THURSDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2017 VOL. CXXXIII NO. 92
THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
FOUNDED 1885
an unexpected drop in aid PENN DID NOT NOTIFY ALL STUDENTS THIS NEW POLICY WOULD AFFECT ALEX RABIN | SENIOR REPORTER
2016-17:
Maximum potential financial aid FOR STUDENTS LIVING OFF CAMPUS
$72,584
$72,584
$70,275
PENN’S ESTIMATED COST OF LIVING BOTH ON & OFF CAMPUS
$2,309 less AID
2017-18:
$72,584 $70,275 PENN’S ESTIMATED COST OF LIVING ON CAMPUS
PENN’S ESTIMATED COST OF LIVING OFF CAMPUS
GILLIAN DIEBOLD & CAMILLE RAPAY | DESIGN ASSOCIATE & DESIGN EDITOR
2016-17
2017-18
T
he decision to move off-campus at Penn, for many students, frequently demands strenuous juggling of cost calculations and complicated logistics. For students who receive financial aid, these calculations become even more complicated. This past spring, Student Registration and Financial Services changed its policy for distribution of aid to students living on and off campus. According to an email sent from an SFS staff member to College sophomore and Penn First member Mohammad Oulabi, ”[b] eginning this year, students who move off campus will have a lower budget than stu-
dents who live on-campus.” The SFS website still listed both oncampus and off-campus costs of attendance as $72,584 in mid-July, but by late September, it listed the on-campus assumed cost as $72,584 and the off-campus assumed cost as $70,275, according to internet archive website Wayback Machine. University Director of Financial Aid Elaine Papas Varas said that because the federal government requires the University to publish data on the differences in cost of SEE HOUSING PAGE 7
Some low-income students are left out of free meal program
U. Council hosts open forum without much discussion
Penn contacts students in need inconsistently
Only four pre-selected speakers could talk openly
GIANNA FERRARIN Staff Reporter
JAMES MEADOWS Staff Reporter
Penn identifies certain “highneed” students every year to ensure that they have adequate meal options over breaks like Thanksgiving, though some have indicated that the way these “high-need” students are identified remains unclear. The result is that while some low-income students are actively invited to participate in these targeted programs, others are left entirely in the dark about what they are. Student Registration and Financial Services and Penn Dining have provided students with free meals at Gourmet Grocer in the days before Thanksgiving break for the past two years. This past Thanksgiving, SRFS contacted almost 900 students they identified as “high-need” to offer them extended meal options over the break, according to Pam Lampitt, Director of Hospitality Services. Of the 900 students, 105 participated in the program, which was made possible when Penn’s chapter of Swipe Out Hunger allowed students to donate their unused meal swipes to students in need. “You do not need to have a din-
Houston Hall’s Bodek Lounge was packed on Wednesday afternoon as dozens of students filed in to attend the University Council’s biannual open forum, which is meant to serve as a platform for any and all members of the Penn community to raise issues for discussion. But while four pre-selected people were allowed a few minutes to speak, the council engaged in little open discussion. The UC functions as a representative body made up of undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, staff, and executive administrators, including Penn President Amy Gutmann and Provost Wendell Pritchett. All members are meant to have the ability to recommend policy changes to the University. At the forum, three undergraduate students and one professor expressed their concerns with various aspects of University life but none received a substantive response from administrators. One of the pre-selected presenters, Diane Deissroth, Wharton Real Estate Department business administrator, did not attend. One of the speakers, Simone Unwalla, the captain of the wom-
JEAN CHAPIRO | STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Around the Thanksgiving holiday, Penn offered free meals from Gourmet Grocer to students identified as “high-need.”
ing plan to participate, and if you do have a dining plan, no swipes or Dining Dollars will be charged for these meals,” University Director of Financial Aid Elaine Papas Varas wrote in an email sent out to the students in “high need.” “Meals will be provided at no cost to you via donated swipes from the Swipe Out Hunger campaign.” But some low-income students say SRFS’ definition of “highneed” is not always comprehensive, causing some students who need the program to be excluded from it. In fact, because the email from Varas was only sent out to the students that the University
identified as “high need,” some students who needed the program were not aware that the program even existed. “It’s almost impossible for those students to get food [from the program] unless they heard from a friend that this is something that is offered,” said College junior Lyndsi Burcham, who is the secretary for Penn First — a student organization for first-generation, low-income students. This was the case for College freshman Cassandra Jobman, who is a Daily Pennsylvanian Opinion SEE THANKSGIVING PAGE 6
OPINION | Race and admissions
“Simply put, admissions offices must cease favoring white students over Asian.” - Lucy Hu PAGE 5
SPORTS | Penn Athletics and Title IX
Among its Ivy League peers, Penn has the least amount of female head coaches, at 40 percent of all female varsity teams. BACKPAGE
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NEWS Common Party hosts former neoNazi speaker
PAGE 6
en’s fencing team and a College junior, accused the administration of artificially inflating the rosters of women’s athletic teams to abide by Title XI anti-discrimination policy, which states that the number of female athletes at an institution needs to be proportionate to the number of female students at the institution. Unwalla noted that five women listed on the fencing team’s roster do not regularly attend practice and added that she has not even met three of them. Penn Athletics, like many other peer institutions, has been plagued for years by complaints of an athletic gender gap. While both Grace Calhoun, the director of athletics and recreation, and Brian Sennett, the chief of Penn Sports Medicine were present at the beginning of the meeting to discuss concussion testing and the mental health of student athletes, both left before Unwalla spoke. The moderator, University Secretary Leslie Kruhly, thanked Unwalla for commenting and moved onto the next speaker. None of the other administrators present responded to Unwalla’s complaint. “It’s really up to any member of the council to ask follow up questions to further the discussion, but we really didn’t see any of that,” College junior Jay Shah, a member of UC Steering Committee and the
vice president of the Undergraduate Assembly, said. Third-year School of Design and School of Arts and Sciences graduate student Miles Owen, who is the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly president, said he was disappointed that the forum was so short and that it included only four speakers. Community members who wished to be guaranteed speaking time had to submit a request the Office of the University Secretary by the morning of Nov. 28, and at the forum itself, the speaking time of all of approved speakers was roughly three minutes. College senior and Undergraduate Assembly President Michelle Xu said she could understand why attendees might have been surprised by administrators’ lack of engagement, but added that this was part of University Council “protocol.” “There is a protocol [to these meetings],” she said. “You make a statement, they take everything that was said at UC and deliberate it at UC steering. It’s not that administrators don’t want to respond.” However, Xu also said she is not aware of any formal mechanism for students to ensure that the concerns they raised at the open forum will actually be followed up on by SEE U. COUNCIL PAGE 6
NEWS University Realty delays move-in date again PAGE 9
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