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THURSDAY, AUGUST 31, 2017 VOL. CXXXIII NO. 66
THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
FOUNDED 1885
LEGACY ADMISSION: fair advantage or unearned privilege?
14% of Princeton’s class of 2020 are legacies
Legacies make up 1/6th of Penn’s undergradute population
Legacies at Stanford are 2 to 3x more likely to get accepted
HARRY TRUSTMAN | Copy Editor
L
ess than a week after the Trump administration announced that it plans to investigate claims of affirmative action discriminating against Asian-American applicants, a former Princeton University admissions officer called attention to another form of “affirmative action” — legacy ad-
missions. Legacy admissions refer to the preference that universities give to students who are related to alumni of the institution. In a letter to the editor published by The New York Times, the Princeton officer, who signed his letter as T.H. Rawls, called legacy admis-
cy gen ved penn grants
college students. Penn’s Admissions Office did not respond to requests for comment. Penn’s definition of a legacy applicant is broader than that of most other universities. SEE LEGACY PAGE 2
CAMILLE RAPAY | DESIGN EDITOR
Penn’s reported incidents of cheating have risen since 2013
‘Disorientation Guide’ after NSO 7.3%circulates are black The creator calls it a resource for students
The rise may be due to the use of Turnitin
HALEY SUH Senior Reporter
DAN SPINELLI Executive Editor
ing orientation last week, but a new, student-produced guide surfaced Monday. Called the “Disorientation Guide *The S**t Penn Won’t Say,” the booklet is an expansive critique of Penn’s administration and school culture. It contains articles by 15 Penn students on various issues including racism and sexual assault on campus, as well as challenges faced by first-generation, low-income students at Penn. “Congrats, you’ve made it to the top university in the world!!” writes the opening sentence in the guide. “There are a few things we forgot to mention in your glossy orientation packets. Like our larger white capitalist imperialist values that are central to the core of our money sucking busine — err higher-education institution.” University spokesperson Stephen MacCarthy did not respond to a request for comment. College senior Miru Osuga was one of the students behind the guide. She came up with the idea after hearing about similar guides being made at
The amount of reported cases of plagiarism and cheating has risen remarkably at Penn in recent years, according to information released Tuesday by the Office of Student Conduct. In the 2016-17 academic year, the most recent date for which complete information is available, OSC investigated 60 cases of cheating, a 161 percent increase from 23 cases in the 2013-14 year. The report tells a similar story for cases of plagiarism. The office went from investigating 56 cases in the 2013-2014 year to 122 in 2015-2016, a 118 percent jump. Not all of these cases result in actual conduct violations — there has only been a 13 percent increase in total academic integrity violations from 2015-2016 to 2016-2017. However, the substantial rise in investigations parallels a crackdown in higher education on sharing information in computer science courses. As an entire category, academic integrity violations have been on a continual rise since 2012-13. The total amount of incidents, which is less than the total amount of case investigations, jumped up 11.45 percent from 2015-2016.
2020 Various orientation packets were distributed byoffers the Unicy accepted of admission versity to new students dur-
acy
sions “affirmative action for whites.” At Penn, legacies make up 16 percent of the undergraduate student body — a greater proportion than first-generation students at 12 percent and black students at 7.3 percent. It also exceeds the 15 percent of students who receive Pell Grants, a federal grant for
DANIEL XU | STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
During New Student Orientation, the “Disorientation Guide” surfaced, touching on Penn’s troubling history of racism and fraternity culture.
Wesleyan University and Cornell University. “There were all these guides that covered a huge amount of topics that I wish I had access to when I was a freshman,” Osuga said. “And I thought that if I had seen this information when I had come in, and just really know what was going on at Penn, there would be so many other students who would want access to this information as well.” The introduction of the guide says that it’s a “resource for people fighting injustice and a documentation of Penn’s blunders and resulting campus activism.” The first piece in the guide,
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titled “History and Tradition: Penn’s Legacy of Racism,” discusses the experiences of the first black students to attend the University. Author of the article and College senior Kellie Ramdeen said she felt compelled to write the section because she wasn’t aware of these issues until she attended an African American Arts Alliance presentation. “I thought about how I had no clue about any of it until that presentation because Penn is so proud of its diversity,” Ramdeen said. The guide also includes a SEE GUIDE 3
ONLINE AT THEDP.COM
REPORTED CASES OF CHEATING 70
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20 10 2013-2014
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JULIA SCHORR | DESIGN EDITOR
OSC Director Julie Nettleton wrote in an emailed statement to The Daily Pennsylvanian that some of the increase in the number of plagiarism and cheating cases can be attributed to the more widespread adoption of Turnitin, which detects plagiarism in essays, and programs to detect matching code in computer science classes. She also pointed to “relationship building” between OSC and students, faculty and staff over the past three years, adding that OSC “widely encourage[s] faculty members to consult with [OSC] when issues arise.” When the DP previously re-
ported on an increase in yearto-year academic misconduct cases, Nettleton previously said OSC deals with most academic misconduct by imposing sanctions, which usually involve writing an essay. Over the last four years, the amount of punitive essay requirements has risen from 53 to 134, a 153 percent jump. Reports of unauthorized collaboration, a category within OSC’s report that presumably would cover cases of academic dishonesty in a computer science course, actually decreased from 2015-2016 to 2016-2017, from 105 to 95 SEE CHEATING PAGE 3
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