Three students were found running a business inside of President Amy Gutmann’s house.
An investigative team at the Department of Public Safety discovered students squatting in the President’s House located on 38th and Walnut streets. Two Wharton students and an M&T student were evacuated from the house and transferred to Hill College House on Sunday evening.
Wharton junior and squatter Patrice Garden, who was found squatting on Gutmann’s golden throne, said that the lack of available on-campus housing pushed her and her friends to live in Gutmann’s home. “The housing system sucks and we waited too long to get good off-campus housing,” she said. “We all know the rumors that the President doesn’t live there, so we figured we could get away with it.”
The other squatters, M&T senior Conrad Conley and Wharton sophomore Diana Gonzales, saw squatting as a perfect business opportunity. “We decided to put our business skills to good use. Instead of leaving the house empty, we set up headquarters here for our new app called Find-A-Home,” Conley said. “I came up with the idea while taking a squat on Gutmann’s golden throne. That shit is actually made of gold.”
The squatters did not sign up for meal plans because they found the leftover food from Gutmann’s many parties to be sufficient. They also made use of the President’s state of the art kitchen. “We found a soda machine, several bottles of tequila and like a hundred coupons to the Philly Pretzel Factory,” Gonzales said. “We were living well.”
While shocked, Gutmann marveled at the ingenuity of the students. “At Penn, we take pride in having the best and brightest students taught by the best faculty,” she said. “I’m impressed by their ability to think outside the box, but I wish they would have left my tequila. ”
She announced on her Twitter account that she would immediately hire four Allied Barton security staff members to survey the house 24 hours a day. The Allied Barton staff would be accompanied by a squatter-sniffing dog named Officer Shoes. The accuracy rates of Officer Shoes have yet to be determined.
The students were discovered through the creation of a new University-sponsored committee that was created without Gutmann’s knowledge.
Provost Vincent Price announced earlier in the semester, through a clandestine Twitter account, the creation of the Committee on Everything Without a Committee, better known as THE Committee by the few who were familiar with its purpose.
The creation of THE Committee pushed the development of the Provost’s Initiative for New Initiatives, which funds itself through money raised from Gutmann’s own initiatives. The Provost’s Initiative for New Initiatives called for a DPS inspection of the President’s House.
“I myself have always had doubts as to whether the President lived there,” Provost Price said. “I don’t want to partake in campus rumors, but have you ever seen her leaving the house in the morning? I didn’t think so.”
In regards to THE Committee created without her approval, Gutmann announced a new deanship position. The Dean of Committees will be charged with identifying all committees related to the University and their purposes. While the search for the new dean is currently in effect, Gutmann has decided to take an alternative approach in the creating a search team. Instead, she will have the Undergraduate Assembly lead the search.
“I have faith in the students of the UA to find good dean recommendations. They all work well together and stick to their goals,” Gutmann said. One UA member confirmed that Kevin Spacey was one of the top recommendations for the Dean of Committees.
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