THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSIT Y OF PENNSYLVANIA
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TUESDAY, MARCH 25, 2014
Penn taps Calhoun as next athletic director M. Grace Calhoun, Loyola’s current athletic director, will take over for Steve Bilsky, effective July 1 BY STEVEN TYDINGS Senior Sports Editor Welcome to the Calhoun era of Penn Athletics. Provost Vincent Price announced on Monday that M. Grace Calhoun, the current athletic director and assistant vice president at Loyola Chicago, will be the next Penn Director of Recreation and Intercollegiate Athletics, effective July 1. Calhoun was formally introduced at a press conference at the Palestra Monday afternoon. Calhoun has been Loyola’s AD for three years and had previously been an associate athletic director at Indiana from 2005-11. She also has previous experience in the Ivy League, both as a student-athlete at Brown University, where she graduated in 1992, and as an associate athletic director at Dartmouth College from 2002-05. Calhoun earned her Ph.D. from the University of Florida, where she also worked in the athletic department. She has also worked as acting director of athletics at Saint Francis University (Pa.) from 1997-98 and associate executive director of the Patriot League from 1998-02. “We set out to find a star, and we did,” President Amy Gutmann said in a press
release. Calhoun will be the first female athletic director in Big 5 history. “I’m helping to open doors for other women, just like so many phenomenal women have helped to open doors for me by being the first to serve in their positions,” Calhoun said. As the new AD, Calhoun will oversee both the Department of Recreation, which is in charge of the Pottruck Center and other facilities, as well as Intercollegiate Athletics, working closely with administrators and coaches to help each program. A major concern facing Penn Athletics has been student apathy towards its programs, something Price is confident Calhoun can address. “We certainly value the role of Penn Athletics in building bridges within the community, not just the larger community but the community just before us, the student body, the faculty, the staff here on campus,” he said. “So one of the reasons we’re so excited about bringing Dr. Calhoun to campus is that she does have that kind of experience in having built that kind of excitement in other programs.” Calhoun succeeds Steve Bilsky, who will retire after 20 years as Penn’s athletic director on June 30. Calhoun said that Bilsky “is in the position until then and [she] fully expect[s] him to continue his decision-makOsama Ahmed/Staff Photographer
SEE CALHOUN PAGE 8
contributed by
“Parks and Rec” icon Retta slays at Harrison Auditorium
Working group to target hazing across student organizations National hazing statistics SOURCE: HazingPrevention.org
BY BEN LERNER Under the Button Editor-in-Chief
Garett Nelson/Staff Photographer
Comedienne Retta, who plays Donna on “Parks and Recreation,” performed a standup routine and entertained questions from the audience last night at the Penn Museum. Her visit to campus was hosted by SPEC Connaissance, which brings one keynote speaker each semester.
On Twitter, she’s @unfoRETTAble, but last night, Retta’s Penn appearance was unforgettable. Most people in the audience at the Penn Museum’s Harrison Auditorium k now the comedienne for her work on NBC’s comedy “Park s and R ecre ation,” where she plays Donna Meagle, the live-tweetin’, selftreatin’ one-liner queen. But Retta appeared as herself last night, and without the constraints of network television, language censorship or others writing for her, the actress was on her A-game. Raunchy and expressive, it was no wonder the Duke alumna, once pre-med, stuck with the comedy path after experimenting with standup after graduation. Retta took the stage after a Penn student opened for her.
A name was missing when student government ballots went live last night. Engineering sophomore Jacob Henner, who is running for the Undergraduate Assembly School of Engineering and Applied Sciences representative, was not listed among his fellow candidates when the initial ballot went online last night. Any students who voted between the original ballot’s
release and the forty minutes before the new ballot was released may vote again in the new ballot, according to the Nominations and Elections Committee. Those students will not be prevented from voting in the replaced UA SEAS ballot. Current UA representative and Engineering freshman Alex George, another candidate on the SEAS UA ballot, notified Engineering junior and NEC Vice Chair for Elections Frederick Ding of the error via email at 12:13 a.m.
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The error was corrected at 12:13 a.m., and Henner’s name was added to the ballot. In order to prevent votes from students who saw the incorrect ballot from creating a bias in the overall results, the NEC removed that ballot from active voting and replaced it with an entirely new SEAS UA representative ballot, which included all candidates, at 12:40 a.m. “I think — when I went to talk to the NEC about the erSEE HENNER PAGE 7
95%
of cases did not report their hazing experiences to campus officials.
of students wouldn’t report hazing primarily because "there's no 36% one to tell," and 27 percent feel that adults won't handle it right. Graphic by Analyn Delos Santos
The Anti-Hazing Working Group aims to implement recommendations by next semester BY MELISSA LAWFORD Staff Writer Penn is proactively taking steps to combat the hazing on campus with a new approach that doesn’t focus solely on
SEE RETTA PAGE 6
Candidate left off UA ballot, some need to recast votes BY KRISTEN GRABARZ Staff Writer
of college students 55% involved in clubs, teams and organizations experience hazing.
Greek life. A new Anti-Hazing Working Group, which consists of students and staff across many
SEE HAZING PAGE 7
UA passes budget increasing SAC and Hey Day funds BY KRISTEN GRABARZ Staff Writer After an unusually long budget season, the Undergraduate Assembly passed the budget for the 2014-15 academic year at its meeting on Sunday night. The finalized budget saw increases in funding to the Student Activities Council and the junior and senior class boards, while the sophomore class board’s funding dropped by 40.83 percent to $7988.
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SAC’s budget allocation increased by 10.39 percent in total, bringing its funds to $670,403.37 from $607,325.75 in a stark contrast to last year’s 39.33 percent drop in SAC funding. The senior class board’s budget rose by 6.9 percent to $15,500 and the junior class budget increased by 10.53 percent to $15,750 to account in part for added Hey Day funds. Making its first appearance on the budget list, UA Steering was apportioned
$250. The budget passed unanimously. The UA also debated a contingency request by the Medical Emergency Response Team for funding for a new automated external defibrillator, an essential piece of medical equipment used to resuscitate victims of heart attacks and other such maladies, to replace a broken one. College junior Tamara Snow, MERT’s administraSEE BUDGET PAGE 6
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