Temple coach Diane Richardson knew she wanted her team to be battle-tested for American Conference play and crafted the Owls’ nonconference schedule to reflect that.
Richardson lined up five teams coming off NCAA Tournament appearances. The Owls went 1-4 in those games, with their lone win coming at home against George Mason in the season opener on Nov. 3.
The difficult schedule leaves Temple with a 6-6 record that does not scream conference title contender. However, with a similarly difficult slate at this time last year, the Owls were 6-5 but went on to win 13 conference games and finished fourth in the American.
Now Richardson is hoping to see similar results. Temple has displayed more offensive firepower and improved rebounding numbers, but the key to success for the coach will be defense and starting games strong. The Owls’ quest for an American championship starts Saturday at home against the reigning regular-season champion, UTSA (2:30 p.m., ESPN+).
“I’m feeling pretty good,” Richardson said. “I know our last outing with Princeton kind of showed us that we have the resiliency that we’ll need. I just wish that we would start out like that. But I’m feeling pretty good. We’ve gotten the tough part behind us, and now we enter into the second season, which is the most important.”
Coach Diane Richardson’s Temple squad opens American Conference play on Saturday against the reigning regular-season champion, UTSA.
Showing resilience
Temple’s four losses against 2025 NCAA Tournament teams came by double digits, with its closest result an 87-77 loss at Princeton on Dec. 22. The Owls also showed flashes of fight and the ability to remain competitive in those games.
In their 72-57 loss to Atlantic 10 favorite Richmond on Nov. 18, the Owls were down double digits early in the second quarter but battled back and were within striking distance until the final five minutes. Temple trailed by as many as 26 points in the fourth quarter against Princeton but cut the deficit to nine in the final minute.
“Early on, we weren’t responding really well,” Richardson said. “… But I think as we got into the season, we started understanding that this is tough, and we have to be tougher. Coming toward the end of the nonconference season, I thought we played better, which is a plus for us going into conference play.”
Before the season, Richardson wanted her team to play faster, but during nonconference play, she felt the Owls were not assertive on offense to begin games or played out of control, which led to an increase in turnovers.
Temple also had to play its final four nonconference games without starting point guard Tristen Taylor, who suffered an ankle injury on the road trip to the Bahamas at the end of November. The Owls were 2-2 without her.
Taylor was the Owls’ second-leading scorer at the time of her injury, averaging 10.1 points and leading them in assists (4.6). She also was second in the American in assist-to-turnover ratio at 2.1. Without its main ballhandler, Temple looked out of sync at times, especially in its 59-52 loss to Drexel in the Big 5 Classic on Dec. 7.
The Owls leaned on guard Kaylah Turner, who ascended to one of the best players in the conference in Taylor’s absence.
She averaged 23 points in the four games Taylor missed, including a career-high 36 points against Princeton. Turner, who is averaging 17.8 points this season, took on point guard duties and struggled with turnovers, but she still offered a steady presence at the top of the offense. Richardson expects Taylor back within the first two games of conference play. She believes Taylor and Turner can form the best backcourt in the conference.
“In the scoring aspect, I do think I did well, but I feel like I could have done way better,” Turner said. “With playmaking and passing, that’s something I’m still working on. So I feel like I definitely could have improved that.”
Tristen Taylor was averaging 10.1 points and 4.6 assists at the time of her injury.
By the numbers
Richardson was keen on her team playing faster on offense and improving its rebounding in the offseason. Nonconference play has shown offensive improvement and major strides on the glass for the Owls.
Temple is averaging 70.1 points, a 3.4-point increase from its mark last year. Three players — Turner, Taylor and forward Jaleesa Molina — are averaging at least 10 points. Turner leads the American in scoring (17.8) and three-point percentage (.460) and is second in field-goal percentage (.450).
The most notable improvement for the Owls has been their rebounding. Last season, Temple averaged 38.8 rebounds and had a rebounding margin of 0.8. This season, the Owls are averaging 39.8 rebounds but holding opponents to 33.9. The Owls give up the second-fewest rebounds in the conference and are fourth in rebounding margin.
Molina and transfer forward Saniyah Craig have spearheaded the Owls’ efforts on the glass. Craig, who was the ninth-leading rebounder in the country last season while at Jacksonville, is averaging 8.9 rebounds, and Molina averages 8.4.
“We’ve got to be hungry, and we’ve got to get every rebound,” Richardson said. “We’ve concentrated on that this week as well. So that’s going to be something that hopefully we’re good at.”
Temple has struggled taking care of the ball. The Owls are averaging 19.6 turnovers, four more than last season, and have turned the ball over at least 20 times in five games, including their last three.
Richardson knows the turnover numbers have to come down, but she believes that the key to a conference banner being raised in the Liacouras Center will come on defense.
“You can miss shots, but you can always play defense,” Richardson said. “I think that oomph, that extra adrenaline turning people over defensively helps us offensively because it gives them more confidence. We want to compound our defense and make that our No. 1 thing.”
Marsha Levick took her seat at a conference table at the Juvenile Law Center on a recent Wednesday for what would be one of her last meetings. She walked colleagues through the basic principles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the 1989 treaty that laid out, in clear terms, what the world said it owed young people.
At the heart of the treaty is a simple idea: A child’s best interests come first — even when that child enters the justice system. It has been ratified by all but one of the U.N.’s member nations: the U.S. And in many of those 196other countries,Levick said, children younger than 14 cannot be prosecuted at all.
“Wait,” a staffer interjected. “Kids younger than 14 aren’t in the justice system?”
“I know,” Levick said. “It’s very different.”
Marsha Levick, chief legal officer and cofounder of the Juvenile Law Center, speaks with staff on Dec. 17.
For 50 years, Levick, 74, has been one of the most persistent and influential voices in the American juvenile justice system, a driving force in turning what was once a niche legal specialty into a national civil rights movement. Colleagues credit her with helping to rewrite how courts view children — persuading judges, including those on the U.S. Supreme Court, to treat youth not as miniature adults but as citizens with distinct constitutional protections and needs.
Levick will step down Wednesday from her position as chief legal officer of the Juvenile Law Center, the Philadelphia-based organization she helped build from a walk-in legal clinic in 1975 into a national leader in children’s rights.
Her departure coincides with the center’s 50th anniversary. At a celebration gala in May, the nonprofit honored Levick with a leadership award that recognized her body of work.
Levick’s career ranged from representing individual teenagers to steering landmark litigation that forced states to overhaul abusive practices. She helped lead the Juvenile Law Center’s response to the “kids for cash” scandal in Luzerne County. She coauthored briefs in a series of U.S. Supreme Court victories that throttled the harshest punishments for kids, including life in prison.
But Levick is also stepping down at what she calls a “dark moment” forcivil liberties in America — a time when rights once thought settled are being rolled back.
Levick was in law school in 1973 when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that recognized a constitutional right to abortion. In the years that followed, a constellation of rights — from marriage equality to access to contraception — also expanded.
Roe was overturned, however, in 2022. Since then, other decisions have also chipped away at affirmative action in colleges and LGBTQ+ protections.
“It’s hard to convey the shock that it imposes,” Levick said in a recent interview. “Now, 50 years later, you’re pushing the rock back up the hill.”
She made clear she was unsparing with herself, quick to point out what she perceived as shortcomings. “There were high moments for sure,” she said. “But I am not foolishly happy about that. I’m shocked that that’s all we could do. That’s as far as we got.”
Yet even as fresh battles loom, colleagues say the groundwork Levick has laid will guide the Juvenile Law Center’s mission and the broader fight for children’s rights for years to come.
Jessica Feierman, the center’s senior managing director, will step into Levick’s role. “It is a huge privilege and also an immense responsibility,” she said. “In this moment of attacks on civil rights and children’s rights, it’s even more vital that we build on the victories of the last 50 years.”
From Philadelphia to the U.S. Supreme Court
Raised in Philadelphia’s Fairmount neighborhood, Levick discovered early the charge of using her voice, first as a girl who demanded a recount in an elementary school election and won the presidency, and later as a teenager who inhaled The Feminine Mystique and the feminist writers who followed. She earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a law degree from what is now Temple University Beasley School of Law.
She cofounded the Juvenile Law Center in 1975 with three law school classmates: Bob Schwartz, a classical music aficionado and part-time semi-pro baseball umpire; Phil Margolis, a vegetarian and free spirit; and Judy Chomsky, a mother of two and passionate Vietnam War resister.
Seven years earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that juveniles were entitled to due process. That decision cracked open an untapped field, Levick said, to buildwith her classmates a new kind of civil rights practice focused on children.
For the first year, they worked out of the Chestnut Street office of Chomsky’s husband, a cardiologist, carving out space in his waiting room and sidestepping an exam room on the days he saw patients.
In its earliest years, the center took on individual cases for children. One of Levick’s first clients was in Montgomery County, a teen girl who had participated in a protest at a nuclear plant and who was arrested and charged with trespassing, she said.
But the center struggled financially. The founding partners laid themselves off at one point, Levick said, so they could keep paying the few employees they had hired: a divorced mother who worked as a receptionist; their first lawyer, Anita DeFrantz, who was an Olympic rower; and a social worker.
In 1982, Levick quit the center to become the legal director of the national NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, now Legal Momentum. By the time she left there six years later, she had become its executive director.
At the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, Levick said, she learned how to build national cases — coordinating multistate litigation and filing amicus briefs in federal courts. By the time she returned to the Juvenile Law Center in 1995, after a stint at a small Paoli firm, she had come to believe that individual wins, while necessary, would not be enough to create lasting change.
The center’s mission became more focused on appellate litigation and national advocacy, setting the stage for children’s rights to reach state supreme courts and, eventually, the U.S. Supreme Court.
Hundreds of juveniles resentenced, released
In 2005, in Roper v. Simmons, Levick cowrote in a brief that social science research on youth development should inform constitutional law. Children, she also wrote, have a greater capacity to change.
“We just pushed ourselves into the center of it,” Levick said. “We were like, ‘We’re here. We’re writing the amicus brief.’”
The high court overturned decades of precedent when it ruled in Roper that the Eighth Amendment forbids the death penalty for juveniles. Five years later, in Graham v. Florida, it barred life-without-parole sentences for juveniles in non-homicide cases, after reading another brief Levick coauthored.
In 2012, Levick helped persuade the court to end mandatory life-without-parole sentences for youths convicted of homicide in Miller v. Alabama. And in 2016, she served as cocounsel in Montgomery v. Louisiana, the case that made the Miller decision retroactive across the country.
Since then, hundreds of juveniles — including nearly 500 in Pennsylvania — have been resentenced or released from prison. One of them: Donnell Drinks, freed in 2018 after 27 years.
The first time Drinks met Levick, he hugged her. “I couldn’t believe how small she was, because of her presence, her legal prowess, has all been so enormous,” recalled Drinks, who works as a leadership and engagement coordinator at the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth.Levick is 5-foot-3.
Those cases brought Levick into courtrooms across the state, often alongside public defenders. One of them, Bradley S. Bridge, a retired Philadelphia public defender who worked with her on dozens of resentencings, called Levick a “zealous advocate” who “always saw the big picture.”
Her ability, he said, “to think toward the future, I think, was most glorious.”
Levick agreed that looking ahead had always been part of her work. “We always tried to look around the corner,” she said.
One of those moments came in 2008, when she and her colleagues began fielding troubling calls from Luzerne County — the first hints of what would become the “kids-for-cash” scandal.
Seeing more in the ‘kids-for-cash’ scandal
In 2007, Laurene Transue called the Juvenile Law Center. Her daughter, 14-year-old Hillary Transue, had been ordered to serve three months in a detention facility after she created a Myspace page mocking her school principal, she said at the time.
“We saw in that one phone call something that was clearly much bigger,” Levick said.
In fact, it was one of the most egregious judicial corruption cases in modern American history: Two Luzerne County judges had accepted kickbacks in exchange for sentencing thousands of juveniles — many for minor misbehavior — to extended stays in private detention centers.
“It was kind of like, if I may, what the f— in my mind,” Levick recalled.
Levick and the center petitioned the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which ultimately threw out and expunged thousands of adjudications. They later helped families pursue civil damages, with the help of other firms. The judges, Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan, were convicted of federal crimes and sentenced to long prison terms; President Joe Biden commuted Conahan’s sentence in 2024.
Hillary Transue now serves on the Juvenile Law Center’s board.
Transue told The Inquirer that as a teenager she believed that “highly educated” adults in “positions of authority” were “mean, nasty people who were out to hurt you.” But Levick, she said, “brushed up against my perception of adults” and proved her wrong.
“I think she’s a goddamn superhero,” Transue said recently.
Marsha Levick (center) stands with staffers at the Juvenile Law Center earlier this month.
Among the successes, Levick still sees failures
Despite the victories, Levick is quick to cite the cases she lost. “I’ve had successes. I’ve also failed many times,” she said.
She still thinks about clients like Jamie Silvonek, sentenced to 35 years to life in prison after killing her mother, whose early release Levick has fought for but has not yet won, or a recent bid to expand parole access for people convicted as juveniles that fell flat in Florida.
Those losses have hardened her view of how deeply punishment is embedded in American law. “I feel like punishment is in our bones,” she said. “The way that we think about crime is that it is always followed by punishment.”
That instinct, she said, has left behind people who could have thrived outside prison — including juvenile lifers who will never be released. One of them is Silvonek, whom Levick described as brilliant and warm. “I want her to be able to share that warmth and joy with her family and with her community, who are all behind her,” Levick said.
“We lost what they had to give,” she added.
Levick isn’t done yet
Levick, who is married with two adult daughters, is not leaving the field. She will become the Phyllis Beck chair at Temple’s Beasley School of Law, a post once held by her cofounder Bob Schwartz, and will teach constitutional law to first-year students.
She feels newly urgent about the course. “I am outraged at the degree to which the law has been perverted by the current moment, and I think I still can say and do something about that,” she said. “I think that the things that motivate me include outrage.”
She expects much of the future progress in youth justice to come from state supreme courts rather than the U.S. Supreme Court — a shift she sees as pragmatic, not pessimistic. Washington State Supreme Court Justice Mary Yu, who has heard Levick argue successfully before her, called her a fearless litigator. “She’s an extraordinary appellate lawyer,” Yu, who is also retiring Wednesday, said in an interview.“It’s almost instinctual to her.”
And even now, Levick said, she has hope.
“We’re not going to abolish the juvenile justice system in America, but we could transform it radically,” Levick said. “I believe that. But it takes more than just lawyers to care. It takes more than the community to care. It takes people in positions of power to care. And that’s the hard part.”
Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the name of a legal advocacy group at which Levick worked. She worked at NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund. The story also misstated the year Laurene Transue called the Juvenile Law Center; she called the law center in 2007.
A patient with no home to return to was pushed in a wheelchair to the curb outside Temple University Hospital. Staffers left him sitting on a bench, even though he was considered at a high risk of falling.
An hour later, a security officer found the man had fallen and was lying on the ground.
He was shaking when the guard brought him back into the hospital, but didn’t respond to a nurse’s questions. So hospital staff again sent him away — this time leaving him alone in a wheelchair outside the emergency department.
He was found there five hours later, slumped over, unresponsive, and without a pulse. He died the following week.
Temple’s treatment of the patient during the Oct. 3 incident prompted state and federal investigations. In a report released earlier this month, the Pennsylvania Department of Health cited Temple for violating state rules that require hospitals to provide emergency care.
Experts say the hospital’s actions amounted to “patient dumping,” a practice prohibited under a federal law that requires hospital emergency departments to medically screen and stabilize all patients.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which oversees hospital safety nationally, confirmed it is also investigating, but has not released details.
Hospitals that violate the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, known as EMTALA, risk hefty fines or losing their Medicare license, though such penalties are rare.
Temple acknowledged that its own protocols were not followed. Health system officials told state investigators the patient should not have been removed from the hospital without being evaluated and cleared by medical staff.
“The safety of our patients, visitors and staff is Temple’s highest priority,” the hospital said in a statement to The Inquirer. “We believe that everyone deserves high quality care.”
The hospital declined to say whether any of the staff members involved were disciplined or fired.
But such incidents are rarely the fault of one individual, legal experts and homelessness advocates said. Rather, they are a sign of systemic problems, such as understaffing that can leave staff overwhelmed, and bias among medical providers that can put vulnerable patients at risk of being dismissed.
“If you work in an environment where safety is prized and honored and enforced from the top down, everyone feels that’s their mission,” said Eric Weitz, a medical negligence lawyer in Philadelphia. “If that’s not a priority being set by leadership, then it’s no surprise the culture doesn’t reinforce it.”
Hospital administrators said the triage nurse who turned away the patient should have sought help, if the patient wasn’t responding to questions. The nurse said she was overwhelmed and working without sufficient support in one of the region’s busiest trauma hospitals.
“I was busy and alone,” she told state inspectors.
The incident violated Temple’s emergency department protocol, staff told Pennsylvania Department of Health inspectors.
Pa. Department of Health investigates Temple
To piece together what went wrong, Pennsylvania Department of Health inspectors watched security camera footage, interviewed staff members, and reviewed internal hospital reports. Their timeline shows a series of mistakes.
At about 3:15 p.m., an employee brought the patient in a wheelchair to a bench near the curb outside the hospital, and left him there on the mild October day with highs near 70 degrees.
He was being discharged to “the community” because he was experiencing homelessness, according to the inspection report. (The state report does not say whether staff attempted to place him at a skilled nursing facility, rehabilitation center or homeless shelter.)
The man sat alone on the bench for an hour before standing unsteadily, taking a few steps, and ultimately falling to the ground.
He managed to get back up, leaning against a tree for support, only to fall again. He was on the ground for 10 minutes before a security guard found him.
The guard brought the man back into the emergency department in a wheelchair about two hours after he had been released.
Back inside the hospital, the man followed orders to raise his arms for a security check at the door. Then he waited in line to be seen by the triage nurse responsible for checking in patients at the emergency department.
When he reached the front of the line, he did not respond to the nurse’s questions. “He was not answering any questions, just shaking,” according to a Temple incident report reviewed by inspectors. Staff said the patient was “not cooperating” and should be sent to the back of the line.
After two minutes with the nurse, a security guard moved his wheelchair to a corner of the emergency department near the entrance.
The man was once again wheeled outside the hospital a few minutes later and left alone.
He was found by medical staff around 9:30 p.m., slumped over in his wheelchair.
Staff began CPR, rushing him back inside for trauma care.
Pennsylvania Department of Health’s inspection report details how a patient in Temple’s emergency department was rolled away in a wheelchair without being evaluated.
The inspection report does not identify the patient’s name, age, or provide details on the medical condition for which he had been hospitalized. It also does not say what happened after he was found unresponsive. He died five days later, on Oct. 8.
Temple responds
Medical screening of every patient who comes to the emergency department is “explicitly required” under Temple’s EMTALA policies, according to the hospital’s response to the state findings.
“It doesn’t matter if they were just there an hour ago, every time they present, it is a new encounter and should be documented as such,” a Temple staffer said in an interview with inspectors.
The hospital told the state it would retrain staff on EMTALA rules, making clear that security officers cannot remove patients from the emergency department unless they have been evaluated and cleared for release by a medical professional.
A week after the incident, hospital staff were instructed to keep a log of patients who are removed from the emergency department and the name of the provider who approved their release. (Temple police may still remove patients from the emergency department if they are threatening the safety of other patients or staff.)
The hospital also said that it would order mobility evaluations for patients who are being discharged “to the community” if they had a high risk of falling, with a doctor’s sign-off required.
Temple treats some of Philadelphia’s most vulnerable patients in an emergency room that sees more than 150,000 visits a year, including high numbers of gunshot victims and people experiencing opioid withdrawal. It operates a Level I trauma center in a North Philadelphia community where 87% of patients are covered by publicly funded Medicare or Medicaid.
The emergency department is so busy that about 8% of patients choose to leave before being seen, according to CMS data, compared to about 2% of patients at hospitals nationally and across Pennsylvania.
The triage nurse on duty Oct. 3 is not identified in the inspection report.
Two healthcare lawyers who reviewed the state’s inspection report said the entire episode is troubling.
“It sounds like they violated every part of EMTALA,” said Sara Rosenbaum, professor emerita of health law policy at George Washington University.
The law does not require specific treatment, but mandates that hospitals evaluate everyone who walks in the door seeking care, and prohibits them from sending them away or transferring them until they are medically stable.
“They failed to screen him, threw an unstable person back on the street, and didn’t arrange a medically appropriate transfer,” she said.
What’s more, the hospital could be sued for malpractice over how it initially discharged the patient.
The incident appears to be “a classic EMTALA violation,” said Weitz, the Philadelphia lawyer who serves on Pennsylvania’s Patient Safety Authority, an independent state agency that monitors hospital errors.
The health department’s description of what happened is “almost eerily the exact fact pattern the law was passed to prevent,” he said.
Healthcare challenges for patients experiencing homelessness
People who are experiencing homelessness often receive subpar treatment when they seek medical care, research shows.
One study that analyzed thousands of California patient records found that those who were described in their medical records as “homeless” were more likely than patients who have a permanent legal address to be discharged from the emergency department, rather than being admitted for care.
In the Philadelphia region, caring for this population is increasingly challenging. The number of available shelter beds has declined in recent years, while the number of people who are considered unhoused has risen, according to Philadelphia’s Office of Homeless Services.
Stephanie Sena, CEO of Breaking Bread Community Shelter in Delaware County, said the colder months also see more people experiencing homelessness coming to hospitals to get off the street.
“If they say they’re sick, they might get a bed and be able to survive the night,” Sena said.
The pattern can make doctors and nurses less likely to believe patients when they report real medical needs. Especially when staff are overwhelmed in busy hospitals, patients experiencing homelessness may be at greater risk of getting denied or discharged when they need help, she said.
Sena said she was disappointed to hear about the Temple incident.
“It is tragic,” she said, “but also not at all surprising, unfortunately.”
A former Temple guard who worked on coaching staffs at two Philadelphia universities placed hundreds of bets on professional and collegiate games while he was a volunteer coach, the NCAA revealed.
Khalif Wyatt, who served as an assistant volunteer coach for the men’s basketball team at West Chester University from July 2022 to spring 2023, placed 498 bets on professional and collegiate games between July and November 2022, totaling $176,326, according to the report released Thursday.
None involved West Chester teams.
Wyatt, who worked as a director of player development at his alma mater Temple before moving to the Long Island Nets in the NBA’s G League in September, declined to comment.
As part of the NCAA’s penalty, Wyatt was suspended from 15% of the regular season during the first season of his employmentif hired by any other NCAA member. He would not be able to participate in coaching activities during that period.
What does the violation mean for West Chester?
The NCAA began its investigation in 2024, when it was investigating another men’s basketball team. During that inquiry, sportsbook operator FanDuel reported Wyatt’s gambling. West Chester did not provide sports betting education to Wyatt, a volunteer coach, until 2023, according to the report. The NCAA found the university also responsible for Wyatt’s gambling.
The university was fined $2,500 and is on NCAA probation until December 2026.
A spokesperson for West Chester said, “Though the infraction was committed by a former short-term volunteer,” the school complied with the NCAA’s sanctions. It has further strengthened its compliance education, the spokesperson said.
Temple did not respond to a message seeking comment.
Khalif Wyatt was a standout player at Temple.
Who is Khalif Wyatt?
Wyatt, 34, grew up in Norristown and attended Norristown Area High School. He was a standout guard at Temple, where he helped the Owls earn two Atlantic 10 titles and NCAA Tournament appearances in four consecutive seasons.
He finishedhis career with 1,576 points, 295 assists, and 273 rebounds andwas named Atlantic 10 and Big 5 Player of the Year. He remains the program’s all-time leader for most 30-point games (seven) and is one of three Temple players to score more than 30 points in two NCAA Tournament games.
After his college career, Wyatt spent nearly a decade playing overseas in China (2013-14), Israel (2014-19), and the Philippines (2019-20).
Where has he coached?
Wyattwas named to Temple’s staff as its director of player development in July 2023, after previously having served as an assistant coach at West Chester.
Wyatt spent two seasons with the Owls before leaving for a job with the Brooklyn Nets’ G League team as a video coordinator this offseason.
Wyatt told The Inquirer in 2023 that he had hoped to be a Division I head coach or work in the NBA.
What is the NCAA gambling policy?
The NCAA bans student-athletes, coaches, and athletics staff members from participating in all sports betting activities, regardless of sport or division — includingprofessional sports.
In late November — after six college men’s basketball players had their eligibility revoked over allegations of sports betting — the NCAA rescinded a rule change that would have allowed student athletes to bet on professional sports.
Are there other local college betting incidents?
Former Temple guard Hysier Miller, who overlapped one year with Wyatt on the Owls’ staff, is permanently ineligible to compete in the NCAA after having placed dozens of bets, including some against his team, during the 2022-23 and 2023-24 seasons.
The Neumann Goretti graduate placed 42 parlay bets totaling $473 on Temple games, and three of those were against his team.
Former Temple special assistant coach Camren Wynter and former graduate assistant Jaylen Bond also violated NCAA rules by betting on professional and collegiate sports. Their bets did not involve Temple.
According to the NCAA, both coaches received one-year, show-cause orders, a penalty in which any new hiring school would have to appear before the NCAA Committee on Infractions to state why it shouldn’t face discipline for hiring the coach, and a suspension of 10% of regular-season contests during his first year of employment.
In late November, Temple president John Fry and athletic director Arthur Johnson wrote in a statement that the NCAA found no evidence of point shaving or wrongdoing by the university.
Pennsylvania’s fledgling State Board of Higher Education on Thursday rolled out itsfirst strategic plan, setting goals addressing affordability, increased degree attainment, the state’s workforce and economic development needs, and the fiscal health of colleges.
The board voted unanimously to post the 10-year plan for public comment.It will consider adoption in February.
“The plan will strengthen partnerships, break down silos, and enable effective reinvestment in the sector,” Cynthia Shapira, chair of the board, said in a statement introducing the plan.
It comes as the sector faces perhaps its greatest challenge in decades. Both private and public universities have been losing enrollment as the number of high school graduates falls — with another dip beginning next year and a 12% decline expected in Pennsylvania by 2037. Public trust in colleges has faltered, while concerns about cost and student debt have mounted.
They are also facing scrutiny from President Donald Trump’s administrationand a forecasted gap in workers who require a postsecondary credential in essential areas, such as healthcare, teaching, and advanced manufacturing.
The Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, which oversees the state’s 10 universities, endorsed the plan’s emphasis on collaboration across private and public colleges and universities.
“Within our own system, we have learned that when universities work together, they can innovate, overcome challenges and better serve students and the Commonwealth,” the system said in a statement. Shapira is also the chair of PASSHE’s board.
The 21-member higher education board includes college presidents, administrators, legislators, and students.It was formed in 2024 by the governor and General Assembly to help public and private colleges work more cohesively and better serve students and the state’s workforce needs. The plan rollout follows public hearings that drew comments from more than 1,200 people, the board said.
The plan outlines the challenges facing the higher education sector including another coming decline in the high school population, financial constraints, and the lack of coordination among institutions. Student debt averages more than $40,000 per student in Pennsylvania, the plan notes.
“Multiple comparative state-level analyses … place Pennsylvania at or near the bottom in terms of affordability, attainment, and state investment per capita,” the report stated. “Adding to these challenges are a large and growing postsecondary workforce credential gap, and a range of closures and mergers that threaten to reduce access to postsecondary education.”
In the Philadelphia region, Cabrini University and the University of the Arts closed in 2024 and Rosemont College announced earlier this year that it would cease operations in 2028 and that Villanova University would purchase its campus. Salus University was merged into Drexel University. Six of Pennsylvania’s state universities were merged into two entities in 2022, and St. Joseph’s University absorbed the University of the Sciences the same year.
Other local colleges have struggled with enrollment declines and deficits. Temple University, for example, has gone from more than 40,000 students in 2017 to less than 30,000 this year.
What are the specific goals in the plan?
The new plan set six goals:
Increase postsecondary attainment.
Ensure affordable pathways to postsecondary credentials.
Support the economic development needs of the state.
Support the workforce development needs of the state.
Ensure accountability and efficient use of state funds.
Strengthen the fiscal health and stability of the higher education sector.
How will the board work toward those goals?
To meet the goals, the board proposes a “strategic communications plan” that touts the benefits of postsecondary education and how it impacts employment outcomes.
It also emphasizes expanding funding for dual credit programs and enrollment in those programs to streamline the path from high school to college and allow students to accumulate more credits before they graduate high school. In addition, the plan proposes studying how to improve retention rates and focusing on reenrolling adults who started college but didn’t finish; there are more than 1.1 million Pennsylvanians with some college experience.
Among its plans for addressing affordability are support of policies that “expand financial aid and forgive debt for in-demand, high-quality credentials,” take advantage of new federal Pell grants for workforce programs, and boost access to “open educational resources” to reduce the cost of course materials.
The report also discusses the intent to “maximize the impact of research universities,” recruit out-of-state students to broaden the talent pool, and increase access to paid work experiences for students.
To promote fiscal health, the plan recommends identifying and promoting best practices for fiscal efficiency and cost savings, and developing resources and an advisory group to help financially struggling colleges.
“If institutions decide to close or merge, tools and expertise to assist in this process will help maximize savings, retain access to critical academic programming, and mitigate negative effects on students and communities,” the plan states.
Another advisory group is recommended to help communities where colleges close maintain access to postsecondary education.
What comes next?
After the public comment period and the plan’s final adoption, the board intends to report annually on progress toward the goals and to consider revisions to the plan every five years.
Temple University plans to increase its patrol officer ranks by 58% over five years after a study assessing staffing levels showed the school was below the middle tier of a framework that rates law enforcement agencies.
The university currently has 77 sworn officers — 50 of them patrol officers — and president John Fry pledged to add 29 patrol officers, one detective, six sergeants, and one lieutenant. That would increase the overall number of sworn officers to 114.
Temple president John Fry said safety was his first priority. Now he plans to increase patrol officers by 58% over five years.
No target has been set for how many officers will be hired per year, but those discussions are underway, said Fry, who named public safety a top priority when he started in November 2024.
The university’s declaration comes amid a particularly difficult time for police hiring, with departments nationally — including the Philadelphia Police Department — continuing to face shortages. Temple has been working for several years to attract more officers, including increasing salaries and benefits, adding signing and retention bonuses and higher contributions to retirement accounts, and hiring an associate director to focus solely on hiring, recruitment, retention, and training. The department also moved to 12-hour shifts to give officers more days off.
Yet, the number of sworn officers has decreased from 81 in March 2024 to the current 77, despite additional hires being made, including four new officers from the Temple University Municipal Police Academy in October.
“We must, and we will, deploy ever more compelling and creative incentives to make Temple’s Department of Public Safety a destination employer for law enforcement in our region,” Fry said. “Our plan is to look closely at what we are doing in the areas of recruitment and retention over the next several months and see what improvements can be made.”
Temple plans to hire former Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey’s 21CP Solutions company to assist, including with how best to recruit and retain more officers, Fry said. The university had hired Ramsey to assess safety following the shooting death of student Samuel Collington in November 2021 and has implemented almost all of the 68 recommendations from his report released in April 2023.
The staffing study was one of the final recommendations that Temple had to complete.
Former Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey speaks at a press conference on the Temple safety audit his firm completed in April 2023.
New bike patrol officers
In addition, Philadelphia Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel has committed to providing six bike patrol officers and a sergeant assigned to Temple, beginning Jan. 5. That’s up from the current four officers and supervisor, who were not always the same personnel.
“The ability to have relationships and collaborations … will be better because it’ll be a consistent group,” said Jennifer Griffin, Temple’s vice president for public safety.
“The ability to have relationships and collaborations … will be better because it’ll be a consistent group,” Jennifer Griffin, vice president for public safety at Temple University, said about the city’s six bike patrol officers that will be dedicated to Temple.
Members of the Temple University Police Association, the officers union, have complained for years of inadequate staffing. In a social media postabout a year ago, the union said the department had lost more than 50 officers since 2022.
But Andrew Lanetti, president of the union, said he is pleased with the direction outlined by Fry.
“From our talks here in the past few days, I am happy with where we’re going in the future,“ he said. ”I believe this is going to be a very positive experience and it’s going to help our community a lot.”
University and union officials already have been discussing ways to recruit and retain more officers, and a more positive working relationship between the union and the university could help move the needle on hiring and retention.
“We’re going to work together and our goal is all the same,” Griffin said. “We want a safer Temple and a safer community.”
Budget woes
The move also comes as the university attempts to close a budget deficit, made worse this fall when the school missed enrollment projections for its main campus that translated to about $10 million in lost revenue.
“It will be a challenge,” Fry said of the new police officer hiring, “but it’s a priority, so we will meet that challenge.“
He said money for the new staffing will be built into the university’s five-year budget plan.
Temple last February hired safety and security consulting companies Healy+ and COSECURE, ancillary businesses of the Cozen O’Connor law firm, to conduct the staffing study. They used a tiered framework “to assess the capacity and effectiveness of law enforcement agencies,” Temple said. The university declined to release the full report, citing its proprietary information.
“Temple is positioned below the middle tier of the framework, meaning the department is presently staffed to meet the essential public safety and emergency response needs of our community,” Fry said. “However, additional personnel would allow the department to organize and coordinate its activities to focus on additional proactive and community engagement activities that would position it higher in the consultant’s framework.”
With the additional police officers that Temple plans to hire, the school would rise from just below the third of five tiers in the consultant’s rating system to the second tier, Fry said. The second tier, he said, connotes “higher levels of proactive enforcement, more presence, more mitigation strategies, and then more outreach, more community engagement.”
Public safety is extremely important as the university plans to release its strategic plan and campus development plan early next year and as Fry seeks to spur economic development along the Broad Street corridor, from Temple’s new Terra Hall location in Center City to the health campus in North Philadelphia.
“There’s going be a campus development plan, which clearly is going to put more activity on this campus, which means we’re going to have to support our police,” Fry said.
Potential investors, he said, are watching.
“When they’re about to commit significant investment, they want to know the area is safe,” he said.
‘Hold ourselves accountable’
Former Temple president Jason Wingard pledged to increase the police force by 50% the month that Collington was killed, and those numbers never materialized. In fact, the number of officers dropped.
Fry said what is different this time is that he has specified the exact numbers that will be added over a distinct time frame.
“This is not something we’re just sort of speculating about,” he said. “This is based on a professional study. … We’ll be able to hold ourselves accountable.”
The university already has made a host of changes that were recommended by Ramsey in the 2023 report. They include more foot patrols and security cameras and increased technology in the communications center.
The university in 2024 touted a decrease in aggravated assaults, robberies, and thefts in its patrol zone. Despite improvements, Temple has continued to face safety challenges in its North Philadelphia neighborhood, including large groups of juveniles that sometimes gather on or near campus — a challenge in other areas of the city, too.
And a student was shot and killed by another student near off-campus housing inFebruary.
Temple University will offer a voluntary retirement program for faculty, the school announced Wednesday.
The move comes as the university attempts to close a budget deficit that stood at $27 million earlier this year but that worsened when the school did not meet projected enrollment targets for its main campus — which president John Fry had said translated to $10 million less in revenue.
“It is important for us to explore strategies that will allow the university to make meaningful changes, as this is key to optimizing the budget and improving our financial results moving forward,” Fry and interim provost David Boardman said in a message to the campus community.
The university did not say how many faculty it hopes will take the offer, but those who are 62 years and older and have at least 10 continuous years of experience are eligible. They must be tenured, tenure-track, or appointed as non-tenure-track under a contract that expires after June 30.
Temple did not immediately provide the number of eligible faculty.
The move also will allow the university to hire new tenure-track faculty over time, Fry and Boardman said.
Fry said the university would fund the program with federal COVID-19 stimulus funds that came in a onetime tax credit reimbursement to businesses that kept employees during that period. Temple last offered faculty a voluntary retirement program in 2023.
Pennsylvania State University last year offered buyouts to its faculty and staff on its Commonwealth campuses as it made plans to close seven of those campuses. More than 380 employees — 21% of those eligible — took the buyout in June 2024.
Also on Wednesday, Temple announced it had tapped Rob Reddy, formerly the vice president for enrollment management at St. Louis University, to serve as interim vice provost for enrollment management. He will begin Jan. 1
Reddy replaces Jose Aviles, who left Temple last month for a new enrollment job at Rutgers University. He has three decades of experience in admissions, financial aid, and veterans’ relations, Boardman said in an announcement to the campus community.
“Rob comes to us with deep experience in the field and a reputation for taking on challenging assignments,” Boardman said.
He previously served as assistant vice chancellor of enrollment management and dean of student financial services at Northeastern University.
The university intends to launch a search for a new enrollment leader in the spring, Boardman said.
When the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services quietly altered the nameplate on Rachel Levine’s official portrait during the recent government shutdown — replacing her legal first name with the one assigned to her at birth — it might have seemed to some like an insignificant gesture.
But symbols matter. Names matter. And, as we are constantly reminded by the pioneering example of Levine — the first openly transgender person confirmed for a government role by the U.S. Senate — identity matters.
And the deliberate act of using a transgender or nonbinary person’s birth name (or a previous name) after they’ve chosen a new one — a demeaning practice known as “deadnaming” — is more than just an insult to one nationally recognized medical leader. It’s a signal about what our health system is becoming.
It tells every transgender clinician, trainee, staff member, and patient: Your identity is provisional here. Your legitimacy is negotiable. Your name can be taken from you. For a profession that depends on psychological safety, this is no small thing.
Imagine training as a transgender medical resident and watching the federal government manipulate the image of one of the country’s most illustrious physicians — someone who helped lead Pennsylvania through the opioid epidemic, someone who oversaw critical COVID-19 responses, and someone so accomplished that they hold the rank of admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service.
Then-Pennsylvania Secretary of Health Rachel Levine meets with the media at The Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency headquarters in Harrisburg in May 2020.
Imagine treating transgender youth in a climate where federal agencies publicly invalidate the very concept of gender identity.
Imagine being a transgender patient, already vulnerable, and seeing your government insist that who you are is, at best, a clerical preference and, at worst, a threat to national security.
We sometimes tell ourselves that culture wars don’t reach the clinic. They do.
They show up when patients avoid care because they fear being misgendered or judged.
They show up when medical students stay closeted to avoid being targeted, derailing careers before they begin.
They show up when clinicians feel pressured to hide their families or their own identities in order to survive training environments already marked by burnout, moral injury, and hierarchy.
They show up in public health, where trust is essential — whether in vaccines, harm-reduction programs, or pandemic response. When government institutions themselves engage in targeted stigmatization, entire communities disengage.
And they show up in professional integrity. A health system that claims to uphold evidence yet endorses policies contradicted by every major medical association — including the treatment of gender dysphoria — erodes its credibility. When science is invoked only when politically convenient, clinicians feel the ground shift under their feet.
Levine showed grace by calling the deadnaming “petty.” In a sense, she’s right: The act is juvenile. But if the rest of us don’t call it out, we risk missing the larger threat.
Professional erasure begins with symbolic gestures — the removal of names, the reclassification of identities, the retelling of who someone “really” is. History is rife with examples of how stripping titles, credentials, or names precedes efforts to diminish authority and restrict participation.
A physician’s portrait is not just a piece of decor. It is a public acknowledgment of service, expertise, and contribution. Altering it is an attempt to rewrite not only identity but legacy.
If medicine is to retain its moral center, clinicians must resist the temptation to disengage. This is not “politics” in the partisan sense. It is professional ethics.
We can start by naming the harm clearly. Deadnaming is not a clerical correction; it is a form of psychological violence aimed at delegitimizing identity.
We must also educate our colleagues, many of whom underestimate the downstream effects of identity-based policies on patient trust, engagement, and health outcomes.
At the same time, we have an obligation to actively support trainees and colleagues — especially those who are transgender or gender-expansive — who may feel newly unsafe or exposed within training environments and workplaces.
Defending evidence-based care is essential: Transgender medicine is medicine. Period. And we must insist that federal agencies speak truthfully about science.
A selective invocation of “scientific reality” is not reality at all; it is ideology masquerading as evidence. Medicine is facing a pivotal question: Are we willing to let political ideology dictate whose identities are valid within our clinics, hospitals, and public health institutions?
Rachel Levine’s portrait matters because deleting her name is an invitation to delete others. It is an attempt to redefine professional legitimacy by biology rather than biography — by chromosomes rather than contributions.
Yet her life is proof that gender identity neither diminishes competence nor negates service.
When a government tries to rewrite that narrative, the medical profession must ask itself: If we do not stand up for the integrity of our colleagues, who will stand up for the integrity of our patients?
Arthur Lazarus is an adjunct professor of psychiatry at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University.
Roberta Fallon, 76, of Bala Cynwyd, cofounder, editor, and longtime executive director of theartblog.org, prolific freelance writer for The Inquirer, Daily News, and other publications, adjunct professor at St. Joseph’s University, artist, sculptor, mentor, and volunteer, died Friday, Dec. 5, at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital of injuries she suffered after being hit by a car on Nov. 24.
Ms. Fallon’s husband, Steven Kimbrough, said the crash remains under investigation by the police.
Described by family and friends as empathetic, energetic, and creative, Ms. Fallon and fellow artist Libby Rosof cofounded the online Artblog in 2003. For nearly 22 years, until the blog became inactive in June, Ms. Fallon posted commentary, stories, interviews, reviews, videos, podcasts, and other content that chronicled the eclectic art world in Philadelphia.
The site drew more than 4,500 subscribers and championed galleries and artists of all kinds, especially women, LGBTQ and student artists, and other underrepresented innovators. “I think we have touched base with every major arts organization in Philadelphia at one point or another, and many of the smaller ones,” Ms. Fallon told The Inquirer in May. “We became part of the arts economy.”
She earned grants from the Knight Foundation and other groups to fund her work. She organized artist workshops and guided tours of local studios she called art safaris.
For years, she and Rosof raised art awareness in Center City by handing out miniatures of their artwork to startled passersby. She said in a 2005 Inquirer story: “We think art needs to be for everyone, not just in galleries.”
She mentored other artists and became an expert on the business of art. “She was so generous and curious about people,” Rosof said. “She was innovative and changed the way art reached people.”
Artist Rebecca Rutstein said Ms. Fallon’s “dedicated art journalism filled a vacuum in Philadelphia and beyond. Many of us became known entities because of her artist features, and we are forever grateful.” In a 2008 Inquirer story about the city’s art scene, artist Nike Desis said: “Roberta and Libby are the patron saints of the young.”
Ms. Fallon never tired of enjoying art.
Colleague and friend Gilda Kramer said: “The Artblog for her was truly a labor of love.”
In November, Ms. Fallon and other art writers created a website called The Philly Occasional. In her Nov. 12 article, she details some of her favorite shows and galleries in Philadelphia and New York, and starts the final paragraph by saying: “P.S. I can’t let you go without telling you about what I just saw at the Barnes Foundation.”
She worked at a small newspaper in Wisconsin before moving to West Philadelphia from Massachusetts in 1984 and wrote many art reviews and freelance articles for The Inquirer, Daily News, Philadelphia Weekly, Philadelphia Citizen, and other publications. In 2012, she wrote more than a dozen art columns for the Daily News called “Art Attack.”
She met Rosof in the 1980s, and together they curated exhibits around the region and displayed their own sculptures, paintings, and installations. Art critic Edith Newhall reviewed their 2008 show “ID” at Projects Gallery for The Inquirer and called it “one of the liveliest, most entertaining shows I’ve seen at this venue.”
Ms. Fallon stands in front of a mural at 13th and Spruce Streets. She is depicted as the figure profiled in the lower left in the white blouse.
Most often, Ms. Fallon painted objects and sculpted in concrete, wood, metal, textiles, and other material. She was a founding member of the Philadelphia Sculptors and Bala Avenue of the Arts.
She studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture, and later taught professional practice art classes at St. Joseph’s. Moore College of Art and Design, which will archive Artblog, awarded her an honorary doctorate.
“Roberta was an exceptional creative artist” and “a force,” artist Marjorie Grigonis said on LinkedIn. Artist Matthew Rose said: “Robbie was a North Star for many people.”
Her husband said: “Her approach to life was giving. She succeeded by adding value to wherever she was.”
Ms. Fallon (second from right) enjoyed time with her family.
Roberta Ellen Fallon was born Feb. 8, 1949, in Milwaukee. She went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to study sociology after high school and dropped out to explore Europe and take art classes in Paris. She returned to college, changed her major to English, and earned a bachelor’s degree in 1974.
She met Steven Kimbrough in Wisconsin, and they married in 1980, and had daughters Oona and Stella, and a son, Max. They lived in West Philadelphia for six years before settling in Bala Cynwyd in 1993.
Ms. Fallon was a neighborhood political volunteer. She enjoyed movies and reading, and she and her husband traveled often to museums and art shows in New York and elsewhere.
They had a chance to relocate to Michigan a few years ago, her husband said. But she preferred Philadelphia for its art and culture. “She was like a local celebrity in the art scene,” her daughter Stella said.
Ms. Fallon and her husband, Steven Kimbrough, visited New York in 1982.
Her husband said: “Everybody likes her. Everybody wants to be around her. She made a difference for a lot of people.”
Her daughter Stella said: “The world would be a better place if we all tried to be like my mom.”
In addition to her husband and children, Ms. Fallon is survived by four grandchildren, a sister, a brother, and other relatives.
Jose A. Aviles, who abruptly resigned last month as Temple University’s head of enrollment, has taken a leadership role at Rutgers University.
Aviles has been named senior vice president for enrollment management and student success at New Jersey’s flagship university.
“Dr. Aviles’ commitment to data-informed, student-centered leadership will be pivotal to strengthening student recruitment, expanding access and enhancing student success metrics,” Rutgers said in its announcement.
At Rutgers, the overall enrollment neared 71,500 this year, up 3.2%.
When Aviles announced his exit from Temple, he told The Inquirer he was leaving for “a life-changing opportunity.”
Aviles, who served as Temple’s vice president for enrollment and student success for 2½ years, joined the North Philadelphia school in 2023, after about six years at Louisiana State University.
In that experience at LSU, he has a tie to Rutgers’ new president, William F. Tate IV, who led the Baton Rouge university from 2021 to this July, when he took the helm at Rutgers.
Aviles left Temple with recent successes under his belt; he had recently been promoted from a vice provost to a vice president.
“Jose has reimagined enrollment management at the university over the last couple of years, helping move us to a modern, technology- and data-driven approach that has delivered results,” Temple president John Fry and interim provost David Boardman said to the campus community last month.
They noted the university achieved growth in first-year enrollment the last two years, with this year’s group reaching a record high of 5,379.
The university also under Aviles’ tenure started the Temple Promise program, which makes tuition and fees free for first-time, full-time college students from low-income families who live in Philadelphia, and the Temple Future Scholars program, a mentoring and college-readiness initiative.
While Temple’s first-year class was strong, the school fell short of its initial overall enrollment projection by about 700 students, which translates to about $10 million in lost revenue.
The university had been estimating it would enroll a total of 30,100 to 30,300 students, which would have been its first enrollment increase since 2017.
Instead, enrollment came in at 29,503, down about 500 from last year and further declining from its high of more than 40,000 eight years ago. (That does not include enrollment on its Japan and Rome campuses, which increased. Including those campuses, Temple’s overall enrollment was over 33,000, a slight increase from last year.)
There have also been concerns about sophomore retention and a higher percentage of third- and fourth-year students not returning.
