THURSDAY, APRIL 7, 2016
THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
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Fighting racial inequality from high school to Penn
THEY’RE IN CHARGE
2016-17 UA president and vice president share their plans for the year CHERRY ZHI Staff Reporter
Freshman hopes to bring advocacy work to engineering career BOWMAN COOPER Staff Reporter
Engineering freshman Andre Wallace has been dedicated to fighting racism since he was in high school. Growing up in Evanston, Illinois, Wallace found the inspiration for his advocacy in the dynamics of his school and community. “Evanston’s a very diverse community on paper, but there’s so, so much that needs to be done in terms of just uniting our community,” he said. “In school, I thought it was interesting that there was so much divide between people just based on where they lived [and] what they looked like — I wanted to make their experience more of a united front.” Wallace saw a need for students to realize their commonalities despite differences in background. SEE RACIAL INEQUALITY PAGE 7 COURTESY OF ISABELLA CUAN
BUILDING COMMUNITY THROUGH GARDENS PAGE 2
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Those with resources are those able to solidiy their experience and unlock more doors, while others only have to watch.” - Loujeine Boutar PAGE 4
KICK IT UP A NOTCH
n April 1, College junior Kat McKay and College sophomore Sola Park were elected as the new president and vice president of the Undergraduate Assembly, respectively. The Daily Pennsylvanian sat down with McKay and Park to discuss what they hope to bring to the 44th UA session in 201617 and what they hope to accomplish by the end of their term. Daily Pennsylvanian: What has been your past experience with the UA? Kat McKay: I was elected to the UA for the first time in my freshman fall and have been on it since then. [This year] I was UA Treasurer, so I proposed a $2.3 million budget for all student activities for 2016-17, and as an extension of that, I was one of the nine executive board members
for the Student Activities Council. So I had UA meetings five or six days a week this year, and I do not think [being] president will be more time consuming. Sola Park: I was also elected freshman fall. I was on the Social Justice Committee in my freshman year and I’m still on that committee as a sophomore. I was the Communications Director [this year]. I led a team of three and we mostly focused on internal and external communications. DP: What made you decide to run this year for president and vice president? KM: I decided to run because after three years of observing other people, I felt like I had a good understanding of the system and a good understanding of what initiatives
students care most about. I feel like I have a good grasp of the pulse of the student body and I also felt qualified. SP: I decided to run for VP specifically because the role really excited me, since I would be in charge of UA Steering, which is about bringing together a lot of people and that’s something I like doing personally. The reason I ran in my freshman year was because the president at the time, Joyce Kim, was such an inspiration to me. Seeing her leadership and Josh Chilcote’s, the VP at the time, excited me about the things I could achieve as a student. Seeing this year’s leadership, it was very different from last year’s: the vibe was very different, the ambiance between the people, the committees and the social bonds was all very different from what I first thought it would be.
DP: Can you elaborate on what you mean by this year’s change of atmosphere within the UA? KM: Every year it’s different. This year it’s been the most casual. The organization used to be so much more formal; we sat in hierarchical order in UA meetings and we had to present at the podium. It was a very different dynamic that I liked a lot. Next year I just want people to feel that their time in the organization is worthwhile and that they achieve something substantial on a weekly basis. DP: What do you hope to achieve in the next UA session? KM: It’s challenging to put a timeline on our projects but I care a lot about this annual tuition increase. SEE Q&A PAGE 3
Cognitive science center to close Majors express concern over the future of the program
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JINAH KIM Staff Reporter
JULIO SOSA | NEWS PHOTO EDITOR
With the impending closure of the IRCS this summer, cognitive science majors express concerns over the future of the department.
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After 26 years, the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science is closing, though administrators say the cognitive science major will not be affected. The IRCS, founded in 1990, is an interdisciplinary research institution studying human behavior and cognition. For the last five years, it has also been the home of the cognitive science major. While the closing of the IRCS had been floated as a possibility for several years, it only became a serious topic of discussion this past year as the Neural and Behavioral
Sciences Building neared completion. “Much of the cognitive science part of [the IRCS] is moving across campus,” IRCS Director David Brainard said. “That provides a moment to rethink the institution that supports cognitive science ... and to take a look at both the landscape at Penn and the landscape in the field of cognitive science nationwide.” Last year, the School of Arts and Sciences announced as part of its Strategic Plan the new “Mapping the Mind” initiative, which hopes to research the way the human mind works. The School of Engineering and Applied Science is also starting to think about new approaches SEE COGNITIVE SCIENCE PAGE 3
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