By Kiera Reilly, C’93
The Penn Student Directory was a printed listing of all the students at Penn – their campus address and phone numbers. It was published every academic year by Penn Student Agencies.
We managed to track down three of the student directories from our time at Penn.
Rob Williams, C’93, had our first student directory with a beautiful photo of Locust Walk in the Spring.
Penn Student Directory 1989 – 1990, photo courtesy of Rob Williams, C’93
As you can see from the cover page below, students’ local (Philly) address and phone numbers were listed as well as the home address, expected graduation year and faternity/sorority affiliation. The information was provided by the Registrar.
Title page of the 1989 – 1990 directory, photo courtesy of Rob Williams, C’93
Remember Penntrex? It’s a, “state-of-the-art telephone system.” The monthly line cost was $8.00.
Penntrex – how to use it! Photo courtesy of Rob Williams, C’93
I remember the coupons in the directory – poor college students needed these to save money!
Coupons in the Penn Directory, photo courtesy of Rob Williams, C’93
I had the covers from two directories in my stash of Penn things. Here is the one from our junior year.
The Penn Student Agencies 1991 -92 Student Directory. Photo courtesy of Kiera Reilly, C’93
I worked at Penn Student Agencies during my four years at Penn, and the summer between my junior and senior year, I worked in the PSA office.
Since the student directory was produced by PSA, there was a summer staff working on the directory.
Here is a photo of us having fun on the Button.
Penn Student Agencies summer staff 1992, photo courtesy of Kiera Reilly, C’93. Back row, L-R: Chris Lehmann, C’93, Jeff Hurok, C’94, W’94, Diana Cruz, C’93, Mo Massel, C’94. Front row, L-R: Kiera Reilly, C’93, Dena Klein, C’94, Debbie Jaffe, C’93
I remember having many laughs with this crew, and I contacted Chris and Diana to see if they remembered anything specific about our summer working in the basement of Houston Hall (where Penn Student Agencies was located while we were students).
Diana immediately responded with this memory:
I do remember us ruthlessly teasing Jeff, about what I don’t remember. Probably him saying my last name is spelled “H-U-R-O-K” as in “you are Ok, ok?”
I remembered that too – because he’d call to leave his name and say, “H as in Harrry, you are OK.” To this day, whenever I leave a message and have to spell something, I always say H as in Harry and think of Jeff!
Diana also said:
I remember thinking while going door to door from business to business “I signed up to do this again?!?” While walking around in 90+ degree heat and 90% humidity!
Chris chimed in and said that we had a lot of targets for teasing, including Publications Director Mo Massel, C’94.
Here are some photos of what we worked on all summer, the student directory for our senior year at Penn.
The 1992-92 Student Directory produced by Penn Student Agencies, photo courtesy of Kiera Reilly, C’93.
Cover page of the 1992-1993 directory, photo courtesy of Kiera Reilly, C’93
Here is the credits page for the directory with all of our jobs. It was a fun summer!
Credits page for the 1992 – 1993 Penn Student Agencies Directory, photo courtesy of Kiera Reilly, C’93
Did you save a copy of the student directory? We would love to see a copy of the 1990 – 1991 directory.
Penn Class of 1993 25th Reunion Countdown
The weekend of September 8 – 9, 2017, marked 35 weeks until the 25th Reunion of the Penn Class of 1993 (May 11 – 14, 2018)!
Join us we count down the weeks to our reunion #93tothe25th:
- Do you have old photos or mementos from our time at Penn? Photos of Spring Fling? Football at Franklin Field? Classes at DRL? We are taking a trip down memory lane and would love for you to share your memories with our class in a future post. Please email us upenn1993@gmail.com!
- Join our reunion committee – email Lisa Grabelle at lisagrabelle@yahoo.com.
- Follow us on Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram.
- Classmates are invited to join our Facebook and LinkedIn groups.
Important hotel update! Overwhelming response from our great class has sold out the Downtown Marriott Class of 1993 room block for Saturday night. There are alternative hotels. We recommend booking ASAP! Please see our class website for additional details.
Frankly Penn 