THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 2018 VOL. CXXXIV NO. 23
THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
Graduate students continue advocacy efforts
A look into financial support in Greek councils
Students say that their current efforts have been frustrated by administrators
Some orgs. offer scholarships to those who can’t afford dues GIANNA FERRARIN Staff Reporter
NAOMI ELEGANT Staff Reporter
Performance groups were not warned in advance that it would be more competitive to get a slot at the upcoming Fling. Fling directors said this is partly because SPEC was still deciding how to maximize the number of performers. “We weren’t 100 percent sure how many people we were exactly going to cut,” said Mountanos, who is also a social media staffer for The Daily Pennsylvanian. Directors also assumed performers knew it would be a more selective process this year after the time and space constraints were announced. “It was implicit,” Fling liaison and College junior Julia DaSilva said. College junior Callie Holtermann, who is co-president of Counterparts — an a capella group performing at Fling this year — “was not aware” that there would be severe cuts this year. Holtermann said she still does not know the extent of how many groups were included and rejected. Mask and Wig member and College junior Eric Calvo said that while he expected cuts to be even more severe, he would have appreciated more explicit information about selectivity. “As far as I know, we didn’t receive any forewarning about any of the changes to Fling before it was announced in the DP,” Calvo said. Wanting to have been more informed about the changes to Fling group performances “is a general sentiment among student performers,” Calvo said. Three Fling organizers each rated the applicants between one and 10 to decide who to accept as performers. Fling co-director and Wharton sophomore Linda Ash-
When Penn students decide whether or not to participate in Greek life, the cost of dues is often a factor, particularly as the percentage of first-generation, low-income students at Penn continues to grow. To accommodate the diversity of Penn’s student body, some Greek organizations offer financial aid to members who would not otherwise be able to pay the cost of membership. However, these provisions are not uniformly offered across Greek councils at Penn. Of the three Greek life councils at Penn, the Panhellenic Council is the only organization that provides scholarships for members in all of its eight chapters. The remaining 41 fraternities and sororities that are governed by the Intercultural Greek Council and Interfraternity Council do not receive scholarships from their respective councils. However, students in any Greek organization can apply for scholarships offered by the national organizations their chapters are affiliated with. College sophomore Anita Itaman, who is vice president of programming for Panhel, said hearing about scholarships was one of the main things that reassured her during the rush process. Itaman, a first-generation, low-income student in Zeta Tau Alpha, receives both a national and campus scholarship to subsidize her dues. “I personally never realized that [dues] cost as much money as they did, so hearing about the scholarships first on and beginning this was helpful for
SEE FLING PAGE 6
SEE FINANCIAL AID PAGE 6
Historically, Spring Fling was held in the Quad and prominently featured student performers like Quaker Notes and The Mask and Wig band. This year’s changes mark a drastic deviation from the previous tradition.
Members of Graduate Employees Together — University of Pennsylvania say they are still focused on campaigning for change for graduate students despite withdrawing their petition for a union vote in February — a decision made over fears that the Penn administration would oppose and prevent legal unionization. A key focus going forward for GETUP is continuing to promote its ongoing campaign for improved sexual harassment reporting policies in the Graduate School of Education. Since GET-UP withdrew its petition to unionize, GET-UP member Katie Pak, who is in her third year at GSE, said the group has had meetings with the administration about Penn’s sexual harassment policies. She described the meetings as “all dialogue and no action.” Pointing to Penn’s decentralized administrative structure, Pak said that GET-UP has met with various administrators, none of whom individually have “a ton of power” over University policies, she said. According to Pak, these encounters have, for the most part, been GET-UP members “just informing [administrators] over and over again about the same things.” “We’ve been getting the runaround,” Pak said. “We feel like we have a lot to offer but that we haven’t established the type of partnership to move things forward that we would want.”
Shorter Spring Fling, fewer student performances
This year, 18 student groups will perform at Spring Fling compared to 44 groups last year JULIA KLAYMAN Contributing Reporter
With Spring Fling festivities shortened from the traditional two-day-long event with multiple stages to a singleday event with one stage, the Social Planning and Events Committee Fling directors had to reject 23 of the 41 student groups who applied to perform. This year, 18 student performing groups will perform at Spring Fling. Last year, 44 groups were given gigs at Fling out of the 47 that applied. Although the Fling directors said they wished it was possible to continue welcoming and promoting the different clubs on campus, the shortened time frame and lack of a second stage forced them to reduce the number of performers. Although the number of performance groups from last year to this year has decreased by 59 percent, performances will each last 15 minutes as usual. In past years, “essentially, we just accepted everyone,” Fling co-director and College sophomore Christopher Mountanos said. About three performing groups were rejected each year, according to SPEC Fling directors, and the cuts for Fling 2017 were only due to groups not meeting requirements, such as including at least one Penn student within the group.
SEE GET-UP PAGE 7
Asian American Studies gets interim director Josephine Park will be taking over as the interim director MADELEINE NGO Deputy News Editor
English professor and longtime standing faculty member of the Asian American Studies program Josephine Park will be taking over as the program’s interim director for the next academic year. Students and faculty members, however, still say they fear for the future of the program. Park has been involved with the ASAM program for 15 years and previously served as the director from 2009 to 2012. She also regularly teaches one of the minor’s core courses, Introduction to Asian American Literature. In her position as interim director, she will no longer be able to teach the course, prompting concerns among students and faculty about the structure of the program. While the term of the director typically spans three years, as of early April, Park will only serve for one year as interim director. Park said that the leaders of the program chose
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to appoint her to the role. “I am very pleased that Professor Park has agreed to lead the Asian American Studies Program next year. She is a distinguished scholar of Asian American studies and an award-winning teacher with a long commitment to ASAM, including a prior term as director,” School of Arts and Sciences Dean Steven Fluharty wrote in an email to The Daily Pennsylvanian. “The choice to serve with the title of interim director was Professor Park’s.” Grace Kao, a former sociology professor and standing ASAM faculty member at Penn, began working at Yale University in early 2017. Her departure from Penn after helping found the program just over two decades ago prompted the resurgence of student and faculty pressure on the administration to give ASAM more attention. “Dean Fluharty has shown no interest in supporting Asian American Studies,” Kao wrote in an email. “Maybe this will change with continued pressure from students if students value the work ASAM does.”
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OPINION | Greeks have a
right to their own narrative “The sheer number of articles I’ve read against aspects of Greek life is suprising in itself, but even more suprising is how few of those writers actually experienced what they claimed to understand.” - Dylan Reim PAGE 5
SPORTS | Battle for the Top Penn women’s lacrosse heads to Hanover, N. H. to take on Dartmouth in a battle for first place in the Ivy League PAGE 9
PHOTO FEATURE |
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SAM HOLLAND | SENIOR PHOTO EDITOR
Park has been involved with the ASAM program for 15 years and previously served as the director from 2009 to 2012 and teaches one of the minors’ core courses.
Current Interim Director and History professor Eiichiro Azuma expressed support for Park and said that the department felt an internal need for a new director.
“Since I have served as ASAM director for the past five years, there should be a change in leadership,” SEE ASAM PAGE 3
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