Issue date: 2/4/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Priscilla des Gachons The BlackBerry Pearl has become a popular mobile option among Penn students. Such phones allow for portable e-mail access and many students find them to be addictive. [Click to enlarge]

From Au Bon Pain to Pottruck Fitness Center, a growing number of Penn students are traveling with their e-mail accounts in tow.

Few can deny it: The BlackBerry mobile device has earned its place in undergraduate culture at Penn.

Au Bon Pain shift supervisor Tamika Deshazor said a majority of customers in the Huntsman Hall cafe approach the cashier with a BlackBerry in hand, and many are rudely preoccupied during their turn to pay.

"That's why a lot of stores have signs that say if you're on your cell phone they won't take you as the next customer," she said.

Deshazor said the BlackBerry trend is more reflective of Wharton culture than anything else, noting that customers at a cafe in the dental school don't seem nearly as attached to their handheld e-mail. "It's mostly the MBAs," she said.

College junior Margaux Howard, who purchased her first Palm Treo - which, though not a BlackBerry, provides mobile e-mail access - one month ago, said the BlackBerry craze fits well with Penn's pre-professional mentality.

"It's definitely a very Penn, Ivy League kind of thing," she said. Sporting a BlackBerry "says that you have your act together, even though you may not."

It was because of the pre-professional stereotype that Wharton junior Roma Patel was reluctant to become a BlackBerry owner, at first.

"But then I saw that so many people had it and it was no longer about an image," she said. "People were buying it for practical reasons."

Patel said she depends on the mobile device to check e-mail between classes and perform Google searches, which are especially useful for looking up restaurants, she said.

But with BlackBerry culture comes BlackBerry etiquette.

"If I'm having dinner with somebody, they'll put their BlackBerry flat on the table, and I think that's the rudest thing in the world," said Wharton sophomore Angela Xu, who plans to hold off on purchasing her own handheld device until after graduation.

Patel defended her own Blackberry manners. "I don't like to bring it out all the time, especially with my family," she said. "Hopefully people will learn how to use it and not have it as an extension of their hand."

The obsessive nature of some BlackBerry users is what's turned some Penn students against the technology.

"As an undergraduate student, your life is not that important that you need to check your e-mail 50 times a day," College junior Austen Helfrich said.

But Wharton junior Jordan Regan said that after being introduced to the device, it isn't easy going back.

"It's kind of like if you buy a Lexus, you're not going to downgrade," he said. "You're just going to grin and bear it, because a Lexus is pretty sweet."

"It's a gift and a curse," Howard said. "Sometimes you want to know about a new e-mail right away, and sometimes it might have been better left in the inbox."

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools