January 11, 2017

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WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 11, 2017

THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

Committee searches for new provost

Provost Vincent Price will become president of Duke TOM NOWLAN News Editor

A committee has been formed to replace departing Penn Provost Vincent Price, the group’s chair announced Tuesday. J. Larry Jameson, the dean of the

Perelman School of Medicine, will head the group. On Dec. 2 the University announced that Price will be leaving Penn to become the president of Duke University next summer. The group will include 11 faculty members, four students, two “consultants,” one staff member and an ex officio participant. College senior Kat McKay, the president of the Undergraduate Assembly, will be among the

student representatives. “The Committee is consulting widely with members of the Penn community to ensure that we fully understand the scope of the Provost’s responsibilities and the opportunities and challenges he or she will face in the years ahead,” Jameson wrote in an email. “We are especially interested in hearing the perspectives of Penn’s students at this early stage in the search process.”

The provost serves, per Penn’s website, as the University’s chief academics officer — overseeing “teaching and learning across the university, including education, research, faculty affairs and student life.” Jameson, who also serves as executive vice president for the university’s health system, publicly solicited names SEE PROVOST PAGE 3

The march will be during Trump’s inauguration ISABELLA FERTEL Staff Reporter

The day after the presidential inauguration on Jan. 20, students and groups from all over Penn will fill the National Mall with thousands of other demonstrators at the Women’s March on Washington. Some of the Penn groups attending are We Are Watching, Penn Democrats, Hillel and the Muslim Student Association. The march, organized in response to the election of 1968 Wharton graduate and President-elect Donald Trump, aims to “join in diversity to show our presence in numbers too great to ignore” and to counter “rhetoric of the past election cycle.” Some students attending the march felt that Trump’s alumni status makes Penn representation at the march more significant. “As the institution involved in educating [Trump], there is a responsibility to have a Penn presence,” said Gavi Reiter, College senior and member of Penn’s V-Day College

Campaign, which puts on an annual production of “The Vagina Monologues.” The feminist art collective We Are Watching hopes to garner as much awareness and involvement as possible on campus, which they see as their “feminist duty,” co-founding member and College senior Rhea Singh said. She added that the group hopes to inhabit more of an activist role on campus. Due to the march’s high profile, We Are Watching has received an endorsement and support for the trip from the Penn Women’s Center, and is hoping to partner with Philadelphia organizations to further their mission of “continued activism” for women’s rights. Penn Democrats President and College sophomore Rachel Pomerantz said she feels that showing solidarity with women on campus and nationally is more important as the country approaches an “unpredictable

and scary time.” She added that public solidarity could have the potential to “morph into a sustainable opposition” to both the Trump administration and specific policies that might target both women and people of color. Singh said that the march will “be a voice for all the people whose personhood’s have been denied” and who she worried would be subjected to violence under Trump administration. We Are Watching co-founder and College junior Amanda Silberling felt the mission of the march was about demonstrating support for women’s rights rather than just opposition to Trump. “When I mentioned to people that I was going to the march, people asked about its unifying message because [it] can be unclear if you don’t know anything about it,” Silberling said. “It’s not necessarily an

anti-Trump march, but it’s supposed to be a reminder and symbol of the fact that so many people in this country aren’t going to stand for a government that treats women unfairly.” Silberling also spoke to the historic nature of the march and its ability to influence not only the Trump administration, but Congress as well. “There is great power in changing just a few people minds,” Silberling said. Reiter, Pomerantz, Singh and Silberling all mentioned the recently announced plan to defund Planned Parenthood, an official partner of the Women’s March on Washington, as an example of a policy that would negatively impact women. All four expressed optimism. Silberling said the march would SEE MARCH PAGE 6

Penn guards climate data in Trump’s America

Fresh Grocer is petitioning lease termination Penn plans to replace the Fresh Grocer with Acme Markets CARL-EMMANUEL FULGHIERI Staff Reporter

Initiative to make climate data available to the public

Fresh Grocer is fighting Penn’s termination of its lease and closure on March 31. Penn, which is Fresh Grocer’s landlord, claims that the store did not renew its lease on time and is arranging for a new operator, Acme Markets, to move in. According to the University, the decision to request proposals from new stores was made after Fresh Grocer did not renew its lease to operate Penn’s grocery store in November 2015. Karen Meleta, a spokesperson for ShopRite, which is the larger chain that Fresh Grocer is affiliated with, disagrees. “We do believe we notified them on time, but there is some discrepancy on what that period of time should have been and therein lies the difficulty,” Meleta said. Fresh Grocer, which has been operating at this location since 2001, disputes this claim and is reaching out to customers, students and locals to sign a petition to keep the store. “Over 2,100 people have signed the in-store petition, and we have received over 30 letters of support,” Meleta said. Students on campus are particularly concerned with the transition occurring in the middle of the semester. Fresh Grocer is open 24 hours a day and located within walking

OLIVIA SYLVESTER Staff Reporter

COURTESY OF DAVID TOCAFONDI

Penn’s Program in the Environmental Humanities’ DataRefuge project aims to conserve environmental data recorded by the government.

FRAT RECRUITMENT UP PAGE 2

SEE PETITION PAGE 3

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When the time came for for Penn’s Program in the Environmental Humanities to meet and decide what project it wanted devote its resources to in upcoming year, the decision was unanimous. After the election of 1968 Wharton graduate Donald Trump, its choice was easy: the DataRefuge project.

We think about lynchings, but we never think about the individuals who sold the rope.

DataRefuge is a national collaborative effort to download, save and reupload climate and environmental data. The project also aims to raise awareness of how social and political events affect the public availability of data. PPEH d i rector Bet ha ny Wiggin emphasized the “precarity of environmental data” as a result of the recent election. She cited how former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper SEE DATA PAGE 3

W. HOOPS STILL ON TOP BACK PAGE

- Calvary Rogers

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