Fagin: 'Putting things behind us is essential'

Interim pres. looks ahead The resolution of The Daily Pennsylvanian confiscation case marks what Claire Fagin's interim administration hopes is a new beginning. With this last messy controversy from the Hackney administration now out of the way, Fagin and Interim Provost Marvin Lazerson are free to begin pushing through the debris with their own agenda – healing. "Putting things behind us is essential," Fagin said yesterday. "These events occurred in April and January of last semester. We can't move forward with any new themes unless we resolve these problems." Charges against nine students implicated in the confiscation of nearly 14,000 copies of the April 15 DP were dropped this week. But Fagin and Lazerson said removing the newspapers would not be tolerated in the future. "This action violated long-held principles of freedom of the press and freedom of speech on the University of Pennsylvania campus," they said. "We will respond vigorously to any future violations of those principles." Fagin cited the welfare of the University as the reason for using a special judicial inquiry officer, Associate Social Work Professor Howard Arnold, to resolve the confiscation case. "I'd like the mood on campus to become more constructive and not destructive," Fagin said. "My goal is to use mediation instead of the judicial [system] – to foster more communication and healing." Currently, Fagin added, many students have a "lack of faith in the system" which would make proceeding with the DP charges difficult and time consuming. She wants to heal old wounds and to "move forward" as rapidly as possible. She added that a major hindrance in burying old controversies is the University's notorious reputation of vague, noncommittal statements. "While we've been criticized for having muddled statements in the past, we need to move beyond that," she said. "We've got to be willing to contest our ideas . . . [and] to communicate with each other." Lazerson, who has been acting as provost since former Provost Michael Aiken became chancellor of the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana this summer, said he thinks that one of the most pressing jobs of his interim administration is clarifying those confusing issues. "My sense was that one of the most important things a new administration can do is clear up ambiguity," he said. "We tried to clear up any ambiguity and any notion that we didn't really understand what was and what was not appropriate [in the DP incident]." Fagin said she thinks the JIO findings were clear and she hopes the students are willing to put the incident behind them. "Free speech is a longstanding principle of Penn," she said. "Yet, I hope [students] will use my version of political correctness, which is just plain courtesy." She hopes that with the campus controversy behind her, she can emphasize the positive. "I think what I really want to do is maximize Penn's greatness," she said. "My goal is that we walk around feeling good about ourselves."