Penn in the News

Debra Schilling Wolfe of the School of Social Policy & Practice writes about the usefulness of child-abuse reports.

A new study shows that the fees public colleges and universities charge students to use campus facilities and cover operation costs have actually risen faster than tuition. Using Department of Education data, Seton Hall University professor Robert Kelchen found that inflation-adjusted fees grew faster than tuition at state schools between the 1999-2000 and 2012-2013 academic years. During that time, fees at community colleges soared 104 percent, while tuition climbed by 50 percent.

Although the outcry over sexual assault on college campuses has intensified recently, the issue has a long history. February 1957: One of the first published studies about campus sexual assault, “Male Sex Aggression on a University Campus” appears in the American Sociological Review (Vol. 22, No. 1, pp. 52-58). 1975: The term “date rape” is coined by Susan Brownmiller in reference to a dating situation in which “an aggressor may press his advantage to the point where pleasantness quickly turns to unpleasantness and more than the woman bargained for.” (Women’s Studies Encyclopedia, Vol.

A superior court judge will decide in August whether the University of California, San Diego, can schedule a new disciplinary hearing for a student accused of cheating five years ago. Last year, a state appeals court ruled that UCSD officials violated the student's right to due process when they concealed the identity of a critical witness in the case. That witness is the person the student allegedly copied from during a midterm exam. The accused student and the appellate court argue that if the student knew who the other exam taker was, he could prove he did not cheat.

Marybeth Gasman of the Graduate School of Education writes about her book Educating a Diverse Nation.

Post-doctoral fellow Eric VanEpps of the Perelman School of Medicine is highlighted for leading research that reveals how color-coded or numeric calorie labels help to reduce the total number of calories ordered from online platforms.

An excerpt from Give and Take by Adam Grant of the Wharton School is included.

Crystal S. Rosson had spent years tracing her family roots — poring over courthouse documents, asking relatives to show her the unmarked graves of their ancestors, even quitting her job at a Virginia high school to devote more energy to her research. With every new picture and article she uncovered, one thought lingered in her mind: Where had her great-grandfather Sterling Jones lived? One day she found her answer. It was a well-kept cabin, once a farm-tool museum, now mostly vacant.

It was nearly 40 years ago when a fractured U.S. Supreme Court was searching for an acceptable and lawful way to take race and ethnicity into account in college admissions. The court majority viewed as unconstitutional a system that would set aside a specific number of seats for one racial group or another. But justices also wanted to enable colleges to take steps they might deem necessary to attain a racially diverse student body. How to do that? Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. turned to the nation’s oldest college for answers.

Aaron Roth of the School of Engineering and Applied Science is cited for researching “differential privacy” to gather data without compromising privacy.