During a University Council meeting on Wednesday, Penn students and organizations voiced concerns about the possibility of United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity on campus.
The Feb. 18 meeting included statements from multiple student groups, including the Muslim Student Association, the Latinx Coalition, and Penn for Immigrant Rights. The students described uncertainty among members of the Penn community and called on administrators to take additional steps to share information and provide support.
“We have yet to hear from the University,” a representative for PIR said. “We have yet to hear that you support us, that you care, and that you have any plan at all.”
The representative added that “it is not up to University to decide what information is worth sharing with us when it is very much a deal of life or death, when our families are being threatened, when we’re being profiled and harassed on the street.”
“Why would we believe anything that the University says when you actively take down undocumented resource sites and support?” she stated.
A representative for the Latinx Coalition similarly noted that “we hope that this university can start showing us it’s proud of its community and demonstrate that it cares about us in proactive ways.”
“No students should feel that attending prayer or breaking fast requires calculating personal risk,” a MSA representative said during the meeting. “We ask that the university addresses the anxiety students are current, currently carrying, not only in moments of confirmed enforcement activity, but now.”
The meeting also included input from several student groups, including Penn’s graduate student union and the Undergraduate Assembly. The event featured a presentation of “faculty perspectives on artificial intelligence in teaching and research,” the fourth focus issue of the year. Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Russell Composto shared new ways the University is incorporating AI into the undergraduate curriculum.
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“Our role in the vice provost office is to make sure … that all schools have access to the ability to have AI in their coursework,” Composto stated.
Iwan Barankay, Wharton Management professor, and Nursing professor Marissa DeCesaris Siegel also shared their perspectives on the different ways AI could be utilized in their respective departments.
“We’re all still looking at ways that we can use AI and make the learning experience more individualized for students,” Siegel said.
Faculty Senate Chair Kathleen Brown mentioned her own concerns with AI in the classroom, noting that “the student use of AI has exacerbated the problem of diminished capacity to read entire books and even chapters and articles.”
Following the presentations, members of the University Council were allowed to contribute individual statements and updates about their respective topics during the new business session.
The section also featured academic developments that the council had not heard before, such as the tentative agreement reached between Penn’s graduate student union on Monday night following threats of a strike, and a resolution from the UA to increase club sports funding.
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Staff reporter Kathryn Ye covers central administration and can be reached at ye@thedp.com. At Penn, she studies biochemistry and philosophy.
