THURSDAY, MAY 26, 2016
Student suspended from frat for use of slurs
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Another requested to deactivate after insensitive language sent on listserv
A fraternity listserv email thread containing racial and homophobic slurs prompted a member to leave the organization at the end of the spring semester. Just before midnight on April 21, former Pi Kappa Alpha member and then-College senior Curtis Harris sent an email to the group’s listserv — of current members and some alumni — about offensive language. He had recently become frustrated with members’ use of racial slurs such as the n-word in joking contexts. “To put it in perspective saying the n-word (the term that is used negatively towards the African ethnicity) or the f-word (the term that is used negatively towards the LGBT community) is just as bad as using a term that the Nazi’s would have created for Jews,” Harris wrote in the email. “I hate to get that deep, but I’m f[***]ing sick of the bigotry.” Some members and alumni responded in agreement, but others responded in a more joking way. One alumnus used the word “n*****f**gots,” which was a reference to a video posted in the listserv. After another alumnus asked if someone “[could] use it in a sentence?” a Pike freshman responded to the
PENN
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12:30 Across 18,500 undergraduate students at 137 universities, Penn students ranked number two on the list of colleges with the latest weekday bedtimes, with an average weekday bedtime of 1:22 a.m.
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DATA COURTESY OF JAWBONE
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Jenna Wang | Staff Reporter
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CHALLENGES FINDING HELP AFTER CAPS
Penn undergraduates have bad sleeping habits
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VIBHA KANNAN Staff Reporter
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US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT 2016 RANKING
hat was once implied by student culture has now been proven by data — Penn undergraduates have bad sleeping habits. Fitness tracker company Jawbone recently published a report of the sleep data it collected from about 18,500 undergraduate students at 137 universities since 2013. Penn students ranked number two on the list of colleges with the latest weekday bedtimes, with an average weekday bedtime of 1:22 a.m., only surpassed by Columbia at 1:26 a.m. In the category of sleep time, which tracks when students actually fall asleep in bed to when they wake up, Penn fared marginally better. It
was ranked fourth, with an average weekday sleep time of 6.72 hours. The average weekday sleep time of all schools surveyed was 7.03 hours. Rising Engineering sophomore Weiwei Meng can attest to the findings of the survey. During the past school year, she said, her sleep schedule was “pretty bad.” “I would sleep around maybe 3:00 or 4:00 a.m. and not wake up until at least 12:00 p.m., and then nap again in the afternoon after class,” she said. Rising Wharton sophomore Kristin Li had a similar weekday sleep schedule. “I usually wake up at 9:00 a.m. and go to sleep somewhere between 3:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m.,” she said.
Meng attributed her late bedtime to her academic workload. Her habit of napping during the day, she said, also affected her inability to sleep earlier in the night. She noted that many of her peers also had bad sleep schedules — in her freshman dorm, there was regularly “a whole group of people in the common room” that would stay up as late as she did. For Li, sleeping late was more a result of social and extracurricular obligations. “During the day, I’d rather spend time with friends, and then do my work really late at night,” she said. “I don’t think my academic workload was too bad, to be honest. It’s definitely a contributing factor, but [my
sleep schedule] was mostly because freshman year, I tried a bunch of random [activities] I was interested in.” While bad sleep schedules are common at Penn, they are not ubiquitous. Rising Engineering sophomore Will Lowe said he usually got at least 10 hours of shut-eye each night at school. “I usually go to bed at school between 9:30 p.m. and 10:00 p.m., and wake up at 8:00 a.m,” he said. “If I went to bed much later, I would just wake up in the morning and not feel great.” Lowe said he would usually try SEE SLEEP PAGE 3
Amazon@Penn opens under 1920 Commons
Trump supporters are popularly imagined, at least at Penn, to be a bunch of racist, sexist, xenophobic, and ignorant hicks.”
This is the first Amazon center among the Ivy League
- Louis Capozzi PAGE 4
MICHTELL CHAN Staff Reporter
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Amazon@Penn, now open under 1920 Commons, will serve as a selfshipping center and a study space as well as a delivery destination.
For many Penn students, 1920 Commons evokes memories of long lines for pasta or expensive healthy snacks at Gourmet Grocer. Now, this campus hotspot is about to get a lot more enticing. The highly anticipated launch of Amazon@Penn, an on-campus delivery and shipping center for the online retailer, is poised to bring new purpose to the centrally located dining hall
building. The new shipping center, which occupies half of the ground floor of 1920 Commons, officially opened its doors to the public last Wednesday morning following a formal ribbon-cutting ceremony attended by multiple Penn administrators and Amazon executives. Amazon@Penn is the first venture of this kind that Amazon has launched in the Ivy League. The construction of Amazon@Penn, which began in January and spanned most of the spring semester, is part of a SEE AMAZON PAGE 5
Canvas transitions to new interface over the summer Students are largely optimistic about new user interface ALEX GRAVES Design Editor
According to Canvas at Penn’s blog post about the May 16 user interface update, everyone would “jump for joy over the new Canvas UI!” But
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to students, while a welcome change, the update was largely inconsequential. Rising College sophomore Michaela Tinkey, who is taking Math 104 during the first session this summer, says that since the change, she has “only looked at Canvas like once.” In fact, this was highly intentional.
“We picked this time ... to minimize disruption for users,” Molly Bonnard, the courseware services manager for Canvas at Penn, says. Tinkey agrees that this was a good course of action, saying, “It’s probably smartest to [update] now because there are going to be less students on campus.” May 16 was not just chosen in
order to facilitate transition. “A lot of [Canvas’] major changes ... will be optional for a really long period, and then be mandatory after a certain period,” Bonnard said. ”[The UI update] is going to be mandatory on the ninth of July.” Bonnard has a positive outlook for SEE CANVAS PAGE 2
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