April 15, 2015

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WEDNESDAY, APRIL 15, 2015

THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

Nearly all of AXO expected to resign the semester ends, according to estimates by chapter members. Sisters have been told that they cannot revoke the chapter’s charter with the University unless they JILL CASTELLANO have a unanimous vote. Because a Editor-in-Chief few members have expressed interest in remaining in the chapter, the More than 90 percent of Penn’s rest of the members have to officially Alpha Epsilon chapter of Alpha Chi deactivate in order to lose their indiOmega is expected to resign before vidual affiliation with the Office of

Fewer than 10 of 201 sorority sisters likely to stay on campus

Fraternity and Sorority Life. The final straw for some of the sorority members was an email sent to them by the national branch of Alpha Chi Omega comparing an underground sorority to a knockoff Tory Burch handbag, which lacks the “same credibility” as a real one. “The email turned a lot of girls off even further. Nationals didn’t really know what they were getting themselves

into when they were dealing with our chapter,” said one member, who chose to remain anonymous because she is finalizing her resignation from the chapter. Last week, leaders of the sorority were looking to revoke the chapter’s charter because of the seemingly harsh sanctions from OFSL, including social probation for the next two years. The SEE AXO PAGE 2

READY TO FLING, BABY QUAKER? CLAIRE (NEW YORK)

“I felt like 10,000 students would have been daunting, but it felt a lot smaller than that.”

ANNABEL (WISCONSIN)

“Philly is a great city … but I thought the campus would have been more spread out. It’s nice that it has this center.”

ANNA (VERMONT)

“I’d heard that there was a competitive atmosphere here, but everybody seems really nice, really welcoming.”

ANDRE (BRAZIL) “Penn was my dream school … This campus is really beautiful, and the cultural diversity fascinated me.” GREGORY BOYEK | STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

For the Admissions Office, keeping Quaker Days separate from Fling is a priority. “We intentionally try to avoid pre- and post-Fling as CAROLINE SIMON much as possible,” Dean of AdmisStaff Reporter sions Eric Furda said. Positioning Quaker Days too As hundreds of prospective Penn close to Fling raises several constudents flood campus for Quaker cerns for the Admissions Office. Days, current students are gearing Most importantly, it is more difficult up for the wildest weekend of the to find hosts for prospective students year. when current students are preoccuPenn’s Quaker Days program for pied with Fling activities. prospective members of the Class of Although the Admissions Office 2019 began on Sunday, April 12, and successfully recruited enough hosts runs through Wednesday. Though in preparation for Quaker Days this official Spring Fling activities do year, Furda said that finding volnot start until Friday, many students unteers was a challenge, especially begin their festivities as early as SEE QUAKER DAYS PAGE 2 Wednesday night.

PATRICK (LONG ISLAND)

Quaker Days overlap with Spring Fling festivities

“Quaker Days really gives me a fuller sense of what the students we will be learning beside are like … The students seem happy to be here even though it seems like all of our hosts were staying up late doing homework.”

For international students, aid doesn’t cross borders Foreign students given less financial aid RUIHONG LI Staff Reporter

Is it better to get into Penn and exhaust every option to afford it, or is it better to simply get rejected because of your inability to pay? This is a serious question that many international students ask themselves when applying to Penn. Unlike its Ivy League peers such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Dartmouth, Penn’s need-blind admissions policy only applies to citizens and permanent residents of the United States, Canada and Mexico. All other applicants must either be able to pay full-price tuition or compete for the $6 million in financial aid available for the entire international applicant pool. This has put significant financial burdens on some international students who can’t afford Penn on their own. “Penn will not admit a financial aid candidate for whom we cannot provide aid,” the Penn Admissions

website says. “As a result, some candidates we would otherwise want to admit will be turned away.” Thus, many international applicants who really want to go to Penn but cannot afford it, apply to Penn without financial aid and seek assistance elsewhere. Outside scholarships ... for a price College senior Julia Shin did not want to take the chance of applying to Penn as a financial aid student. “Generally, if you have a Korean passport, you don’t receive financial aid from Penn,” she said. Each year, the South Korean Kwanjeong Educational Foundation provides a limited number of scholarships for Korean students to attend universities abroad. In 2011, Shin was one of six undergraduate students to receive the scholarship. “I probably wouldn’t come to Penn without my scholarship,” she said. “The only requirements are that I should never get a C in my transcripts and my GPA is above 3.5.” She added that the scholarship allows her to study anything other than

law, pre-med or business. While Shin’s scholarship requirements may seem strict, there are other scholarships that place more demands on students. Col lege sophomor e Dayana Mustak receives a scholarship from the Malaysian government. After speaking with older Penn students from Malaysia, she decided it was in her best interest to apply to Penn without financial aid. “I took a risk and essentially applied without financial aid to increase my chances of getting in to Penn,” Mustak said. “I knew that once I got into Penn, I would have a higher chance of getting financial aid from my government.” Mustak’s scholarship required her to sign a contract with the Malaysian government, where she agreed to pursue a psychology major at Penn and then go back to Malaysia to work after graduation. “Most of us [receiving scholarships] have to work for the government or sometimes the company that

Calorie counting is a guessing game Calorie estimates not always accurate in Penn dining halls JEFFREY CAREYVA Staff Reporter

Counting calories is important for many diets, but Penn’s dining halls don’t make the counting easy. Penn Dining and Bon Appétit do not publish precise nutritional information — like calorific content, percent daily values of nutrients and grams of sugar — for all of their foods. Pilot programs are in the works, however, to make more nutritional information available to students through the PennMobile app and elsewhere, Director of Penn Dining Pam Lampitt said in an interview for a previous article on changes in meal plans. Through the Penn Dining website, Bon Appétit already makes a lot of nutritional data available for the public. But students should not take this data as their dining hall Bible. “Rather than creating standardized meals based on specific predefined

recipe books, our chefs at various accounts across the nation create their own menus for their customer base,” Bon Appétit nutritionist Dan Connolly wrote in an email. “Our chefs therefore cook their meals from scratch on a daily basis, and because of this we are unable to list detailed nutrition information of food items we offer in our cafés.” Nutritional information is available for typical menu items like beverages and condiments, but accurate information on specific and changing menu items is not readily available. Knowing the nutritional values of foods can be a guessing game for students. College freshman and previous The Daily Pennsylvanian contributing reporter Anuj Amin has been focused on maintaining a proper diet before he came to Penn. “I have definitely been trying to count calories in Commons, but it’s hard when I’m a vegetarian and the options are already limited,” he said. “Most of the time I have no clear idea how many calories I consumed, so I try to make an educated guess, but even that’s hard when food like pizza is in all

PENN INTOUCH MEETS PENN COURSE REVIEW

different sizes.” “It would be great if they could post the amount of calories and nutritional information right next to where the food is served — that would be ideal,” Amin added. What nutritional data is available to students comes from “USDA data, common cooking techniques, and data from our suppliers,” Connolly wrote. Variations are possible due to differences between suppliers, seasonal changes and kitchen preparation, and therefore “any attempt to directly connect this general information to any specific item served at any location would be misleading to the consumer,” he continued. What can students do when nutritional information isn’t easy to obtain? “Whenever I have to eat in the dining halls, I always try to stick to the green foods and what looks healthy,” College freshman Cassie Huang said. “It’s been hard to try to know how many calories or how much sugar is in everything SEE CALORIES PAGE 3

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