February 22, 2018

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THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2018 VOL. CXXXIV NO. 13

THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

Taco Bell employee fired for using a racial slur

The employee used the racial slur to describe a Penn student on his receipt NAOMI ELEGANT Staff Reporter

The Taco Bell employee who used a racial slur to describe a Penn student was terminated from his job, according to branch manager Dontae Freeman and confirmed via email by a media representative from Taco Bell. “We do not tolerate this behavior. This employee no longer works for the brand, and the franchisee is retraining its staff to ensure this incident will not happen again. Management has reached out and apologized directly to the customer,” Taco Bell Public Relations wrote in an email to The Daily Pennsylvanian. In Young Lee, a first-year Ph.D. student, visited the Taco Bell at 1037 Chestnut St. at approximately 1:30 a.m. Saturday, after a night out with his friends. He noticed that one of the cashiers had used a racial slur to describe him on his food receipt. Lee detailed the incident in a Facebook post. He wrote that he told the cashier his name was Steve for convenience. He wrote he was surprised and “infuriated” upon noticing that the cashier had also written “Chink,” a derogatory term used to describe “a person of Chinese birth or descent.” Freeman, who does not work weekends, said he did not witness the incident. He said that the employee had been terminated, but could not provide any more details about when the firing occurred. Lee said that he “didn’t think it was necessary” for the employee to be fired and was worried that the termination might make the employee “more resentful, rather than acknowledging he’s done

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The heart of the team

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How senior captain Darnell Foreman has led Penn men’s basketball to the brink of a championship

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Gutmann addresses rescinding of honorary degrees

She discussed the decision to rescind Wynn’s and Cosby’s honorary degrees REBECCA TAN Executive Editor

Penn President Amy Gutmann has said that the University’s decision to rescind the honorary degrees granted to Steve Wynn and Bill Cosby was “very logical” given the circumstances. Speaking for the first time on the issue since Penn made its announcement on Wynn and Cosby two weeks ago, Gutmann said revoking the two honorary degrees came as a natural follow-up to the decision to remove Wynn’s name from “Wynn Commons,” the public area outside Houston Hall. Wynn, a former Penn trustee and a 1963 College graduate, was accused by multiple people of sexual misconduct in January, sparking a strong response from the Penn community that eventually led to the Board of Trustees stripping a former member of his honors. “The group [of University leaders] unanimously recommended that we take Mr. Wynn’s name off of Wynn Commons. And once we did that, it was important also to rescind his honorary degree. And once we did that, we thought it was also important to rescind Bill Cosby’s honorary degree based on similarly serious and credible allegations,” Gutmann said in a 30-minute interview with The Daily Pennsylvanian. “It’s very logical.” Cosby, who has now been accused of sexual misconduct by over 50 women, received a Doctorate of Laws from Penn in 1990. In 2015 and 2016, many of these allegations came to light and a series of civil lawsuits were

SEE TACO BELL PAGE 3

SEE GUTMANN PAGE 8

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Penn immune to widespread flu epidemic

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Students slam Penn’s sexual assault policy at Open Forum

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Philadelphia has tracked 47,752 cases in Pennsylvania this season

Provost Pritchett addressed these issues in an interview the day before

AVNI KATARIA Staff Reporter

As February wears on, the influenza virus has officially returned in full force to Pennsylvania. The state is experiencing its worst flu season in several years, experts say. As the flu enters week nine of a 16-week cycle, the Philadelphia Department of Public Health has tracked 47,752 reported cases in Pennsylvania compared to 26,675 cases this time last year. There have also already been 91 flu-related deaths this season — a significant rise from 38 at this point in the 2017 season. However, Penn doctors say campus is faring pretty well in comparison to years past. Despite the fact that the Pennsylvania Department of Health has tracked the high increase in influenza cases this year, Executive Director of Penn Student Health Service Giang Nguyen said SHS was seeing “a fairly similar volume of cases as in busy seasons in the past.” Experts say the reason for this overall rise across the state may be ineffective flu vaccines. Many flu patients had already been vaccinated, but the vaccine seems to be ineffective against the particularly aggressive strain, H3N2, currently

MANLU LIU & SARAH FORTINSKY Deputy News Editor & Senior News Editor

THOMAS MUNSON Senior Sports Reporter

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f a single ball is heard bouncing in the Palestra, chances are that senior guard Darnell Foreman is getting his early workout in. In fact, he’s probably already been there for an hour or two. “We automatically know it’s him,” said junior guard Antonio Woods. “I want to be the first person working on my game,” Foreman explained. “Not just against my teammates, but anybody in the country.” As a freshman in 2014, Foreman was already an early riser, but veteran guard Tony Hicks pushed him to go the extra mile.

SEE FLU PAGE 3

“I would always come to the gym at 8 o’clock and he’d be there at 7. So I was like ‘alright I’m going to come to the gym at 7:30’ and he’d already be in there,” Foreman recalled. “He got that from Zack Rosen and Zack Rosen got that from the previous guys. It just carried along.” Despite sharing their drive, Foreman has an opportunity to separate himself from the likes of Hicks and Rosen. Unlike his predecessors, he can complete the quest to bring an Ivy League title back to Philadelphia. SEE FOREMAN PAGE 9

STATISTICS FROM PENN ATHLETICS CHASE SUTTON | SPORTS PHOTO EDITOR & GILLIAN DIEBOLD | DESIGN EDITOR

OPINION | From Cornfields to Connecticut

“In high school, I wanted more than anything to move away from Indiana and never return. Now that I’ve gotten my wish, I miss it with a longing ache.” -Rebecca Alifimoff PAGE 4

SPORTS | Saturday Night Showdown

Penn men’s basketball takes on Harvard on Saturday night in the Palestra. The Crimson and Quakers are tied for first entering the weekend, giving the game massive regular season title implications. BACKPAGE FOLLOW US @DAILYPENN FOR THE LATEST UPDATES ONLINE AT THEDP.COM

NEWS Grad students help celebrate the BLM movement PAGE 2

Students raised concerns about sexual assault reporting procedures and single-gender campus organizations to Penn’s top leaders on Wednesday. Just a day before the biannual University Council Open Forum, The Daily Pennsylvanian discussed these same issues with Penn President Amy Gutmann and Provost Wendell Pritchett, who indicated at the time that they had not heard substantive critiques of the University’s sexual assault reporting procedures and had no plans to ban single-gender clubs on campus. A Ph.D. student in the Graduate School of Education and a member of Graduate Employees Together — University of Pennsylvania, Chloe Kannan, said graduate students are worried that Penn’s current system for reporting sexual assault places their academic careers at risk. Earlier this year, four graduate students anonymously described incidents of sexual assault in a public survey. Engineering senior Carolyn Kearney SEE OPEN FORUM PAGE 2

NEWS Fintech startup founded by Wharton graduates PAGE 6

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February 22, 2018 by The Daily Pennsylvanian - Issuu