Penn Violence Prevention hosts consent workshop, continuing efforts from New Student Orientation

On Feb. 22, Penn Violence Prevention hosted a workshop entitled “Pizza & Fries: Conversations About Consent”

MAKENZIE KERNECKEL

Reporter

Penn Violence Prevention hosted a consent workshop on Feb. 22, inviting members of the Penn community to strengthen their communication skills around navigating consent.

The “Pizza & Fries: Conversations About Consent” workshop was held at Hill College House and facilitated by Julie Millisky, associate director at PVP.

Participants worked in small groups to build a pizza with ingredients that everyone agreed on before moving on to topics like developing boundaries and navigating consent when substances are present.

“Initially, I was expecting a seminar with many people attending, but it was a more intimate space for sharing, and I think that worked out for the better,” Sparsh Maheshwari, a graduate student at the School of Social Policy & Practice, said after attending the event. “My biggest takeaway was that if it's not a confident and enthusiastic yes, it's a no.”

Talia Fiester, College senior and student worker at PVP who also facilitated Wednesday’s workshop, said that the highlight of the night was seeing that students think about consent beyond just the activities that PVP facilitates.

“We had a really good conversation on the way that all of the students practiced community care amongst their friend groups,” Fiester said. Wednesday's workshop was a continuation of

Wharton Global Forum in Singapore to feature over 600 government and business leaders

The conference will take place from take place from March 10 to 11 at the Shangri-La Hotel

NILAN NANDISH Staff Reporter

consent circles that were conducted during Penn’s New Student Orientation in August.

According to Fiester, consent circles work towards making consent a more accessible and approachable topic for first years while also building a culture of consent on campus. PVP created the “Conversations About Consent” workshop in the spring of 2022, according to Millisky. PVP offers the option for the workshop to be requested by Penn student groups, organizations, or departments with two weeks' notice. They also offer another workshop, “Supporting Survivors,” which focuses on how to best support a friend if they experience interpersonal violence.

Millisky estimates that PVP will give around 10 to 15 “Conversations About Consent” workshops throughout the academic year. She added that these workshops have proven to be popular and offer a nonjudgmental space where students can ask questions.

The 2023 Wharton Global Forum will be hosted at the Shangri-La Hotel in Singapore from March 10 to 11.

The conference will bring together over 600 leaders in government and business, Wharton professors and alumni, entrepreneurs, inventors, and industry leaders. The speakers will discuss pressing issues that businesses around the world are facing, focusing particularly on advancement in Singapore and Asia.

Dean of the Wharton School Erika James, former United States Ambassador to Russia and China Jon Huntsman, Jr., and Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore and Minister for Finance Lawrence Wong are scheduled to speak at the forum. Additional speakers hail from companies such as J.P. Morgan and the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

2019 forum in London, due to the challenges of COVID-19. Past Wharton Global Forums have been hosted in cities such as Beijing, Amsterdam, New York, and Miami.

Sam Lundquist, the chief advancement officer at Wharton External Affairs, wrote to The Daily Pennsylvanian that Wharton’s planning for this forum has been “a multi-year production.”

Lundquist said that the event faced many challenges because it was initially planned to take place in 2020 but was finally realized in 2023.

“What excites me most is getting to see Dean Erika James lead a Global Forum for the first time. She’s traveled the world this year, as part of the Wharton Impact Tour,” ” Lundquist wrote. “I can’t wait to see her impact on the assembled alumni and business leaders — she has an inspired vision for the school and its place in the world.”

“At the end of the workshop, hopefully, students feel empowered to navigate consent in their own lives,” Millisky said.

According to a press release, conference topics will include fintech, ESG, and artificial intelligence. The conference will feature roundtable discussions, masterclasses, and networking opportunities.

During April, PVP is organizing the clothesline project for Sexual Assault Awareness Month, which will give survivors a chance to share their stories anonymously by writing on T-shirts that will be displayed on College Green, Millisky told The Daily Pennsylvanian.

The upcoming conference will be the first in-person Wharton Global Forum since the

HOUSTON, from FRONT PAGE

Bento stations. Houston Market reopened for normal operations the following day.

In an emailed statement sent to the DP at noon on Monday, the Philadelphia Water Department said that it was “responding to a break on an 8-inch water main.” The statement also said that the Philadelphia Water Department did not have any information about how this has impacted its customers.

"Emergency crews are working to stop flow to site and will begin making repairs as soon as possible. It is anticipated Spruce Street will be closed to traffic between 34th Street and 38th Street while repairs take place,” the Philadelphia Water Department wrote. Prior to Houston Market reopening, a spokesperson for the Philadelphia Water Department later wrote to the DP that repairs to the water main were completed and water "should be restored."

At 5:20 p.m., Spruce Street reopened to traffic.

College first year Alison Yau said she saw the water main break while on the way to class. She said that “the dining hall violations, in addition to Houston closing, is pretty severe, especially for a lot of students at Penn that can’t afford to eat out. We don’t have the monetary capability for that.”

Staff Reporters Emily Scolnick and Sophia Liu contributed reporting.

Lundquist went on to write that the Wharton was able to “adapt and evolve” during the COVID-19 pandemic and was able to maintain strong connections with alumni, business partners, and government officials. Gain

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To learn more about the program and sign up for an information session, visit: www.upenn.edu/prehealth

Laundry room etiquette, anyone?

LOU(D) AND CLEAR | Respect for others in communal spaces is a cause we all should embrace

As an on-campus student, trying to find an open washer on Sunday night is like trying to find an available bench at Pottruck at 5:00 p.m. Impossible. At Pottruck, you could at least ask how many sets the person in front of you has left. But in the laundry room? All you can do is hope a washer is open the next time you check.

Over my years at Penn and countless laundry room ventures, I’ve gathered that there exist three main types of laundry goers. We’ll start with the diligent type. These are the people who set a timer as soon as the cycle starts and promptly retrieve their belongings in due time. There’s perhaps a margin of five to 10 minutes, but overall, they are pretty consistent.

The more common types are the forgetful folk. As soon as the clothes go in the washer, they consider the job done. Perhaps they roam around campus going squirrelwatching or decide to pedal a unicycle along the Schuylkill River. We’ll never know. But one thing is certain: they don’t move their finished laundry.

That leaves the dreaded last type — aggressive laundry goers who demand to have their laundry done this second. They forcibly remove other people’s clothes from the machines, leaving them strewn atop the machine, or worse, the floor. Now, I’ve never seen these laundry goers in action, nor do I know if I would be bold enough to intervene in a moment of laundry room heroism. But I’ve certainly heard the stories from distressed friends and seen evidence of their existence.

All jokes aside, the lack of laundry room etiquette illuminates a bigger theme, which is respect and consideration for others using shared communal spaces. Before you dismiss this as a given, it’s important to realize that this is often a tough standard to follow. Following behavioral norms often involves restraint or curtailing self-interest. For starters, stress will inevitably get in the way. And as college students, living at Penn is the first time that many of us are immersed in using shared communal spaces. Dining halls, gyms, classrooms, study lounges, libraries — we spend much of our waking hours in communal spaces. That’s precisely why maintaining consideration is so hard. It requires discipline. Yet, it is important, lest we allow our community to devolve into a tragedy of the commons.

Of course, there’s really no hard-and-fast rule that one must be cognizant of others in shared communal spaces. Even if there were, it would likely be unenforceable. However, being cognizant of others can manifest itself in a multitude of ways: wiping down equipment in the gym, holding the elevator open for the upcoming person, or not talking in quiet spaces. It’s the simple, little things. The things that may or may not even cross your mind, depending on how your day went. And they do add up.

What about the flip side of the coin? Is inconsiderate behavior really that harmful? Consider workplace incivility, a more extreme form of inconsiderate behavior. Research shows two things. It’s pervasive — 98% of workers have experienced it during their careers. And it drags us down, in mood and productivity, just by witnessing it occur.

It isn’t hard to see how such behavior might snowball into a self-perpetuating cycle. By witnessing and experiencing poor behavior, we get more stressed and unhappy, which in itself is a catalyst for acting in inconsiderate ways. Thus, we are more likely to act flippantly to other people.

Part of the difficulty is that most of the time, you don’t see, know, or talk to the people that you share communal spaces with. It’s analogous to how most people believe that online incivility is in part fueled by anonymity. The benefits of being socially considerate are largely unseen. You don’t see how someone’s face lights up when they are able to find an open washer after you remove your clothes in a timely manner or how someone can effectively concentrate for an impending test when you decide not to chat loudly in the library. That’s the challenge. It’s hard to be motivated by what you do not see. But we nonetheless have to hold ourselves accountable for maintaining and sustaining a mutually symbiotic community.

The key is realizing that the aggressive and disrespectful laundry goer lives in all of us. It may not rear its head that often, but it is there. When the clock starts ticking and no one is watching, we all may face the urge of wanting to take out someone’s laundry to run our own. After all, you tell yourself, it’s their fault for not taking out their laundry promptly. The inconsiderate option is just simply more convenient. It would be remiss, however, if we fail to remember that the conscientious laundry goer lives inside of us as well.

As we think about how powerful this negative progression is, we have to realize that it only takes one person to break the cycle — one person to avert a potential cascade of frustration and inconsiderate behavior. So every time that conscientious laundry goer inside of us wins out, count that as a victory. Just as incivility is contagious in the negative cycle, I believe that being cognizant of others builds a positive cycle that is even more resilient and powerful. Each little act of consideration costs so little but pays so much. Before you know it, we’ll hit critical mass.

ANDREW LOU is a Wharton and Engineering junior studying finance, statistics, and computer science from Connecticut. His email is alou6683@ wharton.upenn.edu.

Dude, where’s my ride?

Picture this: it’s 8:30 p.m. You’ve just had three classes in a row, without time for dinner. You run to the PennBus stop at the Penn Bookstore, unlock your phone, and open up the PennTransit Mobile app. Opening the timetable on map, you find that the Penn Bus West just passed the Bookstore, and another one isn’t coming for 18 minutes. So, a PennRide it is. You’re about to reserve it, but you notice the next vehicle won’t come for at least 45 minutes! Sighing in resignation, you begin the walk home in pitch-black darkness. What went wrong here?

The Penn Transit services have not changed substantially since the early 1980s. These include the Penn Bus, a circulator bus serving West Philadelphia and Center City; PennRides on Request, which operates as a door-to-door ride-hailing (aka microtransit) service, somewhat like Uber Pool; and lastly, the Walking Escort service.

The services were originally created as a response to concerns about public safety on and off campus, and had limited operating hours and frequencies. Today, though, students are living farther and farther off campus, with higher than ever demand for a frequent and reliable service that extends far beyond typical peak hours for public transit.

When the PennRides app was launched at the start of 2019, it immediately skyrocketed in popularity. Students used to memorize and dial a phone number and wait from anywhere from one to 20 minutes, without any tracking or notification when one’s ride had arrived. Now, they could download an app and, in theory, know their shuttle’s position far more reliably. In fiscal year 2022, Penn Transit boasted record ridership numbers of 340,000 passengers, or close to 1,200 weekday riders.

However, with that success comes a familiar problem if you’ve ever studied economics: the tragedy of the commons. At peak hours, which are typically when late classes end from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., the app is inundated with requests that extend waiting times to 30 minutes or more. Journey times lengthen, routings get noticeably more circuitous, and service quality and efficiency overall decrease dramatically. Penn’s strategy thus far has been to double down on on-demand ride-hailing, with an expanded service contract to 40 drivers along with new vehicles.

But brute-forcing the problem here seems futile considering continued demand, with operating and capital costs scaling very poorly as well. In addition, this has come at a time when Penn Bus frequency has degraded from every 15 minutes per route last year to 20 minutes, signaling that Penn Transit has already had to save service costs elsewhere to compensate and feed the on-demand beast.

In a way, this phenomenon reflects the trend seen at many transit providers across the country — for universities and entire cities — as they find themselves at the crossroads between traditional fixedroute and insurgent on-demand service. With alarming bus ridership declines even before the COVID-19 pandemic, and the new normal of commute patterns post-pandemic, several transit agencies have switched out traditional routes in low-performing areas with on-demand microtransit. But critics have warned that University microtransit, like its private counterparts such as Uber or Lyft, run the risk of cutting into the busiest and most congested transit areas without sufficient restrictions and controls on its usage. What may seem complementary at first becomes competitive, and with far higher operating costs than a traditional 40 to 60 seat bus, ends up costing more in the long run.

Penn Transit, for its part, is very aware of this trend, but thus far seems stymied in its quest to get more students using Penn Bus. In every on-demand shuttle, there is a small 8.5-by-11 inch flier posted encouraging students to take the Penn Bus next time, promoting its “convenient” 20-minute service frequency. But if you’ve never taken the Penn Bus before, it’s pretty daunting figuring out where to start.

Finding the nearest available on-campus stop is a struggle, especially at night. Signs are small, dark, and often torn off altogether, as is the case by the School of Dental Medicine on 40th Street. There is no information at the stop about which routes or what frequency they might be expected to come on the signs — it’s on you to download the app. As you leave campus, you must now peer outside and discern street signs flashing by.

When you think you’ve reached your stop, you must pull the cord or shout at the driver exactly before the bus passes it, as outside campus stops are only made by request. With such ambiguity, it’s no wonder most students are unaware PennRides can even be used for inbound trips to campus rather than just going home, leading to a bias for on-demand rides.

With this many potential points of failure from the user’s POV, the message is clear enough: if Penn Transit wants more students taking Penn Bus, they need to promote their campuswide bus service and improve user legibility and accessibility in all aspects.

One welcome change: switching to a new PennTransit Mobile app, replacing software and management providers from DoubleMap to TripShot. Now, there are better trip planning features to get directly from origin to destination, along with stop pop-outs where app managers should include helpful user directions. Along with the app improvements, new printed brochures should indicate how to use Penn Buses step by step, with picture references for every campus stop. Additionally, offcampus stops should be clearly marked, both in-app and physically, around every two blocks to remove any ambiguity about where to get on or off. Penn Transit could even share the same bus stops and shelters with SEPTA to reduce confusion on stop locations.

But perhaps the most necessary policy change revolves around service provision: the Penn Bus needs to get back to 15minute, and ideally 10-minute frequency as more students get familiar with it. As transit planner Jarrett Walker said, "frequency is freedom": a service that comes at least every 15 minutes, without having to read a timetable, is the most attractive to use. But in order to sustain this service increase, we argue that the on-demand service should not be allowed for destinations within a five-minute walk of the Penn Bus — in other words, creating a geofence. Though admittedly controversial, this is a common provision transit agencies leverage to ensure that microtransit doesn’t cannibalize their existing bus service, and it makes sense here as well to reduce PennRide demand for short trips, improving wait time for students who live farther out.

As great as these changes would be, improving Penn Transit is only one piece of the mobility puzzle. Philadelphia already boasts many abundant mobility options, and University administration would do well to further partnerships with Indego bikeshare and SEPTA, bundling fares and passes with employee benefits and student tuition fees, as Penn Medicine has already done. In this way, all employees, faculty, and students, no matter where in the region they come from, are able to get to campus cheaply. But we think Penn Transit has the opportunity to start right in its own backyard with straightforward fixes to its own services.

BEN SHE is a graduate student in the School of Design studying urban spatial analytics. His email is bensh3@ design.upenn.edu.

YIHONG HU is a graduate student in the School of Design studying city and regional planning. Her email is yihonghu@design.upenn.edu.