Penn in the News

It was around midnight on Friday, Oct. 30, when Steven Leath saw more than a half dozen students pile into a car outside a dormitory. The scene alarmed him. One student, clearly drunk, had climbed into the vehicle’s trunk, yet his friends piled into the car and began driving away. Leath, president of Iowa State University, was heading from one location full of partying college students to another.

Sigrid Veasey of the Perelman School of Medicine talks about evidence that supports the theory that Alzheimer’s disease can be worsened by sleep deprivation.

The term "first generation" tends to be thrown around a lot by educators and policy makers. But what does the term mean? Does a first-generation college student come from a home where neither parent earned a college degree? What if at least one parent graduated college? What if their parents attended college but didn't graduate? Does it matter if it's a biological parent that attended college or some other adult residing in their home?

Students are highlighted for participating in the Mr. and Ms. Penn bodybuilding competition.

College campuses across the country have plunged into an intense debate that pits free-speech advocates against those who want to rein in insults, slurs and other offensive expressions. Student uprisings at Yale, the University of Missouri and elsewhere show a passionate desire to confront racism and bigotry in all its forms, from the disgustingly overt — a fecal swastika smeared on a bathroom wall in Columbia, Mo.

Research by Katherine Milkman and alumnus Jihae Shin of the Wharton School about how backup plans may cause a person to be less motivated is cited.

Black women matter." "History is watching." "I refuse to be complicit." Dozens of messages like those were scrawled in chalk on a wide swath of stone in front of Yale University's largest library on Thursday. By Friday evening they had begun to fade, rubbed out in places by the steady stream of students' shoes. But the tensions that have flared on the campus for the past week and a half seem likely to leave a more permanent mark on this elite institution, which finds itself roiled by a heated debate about race relations and free speech.

Doctoral candidate Emma Harrison and undergraduate student Aria Kovalovich of the School of Arts & Sciences are featured for researching endogeic worms.

The Phi Kappa Psi fraternity chapter at the University of Virginia filed a $25 million lawsuit Monday against Rolling Stone magazine, which published an article in 2014 that alleged a freshman was gang raped at the house during a party. The lawsuit focuses on a Rolling Stone article titled “A Rape on Campus,” which detailed a harrowing attack on a freshman named Jackie at the Phi Psi house on Sept. 28, 2012.

Marybeth Gasman of the Graduate School of Education says that southern state governments have a long history of not supporting historically black colleges and universities.