February 23, 2016

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TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2016

Penn professor testifies to Congress

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Michael Horowitz discussed advantages of military drone usage NISHANT UPENDER Staff Reporter

The insight of one Penn professor is helping inform the military decisions of the United States. Earlier this month, Michael Horowitz, Penn associate professor of political science and associate director of the Perry World House, delivered a testimony to the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces. The congressional hearing, which plays into the determination of the federal budget, dealt with the role of the aircraft carrier in ensuring the superiority of the U.S. military’s naval power. Horowitz, who recently co-authored a paper about the consequences of drone proliferation, advocated for investment into the research and development of uninhabited aircraft and SEE DRONES PAGE 2

PENN ALUMS IN THE ACADEMY AWARDS PAGE 5

Conservatives struggle to find community on campus PATRICK ZANCOLLI Deputy News Editor

For conservative-identifying students at Penn, being in the minority is something they are familiar with. American universities, especially the Ivies, have a history of being generally more left-leaning political environments. For students who lean more to the right at Penn, this liberal political environment has various implications on their lives as college

students, especially for those who are heavily involved in the conservative dialogue on campus. “Penn as a whole I feel is very liberal, at least at the undergrad level ... but I also think that’s across all Ivy Leagues,” Wharton sophomore and former treasurer of the College Republicans Samantha Shea said. Shea, who is looking to join the Statesman, which is “the only conservative or right-leaning publication at the University of Pennsylvania,” according to its website, believes that the conservative community at Penn is a very small group that needs to be

mobilized. Searching for a place in the classroom For such a small population on campus, mobilization is an even bigger problem for conservatives who feel that their views are not fairly or accurately represented in the classroom. With a faculty reflective of the liberal majority at Penn, some conservative students feel that their political views have been challenged in classroom settings by students and faculty alike. After sitting in a class for the

SEE CONSERVATIVE PAGE 3

CHOP deemed one of safest hospitals in Phila. for baby heart surgeries

Penn was shocked to find a trans person who didn’t embrace the leftof-center identity politics popular with … LGBTQ activists.” - Alec Ward

An Inquirer study found high survival rates

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JAMIE BRENSILBER Staff Reporter

THE NEXT BIG THING BACK PAGE

semester, although she cannot say for certain whether a professor is a Democrat or a Republican, Shea believes that students can oftentimes infer which way a professor leans. “It happened to me last year in my writing seminar class. I was one of three Republicans in the class, and you could definitely tell when the professor would argue your arguments a little more ... just because you were conservative.” While Shea emphasized that her grades were not affected by this gap, she said she was

COURTESY OF JEFFREY M. VINOCUR | WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia stands among its peers in Philadelphia as the safest hospital for a baby to undergo risky heart surgery.

Located a stone’s throw away from Penn’s campus, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia is one of the safest places for a baby to undergo risky heart surgery — far safer, it seems, than St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in North Philadelphia.

Both St. Christopher’s and CHOP perform difficult heart surgery on newborn babies. However a Philadelphia Inquirer report found that at St. Christopher’s, one in four babies who underwent this surgery died, which is three times the rate seen at CHOP. From 2009 to 2014, 29 out of 121 newborn babies — 24 percent — who underwent heart surgery at St. Christopher’s died. In that same time frame at SEE CHOP PAGE 5

SEPTA measures impact of suicide prevention program Program has placed signs in stations to prevent suicides CHARLOTTE LARACY Staff Reporter

There have been 66 deaths along SEPTA’s train, trolley and subway lines since 2011. Forty of these deaths have been ruled as suicides.

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In 2014, SEPTA — whose stations near Penn provide easy transportation for students going home or traveling into the city — partnered with Montgomery County Emergency Service to install suicide prevention signs within its stations. It started as a pilot program at the Norristown Transportation Center. Currently, there are about 1,000 bold red, blue and black signs displaying a

suicide prevention lifeline number and website. At the bottom of the sign it says, “With help comes hope.” The last five years have seen a constant pattern of deaths and suicides on SEPTA’s transportation system, averaging 12.8 deaths and 7.6 suicides a year. Data from 2015 has fallen in line with this trend: There were 13 total deaths in 2015, and seven of them were ruled

suicides. Scott Sauer, SEPTA’s assistant general manager of system safety, says that it is very difficult to analyze these trends and to conduct a study on the data. “For one thing, they don’t happen that often,” Sauer said. “They are scattered over all different locations, SEE SEPTA PAGE 2

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