THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA • FOUNDED 1885
PHILADELPHIA, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2025
VOL. CXLI
NO. 28
McCaffery says men’s basketball using NIL ‘collective,’ alumni-driven ‘internships’ to support players The use of a collective to fund NIL deals would mark the first official mechanism by which individuals can contribute monetarily to Ivy League players VALERI GUEVARRA, CONOR SMITH, AND WALKER CARNATHAN Sports Editor, Deputy Sports Editor, and Former Sports Editor
stated that the 4000 block of Walnut Street was “all clear” and that activity could resume in the area after foot and vehicle traffic in the area had been restricted for over an hour. Shortly after the incident, a UPennAlert stated that the shooter was last seen driving westbound
Penn men’s basketball coach and 1982 Wharton graduate Fran McCaffery said that the program is utilizing a “collective” that allows individuals to contribute funds to its players through legitimate name, image, and likeness opportunities and encouraging alumni-driven “paid internships” to financially support student-athletes — prompting reactions from Penn’s athletic department and from across the Ivy League community. The Ivy League allows “legitimate NIL,” which is defined as direct payments from third-party businesses in exchange for advertisements or endorsements. But the conference opposes collectives, which typically involve direct payouts to student-athletes for their athletic participation without requiring endorsements in return. McCaffery described Penn’s collective as one that would disperse NIL deals at “fair market value” during an online question and answer session on Nov. 6. “There are a number of people on this phone call that have already stepped up in a big way to help me because we can make some noise in the NIL space through true NIL opportunities and paid internships,” McCaffery said, adding that “We can raise money in the collective, but then it has to be dispersed … for true NIL opportunities where somebody is legitimately profiting from [NIL] and basically funneled through legitimate business opportunities.” These individual deals would constitute legitimate NIL, which the Ivy League currently allows. The use of a collective to fund these deals, though, would mark the
See SHOOTING, page 3
See NIL, page 6
GRACE CHEN | SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER
Philadelphia Police investigating 40th and Walnut streets shooting as search for suspect continues As of 7 p.m. Wednesday, the investigation was ongoing and a suspect had not been arrested, according to a spokesperson for the Philadelphia Police Department JASMINE NI AND SAMANTHA HSIUNG News Editor and Senior Reporter
A Philadelphia Police Department investigation and search for a suspect are ongoing after one individual was injured in a Tuesday night shooting at the intersection of 40th and Walnut streets. The victim was a 34-year-old male unaffiliated with the University, according to a statement
from Penn’s Division of Public Safety. A Philadelphia Police spokesperson additionally wrote to The Daily Pennsylvanian that officers transported the victim to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center with injuries to the abdomen and arm. The incident occurred around 10:10 p.m. on Nov. 11. A UPennAlert at 11:38 p.m. that night
College Dean Peter Struck discusses Foundations program, ‘new era’ for general education curriculum
Penn Carey Law students matriculate from small pool of schools and majors, DP analysis finds
The initiative is part of a planned restructuring of the general education curriculum that will reduce requirements for students, Struck told The Daily Pennsylvanian
The Daily Pennsylvanian constructed demographic data for 98% of the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School’s graduating students from the past three years
SAMEEKSHA PANDA AND LAVANYA MANI Staff Reporter and Contributing Reporter
JACK GUERIN Senior Reporter
College of Arts and Sciences Dean Peter Struck sat down with The Daily Pennsylvanian to discuss the new pilot courses introduced by the College for first-year students this fall and their role in the broader overhaul of the school’s general education curriculum. Following faculty consensus that general education requirements for the College were outdated, Penn introduced the College Foundations program for a cohort of current first years. The initiative is part of a planned restructuring of the general education curriculum that will reduce requirements for students, Struck told the DP. “I worry a little that it’s a little too complicated,” Struck said of the general education requirements. “We‘re testing some ideas right now to try to think about ways we could streamline that.” The four courses in the College Foundations program — a first-year seminar, a writing seminar, and the “Kite” and “Key” courses, which provide an introduction to the humanities and the sciences, respectively — can fulfill six general education requirements and offer an integrated introduction to the subjects they cover. The new curriculum classifies courses within broad categories of science, social science, or humanities and requires a certain number of credits for each. These categories aim to allow for the significant expansion of classes that can be counted to fulfill these requirements, while at the same time enabling students to pursue minors and other interests. According to Struck, the curriculum will undergo student and faculty consideration for the next two years through the pilot program; the aim for the program’s formal implementation is fall 2027. Struck said that the goals for the new structure were to “encourage exploration,” make the curriculum “legible,” “manage complexity,” and produce students who are “capable of thinking independently.” He highlighted the importance of a “breadth SEND STORY IDEAS TO NEWSTIP@THEDP.COM
of knowledge” and noted that the general education curriculum is meant to build an intellectual foundation before students specialize in majors. The expansive requirements of the current structure, however, led to students taking foundational courses late into their time at the University. “‘Kite’ and ‘Key’ was a way of structuring exploration to make sure that students had exposure and background in lots of different ways of approaching both quantitative thinking and qualitative thinking,” Struck said. “Making sure that there was a structured exploration in the first year, so that it could make a difference for students in a choice of major, that’s really the key.” Struck expressed his belief that the “best and most profitable way to prepare for your future is to follow your curiosity” and “learn to think broadly.” “I think that folks who decide in their undergraduate education to pick up just a whole bunch of skills and gather a whole bunch of discrete ways of being able to do things — it’s an invitation to AI to eat their lunch,” Struck said. He emphasized the importance of “meeting the moment” with the curriculum redesign — pointing to reassessments of the language and writing requirements. “What the world needed 20 years ago is a little different than what the world needs right now,” Struck said. “We want to make sure that the curriculum and whatever requirements we adopt are suited to the moment that we have now.” While the College Foundations program aims to provide students with a diverse background of information, Struck said that students with more focused interests also stand to benefit, since the courses emphasize the process of learning over material itself. “The point of the courses is to focus on how knowledge is constructed … so people can be very sophisticated in how they understand knowledge to be constructed, and how they can find their own See COLLEGE, page 2
LAYLA NAZIF | STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
The entrance to Penn Carey Law pictured on Sept. 25, 2024.
Most University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School students come from a highly concentrated group of undergraduate schools and fields of study, an analysis by The Daily Pennsylvanian found. The DP collected names of Penn Carey Law graduates from the law school graduating classes of 2025, 2024, and 2023 using commencement programs. Using publicly available information, the DP constructed demographic data for 98% of the graduating students from these years. The majority of Penn Carey Law students attended a private American institution for their undergraduate degree, with only two of the 10 most commonly represented undergraduate institutions being public. Ivy League universities were attended by 155 students
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— almost 20% of the total student population across the three years sampled. Embed Code Penn was the most represented undergraduate institution among all three classes, with 7% of students having earned their bachelor’s degree from the University. Twenty-four members of Penn Carey Law’s 2025 graduating class received their undergraduate degree from Penn. For the 2024 and 2023 graduating classes, Penn was also the most common undergraduate school, with 18 and 16 class members, respectively. For those graduating classes, the number of students who received a J.D. ranged from 248 to 301. However, this pattern of sending multiple students See LAW, page 2 CONTACT US: 215-422-4640