UA tables joint resolution with GAPSA for student representation on Board of Trustees

If revised and approved by GAPSA and the UA by March 2, the resolution will be in the hands of the trustees to decide

LARA COTA Staff Reporter

Members of the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly and Undergraduate Assembly are revising a joint resolution to appoint student representatives to the Board of Trustees.

The HIV/AIDS Prevention Research Division at Penn partnered with other clinics on an international study intended to engineer a vaccine to recognize multiple HIV variants.

The only current advanced-stage HIV vaccine clinical trial has ended early after results showed that the vaccine did not prevent infection.

The international study, named Mosaico, aimed to engineer a vaccine that used synthetic pieces of the HIV virus to recognize multiple HIV variants, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

The study was run by Janssen Pharmaceuticals — a branch of Johnson & Johnson — and partnered with various clinics, including the HIV/AIDS Prevention Research Division at Penn.

Starting in 2019, the third phase of the trial enrolled almost 3,900 gay and transgender people between the ages of 18 and 60 at high risk for HIV, the Inquirer reported. Participants were given four shots over 12 months, but the trial found no significant differences in HIV infection between those given the vaccine and those given the placebo.

Ronald Collman, director of the Penn Center for AIDS Research, told the Inquirer that creating a vaccine preventing HIV is challenging due to the virus’ protein shell, which frequently mutates, making it

CLIMATE, from FRONT PAGE

Sustainability, told The Daily Pennsylvanian that the report demonstrates progress towards meeting its goals for 2024, the final year outlined by CSAP 3.0.

"Right now, we're working really hard to ensure that all the goals and strategies are wrapped up and we'll be able to provide, hopefully, by next year, a full picture of the progress made and examples of how each of the goals were met," Morris said.

Other objectives that Penn Sustainability provided updates on in the report include the University's academic initiative, with 4,695 students enrolled in sustainability-related courses during the 2021-22 academic year. The report also underlined the creation of a carbon footprint for Penn’s real estate portfolio, as well as a waste precinct map with Urban Park and Penn Housekeeping that is designed to collect data and identify opportunities for "increased diversion."

While the University pursues its sustainability plan, student activists involved with Fossil Free Penn praised some aspects of the latest report but said that Penn should take faster and wider-ranging actions.

College junior Katie Francis, a coordinator with Fossil Free Penn, said that although the climate change efforts were positive, progress is not being made fast enough. Francis reiterated FFP's demand that the University fully divest, dissociate, and cut "all ties" with fossil fuel companies.

"These companies still come to career fairs here on campus and recruit Penn students to work for them," Francis added.

In November, Penn announced that it no longer difficult for antibodies to attach to. holds direct investments in fossil fuels. The University also does not hold investments in 200 companies whose reserves contain the largest amount of potential carbon emissions.

Penn has long been involved in research on HIV prevention. In 2017, Perelman School of Medicine professor George Shaw was awarded $16.3 million from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to develop an HIV vaccine that introduces a weaker or non-infectious form of the virus to build up immunity.

Currently, there is no cure for HIV, but medications can prevent infection, control the disease progression, and allow infected individuals to live long and healthy lives.

PrEP is 99% effective in preventing HIV infection, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2020, the Penn Undergraduate Assembly launched a campaign to raise awareness about PrEP and its availability through Student Health Service.

Despite the discontinuation of the Mosaico trial, Collman remains optimistic.

“Even though we don’t have an HIV vaccine yet, all of the science that has been done over the last 20, 30 years, trying to get an HIV vaccine, has yielded incredible benefits in other areas,” Collman told the Inquirer.

“I think I speak for most of [FFP] when I say that we all know that Penn uses greenwashing tactics in order to avoid the responsibility of having to address climate change issues,” Francis said.

College sophomore Eug Xu, another organizer with FFP, said that Penn's goals outlined in the utility and operations section of the report are “fairly good in terms of concrete reductions in emissions and electrical demands of the university.”

However, too much of the sustainability plan is vague and focused on gathering information rather than taking action, Xu said. They said that the University's report on Scope 3 emissions — intended to quantify emissions from goods and services purchased by Penn — required concrete action rather than presenting information.

"Penn has a much larger, and more broad-reaching impact than the acute campus that they sit on. They have a global impact based on being an Ivy League university,” Xu added. “I think the university should be thinking bigger and doing bigger than just our campus.”

According to the report, Penn Sustainability will spend the next two years finalizing the goals outlined in CSAP 3.0 "and preparing for the next phase of planning."

Morris encouraged students to participate in the work of her office and sustainability more broadly. She added that students could expect "a lot more" from the office regarding sustainability events focused on how to reduce waste "from the beginning."

“We want to find as many ways as possible to support and engage with our school community in whatever way that we can," Morris said.

On Jan. 18, GAPSA passed a joint resolution to have two student representatives on the Board of Trustees. The proposal was written with members of the UA, who following their own discussion of the proposal on Jan. 22, were unable to get majority approval and tabled the resolution. The authors are now working to pass a successful redraft before the Board of Trustees’ next meetings.

The resolution was crafted by two undergraduate and three graduate students: junior and UA representative for the College Charlie Schumer, sophomore and UA Wharton representative Keshav Ramesh, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School third year and GAPSA Vice President of Programming Keshara Senanayake, third-year dual degree master's student and GAPSA President Robert Watson, and fifth-year chemical and biomolecular engineering Ph.D. candidate and former GAPSA President Paradorn Rummaneethorn.

GAPSA and UA's work marks the first official resolution requesting student representation on the Board at Penn, following the example of other universities.

The Board of Trustees is a decision-making body that directly dictates the University's operations. There are 54 trustee members of various industries and backgrounds, with 14 spots allocated to Penn alumni. No spots are currently allocated to students. The Board of Trustees did not respond to a request for comment.

“Students are not just asking for power for the sake of power,” Senanayake said. “We love this University. And we know that the trustees love this University. That’s why they’re volunteering their time to help this institution to be the best possible version of themselves ... we just want to give our thoughts to further that mission.”

Although many of UA members expressed openness to the idea of student representation, a number voiced concerns that the resolution was not properly communicated and advised by all of the stakeholders involved in its proposal.

UA President Carson Sheumaker said that the same concern was the sentiment he gathered in an informal phone call with the Office of the University Secretary. Sheumaker added that he believes the resolution should be discussed with the Faculty Senate, the advocating voice for the University’s full-time teaching faculty. Governed by the Senate Executive Committee, they hold influence over faculty policies and similarly have liaisons on various trustee committees.

“What I've ascertained from talking to administrators is there would not be a student trustee, or some type of changes to student representation, without the same type of change on the faculty side," Sheumaker said.

According to Schumer, the revision board for the resolution is now actively scheduling meetings with several prospective offices, including Executive Director of Office of Student Affairs Katie Bonner and Associate Vice Provost for Education and Academic Planning Gary Purpura.

There was an additional concern from the UA — and GAPSA — about students not being as qualified as the current trustee members to serve on the board. Senanayake said that many students have sat on boards, started businesses, and run entities.

If the resolution is successfully revised and approved by GAPSA and UA by March 2 the trustees will decide whether or not they will allow student representation on the Board.

August 2020 – insisting that there should be “community involvement and resources" when going forward with the repatriation and burial procedures.

In response to this report, the Morton Cranial Collection Community Advisory Group was founded to provide community input in advising its practices.

Members of the group included numerous Penn faculty members and directors from the Penn Museum.

A spokesperson from the Penn Museum said that the Advisory Group recommended that the Museum arrange for the burial of the Black Philadelphians at Eden Cemetery, hold an inter-faith memorial service led by local spiritual leaders, place a permanent marker of remembrance located on Penn’s campus, and engage in a community-led public forum as part of steps towards restorative practices, atonement, and repair.

Monteiro said that museum leaders did not seem open to community input, but rather Monteiro said that museum officials already "showed up with a fully formed proposal that is identical to their [current] proposal" on the first day that the Advisory Committee met.

When the museum filed a petition to the Orphans’ Court in May 2022 intending to bury the remains in the Eden Cemetery, Monteiro said the committee was not informed of it ahead of time, so she and Muhammad filed a petition that halted their burial of over a dozen Black Philadelphians in the collection.

The demands in Monteiro and Muhammad’s petition

— which they refer to as “Finding Ceremony” — aim for a “consent-based process controlled by descendants and descendant community members.” If not for their objection, Monteiro said that all of the bodies would have already been buried.

Earlier this month, Penn Museum announced that it had identified seven more Black Philadelphians in the collection, bringing the total number of Black Philadelphians identified — and to be buried — to 20.

Mitchell, who has done extensive research on the Morton collection as part of his dissertation, said that he believes that these additional remains were not a discovery.

“[The museum] did [initially] say that more [remains] could be found, but it was not expected," Mitchell said. "Why was it not expected? What occurred between May of 2022 and the present as the museum expanded its numbers? And what does that say about the thoroughness of the research that it was doing in 2022?”

There are currently no federal policies dictating what museums should do with human remains, according to Mitchell. One relevant law is the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which says that all institutions that receive federal funding are required to return, as requested by tribal nations, the remains of indigenous ancestors of Native Americans to those tribal nations when a connection can be established.

Most recently, a report by ProPublica said that museum, along with a multitude of other museums across the nation, still possess Native American remains in violation of NAGPRA. According to Monteiro, many of the skulls in the Morton Collection may also be Native American remains.

Allegations of union-busting at Starbucks location on 34th and Walnut Streets

Employees reported that Starbucks allegedly reduced their hours and wages

NINA DILWORTH AND SOPHIA LIU Staff Reporters

The National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint against Starbucks, citing allegations of union busting at its 34th and Walnut streets location.

In the complaint, which was filed on Jan. 23, the NRLB alleged that Starbucks store managers allegedly discouraged workers from participating in a union by reducing hours and wages, as well as failing to bargain with already unionized employees — thereby violating the National Labor Relations Act. The complaint, which also alleges that two employees were fired for participating in union activities, was also filed against Starbucks’ 20th and Market streets location, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

In response to a request for comment, Starbucks contested the validity of the complaint in regard to disobeying the NLRA and defended its actions at the Philadelphia locations.

“We disagree with the merits of the complaint and maintain that actions taken at our Philadelphia area stores were in full alignment with established policies and the National Labor Relations Act,” a Starbucks spokesperson wrote to The Daily Pennsylvanian. “We look forward to a full legal review of the matter as we work side-by-side with our partners to deliver the Starbucks experience and reinvent our company for the future.

Jo Schermerhorn, a shift supervisor at the 34th and Walnut streets location, said that Starbucks told him and other protesters that they could not picket outside the storefront last December, despite legally being allowed to do so.

Alzheimer’s drug trialed by Penn Medicine receives FDA approval

The Federal Drug Administration recently approved a drug trialed by the Penn Memory Center to reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

The drug, Leqembi, received FDA approval under the accelerated approval pathway on Jan. 6, after the AHEAD trial assessed its efficacy on volunteers concluded its third phase. Researchers at Penn Medicine have been studying volunteers who do not exhibit extreme dementia symptoms but who may be at risk for future development, as the study aims to preemptively prevent symptoms.

As of September, the AHEAD clinical trial studied nearly 1,800 individuals. These trials have reported a 27% improvement in slowed or reduced cognitive decline compared to those who received a placebo.

David Wolk, the co-director of the Penn Memory Center and the director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Penn, wrote in a statement that these results are an “extremely encouraging development.”

Leqembi aims to reduce the damage caused by amyloid proteins, which may be associated with memory and thinking impairment. Amyloid proteins are found in higher quantities in the brains of Alzheimer's patients.

The recent FDA approval did not take into account data and results from phase III trials of Leqembi. There remains concern about the drug's longer-term impacts, as three patients enrolled in the trial have recently died from brain bleeding and swelling complications. Some researchers have claimed these deaths may be linked to the drug.

Sanjeev Vaishnavi, a neurologist at Penn Medicine, told The Daily Pennsylvanian that the drug has the potential to be reproduced naturally in humans.

“[The drug] was derived actually from the blood of individuals who were older who did not develop Alzheimer's disease,” Vaishnavi said. “It’s one of these few things that kind of started from humans, went into the lab, and now it’s back in humans.”

Much of the research conducted with Leqembi to this point has proved that it slows down memory degradation in patients that already have Alzheimer's symptoms. Now, the AHEAD study hopes to slow down the process of acquiring symptoms in the first place, Vaishnavi said.

Previously, drugs intended to combat memory loss have not had much clinical success. This lack of success has led some doctors to speculate that amyloid proteins are not a cause of Alzheimer's, but rather an incidental side effect.

An alternative explanation provided by some clinicians is that a protein called Tau is the primary culprit of Alzheimer’s Disease. Virginia Man-Yee Lee, director of the Perelman School of Medicine’s Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research, has led research on Tau.

Overall, Alzheimer's researchers have encountered a multitude of challenges while trying to explore the disease. For instance, Alzheimer's symptoms show and progress over many years, which means that clinical trials must last for long periods of time, Vaishnavi told the DP.

“Speeding things up and identifying the appropriate individuals for research … [is] the work we’re continuing to do moving forward,” Vaishnavi said. “The hope is that if [Leqembi] works for people with more significant memory loss symptoms, it may work even better for people earlier. That's the big-picture thought process.”

“We filed ethics complaints against some of the managers for their behavior during the last strike around December,” Schermerhorn said. “One of the store managers got aggressive really quickly, saying that if anyone were to bump into him, he would get his friend from South Philly to come and take care of us.”

Schermerhorn added that many Starbucks workers at his location experienced a reduction in hours, with his hours cut in half. While Starbucks company leadership makes decisions about cuts to the number of weekly houses that workers can use, individual store managers determine who has access to those hours and how many.

“[Starbucks has] been drastically cutting labor and not giving us hours that we need,” Schermerhorn said. “A lot of us are really unsure of how we’re paying our rent right now.”

Tzvi Ortiz, another shift supervisor at 34th and Walnut streets, said that many Starbucks employees find the pattern of cutting hours akin to union busting, especially since the store is not always properly staffed for busy days.

“We weren’t as busy around the holidays [so Starbucks] kept sending people away, but they weren’t giving us enough people to do the amount of things they wanted us to do,” Ortiz said. “Then the students came back and we were really short staffed. We frequently don’t have people for support.”

Despite employees’ hours being cut, Schermerhorn told the DP that the 34th and Walnut streets location is still seeing soaring numbers and business.

“We can see predicted metrics for the current date based on sales from last year [and] what we actually did in sales on our sales reports which shows how many transactions we do every half hour,” Schermerhorn wrote in a statement. “Those that have been there the longest have never seen volumes this high.”

The 34th and Walnut streets Starbucks first unionized in May 2022 with a unanimous vote, among a host of other Starbucks locations making similar efforts. The employees said they found it necessary to organize their labor demands as a way to protect against the corporation from “unfair wages, inconsistent scheduling and staffing issues, safety violations, and harassment.”

Janice Bellace, a professor of legal studies and business ethics at the Wharton School, said that union workers face significant challenges when confronting a powerful, multinational corporation like Starbucks.

“Starbucks will be very resistant,” Bellace said. “They will refuse to agree, and then it will force the union to just say ‘okay, we accept what you’re giving us.’”

Bellace added that she notices a contradiction between the words and actions of the Starbucks brand.

“They have cultivated this image of being very progressive,” Bellace said, “and then people will say, ‘we’d like to earn a certain amount if we stand here and work,’ and they strongly resist it.”

According to the Inquirer, Starbucks is expected to issue an official response to the complaint by Feb. 6 and attend a hearing scheduled for Feb. 13. Bellace was uncertain about the outcome of the hearing.

“It’s so fact specific,” she said. “It’ll be very important what witnesses the union can have or what they’ll say, and the credibility of the witnesses.”