TUESDAY, JANUARY 16, 2018 VOL. CXXXIV NO. 2
THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
FOUNDED 1885
Students displaced by storm damage
Cold weather has caused pipe bursting and water flooding in campus buildings JAMES MEADOWS Staff Reporter
Some Penn students returned to campus from break to find their on-campus and off-campus residences flooded from pipe bursts. After a “bomb cyclone” and a week of temperatures often below freezing, major transportation delays, and hazardous road conditions, these students join the slew of Philadelphia residents who have experienced burst pipes over the past week. All three on-campus high rises — Harrison College House, Rodin College House, and Harnwell College House — experienced pipe bursts and water flooding, various residents, front desk staff, and security guards confirmed. Many Greek houses have also experienced pipe bursts and water damage, such as Alpha Delta Pi, Sigma Delta Tau, Sigma Nu, and Delta Kappa Epsilon. Students living in off-campus residents have experienced significant pipe burst issues as well. Vice President for Public Safety Maureen Rush said that pipes bursting and water flooding are to be expected with the frigid cold weather. Rush confirmed that there had already been 12-14 reports of burst pipes in the college houses and in various academic buildings that reached the Division of Public Safety as of Jan. 8, two days before classes began and likely before many students returned to the campus residences. The result of this water damage is very costly. Rush said the first priority is safety, but that necessitates the hiring of more housekeeping staff to repair any damage and bringing in staff from Penn’s Facilities and Real Estate Services to repair the pipes. Additionally, because the fire sprinklers system is directly linked to the water pipe system, the potential for the sprinkler system to be ineffective is hazardous. All on-campus and off-campus houses that reported pipe damage are thus put on “Fire Watch,” when DPS assigns security officers to each building. Rush said that this occurs whenever the Penn SEE PIPE BURSTS PAGE 3
GILLIAN DIEBOLD | DESIGN EDITOR BACKGROUND IMAGE FROM PENN SLAVERY PROJECT
Many of Penn’s founding trustees had connections to the slave trade GIOVANNA PAZ Staff Reporter
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n recent years, as various universities stepped forth to acknowledge early institutional ties to slavery, Penn remained steadfast in asserting that it does not have a history of direct involvement with slavery or the slave trade. Now, new undergraduate research places this assertion into doubt. An independent student study, supported by Penn’s History Department, has found that many of the University’s founding trust-
ees had substantial connections to the slave trade. After Georgetown University openly acknowledged its own ties to the slave trade in 2016, many colonial universities were placed under pressure to re-examine their own history with slavery. At the time, Penn Director of Media Relations Ron Ozio told The Philadelphia Tribune that “Penn has explored this issue several times over the past few decades and found no direct University involvement with slavery or the slave trade.” However, throughout the course of last year, student researchers who were part of the Penn History of Slavery Project discovered that out of Penn’s 28 founding trustees
who were investigated (there are 126 founding trustees in total), 20 of them held slaves between 1769 and 1800 and had financial ties to the slave trade. The group has not found evidence that the University, as an institution, owned slaves. These ambitious efforts to confront Penn’s colonial past were spearheaded by College seniors Caitlin Doolittle and VanJessica Gladney, 2017 College graduate Matthew Palczynski, and College sophomores Dillon Kersh and Brooke Krancer, who is also the social media director at The Daily Pennsylvanian. These students worked closely with SEE TRUSTEES PAGE 3
Penn joins Phila. to commemorate annual MLK Day of Service Events began on Jan. 15 and will end Jan. 31 MADELEINE NGO Staff Reporter
Members of the Penn community and West Philadelphians used their day off to honor Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy by participating in a joint Day of Service. The day’s executive planning committee organized numerous free events for the annual MLK Commemorative Symposium on Social Change coordinated by the African-American Resource Center beginning on Jan. 15, with the Day of Service, and ending Jan. 31. The University hosted its first official Day of Service in 1996, incorporating programming that
had already been coordinated by the African-American Resource Center. Former Penn President Judith Rodin declared MLK day an official closing holiday for the University in 2001. The committee, which includes various members of the Penn community, aims to uphold MLK’s legacy by fostering inclusivity and discussions of public education. “I think Martin Luther King’s legacy is about really looking at structures of oppression and how we can dismantle that by collectively working together,” Haley Pilgrim, co-president of the Black Graduate and Professional Student Assembly and third-year Ph.D. student in Sociology, said. This year’s Day of Service began with a free breakfast featur-
LULU WANG | ASSOCIATE PHOTO EDITOR
The Day of Service included various events, such as “A Pocketful of Toiletries,” “Penn Reads,” and “Finding Your Path to STEM.”
ing a speech from Pennsylvania state Rep. Christopher Rabb (DPa.), who received his master’s
degree from Penn in 2006. Attendees were invited to participate in events throughout the
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Friends and family of the College sophomore hold memorials in his honor. PAGE 7
“If Amazon is serious about making Philadelphia its new home, we can afford to make a few demands of our own to ensure that the resulting benefits are shared by all citizens.” PAGE 4
Both men’s and women’s basketball swept the New York Ivies, in the first Ivy League weekend. Forward AJ Brodeur and center Eleah Parker were named Ivy Players of the Week for their efforts. BACKPAGE FOLLOW US @DAILYPENN FOR THE LATEST UPDATES ONLINE AT THEDP.COM
rest of the day including “A Pocketful of Toiletries” where volunteers made bags from t-shirts and filled them with socks, gloves, and toiletries for women at local shelters. Organizers stressed the importance of improving public education in the West Philadelphia area. “It really should not matter what your family means are or what you were born into, but that a good education should always be accessible,” Director of Financial Aid for the School of Social Policy & Practice Karima Williams said. At “Penn Reads,” volunteers recorded themselves reading children’s books to promote literacy in the community. Marguerite Miller, a public relations co-chair for the sympo-
sium and editor of the Almanac, said participants recorded more than 100 books. She added that other members of the symposium committee would send the books and their recordings to local public elementary schools and day care centers. “Finding Your Path to STEM” targeted public high school students. A panel of eight professionals answered questions for students about pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields. The students were given a free lunch and were invited to attend a college fair to speak with faculty and administrators from Penn, Drexel University, and the University of the Sciences. SEE MLK PAGE 3
A NOTE TO OUR READERS:
Due to MLK Day, the DP will be printed on Tuesday and Thursday this week. We will return to our regular publishing schedule of Monday and Thursday starting Jan. 22. SEND NEWS TIPS TO NEWSTIP@THEDP.COM CONTACT US: 215-422-4640