April 29, 2021 by The Daily Pennsylvanian

THURSDAY, APRIL 29, 2021 VOL. CXXXVII NO. 14

THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

All eight Ivy League student governments sign resolution calling for fossil fuel divestment

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Penn under fire for housing MOVE bombing remains

The resolution demands complete divestment by Fiscal Year 2025 ELIZABETH MEISENZAHL & DELANEY PARKS Senior Reporter, Staff Reporter

All eight Ivy League student body presidents signed a joint resolution authored by Penn’s Student Sustainability Association calling for each school to fully divest from fossil fuels. The resolution, which also contains contributions from Penn’s Undergraduate Assembly, considers full divestment to be an end to new investments by Fiscal Year 2021, and complete divestment by Fiscal Year 2025. The resolution defines divestment as no investments in any of the top 200 fossil fuel companies; in companies that extract, process, transmit, or refine coal, oil, or gas; or in any utilities whose primary business function it is to burn fossil fuels for electricity. University spokesperson Stephen MacCarthy did not respond to a request for comment on whether Penn’s administration is aware of the resolution or if it plans to act on it. College junior and SSAP Co-Chair Vyshnavi Kosigishroff said Penn’s 2020 announcement not to invest in coal and tar sands, as well as its recent commitment to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions from endowment investments by 2050, are misleading and insufficient. “SSAP, generally speaking, considers this announcement [of divestment by 2050] to be a lot of greenwashing, not really a commitment to anything, and really unambitious. [It] continues the narrative of Penn being really far behind our peer institutions,” Kosigishroff said. Climate activists from SSAP and Fossil Free Penn criticized Penn’s plan for continuing to invest in fossil fuels. Penn’s plan for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 puts it on the same timeline as that of the oil company BP. Kosigishroff said there is a “really strong” financial case for full divestment, along with a moral imperative. She pointed to the University of California school system, which made the decision to divest from fossil fuels last year to invest instead in sustainable energy, which the school system said is better for the environment and a more financially promising investment than oil or gas. One goal of the resolution is to change the narrative surrounding divestment to push Penn and the other Ivy League institutions to recognize its financial practicality, Kosigishroff said. “The narrative right now is that this is a really niche ask that is coming from a bunch of naive climate activists who have no idea how the real world works, and how finance works at all. That’s just not the case,” Kosigishroff said. Kosigishroff emphasized the contradiction between Ivy League schools, including Penn, producing leading climate research, while continuing to fund the fossil fuel industry. At Penn, Kosigishroff said, this conflict of interest is especially apparent. Several members of Penn’s Board of Trustees have ties to fossil fuel industries, she said, most notably the incoming chair, Scott Bok. Bok is the CEO of Greenhill & Co., Inc., an investment bank that advises and profits off of several companies involved in oil and gas extraction. In an interview with The Daily Pennsylvanian last November, Bok did not budge on student calls for divestment. “Our trustees have a conflict of interest, so it’s not really a fair fight, even though the issue often is framed like that from the top,” Kosigishroff said. The resolution points to the overwhelming support that divestment has among students and faculty across the Ivy League, with schools such as Harvard University passing referendums among faculty members on divestment, only for the issue to stagnate at the trustee level. College senior and outgoing UA President Mercedes Owens said the resolution, about which SSAP approached the UA last year, was based on a similar effort passed by the Big Ten schools in early 2020. SSAP and the UA began to work on the resolution at the end of the 2019-2020 school year, Owens said, but the COVID-19 pandemic delayed progress. Owens said the presidents of the other student bodies she contacted to join the resolution were all interested in helping, but getting approval from the student governments of each school took several months. She added that the collaboration among Ivy League

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More than 300 community members gathered outside the Penn Museum on Wednesday demanding the immediate return of the remains BRANDON ANAYA & KAMILLE HOUSTON Staff Reporter, Senior Reporter

A week after news broke that remains from the 1985 MOVE bombing were held at the Penn Museum, which embroiled the University in controversy and nationwide backlash, members of the Penn and West Philadelphia community are calling for the remains to be returned to the Africa family. While the Penn Museum and University administrators have apologized for holding the remains, the Africa family and members of the West Philadelphia community demand further action. History of 1985 MOVE bombing and discovery of remains West Philadelphian Abdul-Aliy Muhammad wrote an op-ed in The Philadelphia Inquirer on April 21 that revealed the Penn Museum held remains from the 1985 MOVE bombing over a period of 36 years. The remains were previously in the custody of nowretired professor Alan Mann, who received the remains from the city in the 1980s after the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office asked for assistance in identifying

them. Mann later studied the remains with Janet Monge, curator of the Penn Museum’s physical anthropology section, BillyPenn previously reported, before taking them with him to Princeton University. The remains, a pelvic bone and a femur, were transferred back and forth from Penn to Princeton for over 35 years. Philadelphia Department of Public Health spokesperson James Garrow wrote in an email to The Daily Pennsylvanian on April 27 that the Medical Examiner Office’s policy is to release remains to next-of-kin, but declined to comment on the remains from the MOVE bombing due to an ongoing investigation. A forensic anthropologist hired by the MOVE Philadelphia Special Investigation Committee identified some remains as belonging to a 12-year-old victim known as Delisha, and a 14-year-old victim known as Tree. Whereabouts of the remains are currently unclear, but Penn Museum Director Christopher Woods, who assumed his position as director of the Penn Museum on April 1, has also told The New York Times that the remains were

sent to Mann on April 18. Mann has not responded to multiple recent requests for comment. In 1985, the Philadelphia city government bombed a home on Osage Avenue that housed MOVE, a Black liberation advocacy group. The bombing had killed 11 people, including five children aged seven to 13, and destroyed 61 homes in the neighborhood, leaving 250 local residents without a home. The remains were most recently displayed in an online instruction video for Coursera in a Princeton course series titled “Real Bones: Adventures in Forensic Anthropology.” In the video, Monge and an undergraduate student examine the remains and attempt to determine the age of the bones. The video has been removed from Coursera as of earlier this week and was suspended, according to an SEE MOVE PAGE9

Penn will require all students to receive COVID-19 vaccine ahead of in-person fall semester Masks will likely still be required in many locations on campus and COVID-19 testing may still be mandatory JONAH CHARLTON Senior Reporter

Penn will require all students to receive the COVID19 vaccine before returning to campus for the fall semester, which the University expects to hold in person. Penn President Amy Gutmann, Provost Wendell Pritchett, and Executive Vice President Craig Carnaroli wrote in an email to the Penn community on Thursday afternoon that the University expects that masks will still be required in many locations on campus and COVID-19 testing may still be mandatory. Exceptions to the vaccination requirement will only be provided for medical or religious reasons. The University is expecting to begin the fall semester on schedule, with the first day of classes on August 31. Undergraduate courses will be “primarily delivered in person,” with some larger classes held online or in a hybrid format. Most faculty and staff will also return to in-person

work by the beginning of July and academic research will resume in person in the fall semester. Both the return to in-person work and research will be guided by current public health guidelines in the city of Philadelphia. The administrators wrote that “mass vaccination [is] central to our commitment to having a safe campus environment.” Chief Wellness Officer Benoit Dubé told The Daily Pennsylvanian on April 27 that the decision to mandate the COVID-19 vaccine was made in an effort to protect the health of the Penn community, as well as the West Philadelphia community. “At the end of the day, protecting the health of our community and our neighbors just trumped everything else,” Dubé said. Students who are unable to receive the vaccine before the beginning of the fall semester will have the

“Through paying reparations to members of MOVE, as well as ensuring accountability, the University can go a long way in restoring trust with West Philadelphia, and correcting a long-standing injustice.” - DP Editorial Board PAGE 4

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Penn track and field placed in the top five of nearly every event at last weekend’s “Philly Mets,” a scaled-down version of Penn Relays.

opportunity to receive the vaccine at the beginning of the semester at an on-campus vaccination site, but they will have to quarantine between doses. Many peer institutions — including Columbia University and Yale University — have said they will require students to receive the vaccine prior to returning to campus in the fall. Faculty and staff are not required to receive a vaccine to return to campus at this time, but the University “strongly encourages” them to be vaccinated. College Houses and dining halls will also return to normal occupancy and operation style, but will feature some social distancing and other health considerations in accordance with public health guidelines. The University will also consider allowing visitors on campus, as long as they comply with Penn’s public health guidelines and enroll in PennOpen Pass for the duration of their stay.

Penn is currently vaccinating all members of the Penn community at its on-campus vaccine clinic in the Gimbel Gymnasium at the Pottruck Health and Fitness Center. Faculty, staff, and postdoctoral students were first eligible on April 14, and students began receiving vaccines on April 19, when all people over the age of 16 in Philadelphia became eligible. Gutmann, Pritchett, and Carnaroli also wrote that all Penn community members will need to continue to use PennOpen Pass, the web-based daily symptom checker and exposure reporting system, and follow the Student Campus Compact, which will be updated early in the fall. “As we look ahead to the fall, we see the opportunity for a return to campus activities and interactions that are much more in keeping with what we have always known at Penn,” Gutmann, Pritchett, and Carnaroli wrote. “We await that with great anticipation.”

NEWS

PENN STUDENTS OBSERVING RAMADAN FIND COMMUNITY PAGE 3 ON CAMPUS DESPITE PANDEMIC

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PENN INTOUCH REPLACEMENT DELAYED TO MARCH 2022

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2 NEWS

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Penn students observing Ramadan find community on campus despite pandemic Students who observe Ramadan are rediscovering elements of community as COVID-19 distancing restrictions continue to lift MOHAMMAD ABUNIMEH & SASKIA WRIGHT Contributing Reporter, Staff Reporter

During the month-long Islamic holiday of Ramadan, Muslim students at Penn have been fasting from sunrise to sunset each day, and observing various religious practices while attempting to balancing the schoolwork demanded by finals. Muslims are expected to strengthen their relationship with God and their faith through frequent readings of the Quran, extra prayers, and giving to charity throughout Ramadan, which began on April 12 and will end on May 12. Students on campus observing Ramadan generally wake up before sunrise, eat a small meal before dawn, and pray the first prayer of the day, Fajr, right as the sun rises. They fast until the sun begins to set at the time of the fourth prayer, Maghrib, and eat a larger meal. Late at night, after the fifth prayer of the day, Isha, students may also pray an additional set of prayers called Taraweeh. Last year, students said they missed the sense of community they typically experience during Ramadan, when families and mosques often host community dinners for Iftar, or “breaking of the fast,” for example. Now, some students who observe Ramadan are rediscovering elements of community as COVID-19 distancing restrictions continue to lift. College sophomore Fatma Omar said that being in quarantine has allowed her to understand the more spiritual meaning of the tradition. “[Ramadan] is about reconnecting, renewing, reflecting, and contemplating on my spiritual state and my relationship with God, and finding ways to incorporate that into my daily routine,” Omar said. Similarly, College sophomore Ryan Afreen also reflected on how practicing Ramadan provides the opportunity to have a new beginning and gain forgiveness from God. “You get to be born again. We forgive others and we forget. All the trauma that happened to us, we try to move past that,” Afreen said. Despite being away from their families and under COVID-19 restrictions, students have been finding

community during Ramadan on campus. For College junior Kamal Suleiman, Ramadan is about connecting with friends and family, as well as shifting his priorities towards spiritual connection — while attempting to maintain his other responsibilities as best as he can. “In a typical year, I would go to the mosque pretty

Muslim students have also found ways to connect within their residential life. College sophomore Johaer Jilani said the Muslim Life Residential Program has hosted grab-and-go events in his on-campus residence, Harnwell College house, which he attends with other Muslim students in the building. Students observing Ramadan have found it difficult,

much every day, but then this year, though the mosque is open, it’s not really COVID-19 safe, so I’ve had to not go, and as a result, I was kind of bouncing around between different friends doing [prayers] in small groups,” Suleiman said. The Muslim Students’ Association has given out food to students and organized virtual events during Ramadan, and has led socially distanced congregational jummah prayers every Friday this past month. Afreen said MSA’s events were kind and collaborative in their efforts to bring the University community together to pray and talk more about Islam.

however, to balance their religious responsibilities with schoolwork. In addition to the regular duties of fasting and praying, students living on campus described how they have to finish their course loads, study for final exams, partake in extracurriculars, play sports, and fulfill a variety of other tasks. “I think it’s really hard, especially because it is a full month, and it really does consume our whole days. Fasting the entire day gets really tiring, especially while we are trying to act like it is a normal school month,” College first year Summer Maher said. For many first years and sophomores, this year is

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their first Ramadan away from home — leading them to learn how to attend to all their fasting needs like preparing meals, managing a new sleep schedule, and maintaining their spirituality. “My experience [this year] is very different because it’s the first time where I was away from my family during Ramadan. I have to prepare my own Iftar, which is the food that we eat when we break our fast, and that takes some time,” Afreen said. Some students said they had to ask professors for alternate exam times in order to balance the end of the semester with duties for practicing Ramadan, and found that some professors were more accommodating than others. Maher said that after asking for accommodations, some of her professors offered to allow her to take her exam earlier in the day — which conflicts with Maher’s routine of going to sleep at 5 a.m., after a meal that is taken before sunrise. Afreen said that having more Muslim student representatives is one way to increase the awareness around Ramadan on campus. “A lot of Muslims got elected this election cycle, so I think that’ll be great for future classes, so that we don’t have this kind of situation where you have to reach out to your professors, and [they] don’t really know anything about Ramadan and haven’t thought about Ramadan when scheduling the exams,” Afreen said. Omar, however, reported a positive experience with her professors, explaining that this semester was the first time she had a professor who responded to her request to shift a midterm time with enthusiasm, even wishing her “Ramadan Mubarak and may Allah bless you and your family.” “I’ve never seen that statement in an email, and I almost broke down; it reminded me of home for sure,” Omar said. “Having teachers and adults understand [Ramadan] and be also participating in it is really beautiful.

Penn Dining limits pre-packaged food ahead of in-person fall

New UA leaders seek to increase student and community input on Penn’s policies

Changes include the addition of customizable hot food stations and the reopening of salad, fruit, and pasta bars

College junior Tori Borlase and College and Wharton junior Janice Owusu will lead the UA next year

EVA NEE Contributing Reporter

ELIZABETH MEISENZAHL Senior Reporter

(From left to right): Tori Borlase and Janice Owusu will be the UA president and vice president, respectively, next year.

Penn Dining has loosened restrictions to allow more open service options and fewer pre-packaged meals in dining halls. A better understanding of how COVID-19 spreads Penn Dining has increased offerings at various dining halls, moving away from pre-packaged meals has also contributed to the reopening of certain dining services, Director of Business Services and to more open service options. The changes to dining services — which began in Hospitality Services Pam Lampitt said. “We now know that if you touch a bagel that’s late February and will continue through the end of the semester — were implemented to help prepare wrapped, and somebody else comes around and the dining halls for a return to normal occupancy touches that bagel that’s wrapped, it’s highly unand operation style in the fall. Changes in Hill likely that it’s going to cross-contaminate,” Lampitt House and 1920 Commons include the addition of said. Allowing students to take certain pre-packaged customizable hot food stations and the reopening of items themselves has permitted dining halls to bring salad, fruit, and pasta bars. In early April, Commons reopened its Expo sta- back their food bars, Lampitt said. “Packaging food took a lot of time. Without the tion, which allows students to customize their meal with build-your-own sandwiches, tacos, waffles, and need to package everything, we now can bring back more. The dining hall also opened its salad bar and some of the items that we used to serve,” Lampitt an ice cream freezer. Similarly, Hill House reopened said. Lampitt added that, overall, the changes to the its pasta bar and fruit bar. Still, students who get food from these stations dining halls have been well received by students. Nursing first year Cristina Vera said that she liked must be served by the dining hall staff instead of serving themselves. Students can, however, grab the recent changes in Commons, particularly the addipre-packaged foods — such as wrapped bagels, tions of the Expo station and ice cream, although she cereals, and boxed milk — instead of waiting for a wishes the changes could have been made earlier. “It’s also kind of sad [the changes were] added this staff member to hand them the food, as was required late in the semester,” Vera said. earlier in the semester. Penn also reopened indoor dining at Hill House, Penn Dining has been slowly shifting towards pre-pandemic service styles in response to changing Commons, and Lauder College House dining halls on Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guide- March 8. Despite the availability of indoor seating, lines and a desire to broaden the dining experience, few students have utilized the service, in part due to Penn Business Services Director of Communica- concerns about eating indoors during the pandemic. Next semester, Lampitt said that Penn Dining hopes tions and External Relations Barbara Lea-Kruger to bring back Penn Cook program events, during said. “Within [CDC] guidelines, we are doing as much which the dining services highlight a different cookas we can to return [dining] to what it should be,” book for almost every month to celebrate the diversity Lea-Kruger said. “Every time [the CDC] gives us a of Penn’s campus. Penn Dining also plans to open a little inch, we move that way to help bring it closer to new dining hall in New College House West, which will serve as a demonstration kitchen. what the full experience should be.”

Newly elected Undergraduate Assembly President and College junior Tori Borlase and UA Vice President and College and Wharton junior Janice Owusu plan to prioritize student wellness and administrative accountability next year. Borlase and Owusu won the election to lead the student government branch on April 14 in a close race against College and Wharton junior Nikhil Gupta and College sophomore Gaby Montes. To implement their platform, Borlase and Owusu plan to pressure the University to include more student input in decisions and to create more opportunities for students to speak with and question administrators directly. The two running mates campaigned on a four-point platform of diversity and community advancement, wellness and mental health, academic reform, and administrative accountability. Borlase said that to accomplish their goals regarding diversity and community advancement, which include combatting Penn’s gentrification and pressuring Penn to pay Payments in Lieu of Taxes to Philadelphia, she plans to work with Facilities and Real Estate Services to create an advisory board on buildings and development at Penn. The board, which would be known as the Space Steering Group, Borlase said, would consist of members from FRES and administration, as well as students and representatives from the West Philadelphia community. The group would provide input on new buildings and the use of space at Penn. “One of the biggest problems that we have in terms of bigger decisions being made about the [Philadelphia] community or about the Penn community in general by [administration] is that there are not any avenues for input from the communities that are affected,” Borlase said. Owusu added that she hopes to develop training modules for New Student Orientation to inform students about the West Philadelphia community and Penn’s gentrification of the area. To address student mental health, Owusu said that one of her biggest priorities is ensuring that Penn hires and retains more therapists and psychiatrists of color at Counseling and Psychological Services. She plans to meet with Chief Wellness Officer Benoit Dubé this summer

— when most CAPS hiring takes place — to discuss the issue. She added that many of the staff members of color at CAPS are fellows, not permanent hires. “That’s been a struggle for a lot of students, because a lot of diversity comes through their fellows, but when those fellows are often moving up and down, it creates instability for the students as well,” Owusu said. Borlase added that she and Owusu plan to advocate for Penn to encourage student wellness through the academic calendar as well. As of 2018, Penn has the fewest break days during the academic year in the Ivy League, and Borlase said that keeping engagement days in addition to standard breaks after the pandemic would benefit students. “We don’t place enough value on students’ down time and taking breaks,” Borlase said. Borlase’s and Owusu’s platform also focuses on holding administrators accountable — a frequent goal of student government leaders. Owusu said that in her role leading UA Steering, which consists of more than 40 student groups who advise Penn Student Government, she hopes to continue the work done this year by College junior and former UA Vice President Mary Sadallah. Sadallah regularly brought in administrators to UA Steering meetings, allowing members to ask questions, Owusu said. Next year, Owusu plans to continue this, but to bring the same administrators in multiple times throughout the year to allow student groups to follow up and pressure administrators about issues such as space for cultural houses on Locust Walk. “Implementing [the changes to Steering] within the confines and the interim spaces where we’re not getting those answers is going to be where we’re definitely going to try to make a change,” Owusu said. Both Borlase and Owusu emphasized their openness to student input and feedback during their term next year. “Question us,” Owusu said. “Make sure that we’re doing what you want us to do. Make sure that we are keeping up with our platform, because if we’re not, then why did you elect us?”

schools. “It’s really sort of a symbolic call from the student governments of all these schools to show that there’s really broad support for this, not just in one school, not just in one corner of the Ivy League, but actually across the Ivy League,” Potter said. Potter added that the demands for divestment among Princeton students prompted him to sign onto the resolution, citing a November 2020 referendum in which more than 80% of students who voted supported divesting. Catherine Huang, president of the Cornell University Student Assembly, doesn’t anticipate Cornell to act on the resolution, especially since it recently announced a moratorium on new fossil fuel investments instead of full

divestment. This moratorium, she said, means they fulfill only one of the two requirements of full divestment as outlined in the resolution. “We’re very proud of how far we’ve come,” Huang said. “But there’s always the idea that this is not enough, that there’s more to be done. And with every other Ivy League school signing on, [the resolution] shows that we stand united with our student bodies, advocating for the interests of the next generation.” Huang also added that it was significant that the resolution was coming from student body leaders, as activists are often viewed by administrators as “too radical.” She said, however, that she happily signed onto the resolution as she believes it is in line with most students’ beliefs.

Noah Harris, president of Harvard’s Undergraduate Council, similarly said that signing the resolution was a “no-brainer.” He added that while he believes Harvard’s administration often adopts a strategy of waiting out the most passionate students, fossil fuel divestment is too big of an issue for this tactic to succeed. Harris added that although the resolution might not have an immediate impact on policy, the opportunity to join together with all seven other Ivy League student body presidents was exciting and turned up the pressure on all eight universities to divest from fossil fuels. “We know how much of our student body is behind this, and we’re always looking for opportunities to uplift their voices,” Harris said.

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student governments is important because it makes the work of climate activists across the eight schools more visible to administrators and the public. “As UA president, I have the privilege of being able to represent the voice of the student body in many different influential spaces, and so I really think that it’s important for me to elevate the voices of our climate activists on campus,” she said. Princeton University student body president Christian Potter said that the resolution was primarily symbolic, but showed the widespread support for divestment across

4 OPINION

THURSDAY, APRIL 29, 2021

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OPINION THURSDAY APRIL 29, 2021 VOL. CXXXVII, NO. 14 137th Year of Publication DANE GREISIGER President ASHLEY AHN Executive Editor HADRIANA LOWENKRON DP Editor-in-Chief ISABEL LIANG Design Editor

EDITORIAL

Returning the remains isn’t enough

his past Monday, the Penn Museum formally apologized for possessing the remains of at least one child killed by Philadelphia police in the 1985 MOVE bombing. However, Penn Museum’s apology has not been without controversy. Members of MOVE, a Black liberation advocacy group, rejected the apology as insufficient, demanding the immediate return of the remains, the firing of a key employee of Penn Museum at the center of the scandal, and financial reparations.

Likely in response to this criticism, the University issued a second apology on Wednesday, where they doubled down on their promise to return the remains. While the Penn Museum and the University’s recognition that their initial apology was inadequate is a step in the right direction, the University still must do more to truly right this wrong. Beyond returning the remains of the children to the Africa family as soon as possible, the Penn Museum and the University must offer financial reparations to the Africa family, and agree to

CONOR MURRAY News Editor PIA SINGH News Editor HANNAH GROSS Assignments Editor BRITTANY DARROW Copy Editor KYLIE COOPER Photo Editor ALFREDO PRATICÒ Opinion Editor SUNNY JANG Audience Engagement Editor BRANDON PRIDE Sports Editor LOCHLAHN MARCH Sports Editor SOPHIE HUANG Video Editor QIANA ARTIS Podcast Editor ALESSANDRA PINTADO-URBANC Business Manager JASPER HUANG Analytics Manager GREG FERREY Marketing Manager EMILY CHEN Product Lab Manager

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Finals are coming, so join your fellow Quakers and vote by mail

THIS ISSUE ALANA KELLY DP Design Editor ALICE HEYEH 34th St. Design Editor QUINN ROBINSON Deputy Design Editor MAX MESTER News Photo Editor ANA GLASSMAN Opinion Photo Editor SAMANTHA TURNER Sports Photo Editor JONAH CHARLTON Deputy News Editor NICKY BELGRAD Associate Sports Editor AGATHA ADVINCULA Deputy Opinion Editor VARUN SARASWATHULA Deputy Opinion Editor VALERIE WANG Deputy Opinion Editor SOPHIE APFEL Copy Associate EMMA SCHULTZ Copy Associate SOPHIE NADEL Copy Associate

a community-approved investigation. First and foremost, the University must announce and implement a plan to compensate the Africa family for decades of harm, specifically in the form of reparations. This demand is one of many made by the MOVE family, and is especially important given how the Penn Museum exploited said remains for decades. Penn’s payment of reparations for holding the remains of MOVE bombing victims would not be unprecedented; other prominent Universities, such as Georgetown, have developed plans for reparations to right historical wrongs. Additionally, Penn must take concrete steps to ensure accountability. First and foremost, that means meeting MOVE members’ demands for a transparent public investigation into how Penn acquired the remains. While Penn has already hired a pair of attorneys from the Tucker Law Group, and has promised to share the report with the Penn community, the University must go further. This means securing the approval of MOVE members in the investigation, and keeping them updated regarding its progress and findings. Ensuring transparency, not just toward the Penn community, but to West Philadelphians and MOVE members in particular, is of the utmost importance. Handling this situation correctly is particularly important in light of Penn’s recent history with racism. Until two weeks ago, the University had no announced plans to repatriate the Morton Collection, a collection of about 1,000 crania that included body parts from enslaved individuals and over a dozen skulls stolen from the graves of Black Philadelphians in the 19th century. Additionally, Black students at the University have reported chronic racial profiling by members of Penn Police, as well as patterns of racism in the Chemistry Department. If the University can not handle the MOVE situation well, it is doubtful they can combat other instances of systemic racism on campus successfully. Penn can’t right every wrong of its past overnight. However, through paying reparations to members of MOVE, as well as ensuring accountability, the University can go a long way in restoring trust with West Philadelphia, and correcting a long-standing injustice.

Guest Column | Voting by mail provides a convenient way to ensure your voice is heard during the end of the semester

s we approach the end of an unprecedented academic year, students have much more to think about than politics. Still, it is important that students bring their enthusiasm from this fall to the present and vote on May 18, 2021 in the local Philadelphia primary election. Even though the election will occur after finals and commencement, Penn students must still make their voices heard. As Penn Leads the Vote has written about before, local elections are extremely important. Many decisions that affect people’s lives are made by local government officials, including on issues that are important to many students. Students can have an impact on the criminal justice system by voting for both district attorney and local judges. Students can have an impact on Philadelphia’s finances by voting for city controller. And students can have an impact on ensuring smooth elections by voting for local election officers. In addition to these local offices, there are also a few elections on the ballot with state-wide implications. There is an election for a judgeship on the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania and four ballot measures, including one that prohibits denying or abridging rights on account of race. Even though students may not be voting for federal officials this May, they can still make a collective impact in shaping the future of their state and local government. As we reach the end of the academic year, Penn’s Year of Civic Engagement is also coming to a close. During this academic year, students have been encouraged to reflect on their engagement with Penn and West

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Philadelphia and seek out opportunities to be more active members of the community. Voting is a critical way that individuals can be active members of their community, which makes high turnout among Penn students in Philadelphia’s local election this May a fitting way to end this Year of Civic Engagement. High turnout among Penn students this May would demonstrate the importance of voting and civic engagement to students and that the

spirit of the Year of Civic Engagement will continue into 2021 and beyond. For students currently living either on-campus or offcampus and planning to leave the Philadelphia area before May 18, voting by mail is a good option to make sure that you can still participate in this election. Mail-in voting is also ideal for students who will be busy with finals and would benefit from the convenience of having a ballot sent directly to their address. Students can request a mail-in ballot by clicking here. For students who will still be in the Philadelphia area and prefer to vote in person, click here to find your polling location for Election Day. We know that the end of the semester can be stressful. Penn Leads the Vote wants to make sure that Penn students can cast their vote as easily and conveniently as possible. We are available to help with any and every voting-related question or concern. We can be reached via email at pennvotes@upenn.edu. Students are also encouraged to visit our website for customized voter information and resources, and they can click here to learn more about Philadelphia local elections. Penn students, let’s show our resilience, our engagement, and a commitment to a better tomorrow for Philadelphia by making our voices heard this May. PENN LEADS THE VOTE is the University’s nonpartisan election hub. Visit www.pennvotes.org for more information.

Penn must return human remains and repay the Africa family Guest Column | The University cannot move forward from decades, even centuries, of disavowal via closed-door investigations

LETTERS Have your own opinion? Send your letter to the editor or guest column to letters@thedp.com. Editorials represent the majority view of members of The Daily Pennsylvanian, Inc. Editorial Board, which meets regularly to discuss issues relevant to Penn’s campus. Participants in these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on related topics.

n the past week it has come to light that the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology has for over 35 years held, studied, and at times displayed the human remains of a child named Tree Africa, a member of West Philadelphia’s MOVE organization. The bones of 14-year-old Tree Africa, and possibly also 12-year-old Delisha Africa, were reportedly handed over by the medical examiner’s office to Penn anthropologists for forensic study in the 1980s after the May 13, 1985 killing of 11 West Philadelphia residents, when Philadelphia Police dropped an aerial bomb on the MOVE residence and let fires destroy over 60 homes in the Cobbs Creek neighborhood adjacent to our university. For decades, neither Penn nor Princeton contacted the MOVE organization and the Africa family about the existence of these remains. Instead, the bones were in the possession of two anthropology professors, Princeton professor emeritus Alan Mann (who worked at Penn until 2001) and Penn adjunct professor and museum curator Janet Monge. The Penn Museum has stated that both anthropologists were attempting to determine the identity of the remains for over three decades. During this time the bones were used for student research, as in the case of at least one Penn undergraduate senior thesis. Recently Monge has been using them as teaching props in a public online course, “REAL BONES: Adventures in Forensic Anthropology,” hosted by Princeton. While the course has now been removed by the distance learning platform Coursera, just last week over 4,000 students were enrolled. The remains have been repeatedly passed between Penn and Princeton, including Penn Museum Director Christopher Woods’ hasty return of the bones to Dr. Mann on Sunday April 18, 2021. AAUP–Penn stands with the Africa family as they mourn and absorb this devastating news. From our commitment to community and racial justice, we support their

demands, which include the immediate return of their children’s remains. Many faculty and grad colleagues in AAUP–Penn likewise stand with Princeton faculty, who have called for university accountability to the Africa family, and with the Association of Black Anthropologists, the Society of Black Archaeologists, and the Black in Bioanthropology Collective, who have republished the demands of the Africa family, and also demanded support from the American Anthropological Association in conducting “a national audit of all human remains in museum and university collections.” On April 26, 2021, the University of Pennsylvania and the Penn Museum issued an online apology to the Africa family, followed by another email to the Penn community on April 28, each stating the institution’s intentions of returning the remains and reviewing the Museum’s “practices of collecting, stewarding, displaying, and researching human remains.” This is a first step toward recognizing and repairing the harm done to the Africa family. But the process continues to be flawed, as the initial apology was communicated to the family via the media rather than directly, and right before the family started its own live press conference. We call on Penn to do better than issuing online apologies. Any earnest commitment to community justice begins with showing respect toward and building trust with those who have been harmed. Building trust entails acknowledging the long history of the university’s racism and experimentation on Black and Indigenous bodies by social scientists as well as medical doctors. From Penn Anthropology to Penn Medicine, this history spans from the nineteenth-century Morton cranial collection to the use of the MOVE family remains and the medical experimentation conducted by Penn dermatologist Albert Kligman upon the

incarcerated people of Holmesburg Prison between 19511974, people whose families also remain uncompensated. Beyond hiring lawyers to investigate how and why the MOVE family remains were used by University researchers, President Amy Gutmann and the Board of Trustees need to commit to a full and transparent process of repair and financial compensation, beginning with direct community involvement in the investigative process. The University, including its senior administrators and the Board of Trustees, cannot move forward from decades, even centuries, of disavowal via closed-door investigations. A transparent process is integral to any just outcome. It is not only faculty who are to blame for such a travesty of scholarly procedure and social justice; that responsibility must be shared across the hierarchy of “overseers” and administrators. AAUP–Penn further supports efforts to account for the University’s broader effects on and its responsibility to West Philadelphia’s Black communities, including the payment of PILOTs to the public school system. AAUP–Penn also calls for a thorough review of all the holdings of the Penn Museum, and transparency around past and current pedagogical, curatorial, and research practices. A commitment to anti-racism requires more than simply teaching about medical ethics or the federally mandated Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. It involves collaborative decision-making in consultation with affected community members around the Museum’s and the University’s legacies of slavery and colonial violence. PENN’S CHAPTER OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS can be reached by emailing aaup.penn@gmail.com or by visiting aaup-penn.org.

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OPINION 5

THURSDAY, APRIL 29, 2021

According to Penn, graduate student labor doesn’t matter

Action is 36 years overdue in holding the remains of MOVE bombing victims

Guest Column | Penn disregards graduate student labor with deprioritization in vaccine plan

Guest Column | Penn must take concrete steps to rectify keeping and displaying the bones of children killed in the MOVE bombing in 1985 for academic ‘adventure’

n April 12, 2021 the University of Pennsylvania announced the opening of a COVID-19 vaccine clinic on campus. According to an email sent to graduate and professional students, the university-run clinic would begin to serve eligible 1C populations on April 14. Those eligible for vaccination at the University site in category 1C include part- and full-time faculty, staff, postdocs, retired and emeritus faculty, temporary workers, thirdparty workers, and those living in on-campus housing currently eligible for Penn Cares testing. Where does this leave graduate instructors and research and teaching assistants? Although the City of Philadelphia broadly includes “higher education staff” in the 1c eligibility cohort, the University of Pennsylvania’s definition of eligibility departs from the City’s by excluding graduate scholars and workers from its definition of employed staff. In doing so, Penn dismisses the essential labor that we perform for the university. Graduate students are workers. As members of Graduate Employees Together at the University of Pennsylvania, we believe graduate students provide vital revenue generating labor for the university, including (but not limited to) teaching, research, grading, laboratory maintenance and supervision, and advising. This work is also performed by the staff, postdoctoral researchers, and faculty included in the University’s 1c designation—indeed, it is precisely what qualifies them. Under Penn’s plans, a professor recording lectures from home is eligible for a vaccine, but that professor’s teaching assistants leading recitation sections are not. So why this distinction? Last year, eight members from GET-UP authored a column in The Daily Pennsylvanian addressing the reasons why separating graduate students from the category of an employee mattered in the context of Penn’s inadequate initial response to the pandemic. As the authors noted, this distinction limits our access to equitable funding, healthcare, and workplace democracy. It also places significant constraints on international students’ visa statuses, which are

contingent on enrollment and employment. One year later, graduate and professional students are still not receiving proper support from the university. For example, instead of offering universal one-year funding extensions in recognition of the serious disruptions to academic progress, Penn announced a competitive campus-wide fellowship that will reward only a select few in later stages of research. Penn’s phased approach to campus-wide vaccination reflects the larger tendency to defer graduate students’ fair access to university resources during the pandemic. Previous messaging from the university indicated that it would prioritize vaccinations by “age and occupational risk.” But, the ages of graduate students vary widely. Some are older than faculty, staff, and postdocs. We are also aware that graduate students based in shared laboratory settings have been required to perform in-person work, which qualifies as occupational risk. Penn’s vaccination plan did not explicitly address any of these specificities. Although the vaccine is becoming increasingly available after President Biden expanded eligibility to all adults beginning April 19, we are nonetheless concerned about our ongoing exclusion from the University’s category of employee and the consequences it will hold for future decisions about access to healthcare, funding, and other protections. As graduate students organizing with GET-UP, we believe that representation through a union and legal recognition as employed workers at Penn will allow us to better participate in truly democratic, campus-wide dialogues about the importance of our labor. After observing how the University ranked access to vaccinations exclusively based on our status as “students,” and not as “workers,” we think that a union is more necessary than ever to advocate for our health, safety, and futures. GET-UP — Graduate Employees Together at the University of Pennsylvania — is a student organization. Its website is getupgrads.org and their email is penngetup@gmail.com.

s faculty and graduate group members in the Department of Africana Studies, we feel it is incumbent upon us to speak to the tragic, sorrowful, and racist treatment of the remains of two children, Delisha Africa and Tree Africa, killed in the bombing of MOVE. Although this tragic event occurred on May 13, 1985, the presence of these remains within the Penn Museum only very recently became public knowledge. We recognize that other departments on campus are working to raise awareness about systemic racism and the legacies of slavery and racial discrimination, particularly when exploring Penn’s own history. Nonetheless, the Department of Africana Studies was founded to play a special role as academic witnesses to and chroniclers of the ferocity of racism. From that vision, we must protest how this longstanding “secret” has been kept. Many within the community of the Penn Museum — undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and lecturers — knew of the presence of the remains of these Black children, in a container smaller than a shoebox — within the museum’s walls. Indeed, their remains were even the subject of the 2019 Coursera course “Real Bones: Adventures in Forensic Anthropology,” taught for Princeton University by Janet Monge. An opinion piece in last week’s Philadelphia Inquirer stated that within this course, Dr. Monge explored MOVE as a case study. The course was intended to “restore personhood” in forensic anthropology. No matter the motivation, no course can call the restoration of personhood to Black bodies an “adventure.” Such a course fits far too well within the long history of scientific racism in academia in many parts of the world and its practitioners’ academic casual use of dead Black bodies (in this case, we would say murdered). While we agree with many that the University must go further in its investigation and public response to this revelation, we hold that the Penn Museum’s Board of Advisors must also be held accountable for the neglect and grave disrespect of these Black children’s remains. There is nothing new

about this kind of institutional treatment, at Penn or elsewhere. In 2020, Richard Kent Evans published a book called “MOVE: An American Religion,” in which he describes that for six months, bodies of MOVE members languished in the city’s morgue, decomposing, and that machine operators crushed bones and mangled skeletons. On Monday, the American Anthropological Association issued its own condemnation of the handling of Philadelphia Bombing Victims’ human remains. But we can go back further, to 1990, and the establishment of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. The MOVE bombings had occurred only five years earlier. Yet, only now — and as a result of public ‘discovery’ — are the University of Pennsylvania and (hopefully) the Penn Museum’s Board of Advisors taking seriously their role in disgracing not only this Black child’s remains, but their family and their community as well. To the degree that this occurred in the name of “faculty expertise,” we also call upon the Penn Museum to report the use of these remains as a violation of Institutional Review Boards protocol. We must call out the reticence, hesitance, and obfuscation of the Penn Museum and the University of Pennsylvania in addressing this decades-long tragedy for the benefit of all students. As institutions that thrive because of our place within Philadelphia, we owe this to inhabitants of this city, particularly to those whose children, even when dead, were forcibly “lost.” At this time of deep turmoil and reckoning over structural racism in America, we expect the Penn Museum and the University of Pennsylvania to do more than simply appoint two members to investigate the use of these remains. A complete inventory and physical accounting of these and other remains and collections held by the Museum is long overdue. The DEPARTMENT of AFRICANA STUDIES can be contacted by emailing africana@sas. upenn.edu or by visiting africana.sas.upenn. edu.

Remembering my halmoni The Remembrance Project

or the past year, the news has been especially depressing with the increasing rates of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. The statistics continue to flip this emotional switch in my head that has me feeling too invested in the drastically large numbers or feeling drained and numb. On a more positive note, I saw people who were once distrustful of journalism rely on the news to serve as their eyes of the outside world during quarantine. The whole world was living through uncertainty, loss, and change. As with other Penn students, I adjusted to the virtual environment and was ready to start my last semester remotely. However, in the first week of spring semester, I learned that my halmoni — Korean for grandmother — passed away from COVID19. All the emotions of sadness, anger, and nervousness that I had bottled up inside me poured out the first week of classes, and they continue to leak as I now approach graduation thinking about my family. These past months, I have learned that grief comes and goes, and it hits you in waves. One second you’re OK; the next you’re not. While I know my family is one of many affected by the pandemic, it still hurts knowing that the person I

have loved and grew up with is no longer a phone call away. There are only a few weeks until graduation. I never envisioned that my year would also have virtual graduations and that our nursing class would enter the medical workforce during a pandemic. These days, I am actively reflecting on my past undergraduate years as well as my decision to pursue nursing in the first place, and I realize I owe it to my halmoni, who has instilled in me a multicultural worldview through the Korean language and has shown me unconditional love that can easily be translated into care for others. I am still processing the situation that I am in — physically and temporally. The days feel long, but the weeks are short. The pandemic feels like a lifetime, but here we are in April 2021, already more than a year into it. The people around me are so resilient, but at the same time life seems fragile. Thinking about the future makes me feel uneasy, so I’m taking it day by day as the rest of the world is too. JAMIE CHUNG is a Nursing senior from Los Angeles, Calif. Her email is jamiejc@nursing. upenn.edu.

PHOTO PROVIDED BY JAMIE CHUNG

We hit 200 million COVID-19 vaccinations. Now comes the hard part. Caroline’s Queries | Vaccine hesitancy and accessibility are major challenges as we struggle to approach herd immunity. As Penn students, let’s take action.

s this term draws to a close, there’s a cautious optimism among Penn students. COVID-19 cases at Penn remain low, students are getting vaccinated, and Penn intends to hold in-person classes this fall, with vaccines required of all students. This optimism is not unfounded. On a nationwide scale, President Joe Biden has surpassed his goal of 200 million shots in his first 100 days in office. More than half of those eligible in the United States have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, and though our current average, around 60,000 reported cases a day, is far from perfect, it’s better than our peak of 300,000 cases a day in January. Our vaccination efforts have escalated astronomically. All Americans over 16 are eligible to get the

COVID-19 vaccine, with over three million shots being administered on some days. But lately, the average doses per day nationwide has been dropping below three million. Initial vaccination rates in several states have plateaued, and some mass vaccination sites are already closing. Simultaneously, we’re seeing concerning trends in places like Michigan, where younger people are being hospitalized at higher rates. How do we react to the new problems that America is encountering: a lack of vaccine access, an excess of vaccine hesitancy, and premature shifts to prepandemic social behavior? Trapped in the Penn bubble, it can be easy to ignore these problems, especially when it seems like everyone around you is getting vaccinated. But

CHASE SUTTON

nationwide, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. We are in a position of privilege, and we must recognize that and take action, lifting others up and putting an end to this pandemic for each and every one of us. As younger students, we are adept at using technology in a way that older Americans are not, and have an unprecedented familiarity of the Internet. Securing a vaccine appointment shouldn’t depend on one’s internet access and ability to use it, but it often does. Over the past few months, appointment portals have crashed, second appointments have been canceled, and desperate public health officials have resorted to using Eventbrite for scheduling appointments. Granted, it has gotten easier to get the vaccine. More sites nationwide are allowing walk-ins, and decreasing demand means that getting vaccinated is less of a free-for-all than before. But it’s still not easy, and vaccine access remains a problem. 71% of U.S. adults who want a shot have received one, but only 60% of Black and 55% of Hispanic adults who want a shot have gotten one, and this racial gap is widest among those making less than $50,000 annually. Looking at Philadelphia’s vaccination rates by race makes this disparity abundantly clear. Just a few weeks ago, I struggled to schedule an appointment in New York because the registration link for my county-specific vaccination site redirected to another county’s site. I spent seven hours refreshing appointment websites, calling my state’s vaccine hotline, and searching Twitter for advice before I could secure an appointment. This was frustrating for me, a Gen-Z university student who was practically raised on the internet. How frustrating would this be for someone who rarely uses the internet, or lacks access to it? How frustrating would this be for someone who can’t take time off to search for vaccines like I did? I

got my appointment, but I don’t know how many adults would have the time and resources to jump through hoops for theirs. If we can be more persistent and informed when securing our appointments, we can extend these traits to others by advising them on how to get vaccinated on social media, or by booking appointments for others directly as “vaccine fairies.” The slowing rates of vaccination are also the result of vaccine hesitancy, stemming from partisan divides. Roughly one in five Americans refuse to get vaccinated. We need at least some of these Americans to get vaccinated: Estimates for COVID-19 herd immunity range from 70-90% of the population, so herd immunity necessitates tackling vaccine hesitancy. Even if much of Penn’s campus is getting vaccinated, it is essential that we talk to everyone we know to confirm their vaccination plans and help them get vaccinated if necessary. Not just our friends at Penn, but our friends back home, our family, our neighbors.Then, we tell them all to talk to their loved ones in turn. When we encounter vaccine hesitancy in our social circles, we must discuss it with empathy and understanding, since developing trust is essential to overcoming it. Achieving herd immunity will be difficult, and there exist many barriers to vaccination for millions of Americans. But as “Zoom University” students, we are uniquely qualified to help other adults secure appointments and get vaccinated. What are we waiting for? CAROLINE MAGDOLEN is a College and Engineering first-year student studying systems engineering & environmental science from New York City. Her email address is magdolen@sas.upenn.edu.

6 OPINION

THURSDAY, APRIL 29, 2021

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OPINION 7

THURSDAY, APRIL 29, 2021

Penn’s Pandemic Report Card T

his is the Daily Pennsylvania’s final issue until the fall, and hopefully the last with full pandemic restrictions in place. In the spirit of reflection and commemoration, The DP’s opinion staff grades how we — as a university and as a community — responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. The First Year Experience: C While Penn did open up the campus to first-year students during the second semester of the 2020-2021 academic year, the “first-year experience” was far from traditional. Penn held New Student Orientation online, with virtual preceptorials that gave students a look into various aspects of Penn life. However, this orientation did a poor job of facilitating interactions between first-year students, a burden that was largely carried by the class committee and later class board. Despite on-campus living options, Penn restricted on-campus activities significantly, with unequal enforcement and minimal transparency for students. This resulted in difficulties for in-person engagement and therefore inhibited the first-year experience. Hopefully, Penn will allow the Class of 2024 to relive their “first-year experience” as sophomores starting in the fall. Housing and Dining: B Penn made a substantial effort to enrich the dining experience throughout the semester. Hill’s dining hall gradually implemented new meal options in response to student dissatisfaction, including a pasta toss and omelette bar. Near the end of the semester, Penn also created new avenues to use meal swipes, namely at Houston Market and Gourmet Grocer. However, the university was largely unable to enforce COVID-19 housing guidelines, prompting numerous Resident Advisors to step down in late January. Additionally, Penn’s decision to mandate second-year dining as an extension of the Second Year Experience was not well-received, as it used community-building as an excuse to force unwilling students to purchase dining plans. Virtual Classes: C With online learning necessitated by the pandemic, all students expected classes to look different. How different, however, seemed to be left up to luck. Some professors and departments made accommodations for students, like administering open-note exams, which were much appreciated. Yet the unrelenting workload of classes often reflected faculty’s poor understanding of students’ mental wellness and capabilities. Additionally, some courses, most notably MATH-104, shifted entirely to asynchronous lectures, eliminating opportunities for professor-student engagement. This was especially challenging for firstyear students, who, without relationships with faculty

and their classmates, struggled to feel as though they were part of the Penn community. STEM Research: B It was great that Penn’s research facilities stayed open to undergraduates for nearly the whole semester; even with a spike in cases in early February, only the Medical School briefly shut down. Research at Penn is normally accessible to all Penn students. However, limiting lab capacities made professors wary of accepting new members, making it difficult for new students to begin research or switch between in-person labs. Although these precautions are understandable, this generated an unfair divide between those who were lucky enough to have started research prior to the pandemic, and those who may now be a full year behind on their research goals.

Clubs: B+ While the effort made by many clubs to stay afloat throughout the pandemic was laudable, the virtual format didn’t lend itself well to the overall experience. The student-created Penn Clubs website hosted multiple virtual activity fairs, allowing students to preview and connect with Penn’s hundreds of clubs. But because socializing is a crucial part of many campus organizations, the isolating nature of virtual meetings made it difficult for students to find a close sense of community. Additionally, the brutal recruitment process for many clubs remained, isolating many international students who were forced to adapt to entirely different time zones. Nevertheless, many students found ways to overcome the social obstacles of the pandemic and make clubs into a generally positive experience.

Campus Health Transparency: C+ Transparency was an essential part of keeping the Penn community updated on the COVID-19 situation on campus, and Penn’s approach to this crucial information was nothing short of opaque. The COVID-19 dashboard’s once-weekly updates, paired with little information about where the positive cases were clustered (such as by class year or College House), did little more than keep students in the dark when case counts skyrocketed — a March DP survey found 69 percent of students did not believe it was updated frequently enough. Better communication and more frequent updates could have helped create a more responsible campus culture, but instead we ended up with weekly Russian roulette.

Sustainability: B Penn tried to stay sustainable despite COVID-19, but their efforts are nothing to write home about. When Penn Dining started using take-out containers and bags to meet COVID-19 regulations, they also started the Green2Go program (using reusable containers), gave out cloth dining bags, and posted signage on sorting recycling to decrease overall waste produced. These solutions were mediocre, since few students used Green2Go and images of improper recycling frequently circulated online. That said, Penn Sustainability deserves credit for continuing to run social media and host virtual events, and 2020 did see an overall drop in carbon emissions and waste generation due to the pandemic.

Greek Life: D Tracing the roots of Penn’s COVID-19 outbreaks early in the semester leads back to one source: Greek life. Between downtown events and crowded, maskless indoor gatherings, it was unsurprising that a correlation was found between Greek life events and COVID-19 cases. Penn neglected to take many concrete steps in punishing the fraternities, which were primarily responsible for these violations, instead opting to send emails warning students of the repercussions of Campus Compact violations. The only positive aspect of Greek life this semester was the opportunity it provided for first-year and transfer students both on and off campus to find a sense of community in an otherwise isolating period of time.

Mental Health and Engagement Days: BThe COVID-19 pandemic has been a time of emotional desolation for many around the world: fear of illness, financial concerns, and loneliness have contributed to anxiety and depression for millions, and Penn students are no exception. For the most part, Penn has tried to work with students on this, with Counseling and Psychological Services hiring new clinicians since the pandemic’s onset, adapting counseling and psychiatric services to a virtual format, and maintaining a presence through the 24/7 helpline. Yet Penn’s scant offering of holidays (with only several engagement days sprinkled throughout the semester in lieu of spring break) has forced students to cope with an unrelenting workload with minimal time off. In fact, many Penn students have not found

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engagement days to be true opportunities for relaxation. The overall theme of pandemic mental health? An overburdened counseling center scrambling to meet the demands of the administration’s unsympathetic schedule. Grading and Academic Integrity: BWith easy access to textbooks, notes, and the internet, “Zoom University” has created an environment where cheating runs rampant. While Canvas has many technologies in place to detect academic dishonesty and professors have developed tactics such as live proctoring, students managed to find ways to gain unfair and unethical advantages. And with a lack of evidence proving any form of misdemeanor, grades unfortunately reflect a false sense of achievement from students not necessarily putting in the work. Even with the implementation of pass/fail, students continued to take advantage of the school’s inability to crack down on cheating. However, in terms of grades and their impact on mental health, the pass/ fail option provided a significant benefit to students as they struggled to navigate the academic and social challenges of a virtual college experience. Support of the West Philadelphia Community: C+ Early on, it was clear that major campus decisions were being made without community consultation. Our West Philadelphia neighbors worried from the start that the return to campus would “literally kill people.” Nearly five months later, City data shows the 19104 zip code to have among the highest total numbers of COVID-19 cases in the city (no recent information was available related to COVID-19 hospitalizations or deaths by zip code.) However, Penn Medicine and community partners have held a number of community-focused vaccination drives, including one in early February for people in the 1a and 1b categories. With all adults now eligible for free vaccines, Penn’s community partnerships will be essential in working towards the city’s herd immunity. CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS: Lexi Boccuzzi, Emily Chang, Alex Eapen, Isabella Glassman, Matthew Liu, Caroline Magdolen, Taja Mazaj, Alfredo Praticò, Varun Saraswathula, Valerie Wang

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NEWS 9

THURSDAY, APRIL 29, 2021

Penn InTouch replacement delayed to March 2022

Nursing student awarded President’s Innovation Prize for first time

The new system was originally set to debut in late 2020

Senior Anthony Scarpone-Lambert won the prize for his wearable light that won’t wake patients

HELEN RUDOLER Staff Reporter

SUKHMANI KAUR Contributing Reporter

Penn’s new course registration system will replace Penn InTouch in March 2022 after facing multiple delays. The new platform was originally set to be released at the end of 2020, but was delayed until 2021, and then delayed again, as COVID-19 threatened to disrupt plans, Executive Director for Academic Technology and Planning Rob Nelson said. The system will be implemented in time for summer and fall 2022 course registration. The new system is set to consist of a number of improvements to the outdated Penn InTouch software, including making the interface more modern and seamless and fixing glitches. Nelson told The Daily Pennsylvanian in 2019 that the current Penn InTouch infrastructure contains functionalities from the 1980s. So far, there is no official name for the new platform, Nelson said. “While considering several possibilities with the student advisory board, Path@Penn is the leading contender for the name of the new Penn InTouch,” Nelson wrote in an email to the DP. The phaseout of Penn InTouch is part of a larger project called Next Generation Student Systems, which aims to streamline and improve Penn’s curriculum planning and aid systems through a suite of websites and applications. Nelson said the new rollout will include more than just a replacement to Penn InTouch, such as “a collection of applications and information systems that will support students’ academic planning and academic success.” The platform will include a student engagement layer, which is a web portal that links students to any academic information they need to access, and a registration application, PATH, that will allow students to plan and register for courses. Unlike Penn InTouch, PATH will integrate academic planning and registration, rather than having academic planning worksheets and registration as separate processes, which Nelson said is intended to make course registration more efficient. PATH will also fix many of the glitches that currently frustrate students, such as overloading during registration periods. Nelson said that student voices have been important to the development of the project. A student advisory board working on the project consists of students representing the Undergraduate Assembly, Penn Labs, the Student Committee on Undergraduate Education, and the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly. College and Wharton senior Daniel Gordon has

served as a UA representative on the PATH advisory board for several years, and said that student voices were considered in all areas, ranging from the product’s infrastructure to its name. Outgoing UA Speaker Pro Tempore and College junior Jonathan Scotto said that an important part of his role on the advisory board is making space for student affinity groups in the conversation. He said he has been in contact with groups such as Penn Non-Cis and Penn Association for Gender Equity to be sure the new site respects pronouns, as well as the Transfer Student Organization to combat challenges transfer students typically face with course planning. “I’m not speaking for student groups and for the experiences, but rather including them in the conversations,” Scotto said. In addition to pronoun designation and a potential name-pronunciation feature — which Scotto hopes to see, if not in the initial release, in a future iteration — other new features include a redesigned interface for course planning and a tentative new waitlist system, which were influenced by popular Penn Labs products and may overlap with them in functionality, said Nelson. Engineering junior Marta García Ferreiro, outgoing co-director of Penn Labs, said that Penn Labs may make changes to differentiate some of their popular course planning sites, such as Penn Course Plan and Penn Course Alert, if the new system provides students with some of that functionality. Engineering sophomore Charles Cunningham, who is a team leader for the Penn Labs course sites, said he joined the student advisory board this semester to help prepare the Penn Labs team for any changes they’ll need to make to accommodate the new system, or possibly assist in discontinuing Penn Labs products that are made obsolete. “Penn Labs just cares that students have access to the resources they need. We’d be super happy if the new Penn PATH project has a much nicer [user interface] for selecting courses and registering for them,” Ferriero said. The students of the advisory board, including seniors who won’t have a chance to use the new software, all look forward to students being able to plan their academic courses without the inconvenience of the old Penn InTouch system. “The system is outdated, and props to the administration for recognizing that,” Gordon said.

At 6:30 a.m. on a Tuesday morning in fall 2019, then-Nursing junior Anthony Scarpone-Lambert entered his patient’s room, ready to change their IV fluids. He was forced to choose between turning on the bright, white fluorescent lights and risking waking his patient, or struggling in the dark to change the IV bag. Tired of choosing between the two options, Scarpone-Lambert worked with Valley Children’s Healthcare Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Nurse Jennifferre Mancillas to invent the uNight Light, a wearable LED light nurses can attach to their scrubs to illuminate their workspace without disturbing a patient’s sleep. Scarpone-Lambert was awarded the 2021 President’s Innovation Prize for his startup Lumify Care, which sells the uNight Light as the flagship product. Scarpone-Lambert is the first Nursing student to win the $100,000 President’s Innovation Prize in the award’s history. Lumify Care plans to use the prize money for marketing and product development to bring their uNight Light to more frontline health care workers and expand their educational efforts, which focus on emphasizing patient needs. Since Lumify Care’s official launch on Jan. 22, over 4,000 nurses from over 100 hospitals in all 50 states are active customers of Lumify Care, Scarpone-Lambert said. “The power that nurses bring into this innovation space is that we really understand problems we are solving first hand, because we are the ones at the bedside with the patient,” Scarpone-Lambert said. The uNight Light is intended to serve as an alternative to turning on bright overhead lights or using phone flashlights, pen lights, and other wearable lights that are not made for clinical settings, and could pose a risk of infection. Lumify Care’s products are designed specifically for a clinical setting, and can be cleaned using any hospital grade disinfectant. Each uNight Light has three levels of brightness to help nurses complete different tasks, and contains a battery that lasts approximately six months, Mancillas said. Through pilot programs involving more than 400 nurses from 12 health care systems, ScarponeLambert and Mancillas found that the uNight Light decreases patient sleep disturbances by 70% and

allows health care workers to see more easily, according to Mancillas. Scarpone-Lambert and Mancillas, who works in Madera, Calif., met at the 2019 Johnson & Johnson Nurse Hackathon. The idea for the invention stemmed from their experiences working on the front lines of health care in rooms with poor lighting and loud machines that could impede patients’ sleep. Scarpone-Lambert and Mancillas found that 87% of nurses struggled to see while providing care to patients sleeping with the lights off, based on interviews with over 250 nurses. Scarpone-Lambert is mentored by Therese Richmond, the Andrea B. Laporte professor of Nursing and associate dean for research and innovation. He also credited Practice Professor and Associate Director of the Engineering Entrepreneurship Program Jeffrey Babin for helping him bring his idea to a scalable business through Penn Wharton’s Entrepreneurship VIP-Xcelerate, a three-month accelerator program. “Anthony’s energy and passion to help others is palpable when you first meet him, even through Zoom,” Babin wrote in an email to The Daily Pennsylvanian. “As I got to know him and his objectives for Lumify, he [reinforced] his commitment with a methodical, data-driven approach to improving the lives of patients and frontline workers with Lumify Care products and services.” As hospitals implemented restrictions governing who could enter their facilities at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mancillas and ScarponeLambert had to rely on their hospital systems and connections to find people to pilot their product. Scarpone-Lambert said the pandemic accelerated his desire to make a difference, because he realized how much frontline health care workers needed to be supported. He added that his identity as a first-generation student has helped push him as an entrepreneur and motivate him in pursuit of change. “Penn students often don’t take enough risks in a way,” Scarpone-Lambert said. “For me I tried to maximize my Penn experience in that I wanted to make an impact and utilize resources on campus, and I credit that to really sparking my resourcefulness and the want to make a product.”

Pennsylvania’s soon-to-be-vacant U.S. Senate seat might be filled by a Penn affiliate The announcement of Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.)’s retirement in early October has prompted a flood of candidates to enter the race CELIA KRETH Staff Reporter

Penn graduates and faculty members have launched campaigns and exploratory committees for the United States Senate in Pennsylvania, entering one of the most competitive races in the nation for the seat. The announcement of Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.)’s retirement in early October has prompted a flood of candidates to enter the race. The election will help determine which political party controls the Senate chamber after midterm elections, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported, and may affect President Joe Biden’s ability to pass legislation, appoint judges, or fill possible vacancies in the Supreme Court. Out of the candidates, Penn affiliates running for a seat include Kevin Baumlin, chair of Emergency Medicine and professor of Clinical Emergency Medicine at Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine, Pennsylvania State Senator and 1999 Penn Law graduate Sen. Sharif Street, and Valerie Arkoosh, a former professor of Clinical Anesthesiology and Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Medical School, have each announced their bid for U.S. Senate. Two other University affiliates — Wharton Legal Studies and Business Ethics professor Eric Orts and Kenneth Braithwaite, a graduate of Penn’s Fels Institute of Government — are also reported to have considered filling Toomey’s vacancy. Baumlin, who has been an emergency physician and doctor for 30 years, officially announced his campaign on April 8, saying that he has been on the front lines of the MOVE FRONT PAGE

email sent by the University on April 28. Responses from Penn Museum and the University The Penn Museum issued a public apology to the Africa family on April 26 for its possession of the remains of at least one child killed in the bombing and their use of the remains for teaching and research practices. Following nationwide coverage and uproar, the Penn Museum and the University issued a second apology two days later to the Africa family and Penn community members in an email to all undergraduate students, in which they committed to a comprehensive review of its possession of the remains. The University announced hired attorneys Joe Tucker and Carl Singley of the Tucker Law Group to investigate how the Penn Museum came in possession of the remains and how they were used. This report will be shared with the Penn community with the intention that “nothing of this nature is repeated in the future.” The Penn Museum also stated it is working on a resolution to return the remains, and promised to reassess its “practices of collecting, stewarding, displaying, and researching human remains.” It will also review how human remains are used in teaching, and review the holdings and collection practices of its physical anthropology section. Penn President Amy Gutmann and Provost Wendell Pritchett previously released a statement on Monday afternoon calling the obtainment of these remains “insensitive, unprofessional, and unacceptable.” During a news conference on Monday, however, the Africa family rejected the Penn Museum’s apology. The group criticized the apology for its lateness in addressing the issue, the Inquirer reported. Other members of the Penn community like Anthropology Department Chair Kathleen D. Morrison similarly spoke out against the Penn Museum’s holding of the remains. In an email to department students, faculty, and staff on April 23, Morrison pledged to develop a more comprehensive framework for using human remains in teaching instead of the “minimal” guide currently provided by the Penn Museum. Morrison also wrote the anthropology department is creating a content warning system to alert students if classes involve the handling of human remains. “Our consideration will include not only legal concerns, such as the HIPAA Privacy Rule, which protects the individually identifiable health information about a decedent for 50 years following the date of death of the individual,

pandemic, caring for those affected by COVID-19 and is running for the Senate for the nearly 600,000 Americans and the 25,000 Pennsylvanians who died from the virus — specifically those that are disproportionately affected, such as older adults and the Black, Hispanic, and Asian communities. “I know that there are solutions, that if leaders think about the people that I care for — and not the power — and make decisions based on science and facts — and not lies and disinformation — we really can do better,” Baumlin told The Daily Pennsylvanian. “I’m ready to bring my white coat and my scrubs to Washington and get down to work and have a better, healthier Pennsylvania.” Baumlin said he is running on a platform that emphasizes the necessity of science in making health care decisions, as well as focusing on education, gun violence, immigration, hunger, and the opioid crisis. He has over 25 years of experience educating students and now teaches bedside at Penn Medicine. Baumlin also founded a nonprofit organization called Oak Street, which focuses on education and prioritizing the preferences of teachers. “Teachers want to teach, but they want to do it in small class sizes of one to 12, where they can make sure that every kid has an independent learning plan and isn’t left behind,” Baumlin said. Another one of his priorities is to make sure that Pennsylvania schools have proper ventilation and basic needs,

such as playgrounds and equipment for recess, which he said he saw were lacking when he was distributing vaccines in the Philadelphia area. Street, the Pennsylvania state senator from the Third District, launched an exploratory committee on April 9 because he wants his platform to come directly from the people of Pennsylvania. Street said he is passionate about funding education and wants to increase the operational dollars to fund education at the federal level. He also wants to improve the school buildings in Philadelphia, citing issues in infrastructure, such as the lead and asbestos problems, as well as its insufficient internet access and lack of wall outlets. He is additionally running on a platform focused on resolving environmental issues, adding that he has drafted legislation for alternative energy portfolio standards that expands the use of renewable resources and incorporates carbon capture technology. “I think there’s a false narrative that has been put out there that you’re either for jobs or you’re for saving the planet,” Street said. “Obviously, we have to save the planet, or we don’t have a place to live, but I think that as we do it, we can create jobs and create opportunities.” Criminal justice reform is also one of Street’s major campaign focuses, and he particularly hopes to reform the cash bail system, he said. He cited the inequality of wealthier citizens’ ability to pay bail for more severe crimes, stating that some citizens cannot even afford to

pay $50 for a minor crime. Street added that he would also support cannabis reform, an issue that has garnered increasing support from the American public in recent years. College sophomore Gianni Hill, who began working in Street’s government office as an intern in September 2019, said that Street has been adamant about engaging local citizens and speaking about political issues that “affect real people” in all of Pennsylvania’s communities. Another Penn affiliate, Arkoosh, who was elected as chair of the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners in 2016, also recently entered the race. Arkoosh, who ran for Congress after leaving Penn, said she is dedicated to lowering the cost of prescription drugs, growing the economy, getting out of the COVID-19 pandemic, and rebuilding infrastructure in a manner that is sustainable in order to combat the climate crisis. “As a doctor, my job was to diagnose the problem, and then work with a patient to solve it. Over time, I came to realize that many of the problems that my patients were facing were things that were occurring outside of the exam room,” Arkoosh wrote in an emailed statement to the DP. “That’s why I decided to become a public health advocate and worked to pass the Affordable Care Act. And as good as that was, I knew there was still more work to do.”

the histories of acquisition, and the role of informed consent, but also ethical concerns of care, avoidance of harm, and sensitivity for cultural differences,” the email read. The Department of Africana Studies released a statement Tuesday denouncing Penn’s holding of the remains, which Billy Penn reported were at one point stored in a cardboard box. The department called for the University to perform a deeper investigation into the MOVE remains as well as the rest of the museum’s holdings. “At this time of deep turmoil and reckoning over structural racism in America, we expect the Penn Museum and the University of Pennsylvania do more than simply appoint two members to investigate the use of these remains,” said Eve M. Troutt Powell, history and Africana studies professor. “A complete inventory and physical accounting of these and other remains and collections held by the Museum is long overdue.” Criticism from Penn students and West Philadelphia community More than 300 West Philadelphia and Penn community members gathered outside the Penn Museum Thursday evening to demand the immediate return of the remains and honor the lives of Tree and Delisha Africa, whose remains the Africa family believes were held by the Museum. More than 7,370 people have also signed a petition created by the Africa family also calling for the return of the remains and those of Delisha Africa and Tree Africa. The petition also demands financial reparations to the MOVE family and the creation of a transparent, public investigation led by a MOVE-approved investigator and funded by Penn and Princeton. Graduate School of Education professor and Black Lives Matter Philadelphia organizer Krystal Strong affirmed the demands of the MOVE family, and urged members of the Penn community to stand in solidarity with MOVE. “It’s time for us who are members of Penn to listen to the MOVE family to follow their lead and to support them in how they determine what justice looks like,” Strong said. After Muhammad wrote their op-ed, they told the DP that the Museum’s possession of Black Philadelphian bodies is perpetuating the University’s cycle of abuse with its surrounding community. “It’s an atrocity that for over 35 years the Museum at Penn — and it seems like Princeton — have been trafficking in the remains of the MOVE bombing victim, or

victims,” Muhammad told the DP. “[Penn is] complicit in the harm that befell the MOVE people. It’s complicit in the harm that befell the Black residents of West Philadelphia. It’s complicit in the harm that was levied against two Black children, 14 and 12 years old.” Philadelphia Councilmember and Penn alumna Jamie Gauthier wrote in an April 24 email to the DP that she felt sickened to hear that Penn has been in possession of the remains, adding that this incident reopens conversations surrounding distrust between Penn and Black West Philadelphia communities. “The University of Pennsylvania and the City of Philadelphia owe the Africa family and the West Philadelphia community a full explanation of what happened here. Additionally, the university must make meaningful efforts towards reconciliation,” Gauthier wrote. “It’s long past time that Penn as an institution conducts an honest accounting of their treatment of, and impact on, Black and brown neighborhoods — and that they work to make things right.” School of Arts and Sciences Ph.D. second year and member of the Penn & Slavery Project VanJessica Gladney said she was shocked to learn that the remains were in Penn’s possession, and especially that they were used in online instruction videos. She believes the remains must be returned expeditiously to the Africa family. “Once again, we see the remains of Black Philadelphians used as a teaching tool when it’s an actual person — and that person should have been honored,” Gladney said. “[Is Penn] prioritizing truth and moral good, and giving the remains of someone to a proper burial and to their families? Or is it all just prestige?” Professor of Religious and Africana Studies Anthea Butler posted a series of tweets on April 21 denouncing the use of the remains as objects to study rather than actual people who once lived. Butler declined a request for comment. Police Free Penn has joined other groups in leveling criticism against the University and the Penn Museum for its possession of the remains. The group has publicly voiced their support for the Africa family on social media, and on April 23, Police Free Penn initiated an email campaign to demand the immediate return of the remains to the Africa family.

Graduate School of Education student Christopher Rogers, who is a member of Police Free Penn, criticized Penn for its performative commitment to racial equity, pointing to an email sent by top administrators to the University community during jury deliberations on the trial of Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer who was found guilty for the police killing of George Floyd. “I’ve been getting email after email of [Penn] telling me they care, and then when we actually have a real moment to address the real and deep substantive work of doing racial justice, they’re evasive,” Rogers said. In a Daily Princetonian op-ed, 69 faculty members denounced the possession of the remains by both Penn and Princeton, as well as their use by Monge in the Coursera video. “It is simply not enough to assert, as has a University spokesperson, that nothing ‘improper is currently taking place at Princeton,’” the op-ed reads. “The victims of the MOVE bombing, their families, and those of us at Princeton invested in Black history and communities deserve more.” Reparations and restitution of the remains For some members of the local community, Penn’s possession of the MOVE bombing remains and the Morton Collection, which holds the skulls of 14 Black Philadelphians whose remains were robbed from their graves in the 19th century, prompts conversations about reparations. While the University has issued apologies and plans to repatriate the Morton Collection and return the MOVE remains to the Africa family, MOVE and their allies hope to see immediate restitution. “We were just at Penn a week ago to demand the sacred return of the crania of 14 Black Philadelphians, and now we find out that they also have the remains of MOVE bombing victims —young Black children— in their possessions,” Muhammad said. Muhammad said the actions that should be taken are simple: The University must return the remains to the Africa family, as well as pay them reparations, which the Africa family demands as well. “There won’t ever be enough repair to deal with what they did, but they have to make financial restitution to the family of Tree and Delisha Africa,” they said.

10 SPORTS

THURSDAY, APRIL 29, 2021

THE DAILY PENNSYLVANIAN | THEDP.COM

QUESTIONS WITH BEN BEDARD, A PENN MEN’S LACROSSE SENIOR

SPORTS | Bedard plans to take a fifth year of eligibility to play lacrosse JONNY MILLER Sports Reporter

1. Can you introduce yourself? I’m Ben Bedard. I’m from Annapolis, Md. and my major is political science.

2. What are your plans after you graduate from Penn? Right now, I don’t have specific plans [in regard to a job], because I’m planning on taking a fifth year to play lacrosse. I’m not sure where I’ll be playing yet.

3. How did playing in a conference as competitive as the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association in high school help you develop as a player and get recruited? When you’re playing against good teams and the best competition, you’re able to get to the next level. You get a lot of exposure because the college coaches come to watch the best high school teams, so if you’re able to stick out in those games against really good teams, that’s always a plus for getting recruited.

Senior midfielder Ben Bedard’s admires his older brother, who played Division I lacrosse at North Carolina.

8. What three words best describe you as a lacrosse player?

4. What other schools did you consider while you were getting recruited and what made you choose Penn?

I would say tough, leader, and athletic.

9. What’s your go-to pre-game song?

Wow, that was a long time ago. Ohio State and North Carolina were other schools that I considered. I chose Penn because when I visited the school I loved the culture in our locker room, the team feels like a family, and the coaches really bring you in, so it was a pretty easy decision.

My pre-game song is “Kickstart My Heart” by Motley Crue. That has to be my favorite.

5. Did you play other sports growing up and how did they help you become a better lacrosse player?

I would definitely say “Miracle.”

I played football growing up. That helped me get tougher and helped with the vocal aspect and being a better leader, along with some other elements of the game that translate over to lacrosse too.

11. Who’s your favorite athlete?

10. What’s your favorite sports movie?

I think my all-time favorite would be Sean Taylor. I’m a big-time [Washington Football Team] fan.

6. How did it feel to play against outside competition for the first time this season on Friday?

12. How have practices been not knowing if you will get the chance to play in games?

It was awesome. We’ve been waiting and fighting for that for a long time now. I think it was 411 days since the last time we played another school so it was definitely a really good feeling.

Our team has held together really nicely. There were a couple of times we got kicked around, but we always got to come to practice and be together. We all wanted to be there and were able to get better as a team every day.

7. Who would you say has had the biggest impact on you as a lacrosse player?

13. How has your approach to the locker room changed as a senior this year in such an unprecedented season?

I would say my older brother. He played Division I lacrosse at North Carolina, so I got to watch him play, and we went to the same high school. I sort of watched the way he played and competed and that really shaped the lacrosse player I am today.

We’ve kind of switched gears and started focusing on the culture and not letting it slip while we’re in this year. It would be easy for us to roll over and give up, but we’ve focused on really fighting to play, and we work every day to make sure the guys returning next year have what it takes to compete for a national championship.

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For our senior class, if Friday was our last game together, we got to go out 1-0 together. We hope we set the foundation for future classes to compete for a national championship.

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SPORTS 11

THURSDAY, APRIL 29, 2021

Freshman Brianna Brown of Penn softball is making her presence felt in the outfield SPORTS | Consistent hitting, stolen bases, and diving catches are Brown’s specialities TYIRA BUNCHE Sports Reporter

Freshman Brianna Brown has made the most of her rookie campaign, starting five games in this shortened season.

Freshman outfielder Brianna Brown fell in love with softball at a young age and has finally been able to express that passion on the field with Penn. The Tinley Park, Ill. native grew up with a mother and aunt who both played collegiate sports. From basketball to gymnastics to taekwondo, Brown tried out several different sports throughout her life. The community and family atmosphere in softball, however, is what persuaded her to commit fully to softball. “I felt like I was able to get the closest with the people I played with in softball,” Brown said. “Softball always just seemed to be the place where there’s the most encouragement. I’m not a fan of solo sports. I really like playing with teammates.” Even though the start to her freshman year had been virtual in the fall semester, she received that same support and community atmosphere from her Penn teammates. Before she even set foot on campus, her teammates reached out and made an effort to get to know her. When the team finally returned to competition, Brown felt like she was already engrossed in the Penn softball family. “Penn softball places a really big emphasis on getting to know your teammates and having that good team chemistry,” Brown said. “They really make an effort to be friends with you on and off the field, which I really appreciate.” Before starting high school, the outfielder ramped up her dedication to softball, but never truly thought about pursuing it collegiately. It was actually her high school coach at Marist, Colleen Phelan, who told Brown she should start reaching out to college coaches. Phelan got to know Brown in sixth grade when she started attending Marist’s softball camps. “I started giving her slapping lessons, and she was always the most fun, bubbly, energetic, exciting camper that we had. We were very fortunate for her to choose to come to Marist,” Phelan said. The outgoing personality that Brown had at camp continued throughout her high school career

and made her beloved by her teammates. Brown was committed to not only improving herself, but also giving support to her teammates to help them be successful. Her dedication to her team was rewarded when she was named team captain for her senior season. Although her senior year was virtual due to the pandemic, Brown remained dedicated to her team and focused on keeping the team together over Zoom. “Just because we didn’t have a season, [her teammates] still looked up to her as a leader because we had a lot of young kids on the team,” Phelan said. “She did a really good job for me all four years, following the rules and leading vocally and by example.” One of the other things that stood out most to Phelan was Brown’s energy on the field and her speed. In only her third start for the Quakers, against Saint Joseph’s, Brown showed that speed with a diving catch in left. Later in the same game, she displayed that speed on the bases when she stole second base after hitting a single. While softball has been a big part of Brown’s life, her academics were always at the forefront of importance for her. Although Brown was a varsity softball player all four years of high school, she also committed herself to a heavy course load filled with AP courses. At the start of high school, Brown was dedicated to becoming a veterinarian and was originally drawn to Penn for its veterinary program. Despite no longer being interested in veterinary science, she’s excited to tackle a heavy course load at Penn. In her first year, Brown has not yet settled on a major, but is leaning towards pursuing something along the lines of computer science, physics, and math. Despite the shortened season, Brown has already started five games for the Red and Blue and has made her presence on the field known. With three more seasons at Penn, Brown has the opportunity to continue to do something she’s passionate about,

Penn softball defeated by Drexel in just five innings SPORTS | Freshman pitcher Olivia Szewczyk was handed a losing start for the Quakers ANUSHA MATHUR Sports Associate

In a devastating defeat, Penn softball lost its first matchup against Drexel this season by a score of 11-2. The Dragons (18-6) only needed five innings to knock off the Quakers (5-5). The game at Penn Park was disappointing for the Red and Blue from the first inning. Olivia Szewczyk started on the mound for Penn. The Dragons jumped on her early, immediately notching two doubles and a single to make the score 1-0. After just four batters, Drexel was able to knock Szewczyk out and the Quakers called upon sophomore pitcher Bella Fiorentino from the bullpen. The Dragons then scored two additional runs, making the score 3-0. At bat to lead off the Quakers in the bottom of the first inning was their offensive leader, junior Emma Nedley. However, she was unable to make any progress. The Quakers put more players up to bat, but had little luck. The Red and Blue were unable to score a single run in the first inning. In the second inning, Penn placed more defensive pressure on the Dragons, and the Dragons were unable to score. However, when it was their turn to bat, the Quakers were unable to even the score or knock off Drexel’s pitcher, Meghan Conroy, who remained on the diamond for the entire game. In contrast, later in the game, the Quakers had to substitute out their pitcher for the second time, with senior Abigail Abramson entering the game in the third. In the third inning, thanks to Drexel’s star

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player and all-time home run leader Linda620 Rush, Eighth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10018 the gap between the Dragons and Quakers widFor Information Call: 1-800-972-3550 ened to 9-0. Drexel capitalized on three Penn erFor Release Friday, April 30, 2021 rors and three hits, culminating in a grand slam off the bat of Rush, to run up the score. Penn saw a sliver of hope when sophomore Alyssa Pope notched the Quakers’ first hit of the game in the bottom of the third. Freshman Sammy Fenton followed up with a hard single towards third base, leaving the Quakers with a run finally on their side going into the fourth. Fenton now has six RBIs on the29 season, putting her only Org. with 54 Water under ACROSS 1 2 3 4 behind Nedley in that category. 1-Across the bridge? 1 Parts of a leak The Quakers again blew an opportunity to 12 Voluptuary 57 Zonked close the around gap during inning, and the 12 Pop a the30fourth 14 scorelot? remained 9-1. Tension was high the start 32 Warms up atthe 58 “Stop … don’t of the fifth. Drexel scored crowd, a pair of runs at the panic” say 14 “Whoa, there!” 16 17 top of the inning to make34itSteadiness 11-1, but Nedley was 61 Phil Silvers 16 One with aback, nestsmashing a home run deadable to answer 19 20 character of 36 Stravinsky’s egg center for her team.

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Today’s Puzzle Answers

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Edited by Will Shortz

THURSDAY, APRIL 29, 2021 VOL. CXXXVII NO. 14

THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

FOUNDED 1885

WITHOUT PENN RELAYS, TRACK AND FIELD EXCELS AT ‘PHILLY METS’

CHASE SUTTON

Penn captured all three top spots in the 3000-meter steeplechase, earning the team “Moment of the Meet.”

SPORTS | Both the Female and Male Field Athletes of the Day awards were won by members of the Red and Blue ANUSHA MATHUR Sports Associate

Last year, the COVID-19 pandemic forced spring sports competitions to come to a halt. One such tournament was the annual Penn Relays, the oldest and largest track and field competition in the United States, always hosted by Penn at Franklin Field. This year, the Penn Relays sponsored the Philadelphia Metropolitan Collegiate Invitational (“Philly Mets”), a scaled-down version of the typical week-long extravaganza. The meet included relays and individual events, allowing athletes to compete and establish qualifying times for future meets. Penn Relays typically attracts more than 15,000 participants from high schools, colleges, and track clubs from across the country as well as competitors from abroad. However, per Ivy League COVID-19 guidelines, all competitors this year were from schools within a 40-mile radius of Penn. Eighteen local teams participated, including all Big 5 schools. Additionally, no spectators were allowed on the field, a major shift from the 100,000 people who typically attend the last three

days of the tournament. “We just wanted to have some sort of activity and provide competitive opportunities for our local collegiate athletes,” Penn Relays Executive Director Scott Ward said in an interview with CBS Philly. Of the competitors this weekend, Villanova has won the most events since Penn Relays’ inception in 1895, and the Wildcats brought a significant number of athletes to the competition. However, Penn broke numerous records and won several awards, placing an athlete in the top five of nearly every event. The Quakers won the titles of both Female Field Athlete of the Day and Male Field Athlete of the Day. Senior Ashley Anumba won first place in the women’s discus throw (55.99m). Her impressive performance placed her in the top 15 in the country this season. Senior Chudi Ikpeazu launched his discus 58.42m in the men’s throw, almost 10 meters further than any other competitor. His performance earned him second place in the event. It is not only the second-best distance in program history, but also top 10 in the nation this season. The Quakers also took home a third recognition from the meet. In the men’s 3000m steeplechase, Penn earned first, second, and third place. First place went to sophomore Michael Keehan (8:48.54) and second went to junior William Hare (8:51.45). All three athletes broke 9:00, a feat that no other competitor was able to match

in this tournament. This accomplishment was named the Moment of the Meet. Keehan’s performance is the sixthbest in program history and puts his time in a top-10 spot in Division I this season. Hare’s time is ninth in program history. On the women’s side, the Red and Blue took home first place in the discus throw, 400m hurdles, long jump, triple jump, and 4x800m relay. Junior Haley Rizek won the 400m hurdles (59.68), and her performance was third-best in program history. Senior captain Camille Dickson secured a victory in the long jump (6.24m) and junior Tamara Grahovac in the triple jump (12.19m). Grahovac’s performance marked a new personal record. Additionally, in the 4x800m relay, the quartet finished in 9:04.47. The Red and Blue won second in the 100m hurdles, 5000m run, 4x400m relay, and javelin throw. In the 100m hurdles, sophomore Grace O’Shea’s second place finish (13.98) was sixth best in program history. Additionally, in the 4x400m relay, the quartet’s time (3:39.57) was ninthbest in program history. In the 5000m run, Penn’s fastest runner was senior Danielle Orie (16:34.86), and in the javelin throw, junior Kirsten West threw 41.18 meters. The Quakers secured third-place spots in the 1600m sprint medley, 3000m steeplechase, and shot put. The 1600m sprint medley time (3:55.69) is the fourth-best in program history. In the 3000m steeplechase, fresh-

man Olivia Morganti earned third place (11:24.24). In addition to sophomore Morgan Johnson’s third place (13.41m) shot put throw, Penn also took home ninth place in the event. The Quakers earned fourth and 10th place in the 1500m as well as fifth and sixth in the hammer throw. Freshman Omonye Osezua’s 48.61m hammer throw made the cut for top 10 in program history. In the high jump, the Quakers won fourth and fifth place with junior Claire Moreau and freshman Sarah Lavery both jumping 1.65m. In the pole vault, senior Michelle Rubinetti won fourth place (3.60m). In addition to these performances, Penn’s female athletes competed well across the board. In the 400m hurdles, the Quakers won second and eighth place. They took home second, third, fourth, eighth, and 10th place in the 5000m run. The Quakers also placed fifth in triple jump as well as seventh and tenth in discus throw. The Red and Blue took fifth in the javelin throw. Penn’s athletes consistently performed well on the men’s side as well. Freshman Justin Iler’s 5000m time (14:22.62) and junior Enoch Cheung’s 110m hurdles performance (14.68) earned them first place in both events. However, both of these were extremely tight victories. In fact, Iller edged out two Villanova athletes in the home stretch to take the 5000m title.

Jason Hildebrandt and Zach Smith of Penn men’s tennis attribute doubles success to their friendship SPORTS | The pair often ride scooters around town in their spare time JOEY PIATT Sports Associate

rom off-court best friends to on-court doubles partners, sophomore Zach Smith and junior Jason FHildebrandt have been through it all as Quakers.

In addition to being two of Penn men’s tennis’ best singles players, Smith and Hildebrandt are Penn’s No. 1 doubles pairing this season. In the shortened spring season, the two have lost their doubles match only once, helping Penn to perform well in doubles action overall this season. Even before competing alongside one another, the two

CHASE SUTTON

Junior Jason Hildebrandt and sophomore Zach Smith are the No. 1 doubles team for Penn men’s tennis. SEND STORY IDEAS TO DPSPORTS@THEDP.COM

found the decision to become a pairing an easy one. “We started doing a lot off the court in the beginning of the year,” Hildebrandt said. “Then, when we found out we would actually have matches, we tried [playing together] a bit in practice and worked out well as doubles partners.” One thing that was instrumental in the pairing’s decision to compete with each other was the foundation of their off-court relationship. “The connection we have off court definitely helped us to become a good doubles team, and we were able to carry that through this season,” Hildebrandt said. In tennis, chemistry between doubles partners can play a large role in the success a pairing has during competition. The Quakers have enjoyed success in doubles this season, and it has largely been due to the strong relationship between their top pairing. “For me personally, I think 90% of a good doubles team is the chemistry between the guys,” Smith said. “We’ve generally been really close … Hanging out as much as we do, the connection we have definitely helps out on the court. We understand each other.” Smith and Hildebrandt have become nearly inseparable since stepping onto Penn’s campus, as they have forged a close friendship. Years of going to practice together and hanging out with each other have allowed them to serve almost as a second family for each other. “It’s almost kind of like we’re brothers,” Smith said. “I’ll eat with him, [or] we’ll go to practice together, and then be like, ‘Let’s go grab dinner.’ I’ll wake up and send him a text … it’s honestly like a relationship with my family.” Spending a large amount of time together off the court has allowed the pair’s chemistry to shine through on the tennis court. In a sport where chemistry can play a large part in an athlete’s success on the court, this time together has been instrumental in helping the two improve as athletes.

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Even when Penn athletic activities were suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Smith and Hildebrandt found ways to spend time together and continue to strengthen their relationship. “When we didn’t have matches, we kind of tried to make up for the time we would’ve spent together on the tennis court,” Hildebrandt said. “We just spent that off the court.” While spending time off the court together has been enjoyable for both, like many athletes, the two were eager to resume competition this spring. When they finally got the opportunity to compete alongside one another, it was just as much fun as they had imagined it. “[It has] just been a lot of fun, honestly,” Hildebrandt said. “Just on the court, [we’re] really enjoying it. We have so many shared experiences together, and that’s just great. We hope to continue it next year.” This shortened season has allowed for Smith and Hildebrandt’s friendship to be on full display. However, even when they aren’t lined up next to each other on the tennis court, they can still be seen around campus with their teammates. “Sometimes we’ll get a couple other guys, and we pretty much spend the whole day together from wake up until super late at night,” Smith said. “Whether it’s exploring Philadelphia, throwing some tennis, meeting up with some friends, it’s just great being all together.” Despite the wide range of activities the two do together, one of their favorites involves riding around town. “One iconic thing we always do together … I have an electric scooter, they have three skateboards, so we kind of ride around the town,” Hildebrandt said. Whether it’s on the court or off the court, Smith and Hildebrandt will almost certainly be seen together, and they will be a pairing to watch next season when Penn men’s tennis resumes play. CONTACT US: 215-422-4640