October 20, 2022

Magill’s first 100 days

Magill’s inauguration to feature Sheryl Crow, Elena Kagan, and her goldendoodle, Olive

SOPHIA POWELL Staff Reporter

This Friday marks the long-awaited inauguration of Penn’s ninth president Liz Magill, and the Uni versity has planned a plethora of festivities during Homecoming Weekend to celebrate.

The inauguration will feature events including a procession down Locust Walk, a 5K around Penn Park, and a pet-friendly walk with Magill and her goldendoodle. The evening before Magill’s inau guration, the University Board of Trustees and president’s special guests will attend a dinner, ac cording to the University.

The two-day program will represent Magill’s official installation as the University’s ninth presi dent, according to the University’s announcement in August.

The festivities begin on Oct. 21 with an aca demic robing at 8:30 a.m. at the Annenberg Center. Magill, student leaders, and faculty will depart at 9:30 a.m. and walk in a procession through campus with Irvine Auditorium as the destination. Penn has invited presidents and delegates from peer institu tions to attend the procession and inauguration, including Amy Gutmann and Judith Rodin, Penn’s

seventh and eighth presidents, respectively.

The inauguration ceremony will take place in Irvine Auditorium at 10 a.m. Attendance is by invi tation only, but the ceremony will be streamed live online, and members of the Penn community can watch the livestream of the ceremony under the tent at Penn Commons, in front of Houston Hall.

After the inauguration ceremony, there will be a picnic and concert on College Green from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m., which members of the Penn community must register to attend. The concert will feature some of Magill’s favorite musicians: Jeff Tweedy, of the Grammy-winning rock band Wilco, and Sheryl Crow, a celebrated country music star, song writer, and nine-time Grammy Award recipient.

At the picnic, members of the Penn community can sample bites from restaurants such as Zahav, Federal Donuts, and Goldie; enjoy picnic fare from Neuman’s Kitchen; and taste a special scoop of “Penn-augural Berry Chocolate Chunk” ice cream from Bassetts Ice Cream.

The University will host an academic symposium from 2:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. in Irvine Auditorium. The

From faulty elevators to dirty common areas, high rise residents report maintenance issues

NITIN SESHADRI Staff Reporter

Some student residents have reported numerous maintenance issues, pest disturbances, and clogged trash chutes in Penn’s high-rise college houses.

Home to nearly 2,400 students, Rodin, Harrison, and Harnwell college houses were constructed in the 1970s. The students that The Daily Pennsylva nian spoke with described slow response times to maintenance issues, including dirty common areas; clogged trash chutes; and malfunctioning elevators.

Walt Molishus, the director of utilities with Fa cilities and Real Estate Services, said the most prevalent calls to maintenance in the three high rises are for light bulbs, clocks, sinks and toilets, and batteries for the locks on the doors. Common calls also include plumbing services, which is due

to the presence of kitchens and private bathrooms in the high rises.

“In general, lighting, light bulbs, and plumbing account for about 80% of our calls on high rises,” Molishus said. “Routine work orders are targeted to be completed within 30 days or less. Emergencies are responded to immediately. ... Overall, [the aver age response time] is four and a half days.”

Molishus added that if a student has any urgent issues, they should call FRES on the phone di rectly. However, an RA in Harrison — who asked to be anonymous out of fear of retaliation from the University — wrote to the DP that complaints felt

invitation-only event will feature Magill in conver sation with United States Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan. The event will be live-streamed online and shown under the Penn Commons tent.

The event harkens back to Magill’s background as an up-and-coming lawyer who clerked for late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg from 1996 to 1997. Ginsberg had described Magill as “the kind of law clerk I wish I could have kept for ever” in a 2017 conversation with the World Justice Project.

On Saturday, students can register to join Magill and Olive, her goldendoodle, on a walk down Locust along with the Quaker mascot, members of the Penn Band, student-athletes, and members of the Penn Vet Working Dog Center to Franklin Field, which is where the Penn Relays 5K will take place. Registrants are encouraged to bring along their own dogs.

Members of the Penn community are also invited to participate in the second annual Penn Relays 5K,

Penn to fund Middle East Center after loss of federal funding sparked outcry

The plan will be announced at the Oct. 26 University Council meeting and will sustain the Center for four and a half years

JARED MITOVICH & SIERRA WEI Senior Reporter & Staff Reporter

Penn will fully fund the Middle East Center after it lost its federal Title VI funding, which had temporarily jeopardized the Center and its future.

The University’s funding plan — a collabora tion between the MEC, the School of Arts and Sciences, and the provost’s office — will be an nounced at the Oct. 26 University Council meeting and will sustain the Center for four and a half years. The MEC lost its federal Title VI funding from the United States Department of Education in August due to insufficient institutional support from the University.

The Municipal Court of Philadelphia County has set a criminal trial date for College senior Nicholas Hamilton, who has been charged in an alleged as sault that occurred on campus last September.

Hamilton allegedly injured a Penn sophomore at a party held on Sept. 4, 2021, in the chapter house of his fraternity, Psi Upsilon — also known as “Castle.”

According to court documents viewed by The Daily Pennsylvanian, Hamilton has been charged with both simple assault and harassment, subject other to physical contact. His court trial is set for Nov. 8 at 10 a.m. after a private criminal complaint was filed on Oct. 3, 2022.

Both Hamilton and his lawyer did not respond to requests for comment. The Philadelphia District At torney’s office also did not respond to request for comment.

A witness from the event, who requested anonym ity due to their close relationship with the victim, previously told the DP in September 2021, that other Castle brothers were witnesses to the assault but did not intervene. After the victim appeared to be partially unconscious, the witness had told the DP that two other Castle brothers carried the victim out of the house. Later that night, the victim was transported via ambulance to the Penn Presbyterian

The victim’s brother, a Penn student who was also present at the party but who did not witness the as sault, previously told the DP that he suspected that race played a factor in the incident. The victim’s brother had said he previously had a disagreement with Hamilton after Hamilton allegedly made racist comments about South Africa, which is Hamilton’s home country, during a Castle rush event at an offcampus apartment in January 2021.

In response to news of the alleged assault, Penn students had hung 300 flyers around campus calling to “END FRAT CULTURE.” A petition, created by students in September 2021, has garnered over 5,800 signatures to remove the Castle fraternity from their house and reuse the building as a central campus space.

Over 50 students also held a four-day protest out side of the Castle chapter house in September 2021. The protestors previously told the DP they wanted Hamilton expelled from the University, the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life remove Castle from its chapter house, and Penn to release a statement condemning the incident and reassuring the stu dent body that it would not tolerate any kind of hate crimes on campus.

The University, however, has not released a state ment on the matter. University spokesperson Ron Ozio did not respond to an immediate request for comment.

Locust Walk, a 5K around Penn Park, and Penn-themed ice cream

In response to a request for comment, SAS Dean Steven Fluharty wrote to The Daily Pennsylvanian

by jesse zhang

PHOTO BY JESSE ZHANG

Medical Center.

Criminal trial date set for Penn senior charged with alleged assault at Castle party last year

The College senior allegedly injured a Penn sophomore at a party held in the chapter house of his fraternity

IMRAN SIDDIQUI Senior Reporter

PHOTO BY NICHOLAS FERNANDEZ

The chapter house of Psi Upsilon fraternity, commonly known as “Castle,” on Sept. 19, 2021.

which will start at 8:30 a.m. on Oct. 22 and is organized around Penn Park — beginning and ending at Franklin Field. There is also a onemile run and/or walk option.

Magill, who previously served as the University of Virginia’s pro vost and executive vice president, assumed the position on July 1. Gutmann’s successor was nominated on Jan. 13, and the Board of Trustees voted to confirm her nomination in March.

The two days of festivities surrounding Magill’s inauguration also coincides with Homecoming Weekend. Taking advantage of the mo mentous occasion and anticipated return of many Penn graduates to campus, many arts and cultural institutions at Penn have planned events for the weekend. On Saturday starting at 1 p.m., Penn is slated to play the homecoming football game against Yale University.

Students said they saw the upcoming weekend’s events as historic and said they are excited to be a part of the moment. College first year Katrina Machetta said that the chance to witness the transition of lead ership was a rare opportunity.

“As a freshman, it’s exciting to be here at a time of new leader ship. Only once in a blue moon is there a new University president,” Machetta said. “Being here and being able to witness the start of her leadership as president will be really memorable. That is something we can take with us forever.”

College first year Eric Yang says he is excited for the “regalia” of the robing ceremony. Yang said he had met Magill at a New Student Orientation international student picnic, recounting an encounter in which Magill remarked that she, too, was a first year after he intro duced himself as a new student.

He added he is most excited for the concert and that music is a “cool way that [Magill] is connecting with us.”

MAGILL , from front page

PHOTO BY ANNA VAZHAEPARAMBIL

rises encounter more usage due to the density and footprint of the building.

“All elevators are on campus, are tested annually and certified to be safe and in working condition,” Kothari said. “Having said that, the elevators do have minor repairs from time to time.”

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Mice are also a common problem in the high rises. HarveenKaur Kothari, the director of Locust area, operations, and maintenance at FRES, said that problems with mice tend to occur on lower floors of the high rise buildings. She explained that the University uses an integrated pest management approach to prevent the infestation and reproduction of pests, including several inspections throughout the year in the high rises.

“Overall, the past number of calls that we have received [for mice] for the high rises are very low compared to the pre-pandemic counts,” Kothari said. “We are looking at about 65% lower.”

Paul Forchielli, the senior associate director for building operations, noted that students can also play a role in preventing pest infestations. He said that students should be mindful of cleaning up after themselves, avoiding clutter in residential spaces, and regularly place trash into trash chutes.

Clogged trash chutes have also been a persis tent issue, according to residents. Harrison’s trash chutes are “forever clogged,” according to the anon ymous RA, who said that the clogged trash chutes have been “incredibly frustrating for residents” due to the smell, inconvenience, and lack of sanitari ness.

According to Forchielli, trash chute clogs are often caused by cardboard. When students put card board boxes down the trash chute, they get stuck. The solution, he said, is to break down the card board and place it into the recycling area instead of the trash chute.

Forchielli also encouraged residents to call FRES as soon as they are aware of a clog on their floor be cause it is hard for housekeeping to unplug the chute once a lot of trash accumulates.

The anonymous Harrison RA wrote that they have filed multiple work orders about trash chute clogs, but the system shows that the work orders are resolved when they are clearly not. Emailing the building administrator did not fix the issues, either, they wrote.

In Harrison, maintenance overall has been subpar, according to the anonymous RA living in the building. The anonymous RA wrote that hall ways, floors, and lounges appear to almost never have been cleaned and that many members of the RA staff were “frustrated” with “persistent maintenance issues” and “poor support from ad ministration” in responding to them.

Elevators in the high rises have also faced problems with interruptions to service. Out of 43 elevators in the residential portfolio, the 12 in the high rises account for about 60% of elevator-related work orders, Kothari said. The elevators in the high

Harrison’s elevators have been particularly prob lematic, dealing with month-long repairs and a situation in which all the buttons stopped working. In an Oct. 7 email to Harrison residents, Building Administrator Chris Lawson said that Harrison’s second elevator would be out of service for approxi mately a month.

“While inspecting the elevator earlier this week, the elevator repair company determined that while the elevator was safe to use, it was time to replace certain aging gears and bearings used to operate the elevator,” the email read.

Forchielli said that the elevator in question was making “particularly significant noise” due to issues with its gears.

“In terms of operations, [it] was going to prob ably break down fairly frequently over the next few months,” he said. “So we figured we might as well go ahead and take care of this now.”

Then, on the morning of Oct. 12, the elevator call buttons stopped working in Harrison, forc ing students on all levels to take the stairs down the building. Repairs were completed later that day, according to an email sent by Lawson to Harrison residents.

“I had to go down 19 flights of stairs to get to class,” College sophomore Ryan Tannir, a Harrison resident, said. “And a lot of the times, only [two out of four] elevators are operating.”

Rodin’s elevators are the newest of the three buildings, having been installed during 2016 and 2017, according to Kothari. Forchielli added that the elevators in Harnwell and Harrison had cosmetic work done in the mid-2000s, but still contained components that were original to those buildings.

“No elevator on campus has been reported for dropping floors, and in fact it is impossible for cars to fall unless all the cables are cut,” Kothari re plied when asked about posts on Sidechat, a social media platform, that claimed that an elevator fell six flights in Rodin.

Forchielli speculated that such a report could have stemmed from the elevators being pro grammed to return to a specific floor if no buttons are pressed inside.

“If you had a situation when you stepped into an elevator and you either forgot to hit the button, or there’s a malfunction with the button, and then it started ... going down like it normally does, you might perceive that somehow that it had fallen,” Forchielli said.

Barbara Lea-Kruger, Penn Business Services’ director of communications and external relations, encouraged students to note any issues in their resi dences immediately.

“If students can report issues right away, that’s critical,” Kruger said. “And that has to do with any thing, any kind of maintenance issue, whether it’s pests, whether it’s, you know, trash chutes, whether it’s mold, whether it’s anything, students have a big role to play in prevention.”

Philadelphiabased barbecue restaurant The Lucky Well opens new location in University City

The restaurant, which is located at 3432 Sansom Street, has been open for dinein as of Oct. 6

BEN BINDAY Contributing Reporter

The Lucky Well — a Philadelphia-based barbecue restaurant chain — recently opened a new location in University City.

The Lucky Well joined the Shop Penn retail com munity and held a preliminary opening in June. The restaurant, which is located at 3432 Sansom Street, started out offering delivery and takeout services and has been open for dine-in as of Oct. 6. The menu features BBQ food and a happy hour option.

Baby Blues BBQ previously operated in its loca tion, and The Lucky Well has renovated the dining facilities. The Lucky Well currently operates at two other locations, and the first location has been open

Rosenthal told The Daily Pennsylvanian that he thinks the restaurant’s location gives it room to grow.

“We only have half of The Lucky Well open right now, so we’re currently using the bar, the dining room, and the little patio in the back for dinner five days a week,” Rosenthal said. “As we get rockin’ and rollin’, we hope to open up the full space and start offering lunches by early 2023.”

He also discussed his aims to make the restaurant accessible to students.

“We’re really excited about the new location and its demographics, located in between the hospitals and the colleges,” he said. “We know college kids are on a budget and we’re on a campus, so that’s part of our plan to make it accessible.”

Head chef of The Lucky Well Steven Seibel told the DP that he believes that the University City lo cation’s unique food offerings differentiate it from other restaurants, specifically pointing to the BBQ pizzas.

“With me being a pizza guy and Chad being a barbecue guy, we came together and thought we can marry the two and see what happens,” he said.

Seibel and Rosenthal both mentioned the restau rant’s happy hour deals and their hopes for local students to come for it.

“I want to have the best happy hour in all of Penn’s campus,” Rosenthal said.

Students expressed excitement about The Lucky Well opening a new location in University City.

“Coming from Texas, I’m used to quality barbe cue, but haven’t had any great options near Penn the past few years,” Wharton senior and Texas resident Connor Pierce told the DP. “I’m excited to try it out soon and see if it matches up with what we have down in Texas.”

College first year Maria Kevane echoed Pierce’s

PHOTO BY WILLIAM BARTOC

The Lucky Well on Oct. 18, 2022.

Magill’s words, or the lack thereof, revealed something that many on College Green, perhaps even including Magill herself, soon realized: Just short of two months in, she was being tested as a President and a leader. The events that transpired that night act as an early defining moment of the Magill presidency.

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July in an interview that she wants to "get to know Penn and get to know everything and everyone who’s important to our success," a goal she continues to work to achieve.

Opinion

Correcting myths about the UC Townhomes movement

GUEST

To those first years who were disappointed that their convocation was disrupted: We understand your disappointment. We would all like to live in a community where we celebrate each other’s achievements and dreams. Unfor tunately, Penn has a long and troubled history of silencing dissent on campus and, more sig nificantly, harming its Black and low-income neighbors. When the administration continues to ignore the needs of its neighbors for its own self-interest, we are left with few choices. We must ask ourselves: Is the celebration of our achievements and dreams more important than the right of our Black, low-income, and disabled neighbors to live in our community? Do Black lives only matter to us if they are Penn students?

As we explain below, our tactics are the only proven way to convince the administra tion of the importance of this issue. Until our demands to Penn are met — that Penn pledge $10 million to support the preservation of the Townhomes as 100% low-income housing — you will continue to hear from us.

Myth #1: Penn has no direct connection to the UC Townhomes.

As we have written elsewhere, low-income housing at 39th and Market is directly histori cally tied to Penn’s practices of expansion and displacement. In 1959, the West Philadelphia Corporation, headed by Penn, sought to re brand West Philadelphia as University City. Working with the Philadelphia Redevelop ment Authority, the Corporation targeted the 105 acres between 34th and 40th streets, stretching from Chestnut and Ludlow streets in the south to Lancaster and Powelton av enues in the north, for “urban renewal.” This area was known as the Black Bottom, a Black working-class community that the City Coun cil designated as “blighted,” invoking the right of eminent domain and paving the way for the Redevelopment Authority to demolish the area beginning in 1966. A total of 2,653 people were displaced. Roughly 78% of them were Black.

The displacement of the Black Bottom sparked community-led protests in West Philadelphia and at Penn. In 1969, student protestors and community activists occupied College Hall to demand that Penn provide compensation in the form of housing to dis placed Black Bottom residents. As a result

of this occupation, Penn trustees pledged $10 million and accepted a proposal dedicating five plots of land for low-income housing, in cluding land at 39th and Market. But over the course of years, Penn strategically waited out the housing activists, and never delivered the land or the money to community groups. In stead, the land stayed in the city’s possession until 1978, when current owner Altman Man agement purchased a parcel and developed the University City Townhomes.

Penn’s historical connection to the Town homes is real. While it is true that they do not own the land, low-income housing only exists on that land because of the pressure activists placed on Penn to make reparations for their displacement of an entire Black community.

Myth #2: Gentrification is unfortunate, but we should not blame Penn for so-called inevi table changes to city neighborhoods.

Over the past 30 years, Penn has deployed an array of tactics to redevelop so-called Uni versity City and displace the community that lives there. In 1974, Penn created its own mili tarized police force to protect the privileged class of newcomers. The force has ballooned into the largest private police force in Penn sylvania and has been accused repeatedly of racial profiling. Now, UPPD patrol as far west as 52nd Street, where in 2020 they as sisted Philadelphia Police in quelling protests after the murder of George Floyd, making the neighborhood appear safe for real estate investors while criminalizing Blackness and poverty.

Penn pairs residential subsidies with selec tive investments into nearby public schools to accelerate the real-estate market within school catchment zones and attract wealthy families and faculty to the neighborhood. In the Penn Alexander catchment, home prices have more than quadrupled since the University began in vesting in the school in 2000.

Now, Penn and Drexel are aligned in an effort to drive the market for the Life Sciences industry by densifying University City. This coordinated real-estate speculation inflated land values and induced the attempted sale of the Townhomes property. Altogether, Penn pioneered the university-led gentrification model.

These tactics amount to an intentional

The cult of Harry Styles

The meteoric rise of Harry Styles has been undeniable in the past few years, recently culminating in his record-setting 15-day resi dency at Madison Square Garden and release of the star-studded film “Don’t Worry Darling.”

However, while his following has grown into the tens of millions and provided a community for many, there have been arguably complex and damaging manifestations of this fandom.

The obsession with the singer is a clear example of a mass parasocial relationship, a sit uation in which people exert a disproportionate amount of energy and interest in a relationship in which the other party is largely unaware of their existence. Often mediated through social media, this fosters highly idealized, virtually infallible, versions of public figures.

While there is absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying Styles’ music or other work, the dynamic created can result in a critical lack of public accountability while facilitating Styles’ ability to take advantage of his fan base, through manipulating his image to garner ever-increas ing profits and stardom.

Whether intentionally or not, there has been very little discourse on what I consider remains a harmful and intentional aspect of Styles’ messaging and brand: his co-opting of queer identity. Behind his apparent earned success is a calculated image which is arguably the reason he has skyrocketed to fame. This very image, finding an obsessive audience after his 2020

Vogue cover in which he was clothed in a dress (Heaven forbid!), is one which associates him with the queer community while maintaining just enough distance for a necessary ambiguity.

Styles’ choice to appear on the cover of the famed fashion magazine in a dress was merely a prelude to what would become a trend for the artist who is now widely known for his bend ing of gender norms in his confident wearing of dresses, stockings, makeup, and other typi cally (what are considered) feminine items.

While gender is certainly a social construct that is maintained by the invented division in items of expression — like clothing — it cannot be ignored that queer communities have been engaging in these distortions of norms for de cades. So much so that it has become part and parcel of queer expression.

Here we get into the tricky question of whether Styles’ continued fashion choices — that could be said to appropriate those of the queer community — constitutes queerbaiting and, more importantly, whether identifying them as such is a slippery slope. Either way, because of the brand he has curated, Styles has become somewhat of a queer icon — without being queer himself. And therein lies the issue.

While profiting off his gender-bending image, and by extension the queer commu nity, he has insistently denied being queer (or straight), opting to remain unlabeled. After all,

strategy to transform West Philadelphia into a privileged enclave for students and faculty through the dispossession of land from Black families, increased policing and surveillance of surrounding communities, and direct inter ventions in the real estate market.

Myth #3: There is nothing Penn can do to save the Townhomes.

Penn is business partners with the Town homes’ current owner, Brett Altman, and is the most powerful institution in this city. A public statement from Penn would apply immense pressure on Altman to seek an alternative. A financial pledge to support the purchase of the Townhomes through a land trust would go even further, setting a precedent that other in stitutions in the city would be likely to follow.

But what about the money? Penn has a $20.7 billion endowment and an operating budget of $4 billion. They will tell you that their money is tied up in investments and dedicated to spe cific funds. But this is a lie: When Penn wants to find money to support community interests, they find the money. They found $100 mil lion to help public schools mitigate asbestos. They invested $4 million in the Lea School in West Philadelphia (in another gross attempt to stimulate neighborhood growth). They found $35 million to redevelop the McDonald’s on 40th and Walnut after Penn admin described it as a “safety concern.” While we should question the real motivations behind these in vestments and continue to demand that Penn pay PILOTs, it is plain to see that they have resources at their disposal.

Myth #4: The Coalition to Save the UC Townhomes is not interested in a civil discus sion.

We have tried everything. Since Octo ber 2021, when the Coalition to Save the UC Townhomes was formed, we have held dozens of teach-ins and non-disruptive protests on Penn’s campus to raise awareness around the issue. We have attended formal open forums hosted by Penn to raise the issue to administra tion and the board. We have had several civil written communications with Penn adminis tration, including with then-Interim President Wendell Pritchett, who refused to engage them. It was only after student activists dis rupted one of Pritchett’s prestigious events that

he agreed to meet with us.

Residents have already met with Pritchett, who gave them the runaround on their central demands: that Penn intervene to stop the sale to a commercial buyer, and invest capital in a preservation fund to save the site.

So we also reached out by email to Presi dent Liz Magill when she arrived this summer and asked her to meet with residents to con tinue to explore options. President Magill’s office responded by saying, “Because Penn does not own the UCTH property, our options are limited.” Another day, another disavowal.

Calls for civic engagement are a hallmark of Penn’s repression of dissent. Recently, 10 out of 12 student groups addressed President Magill at the meeting of the University Coun cil and spoke in support of the Townhomes, and still we hear nothing. When 10 out of 12 major student groups endorse the Townhomes’ demands and we continue to be ignored, what other options are we left with? The adminis tration’s behavior leaves us with little choice but to take a more disruptive approach. This is the only proven way we have of getting their attention.

Meanwhile, time is running out for the residents, who face a current eviction dead line of Dec. 27. If the Townhomes are sold and demolished, University City will lose one of its last remaining federally subsidized lowincome developments, leaving low-income residents with few options for staying in their community, and furthering Penn and Drexel’s decades-long colonization of the surrounding neighborhood.

It is true, you may not have gotten the wel come to Penn that you dreamed of. Instead, you got the truth about the institution which you are now a part of. Which side are you on? As members of the Penn community and vital stakeholders in this institution, we ask you to join our cause and we can grow together. Find us at Fossil Free Penn’s encampment, join our mailing list, and meet us in the streets.

THE COALITION TO SAVE THE UC TOWNHOMES consists of University City Townhomes residents, commu nity organizers, Penn students and faculty, activist groups, and other Philadelphia residents. Their email is saveuctownhomes@gmail.com.

wouldn’t it destroy his brand if millions of teen age girls couldn’t realistically fawn over him? Equally problematic, he has never given credit to the trailblazers of this identity in the enter tainment industry including Elton John, David Bowie, Billy Porter, and countless others.

Of course, it is Styles’ prerogative to keep his sexuality private; fame should not require him to bare his identity for public consump tion. But Styles has seemingly taken it upon himself to speak to the queer experience, pontificating in an interview leading up to the release of “My Policeman,” “So much of gay sex in film is two guys going at it, and it kind of removes the tenderness from it.” But what does Harry Styles know about gay sex? And more importantly, as someone who’s consistently profited off of queer aesthetics and identity while refusing to explicitly align himself with the community, what ethos does he have to speak on the subject?

All of this taken together, Styles has un derstandably become a problematic figure for many queer people, and yet all of this has been eclipsed by a perpetual mass obsession with him.

This parasocial relationship also shields Styles, and his fans, from interrogating the effect his comments or image have on various communities. The phenomenon, however, does not start and end with Styles. Increasingly, ex acerbated by mediation through social media,

mass obsession has shielded celebrities like Taylor Swift or the Kardashians from being held meaningfully accountable for their envi ronmentally damaging behavior, for example.

Additionally, one could see how this be comes crucially more dangerous when applied to politicians who have amassed cult-like fol lowings including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Donald Trump. To empower individuals with representing, and legislating for, our coun try on the basis of their personas as opposed to their policies or body of work poses a grave threat to the very purpose of elections. This mechanism of accountability cannot be tainted by blinding biases. Our politicians and repre sentatives must work for us, not in the interest of creating a cult of personality to sidestep ac countability.

Parasocial relationships can quickly find their way out of Twitter or Reddit and into the real world, where they insulate public figures from necessary criticism — but as digital citi zens we must be vigilant of this fact and work to extract ourselves from the cults of Harry Styles and others.

VINAY KHOSLA is a College sopho more studying history and political science from Baltimore, Md. His email is vkhosla@sas.upenn.edu.

PHOTO BY SOPHIA LEUNG

The Queen’s death is cause for Penn to consider its own troubled past

W hen the news of Queen Elizabeth II’s death broke, I, along with Brits everywhere and seemingly half of the rest of the world, was ren dered suddenly and surprisingly silent. The pre-planned obituaries and messages rolled out, sure, but in the moment, most of us were left stumped as we considered for the last time what the Queen really meant to us. The truth is, she represented so much more than a face on a throne. She was present on everyone’s TVs in her annual Christmas Day speech, and her memory lives all the way down to the few pound coins I still carry around in my pocket. (Just in case I need them — you never know.) She was an untouchable leader and global icon.

But while the Queen is someone who I was proud to have representing me, her death has once again led me to reconsider my feelings on the Royals as a whole. Unfortunately, while they’re the cultural and diplomatic faces of the country, the ruling royal family is ultimately a deeply prob lematic institution that continues to represent the United Kingdom’s past of abuse of power, both domestically and abroad. There are, of course, the scandals, which are far too pervasive to ignore: There’s Prince Philip’s (the Queen’s late hus band) well-documented racist and sexist remarks, or Prince Andrew’s (her son) all-but-admitted grooming of a 17-year-old girl (Did I mention one of his friends being a certain Jeffrey Epstein?), and, of course, Princess Diana, a woman who was manipulated into falling in love with the whole family before being tossed aside with no remark about her convenient death once she’d produced an heir — even after she had become more adored than the rest of them put together.

But while what they do can be a serious issue, it’s more what they represent that’s the problem. They were, after all, once called the “Imperial Family” — their continued rule over much of the Commonwealth serves less as a signal of friend ship, and more as a reminder of who used to be the colonisers versus who used to be the colonised.

The worldwide power and renown they’ve gained is far from a product of Elizabeth’s good grace and manners; rather, it is a legacy of an Empire that brutally oppressed millions of people for hun dreds of years. (Many Northern Irish and fellow Scottish people would argue that this oppression continues to this day, but I digress.) That past is something that we have to atone for; however, the Windsors’ dominion only serves to perpetu ate it. The protests surrounding Will and Kate’s recent visit to Jamaica and Belize showed that

their so-called “subjects” are growing less and less patient with their presence. With Elizabeth’s death bringing her less-than-popular son Charles to the throne, I think that it’s time that the United Kingdom had a serious reckoning with who we want to be and how we want to present ourselves to the world.

These reflections aren’t unique to the United Kingdom, however; I knew I’d be encountering a similar sense of a problematic institutional past long before I actually got to Penn. A few months after I settled into my place here, a good friend of mine sent me an Instagram page called @segrega tion_by_design. They were doing a series on the forced upheaval of the Black Bottom, the thriving 78% Black neighbourhood, which Penn worked with the authorities to clear out in order to make space for University City.

The legacy of this societal damage sadly con tinues today with the push for the removal of the University City Townhomes, one of the last rem nants of the Black Bottom, as residents are once again being forced out of their homes with little notice and nowhere else to go. The University, meanwhile, which has billions of dollars in wealth and continues to benefit from the dismantling of that community, is silently sitting and watching. Penn has been given the chance to come to terms with and begin to fix the historic wrongs on which it was established by stepping in and saving the Townhomes; this would help to stop the past from repeating itself. Unlike my Royal Family, who I know full well to be incapable of such fundamen tal change, I hope the choice that our university makes is the right one.

Just as the United Kingdom owes atonement to the rest of the Commonwealth, Penn owes the pro tection of the UC Townhomes to its community in West Philadelphia. We all have the opportunity to choose the type of institutions we want to be: ones that ignore, and in doing so, perpetuate the sins of our past, or ones that work with those we’ve wronged to build a better future. Though I loved Elizabeth in many ways, I doubt the latter is what she would have wanted; however, I know that it is what Diana would have. I’m sure you can guess who the Queen of my heart truly was.

ALEX BAXTER is a junior exchange student from the University of Edinburgh studying phi losophy, politics, and economics. His email is ajgb@sas.upenn.edu.

Take charge of your Penn education

GUEST COLUMN | Student voice is at the heart of shaping what we want our educational experience at Penn to be

W e all come to the University of Pennsylva nia from different backgrounds, interests, goals, and experiences, but there’s one thing we all share in our coming here: we want to receive a Penn education. This often means research, access to cutting edge professors, a challenging yet rewarding suite of coursework, an endless array of things to study. At the same time, our Penn education can be full of roadblocks and dis appointments; when we arrive here, we are faced with a million opportunities, but also the fact that everything we were promised upon admission to our university isn’t always fulfilled. Criticism and changemaking can be the greatest act of love — we ask for change in our community because we want it to be the best that it can be.

The Student Committee on Undergraduate Edu cation, or SCUE, was the first branch of student government at Penn. Founded in 1965, we were created as a merger between the men’s and wom en’s student governments, which led to the full

integration of the men’s and women’s colleges at Penn in 1974. The effort was spearheaded by 1966 College graduate Judith Rodin, who would go on to be president of the University. Today, SCUE serves as the education policy branch of student government, acting as advocates for student inter ests and advisors to faculty and administration in revising education policy.

We’ve spearheaded projects from Take Your Professor to Lunch to the development of Penn Course Review, and have influenced adminis trative decisions like the extension of pass/fail grading during the COVID-19 pandemic, revamp of Penn InTouch to Path@Penn, and the creation of Fall Break. Every year, we publish the Road map to Penn, and have a publication history that encompasses many other aspects of undergraduate education, including our Roadmap to Research, Wellness Bright Paper, Analysis of Holistic Ed ucation, and assessment of Penn’s Half-Credit Course offerings.

Recently, SCUE has worked on the Bridge to Math Program, developing a marginalized commu nities studies program, increasing civic engagement, improving advising, and creating TA and professor wellness training programs, among others.

Additionally, every five years, SCUE publishes our White Paper, composed of research on stu dent initiatives, an audit of the current state of undergraduate education at Penn, and proposed solutions and changes to resolve problems at Penn. It’s addressed to the president of the University and is circulated widely among administration and faculty, becoming a touchpoint for the devel opment and revision of education policy at Penn for the next five years. We published our most recent White Paper in 2020, and are currently in the process of planning and conducting prelimi nary research for our 2025 publication.

Since the pandemic, many of SCUE’s initia tives have been disrupted; with the constantly evolving educational landscape in response to the

pandemic, change and advocacy became reaction ary rather than progressive. This week, SCUE is re-launching our first Education Week since the fall of 2019 as we as a Penn community transi tion out of the pandemic and ask ourselves what we want the future of our education to be. With President Liz Magill’s inauguration at the end of this week, we are entering a new era of education at Penn — this gives us a unique opportunity to ask for the changes we want to see and play a vital role in shaping the future of our school.

All this being said, SCUE cannot advocate for the student voice without your feedback; we want to focus our energies on projects that are impor tant to the student body. If there’s something you want to see change or improve in your Penn edu cation, we want to hear it. However, that requires speaking up and getting engaged — it’s up to us as students to take charge of our education at Penn.

While it’s easy to get wrapped up in the extracurriculars, social life, networking, preprofessionalism, and everything else that colors our undergraduate lives at Penn, it’s important to remember that we’re all here for one reason: cut ting-edge education. This week (as well as every week) SCUE asks you to reflect on what under graduate education means to you and speak up about what you want to see grow and change in your education at Penn.

This week, find SCUE on Locust and tell us about your favorite class you’ve taken here, or the best professor you’ve had and what they’ve done to make your Penn education special. Or, share your frustrations, the things you want to challenge or see uprooted within undergraduate education. The SCUE website contains a live feedback form where you can communicate with us the initia tives you’d like to see and issues you’d like to see brought to the table in conversations with admin istrators. You can also find live surveys for our various projects to provide direct feedback about your undergraduate education experience. We’ll also be holding events, including a study break on Monday night, an Academically Based Commu nity Service course Panel co-hosted by the Netter Center, Wellness Community Conversation, and Bridge to Math Study Hall. You can see the full schedule here.

Our education at Penn is incredibly valuable, one of the best in the world. But with that comes a demand for accountability for the promise of what our education could be, and advocacy for what we as students believe it should be. This week, join SCUE in standing up for your vision of undergrad uate education at Penn.

A BRIT ABROAD | Penn, like the United Kingdom, must atone for its mistakes

DESIGN BY TYLER KLIEM

THE STUDENT COMMITTEE ON UNDER GRADUATE EDUCATION (SCUE) is the education policy branch of Penn Student Government whose mission is to improve undergraduate education at Penn. You can contact the SCUE Steering Committee at scuedolphin@gmail.com.

PHOTO BY MAX MESTER

ALLYSON NELSON Staff Reporter

College senior Elizabeth Meisenzahl competed on last Wednesday’s episode of “Jeopardy!” on ABC.

Meisenzahl, a reporter for The Daily Pennsylvanian, appeared as a contestant after following the hit game show for many years. Despite falling into a negative total early in the episode, she came in second place to nine-day winner Cris Pannullo with a total of $10,001 — taking home the $2,000 prize for finishing as the runner-up.

“Jeopardy!” was a frequent occurrence in Meisen zahl’s life growing up. She watched the show with her family every night and discussed the results the follow ing day with her school’s trivia team coach. She decided to take the qualifying test “on a whim” last spring, she said, and got a call a few months later asking her to fly out to California to film the show.

To prepare for the game, Meisenzahl rewatched old episodes of “Jeopardy!” that her family had recorded on their TV, focusing on the science and art categories. She filmed the episode two months ago in mid-August, an ex perience she got to share with her mother, as the show is allowing a live studio audience once again after temporar ily suspending it during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“They’re letting people back in the audience again, so my mom came with me, which was really fun. She got to watch all the games and see the whole studio and every thing, too,” Meisenzahl said.

Meisenzahl said that while the filming process was tiring because the show films five episodes at once, she enjoyed getting to know the other contestants during breaks in the show. A highlight of her “Jeopardy!” ex perience was meeting Ken Jennings, a former longtime “Jeopardy!” contestant and current host of the game show.

Meisenzahl is not the first Penn student to compete on the hit trivia show in recent history. In February, then-Col lege senior Mehek Boparai, a former 34th Street editor, came in second place in her “Jeopardy! National College Championship” debut, winning a prize of $10,000.

Overall, Meisenzahl said she was excited that she could be a contestant on “Jeopardy!” and is grateful that she was able to be a part of the show she grew up watching.

“I was really nervous about it before, but now, I am just really happy. It was fun, and I had a good time,” Meisen zahl said. “I got to watch it with my friends, and everyone was super nice about it.”

PHOTO FROM ELIZABETH MEISENZAHL

College Senior Elizabeth Meisenzahl on “Jeopardy!”

Penn transfer students find community and resources amid a challenging transition

DAVID ZHANG

Penn’s transfer students — which comprise the second-highest transfer student community in the Ivy League — report finding resources and com munity despite a challenging transition.

Every year, Penn admits around 160 trans fers, second only to Cornell. While schools such as Harvard and Princeton usually enroll under 20 transfers, students said that the large size of the Penn transfer cohort has allowed for better support infrastructure and a better bonding ex perience.

“I’m proud of the size of the transfer cohort at Penn. We enroll well over 100 every year,” John McLaughlin, vice dean of admissions, wrote in an email to The Daily Pennsylvanian.

“We explicitly preserve some space in our com munity to welcome transfer students because they enrich our campus with their varied experiences and interests,” McLaughlin added.

Penn’s infrastructure to support transfer stu dents includes the Transfer Student Organization — a student-founded group that aims to help

students adjust to Penn both socially and aca demically. It offers resources such as a mentorship program, events throughout the year, and tools to help keep track of academic progress.

College sophomore Gabe Lipschutz, who is a transfer student from Washington University in St. Louis, said he was able to meet new people during the activities TSO held during New Student Ori entation. He added that one of the Transfer Peers

Helping Integrate New Students is his resident ad visor, and the two have become close.

However, he said, the transition is not as smooth as the typical first-year experience.

“Everybody already has their friend groups, and you just have to kind of mingle and get in volved,” Lipschutz said. “So it’s very helpful to have a few friends that I met during transfer week

partnership between the groups.

By centralizing mental health organizations’ resources, the student leaders hope that those at Penn who are new to the wellness community will be exposed to more like-minded individu als and forge stronger connections.

Coalition for Wellness board member and College junior Steven-John Kounoupis said that the Coalition intends to “take on projects and discussions that get wellness more embedded into the definition of what a Penn student is.”

This can include research projects, discus sions, or panels with administration and faculty, as well as increased incorporation of mental health into class curriculums or advising of fices.

To Kounoupis, the perception that the admin istration doesn’t care about mental health and terms such as “Penn Face” are major problems concerning mental wellness on campus.

and a few friends that already go here from my high school.”

College sophomore David Deng — who trans ferred from the University of Texas at Austin — agreed that the transition presented challenges, but TSO was a source of support. Specifically, he said, transferring credits has been “a pain.”

“The biggest adjustment for me is getting used to PennNet’s Wi-Fi speed and the food at the dining halls, which I definitely took for granted at UT,” he said. “Honestly, I found the Transfer Student Orga nization has made settling in relatively painless, and I could not ask for better roommates. Just last week, our transfer floor had an amazing time at the cinema watching ‘Amsterdam.’”

Being a transfer student was especially difficult during the pandemic, according to Nursing senior

Michaela Ryan, who transferred from Adelphi Uni versity in fall 2020, a semester when Penn’s campus was shut down due to COVID-19.

“The only socialization I had was that after Span ish classes we would play ‘Among Us’ together,” Ryan said. “In spring 2021, I was on campus, but I had only met people in nursing clinicals and labs. I really feel like my first year at Penn was the fall of 2021.”

Despite the difficulties, Ryan still feels grateful for the friendliness of her fellow classmates and the close-knit nursing community.

In addition to blending in socially, some students reported finding Penn’s academic opportunities both more fulfilling and sometimes more challenging.

Lipschutz, who intends to pursue a physics major, finds that although his classes are more challenging than the ones at his old school, he can gather more resources here at Penn.

“There are more chances to communicate with faculty and staff one-on-one,” he said.

For Deng, the academic opportunities he saw with Penn’s philosophy, politics, and economics major were a major factor in his decision to transfer — along with exploring other parts of the country, as he had previously lived in Austin, Texas his whole life.

Lipschutz said that he enjoys being part of a more di verse student body, especially in terms of academic interests.

“[Washington University] was a great school for me in many regards, but I thought that the student body in terms of interests and majors and type of people were not really up my alley. It was a lot of premed and business people,” Lipschutz said.

Looking forward after Penn, Ryan hopes to make a difference in researching and eliminating health care inequity.

“I noticed a lot of health care inequity, a lot of abuse in the health care system. And I was like, ‘Oh, I really want to do research and solve some of these issues,’” Ryan said.

For Ryan, who is passionate about nursing research, making the decision to transfer was an easy one.

“I always wanted to go to Penn, which has the best nursing school in the world,” she said.

Student leaders have established the Penn Co alition for Wellness to address the fragmentation of different mental wellness groups.

Created in spring 2022, the Coalition is a partnership between eight groups — Penn Re flect, Active Minds, Penn Benjamins, Penn Walks 2 Wellness, Be Body Positive Penn, Icarus, RAPLine, Cogwell at Penn — as well as the SNF Paideia Program. The organization is currently in the process of gaining recogni tion from the Student Activities Council, Vice Provost of University Life, and Chief Wellness Officer Benoit Dubé.

The Coalition for Wellness aims to advocate for mental health initiatives, interact with the greater Penn community, and serve as a unified resource for mental health on campus.

The three main missions of the board, Co alition for Wellness Liaison and College junior Brinn Gammer said, are to “help people seeking help, seeking involvement [in wellness groups], and then seeking change.”

Falling attendance at events and decreased access to resources after COVID-19 prompted the student leaders of the eight organizations to unify, allowing them to collaborate in their shared missions of promoting mental health.

Co-President of Penn Reflect and College sophomore Venus Tian added that another aim of the Coalition is to “present a stronger voice to administration, a more organized, and less disjointed voice” with a formal and structured

With the Penn Coalition for Wellness, Kou noupis aspires for student leaders and mental health organizations to “unify our adminis tration, our faculty, and our student groups together to make one unified voice that spreads across campus.”

Penn Benjamins is one mental health orga nization that has partnered with the Coalition for Wellness. Penn Benjamins is a peer-to-peer counseling organization that aims to indi vidually support students, according to Penn Benjamins President and College junior Emily Huynh. For her, Penn Benjamins had a clear goal in joining the Coalition.

“The fragmentation has definitely not been helpful for us, and we kind of knew that and that’s why we wanted to team up to get a bigger voice out there,” she said.

Penn Reflect is another mental health organi zation that has partnered with the Coalition for Wellness. Co-President of Penn Reflect and Col lege sophomore Jessica Jia said that each month, they offer roundtable events aimed at promoting openness and wellness.

According to Tian, these monthly roundtable events center around “self-love and self-care, community and belonging, [and] stressing or anxiety.”

At the beginning of this semester, the Coali tion for Wellness sponsored multiple mental health events, including one at New Student Ori entation. They also supported the recent “Send Silence Packing” event, which was a national suicide prevention event.

PHOTO BY ANA GLASSMAN

at Penn Commons on Sept. 14, 2022.

PHOTO BY MAYA PRATT

The LOVE statue on Locust Walk on March 19, 2021.

In Photos:

Penn football’s undefeated first half

For

season

Dan

quarterback

has completed nearly 65% of his passes for over 1,200 yards and 11 touchdowns. And on

ground, senior tailback Trey Flowers has been

the heartbeat of a strong Quaker rushing attack, av eraging nearly five yards per carry this season. On defense, Penn has been holding opponents under 15 points per game, and has only surrendered nine total touchdowns. The front seven have tallied 19 sacks for 117 yards, good for second and first in the Ivy League, respectively.

Senior running back Trey Flowers runs past defenders on Sept. 17 at Franklin Field. Flowers rumbled for 73 total yards and a score in the season-opening victory.

BY ANNA VAZHAEPARAMBIL & CALEB CRAIN

Sophomore quarterback Aidan Sayin

performance

shootout against Lehigh

Joshua Casilli

Franklin Field. When Penn was without star back Trey Flowers

Cayenne,

catches

159 yards and a touchdown.

Senior running back Tysen Comizio tries to break a tackle at Franklin Field on Sept. 24. While the Quaker offense put up its worst performance of the season, the defense kept Lafayette off the board for all 60 minutes.

PHOTO BY ANNA VAZHAEPARAMBIL

PHOTO BY SAMANTHA TURNER

PHOTO BY ANNA VAZHAEPARAMBIL

PHOTO BY ANNA VAZHAEPARAMBIL

PHOTO BY ANNA VAZHAEPARAMBIL

weeks, giving

almost

far

year.

probably one of the better defensive fronts we’ll face all year.”

Through COVID-19 and a difficult injury, Penn volleyball senior middle hitter Elizabeth Ford has persevered to now become a staple piece for the Quakers.

After appearing in only one match her fresh man year and a sophomore season canceled by COVID-19, Ford hit the ground running during her junior year, starting in the team’s first three games, all of which Penn won. In the third game, Ford finished with a team-high of seven blocks and a career-high of eight kills. But Ford missed the rest of the season with a back injury, halting the momentum she had been building.

“It was my expectation that I could possibly never play again,” she said.

Throughout her recovery period, Ford stayed positive, always telling herself she was coming back to the game in due time, as her team, family, and coaches stayed by her side.

Fortunately for her, she has since recovered and returned to the lineup this season, contrib uting 33 kills and 40.5 points so far.

“While I wasn’t able to be on the court last year, I had ample opportunity for mental reps,” Ford said. “I watched so much volleyball, [and] my volleyball IQ got better. There was a moment there where I felt like a coach to my teammates, but they welcomed the feedback, and I have a great relationship with them, so now it’s just transitioned back to being an oncourt leader and player.”

Taking time off also gave Ford a new perspec tive on the sport and reinforced her passion for the game of volleyball.

“Having it taken away from me for so long made me realize how much I love the sport itself,” she said. “And I love the camaraderie of

it. Even when injury was a question, there was never a question of if I was going to leave the team. I was just going to step into a new role if that’s what it came to.”

Though volleyball became her beloved game of choice, Ford was always destined to play a sport, given her 6-foot-3 stature and her background coming from a football family.

“They’re

sound,

physical … on de fense,”

is …

said. “Their

In the first five games of the 2022 campaign, sophomore quarterback Aidan Sayin’s first year as a starter has been a huge driver behind the team’s success. The Quakers have been averag ing over 30 points per game, enough for second in the Ivy League, and their 11 passing touch downs lead the conference.

Last week against Columbia, Penn put up nearly 400 yards of total offense, led by 299 passing yards by Sayin, over half of which went to junior wideout Joshua Casilli.

And this potent offense could be getting major pieces back in time for this weekend’s matchup. Both senior running back Trey Flow ers, Penn’s leading rusher, and sophomore tight end Justin Cayenne missed last week’s game against Columbia due to injuries. But according to Priore, both of them have the chance to return against Yale.

“They’re both in a … probable world right now,” Priore said. “We’re hoping that they will be able to dress for the weekend.”

Despite the upcoming test, both Priore and Morris say that football’s hot streak has fueled a surge of positive emotions in the locker room. But the team is also taking care to remain focused.

“The biggest thing that some of the guys that have been here for a while want to do is to make sure everybody’s focused each and every day,” Morris said. “Regardless of what our record is … [we’re] just trying to get 1% better and win the day.”

The game will be at home at Franklin Field. Kickoff is at 1 p.m., and the game will be broad cast on NBC Sports Philadelphia or is available on streaming via ESPN+.

Returning from injury, Penn volleyball captain Elizabeth Ford carves her own on-court role

Basketball and volleyball were the clear op tions, and she chose the latter.

“The height just kind of made volleyball obvious,” Ford said. “I was never good at bas ketball. The girls in my grade were all headed to this travel club volleyball thing, and I thought I might as well try out — I have the height. And it stuck.”

For the first seven years of her volleyball career, starting at age 11, her team competed at her father’s alma mater, Northwestern Uni versity, which also happens to be right in her backyard in Evanston, Ill. She played there with her now-Penn teammate Maddie McGregor, and with both Quakers in their senior years, this is their 11th season together.

“It’s nice to have a constant like Maddie,” Ford said. “I don’t know volleyball without Maddie.”

On Penn’s team, Ford serves as a captain and one of only three seniors, which creates a differ ent pressure to run the court.

“I don’t think the title [of] captain has really changed much at all,” she said. “I think now it’s

just more defined … I can act as a liaison for the younger girls with coaches and staff if they need help finding their words.”

“I’ve been able to become articulate enough and sure enough in my self-advocacy — that will translate to the rest of my life.”

Even amid setbacks and injury, Ford has been unwavering in her commitment to the team, and she’s kept that mentality in her senior season. The middle hitter feels she became mentally tougher through her challenges, and when she’s playing, she is able to understand that it really is just a game.

“When I used to be so far in it, I couldn’t remove myself from those pressure situations,” Ford said. “But now I understand it’s not life or death, and I have a much better vision of the court after having gotten those mental reps in. I see holes and tendencies that I never would have recognized as a younger player.”

With just seven games left in her final season with Penn volleyball, don’t be surprised if Ford translates those mental reps into more impres sive game results.

PHOTO BY ANNA VAZHAEPARAMBIL

Now-senior captain Elizabeth Ford blocks a hit from Canisius during the game at the Palestra on Sept. 4, 2021.

PUZZLE BY RUTH BLOOMFIELD MARGOLIN

PHOTO BY ANNA VAZHAEPARAMBIL

Senior linebacker Adam Conyer fights through a block against Columbia on Oct. 15.

Despite debilitating injury, Jordan Ortiz manages to thrive as sprint football cornerback

BECCAN SIMON Sports Reporter

You probably wouldn’t expect a guy with seven screws and a six-inch plate in his left ankle to be playing football. And even if he did, you probably wouldn’t expect him to be playing cornerback, a po sition that arguably requires some of the quickest and most agile feet on the field.

But if he somehow managed to accomplish both of those things, and he found himself playing an already difficult position with an injury that would seem like a cornerback’s kryptonite, he would probably need to have already played football for a number of years.

Well, that’s not the case for Jordan Ortiz, a sophomore on the Penn sprint football team from Westfield, N.J., who suffered a brutal injury in the summer before his senior season of high school. Up until his junior year, he’d actually never touched the football field.

“I thought I’d be a backup on [junior varsity], and then I was pulled up,” Ortiz said. “After preseason camp, I was a varsity starter. So that was pretty cool after not playing football at all.”

Ortiz’s preseason the following year, however, did not go quite as well, as he jumped to defend a pass and came down on his left ankle in the wrong di rection, forcing him to have emergency surgery that included seven screws and a six-inch plate.

Ortiz’s recovery was arduous. With titanium now in his ankle, he had to relearn how to walk and was doing physical therapy for around seven months. From there, Ortiz had five to six months to learn how to play football again.

At the time, Ortiz had coincidentally just started talking with Penn’s sprint football coaching staff.

“I knew I had wanted to go to Penn since I was a kid. ... My mom [was] just randomly scrolling through the Penn Athletics website [and] goes, ‘Oh, there’s this thing called sprint football.’”

Ortiz then decided to send in his “very limited tape” and academic records. From there, his discus sions with the team began.

“One of the first times I ever talked to coach [Jerry McConnell] was when I was going in for surgery. … It was a good phone call. … I just didn’t think I’d be able to play again.”

But somehow, he managed, and Ortiz became a starter at Penn in his first year, finishing the season with the second-most pass breakups in the Colle giate Sprint Football League. Now a sophomore, he’s continued the same strong performance. In

, from page 16

against Columbia — without starting running back Trey Flowers — showed that the unit is able to compete in the Ivy League in a way it wasn’t able to last season.

I got a lot wrong in my season prediction, but there was one particular area where I was dead on: The only current Penn defensive player I

the Quakers’ game last week against Chestnut Hill, Ortiz amassed two interceptions, earning him CSFL Defensive Player of the Week.

Ortiz attributes his recent success to his diligence with film and its impact on the field.

“The mental aspect of the game is the most im portant. … [W]e’re all the same size, [with] pretty similar ability, but I think what separates the good from the great is how much time you put in outside

quarterback to just five total completions on 21 throws, resulting in his benching for much of the second half.

In the run game, meanwhile, Penn’s defensive front last season ranked third-to-last in the Ivy League. This time, the Quakers have improved to third in the conference, marking a welcome growth for a unit that lost defensive lineman Prince Emili and linebacker Brian O’Neill after last season.

In all key aspects of the game, this team looks to have done a 180 from what it was last season,

of practice,” he said.

He’d learned that lesson while he was sidelined during his senior year, when the most he could do was watch YouTube videos on his phone and look at old film.

With obvious limitations on Ortiz’s physical mo bility, dedicating his time to the mental aspect of the game was a new focus. He continues to utilize film extensively even now that he’s healthy. But even with

such an impressive comeback story, it’s hard not to wonder why he’s still playing football. Health risks aside, you’d assume the football field might be a bit traumatizing.

Even after a brutal football injury had derailed his senior year of high school and caused him to be, as he puts it, “at [his] lowest,” what motivates him to continue stepping on that field?

“To prove to myself that I can keep going.”

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mentioned by name was senior defensive back Kendren Smith, and on Saturday, he had what was easily the best performance of his career.

Smith forced a whopping three Columbia turn overs, stripping the ball away from the Lions on two separate occasions and undercutting Colum bia quarterback Joe Green’s end zone throw to snag the second interception of his career.

The defensive back was not a part of much of the Quakers’ run last season — sidelined with an injury past Week 3 — and his return, along with a seeming improvement in all aspects of coordinator Bob Benson’s unit, has this team looking like an Ivy title contender.

Watching these first five games, it feels like all of the quarterbacks Penn has faced often can’t find any open targets or don’t have enough time in the pocket to wait for one to open up. The Quakers rank first in the Ivy League in defensive passing efficiency, with just 52.4% of opposing team’s throws resulting in completions.

On Saturday, Penn held Columbia’s starting

and, barring a dramatic end-of-season drought, the Quakers will finish well above .500. After this week, they might even rank in the top 25 in the FCS.

In terms of Ivy title contention, though, Penn still has Princeton, Harvard, and Yale left on the schedule. Three of Penn’s wins so far have been non-conference, and two have been against con ference teams that look significantly worse than they were last season.

This group still has a lot to prove. But if the team keeps performing as harmoniously as it did on Saturday, there’s no question whether it can at least hang with the top Ivy contenders for the cov eted conference championship.

MATTHEW FRANK is a Senior Sports Editor for The Daily Pennsylvanian and is a College junior from Miami studying English. He can be reached at frank@thedp.com.

PHOTO BY ANNA VAZHAEPARAMBIL

The Penn football team’s entrance before the game against Columbia at Franklin Field on Oct. 15.

Ortiz earned CSFL Player of the Week following a two-INT performance

PHOTO BY ANNA VAZHAEPARAMBIL

Sophomore cornerback Jordan Ortiz runs the ball down the field during the game against Chestnut Hill at Franklin Field on Oct. 7.

PHOTOS BY ANNA VAZHAEPARAMBIL DESIGN BY SOPHIA LIU

HOME HALFWAY

CALEB CRAIN Sports Associate

The challenge of limiting the Yale offense that has put up nearly 30 points per game will fall onto a Penn defense standing second in the Ivy League in points allowed. Additionally, the Quaker defense has been stout against the run, a preseason priority of defensive coordinator Bob Benson.

“We’re not just playing against 10 people, we’re playing against 11 and having an elusive quarterback always makes it a big challenge,” senior linebacker

Garrett Morris said. “Focusing on what we do best and stopping the run … [is] going to be a big test.”

On the other side of the ball, Yale’s defense ranks around the middle of the Ivy League in most key metrics. The Bulldogs have held opponents to 21.6 points and 339 yards per game in the first half of the season.

Where the Bulldogs have excelled this season is in the air. Yale leads the conference with barely over

See YALE, page 14

Why Penn football is exceeding all expectations — including my own

Priore has been building a well-rounded brigade, usurping lukewarm expectations even within the Penn sports staff

MATTHEW FRANK Sports Editor

At the halfway point of the season, Penn foot ball now sits at a perfect 5-0 record, and I have some atoning to do.

Prior to the season, I predicted that Penn would go 5-5 — a modest two-game improvement over last season’s dismal 3-7 output.

Well, barring a catastrophic collapse in the second half of the season, the Quakers are going to eclipse that total. And if this Saturday’s blow out victory over Columbia is any indication, they might surpass what my more optimistic colleagues predicted, and maybe — just maybe — have a shot at winning an Ivy title.

I said Penn would go 5-5 primarily because it felt like the offense needed another year to reach its fullest potential. New offensive coordinator Dan Swanstrom was just months into the job, and he was tasked with turning around an Ivy-worst offense and developing an attack centered around sophomore quarterback Aidan Sayin, who looked promising but was still very early in his trajectory.

While the offense isn’t the unit carrying the team this season, Swanstrom has devised a scheme that finally works around its sophomore signal-caller. In the five games Sayin played in 2021, the highest number of receivers he targeted in a single game was seven. This season, however, Sayin hasn’t thrown to fewer than eight receivers once, more often targeting nine or 10, as he did on Saturday.

The diversity in the receiving corps has been supplemented by shorter throws, as Sayin’s yards per completion has dropped by over a yard from last season. On Saturday, this trend continued, but Penn’s quarterback proved his deep ball abilities in the second quarter with a 45-yard strike up the middle for a touchdown past three Columbia de fenders.

The receiver that caught the score was junior wideout Josh Casilli, who finished with a careerhigh 11 catches and 159 yards, cementing himself as a viable offensive weapon after three quiet weeks in which he and Sayin “miss[ed] each other by a slim margin,” according to Casilli.

The Quakers’ offense struggled through the first three games of the season, and, even on Sat urday, there were still some missed throws and difficulty establishing the run. But though the 59point explosion at Georgetown might’ve been due to the Hoyas’ lackluster defense, its performance

No. 16 men’s soccer ‘staying hungry’

The Quakers are on track to tackle an unfinished goal of last season: Claiming the highest seat in the Ivy League

Since the beginning of the season in early Sep tember, Penn men’s soccer (9-1-2, 3-0 Ivy) has built an impressive record, winning nine of its first 12 games and all three of its first Ivy League games, including Saturday’s huge contest at No. 15 Cornell, which the Quakers took 3-2. Currently, the Quakers sit atop the Ancient Eight heading into their final four games of the season.

All of Penn’s remaining contests will see the Quakers match up against long-time Ivy League rivals. The team will host Brown (6-3-2, 0-1-2) at Penn Park before traveling to Cambridge to face Harvard (6-4-3, 0-1-2). The Quakers will then play their last home game against Colum bia (1-5-5, 0-0-3) before concluding their season with a final away match against last season’s Ivy League champion, Princeton (5-4-2, 1-1-1).

With a prolific attack and a reliable defense, Penn has been able to close out difficult games against quality opposition this year. Last season, the Quakers only managed one in-conference win despite having many solid performances.

“Wins and losses come down to the ability to continue to make critical plays at critical times during difficult moments,” coach Brian Gill said. “Soccer is one of those games where you can play well and lose. We felt like we didn’t play poorly after some games last season; we just didn’t get some of the critical plays we needed to in order to get the wins that we were looking for.

“With the team being a year older and having more experience, we’ve been able to deal with

games differently than maybe we had in the past.”

Penn’s recent victory against No. 15 Cornell solidified the Quakers’ position as the sole leader in the conference, establishing them as the un disputed team to beat heading into the remaining games of Ivy League play. As seen in the match against Cornell, Penn’s games against conference rivals are typically intense, action-packed, and attract large crowds.

“The Ivy League breeds a rivalry within almost every single team in the conference,” Gill said. “Playing against one of the other schools in the league should be something that our play ers walk away from having a good memory of. I think this year, we’re just trying to be excited about putting together really good memories and relishing opportunities to play and live these big moments. The players have done a great job of taking the season game by game and competing as a team.”

The Quakers are looking to continue im proving on last season’s results by securing key victories against rivals. After last year’s losses against Princeton, Harvard, and Brown, Penn is looking to prove itself against some of the histor ically strongest soccer teams in the conference.

“Whether we’re playing an in-conference opponent or not, we do our due diligence to scout our opponents to try to get a sense for what they’ll try and do against us,” Gill said. “Looking at the remaining schedule, teams like Princeton, Brown, and Columbia, among others, are all good enough to win the league, so we try not to fixate on just one team.”

Although Penn is widely seen as the current fa vorite to finish first in the Ivy League standings, this last upcoming stretch of games will bring new tests for the Quakers to endure. Penn’s suc cess so far this season has given the players and coaching staff a new perspective on the team’s long-term goals.

“There’s a lot of people that would love to be in our shoes at this point in the season, and we’re really trying to impress upon our team that they’ve worked really hard to get to this point,” Gill said. “We want to continue to uti lize the experiences we’ve had and acknowledge some of our successes. We don’t want to rest on the fact that we’ve achieved some of the things we have to date. Instead, we want to keep going along our way in a humble manner, staying

hungry for what the next opportunity may pres ent.”

Many teams in the Ivy League have the skill necessary to challenge for first place, but the Quakers’ strong start to in-conference play has already given them a considerable record advan tage over most other contenders. Consistency and quality will be crucial for the Penn men’s soccer squad in its last stretch of Ivy League games — starting with the Oct. 22 match against Brown.

Penn football puts undefeated record to the test with homecoming clash vs. Yale

ANTONIO MELONI Sports Reporter

PHOTO BY ANNA VAZHAEPARAMBIL

Sophomore defender Leo Burney dribbles the ball down the field during a game at Vidas Field against Drexel on Oct. 18.