March 25, 2021

THURSDAY, MARCH 25, 2021 VOL. CXXXVII NO. 9

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Penn’s Alpha Phi placed on probation after repeatedly violating COVID-19 guidelines The Alpha Phi International Fraternity banned the chapter from holding in-person and virtual events until May 11 PIA SINGH News Editor

Ineligible Penn students have received the COVID-19 vaccine SUKHMANI KAUR

City officials said ineligible college students have tried to get vaccinated through walk-ins at Philadelphia’s federally run vaccination site JONAH CHARLTON Senior Reporter

Numerous Penn and Drexel University students have received the COVID-19 vaccine despite being ineligible under current Philadelphia vaccine distribution guidelines, city officials confirmed to The Daily Pennsylvanian.

Philadelphia Department of Public Health spokesperson James Garrow said the city’s decision to begin allowing walk-ins on March 17 at the Federal Emergency Management Agency-run site in the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Center City has shown signs of early success in improving the racial equity of its COVID-19 vaccine distribution. It has also, however, led to a large number of local college students receiving the vaccine, despite lacking qualifications required under current Philadelphia regulations.

While the city cannot entirely confirm that students are lying in order to receive the vaccine, Garrow said he

has seen social media posts from students instructing others on “the lines to use and the phrases to say” in order to get the vaccine at the FEMA clinic.

On average, the FEMA clinic gives out 6,000 vaccines a day — 3,000 of which are for scheduled appointments and the other 3,000 of which are for walk-ins, Garrow said. Garrow added that of the approximately 3,000 vaccines given each day to walk-ins, a significant amount of vaccines have been administered to students, many of whom do not qualify for the vaccine at this time.

Currently, only people who are included in Phases 1A and 1B of distribution and also live in one of 22 under-vaccinated zip codes — including 19104, which contains Penn’s campus — are eligible to receive the vaccine, regardless of whether or not they sign up online or do a walk-in. Phases 1A and 1B include

hospital staff, first responders, childcare workers, education providers, people ages 75 and older, and people with high-risk medical conditions.

Garrow explained that those walking up and attempting to receive the vaccine are first asked to prove their residency in one of the 22 zip codes using any document that shows both their name and zip code.

Garrow said the next question is whether or not they are eligible under Phases 1A or 1B. They are not, however, asked to supplement their answer with any sort of official documentation.

Garrow said FEMA believes that “people who are [receiving the vaccine while ineligible] are significantly degrading operations.”

SEE VACCINE PAGE 3

Penn’s chapter of Alpha Phi has been placed on probation after alleged violations of COVID19 safety guidelines, such as hosting and partaking in social gatherings without social distancing or mask wearing.

The Alpha Phi International Fraternity banned the chapter from holding in-person and virtual events until May 11, at which date the chapter’s status will be reviewed again based on the University investigation, according to a March 16 email from the Alpha Phi International Fraternity to Penn’s chapter.

The international fraternity placed Penn’s chapter on probation on March 12 after an internal investigation found “substantiated allegations and uncovered concerns involving the new member experience and other social activities that may have taken place.” Staff from the international fraternity and University officials similarly expressed “significant concern” about the chapter’s repeated COVID-19 violations on a call, according to the email.

According to the email, Alpha Phi and its chapter members violated two aspects of the Alpha Phi International Fraternity policy: a chapter must comply with all laws and regulations set by the country, city, and state where it is located and follow all rules established by its University.

“We were concerned to find the chapter members’ involvement in events while [COVID-19] guidance has been put into place and communication shared repeatedly by the University,” the international fraternity wrote in the email.

University spokesperson Stephen MacCarthy, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Life Monica Yant Kinney, and Associate Vice Provost for Student Affairs Tamara Greenfield King did not respond to immediate requests for comment.

Failure to comply with the order to “cease and desist” all activities and operations will result in disciplinary action for any individual member or the chapter itself, which may range from “educational terms” to membership termination for the individual, according to the email.

The Daily Pennsylvanian reported on parties — without social distancing — occurring around Penn in the fall 2020 semester, even though the majority of on-campus housing was closed. In early February, the University warned Greek life members that a “completely disproportionate” number of positive COVID-19 cases on campus was linked to fraternities and sororities, particularly as cases were reaching semester highs.

Over 1,400 petition against Penn’s decision to hold commencement on Jewish holiday

UA secures climate town hall with administration

Commencement is on May 17 during the Jewish holiday Shavuot

The UA has been requesting a town hall for more than a year

TYLER HARRIS & LINDSEY PERLMAN Staff Reporters

ELIZABETH MEISENZAHL Senior Reporter

When Wharton senior Gabe Low thinks about commencement, he feels disappointment. For Low, who took two gap years to serve in the Israeli Army, the journey to commencement has been an unconventional one — six years in the making. But because commencement this year is scheduled on Shavuot, a Jewish holiday, Low and other Orthodox Jewish students must grapple with whether or not to attend.

“It’s a shame because it’s really a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to graduate,” Low said. “And now, I’ve been waiting for this graduation for six years, and it’s not the outcome that I hoped for or expected.”

Penn’s decision to hold commencement on May 17, which coincides with Shavuot, caused outcry among observant Jewish students, culminating in both a guest column College senior Yoni Gutenmacher authored in The Daily Pennsylvanian and a petition to move the ceremony. The petition, which was created last week, has garnered more than 1,300 signatures.

University spokesperson Stephen MacCarthy did not respond to a request for comment about whether the University is aware of the petition and if it is considering moving the date of commencement.

More than 45 years ago, Penn moved the 1975 commencement ceremony from its original date to accommodate Jewish students and families that celebrated Shavuot. But this year, Gutenmacher and other Orthodox Jewish students are facing a different outcome: Penn has not responded to student pleas for accommodation.

“Years later, when Penn has become a much more progressive institution, it’s weird that their actions aren’t following suit,” Gutenmacher said.

Student leaders in the Jewish community, including Gutenmacher, December 2020 Wharton graduate Simcha Stadlan, and College and Wharton senior and

2021 Class Board President Lizzie Youshaei, also sent an email on March 18 asking Penn administrators to reconsider moving commencement and have not received a response.

Observant Jewish seniors are now forced to make a difficult choice of whether to risk infringing on their religious beliefs to attend the event. Shavuot, a two-day holiday that begins on May 16, typically entails going to religious services and forgoing the use of technology.

As a result, Orthodox students who do attend graduation cannot take photos, call their family members, or go out with friends to restaurants after the ceremony.

“I am forced to choose between attending a holiday that is really important to me that Jews have practiced for thousands of years, and attending the one commencement I have in my life that’s only been on the calendar for three years,” Gutenmacher said.

This decision has been years in the making: Orthodox students learned of the religious conflict when the 2020-2021 academic calendar was released three years ago. Aware of the logistical issues that moving commencement would cause — particularly because Penn had planned four separate ceremonies for each college — some students felt the date was set in stone. But COVID-19 changed all of that, Stadlan said, adding that Penn could have adjusted the date as it altered its plans for the ceremony amid the pandemic.

“It’s one thing that Penn didn’t consider us when they first made the date, but when they had a second chance to remedy that, they again disappointed,” Stadlan, who graduated in December 2020 and will participate in the upcoming commencement ceremony, said.

“Employers and graduate schools can relieve some stress by saying that no student, Penn or elsewhere, will be punished simply because they elected to take some classes pass/fail.” - DP Editorial Board PAGE 4 SEND STORY IDEAS TO NEWSTIP@THEDP.COM

SEE COMMENCEMENT PAGE 10

With Penn on the sidelines for this year’s March Madness, we explore some of the Quakers’ best runs in the NCAA Tournament.

The Undergraduate Assembly and Faculty Senate will cohost a Climate and Sustainability Seminar next month, allowing students and faculty to speak directly to administrators about climate-related concerns.

The event — which some student and faculty leaders say is an important step in a longer process of voicing climate concerns to administrators — will take place on April 7 from 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.

While Executive Vice President Craig Carnaroli, Chief Investment Officer Peter Ammon, Vice President of Business Services Marie Witt, and Facilities and Real Estate Services Vice President Anne Papageorge will attend to hear student concerns, questions must be submitted in advance of the event, which some student activists worry may render it ineffective.

“This is an important issue and one where the University has made great progress, as outlined in our Climate and Sustainability Action Plan,” University spokesperson Stephen MacCarthy wrote in an email to The Daily Pennsylvanian. “Our hope is that this seminar will provide a broad audience access to the information and progress Penn is making.”

The Climate and Sustainability Action Plan 3.0, released in October 2019, laid out a five-year plan for promoting sustainability on campus. The plan included reducing carbon emissions from campus buildings and purchasing sustainably produced food products and office equipment. At the time, Fossil Free Penn criticized the plan for not doing enough to address the University’s contribution to climate change. The plan also did not mention the University’s fossil fuel investments.

College junior and UA Academic Initiatives Committee Director Tori Borlase said she and two other

NEWS

UNDERGRADUATE COVID-19 POSITIVITY RATE INCREASES PAGE 3 LARGELY DUE TO STUDENT TRAVEL

PAGE 13

UA members, as well as students from Student Sustainability Association at Penn, began trying to get the administration to hold a town hall a year and a half ago.

Borlase said SSAP — an umbrella group representing 13 environmental student groups on campus, including Fossil Free Penn — told her they wanted more access to the administrators with whom the UA regularly meets.

While an initial event was planned for last spring, Borlase said the COVID-19 pandemic caused administration and the UA to cancel the town hall. Since then, Borlase said getting a definite plan and getting administration to agree — or even respond to her emails — had been difficult.

Architecture professor and Faculty Senate ChairElect William Braham said that last month the Faculty Senate — a representative body for faculty at Penn — offered to co-host a climate-focused seminar with the UA after the UA struggled to get administration to agree to a town hall. Since the onset of the pandemic, it has held a Faculty Senate Seminar Series that invites administrators to attend and take questions from faculty.

Borlase said that while she was grateful that Faculty Senate reached out to collaborate, she was disappointed that administrators were not responding to her emails or willing to work with her until the UA joined the Faculty Senate effort.

The format of the event allows students and faculty to submit questions ahead of time through a form, and no live questions will be taken, Braham said.

Engineering junior and FFP Campaign Coordinator SEE UA PAGE 3

NEWS PAGE 10

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THURSDAY, MARCH 25, 2021

Undergraduate COVID-19 positivity rate increases largely due to student travel

Penn Abroad to offer virtual internships in summer 2021

Penn’s undergraduate positivity rate rose to 0.93% , after declining for five straight weeks

Participants will receive cross-cultural training and language education

HELEN RUDOLER Staff Reporter

RACHEL MILLER Contributing Reporter

After declining for five straight weeks, Penn’s weekly undergraduate COVID-19 positivity rate increased from 0.23% to 0.93% for the week from March 14 to March 20.

Director of Campus Health Ashlee Halbritter said the 49 total undergraduate cases can largely be attributed to student travel during the two “Spring Stay” days, which took place on March 10 and 11 in place of the previously canceled spring break. Halbritter also said the spring weather over the past week has been a factor in the uptick in cases, as it incentived many students to socialize, party, and dine indoors at increased rates.

Halbritter and Chief Wellness Officer Benoit Dubé said it is still too soon to tell whether the spike in cases will be isolated to this week.

“Either this will be a bump in the road, or this will be the beginning of a trend,” Dubé said. “We obviously hope it is the former.”

Over the past two weeks, Dubé said he has been anxiously awaiting this week’s results, preparing for a potential increase in cases due to student travel.

Students who traveled out of the state are required by the University to quarantine for 10 days, unless they have been fully vaccinated within the past three months, are not experiencing any COVID-19 symptoms, and have a green PennOpen Pass.

“Testing is not your passport to party or your ticket to travel. Vaccines are sort of going to be the same way, as we must remain vigilant,” Halbritter said.

Halbritter pointed to current research, which

Asian American Studies professor to leave Penn over lack of support for program Community members express concern for the future of Asian American Studies at Penn SHIRALI SHAH Staff Reporter

David Eng, a professor of the Asian American Studies Program, is slated to leave the University in the coming weeks as a result of a longstanding issue of declining support for the program — leaving community members with a sinking feeling about the entire future of Asian American Studies at Penn.

Eng — Richard L. Fisher professor of English who is also a professor in the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Program and the Comparative Literature and Literary Theory Program — said he is one of three remaining tenured faculty members in the Asian American Studies Program.

The fight to preserve Asian American Studies at Penn began when former Sociology professor and longtime director of the Asian American Studies Program Grace Kao departed for Yale University in January 2017. Since her departure, the program, which was founded in 1996, has lobbied for funding, support, and more teaching space for courses.

In February 2017, students rallied on College Green to demand that Penn hire a standing senior Asian American Sociology professor to replace Kao. Students also called on the University to provide a physical space to house the Asian American Studies Program and increase funding for tenured Asian American Studies professors.

At the time of her departure, Kao was one of four tenured faculty members in the Asian American Studies Program.

“The [Asian American Studies] Program thrived and continued to thrive, but the School of Arts and Sciences, and perhaps the rest of the administration, did not seem to want to support it, despite the high interest level of the students,” Kao said. “I

VACCINE FRONT PAGE

“We understand that everyone wants to be vaccinated, but the system in place is what will get us back to normal,” Garrow said. “We appreciate the desire to get vaccinated, but we are operating under a system in which there are not enough vaccines for everyone, and we need to vaccinate the people at the highest risk first.”

FEMA Region 3 Community Preparedness Officer Charles Elison said that he understands why people are frustrated and looking to expedite a return to normalcy after over a year of pandemicaltered life. He urged students, as well as other Philadelphia residents, to remain patient and honest about which phase they qualify to receive the vaccine under.

“Some people may take it upon themselves to exaggerate or flat-out lie about a medical condition, as well as about Philadelphia residency,” Elison said. “People are going to try to get the vaccine any way they can — even by lying and distorting the truth. “ Garrow added that the city has no plans to implement any sort of Phase 1A or 1B documentation requirement, despite the significant number of students who have received the vaccine without qualifying.

“We worry that for many people in [Phases 1A and 1B] — particularly in those target groups that we really want to make sure we are vaccinating

shows that the vaccines are effective at preventing death and hospitalization, but not necessarily transmissibility of the virus. Students — not including those in Phases 1A and 1B of the city’s vaccination plan — are not eligible to receive the vaccine currently, but will become eligible on May 1, when the city moves into Phase 2.

The potential availability of vaccines was a primary reason cited in Penn’s announcement that it plans to resume in-person instruction in fall 2021.

Penn has also reopened several aspects of the University in the past few weeks as the undergraduate COVID-19 positivity rate has decreased, including Pottruck Health and Fitness Center and limited indoor dining.

ANA GLASSMAN

felt like I had worked on something for 20 years and had not seen a lot of evidence of any support from the University, and it was just tiring honestly.

Twenty years is a lot to give to something.”

Like Kao, Eng cited offers of professorship he received from other universities — such as Harvard University, Rutgers University, and the University of Hong Kong — as one of the reasons he is choosing to leave Penn after this academic year.

Eng added that Harvard’s offer of professorship is a result of a larger effort at Harvard to recruit more faculty members in ethnic studies over the next several years.

Penn and Cornell University are the only two Ivy League Universities that offer minors in Asian American Studies. Princeton University added a certificate — the equivalent of a minor — in Asian American Studies in fall 2018. Harvard offers courses in Asian American Studies but has not indicated any plans of adding a major or minor, and Dartmouth College is developing an Asian American Studies minor under its Asian Studies program.

“The fact that Grace Kao left for Yale four years ago and has still not been replaced — and that I am about to go — suggests a troubling pattern,” Eng said.

Some of Eng’s former students believe his departure will further limit their access to resources in the field of Asian American studies.

Howie Tam, a former advisee of Eng’s who received a Ph.D. in English from Penn in 2019, cited the overburdening of professors as one of the reasons ethnic studies professors continue departing from the University.

“When you have only two or three [professors] and several students who are interested in working with them, you overburden them,” Tam said. “The University hasn’t created an environment where someone like [Eng] can feel supported as a faculty member.”

College senior Erin O’Malley, a former student of Eng’s who is minoring in Asian American Studies, said they transferred to Penn because the University of Rochester — the University they previously attended — did not have an Asian American Studies Program. O’Malley added that they are concerned about the availability of Asian American Studies classes after Eng’s departure because many of the classes are not offered regularly, noting that they were not able to take ASAM 002: “Asian American Literature” until their junior year

— [they] don’t have routine or easy access to medical care to get a letter from their doctors certifying they have a certain condition,” Garrow said.

Garrow added that the city is “dependent on people’s good will” when it comes to residents answering whether or not they qualify honestly.

While the decision to open walk-ins to the 22 significantly under-vaccinated zip codes has not been flawless, given the students’ actions, it has already shown signs of improving the racial equity of the vaccine rollout.

During two days of walk-ins on Wednesday and Thursday, Garrow said white residents made up 36.7% of vaccine recipients at the FEMA site, down from 57.7% between March 1 and March 7. Black and Hispanic residents made up 19.5% and 16.1% of recipients, respectively, up from 12.9% and 10.6%.

Garrow said the initial results of the walk-in process and the shrinking racial disparity are encouraging news, but Penn and other local students — as well as others who are ineligible to receive the vaccine — taking advantage of the new procedure is disheartening.

“We get that people want to get the vaccine and get it now, but we want people to ask themselves: Is their being vaccinated really worth some 65-yearold grandmother who has medical conditions not getting the vaccine?” Garrow said. “Because if she gets COVID-19, she’ll likely end up in a hospital on a ventilator, so is their decision to skip ahead in the line truly really worth putting people at risk of death?”

As COVID-19 continues to restrict study abroad and internship options, students can participate in Penn Aboard’s new Virtual Internships Abroad program, which provides them with work experiences at companies around the world.

Participants will receive cross-cultural training and language education through the new program, which includes remote internships in business, law, tourism, fashion, sustainability, and more. Employers are based in Europe, Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. Although the internships are unpaid, Penn Abroad covers the program fee for personalized matching and placement, cultural programming, professional training, access to language learning, and ongoing student support.

Hundreds of students have already applied for the program, which runs from four to 10 weeks over the summer, Senior Associate Director of Penn Abroad Erica Sebastian said.

The program is designed to offer students flexibility, allowing them to choose how many weeks they can work and how many hours per week from between 10 to 40 hours.

The application process includes submitting a resume, personal statement, interest survey, and short essay response. Applications are due on April 1. Once students are accepted to the program, they will be matched with an employer in one of the industries they ranked in their interest survey.

Penn Abroad ran a virtual internship pilot program last summer, which Sebastian said paved the way for VIA to take place this summer. After

Penn Abroad canceled all travel in summer 2020, 20 students who were supposed to complete an internship abroad through the Global Research and Internship Program completed their internships remotely, Sebastian said.

College sophomore Jeffrey Fishman interned at Matriarca, a clothing cooperative in Buenos Aires, Argentina as part of the pilot program.

Fishman worked as a marketing intern, helping the company enter the United States clothing market by analyzing various influencers’ social media accounts and mom blogs.

“I got a lot of hands on marketing experience that I otherwise wouldn’t have gotten,” Fishman said. “I think having the freedom and independence to try different things and figure out if marketing was something that I really wanted to do as a career was the most helpful part of it.”

College and Wharton junior Shaila Lothe also participated in the pilot program, interning at Start-Up Chile, a startup accelerator created by the Chilean government. Lothe researched venture capitalists in Latin America and ran an English program for entrepreneurs who were trying to improve their English and business skills. Through her work as an intern and her remote interactions with coworkers, Lothe said she was able to learn about Chilean culture and refine her interest in a career in venture capital.

“For students who are considering improving their language skills, a virtual internship can be a really great way to get that language exposure,” Lothe said. “Even though I couldn’t be there in person, I definitely felt like my language skills improved.”

because the class is only offered in fall semesters and was canceled in fall 2018.

O’Malley added that Undergraduate Chair of the English Department and Director of the Asian American Studies Program Josephine Park, one of the remaining tenured professors in the program, is not teaching any Asian American Studies courses this semester. Park has not taught an Asian American Studies course since fall 2019.

Park did not respond to request to comment.

O’Malley also noted that the lack of tenured professors in Asian American Studies poses a challenge for students applying to graduate programs, as many graduate programs across the country require three letters of recommendation from tenured faculty in the field of study.

“It feels almost like Asian American Studies and other ethnic studies are sort of being tokenized,” O’Malley said, referring to the fact that the program will soon only have two tenured professors, while other fields of study at Penn have adequate financial support and more tenured faculty members.

Because Asian American Studies is a program and not a stand-alone department, Eng said that it is difficult to hire new faculty. He explained that the program has to appoint professors who have research expertise in Asian American studies, and who are already tenured in other departments at Penn. This requirement makes it difficult for the University to appoint new faculty to the Asian

American Studies Program because Penn cannot require that departments hire people with research interests in specific fields, Eng said.

Regarding his decision to leave Penn, Eng noted that he has been in a “commuting relationship” with his partner, a law professor at Emory University, for the past 20 years and that the two now wish to find positions at the same university.

“Just in the English department itself we have eight couples, so Penn has been very accommodating for couples, but these are all straight couples,” Eng said. “The English Department has been advocating fiercely to retain me and recruit my partner to Penn, but this is something that ultimately only the upper administration can make happen.”

Eng said one way the University can continue supporting Asian American students is by providing better psychological services, citing his book published in 2019 that discusses Asian Americans’ mental health.

On a scale of one to 10 of psychological distress, Eng said that white students will visit psychological clinics when they are at six on average, indicating that they have exhausted their friends and families as resources and are seeking a neutral perspective.

Asian American students on average tend to visit clinics when they are at 10 or 11 — indicating that they are already experiencing a psychological crisis — and Black and Latinx students often do not visit clinics at all because they do not “feel entitled to the space,” Eng said.

“When I talk with my students about Counseling and Psychological Services, I don’t hear the most positive stories,” Eng said, in light of the recent departure of an Asian American CAPS staff member.

“You need to have people in [CAPS] that reflect the student body and who are culturally sensitive and aware.”

Tam said the need for robust ethnic studies programs at Penn is heightened due to the rise in anti-Asian racism and violence during the COVID19 pandemic. The University administration sent an email to the Penn community on March 17 denouncing anti-Asian violence, following a shooting in Atlanta that killed eight people, six of whom were women of Asian descent.

“The question for the University is how are [they] going to help address anti-Asian racism?” Tam said. “The answer is simple: [They] educate. That’s what a university is supposed to do, and you do that by hiring people to do the educating.”

David Eng

UA FRONT PAGE

Emma Glasser expressed her concern with the format, saying that it prevents students and faculty from being able to hold administrators accountable because attendees must submit pre-written questions. She added that the event should be marketed to the Philadelphia community impacted by Penn’s environmental footprint.

“Fossil Free Penn will never be part of a publicity stunt or greenwashing that this University puts forth, and that’s exactly what this event is set up to be,” Glasser said.

During the previous school year, FFP held weekly sit-ins outside Penn President Amy Gutmann’s office demanding a public town hall focused on the University’s investments in fossil fuels. The group has also protested at Board of Trustees meetings. These actions, Glasser said, have been met with silence from the administration.

Glasser said that the terms of this seminar are not in line with the public town hall FFP has called for since 2019.

“If we were to hold a town hall, that is what our ultimate goal would be — to bring the faces and stories of the Philadelphia community, of Indigenous activists, of the people who are on the frontlines of the climate crisis to these decision-makers,” Glasser said.

College junior and SSAP Co-Chair Vyshnavi Kosigi is slightly more optimistic. She said that SSAP sees the seminar as a positive step, but added that it is still “the bare minimum.”

“It’s cool that [administration] is acknowledging us and is agreeing to meet with students, but it’s hard to know how much will actually change,” Kosigi said.

Kosigi said that SSAP members will use the seminar to push for fossil fuel divestment and a required climate course.

Elizabeth Ware Packard Professor of Communication and Faculty Senate Chair Kathleen Hall Jamieson said that faculty will raise issues ranging from fossil fuel investments to renewable energy sources for both campus and faculty members’ homes at the seminar. She said that in addition to calling for the University to divest from fossil fuels, many faculty members want an option to have their retirement funds divested from any funds that profit from fossil fuels.

“Can we get to being carbon neutral?” Jamieson said.

“And can we get there in time to play the role that we all need to play in order to minimize the likelihood that catastrophe exists just around the corner?”

Glasser said that FFP wants to see Penn commit to divesting from fossil fuels and cutting ties with the fossil fuel industry — including Gutmann, who serves on the board of Vanguard, an asset management firm that owns funds invested in fossil fuels. She added that FFP would hope to see Penn reinvest in sustainable energy and commit to a vision of climate justice — but the group does not see the seminar as a fruitful way to pursue these.

“This event isn’t set up for us to ask these hard questions and get the answers that we know and deserve — and actually, that the community and the world deserves,” Glasser said.

4 OPINION

THURSDAY, MARCH 25, 2021

THE DAILY PENNSYLVANIAN | THEDP.COM

OPINION Philadelphia’s local elections are coming up.

Here’s why it’s important that you vote.

THURSDAY MARCH 25, 2021 VOL. CXXXVII, NO. 9 137th Year of Publication DANE GREISIGER President ASHLEY AHN Executive Editor HADRIANA LOWENKRON DP Editor-in-Chief ISABEL LIANG Design Editor 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 PETER CHEN Technology Manager JASPER HUANG Analytics Manager GREG FERREY Marketing Manager EMILY CHEN Product Lab Manager ERIC HOANG Consulting Manager

THIS ISSUE ALANA KELLY DP Design Editor ALICE HEYEH 34st Design Editor

Guest Column | After a high-turnout presidential election, Penn students have another opportunity to have their voices heard

E

very four years, presidential elections capture the public’s attention and put politics to the forefront of public discourse in the United States. Meanwhile, local elections occur in Philadelphia every two years and are equally as important, yet they receive much less attention from both the media and the public alike. With a local primary election coming up in Philadelphia on May 18, it is critically important Penn students understand the importance of the offices and ballot measures that they can vote on, because student voters will make a difference.

This May, there will be elections for Philadelphia district attorney, city controller, judges of election, inspectors of elections, and local and state judgeships, including for the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. All voters in Pennsylvania will also vote on at least three proposed amendments to the Pennsylvania Constitution: the Equal Rights Regardless of Race or Ethnicity Amendment, the Emergency Declarations Amendment, and the Legislative Resolution to Extend or Terminate Emergency Declaration Amendment. As ballots have not yet been finalized, there could possibly be additional ballot measures in the May election.

The Philadelphia district attorney is a position with a significant impact on criminal justice in the city. The district attorney is responsible for deciding to bring charges and prosecute people who are arrested for violating state and local laws. The current Philadelphia district attorney, progressive Larry Krasner, pulled off an improbable victory in the 2017 primary race, in part because voters recognized the importance of turning out for this otherwise low-salience election. Since then, Krasner has instituted a number of reforms, including instructing Philadelphia prosecutors to not prosecute marijuana charges when there is no intent to sell. Krasner is running again in the May primary election for district attorney, in what is sure to be an intense race. Running against Krasner in the Democratic primary is Carlos Vega, who has proclaimed that he will be a “voice for victims” of crime. Penn students have the ability to help shape the criminal justice system in Philadelphia through their vote this May, an opportunity they should not give up.

There are also several important judicial elections on the ballot this May, most notably for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. One seat on the seven-member state Supreme Court is on the ballot. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court is the court of last resort in Pennsylvania and has decided numerous important cases in recent years, including one where the Court redrew Pennsylvania’s congressional maps after finding that the existing maps were unconstitutionally gerrymandered.

Gerrymandering is the process of drawing electoral districts, such as those for the House of Representatives, in such a way as to benefit incumbents or a certain party, and the way that the

boundaries are drawn can have major impacts on who wins elections. Voting for a state Supreme Court justice is yet another way for Penn students to have an impact in this election on both Philadelphia and Pennsylvania.

There are several other local elected officials on the ballot, who have a significant impact on the day-to-day happenings in Philadelphia. The city controller oversees much of Philadelphia’s finances, with responsibilities including serving as an auditor for the Philadelphia School District, serving on the Philadelphia Gas Commission, and serving on the Board of Pensions and Retirement. There are also races for local election officers, which oversee elections held in Philadelphia. With so many local officials on the ballot, Penn students have many opportunities to make their voice heard in state and local government this May. For the three measures on the ballot this May, this will be the only opportunity for voters to voice their opinions on these critical issues. One very important ballot measure is a proposed amendment to the Pennsylvania State Constitution that explicitly prohibits denying or abridging someone’s rights on the basis of their race or ethnicity. Second, there is also a proposed amendment that would limit the length of the Pennsylvania governor’s emergency declarations to 21 days, unless the state legislature explicitly extends a declaration. The third proposed amendment would allow the legislature to pass a resolution at any time to extend or terminate an emergency declaration made by the governor, with the resolution not subject to a veto by the governor. The latter two ballot measures are especially relevant amidst the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, where Gov. Tom Wolf has made several emergency declarations to prevent the spread of the virus. As the past 12 months have been dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic and a nationwide reckoning on race, Penn students have the ability to voice their opinion on important issues that will significantly impact the Philadelphia community.

From local elected officials, to judges, to constitutional amendments, Penn students have an opportunity to make a big difference this May. Penn Leads the Vote is 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. All politics is local, so let’s use our voices this May by voting in the local primary elections and make a difference in our community.

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he COVID-19 pandemic killed higher education as we know it. Instead of being a time when students could experiment with adulthood, many students were relegated to their childhood bedrooms as they took classes online.

Knowing that their campus community faced more than normal amounts of stress, anxiety, and responsibilities, Penn and its Ivy League peers instituted pass/fail policies over the past few semesters, often allowing students to pass/fail courses while still counting towards academic requirements.

However, some Penn students may be regretting their decision to take classes pass/fail due to considerable uncertainty on how classes taken pass/fail during the pandemic will be treated by employers, graduate schools, and other institutions. Made worse, much of this reckoning comes on a tight deadline, as decisions for life after college approach rapidly for graduating seniors. Moreover, many of the uncertainties of the pandemic still loom large for the foreseeable future. Thus, when employers and graduate schools look at Penn students, they should not hold pass/fail grades against them.

PENN LEADS THE VOTE is the University’s nonpartisan election hub. Visit www.pennvotes.org for more information.

It’s time to start paying attention to the ‘invisible minority’

NATHAN ADLER Design Associate TYLER KLIEM Design Associate 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 NINA WEI Deputy Copy Editor KIRA LU Copy Associate SOPHIE APFEL Copy Associate

SUKHMANI KAUR

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Have your own opinion? Send your letter to the editor or guest column to letters@thedp.com.

Employers: Don’t judge Penn students for their pass/fail decisions

LETTER FROM THE EXECUTIVE EDITOR

QUINN ROBINSON Deputy Design Editor

LETTERS

EDITORIAL

mid a rampant increase in anti-Asian attacks since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the fatal shooting of eight people — six of whom were Asian — in the Atlanta area on Tuesday has left the Asian American and Pacific Islander community, including myself, stunned and outraged.

The Daily Pennsylvanian condemns any form of racial violence and mourns the killings of Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33; Xiaojie Tan, 49; Daoyou Feng, 44; Paul Andre Michels, 54; Soon Chung Park, 74; Hyun Jung Grant, 51; Suncha Kim, 69; and Yong Ae Yue, 63.

As an Asian American from metropolitan Atlanta — my birthplace and home of over 20 years — I am in shock, and I fear for my family’s safety, as well as my own. Being unable to walk the streets of my hometown without the fear that I could be a victim of anti-Asian hate — the same hate that took the lives of six Asian women just a short drive from my house — is both infuriating and saddening.

The Atlanta shooting is a grim reminder of the disgusting racism and xenophobia Asian Americans continue to face as the pandemic continues. Tied to racist rhetoric, such as former President Donald Trump’s labeling of COVID-19 as the “Chinese virus” and “kung flu,” antiAsian hate crimes have increased by 150% in 16 cities in the last year. Stop AAPI Hate, an AAPI advocacy group, reported nearly 3,800 hate-related incidents from March 2020 to February 2021. Asian Americans fear for their safety in a country plagued with anti-Asian racism, and that is unacceptable.

The suspect’s claim attributing the fatal shooting to his sexual addiction points to a larger history of the hypersexualization and fetishization of Asian women — Penn students’ accounts of which have been reported on by 34th

Street in 2018. Stop AAPI Hate data also show that Asian American women are disproportionately targeted by racial violence, making up 68% of the incidents reported by Stop AAPI Hate while men made up only 29%.

For too long, Asian Americans have felt ignored. We have been labeled as the “model minority,” suggesting that we are all successful — that we no longer experience discrimination. I am frustrated and disheartened to see that it took thousands of hate crimes incited by the pandemic and the killing of six Asian women on Tuesday for the discrimination my community faces to be pushed to the forefront of conversation.

As the AAPI community and other community allies break their silence, I urge you — as a member of the Penn community — to not only use the DP as a source of news, but also as a platform through which you can amplify your voice. Submit a guest column or a letter to the editor.

Leave comments on our online articles or social media posts. We will continue to solicit the diverse voices of the Penn community and likewise encourage students, faculty, and staff to engage with us and reach out.

The DP is committed to uplifting marginalized and unheard voices, particularly those from underrepresented and underserved communities. We stand in solidarity with the AAPI community and AAPI students, faculty, and staff at Penn to condemn discrimination against Asian Americans and any and all forms of racial violence.

ASHLEY AHN is the 137th executive editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian and is a College junior from Atlanta studying East Asian area studies. Her email address is ahn@thedp.com.

ALVIN YU

Perhaps the most obvious reason to not judge pass/ fail grades is the relatively early deadline Penn students faced when electing pass/fail. This semester, students were required to make a decision by March 19, compared to April 5 for Harvard or April 15 for Columbia. Given that Penn students have been rushed into a decision compared to their peers, they are making such a decision with less thought and less knowledge about what their final grade may look like. Particularly in a global pandemic, this is something that should not be held against them.

Furthermore, although the University has generously relaxed pass/fail restrictions in light of the current global environment, it has also issued occasionally confusing guidance. At the beginning of the semester, the undergraduate deans sent out an email warning students to “think very carefully” about pass/failing a class, given the possible professional and academic implications of such a decision.

However, student leaders opposed the email, and many students found the lack of concern for their well-being upsetting. Given that students are receiving conflicting guidance from their peers, the University’s deans, and University policy, and given that students do not know the full implications of a pass/fail decision, it seems unfair for employers and graduate schools to hold taking a class or two pass/ fail against them.

However, the most important reason that employers and graduate schools shouldn’t discount students’ pass/fail grades is because of the new, pandemicinduced, way of life. Not only has the pandemic fundamentally altered higher education, but it has taken a considerable toll on students’ mental and physical well-beings, with undergraduates experiencing everything from social isolation to grief from the loss of a family member. The global pandemic has impeded the ability of many students to think clearly and achieve their best. As such, nobody should be judged for pass/failing a class in this environment.

In contrast, employers and graduate schools, in certain circumstances, might want to see pass/fail grades as a sign of strength. Specifically, such grades in this environment often showcase a willingness to prioritize one’s personal well-being over the letter on a transcript. Having the confidence to make such a tradeoff shouldn’t just be seen as admirable on a personal level, but admirable to employers as well.

Of course, there are exceptions to this principle. A student with a transcript full of pass/fail grades, with very few letter grades, provides little to no indication of their academic record, and it is thus understandable that employers and graduate schools may be hesitant. However, graduate schools and employers should not judge negatively those with lengthy records of academic success and a few courses taken pass/fail over the course of an undergraduate degree.

Penn students have been through enough over the past year as is, facing plenty of stressors. Employers and graduate schools can relieve one of them by coming and saying that no student, Penn or elsewhere, will be punished simply because they elected to take some classes pass/fail.

THEDP.COM | THE DAILY PENNSYLVANIAN

OPINION 5

THURSDAY, MARCH 25, 2021

Where’s the pandemic-safe fun at the ‘Social Ivy’?

Caroline’s Queries | Penn needs to make more socially distanced activities for students

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hen I was accepted to Penn last March, I was completely floored. Penn is known for being the “Social Ivy” and was ranked as the number one party school by Playboy Magazine in 2014. I’m a chronic wallflower. Why did Penn’s admissions team think I belong here?

What caught my attention the most at Penn was the “work hard, play hard” trope. While I disagree with studying and partying to the point of burnout, I appreciate that Penn students strive to strike a balance between their academics and socialization, valuing both equally. Though the Ivy League name implies a lopsided, academics-oriented school culture, we’re much more than our classes and internships. We’re known for who we are outside of school, for our dedication to our hobbies, our friends, and yes, partying too. Considering my own social and extracurricular commitments, which often equal or overtake my academic duties, perhaps I do belong here after all.

And yet, since the onset of the pandemic, Penn has transitioned to a culture of work hard and … what else, exactly? In classic Penn style, several students have treated the pandemic as an opportunity to load up on courses, but many others have reported considerable academic stress over the past year, with some opting to take this term off. Meanwhile, Penn has done little to improve conditions.

Fall break was scrapped, and Penn only allotted more days off in the spring after student government took action. Though Penn has made it easier to pass/fail courses, a passive-aggressive email discouraged using this option.

The mental health of Penn students was far from perfect before the pandemic, in part because of Penn’s social culture. Daily Pennsylvanian opinion columnists have criticized Penn’s “play hard” mentality for fostering FOMO, loneliness, and escapism, and I don’t think they’re wrong. Everyone feels sad and alone at times, whether they

meet dozens of peers a day or hardly interact with anyone, and we should work towards an environment where these feelings are normalized, rather than drinking away our emotions at parties or hiding them behind Penn Face.

That said, we cannot ignore Penn’s social culture pre-COVID-19 and say that Penn is absolutely better off without it. With the pandemic soon coming to a close, we have the opportunity to revamp this culture, to embrace the social nature of our student body in a way that improves mental health instead of degrading it. When Penn’s administration does not address our social nature, we all suffer for it.

Consider the beginning of this spring term.

COVID-19 positivity rates were higher than at any other Ivy, and there were strong links to Greek life and first years’ social events. While this behavior is inexcusable, we must acknowledge that it’s related to being socially isolated for nearly a year.

When Penn threatened a level three campus alert that would essentially reintroduce the Quiet Period guidelines, it felt like they were missing the whole point. Instead of removing in-person social interaction altogether, Penn’s administration should have committed to making this in-person interaction safer, through more designated outdoor spaces and organized activities. Because let’s admit it: Zoom calls don’t compare to real, face-to-face interactions. It’s easy to feel like the health risk of these interactions is outweighed by the social benefit.

On the flip side, following Penn’s Social Compact to a T results in little to no social interaction, leaving students susceptible to pandemic loneliness. Penn has taken some action on this front.

For instance, the peer counseling group Penn Benjamins reported an increase in turnout this semester, and Penn is providing its community with premium subscriptions to Wellnest, a mindfulness app. Though this support is helpful, it does not

DIEGO CÁRDENAS URIBE

address the root of the problem.

All of us have made sacrifices, both big and small, during this pandemic. I’m not saying that we should stop being COVID-19-safe. But this term, with more students on campus, Penn has the opportunity to do more for student social life than half-hearted Zoom events and initiatives. Penn should seize it.

This “Spring Stay,” Penn sent out an email to all students, detailing free outdoor activities and excursions that we could sign up for. Within minutes, every trip’s time slots had sold out on Eventbrite. Clearly, there’s demand for COVID-19-safe activities, and Penn should act on it. As we hold more events, we can start to return to the social culture we’ve lost.

A lack of social interaction is just one of the contributors to Penn’s mental health crisis, but it is also one of the easiest to solve. If Penn can organize these events for Spring Stay, there is no reason that they cannot become a regular occurrence until May, or even after this pandemic. There is no reason that we cannot pool Penn’s collective resources and ingenuity into restoring Penn’s social nature.

CAROLINE MAGDOLEN is a College and Engineering first year studying systems engineering and environmental science from New York City. Her email address is magdolen@sas.upenn.edu.

Examining the social responsibility of ‘the world’s first business school’ Guest Column | It is time we rethink how Wharton students approach society and the environment

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early four years ago, I entered Penn as a first year in the Huntsman Program in International Studies and Business excited to learn about theories and practices that could develop my understanding of environmental justice and the roles business, law, and communities play in the pursuit of equity.

At Wharton, I have had the opportunity to learn about energy markets and renewable energy policy, speak with CEOs of sustainable European companies, and understand community-run, nonprofit landscapes in Kenya and South Africa. This is not the typical Wharton undergraduate experience.

Many students enter and exit Huntsman Hall without ever examining the relationships between companies and marginalized people, or without ever challenging themselves to reframe their expectations for what a business should accomplish for society and the environment.

As the foremost undergraduate business school in the country, Wharton has a unique opportunity to be an educational leader that reshapes the values and skills required to be a business professional.

Right now, we are not taking full advantage of that opportunity, and are shirking the responsibility owed to our students, to Philadelphia, and to the world that will be impacted by the decisions Wharton students will make in the future.

To illustrate this point, we can look at just three examples that I think highlight how the curriculum shapes a Wharton student’s exposure to equity and sustainability conversations: 1. Currently, there is only one undergraduate course requirement in Wharton that mandates a discussion of business and ethics: LGST 100 or LGST 101.

2. Students at Penn are encouraged to connect their learning to solving community and campus-wide problems through non-mandatory Academically Based Community Service classes.

However, from 2019 to the present, there have only been two Wharton courses offered that were ABCS courses. In the same time period, the biology major alone had two ABCS courses, with the College of Arts and Sciences offering over 60 different ABCS courses.

3. Wharton does require general education courses in the College; however, there is nothing that mandates Wharton students choose classes that would expand their perspectives on business and its impact on marginalized people and the environment. (Such courses like “Cinema and Politics,” “Contemporary Issues in African Society,” or “Global Climate Change,” for example.)

Furthermore, even if these requirements were sufficient, this curriculum would relegate the majority of a Wharton student’s discussion of cultural, social, and environmental topics to the humanities. This implicitly sends the signal that business exists in a realm distinct and disjoint from histories of colonialism, the present realities of societal inequities, and the responsibilities we hold towards the futures of all members of our society – not just towards the futures of shareholders and target consumers.

To be fair, some strides have already been taken to incorporate new thinking into course offerings. As an environmental policy and management concentration student, I have seen the discussions that can be fostered over the future of solar energy and creative solutions to unsustainable business

models. I have heard from friends about their perceived growth in popularity of the Leading Diversity in Organizations course. As a teaching assistant for “Wharton 101,” since my first-year fall four years ago, I have watched the incorporation of equity topics develop into discussions led by the founder of the National Training Institute on Race and Equity.

However, with the exception of “Wharton 101,” I have seen that these classes exist as a niche within Wharton and are usually taken by students who actively self-select into these conversations. It is insufficient to simply increase offerings without also increasing the mandate for all students to take these classes, and for all professors to incorporate these perspectives into their classes.

Maybe it is time to even rethink the concept of concentrations. Ultimately, when we graduate from Wharton, our concentrations are not listed on our diplomas. From my experience, our specific concentrations are far less important to employers than the demonstration of technical skills, alongside the stock employers place in the Wharton brand of business education.

So, then, what would it look like if Wharton reimagined concentrations to be more interdisciplinary? If, in expanding the availability of courses that tackle environmental, social, and governance topics, we also required our students to actively engage with these courses?

What if breadth and depth requirements were less driven by department-focus and instead more closely mirrored the existing Global Economy, Business, and Society and Technology,

Innovation, and Analytics requirements?

Further, what if, instead of concentrations, we introduced Environment and Governance, Equity in Business, and Community Engagement requirements alongside elective requirements that would still allow some students to pursue specialized knowledge in a discipline, while also allowing others to gain perspectives across fields?

What new insights could emerge if existing courses drew scholarship and speakers from non-business and economics fields to encourage breaking away from traditional, and sometimes dogmatic, business thinking?

What could our society look like if we actively addressed the call from our communities — from those local and global, from marginalized peoples, and from our environment — to prepare our students for modern societal problems with interdisciplinary and equity-minded thinking?

For too long, we haven’t answered these calls.

It is time to be the leader I know Wharton can be. We not only need a curriculum change, but an institutional perspective shift that calls on Wharton professors, students, administration, and alumni not only to be better, but to effectuate change that makes our world better.

EVE ROBINSON is a College and Wharton senior studying international studies and environmental policy and management from Chicago. Her email is erob7@wharton.upenn. edu.

On the frontline of our pandemic: local politics Lexi’s Take | Our local governments affect the future of the pandemic as much as the national government

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he COVID-19 pandemic has been an inescapable plight for all of us over the last year.

Looking back at my Snapchat memories from March 12, 2020, I don’t think anyone could have anticipated that we would still be far from normal a year later. I know for sure I never expected to be attending Penn online my first semester, let alone my entire first year of college. However, for most of us, our understanding of the pandemic has likely been very personal, reflected in the experiences, jobs, and lives we lost out on.

Nevertheless, this pandemic has not only affected us personally, but has shaped every facet of the way our societies function worldwide. The most informed members of the “Civic Ivy” can likely tell you how many times Dr. Anthony Fauci has changed his stance on “mask protocol,” or

KYLIE COOPER

the various vaccines that are currently approved, and how they were funded by Operation Warp Speed. However, the real frontline of pandemic politics happens on the local level. So the question becomes: What did different cities and states do right and wrong in the pandemic, and how does our local government’s COVID-19 policies hold up?

In Philadelphia alone, 3,231 people passed away from COVID-19. Though striking, this number is thankfully small when compared to New York City’s 30,564 and Chicago’s 10,144, even when respective population sizes are taken into account.

The relatively low mortality rate in Philadelphia was attributed to early lockdowns last March.

Nevertheless, while lockdowns were vital precautions early on, strict Pennsylvania and Philadelphia

guidelines have put enormous tolls on the city’s economy, and particularly on small businesses.

As of December 2020, approximately 30% of the Philadelphia workforce had filed unemployment claims with Pennsylvania. These claims were being disproportionately filed from both communities of color and those with low unemployment rates pre-pandemic. The strict lockdowns also endangered the long-term statuses of many small businesses in the city. Between March 1 and July 10 of last year alone, 252 small businesses in the city permanently closed their doors. While the city did offer grants to restaurants and gyms this past January, it did not compensate for elusive timelines around reopenings and a lack of information about how to increase indoor business capacities.

While the city of Philadelphia was lucky to not have taken as severe of an economic or health hit as cities like New York, poor implementation of policy now could have a drastic impact on how long the pandemic continues to affect the city. As we approach the end of the pandemic, priorities have switched from managing business occupancy to vaccine distribution. In many low-income communities with high rates of underlying health conditions, the roll-out of vaccines can literally be the difference between life and death.

Despite this fact, when the city had the opportunity to open its largest vaccination distribution site yet in early January at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, it chose to contract out to the group Philly Fighting COVID, made up of Drexel college students and graduates. The company became for-profit quickly after the city’s sign-on and mismanaged thousands of vaccines intended for those with underlying conditions in Philadelphia. The distribution was so out of hand that it led members of the Philadelphia City Council to launch an investigation into those involved.

Both the Philadelphia and Pennsylvania

governments at large are not distributing vaccinations at a rate comparable to many other localities.

Connecticut, for example, is taking an age-based approach to allocation — rather than the underlying conditions method used by New York and Pennsylvania — and is ranked in the top four states for vaccine distribution. This has resulted in 85.45% of vaccines being administered, significantly higher than 74.15% in Pennslvania.

In a country obsessed with the sport of national politics, it’s easy to allow the current state of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts to devolve into a Democrats versus Republicans blame game. While mainstream media may try to convince you that the vaccine should be “credited” to the Biden or Trump administrations, the reality is that the direct impacts of pandemic policy are much closer to home. This crisis has shown Americans just how vital it is to pay attention to local politics and how we should hold both city and state governments accountable rather than let them fly under the radar.

Our very present reality — the liberties we have on campus next fall — rests largely in the hands of the Philadelphia city officials. More importantly though, the lives of millions of people who also call this community home are dependent upon those same policymakers. Whether or not they have jobs, whether they get access to health care, whether they are able to be vaccinated. As residents of the City of Brotherly Love, we have an obligation to not only be conscientious of how our actions affect our neighbors but also to remain vigilantly informed on the way the government’s actions do so as well.

LEXI BOCCUZZI is a College first year studying philosophy, politics, and economics from Stamford, Ct. Her email is abb628@ sas.upenn.edu.

6 OPINION

THURSDAY, MARCH 25, 2021

THE DAILY PENNSYLVANIAN | THEDP.COM

How to resist anxiety and pressure this internship season

Foreign donations to Penn threaten our integrity

Isabella’s Impressions | Students should resist the pressure to compare themselves to their peers in the search for summer internships

The Breakdown | Penn’s acceptance of donations from authoritarian foreign governments is hypocritical to Penn’s principles

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his past September, I caved in. The permeating and ambitious spirit of Wharton finally crumbled my willpower — I made a LinkedIn. A decision I made with reluctance has shown to be worthy of my original trepidation. Scrolling through the feed, it is natural to feel overwhelmed by announcement after announcement of impressive internships, job offers, and other opportunities touted by one’s own connections. This stress is magnified during internship season. The anxieties stemming from this is twofold: Some are founded in the general pressures of competition and the nagging feeling that one should be doing more; others are associated with the pandemic’s continued impact. As students are once again feeling the pressure of summer and the internships it potentially holds, it is vital to stay grounded in one’s own interests and remember the pandemic’s lasting effects on the internship landscape are still affecting some industries and opportunities.

To write this piece I did something I try to avoid doing: I actually checked the homepage of my Linkedin. A vortex of wildly impressive achievements pulled me deeper and deeper in as I found myself scrolling for much longer than I anticipated. Unsurprisingly, I felt completely inadequate after my journey down this business-minded, professional rabbit hole. I am currently studying philosophy, politics, and economics, a major that many use to launch consulting careers, no doubt using their interdisciplinary education to stand out amongst the crowded sea of students studying solely economics or finance. I have zero interest in consulting or finance, yet, I cannot help but feel disappointed in myself seeing my peers accept impressive summer analyst positions at Goldman Sachs, or J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. The pressure to explore these industries is empirically demonstrated by the consistent and vast quantity of Penn graduates who eventually accept jobs in finance and consulting after graduation, likely made possible by their internship experiences in the years prior. Out of the Class of 2020 graduates who responded to Penn Career Services’ Career Plans Survey, 30% of the employed students were in financial services and 20% in consulting.

These results were also seen in years prior, with finance and consulting leading the list for the Class of 2018 Penn graduates. With all of these students pursuing careers in these fields, it can augment the existing pressure other undecided, or less businessminded, students feel to make money and have a prestigious career. This effect trickles down into internship season, so students, including myself, feel lesser for not wanting financial services or consulting-related internships.

While there is no perfect solution to combating this internal pressure, it is important to take a step back and not fall into a trap merely because of Penn’s environment. While taking an internship in this field has the potential to lead to a lucrative career, money does not equate to happiness.

According to a 2010 study, as long as individuals meet a minimum income of $75,000 — approximately $90,000 today — additional money will not provide more happiness. Pursuing passions rather than money is more important, so when it comes to internships, following potential interests should take precedence over doing what others say is the “right path.” Making an individualized choice of what industries to explore is of greater importance than blindly following what the majority of the Penn student body does.

Regarding the COVID-19 aspect of internship season, this summer still poses some problems for certain industries and internships. While nothing compares to the utter disarray that many students’ internships were thrown into last summer as internships were canceled or moved online last minute, some remote aspects and limited opportunities still persist. This summer it has been reported, according to websites designed to help students find internships, that some companies who usually take on undergraduate interns are no longer doing so due to resource constraints or other pandemic-related challenges. Those that are continuing their internship programs may do so remotely, including major companies like Google. This factor leads many students to feel that they are gaining less experience and facing more challenges with developing workplace connections than their in-person peers.

Many of these obstacles may just depend on the industry one is looking into. Personally, I have faced challenges finding law-related internships as an undergraduate, since law students are given preference. In an internship season as unusual as this one, comparing one’s own interests and opportunities to that of others can add undue stress to an already overwhelming time.

The search for summer internships can create a variety of anxieties arising from internal conflicts over the balancing act between passion and prestige for some students. If this is not your concern, perhaps the changes to internships stemming from the lasting effects of COVID-19 have changed your four-year plan. While these concerns may be valid, they should not come from a place of comparison. In other words, don’t worry about finding a consulting internship if you only think you should find one because your classmate is doing so; don’t feel insecure about your remote internship because your roommate is spending the summer in Washington, D.C. Comparing gets you nowhere. Log out of LinkedIn and remind yourself of what you’re passionate about and where the best opportunities are that are available to you because treating the summer like a competition won’t be of any benefit.

ISABELLA GLASSMAN is a College sophomore studying philosophy, politics, and economics from Suffern, N.Y. Her email is iglass@sas.upenn.edu.

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ast year, The Daily Pennsylvanian reported that Penn received nearly $258 million from foreign organizations between 2013 to mid2019. Later that year, members of the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Amy Gutmann, alleging that “since 2015, the University of Pennsylvania has declared 92 gifts or contracts totaling $62,204,380 from China, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Russia — all of which, 28 totaling $27,104,975 [about 44%] were anonymous.”

Foreign government spending to American universities, particularly from China, have been described as a “black hole” due to the lack of transparency and disclosure involved. The acceptance of donations from authoritarian and undemocratic governments sharply contrasts with Penn’s motto, “leges sine moribus vanae” — or “laws without morals are useless.” This presents massive concerns and hypocrisy for which we, as a student body, must hold Penn accountable.

Our university is accepting funds from a government that actively suppresses democracy, forces ethnic minorities into detention camps to “re-educate them,” and downplays and censors news about the coronavirus pandemic. Mind you, this is only from China — investigations reveal that Penn also has accepted donations from the ministry of defense of Saudi Arabia, a government that orchestrated and subsequently denied the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Governments like China’s are passing legislation without accounting for ethics or morals.

P ut t i ng U ig h u r Muslims in detention ca mps, for example, attacks the fundamental human right to freely practice religion and goes in conflict with Penn’s founding as a non-sectarian institute of higher education, which was done to ensure people of all faiths or no faith had an opportunity to pursue academic study. If Penn wants to stand by its founding principles, then it must work with and ally itself with organizations that follow them as well.

In addition to Penn’s hypocrisy, congressional investigations have found that foreign governments typically donate to universities like Penn with ulterior motives. Countries like China target the higher education sector as a means to infiltrate American research projects and influence

curricula. Senate investigations reveal that Chinese funding typically “comes with strings that can compromise academic freedom.”

This should be incredibly concerning. Donations that harm academic freedom also undermine Penn’s quality of education and research, which is directly detrimental to us as students. As Robert Daly, director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States, stated in an interview with the Council on Foreign Relations, “Universities have become a vector for the loss of strategically significant information to China ... through normal teaching and research activities. This is the broad and potentially, if not framed properly, extremely dangerous accusation or realization.”

At the very least, Penn must disclose all sources of funding from foreign organizations promptly to create a more transparent and open atmosphere that ensures that donations to Penn do not come with strings attached.

Last year, the Department of Education launched a reporting portal to allow U.S. universities to more easily disclose foreign funding. Penn has begun to use the portal, but must do so for all foreign donations.

In addition, Penn must be held accountable to explain why they are receiving donations from foreign governments. It could b e the case that these donations from Saudi Arabia, China, and others have perfectly reasonable explanations — not all foreign funding is bad and can often provide much needed resources for important research projects.

However, we don’t know that for certain, and that’s a big part of the problem.

Failure to explain in detail where these donations are coming from and why they are being received necessitates an immediate reexamination of Penn’s relationship with authoritarian and undemocratic governments.

Penn cannot only state that “laws without morals are useless” — their actions must exemplify this as well.

DANIEL GUREVITCH is a College first year from Wynnewood, Pa. studying political science and philosophy. His email is dgure@sas. upenn.edu.

It’s time to improve the state of women in leadership Surayya’s Spice and Everything Nice | Three steps we can take to help women unleash their inner Wonder Woman

TYLER KLIEM

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omen are leaders. We deserve a seat at the head of the table — just as much as any male leader does. It shocks me that I still have to write articles like this, even with the myriad of evidence that supports and empowers female leadership. Harvard Business Review released an article highlighting research showing that women are better leaders during a crisis. Countries with women in key leadership positions fared better during COVID-19. Women lead through every facet of society — from the kitchen to the boardroom. We are more than leadership material, we model and shape the future of leadership.

However, women, like myself, still face various challenges when ascending to our rightful positions of power and influence in corporate or organizational hierarchies. Our inner Wonder Woman is waiting to emerge and manifest, but is often squandered due to various gender stereotypes, hindering our potential for impact.

In 2014, Sheryl Sandberg, famed chief operating officer of Facebook and author of “Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead” launched the BanBossy campaign to encourage girls to

become leaders. I vividly remember watching a BanBossy ad as a young teenager. I was student body president of my middle school at the time, and I was constantly told that I was “bossy” and “aggressive.” At 14 years old, I soberly recognized that my path to leadership would be a lonely one — that some people would accuse my passion and ferocity of being “pushy” or “intimidating.”

Today, in 2021, I still face many of the same struggles I dealt with at 14 years old. In six to seven years, things have only scarcely improved for women in leadership. Unfortunately, I am far from the only woman who has faced this issue.

Women leaders are still facing discrimination when in positions of power and influence.

A Harvard Business Review article uncovered that women leaders are given disproportionately more negative attributes in their performance reviews. This article proves that the way we analyze leadership skills is still subject to gender biases. Female leaders received, on average, significantly more negative language in their evaluations as male leaders, and were referred to as being “selfish” or “vain.” In another article,

researchers found that women in leadership are often pressured to simultaneously display traits from two extremes: to be both “competent and tough” and “warm and nice.” All in all, this paints a starkly negative picture of women in leadership, portraying them as constantly being “too much” or “not enough.”

For women of color, the struggles of attaining leadership positions are influenced by the impacts of racial stereotyping. LeanIn.org collaborated with McKinsey & Company to release a report on the state of Black women in corporate America.

The report outlines various gendered microaggressions, with women being told that they are “overly ambitious” or “out for themselves” when showcasing a desire to lead. However, women of color experience these biases with more intensity, given their often-faulty portrayal of being a “diva” or “bitter” when speaking up at work. I relived many remnants of my own experiences when reading these reports. However, this Women’s History Month, we must collectively commit to improving the leadership experience and improving access to leadership experiences for women across different

identities.

To improve the state of women in leadership, we can do three key things. First, we can hold space for the talents of female leaders. Women are often accused of being self-promoting or narcissistic in their ambition. Before you label a woman who is a strong leader as something problematic, why not support her? Celebrate her efforts and achievements. Ask yourself, “Would I have an issue with this personality trait or behavior if a male leader displayed it?” Check your biases continuously. Women leaders face enough negativity — work to build them up and do not tear them down.

Don’t allow women’s contributions to be overlooked or overshadowed by a male leader.

Cut down on the male interruptions (“manterrupting”) in your organizations, and make sure that women have a chance to speak up and be heard. Second, promote women. Be the change you wish to see in your organization. According to the American Association of University Women, women are still less likely to serve as leaders across various industries. Don’t be afraid to move women into the boardroom or the executive space. In fact, companies with more women on their boards often fare better financially.

Most importantly, we can commit to paying women an equal wage. It is 2021. A wage gap should not exist. By paying women less, we subtly communicate that their work, and the benefits they bring to the workforce, are negligible or less important. Women often bear the weight of the emotional labor of the workplace. Combining that with a lack of equal pay can easily lead to burn-out and other mental health issues.

Organizations where women are being paid less, especially when in leadership roles, need to be held accountable. We have to step into deeper equality, and that starts with companies putting their money where their mouth is.

I long for a world where women can unleash their inner Wonder Woman without dealing with the scars of negative biases or sentiments hurled towards our leadership or strength. I don’t know how long it will take for us to get there, but I will continue to do my part to pave a path for the future of leadership to be equally and unabashedly female. Before you call a woman leader a bitch or even bossy, thank her for her drive and ambition instead.

SURAYYA WALTERS is a Wharton junior concentrating in management and decision processes from New Rochelle, N.Y. Her email address is surayyaw@wharton.upenn.

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FGLI students criticize Biden’s relutance Here’s what you need to know about the to forgive debt for Ivy Leaguers upcoming Quad and Stouffer renovations Biden said he does not support canceling loan debt for “people who have gone to Harvard and Yale and Penn” at a town hall

Construction is set to begin in 2022 after Penn’s Board of Trustees approved the renovation plans last month

MARY TUYETNHI TRAN Staff Reporter

KOMAL PATEL Staff Reporter

President Joe Biden said that he does not support canceling loan debt for “people who have gone to Harvard and Yale and Penn” at a February town hall, sparking backlash from first-generation, low-income students.

At the town hall, Biden said that he would not consider a plan that would forgive up to $50,000 in debt, doubling down on his stance that he would instead cancel up to $10,000 in debt. He then questioned why elite school graduates would need debt forgiven, adding that such money would be better used for other priorities like early childhood education or making community college free.

His stance puts him directly in conflict with progressives — as well as leaders of his own party, like Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) — who have urged him to cancel a greater sum of debt. Students at Penn, particularly first-generation, low-income students, feel that the Biden administration has overlooked the minority and FGLI students at elite institutions.

Although Penn Admissions boasts a financial aid package that meets 100% of student need for every student, about 27% of Penn students took out loans for the 2018-2019 academic year.

Penn also charges one of the highest costs of attendance in the United States, which generally increases by about 3.9% each year. Next year’s cost of attendance will rise by a lower rate of 2.8%, a move President Amy Gutmann said is intended to benefit families in light of the pandemic. The cost of attendance for the 2021-2022 year will total $79,014, including tuition, fees, and room and board.

Wharton first year and FGLI student Faith Bochert said that she took Biden’s statement as a “direct insult,” describing her disappointment that her accomplishment of getting into Penn as a FGLI student was discredited

by Biden’s overgeneralization about who attends Ivy League schools.

“Not everyone at Ivy League schools are wealthy legacies who can just walk right in, and it’s really frustrating as a FGLI student to be lumped in [with them],” Bochert said. “Whether I went here or Colorado State, I would still have student loan debt.”

College first year and FGLI student Kevin Zhao echoed Bochert’s sentiments, adding that Biden’s implication that the wealthy will benefit the most from student debt relief is erroneous. “[Biden’s] policies aren’t going to affect rich people,” Zhao said. “Rich people aren’t going to graduate with debt, so I don’t see why elite institutions should be cited as a reason.”

An NPR fact check of Biden’s statements found that using Ivy League schools to justify a smaller student debt relief plan under the pretense that the wealthy may disproportionately benefit is misleading.

Some FGLI students mentioned the societal benefits that providing more aggressive student debt relief could have. College sophomore Emilia Onuonga, vice president of Penn Democrats and a FGLI student as well as

a former DP opinion columnist, said that Biden’s statement was “disappointing” and feels that forgiving up to $50,000 in federal student debt is essential to combat socioeconomic inequity.

“Ten thousand dollars is pretty insufficient to enact real change and try to reduce the racial wealth gap in America and also uplift education as a whole,” she said.

Bochert explained the financial strain that being at Penn has had on her family, prompting her to take on student debt. The questions on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid and Penn Financial Aid Supplement did not encompass the complexity of her situation, as her family was in the middle of a divorce, and as a result she did not receive enough aid for her situation.

“My mom has spent her entire retirement fund,” she said. “We’re bled dry, and I’ve been here for two semesters out of eight before I graduate.”

Some FGLI students said that going to a selective college like Penn does not directly translate into wellpaying jobs in lucrative industries, which bolsters the need for loan forgiveness for these students.

“There are a lot of humanities majors, or majors that aren’t necessarily related to finance and [computer science],” Zhao said. “It seems to me like the implication that Biden is trying to say is that, ‘Hey, these elite students will graduate and get $200k salaries.’ That’s just not the truth.”

Some students also pointed to the rising cost of college tuition as a significant burden. Wharton sophomore and Penn Dems Communications Director Holly Anderson said that the total tuition cost for schools across the country is “ridiculous.”

“It’s important for elected officials to grasp that the cost of college that’s ever-increasing is not realistic for the vast majority of Americans,” Anderson said.

Although Biden’s refusal to forgive up to $50,000 in federal student loans drew criticism from progressives and students, some Penn experts and professors saw merit in Biden’s stance. A few students agreed, telling the DP that forgiving student debt at once is treating a symptom rather than the root issue.

Engineering incoming first year Hussain Zaidi, who identifies as a FGLI student, expressed concerns that canceling federal student debt indefinitely does not solve the issue of the high cost of education.

“We should be working towards providing affordable education,” Zaidi said. “There are different ways to solve this, not just giving [colleges] money.”

Most students agreed, however, that generalizing the socioeconomic diversity of elite institutions disproportionately does harm to FGLI and middleincome students at Penn and other institutions who bear the brunt of the debt.

“I think he needs to sit down with real people and maybe even get some anecdotal data from students at Ivy Leagues,” Bochert said. “He needs to hear from the people who are experiencing it.”

Penn’s upcoming renovation projects for the Quad and Stouffer College House will feature a number of interior and exterior improvements and are set to make both buildings more accessible.

The University approved renovation plans for the two buildings last month at a Board of Trustees meeting, both of which are set to begin construction in 2022. The Daily Pennsylvanian sat down with representatives from Facilities and Real Estate Services and Residential Services to learn more about what is set to change. Renovations will include more single-use bathrooms in the Quad, the removal of sinks from Quad bedrooms, and new elevators in both buildings.

This will be the first major renovation launched for the 126-year-old Quad since 2000, when its four college houses were condensed into three — Fisher Hassenfeld, Riepe, and Ware — and a number of improvements were made, including air conditioning implementation, bathroom renovations, window repairs, and exterior landscaping.

The budget for the renovation of the Quad totals $200 million, and construction will be done over six summers, beginning in 2022 and ending in 2027. It has not yet been determined which college house in the Quad will be renovated first, FRES Executive Director of Design and Construction Mike Dausch said.

Next year’s renovation project will also include exterior improvements, as well as interior maintenance. University Architect Mark Kocent said 160 bathrooms in the Quad will be renovated and reconfigured into single-use bathrooms to increase privacy, though not all bathrooms will be changed to become single-use.

“Some [bathrooms] will stay multi-use because you couldn’t possibly make all of them single stall, but many of the ones that currently have, say, two stalls or three stalls in them are being separated so that you could have individual compartments in the bathrooms and the shower so multiple users could use [at] the same time,” Kocent said.

Around 27 residential rooms next to existing bathrooms are expected to be lost during the renovation in order to expand bathrooms to provide more privacy for students. Director of Residential Services Pat Killilee said, however, this doesn’t necessarily mean that fewer students will be able to live in the Quad after renovations are completed. He said the amount of student beds lost during the renovation will be minimal, but did not provide a specific number.

Because of the bathroom renovations, all sinks currently in student rooms in the Quad will be removed. The only sinks that will remain will be in residential advisor and graduate associate rooms throughout the Quad.

Student rooms in the Quad will feature new paint,

new fan coil units, and flooring. Hallways will also feature new paint and flooring.

On the Quad’s exterior, 1,680 of 3,715 windows will be repaired. Kocent said the windows will either be restored or replaced with a similar window in order to maintain the historical integrity of the building. Roofing will also be replaced in a large portion of the Quad.

To increase accessibility in the Quad, two new elevators will be installed — one in the Thomas Penn hall and one in Memorial Tower. Kocent said these locations were chosen in order to provide easier access to nearby common spaces.

Next year will also see Stouffer College House undergo its first major renovation since 1972.

Stouffer’s renovation, which has a budget of $29.8 million, will begin in May 2022 and will last until August 2023, during which period the building will be closed for residency.

A major goal of the renovation of Stouffer is to make the building compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, Killilee said.

The Stouffer entrance will be moved from Woodland Walk to the corner of Spruce and 38th streets.

This move, Killilee said, is partly cosmetic, but will also provide more accessibility as an elevator will be installed nearby.

The new layout of Stouffer will maintain its existing bed count, despite the renovation converting all multi-stall bathrooms into single-use. Student spaces, such as common areas and study rooms, will also be added throughout the College House. Existing multilevel floor lounges will be removed to provide full accessibility, and the exterior walls will be changed to provide views of the street.

“We’re essentially gutting the whole building and rebuilding it with a fully accessible pathway through the building, so it won’t need one elevator to get from down at the ground level where the Stouffer Commons is, up to the plaza, and then once you’re up there, the entire floor of each floor of the building will be fully accessible,” Kocent said.

In a typical year, 127 students and four RAGAs reside in Stouffer, the majority of whom are first-year students, Killilee said. These students will be unable to reside in Stouffer when it is closed for renovations.

“Students will have to be spread out through other College Houses, so it might mean that some other four-year houses will have a few more [first years] than they would typically have,” he said.

Since College House renovations are completed in cycles, the last of which ended with Hill College House in 2017, the renovation of the Quad and Stouffer will mark the beginning of a new cycle.

In the previous cycle, the high rises were renovated after the Quad. While Killilee said the high rises are most likely next to be renovated, plans to do so have not yet been made.

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Policing, cultural space center among chief concerns for newly elected 6B leaders The DP interviewed the leaders about their priorities and ambitions for the year SHIRALI SHAH Staff Reporter

Penn’s minority student coalition groups, known as the 6B, have elected new student leaders for 2021. The 6B is composed of the Asian Pacific Student Coalition, Lambda Alliance, Latinx Coalition, Penn Association for Gender Equity, the United Minorities Council, and UMOJA.

College sophomore and Latinx Coalition Chair of External Affairs Gabriela Alvarado said their goal is to create a safer space on campus for Latinx students, especially as more students return to campus in the fall.

Alvarado said that they would prioritize the issue of sexual violence on campus, as it affects the Latinx community at a disproportionate rate, as well as how policing affects the community and other students from underrepresented groups.

“Tragically, the events of this summer have also put [policing] at the fronts of a lot of people’s minds, but this is something that a lot of Latinx communities and other racialized minorities have had to deal with their whole lives,” Alvarado said. “A lot of what we face is fear of [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and deportation, but also a fear of being stopped by ICE even if you are a citizen or have papers.”

Having a separate cultural center on campus that is open for longer hours and is staffed with full-time faculty can help create a safe haven for students who might otherwise not feel protected on campus, Alvarado said, adding that they will continue working with the other 6B groups to advocate for more space for the cultural centers.

Alvarado said that many issues in the Latinx community — such as homophobia, transphobia, and ‘machismo,’ or hypermasculinity — also affect members of other communities, noting that many constituents of the Latinx Coalition are also constituents of other 6B groups. They added that they are looking forward to working with the other 6B groups to identify and resolve intersectional issues.

College junior Samantha Pancoe, who is the chair of PAGE, said her primary goal for the year is to work on sexual violence prevention initiatives and creating a “culture of consent” at Penn. She added that PAGE has begun meeting with Title IX and Penn Violence Prevention this semester, and is working on an initiative to increase Greek life compliance with sexual assault trainings.

Pancoe said another goal of hers is to make the University a more inclusive environment for transgender students, adding that PAGE is working with Penn Non-Cis to create a “language guide” aimed at helping Penn students and faculty rethink gender, and is planning to bring more speakers on campus to talk about issues the transgender community faces.

Because PAGE has a space on Locust Walk in the Penn Women’s Center, Pancoe said PAGE will use their resources to support the groups without a cultural center and advocate for them to have their own space on Locust Walk.

College junior Blake Rubenstein, the chair of Lambda Alliance, said his goals this year are to advocate for more gender non-conforming staff and staff of color in Counseling and Psychological Services and Student Health Service, more multi-stall all-gender bathrooms on campus, more queer faculty across schools, and increased faculty awareness of gender identity and pronoun usage.

“Almost none of the schools [at Penn] have any tenuretrack faculty that identify as part of the trans[gender] community,” Rubenstein said.

Another goal of his is to strengthen the sense of community among LGBTQ students with events such as QPenn, a cultural week that celebrates queer identities through social and academic events. He added that this semester, Lambda Alliance has implemented “coffee chats,” an opportunity for LGBTQ students to get grouped together every two weeks to meet one another.

Rubenstein said that Lambda Alliance will support the rest of the 6B in advocating for cultural centers to have their own buildings on campus, and will advocate for these centers to have multi-stall all-gender bathrooms if the centers are created.

College junior Justin Arnold, who is one of the cochairs of UMOJA, said one of his goals for the year is to work with Career Services and Student Registration and Financial Services to ensure that there are ample summer internship opportunities and funding for middle-income and highly aided Black students. Arnold also echoed Rubenstein’s goal of increasing the diversity of staff at CAPS. UMOJA hopes to collaborate with Police Free Penn and Penn for PILOTs, a group of Penn faculty and staff that demands the University pay Payments In Lieu of Taxes, Arnold said, to ensure that there is not an increase of police presence on campus.

“We know that the police often don’t keep our communities safe,” he said, adding that UMOJA plans to do more anti-racism work within the West Philadelphia community this year in collaboration with West Philadelphia activists and scholars.

College junior Kai Song is the newly elected chair of APSC. Song said their focus right now is to support Asian American students in grieving and processing the shooting in Atlanta last week that killed six women of Asian descent as well as the deportation of 33 Vietnamese refugees.

Song added that APSC is supporting efforts led by the Asian American Studies Program and the Asian American Studies Undergraduate Advisory Board in efforts to increase funding and administrative support for the program.

APSC is also working with UMOJA and Latinx Coalition, Song said, to advocate for the Pan-Asian American Community House, Makuu: The Black Cultural Center, and La Casa Latina to move out of ARCH, replace some of the fraternity houses on Locust Walk, and receive more funding to adequately staff each cultural house.

“Particularly with the Asian community, we are not a monolith. We have such varied experiences and needs,” Song said. “Our students that we serve make up Asian Americans, international students, and there’s also a thriving graduate Asian population.

There’s just literally not enough staff to try to address everyone’s needs.”

College senior Brooke Price will continue serving as the chair of UMC until April, when the group will hold elections. Price said she has refocused her goals since the start of the pandemic, from holding collaborative and social events in person to now remotely supporting and assisting UMC constituents.

“Our [general body meetings] have been more discussion-based to give people a space to talk about current events that are affecting minority communities disproportionately,” she said.

UMC is working with Police Free Penn, an assembly of Penn community members calling to abolish policing on campus, to advocate for justice for victims of police brutality and for Penn to defund its police force, Price said. She added that UMC is also advocating for Penn employees — such as security and dining hall staff — who work in campus buildings to have greater access to medical resources when more students come back to campus in the fall semester.

“We’re also making sure that there are protections in place, whether it’s sanctioning students who break the [Student Campus] Compact or providing [workers] with the proper [personal protective equipment],” she said.

Price added that UMC is working with the other 6B organizations to draft and present proposals to top University administrators about increasing cultural spaces on campus.

GRAPHICS BY ALICE CHOI

COMMENCEMENT FRONT PAGE

Penn announced on March 9 that, due to the pandemic, all seniors will attend a single in-person commencement ceremony at Franklin Field.

Guests are not permitted, and the event will be livestreamed for family members to watch remotely.

“If the graduation was on Sunday — one day before — it would make a world of a difference because not only would we be able to take pictures, but also our families would be able to watch,” Low said.

But above all, students, like College junior Elyakim Suissa, say they are surprised by Penn's unwillingness to consider moving the date of commencement. At a university with such a large Jewish population — 17% of Penn's undergraduate population is Jewish — the decision to hold commencement on Shavuot seems “out of character.”

“It’s just baffling,” Suissa said. He speculates that Penn’s continued silence about this year’s commencement reflects the administration’s desire to “sweep concerns under the rug” until it is too late to change the date.

The decision to hold commencement during Shavuot also sparked outrage among Penn alumni, who voiced their frustrations on the petition website.

Carole Lerman, a 1975 Nursing graduate, argued that commencement would never have been scheduled on a comparable Christian holiday like Easter or Good Friday.

“That’s it for my donations,” Lerman wrote.

Penn’s silence on the issue stands in contrast to last year, when administrators met with Orthodox students at the Office of the Chaplain to discuss religious accommodations for the ceremony. Now, leaders in the Jewish community have expressed frustration that they cannot even get a simple reply to their email.

Faced with silence from the University about this

year’s commencement, many Orthodox students, like College senior Daniel Shenwick, say they are undecided about their graduation plans.

“My family definitely won't be able to watch the livestream. At this point, I am not exactly certain what I will do; it's going to depend on what the setup looks like for commencement,” he said.

Penn’s decision to hold commencement during a religious holiday is just one aspect of a larger pattern of challenges that Orthodox students face.

From having exams scheduled during religious holidays to forgoing the use of technology — including PennCard usage and PennOpen Pass daily COVID19 symptom checks — on Shabbat, observant Jewish students face unique obstacles throughout their college experience.

“These types of religious observances have always given me trade-offs, so when it came to Penn’s graduation, which is a once-in-a-lifetime celebration and something that I am excited to participate in and I know my friends are too, I really

didn’t want to have to be part of this trade-off equation,” Stadlan said.

In a year where Penn has gone to great lengths to promote inclusivity within its student body, Youshaei said that she was disappointed with the University for putting her Jewish peers in this avoidable position.

“I really believe that Penn is a campus that celebrates diversity, and I was really angered to see that Shavuot was on graduation because it just felt like it went against so much of what Penn claims that it upholds as a University in terms of diversity, equity, and inclusion,” Youshaei said.

Low added that he hopes Penn administrators will respond to the petition, the students' email, and students’ concerns rather than remain silent in the face of mounting criticism.

“Moving graduation would be an extremely positive reflection on the University, to show that it cares about all students and trying to be as equitable as possible,” Low said.

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THE REMEMBRANCE PROJECT Inspired by Resolve Philadelphia’s With Love initiative, The Daily Pennsylvanian has launched The Remembrance Project as an opportunity for members of the Penn community to say goodbye to their loved ones lost from COVID-19 through letters, videos, recordings, photos, or any other preferred medium.

Submissions are open and will close on April 1.

Please reach out to Daily Pennsylvanian editor-in-chief Hadriana Lowenkron at lowenkron@thedp.com with any questions.

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THURSDAY, MARCH 25, 2021

Senior runner Danielle Orie’s finish line won’t be at Penn

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Just go for it.

For Danielle Orie, a senior runner for Penn women’s track and field and cross country, this has become the motto she follows in all aspects of her life.

Orie’s path to competing at Penn was atypical. The Buffalo, N.Y. native grew up as a multi-sport athlete, sampling nearly every sport that she could. Even when it came time to specialize in sports early in high school, running hadn’t crossed Orie’s mind yet.

“I was mainly a basketball player and a swimmer, and I did almost every other sport,” Orie said. “My mom was a swimmer and my dad was a basketball player, so that’s kind of where I got those interests.”

While her main interests were in basketball and swimming, Orie also started running during the spring track seasons. As she continued to run competitively, Orie knew that running could take her the farthest as an athlete.

“After my sophomore year, I was like ‘wait, I’m actually pretty good at running,’” Orie said. “I was a talented swimmer, but I was a more talented runner. I could also use swimming as that cross-training [for running].”

Once Orie committed to running, she found herself at Penn, succeeding in a sport that she had only started competing in a few years prior. In her freshman season, Orie was named second team All-Ivy for cross country. A year later, she earned second team All-Ivy honors in both the 5,000m and 10,000m outdoor events.

Her early successes were interrupted later that spring, when Orie found herself dealing with the first of a string of stress fracture injuries that threatened her career and running ability.

“I was having a really rough string of injuries,” Orie said. “It was a little bit nutritionally related. Also, I just have this tendency to kind of push through pain that shouldn’t be pushed through. I want to go from 0 to 100 right away without all of the steps in between.”

Orie’s injuries kept her sidelined for nearly all of the 2019 athletic calendar. As she started to prepare for a return to the competition in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic halted collegiate sports. Like it did for athletes everywhere, the pandemic changed Orie’s plans.

“I think having that cancellation of all the sports kind of made me take a step back,” Orie said. “I talked to my coach and we started a slow, gradual build-up and because there was no season on the line, I could take as much time as needed.”

The cancellation of sports offered Orie a kind of silver

SPORTS | Orie will use her last two years of eligibility at the University of Wisconsin JOEY PIATT Sports Associate

Danielle Orie, current Penn cross country senior, did not start seriously running until high school.

lining: a chance to be as patient as necessary with her recovery, allowing her to return to her old form.

Orie’s grit and determination in her recovery were noticeable to those around her, including her twin sister, Gabrielle, who is a member of the cross country team at Cornell.

“Even when her body was giving up on her, her mind wasn’t giving up. She continued to persevere,” Gabrielle Orie said.

Danielle Orie’s determination to be at her best is not limited to her athletic career. It has also helped her to find a career that she is passionate about.

“My family is very strongly entrenched in the medical field, and so I came to Penn with the intention of becoming a nurse,” Orie said. “I ended up transferring out of the school of nursing after my third semester at Penn and decided to major in anthropology.”

Orie’s ability to pivot is something that she has always been adept at. If she is not passionate about something, she has always been able to find a way to improve her circumstances.

“She’s always being thrown in different directions, and I’d like to say she’s a little bit impulsive, but I’d say she’s also brave in that sense,” Gabrielle Orie said. “Whenever something is not making her happy, she figures out a way to make herself happy. Sometimes it’s a little bit impulsive, but that’s just her style.”

Orie’s ability to pivot when she needs a change in direction and her ability to persevere in tough circumstances have put her on a new path following her graduation from Penn this spring. The senior intends to combine her studies in anthropology with her passion for food by attending law school at the University of Wisconsin, an agricultural hub. Her transition to Wisconsin will also include the next step in her athletic career.

“I actually have two more years of eligibility between COVID-19 and the injury,” Orie said. “So, I committed to taking a fifth and sixth year while I’m in law school at Wisconsin.”

Orie’s next steps have those around her excited, as her return to competition has been a long time coming. Those around her know how hard she has worked to return to form, and they know how ready Orie will be to compete at the next stop in her athletic journey.

“I’m just so excited to see her race again in her uniform,” her sister said. “It’ll be the start all over again, but it will also be crossing a big finish line with her beating injury and beating everything that told her to stop.”

Penn football alum Brandon Copeland signs with Atlanta Falcons in free agency SPORTS | This will be the sixth NFL team for Copeland, who is currently teaching a class at Penn MATTHEW FRANK Sports Associate

2019 season for violating the league’s performanceenhancing substance policy, Copeland was reinstated and played the remaining 12 games of the Jets’ season.

His final stop before his new deal came with the Patriots, where he had a solid start to the season but suffered another pectoral injury in Week 7 and would not play again for the remainder of the year.

On top of his dedication to football, Copeland has also returned to Penn to create and teach a course about financial literacy and wellness that he refers to as “Life 101.” The course is titled “Urban Financial Literacy: Pedagogy and Practice,” and he’s teaching it this semester alongside Dr. Brian Peterson, director of Makuu: The Black Cultural Center.

Recently, Copeland was named to the 2021 Forbes 30 Under 30 Sports list. The mention came in part due to his teaching work at Penn, but also due to his community involvement, which includes Beyond the Basics, a nonprofit organization that focuses on youth empowerment.

For his charitable work, Copeland was awarded the NFLPA Community MVP award in both 2019 and 2020 and the Alan Page Community Award in 2020. The 30 Under 30 honor also came in part due to his business acumen, as he operates two different real estate companies on top of all his other responsibilities.

Former Penn football linebacker Brandon Copeland has signed a one-year contract to play for the Atlanta Falcons during the 2021 NFL season.

After stints with five different NFL teams, Copeland joins a retooling Falcons squad that has had three consecutive seasons with a losing record. During his free agency period, Copeland saw interest from the New York Giants as well, but wound up choosing Atlanta instead.

The deal is expected to be worth somewhere around the veteran minimum, and it appears likely that it came about in part due to a recommendation from new Falcons’ linebackers coach Frank Bush, who coached Copeland with the Jets.

In his time at Penn, Copeland was a major contributor to the football team, helping lead the Quakers to Ivy League Championships in 2009, 2010, and 2012.

In his final season, Copeland served as senior captain.

After his time at Penn, Copeland went undrafted but was signed by the Baltimore Ravens and also spent some time with both the Tennessee Titans and the Orlando Predators of the Arena Football League.

He returned to the NFL in 2015 and played for the Detroit Lions for two seasons, but a torn pectoral kept Copeland sidelined in 2017. The CoThefollowing New Yorkyear, Times Syndication Sales Corporation peland played in all 16 games for 620 the Jets, garnering Eighth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10018 PHOTO FROM NEW YORK JETS 34 tackles and five sacks.

For Information Call: 1-800-972-3550 playing with the Jets and then the Patriots, Penn alumnus Brandon Copeland signed with the Atlanta Falcons March 25,2021 2021 After being suspended for the first For four games ofThursday, the ForRelease Release Friday,After March 19, for a one-year contract for the 2021 season.

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CALHOUN PAGE 14

coach four years later.

Another set of issues that occurred during Calhoun’s tenure were separate mistreatment allegations on two Penn teams.

In 2018, Penn softball coach Leslie King was accused by former players of a years-long pattern of mistreatment that led many of them to quit the team. After the story broke, Calhoun sent out an email to Penn softball alumni looking for input. Ultimately, the decision was made to keep King.

A similar story came out in 2019 when new Penn volleyball head coach Iain Braddak was accused of mistreating his players. Eight grievances were filed amongst the 20 players on the team. The athlet-

ics department said that it thoroughly vetted each grievance that was filed, but players reported an inability to make their voices heard or to even get a meeting with Calhoun. In fact, several players said that the athletics department’s response, or lack thereof, left them feeling worse than the mistreatment itself. Braddak resigned from his position in January of 2020.

In spite of these three controversies, Calhoun had much success with the Quakers, which included raising hundreds of millions of dollars, improving the caliber of Penn’s varsity teams, and creating the framework and resources to make Penn Athletics an equitable division.

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SPORTS 13

THURSDAY, MARCH 25, 2021

RANKING PENN MEN’S BASKETBALL’S FIVE BEST MARCH MADNESS RUNS OF ALL TIME SPORTS | The 1970s were Penn’s golden era on the national stage JOEY PIATT Sports Associate

Penn men’s basketball has a rich history of success both in the Ivy League and in the postseason. Like the rest of the Ancient Eight, Penn did not compete in the 2020-2021 season due to COVID-19. However, with March Madness in full swing this week, we explore some of Penn’s best runs in the NCAA Tournament.

Penn has appeared in March Madness 24 times in its history, with a total record of 13-26 in that stretch. The team has made several trips in the 21st century by winning the Ivy League’s guaranteed conference spot in the tournament.

However, the Red and Blue have struggled to advance past the initial round of 64 teams, with their last trip to the second round coming in 1994.

Here are the Quakers’ top five postseason runs in recent history:

5.

2018

Penn received one of the dreaded No. 16 seeds after winning the second-ever Ivy League basketball tournament.

Before 2018, when 16th-seeded UMBC upset No. 1 Virginia, no 16th seed had ever knocked off a top-seeded foe in the opening round.

With a game against Kansas in Wichita, Kan. on the schedule for Penn, it was unclear exactly how close the Red and Blue would be able to keep the game. Though the final score of 76-60 seems like a relative blowout, the Quakers kept the game tight until the final minutes of action. They were unable to complete the upset, but keeping up with the No. 1 seed was an impressive showing.

4.

1994

This run may not seem like a true success at first glance, as the Quakers were knocked out of the tournament in the second round by No. 3 seed Florida by a score of 70-58.

However, their impressive opening round upset of No. 6 seed Nebraska was enough to make the trip to March Madness successful. As previously mentioned, this year was also the most recent time that the Quakers advanced past the first round.

3.

PHOTO BY CHASE SUTTON

1971

1971 was a fairly successful year for the Quakers, as they were able to advance to the Elite Eight after dominant victories against Duquesne and South Carolina. The tournament consisted of only a 32-team field at this point, meaning Penn’s two victories were enough to put it two wins from the title game. However, the team came up well short of its goals when it was beaten by Big 5 rival Villanova in a 90-47 blowout.

2.

1972

In 1972, the Quakers reached the Elite Eight for the second consecutive season, still with the tournament field set at 32 teams. Penn made quick work of its opening opponent in Providence. Then, it got revenge on Big 5 rival Villanova with a narrow Sweet Sixteen victory that made up for the Wildcats’ defeat of the Quakers in the previous season’s tournament. However, Penn could not carry that momentum into the Elite Eight, as it came up short for the second straight year, this time falling to the North Carolina Tar Heels, 73-59.

1.

1979

In 1979, the Quakers had their most successful postseason run, eventually reaching the Final Four. Penn made quick work of their initial opponents, defeating Iona, North Carolina, Syracuse, and St. John’s to advance to the Final Four. Penn’s run ended against Magic Johnson and the Michigan State Spartans, however, when the team was on the wrong end of a 101-67 throttling. A loss to the Spartans placed the Quakers in the third-place game against DePaul, where they came up just short, 96-93.

THURSDAY, MARCH 25, 2021 VOL. CXXXVII

NO. 9

THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

M. GRACE CALHOUN’S TRAILBLAZING LEGACY M. Grace Calhoun is leaving Penn from her position as director of athletics and recreation to go to Brown, leaving behind successes for Penn Athletics but also experiencing some scandals through her tenure.

SPORTS | Calhoun’s successes with the Quakers were not won without controversy MATTHEW FRANK Sports Associate

After seven years at Penn, M. Grace Calhoun is exiting as the director of athletics and recreation to assume the same role at Brown. With her departure, she leaves behind a legacy that influenced all aspects of Penn Athletics.

Calhoun was hired in March of 2014 as Penn’s athletics director after the retirement of previous Athletics Director Steve Bilsky. By accepting the position, Calhoun became the first female athletics director in Philadelphia Big 5 history. Since then, she has managed to secure a great deal of funding for the athletics department, improve the stature and quality of Penn’s teams, and take on leadership roles in the NCAA and Ivy League, all while enduring a few controversies within the division.

On Calhoun’s departure, Penn President Amy Gutmann had nothing but praise to offer.

“Grace will depart having left an indelible mark on Penn Athletics not only on the field of competition but also in a deeply felt commitment to the overall health, safety and success of our student athletes and in the strategic planning and operations of the division,” she said.

CATCHING UP WITH IVY LEAGUE BASKETBALL TRANSFERS PLAYING IN MARCH MADNESS SPORTS | All three players are members of teams with a No. 2 seed or better in this year’s tournament CHARLIE MA Sports Associate

March Madness is back — for most.

After the tournament was canceled a year ago due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament returned this year on March 19.

Unfortunately for the Ivy League, there were not any teams from the Ancient Eight participating in this year’s tournament after the league canceled the winter season.

However, there are a handful of graduate transfers from around the Ivy League who made an impact in the first weekend of this year’s March Madness.

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During Calhoun’s tenure at Penn, the Quakers captured 27 Ivy League titles in 16 different sports, three individual national titles, and three national runner-up finishes, while also consistently garnering one of the highest NCAA Academic Progress Rates in the nation. The APR tracks the academic performance and subsequent eligibility of studentathletes.

Just four years into Calhoun’s tenure, Penn’s average ranking in the Ivy League across all sports rose from 4.83 to 4.18.

Calhoun has also led an invigorated charge to elevate the athletics department’s endowment. She established the “Game Onward” fundraising campaign, which is on track to raise over $200 million for Penn Athletics by the end of the academic year.

Additionally, Calhoun has aided in more than doubling the size of Penn’s athletics endowment and has increased annual fundraising to record highs, which includes a top-five national performance with $63.4 million raised in 2018-19.

In large part, this money has gone to the building or renovation of at least five athletics facilities as well as improvements in general program and department funding.

Outside of varsity athletics, Penn’s Pottruck Health and Fitness Center, which is under Calhoun’s watch, is the nation’s second-rated fitness center. Pottruck, along with the Fox Fitness Center, has provided more than 5,000 recreation classes per year, with over 875,000 annual visits to these

facilities by undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty and staff. Calhoun has also maintained oversight over club sports and intramural sports, which has given thousands of students athletic opportunities.

In trying to adapt her division into an inclusive and anti-racist one, Calhoun commissioned the Racial Justice Task Force, which was a move that Gutmann highlighted in her recent statement about Calhoun leaving.

“She has done important work in addressing issues of diversity, equity and inclusion within Athletics,” Gutmann said.

In addition to her duties as Penn athletics director, Calhoun has held key positions in the conferences and leagues to which Penn belongs.

Since June of 2019, Calhoun has acted as chair of the NCAA Division I Council. In the role, she represents the council at the NCAA Division I Board of Directors and NCAA Association-wide Board of Governors and has been a key figure in the association’s efforts to adapt to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Calhoun also recently completed a two-year term as chair of the Ivy League Directors of Athletics and is the current chair of the Philadelphia Big 5 ADs. For all her work and leadership, Calhoun was inducted into the 2020 class of “Game Changers: Women in Sports Business” by Sports Business Journal and has also received a number of other

CHASE SUTTON

awards and accolades.

Although the standing of Penn Athletics has undoubtedly improved over Calhoun’s tenure, there were a few controversies during her time as athletics director.

In 2017, Penn had to hire a new head coach for the men’s golf program. After going through different candidates, the search landed on Jason Calhoun, M. Grace’s husband. This hire launched numerous accusations of nepotism, despite Calhoun having taken herself out of the search process due to the issues that would inevitably arise.

Much of the criticism came from the notion that Calhoun had intentionally set the parameters so that her husband could get the position. Prior to the beginning of the search, Calhoun put a specific detail on the list of preferred qualifications: being a PGA Class A Professional. This specification left Michael Blodgett — who was the interim coach the season prior and was not a PGA Class A Professional — out of luck.

“Most college golf coaches do not have that classification. If you went through your top 100 schools in men’s and women’s golf, you might not even find ten that are considered Class A Professionals,” Golfweek Magazine writer and college golf expert Lance Ringler said of the situation in 2017.

Jason Calhoun remains the men’s golf head SEE CALHOUN PAGE 12

Mike Smith — Michigan (Transferred from Columbia)

Jordan Bruner — Alabama (Transferred from Yale)

Seth Towns — Ohio State (Transferred from Harvard)

After an illustrious four years playing for the Lions, Mike Smith finished fourth on Columbia’s all-time scoring list, second in assists, tied for fourth in steals, and third in free-throw percentage.

During his senior season before the COVID-19 outbreak, the two-time second team All-Ivy guard led the Ivy League and ranked No. 6 in the NCAA in points per game.

Smith chose to transfer to Michigan over schools like Gonzaga, Arizona, and Seton Hall for his last year of eligibility. The former Columbia standout has played in all 24 games for the Wolverines this year, averaging 9.1 points per game and 5.4 assists per game. Michigan entered March Madness as one of the favorites to win it all, as they are the Big 10 regular season champion and No. 1 seed in the East Region, boasting a 20-4 record.

As the favorites of their region, the Wolverines rolled over their Texas Southern and LSU opponents in the first weekend. In their first round matchup against Texas Southern — Smith’s first postseason appearance — the guard scored 18 points. Then, against LSU, Smith tallied six assists to aid his team to an eight-point victory.

Michigan will face No. 4 seed Florida State in their regional semifinals on Sunday, March 28, as it hopes to advance to the Elite Eight.

During his time with the Bulldogs, Jordan Bruner compiled 149 blocked shots and 647 rebounds, ranking him fourth and tenth respectively on Yale’s all-time lists, despite missing a season due to injury.

In his freshman year, Bruner led the team in blocks coming off the bench, and by the end of his senior season, the forward from Columbia, S.C. was named to both the first team All-Ivy and the Academic All-Ivy Team. Additionally, Bruner recorded the first triple-double in Yale history during a 81-80 double-overtime win over Cornell.

After his final season with Yale was cut short, Bruner chose to transfer and play for the Crimson Tide over schools like Baylor and Maryland. During this past season, the former Bulldog started in all 21 games that he played in, missing nine games to injury. Bruner averaged 6.1 points per game and 4.2 rebounds per game. Alabama entered as a No. 2 seed in the East Region after winning both the Southeastern Conference regular season championship and the SEC Tournament. The Crimson Tide have a 24-6 record and entered the tournament hoping to make a deep run in this year’s March Madness.

In the round of 64, Alabama breezed past No. 15 seed Iona in a 13-point win. In the following round against No. 10 seed Maryland, Alabama’s offense exploded for 96 points in a dominant victory.

The Crimson Tide is set to face No. 11 seed UCLA this upcoming weekend, as Bruner and his new team seek to advance to only their second Elite Eight appearance in school history.

Before transferring to Ohio State, Seth Towns missed the previous two seasons due to knee injuries, but the former Harvard guard was the 2017-18 Ivy League Player of the Year after averaging 16.0 points per game and 5.7 rebounds per game. He also shot 44.1% from three-point range that season. Arguably the best graduate transfer on the market, Towns chose to play for the Buckeyes over schools such as Duke, Kansas, Virginia, Syracuse, Michigan, and Maryland.

During this past season with Ohio State, Towns played in 24 games, averaging 3.9 points per game while shooting 43.8% from the field.

Although the former Crimson did not have the same statistical success as he’s accustomed to, Towns proved to be an invaluable player coming off the bench as the Buckeyes finished the season 21-9 and won the Big 10 Tournament.

Ohio State entered the NCAA Tournament the No. 2 Seed in the South Region.

Unfortunately for Towns, the Buckeyes were upset by the No. 15 seed Oral Roberts in the first round, who, after winning in the second round, are currently set to face No. 3 seed Arkansas for a chance to advance to the Elite Eight this upcoming weekend.

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