November 16, 2017

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THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2017 VOL. CXXXIII NO. 87

THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

Republican tax plan to impact graduate students Scholarships would be treated as regular, taxable income NATALIE KAHN Deputy News Editor

Graduate students at Penn could stand to lose almost 40 percent of their income under the proposed Republican tax plan. The tax proposal, which was unveiled early this month, is a $1.5 trillion plan that entails a rewrite of the current tax code. It could deliver significant cuts in the corporate tax rate — a reduction from 35 percent to 20 percent — and various new taxes for universities. On Nov. 9, Penn President Amy Gutmann, Provost Wendell Pritchett, and Executive Vice President Craig Carnaroli called the plan “regressive” in an email, which also encouraged students to vocalize opinions on the proposed measure. “We are working closely with our peer universities and professional groups to inform elected officials of our concerns and to emphasize the value to our country of support for higher education,” the email read. One of the communities that stands to lose the most is graduate students. The proposed policies would tax the scholarships that graduate students use to pay for tuition as regular income, making graduate education unaffordable for many. Graduate students, particularly those in Ph.D. programs, usually receive a teaching or research assistantship stipend which is valued at approximately $30,000. Along with this stipend, many Penn Ph.D. students are also granted tuition scholarships, which can amount to almost $50,000 based on the field of study. The increase in taxes is rooted in changes made to what is considered “taxable income,” explained Graduate and Professional Student Assembly President and third-year Design and School of Arts and Sciences professional graduate student Miles Owen. Currently, only graduate student stipends, which are approximately $30,000 at Penn, are subject to tax. But under the new Republican proposal, both graduate student stipends and their $50,000 tuition scholarships can be taxed, which means they would have to pay significantly more on their income. In addition, a study conducted by University of California, Berkeley Ph.D. student Vetri Velan found that the tax plan will affect graduate students at private universities like Penn more dramatically than those at public universities. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which Velan used as a case study, research assistants who make about $37,000 and approximately $50,000 in tuition will have to shell out nearly 240 percent more in taxes. Under the new plan, their taxes would grow from $3,993 to $13,577. Penn graduate students may also face significant changes in their taxes, though not all students will be equally affected. At Penn, graduate students are paid differently across schools and departments. Some students will be subject to increased taxes on both their tuition scholarships and stipends, which will pose a significant financial burden, Owen said. Others, who pay taxes only on their stipends, will be affected less by the new Republican plan. “You would not be able to make a living wage off of graduate stipends,” Owen said about the new proposal. “You’d have to be independently wealthy to pursue graduate studies.” Penn, as an institution, could also lose substantial funding under the tax proposal. While private institutions are currently exempt from taxation on their investment income, the new plan would impose a 1.4 percent excise tax on the University’s endowment returns. According to The Atlantic, “endowments are tax-exempt funds, including donations and investments, that colleges and universities manage over many years to pay for a wide range of expenses.” Economics professor Petra Todd said this as-

Does Penn need

another

New College House? HALEY SUH & KELLY HEINZERLING | DEPUTY NEWS EDITORS Despite a lack of student demand, the University has embarked on three residential construction projects in the last four years

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ew College House West, which will be built over the High Rise field, is the latest of three major projects that Penn has undertaken in the past four years to expand on-campus housing. Some administrators have said that the main reason for building New College House West is an apparent need for more on-campus housing, though student accounts and data on student housing seem to contradict this. Interviews with various administrative departments suggest that it might be more likely that Penn approved plans for New College House in 2013, Hill College House in 2015, and NCHW in 2017, with the long-term goal of providing capacity that would allow them to renovate older college houses like the Quad. Student accounts and data suggest that there isn’t increasing demand for on-campus housing When the Board of Trustees announced the construction of NCHW earlier this month, Penn President Amy Gutmann said the new residential building would

“We must come together in times to support one another when no one wants to recognize us…” - Carlos Arias Vivas PAGE 4

SPORTS | Football’s final fight

After three straight wins, Penn seeks to send the seniors off with a winning record in the Ivy League BACKPAGE

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Students are unsatisfied with halal dining hall options

Kings Court is the only dining hall to currently serve halal food

“enable more Penn students to participate in the College House system.” Vice President of Penn Business Services Marie Witt said the average occupancy rate across all College Houses is 97 percent and in some years, that rate has reached 100 percent. University spokesperson Stephen MacCarthy also told The Daily Pennsylvanian in an emailed statement that while Penn currently has the capacity to house 5,800 of the school’s 10,468 undergraduates, there is a “need beyond that.” But information from other administrative departments seems to contradict this. Data from Penn Business Services shows that every year since 2012, the number of undergraduates who live in College Residence halls has hovered around 5,700 students, which is a hundred less than the 5,800 that MacCarthy said Penn is able to house. Various students have also indicated anecdotally that they are looking to move off-campus or continue staying in their off-

GIANNA FERRARIN Staff Reporter

Nearly two years ago, Kings Court English College House became the first — and remains the only — dining hall on campus to serve halal food. For Muslim students, the inability to opt out of the meal plan means they can only visit one dining hall on campus for meals. This situation is made even more complicated by the fact that several students have noticed lapses in the dining hall’s adherence to halal food preparation rules. On Nov. 8, two incidents were reported to Bon Appetit’s registered nutritionist by five freshman students, including College freshman Bhaktiar Choudhury and Wharton freshman Asfandyar Cheema. One detailed an occasion where there was no available halal food at Kings Court English House, and another described an incident in which cooking wine, which is not permissible under the rules of halal, was used to cook halallabeled chicken. Bon Appetit Resident District Manager Stephen Scardina said Penn Business Services conducted an investigation upon receiving these two reports.“It wasn’t wine as one would buy in a state store, but it was a cooking wine,” Scardina said of the second incident, “but still we removed all of that from our operation, and we rewrote any of the recipes that would call for that type of product so that it would never happen again.” Wharton freshman Shehryar Khursheed said he has heard of at least two additional instances in which alcohol was used in food preparation and two in which meals with pork were mistakenly labeled as halal. Khursheed also said that in comparison to Kings Court English House, both Falk Dining Hall at Penn Hillel, which provides kosher food, and Hill College House dining hall, which offers vegan options, take greater precaution to adhere to the dietary restrictions of students. Scardina said the Kings Court English House dining staff undergoes a training in halal food preparation practices arranged by the Muslim Students Association every semester. He also said that Bon Appetit’s campus executive chef, Christopher Smith, performs check-ups to make sure the kitchen practices are up to the proper standards three to four times every week. College and Wharton junior Zuhaib Badami, the president of MSA, said the reported incidents were not “especially terrible” and are understandable given that Kings Court English House’s halal options are part of a growing process. “The halal chicken dishes are put next to the not-halal meat dishes which is, that’s basically not how you do things like if you’re saying a dining hall is halal then you have to realize that every single thing in that dining hall has to be halal,” Cheema said. Khursheed has contacted the Provost’s Office and the Dining Advisory Board in an effort to have halal food trucks be covered under dining dollars so that Muslim students could choose from better halal options than they would in campus dining halls. By doing so, Khursheed said more upperclassmen would be willing to participate in the dining plans. “If it continues, then the very fact that Penn Business Services and Penn requiring us Muslims to be on the dining plan when dining doesn’t fully cooperate with our beliefs is kind of counterintuitive and just fosters tension between us and Penn administration,” Khursheed said. So far, he says his plan has received “huge backlash” from administrators. Director of Business Services Pamela Lampitt wrote in an email to Khursheed that for now, Penn is trying to focus solely on improving current dining facilities on campus, rather than expanding efforts to outside vendors. “We should approach it as, in my perspective, if one person is affected by this, then the whole Penn community is affected by this,” Khursheed said.

SEE CAMPUS HOUSING PAGE 7

SEE TAX PLAN PAGE 7

OPINION | Cultural groups on campus

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NEWS Record number of students apply ED

NEWS Penn hosts conference on mental health

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