September 12, 2016

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MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2016

THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

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Sorority members publish open letter

Over 900 Greek and off-campus group members signed DAN SPINELLI City News Editor

More than 700 members of affiliated sororities and unaffiliated all-female groups signed an open letter on Sunday lambasting an “overarching culture” of misogyny within fraternities and other predominantly male groups.

The letter, addressed “to all complicit in rape culture at the University of Pennsylvania” and including signatures of women from 23 affiliated sororities, off-campus organizations and multicultural groups, described a pervasive reality at campuses nationwide that “targets women and brands them as inferiors, or simply objects for the male gaze.” About TKTK percent of all Penn undergraduate women in Panhellenic sororities signed the letter, according to

estimates provided by the University’s Common Data Set of students during the 2014-15 academic year. Members noted their group affiliation, but some did not leave their name because “a lot of sorority chapters can get in trouble with their national organization if they’re publicly making statements that aren’t approved by the national chapter,” College junior and one of the protest leaders Amanda Silberling said. The plan to publish the letter and decide on its final wording came about

in a meeting on Sept. 9 of about 30 representatives from every Panhellenic sorority, unaffiliated groups and some multicultural organizations, as well as the protesters who spearheaded the flyering of campus last week with copies of a salacious email from off-campus organization OZ intended for freshman women, according to multiple sources present at the meeting who described it for SEE LETTER PAGE 2

WEATHER FORECAST Sept. 12-14 MON

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Sunny High: 80º

Sunny High: 84º

Partly Cloudy High: 87º

SEE FULL FORECAST ON PAGE 7

PHOTOS OF THE WEEK PAGE 2

TAKING ON

14th PennApps competition held this weekend JULIA BELL Staff Reporter

We need to view this week’s unveiling of the flagrantly sexist OZ email as the continuation of a conversation, not an isolated act.”

PennApps — the weekend-long hackathon at Penn that happens twice a year — drew to a close in Irvine Auditorium on Sunday. PennApps has been a Penn tradition since 2009. The event joins students from various universities and even high schools into teams to create a software or hardware solution to a problem of the team’s choice. The final creations are judged on a rubric of originality, usefulness, technical difficulty and user experience. This year, the judges selected 10 of the projects from the weekend to display on stage before the awards ceremony. Projects not e d by E3

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- Peter LaBerge

S P P A N N E P the judges at this year’s hackathon included a “smart” insulin reminder app for diabetics and an app that can perform an eyeglasses prescription test with a downloadable template to use on cardboard. T h e w i n n i ng t e a m wa s SpeakAR, which created a wearable translator hololens — goggles that convert communication between text, spoken, word and sign language using GIFs and text bubbles that appear in front of the user’s vision. M a x G i lb e r t , a second-year graduate student at Penn, took

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second place along with his team, Project Em. The team is a collective of PennApps veterans, including some who have started their own hackathon. Their entry was a game controlled by voice com ma nds, wh ich directed a virtual avatar to the speaker. “We’ve made a lot

of games but this one i n c o r-

Spokes out for body positivity

SPREADING THE WEALTH BACK PAGE

REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK |

Eighth annual Naked Bike Ride promotes cycling CARL-EMMANUEL FULGHIERI Staff Reporter

YOSEF ROBELE | STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Thousands of people rose awareness for fossil fuel dependency, cycling advocacy and body positivity in Philadelphia’s eighth annual Naked Bike Ride.

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Your correspondent spent his Saturday taking a nude jaunt on his bike through the streets of Philadelphia. I was not alone: Thousands of attendees, estimated to be close to 4,000, participated in the eighth annual Philadelphia Naked Bike Ride, drawing attention to the culture of dependence on fossil fuels,

cycling advocacy and body positivity. Moving as a large mass and interrupting traffic on its 11-mile route for 2.5 hours, the group drew the citizens of Philadelphia out to the street to cheer and partake in the evening’s spectacle. While scouring the internet only a couple weeks ago, I came across the event’s Facebook page and resolved to participate in this colorful event. The PNBR is part of the larger World Naked Bike Ride movement, which began on June 12, 2004, as SEE BIKE RIDE PAGE 5

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