U. will spend $24,000 on race summit

Half will pay for lodging The Penn Student Summit on Race Relations, a gathering of student leaders to discuss campus race relations, will cost the University approximately $24,000, Wharton senior and retreat coordinator Lawrence Berger said. The retreat will take place from Jan. 28 to Jan. 30 at the Sugarloaf Executive Conference Center in Chestnut Hill, Pa. Half the cost of the summit, or $12,000, will go toward the use of the compound, which is owned by Temple University, Associate Vice Provost for University Life Larry Moneta said last night. "It's just a beautiful professional retreat site," he said, explaining why Sugarloaf was the "right" place to hold the conference. The retreat's organizers also justified the expense, by saying that a campus summit would not be as effective. "We felt that it was very important to remove students from the campus so that their main focus would be this issue," retreat co-organizer and Wharton and College senior Jessica Mennella said. The other half of the cost will pay for facilitators provided by A World of Difference, a New York City based organization affiliated with the Anti-Defamation League, Moneta said. Berger and Mennella approached between 50 and 65 corporations, including Mellon Bank and Aetna Life Insurance, for contributions in November, but were denied by all of them, Berger said. "The timing was the biggest problem because some companies said they needed a year or more [ to approve such an expense]," he said. "The response was a wholehearted no." "The last thing we wanted to do was take University money," Berger added. The money, which will be used for the program, will come from the offices of the president and the provost, who support the endeavor, Berger said. "It was really difficult at first," he said. "But with the help of [Interim President] Claire Fagin and [Executive Assistant to the Provost] Linda Koons, things started getting rolling with funding from the University." The summit organizers say the retreat will allow 60 student leaders to talk about campus race relations and attempt to develop a concrete one-year plan to solve the problems they discuss. Wharton junior and President of the Junior Class Board Jason Diaz, who is planning to attend the conference, said the retreat will be worth the money the University is spending. "If the goalposts cost $20,000 and the retreat costs $24,000, I would take this any day," he said. "If this can bring forth action, it's probably a fairly cheap way of doing it." College junior Lissette Monge, president of both Acela, the Latino Students Association, and the Social Planning and Events Committee, said she will not attend the conference, but added that both groups will send members to the retreat. "I'm hoping [the organizers have] made their best judgement," she said. "I think it's a lot of money but for a good cause." College junior Seth Hamalian, Undergraduate Assembly chairperson, tentatively plans to attend the conference. He said his schedule, and not the program's cost, will determine his attendance of the retreat. "I don't think one can pass judgement yet until we see what the results are," he said. "The issue is important enough to warrant the commitment timewise and costwise. Hamalian said, however, that the cost of the retreat should not be discounted. "I'm behind the concept of the retreat," he added. "But I'm not behind the concept of just randomly throwing out $24,000." Mennella said the summit has received a "highly discounted rate" from both Sugarloaf and A World of Difference. "We really scraped and saved wherever we could," she said.