5/18
Penn in the News
A round-up of Penn mentions in local, national, and international media.
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Penn In the News
How One University Went All-In on Restorative Justice
Gabriella Lanzi, a junior at the University of Michigan, has spent the past two years of college immersed in conflict. But she doesn’t mind. As a student facilitator in Michigan’s Office of Student Conflict Resolution, her job is to help her fellow students navigate disputes either with their peers or, if they may have violated a university rule, with the institution itself.
Penn In the News
Title IX Officers Pay a Price for Navigating a Volatile Issue
On the second day of class this year, the University of Florida fired its deputy Title IX coordinator amid complaints that he had too much power over resolving sex-assault cases. Then, this month, Baylor University’s Title IX coordinator resigned, charging the institution with refusing to give her enough authority. The claims — that one Title IX officer had too much power, while another didn’t have what she needed — highlight the pitfalls and pressures for those in a high-profile job at the center of one of higher-education’s most vexing issues: campus sexual assault.
Penn In the News
Our Idea of Tolerant Isn’t
You get used to the vehemence. In academe, anything that’s published about our own special place gets somebody going. Even so, the vituperation among the professoriate generated by the journalist Nathan Heller’s May 2016 New Yorker article, "The Big Uneasy," took me aback. A case study of student discontent at Oberlin College, the essay is by no means the first to raise academic hackles about students. Before Heller, the Northwestern University professor and feminist Laura Kipnis stirred an outcry in these pages with her charges of "sexual paranoia" among women students on campus.
Penn In the News
If Colleges Are Dismantled, Consider the Impact on Their Cities
Everything today is being unbundled: television, hotels, even the European Union. Some education reformers would like the university to be next. Ryan Craig, author of College Disrupted: The Great Unbundling of Higher Education, argues that disaggregation of the university’s services is a positive and inevitable process that will make the university more efficient and accessible. Craig is not alone in seeking to parcel out a number of the university’s duties.
Penn In the News
A Closer Look at Income-based Repayment, the Centerpiece of Donald Trump’s Unexpected Higher-Ed Speech
On Thursday Donald J. Trump broke his near-silence on the higher-education policies he’d pursue if elected president, laying out a variety of ideas at a rally in Columbus, Ohio. If the speech itself was a surprise, more surprising still was the issue Mr. Trump discussed in the greatest detail: income-based repayment plans for student-loan borrowers. Those plans have broad bipartisan support and have been embraced by the Republican nominee's Democratic foils.
Penn In the News
Michigan Gave Colleges $500,000 to Fight Sex Assault. Here’s How They Spent It
Last year Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan announced a new grant program aimed at preventing sexual assault on the state’s college campuses. More than 30 institutions applied, and a mix of private, public, and community colleges — 22 in total — received a slice of the pie.
Penn In the News
After 4-Year Delay, Kansas Colleges Move to Carry Out Campus Gun Law
For three years, Kansas’ public colleges have known a guns-on-campus law would take effect. That day is drawing closer and closer. In 2013 state legislators enacted the law, which requires that licensed handgun owners be allowed to carry their concealed weapons on public-college campuses, but the colleges were able to opt out for four years. Starting on July 1, 2017, though, they’ll have to comply. And this month they’re submitting their proposed policies to the Kansas Board of Regents for approval.
Penn In the News
What A Landmark Finding in a Title IX Case Means for Colleges Wrestling With Sex Assault
In an apparent first, federal officials have found a college in violation of Title IX, the gender-equity law, for infringing on the rights of students accused of sexual violence. The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights had opened an investigation of Wesley College, in Delaware, in July 2015. That investigation was one of more than 300 the office, known as OCR, has conducted into colleges for possibly mishandling reports of sexual violence. In the past, OCR’s findings about colleges have occasionally alluded to the rights of accused students.
Penn In the News
As U. of Florida Law Dean Calls Out Sexism, Her Rankings-Driven Regime Comes Under Fire
An alumnus in Orlando told her he didn’t remember a dean with "legs like that." The star editor of the law review described her as "young and vivacious," parroting a phrase he’d picked up from his mentor. Faculty members and graduates have called her a careerist, whose singular focus on national rankings has come at the expense of collegial consultation and respect for beloved professors.
Penn In the News
When It Comes to Campus Crises, College Communications Staffs Plan, React, and Fret
As college presidents face pressure to respond to protests and social-media-fueled controversies, their teams are also feeling the heat. Communications staffs, in particular, are struggling to keep ahead of public discussions that seem only to get more volatile and intense. "I said last year at this time, I’ve never seen anything like it," says Teresa Flannery, vice president for communication at American University. "And I said it again this week."