October 1, 2015

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THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2015

Sexual violence beyond the numbers

THE DAILY PENNSYLVANIAN | THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

MEET PENN’S

MATCHMAKERS Ben Franklin

Administrators say AAU survey confirms what they’ve already heard

65 mutual friends

Deborah Franklin

ISABEL KIM Deputy News Editor

37 mutual friends

For those familiar with sexual violence research, the American Association of Universities’ recent survey findings were not surprising. “There hasn’t been any great shock,” Director of the Penn Women’s Center Litty Paxton said. “I think for folks who have never paid attention to this issue, the survey data is jarring.” The data confirms previous research on why students underreport sexual violence, Director of Student Sexual Violence Prevention Jessica Mertz said. While the findings are important, administrators say they don’t tell the full story. “The data are just points,” LGBT Center Senior Associate Director Erin Cross said. “It’s kind of a composite person or people, so we don’t know the actual lived experiences.” “We’ve always wanted to have our efforts and our programming and our response methods be guided by students’ experiences more than data or what’s in the national media,” Mertz said. Administrators also focus on the holistic SEE AAU PAGE 3

Facebook group aims to connect Penn’s singles LILY ZANDI Staff Reporter

For students who have lost faith in Tinder and OkCupid, a new dating platform has emerged: UPenn Singles Meet. Just a few weeks ago, College sophomore Joseph Ebner and College junior Zach Howell created the Facebook

group. Despite its recent creation, the group already has about 200 members and continues to grow by the day. Noticing that Penn students are often overwhelmed with academic and extracurricular responsibilities, Ebner and Howell identified a need for Penn students to have a convenient way to connect. “We just found that here at Penn, [with] balancing the work and everything like that, it is really hard to go out and

CHANGES TO GREEK JUDICIAL BOARD

actually form a meaningful relationship,” Howell said. “We expedite the process of meeting people,” Ebner added. Ebner and Howell have invented different ways to encourage the members of the group to bond. A member of the page is profiled each day, and their pictures and interests are posted for other members to see. The profiles are intended to be humorous and exaggerated to break down

social barriers and incite conversation. “We provide ice breakers and conversation starters for people that can come on the group and see us being a little silly perhaps, and not feel embarrassed to put themselves out there,” Howell said. Ebner and Howell also post funny questions to the group for members to comment on. The questions are loosely SEE SINGLES PAGE 7

PennApps winners discuss plans for future

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Team of four invented a keyboard for the blind SHOBA BABU Staff Reporter

There is nothing ‘just’ about my heritage.” - Titus Adkins PAGE 4

COURTESY OF FIFTHSENSE TEAM

Grand prize winners of PennApps discussed their invention, PennApps, and plans for the future.

NOT THE TIME TO CELEBRATE BACK PAGE

After taking home the grand prize from PennApps, four sophomores from Carnegie Mellon University are excited to see where their winning FifthSense invention takes them. The night before PennApps, Rajat Mehndiratta, Cyrus Tabrizi, Edward Ahn and Vasu Agarwal arrived in Philadelphia with no idea what was in store for them — they didn’t even sign up as a team. “Most of us happen to live on the same floor ... and the night before the hackathon, [Edward, Vasu, and I] were talking together, and none of us had teams, so that night we [decided to team up with each other]” Tabrizi said. That was the beginning of a match

made in tech heaven. As the three were boarding the bus from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia, they saw Mehndiratta — who was also not on a team yet — and knew he was the missing piece of their puzzle. The four were already well acquainted with each other: they are all students at Carnegie Mellon’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and had interests in robotics and hardware. Challenges were still ahead after forming the perfect team. The four spent 12 sleepless hours just forming a finalized idea. They were so sleep deprived when they finally decided on their invention that none of them can even recall how exactly the idea came to them — all they remember is that it was in the early morning, when everyone else was asleep. SEE PENNAPPS PAGE 6

UA to launch website deconstructing Penn Face Student committee to work with professional developers VIBHA KANNAN Staff Reporter

At Stanford, it’s called ”duck syndrome.” At Penn, students casually refer to it as the “Penn Face.” These expressions, which students use to describe when they act happy and self-assured even while sad or FOLLOW US @DAILYPENN FOR THE LATEST UPDATES

stressed, have become the status quo at elite universities. But the Undergraduate Assembly hopes to deconstruct the Penn Face. At the end of this semester, the UA will launch a website called Penn Faces on which students can share their own stories through videos and images. UA Director of the Student Life Committee Emily Hoeven, a College sophomore and Daily

Pennsylvanian columnist, said she was motivated by her own freshman experience to start the project. “I knew I probably wasn’t the only one feeling like I didn’t fit in perfectly, but I didn’t have concrete evidence,” Hoeven said. “With the Penn Faces website, I want to create something where students can share their experiences.” Hoeven and Executive Director of the Weingarten Learning Resources

Center Myrna Cohen were inspired by other websites like Harvard’s Success-Failure Project. Cohen said that the website will be specific to Penn students, however. The administration has also stated its support for the project. The website will have a ”.upenn.edu” URL, and a professional web developer will help design the project. SEE PENN FACES PAGE 6

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