Protestors disrupt Magill speech at alumni event

After interrupting the event, community members and students joined the demonstration outside Hunstman Hall

IMRAN SIDDIQUI Senior Reporter

A group of student protestors interrupted a Penn Alumni event featuring President Liz Magill on Feb. 10, urging Penn to preserve the University City Townhomes as affordable housing.

The protestors, affiliated with Fossil Free Penn, disrupted the class presidents Event dinner on Huntsman Hall's eighth floor at 7 p.m. for around five minutes, beginning while Magill was delivering remarks. After exiting the building, community members from the Coalition to Save the UC Townhomes and other students joined the demonstration as the group of nearly 50 marched from Huntsman Hall to the UC Townhomes.

The group is demanding that Penn commit $10 million to the preservation of the UC Townhomes, according to College senior Gigi Varlotta, one of the demonstrators who interrupted the event. They said that once Penn makes this commitment, they believe that other institutions across Philadelphia — including Drexel University and the University Hospitals — will follow suit.

"Penn is the most influential player in the city," Varlotta said. "The reason that the [UC Townhomes] are being sold is because of Penn's history of expansion and displacement in West Philadelphia."

Penn Alumni did not respond to a request for comment. University spokesperson Ron Ozio wrote, "Intentionally disrupting a private event with a bullhorn is inappropriate and inconsistent with our values."

The protestors carried banners into the event displaying their demands while chanting "Save the UC Townhomes" and "housing is a human right."

Varlotta alleged that the alumni and former class presidents were not happy with the demonstration, claiming that one person pushed Varlotta's bullhorn into their face.

"They were angry, and I said I'm angry too, because my friends are losing their homes," Varlotta said. "I said that if Magill and the administration had listened to their students, we wouldn't be here today."

Following the interruption at the class presidents event, the group left Huntsman Hall and convened with other demonstrators on the corner of 38th and Walnut streets where residents of the UC Townhomes spoke about their demands for the University.

"We will win out," Mel Hairston, a UC Townhomes resident, said at the demonstration. "No matter how long this takes, and no matter how long we have to go through the processes, we will win."

Around 7:20 p.m., demonstrators marched down Walnut Street and stopped in front of the nowclosed McDonald's location near campus — which is in the process of being redeveloped into a mixedused office building operated by Penn with a new McDonald's on the first floor. Here, protestors demanded that the University take accountability for its role in the gentrification of West Philadelphia. The demonstration ended at the UC Townhomes. Recently, the eviction deadline for the residents of the UC Townhomes has been extended until Feb. 21. Residents in 13 out of 70 units are still living on the site, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

The UC Townhomes are a rental property located at the corner of 39th and Market streets. Since the property's owner, IBID Associates Limited Partnership, announced its decision to sell the UC Townhomes last year, residents, student and local activists, and the city council have organized opposition against the sale and what the effects of displacement and redevelopment could mean for the city.

Previously, the University has said it is committed to helping tackle the City's issue of affordable housing.

In September, Penn announced it would partner with Rebuilding Together Philadelphia, a local community revitalization organization, to assist approximately 75 West Philadelphia low-income homeowners. Administrators also asked faculty at the Penn Institute for Urban Research to produce a “comprehensive study” with “actionable strategies” on how the University can support the increase of affordable housing and determine “best practices” for partnerships between the

University and the West Philadelphia community.

Penn does not own nor has plans to purchase the UC Townhomes property, and administrators have said that it does not have any direct control over the redevelopment plans for the Townhomes property site.

Previously, FFP interrupted Penn's Homecoming football game in October, delaying play for over an hour. Protestors from Save the UC Townhomes also interrupted Convocation for the Class of 2026 last semester.

Varlotta said that student activists and community members will continue to disrupt University events until Penn meets their demands. Regardless of any direct control, Varlotta said that it is the University's "duty and responsibility" to preserve affordable housing in West Philadelphia.

"We are here to show Liz Magill that the University does not get to have their little dinners and their fancy events when students and community members are fighting for their lives," Varlotta said. "Sorry that your event was disrupted, but we're more sorry that people are losing their homes."

Senior reporter Jared Mitovich contributed reporting.

Proposed Clark Park master plan includes public bathrooms, increased accessibility

Friends at Clark Park has been working on the master plan for 18 months and is now halfway through the community engagement phase HALEY SON Staff Reporter

A new master plan for Clark Park in West Philadelphia is in the works, with discussion of installing public bathrooms and making the playground accessible for children with disabilities.

Friends of Clark Park, a local volunteer organization, initiated the plan, and University City District, Philadelphia Parks & Recreation, and other partners are supporting the planning process. The plan focuses on generating ideas for improvements to the park and the community's needs, according to Andrew Bowers, board president of Friends of Clark Park.

“The goal of this master plan is to make the park better for everyone using it on a daily basis, but also better for the large-scale events that come to the park,” Chris Richman, the director of marketing and communications at University City District, said.

When the master plan was announced, Bowers said that community members expressed concern because they thought the plan was going to negatively change the park.

“One of the biggest challenges is convincing people that anything needs to be done at all,” Bowers said.

College junior Noah Lewine — who lives around the corner from Clark Park and goes to the park every week — said that while he does not think the park is run down, he agreed it would benefit from some renovations.

Friends at Clark Park has been working on the master plan for 18 months and is now halfway through the community engagement phase. It hopes to release the finalized plan in April, according to Bowers. He added that the master plan is roughly estimated to be implemented by the end of 2024, although an end date is hard to set in stone since it is still in the planning phase.

Studio Bryan Hanes — a local design firm that has been hired for the project — has developed four schemes, each with different features. A second online survey — which is currently open to the public and has almost 400 responses — asks participants to evaluate individual components of each scheme, such as the updated playground and new walkways.

One of the main improvements brought up is making the park more accessible to those with mobility issues, according to Nathan Hommel, director of planning and design at UCD.

“We certainly want to make sure that the [updated] playground allows people with mobility issues to get to it,” Hommel said.

There have also been requests from the community to add a public bathroom to Clark Park, according to Hommel.

“[Having a public restroom] is just an absolute human basic need," Bowers said. "It’s something that we really want to get done this time."

In an emailed statement to The Daily Pennsylvanian, Sarah Peterson, communications director at the Office of the Mayor, wrote that the Department of Health and Human Services said that the new public restrooms would be maintained and cleaned frequently.

In the comments section of an article published in West Philly Local, some users expressed concern about public bathrooms and additional seating attracting more unhoused people to the park. Lewine said that he hopes that the planners do not add any anti-unhoused architecture when considering the redesign.

UCD and Friends of Clark Park said there wouldn’t be any disruption to the park’s normal activities. Hanes said it would depend on the plan’s specifics, such as potentially updating the current playground.

“Clark Park is the front yard for the community," Hanes said. "I don't know of another park in the country that has such a diverse population of users and activities."

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When “let’s be casual” replaces “be mine”

LEXI’S TAKE | The lost art of love and meaningful connection

"You’re the anti-hookup culture girl, right?”

For a month or so last year, my frat party conversations were dominated by a popular opinion column I wrote last Valentine’s Day. “Is finding Mr. Right at Penn all wrong?” cited concerns about the prolific hookup culture at Penn. A year’s worth of insight later, I have come to realize that the problem is much deeper and more complicated than meat market style casual sex. Our generation is missing genuine, serious connections. While this problem is not limited to Penn students, it is often exasperated by our competitive and transactional culture. Rather than causing our lack of substantive and long-term relationships, hookup culture is a symptom of a larger problem.

If one thing can be said of our generation, it is that we are exceedingly casual. Jeans are considered fancy, we replace virtually every phrase with abbreviation or slang (“lol such a slay”), and we consider handshakes to be an outdated ceremonial procedure (“dap me up”). It’s safe to say that this shift has affected the way we approach relationships as well. With dwindling attention spans and increasingly self-centered and present-focused outlooks, most of our connections have become superficial, short-lived, and dangerously transactional.

As the first generation coming of age with social media and extreme oversaturation of technology, this stripped-back and instant gratification oriented culture is unsurprising. Dating apps from Tinder to

Bumble and even Hinge have capitalized directly on this. Over 74% of millennials and Gen Zers use dating apps, spending approximately two hours a week swiping. With the limited access to information and intimacy on dating apps, they lend themselves to the unique phenomena of the modern age: catfishing, ghosting, and the like. People are able to start and end entire interpersonal romantic relationships without having to ever confront their partner face to face. The days of love where you’re “screaming and fighting and kissing in the rain,” to quote Taylor Swift, seem to be fading.

Dating via social media is not only superficial due to a scarcity of information, but also from the lack of commitment that it encourages. A University of Texas study found that people were more willing to make their relationships work when they didn’t have alternatives, therefore indicating that when a perceived better offer is available, people are more likely to abandon their current partner. Psychologists have applied this to dating apps — making the number of optional partners virtually limitless has exacerbated the commitment issues imposed by the “better offer” phenomenon. In theory, this unlimited number of potential partners should make it better for people to find their soulmates — that is the philosophy behind dating apps, after all. However, the opposite seems to be true. 75% of Gen Z is single and our close generational peers, millennials, are getting married at lower rates than any generation before them. This is accompanied by an increase in shorter ‘on-again, off-again’ relationships, as well as the notoriously common situationship (a staple at Penn). While these types of relationships often guarantee less time investment, a lower perceived risk of being hurt, and the availability of alternative options, they more often than not strip people of the opportunity to develop substantive connections. Without emotional investment and commitment, ‘relationships’ become transactional: vehicles for sex and instant gratification until the next best thing comes along.

This issue isn’t limited to our romantic relationships either. Despite our greater desire for mentorship than previous generations, Gen Z is wanting for mentors.

This is unsurprising when I think of my peers at Penn. When I cite the close relationship I have with one of my professors, I am struck that the first reaction from my peers is, “wow, they are going to write a great recommendation letter!” Rather than developing deep connections with those from whom we have so much to learn, our self-centered, superficial, and casual generation perceives our interactions as first and foremost transactional.

Relationships of convenience often characterize our friendships as well. It is a regular occurrence to hear complaints of social climbing, lack of substance, “sceney” behavior, and general social superficiality at Penn. While I have been lucky enough to meet some of the best and most supportive friends of my life, these accusations are not unfounded. Everyone has experienced it in some capacity or another, and millennials and Gen Z have been broadly accused of less empathy than our predecessors.

The recent sex survey from The Daily Pennsylvanian shows just how much this is affecting our sexual activity as well. A third of students do not feel satisfied with their sex lives, with many citing hookup culture and an absence of “sustained romantic connections” as reasons for their dissatisfaction, proving how our mentality about relationships is clearly flawed. Further, the survey asked about “best sex stories” and quantity of partners, rather than anything about preference for sex in committed relationships or romantic history, and this is indicative of our continued glorification of casual and often transactional sex.

The reality is, despite being the most sexually fluid generation, a status that is colloquially regarded as empowering or progressive, we are struggling greatly with intimacy. Until we begin to develop deeper, more substantive bonds with the people in our lives, romantic interests or otherwise, we will continue to lack vulnerability, intimacy, trust and, ultimately, love. So, unless you want to receive candy conversation hearts that say “let’s be casual,” we need to rethink how we approach relationships.

LEXI BOCCUZZI is a College junior studying philosophy, politics, and economics from Stamford, Conn. Her email is boccuzzi@thedp.com.

Patagonia privilege: The on-campus housing rip-off

A BRIT ABROAD | Penn’s housing lottery produces intolerable inequality former-President namesake, in which she announced that every single resident of the new house would be gifted a free sweater — from Patagonia, no less — with the building’s name embroidered on the sleeve. Residents of other college houses are rewarded for their perseverance in seriously adverse conditions with printed t-shirts as house merch. The staggering contrast would be hilarious if it weren’t so unjust.

The worst part of all of this, though, is that those living outside of Gutmann, most of whom are given no alternative to living on campus and got their rooms through a random lottery, have to pay the exact same rent price for what is an unequivocally far worse experience. While I’ve been lucky enough to move to Gutmann this semester, I’ve seen the same bewilderment I once felt on the faces of incoming exchange students when they walked into my room for the first time, wondering how on Earth I’d managed to score such a place. After all, if Penn can afford to give me such luxury, why weren’t they receiving the same treatment for the same price?

The day I was accepted into Penn remains one of the most exciting days of my life; it was the culmination of years of work aimed at getting an exchange offer at one of the best schools in the United States and, indeed, the world. But while the thrill of coming here was incredible, the sobering financial reality of studying here quickly set in. I soon had to explain to my parents that, unlike my friends going to other U.S. schools who could live in private accommodations, I had no choice but to pay almost $12,000 (about $1,300 a month) for Penn housing. The average rent at home sits at less than half of that. And, what was worse, there was a chance I’d have to share a bedroom, something that students rarely have to do in the U.K.

Penn’s housing system requires that all first-year, sophomore, transfer, and exchange students live on campus, while other students are given the option to stay or leave. While Penn’s website suggests that you have an open choice of college house, the reality is that rooms are allocated via a lottery in which students are randomly given a time slot to choose rooms. The living situation of thousands of students is left up to pure chance, leaving many of them dissatisfied and miserable. Were all of Penn’s living locations of roughly equal quality, this system could at least be argued as equitable. The reality, though, is that some lucky students live in luxurious, brand-new dorms while others live in rundown and outdated buildings. As for me, my chances at this lottery were even worse than I’d imagined. Exchange students don’t even get to apply for rooms until June, many months after fulltime students choose theirs. The result is that we are left with the rooms that nobody else wants. So, although I had obviously put the then-called New College House West as my top choice in the hopes of getting my own bedroom, I ended up in a tiny, two-person, shared-bedroom apartment in Rodin. While Rodin was average but tolerable, it wasn’t until I visited some of my friends’ apartments in the newly-named Gutmann that I truly understood the extent to which I was being ripped off. They were living in a beautiful, brand-new building with single bedrooms, spacious living areas, study rooms, and an exercise suite to boot; meanwhile, my shared room barely had space to breathe in, never mind any semblance of privacy, and my shower took about a minute to heat up every morning.

My experience is far from unique and certainly not the worst; recent disasters in Penn houses have only served to demonstrate how great its inequalities are. In just the past few weeks, there has been a huge increase of rodent sightings in Kings Court English College House and several residents of Harrison College House have had to vacate their rooms entirely due to extensive flooding. The Quad, meanwhile, has long been infested with mold. At the same time, Gutmann had a lavish official opening ceremony attended by its

It is clear that there is serious inequity here that leaves many students feeling rightfully screwed over. The prognosis is simple: Penn cannot continue to force their students to pay extremely high rent prices for clearly inadequate facilities without any option of moving off-campus. Either lower the rent for those in the clearly worse accommodations — and no, that doesn’t mean raising prices by 20% for nicer accommodations, as they did with the Radian — or allow students to move off campus. Failing to do either is a blatant abuse of monopoly power which demonstrates both greed and a serious disregard for their students’ well-being. For one of the world’s best economics and business schools which claims to care about its community, you’d think they’d be above such inconsiderate inefficiency. So while I love my new fleece, putting it on only serves as a reminder of the undeserved privilege I received for winning Penn’s housing lottery, and the unfair treatment the “losers” have to face.

ALEX BAXTER is a junior on exchange from the University of Edinburgh studying politics, philosophy, and economics in the College. His email is ajgb@sas.upenn.edu.