THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSIT Y OF PENNSYLVANIA THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSIT Y OF PENNSYLVANIA
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WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2014
One step at a time
For Commencement, female speakers are few and far BY BRENDA WHANG Deputy News Editor Only eight percent of recorded Penn commencement speakers were women. Jodie Foster, who spoke in 2006, was the only woman to speak at Commencement since 2000. Two
In Philadelphia classrooms, national standards clash with local realities BY LIANNA SERKO Senior Writer
first ladies, Hillary Clinton and Barbara Bush, were the only female speakers in the ‘90s. Online records of commencement speakers begin in 1938. “It’s so shocking to me that a
SEE COMMENCEMENT PAGE 3
Female Commencement Speakers at Penn since 1938
This past fall, Say re High School students in a program called “Leaders of Change” examined how Philadelphia and state schools function and came to a stark conclusion: Their school system is failing them. The theme that emerged, College sophomore and program volunteer Filippo Bulgarelli said, was that the students — all more involved and high-achieving than the average Sayre student — knew that something was wrong with their school, but didn’t know how it was being addressed. Bulgarelli said the students saw the problems first-hand: lack of academic opportunities and overworked teachers — not to mention the poor conditions that permeate the city’s schools. These issues plague public schools in cities and rural areas throughout much of the nation, and Philadelphia is no exception. Nationally, a movement has
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2006 JODIE FOSTER Actress, Producer and Director 1993 HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON First Lady of the United States 1990 BARBARA BUSH First Lady of the United States 1988 PATRICIA SCHROEDER Congresswoman
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1947 FEBRUARY - JAMES CREESE President, Drexel Institute of Technology MARCH - CHESTER I. BARNARD President, New Jersey Bell Telephone Company JUNE - MARGARET MEAD Associate Curator, American Museum of Natural History AUGUST - EARL G. HARRISON Vice President in Charge of Law School
1945 MARCH - ABRAHAM A. NEUMAN 1983 President, Dropsie College ELLEN GOODMAN JUNE - THOMAS J.S. WAXTER Syndicated columnist Public Welfare Administrator 1978 JUNE - SAMUEL T. ORTON PATRICIA HARRIS Physician and Investigator Secretary, Department of Housing JUNE - ARTHUR T. VANDERBILT and Urban Development Dean of the Law School, New York University 1969 OCTOBER - VIRGINIA C. GILDERSLEEVE LADY BARBARA WARD JACKSON Dean of Barnard College Albert Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities, Columbia University
SEE SCHOOLS PAGE 6
Body image in focus
Students address body issues in Penn Poised’s ‘Come As You Are’ photography campaign BY BOOKYUNG JO Staff Writer
Now streaming: my little in vitro pony BY TINA CHOU Contributing Writer Starting today, students will have access to the miracle of life — horse edition. An eleven-year-old thoroughbred named My Special Girl is expecting to deliver her foal midMarch at the New Bolton Center Campus in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. Starting today, students can watch the live birth on Penn Vet’s website, but the father can’t — the sperm cell came from the frozen semen of a deceased stallion. My Special Girl is a surrogate mare, pregnant with an egg from another horse. She was impregnated last April through intracytoplasmic sperm injection, or ICSI. “We want to give the public a behind-the-scenes look at the work we do at New Bolton Center, to allow people to see our veterinarians,
technicians and staff doing their jobs,” Penn Vet Associate Dean for New Bolton Center Corinne Sweeney said. “New Bolton Center is a teaching hospital, and this is an educational opportunity.” ICSI is a common infertility treatment for humans, but the procedure is not as common in the equine population. The process entails injecting a single sperm cell into an egg, which is incubated for eight days and then transplanted into the mare. “There are a handful ... of other places in the country who have produced live foals using this procedure,” Penn Vet Associate Professor and Foal Cam coordinator Regina Turner said. She added that My Special Girl’s pregnancy is “special and rare.” Equine ICSI was spearheaded by Colorado State and Texas A&M universities. The success of My Special Girl’s pregnancy will place
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Penn Vet among the few that offer this advanced service. “We want to join this select group and stay on the forefront of assisted reproduction by offering this service to our clients,” Turner said. While Penn Vet is keeping the gender of the foal a secret, the school will be hosting a naming contest through Facebook and its website. The foal will be raised by My Special Girl for the first six months before being adopted by Penn Vet Assistant Professor of Large Animal Medicine Rose Nolen-Walston . A gormer Olympian of Canada’s Eventing team is slated to train the foal. “We are very much looking forward to the birth of this foal, and to meeting the new member of our barn family,” Nolen-Walston said. “Given the lineage, this foal could grow up to be a terrific sport ■ horse.”
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Ying Pan/Staff Photographer
College Freshman Emily Fisher poses at a Penn Poised photoshoot, with the message “I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul” written on her body as part of a the Poised: Come As You Are campaign promoting body positivty. A recent study published in the Journal of Women & Aging found that only 12 percent of women are satisfied with their body image. 88 percent of women surveyed were
in the normal weight range. Penn Poised, a student organization on campus, started ‘Come As You Are’, a photography campaign hoping to stimulate conver-
SEE BODY IMAGE PAGE 5
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