September 17, 2026

THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA • FOUNDED 1885

PHILADELPHIA, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2026

VOL. CXLII

NO. 21

A history of the Penn presidency As the search for Penn’s 11th president continues, here’s how the role has changed AIDAN SHAUGHNESSY Senior Reporter

For most of Penn’s history, there was no University president. Until 1930, Penn shouldered administrative responsibility as a collective, with its University Board of Trustees bearing responsibility for the most consequential decisions. With time, the University came to primarily entrust its direction to a single person. Larry Jameson is the latest individual to embody Penn’s presidency. In 2024, he was handed the reins to the University at a time of unprecedented volatility on campus. But much of what has defined Jameson’s tenure has not been unprecedented at all. The office he stands to leave has only existed for 96 years, and in that time, nearly every president has faced campus protests, federal scrutiny, and political tension. As the search for Penn’s 11th president continues, The Daily Pennsylvanian dug through University archives to examine the history of the office. The role of the president From Penn’s founding in 1740 until the late 19th century, the provost was the University’s highestranking administrator — with oversight only over faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences. As new schools were added to the University, the administration was reorganized, a process that established the Office of the President in 1930, according to the University Archives. On Oct. 6, 1930, the Board of Trustees elected Thomas Sovereign Gates, resolving to discharge all executive duties through a “President of the University” who would hold office at the board’s discretion. That language still defines the job. Under the current Statutes of the Trustees, the president is the University’s chief executive officer and its educational and administrative head. The president also serves as a liaison between the trustees and the faculty, holds the rank of professor, and is a “member of every Faculty of the University.” Gates himself was a product of the Board of Trustees. An 1893 Penn graduate and J.P. Morgan partner, he had served as the chairman of the Board of Trustees for four years before his presidential appointment. Gates’ administration went on to create the College of Liberal Arts for Women and the School of Nursing, while leading the University through both See PRESIDENT, page 3

JULIA WANG | SENIOR DESIGNER

A ‘Penn kind of football’ turns 150 Whenever Penn football hits the field, it’s the ‘guys from Philly against everyone else’ ELLIE CLARK Sports Editor

When then-freshman quarterback and 1983 Wharton graduate Gary Vura moved to Philadelphia in the fall of 1979, the idea that Penn football could become a powerhouse program was laughable at best. It had been 20 years since the Quakers won an Ivy League championship. The Mount Rushmore of Penn football — John Heisman, Chuck Bednarik, George A. Munger, John H. Outland — had been firmly unchallenged since the dawn of the modern era. Although the namesakes of the four biggest awards in college football took their first steps toward greatness

on Franklin Field, Penn was considered a “basketball school” after a surprise run to the Final Four of the March Madness tournament in 1979. Vura was determined to change that. The Cleveland native and Miami transplant got his first minutes with the Quakers during his sophomore season in 1980. Although he began the 1981 season as a starter, Vura would ultimately lose the role after a number of low-scoring performances, including a 58-0 shutout loss against Lehigh. It’s hard to pinpoint what changed going into the 1982

Penn Reading Project offers first years a taste of academic life Since 1990, the program has been a cornerstone of New Student Orientation and a chance for incoming students to experience academics at the University CHRISTINE OH Senior Reporter

All across Penn’s campus, Benjamin Franklin gazes down at passersby from pole-mounted street flags celebrating the nation’s semiquincentennial. This August, first-year students encountered that history up close. Since 1990, the Penn Reading Project has served as a cornerstone of New Student Orientation and a first taste of the University’s intellectual life for first years. Before arriving on campus, incoming students from Penn’s four undergraduate schools receive reading materials to prepare for the event, which marks their first college lecture at Penn. In an interview, Penn Reading Project and New Student Orientation Director David Fox described the event as a “commitment to the educational and intellectual mission of the University.” “We felt that it was really important that people are here because it’s a major university,” Fox said. “We should make that a kind of groundbreaking part of New Student Orientation.” Fox acknowledged the tendency for Penn students to “start to really identify” with their respective schools “very quickly after orientation.” “There’s interaction across schools, but there are very few experiences that everybody has,” Fox said. “That was really a significant idea behind the Reading Project that whether you’re in Nursing, or the College, or Wharton, or Engineering, you could talk with your fellow students and you could share this experience.” The project was put on pause between 2022 and 2025 while resources were dedicated to different programs for incoming undergraduates. This year, American History professors Sarah Gronningsater, William Sturkey, and Karen Tani jointly curated a selection of written material that NEWS Penn has begun its search for the next Stuart Weitzman School of Design dean

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season. Vura was back in the starting lineup. Thencoach Jerry Berndt made weight training mandatory after realizing the Quakers were being manhandled on short-distance downs. Franklin Field was re-turfed amid historic renovations. The Quakers took their first game of the 1982 season — against defending Ivy League champion Dartmouth — in a shocking 21-0 shutout victory for the program’s first road victory since 1976. Lehigh, the same team that the Quakers struggled to score against just a season prior, See FOOTBALL, page 9

No — AI will not wipe out humanity by 2030, Penn experts say An Anthropic employee believes the technology has a greaterthan-10% chance of leading to human extinction within the decade ADDISON SAJI Senior Reporter

EDDY MARENCO/UNIVERSITY COMMUNICATIONS

The Penn Reading Project took place on Aug. 23.

showcased the evolution of modern democracy in the United States. Gronningsater served as this year’s event moderator, leading students through a brief lecture on “ordinary people and their role in American democracy.” In an interview, Gronningsater reflected on “the specialness of having 2,000 students enter NEWS An ally of President Donald Trump will represent Amy Wax in her lawsuit against Penn

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their first year at Penn having a common experience.” To Gronningsater, one of Penn’s strengths is its reputation as “a massive research university,” where people have the opportunity to “chart your own path in all these different ways.” See READING, page 7

OPINION Columnist Gloria Oladejo argues Penn’s financial aid presents challenges for students with non-nuclear families

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A former researcher at the artificial intelligence company Anthropic announced his resignation on social media last week with a stark warning: The people building AI models believe it could wipe out humanity by the end of the decade. His post set off a dayslong discourse over the rapid pace of AI research and development, which quickly became national news when a current Anthropic researcher agreed. “We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade,” Anthropic Alignment Science lead Evan Hubinger chimed in. Experts at Penn, however, say that outcome is highly unlikely. “It seems as though everyone is talking about these precise timelines and those precise threats at almost exactly the same time. I usually find that suspicious,” Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education at the School of Engineering and Applied Science Robert Ghrist said in an interview. It is “highly unlikely” that AI will kill humanity, School of Social Policy & Practice professor Ioana Marinescu concurred. “You can’t rule it out,” she added, but a “complete wipeout is quite improbable.” Engineering School professor Hamed Hassani called the X posts “completely overdramatic.” “This will not happen,” he said in an interview. “Of See AI, page 6

SPORTS Senior defensive back Josh Narcisse has turned every obstacle into an opportunity

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NEWS 3

Penn begins search for next Weitzman School of Design dean

Penn resumes CPT review for federally compliant international students

Current Stuart Weitzman School of Design Dean Frederick Steiner will serve in the role through June 30, 2027

The University paused all new and pending applications for the work authorization in August

RYAN RUCKER Staff Reporter

LAVANYA MANI AND ADDISON SAJI Senior Reporters

Penn announced the formation of an advisory committee to help select the next dean of the Stuart Weitzman School of Design on Tuesday. According to an announcement from Penn President Larry Jameson and Provost John Jackson Jr., the consultative committee includes seven faculty, two students, and two alumni. Current School of Design Dean Frederick Steiner has held the title since 2016 and will serve in the role through June 30, 2027. “I’ve thoroughly enjoyed serving as Dean of the Weitzman School as well as being the Paley Professor,” Steiner wrote in a statement. “We have a fabulous community of students, alumni, faculty, staff, and friends at the Weitzman School. I plan to return to teaching in landscape architecture and city planning at Penn after my term as Dean ends next summer.” Jameson and Jackson wrote in the announcement that the committee will accept “nominations and input from all members of the University community” until Oct. 31. Graduate School of Education Dean Katharine Strunk will serve as the committee’s chair. The faculty members include five professors appointed to the School of Design: Francesca Ammon, Sharon Hayes, Rashida Ng, Catherine Seavitt, and Lisa Servon. History and Sociology of Science professor David Barnes and Perelman School of Medicine professor Eugenia South will also serve on the committee. The committee also includes School of Design

master’s students Sydney Jones and Mic Ma, as well as 2000 School of Design graduate Mark Gardner and 2001 Wharton graduate Matthew Nord, who serves as chair of the School of Design’s Board of Advisors. Senior Vice President for Institutional Affairs Joann Mitchell is listed as an ex officio member. Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor to the President Pierce Buller and Senior Director of Special Projects Eugene Vaynberg will serve as staff to the committee. The group’s work will be supported by Jackie Zavitz and Meghan Ashbrock, consultants from the executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles. The firm has previously supported searches at Baylor University and Davidson College. Steiner’s deanship, initially set to last until 2023, was extended in 2021 and again in 2024. While in the role, he oversaw several initiatives and expansions at the school, including new scholarships. In 2019, the school was renamed for fashion designer and 1963 Wharton graduate Stuart Weitzman, who provided a major donation that relieved financial strain. In February, the school unveiled the renovation of Stuart Weitzman Hall, improving studio facilities and adding multipurpose spaces designed to increase collaboration. Penn has another ongoing consultative committee shaping the search for the University’s next president. This summer, Jameson announced that he will step down from his post as planned next June.

Penn will start processing international student requests for Curricular Practical Training authorization. The University paused all new and pending applications for the work authorization — which allows international students to work off campus while seeking a bachelor’s degree — after new guidance from the Student and Exchange Visitor Program last month. In a Sept. 10 message, Penn International Student and Scholar Services said the office will only consider “requests that meet the current federal requirements.” ISSS Director Rudie Altamirano wrote in a statement that the processing has resumed for students whose “practical training is required for all students in the academic program or track and is an integral part of the established curriculum.” Requests must “satisfy all applicable requirements, including a written cooperative agreement with the employer,” he added. According to SEVP’s Aug. 24 memo, CPT is permitted “only where the training is an integral part of an established curriculum.” The federal guidance warned that institutions that fail to comply with the updated regulations could lose their certification to enroll foreign students. “Schools confirm the relevant academic requirements, while ISSS determines immigration eligibility and issues CPT authorization,” Altamirano wrote. “Because eligibility depends on both the student’s curriculum and the specific placement, each request must be evaluated individually.” According to the webpage, “Students seeking CPT authorization should work with their academic department to confirm that the practical training satisfies the applicable curricular requirements.” The SEVP guidance is the latest in a series of orders from Washington affecting Penn’s international student

CONNIE ZHAO | SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

The School of Design on April 1.

PRESIDENT, from front page the Great Depression and World War II. Each subsequent president has brought with them an entirely unique character, along with priorities that have defined various eras of the University’s history. Gates was succeeded in 1944 by George McClelland, a Penn English professor who had served as provost since 1939 and whom Gates had primed for the role. McClelland was followed in 1948 by Harold Stassen, the former governor of Minnesota. Stassen — who had lost the Republican presidential nomination that summer — was the first president without prior ties to the University. Gaylord Harnwell, elected in June 1953, had chaired the physics department for 15 years. Martin Meyerson, who took office in 1970, was a city planner who had previously served as acting chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, and president of the University at Buffalo. Meyerson’s “One University” vision called for Penn’s schools to collaborate across disciplines and led to the formation of what is now the School of Arts and Sciences. The presidents who followed largely came from academic backgrounds. Sheldon Hackney was a historian of the American South; Judith Rodin, a 1966 College graduate, was the former provost of Yale University and the first woman to permanently lead an Ivy League university; and Amy Gutmann was the former provost of Princeton University before becoming Penn’s longest-serving president, from 2004 to 2022. Liz Magill arrived from the University of Virginia, where she was executive vice president and provost. Jameson was the University’s longest-serving dean and the executive vice president for the University of Pennsylvania Health System. Responses to campus unrest Throughout Penn’s history, some of the most prominent moments of student activism took place inside or around College Hall — with a goal of catching the president’s attention. How each president responded mirrors the evolving functions and influence of the role. One of the most fiery confrontations began on Oct. 16, 1965, when 350 protesters walked from City Hall to 37th and Walnut streets to protest Penn’s Institute for Cooperative Research. Activists accused the institute of conducting research for the Vietnam War, although Harnwell said Penn had no direct relationship with the conflict. In the spring of 1967, after a two-year dispute in which professors threatened to wear gas masks at Commencement, the University canceled the two classified Defense Department contracts, known as Spice Rack and Summit. When protesters blockaded Van Pelt-Dietrich Library in May 1971 in support of union rights, Meyerson condemned the action as “immoral” and “illegal,” warning that he would “turn to civil authorities” if they ignored citations. In 1977, the University’s Committee on Open Expression found that Penn’s Office of Security and Safety had paid students to attend campus political meetings and share information with authorities — all without identifying themselves as staff. Meyerson wrote that he was “saddened” by the practice, but added that the Committee’s report did not adequately emphasize that “freedom of any kind cannot flourish without protection.” While Hackney was president, students demanding

population. In July, the federal government announced that fixed visa lengths would replace the longstanding “Duration of Status” system. Individuals who need time beyond their authorized admission period would be required to apply for an Extension of Stay. That proposal was temporarily blocked on Sept. 14, just one day before it was set to take effect. United States District Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV of the District of Massachusetts wrote in a motion that the government’s rationale was “exceptionally weak.” Altamirano explained that students “should continue to follow the existing requirements applicable to their immigration status.” In 2025, the Trump administration also announced a $100,000 annual fee on new and renewal H-1B visa petitions, which are granted to foreign workers in specialty occupations. A federal judge struck down the fee in June, but at the time ISSS advised students to continue to “exercise caution” as “further government action is anticipated.” The White House considered implementing a separate $100,000 fee on Optional Practical Training, which currently allows international students to remain and work in the country for one to three years post-graduation. Penn experts said the move could price out recent graduates and erode a pipeline American universities and employers have long relied on. In conversations earlier this month, international students said that changing federal immigration policy is already reshaping how they approach their career plans. Altamirano wrote in a statement that ISSS remains “committed to providing students with timely and accurate information” and that the office “provides one-on-one advising to help students understand the immigration requirements and how the guidance may apply to their individual circumstances.”

CONNIE ZHAO | SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

College Hall on April 27.

divestment from companies doing business in apartheid South Africa launched a sit-in in College Hall on Jan. 22, 1986. During the 20-day demonstration, a wooden shanty was erected on College Green, according to the Pennsylvania Gazette. Hackney’s response was to change who enforced the guidelines on open expression. That October, he and then-Provost Thomas Ehrlich formed a special committee to review “ambiguities” in the policies’ language, a move some Committee members saw as an attempt to “dilute” the group’s power. During Gutmann’s tenure, Fossil Free Penn’s proposal for the University to divest from fossil fuel companies was rejected in September 2016. The student group responded with sit-ins in College Hall in November 2016 and March 2017. The protests escalated in November 2019, when about 100 FFP members disrupted a Board of Trustees meeting until it was shut down. In February 2020, Gutmann announced that Penn would not invest in the coal and tar sands industries. Four years later, Penn again became the site of multiple demonstrations, including a 16-day Gaza Solidarity Encampment on College Green. After weeks of protests, rallies, and negotiations with administrators, Penn Police officers — assisted by the Philadelphia Police Department — dismantled the encampment and arrested 33 people, including nine Penn students, on May 10, 2024. On June 6, 2024, Penn announced a temporary set of guidelines for campus demonstrations and began the process of reviewing its open expression policies. That process is ongoing. The president in Washington Stassen is the only Penn president to have sought the White House while in office. After losing the 1948 Republican nomination to former New York

Gov. Thomas Dewey, he ran again in 1952. He later lost the nomination to former U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower, who then named Stassen to his Cabinet as director of the Mutual Security Agency. On campus, Stassen was known for his absences, particularly during his spring 1952 national campaign, and was criticized for using Penn as a political staging ground. Stassen would seek the Republican nomination nine times between 1948 and 1992. A 2001 article by the DP called him “the president that Penn forgot.” Harnwell’s role on the national stage, on the other hand, was quieter. In 1960 and 1961, he advised the founding of an American-inspired university in Shiraz, Iran. He also spent World War II directing the Navy’s sonar research laboratory in San Diego and received the Medal for Merit in 1947. Rodin became the first woman to lead the Rockefeller Foundation, which supports global initiatives to address climate change and economic insecurity. She also joined the boards of Aetna, BlackRock, Citigroup, and Comcast. Gutmann also held many national roles while in College Hall. Former U.S. President Barack Obama appointed her in 2009 to chair the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, which she led for seven years. The Senate confirmed her as the U.S. ambassador to Germany on Feb. 8, 2022, the day she stepped down from the presidency. She served in Berlin until July 2024. While many of Penn’s early presidents left the University for jobs in Washington, its most recent leaders seem to have Washington come to them. Magill ended her presidential term with a Hearing at the U.S. House of Representatives. In December 2023, Magill — alongside the presidents of Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology — was questioned about antisemitism

on college campuses by the House Education and Workforce Committee. Members of Pennsylvania’s congressional committee urged the Board of Trustees to remove her, which left Magill no choice but to resign. Many of Jameson’s defining moments as president have revolved around federal scrutiny. In March 2025, the White House announced it would freeze more than $175 million in federal funding to Penn, citing the University’s earlier participation policies for transgender athletes. In July of that year, Penn became the first Ivy League school to reach an agreement with the Trump administration. Throughout Jameson’s tenure, Penn has navigated sustained scrutiny from the federal government, including an antisemitism investigation and efforts to pressure the University into changing its governance practices. The presidential search process Previous searches for a new Penn president began quickly. The Board of Trustees formed a search committee 20 days after Hackney announced his resignation in April 1993, about two months after Rodin’s announcement in June 2003, and two months after Gutmann’s in July 2021. But 130 days after Magill’s resignation, Penn still hadn’t announced its committee. The board instead extended Jameson’s interim term in June 2024, before making him permanent president in March 2025. In an August interview with the DP, Jameson said that “somebody actually had to tell” him that he was the 10th president of Penn. “I hadn’t counted them myself,” Jameson said. “But I think the caliber of the institution has just progressively improved all the time.”

AMY LUO | SENIOR DESIGNER

4 OPINION

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2026

Opinion

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Financial aid versus the non-nuclear family GLORIA OBJECTS | How Penn’s financial aid process fails families On a campus riddled with designer bags, pricey downtown events, and peers with last names that appear on campus buildings or nearby streets, it’s no question that there is a class disparity problem within our culture. While, of course, this is a weighty issue in the social framework of student life, I think there has been a lot of emphasis on and cyclical conversations around socioeconomic disparities within the culture — but not the system. Like most historic and prestigious universities in America, Penn served as a breeding ground for white, male, and wealthy students for nearly two centuries. An increase in admissions for students of color began in the 1960s, and the University didn’t become coeducational until 1974. In terms of Penn’s relationship with low-income students, having to pay little or no tuition without taking a loan didn’t seem like a possibility until the Class of 1971 arrived on campus. Financial aid initiatives were rolled out, slowly expanding the socioeconomic diversity of the student body. While some progress has been made with programs like Penn First Plus and initiatives like the Quaker Commitment, the financial aid process still has a ways to go. In particular, this process has a lot of room to improve when it comes to supporting families that don’t perfectly fit the Western nuclear family archetype, and who are often immigrant and Black or Indigenous households. Growing up in an immigrant household, I was no stranger to the “it takes a village” philosophy. Family friends and extended family assisted my parents in raising me and my siblings. In turn, our door was always open to them. My parents, sisters, and I were the only people within my family in the West for a long time, and as we settled in, my parents supported their parents and their siblings following the prayer popular in Yoruba culture: “May you grow old and may your children take very good care of you.” In my home country, there is no robust social security system, or even insurance. While here, we have job benefits and insurance to rely on for support, many in countries similar to mine in the Global South have their children as their form of insurance. When I received my college acceptances, one of my grandparents was facing an acute

ELLIE PIRTLE | DP FILE PHOTO Columnist Gloria Oladejo highlights how Penn’s financial aid process presents challenges for students with a non-nuclear family structure.

health crisis, which resulted in my parents contributing to the medical bills and other financial support. This placed a huge strain on our financial situation, which I had to explain in vast, intimate detail as an “extraordinary” financial circumstance on Question 13 on the Penn Financial Aid Supplement. Long story short, the appeal was disregarded in a short, inexplicit email. I know I am not the only student who has endured something like this. In a conversation with a friend, they shared with me a similar experience in which their Estimated Financial Contribution didn’t take into account the support their household gave to extended family members. When talking directly to a financial aid officer, they were told the reason for their denied appeal was that the financial support went to extended and not immediate family members. Reflecting on this conversation and my own experience made me think back to that dreaded Question 13 and the nature of Penn’s financial aid process. If the experience my

family endured with my grandparent’s health crisis wasn’t an “extraordinary financial circumstance,” what exactly constitutes an extraordinary circumstance? I decided to visit the Financial Aid Appeals section of the Student Registration and Financial Services website — which was interestingly a hard section to find directly on the website and required a Google search — and to my disappointment, my situation and situations like mine are explicitly disregarded. Under “Permissible Reasons for Appeal,” uninsured medical expenses are excused only for immediate family members. Additionally, under “What We Cannot Consider,” providing financial support to family living abroad is listed. With these barriers, many families and students undergo not only financial stress but emotional stress when confronted with the pressure of choosing between a Penn education and family. Inexplicitly regarding financial support to extended family as voluntary undermines the weight of cultural responsibilities that have a weighted history

that cannot be boxed into the individualistic and nuclear family structure of the West. This barrier presented by the financial aid process is far from the only barrier students face. While, again, Penn has made strides in expanding the ways it supports students, there is still a massive room for improvement within the system. By acknowledging the diverse circumstances students come from, rather than following federal aid formulas that are disproportionately centered around Western nuclear families, Penn can move in a progressive direction and offer more opportunities to students who may not be able to afford Penn because they don’t have “extraordinary” financial circumstances. GLORIA OLADEJO is a College sophomore studying law and society and Africana studies from Coopersburg, Pa. Her email is gloriao6@sas.upenn.edu.

Situational awareness isn’t good public safety advice UNHINGED | Popular reactions to violent crime often put the burden on victims Penn alumni have become the subjects of recent marquee street-crime headlines — from 2020 Engineering graduate Luigi Mangione’s alleged killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson to 2016 College graduate Erin Piacenti becoming the victim of a random stabbing. These cases often stir panic on social media given both their brutality and spontaneity. And without fail, certain users always offer their two cents on how to avoid violent attacks. Footage of the gruesome attack has been making the rounds online. We can see Piacenti, a Bank of America vice president who had just returned from maternity leave, walking along Seventh Avenue in the heart of Times Square. Amid the crowd, Pamela Cisneros pulls two knives from a shopping bag and fatally stabs Piacenti off camera. Piacenti wasn’t wearing headphones or lingering in place, which would have made little difference in the horde of tourists and commuters. Yet according to users online, had she only looked around more intently or somehow heard the right warning cue, she might have had a chance to run — though I’m not sure how she was supposed to divine that Cisneros was armed in the first place. One X user suggests that citygoers like Piacenti “keep [their] head[s] on a swivel.” Another adds that “if you … pay attention to your surroundings there’s zero reason for this to be your fate.”

Many of these posts are heavily ratioed edge cases, drawing more views than likes and fire in reply threads. But the idea that victims could prevent unprovoked attacks is not new, particularly at Penn. In late 2025, a group of individuals was repeatedly striking University City pedestrians in the backs of their heads before fleeing. The attacks often occurred in high-traffic parts of campus, including outside 1920 Commons as people left near closing time or near Wawa on Spruce Street, just beyond a stretch of fraternity houses. In response, public safety officials urged residents to avoid distractions such as phones and earbuds. And as for the advice that members of the r/UPenn subreddit dish out to incoming students: “You do need to just exercise general awareness — don’t wander into ‘bad’ neighborhoods, don’t just hang around a corner, don’t walk with your earphones in at night.” These precautions are valuable because we can be on the defensive more easily than we can control a random aggressor’s behavior. But our ability to take precautions tells us little about their causal importance in preventing victimization. According to an estimate by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 0.77% of Americans age 12 or older experienced at least one violent victimization by a stranger during 2024. In this study, the BJS considered robberies or assaults arising from disputes with strangers,

among other incidents, so random street attacks constitute only part of that percentage. The numbers are another way of saying that it makes little sense to move through public life treating every stranger as a potential murderer. If anything, through July 2026, New York City registered 149 murders, the lowest first-seven-month total in the New York City Police Department’s recorded history. And that’s the problem with suspicious behavior in the abstract: if you know that someone has a weapon, you can get away. But if all you know is that someone seems “off,” you attempt to stay calm while figuring out what exactly you are looking at. The advice is sensible enough, but it requires pedestrians to diagnose the genre of danger before anything has actually happened. As viewers of these violent clips, we know which stranger in the footage poses the danger. Nevertheless, a pedestrian in Times Square sees thousands of strangers. On zoomed-in footage, it was impossible not to notice Cisneros spinning around knives like nunchucks. Piacenti, however, did not see that scene from the vantage point body-camera footage later gives us. Before the attack, Cisneros’ behavior still fell somewhere within the vast New York behavioral spectrum between imminent threat and some guy on the L train having a Monday. Commentators who dwell on supposed warning signs create a false narrative of vio-

lent street crime as being predictable. They leave us thinking that victims have more time to react than they actually do. When we internalize that false expectation, we become less prepared for how sudden an attack can be. This negligence puts all of us in greater danger — especially on a campus where UPennAlerts are often at the top of our recent texts. As for more reasonable advice, the Upper Darby Township Police Department, just outside Philadelphia, recommends keeping a personal alarm on hand while walking. Nearby Upper Merion Township Police similarly adds that whistles or personal alarms can alert folks nearby when something is wrong. While no precaution can guarantee enough reaction time during a sudden attack, advice of this kind can at least respect the nature of the situation as it actually occurred. Once a lack of vigilance becomes our goto explanation for why someone became a victim, we relieve ourselves of the burden of reckoning that some attacks are beyond our control. Unfortunately, many of us will keep claiming the moral high ground, offering opinions about what someone should have done, until life puts us in the same position. MRITIKA SENTHIL is a senior from Columbia, S.C. Her email is mritikas@ upenn.edu.

Embrace AI. It’s here to stay. JACK OUTSIDE THE BOX | Give up on the no-tech craze

LETTER SUBMISSION Have your own opinion? Send your letter to the editor or guest column to letters@thedp.com. Editorials represent the majority view of members of The Daily Pennsylvanian, Inc. Editorial Board, which meets regularly to discuss issues relevant to Penn’s campus. Participants in these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on related topics.

LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The Land on which the office of The Daily Pennsylvanian stands is a part of the homeland and territory of the LenniLenape people, known to the original Indigenous people as “Lenapehoking.” We affirm Indigenous sovereignty and will work to hold The Daily Pennsylvanian and the University of Pennsylvania more accountable to the needs of Native American and Indigenous people.

CONNIE ZHAO | SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER Senior columnist Jack Lakis comments on recent anti-artificial intelligence sentiment and Penn’s need to correct course.

For the first time in my now seven semesters at Penn, all of my classes are “no tech,” meaning the professors have disallowed laptops for any purpose in the classroom. Each of these policies is accompanied by a strict and uncompromising ban on the use of artificial intelligence for any reason in the course. While academics and collegiate administrators have been pessimistic about AI for some time, this turn marks a new extreme in how they catastrophize AI. In practice, this means that many of my courses, all of which are in the social sciences, no longer ask students to write out-of-class essays or research papers. Professors have in-

stead begun to rely on in-class handwritten assignments and exams. That is an unsatisfactory solution. In trying to prevent students from cheating critical thinking, our faculty have taken critical thinking off the table completely. As AI, distracting technology, and whatever comes next are introduced, pedagogy should be innovated, not regressed. Through outright AI bans, Penn’s faculty have enforced a Ludditelike approach to learning that has been outdated for decades. Instead, our University should focus on how AI can be a useful tool. Its embrace is almost universal elsewhere, and it isn’t going to magically disappear anytime soon. At least one university is getting it right:

Dartmouth College. Earlier this month, Dartmouth President Sian Beilock offered her perspective on AI as an educational tool. She compares reluctance to embrace AI to the anticipation one experiences before an important exam. We sit squarely in that anticipatory phase: instead of dealing with AI, professors are just trying to make it go away. A more productive approach, Beilock says, would be for educators to teach their students “how to approach AI critically.” The truth is that AI is very much here to stay. Virtually every workplace that Penn graduates frequent is being revolutionized by generative tools. We are nearing an era where AI fluency is an employability skill as crucial as professionalism and technical knowledge. Penn can make a difference by teaching students how to responsibly and effectively use AI in their academic work. It’s a pedagogical necessity like any other. We lose so much by pretending that AI doesn’t exist. These tools have given us an opportunity to challenge students in new ways. They’ve also introduced a responsibility for universities to universally adapt and help their students work through our new AI-native reality. AI will be available in any job, schooling, or real-world setting that our graduates encounter. It’s illogical for it to be prohibited at the very place that intends to train them for postgraduate success. One uncomfortable truth must be confronted: if your at-home essay assignment could be satisfactorily completed by ChatGPT, then your as-

signment is no longer valuable. Instead, assignments and content should require engagement from the human mind. Then, a student’s use of AI shouldn’t be of concern. When calculators were invented, humans moved from computation to calculus. AI should be a similar opportunity: human critical thinking shouldn’t go away, it should become more advanced. I challenge social science, humanities, and liberal arts professors to think critically about what AI is useful for and what it isn’t. Human judgment is evolving. A computer can generate a lot of written content, but only a human mind can pick out what information is important and accurate. When used correctly, AI has been proven to enhance the quality of your work without compromising the learning process. Its use is essential. Anti-AI and no tech policies have made me a fundamentally worse student. Without longform writing, the ability to take in-class notes quickly, and the leeway to ask Claude for clarification, I simply haven’t been gaining as much from my classes. That’s a disappointing reality for my final year at Penn. But, we still have time to put our best AI-generated foot forward. An open and responsible embrace of AI tools is Penn’s next step in providing the world-class liberal arts education we are promised. JACK LAKIS is a College senior studying political science and communication from Kennesaw, Ga. His email is jlakis@sas.upenn.edu.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2026

THEDP.COM | THE DAILY PENNSYLVANIAN

OPINION 5

Can we be proud of Penn? PIPER’S PENN PAL | What does it look like to love a deeply flawed institution? Becoming an upperclassman sneaks up on you, truly. One minute, it’s New Student Orientation — you’re new and wild and 18 — and the next, you’re a junior. Friends are having 21st birthdays, planning post-graduation, and if you’re from a small town, like myself, some are even starting families. Meeting first years prompts a withered laugh and a piece of advice, instead of instant conversation about writing seminars and the lack of free printing included in that nearly $100,000 tuition. We’ve all heard it before. Penn, in all its good and bad, is old news. Getting older is wisdom, comfort, freedom, and friends that you love, rather than those you happened to find in your hall. But being on the precipice of leaving also means that the little bug called legacy begins whispering in your ear: “Did I do enough? Did I meet everyone I could’ve? What was it all for?” These questions run through my mind frequently, though I find regrets to be a Schrödinger’s cat situation. But there’s one box even Schrödinger can’t keep me from opening: a vivid vision of our 10th, 20th-, 30th-year reunions. When I walk away from this place, will I tote a Penn sweater and describe it as the best years of my life? Will I donate, or advise my children to apply? Will I talk about it fondly with all of the other WASP parents at piano lessons? After all I’ve learned about this place, is it truly one I want to be associated with? And that has to be the most incredibly privileged stance to take — to question the value of an institution millions would dream of attending. I know. The ivory tower is a strange place from which to complain. But perhaps our position is exactly why we should look closely at what it asks us to defend. Penn has its plethora of problems; we all know it. Once again, cue the broken record. I could — and The Daily Pennsylvanian has — spend years detailing them in excruciating detail. Institutionally, we operate like a business, prioritizing profit over student education. Most of those students already come from wealthy families and areas, while those who aren’t exceedingly privileged or connected get maimed by financial aid year after year. Culturally, we promote hollow connections, status, and exclusivity, while lacking empathy, humility, and an appreciation for careers in service. I could go on. When my mother reads this, I expect a text along the lines of: “If it’s so bad, then what am I paying for?” Well, Mom, I’ve wondered the same thing. How can all of these things be true, and yet, so many of us still love this place? Talk about cognitive dissonance. I don’t pretend to be a paradigm of morality, but as Penn slowly becomes something I’ll remember rather than somewhere I reside and learn, I’ve started wondering what it means to remain loyal to an institution whose values I don’t always recognize as my own. Especially when some of its failures fall hardest on the very students who stand to gain the most from being here. Then enters my very dear friend, who, each time I find myself in this hole, reminds me with a sheepish smile just how very lucky we are to be complaining. How enriched she’s been in lecture,

CHENYAO LIU | SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER Senior columnist Piper Slinka-Petka investigates what it means to be proud of Penn.

fascinated merely to be in the orbit of some of our world’s brightest minds. Reminding me that after every low of Penn, there’s that insurmountable love from our wonderful friends, that makes all of my complaints quite dull, actually. She reminds me how every other member of my high school graduating class doesn’t get access to the connections and capital that Penn basically drops in our lap. And her argument is compelling. When I think about the students whom Penn has brought out of poverty, from generational disadvantage, or countries in which higher education once felt impossibly distant, it becomes difficult to reduce this place to its failures. I think about the professors who could make double the salary in research or consulting but show up to teach us anyway. And let’s not forget the angels in the financial aid office working overtime, against their higher-ups, to get students and parents that discount. The cooks, security officers, and cleaning staff that work for countless hours to give us the most convenient life possible. How can I call Penn the belly of the beast after seeing

all the good it gives? If Penn is somehow a deeply flawed microcosm of American values, and yet also an extraordinary place of opportunity, we find ourselves essentially where we started. I ask again, can we be proud of Penn? If it was an easy question, I would pick a side and camp out there. I could say we should all be entirely cynical, that Penn is inherently flawed and no sane person would be proud to be a member of it. Or, I could instead be so full of optimism and gratitude that I refuse to critique such a privilege. Neither seem quite right, and frankly, oscillating between them is a bit exhausting. Perhaps, treating love and criticism as friends rather than enemies is the solution. Recognizing its failures does not require me to resent the years I’ve spent here. I’ve seen what Penn can give people — the education, the friendships, the opened doors, the chance to live a life previously unimaginable. Yet, I don’t want gratitude for those things to make me complacent about who gets them, who doesn’t, or who gets hurt along

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the way. My sweater-toting loyalty doesn’t have to defend Penn just because it gave me something worth loving. It could be expecting Penn to become more deserving of that love. So, when that little legacy bug inevitably returns, I’m going to let it ask a different question. Hopefully, I won’t remember Penn as the best years of my life. But I imagine I’ll return for those reunions anyway. Not because a sort of Stockholm syndrome has convinced me that this institution was always worthy of my pride, but because loving a place and wanting better from it can exist in the same breath. Pride doesn’t have to be blind. I’ll wear my sweater, but I’ll wear it hoping the Penn I return to someday gives me even more reason to be proud of it.

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6 NEWS

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2026

THE DAILY PENNSYLVANIAN | THEDP.COM

News

Trump ally to represent Amy Wax in lawsuit against Penn

John Eastman, who previously advised 1968 Wharton graduate and President Donald Trump, will join the Penn Carey Law professor’s legal team CATHY SUI Staff Reporter

Amy Wax has hired a new attorney to support her legal fight against Penn: John Eastman, a conservative lawyer who previously advised President Donald Trump. Penn imposed sanctions on Wax — a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School — in 2024 over controversial remarks on race and immigration, which prompted her to file two lawsuits. She will now be represented by Eastman, who previously advised Trump and was disbarred by the Supreme Court of California in April. Eastman has since appealed his disbarment to the United States Supreme Court. According to a case filing submitted last Friday, he will argue on behalf of Wax at a November hearing. Requests for comment were left with Wax’s existing representation and a University spokesperson. Trump graduated from the Wharton School in 1968 with a bachelor’s degree in economics. “I was delighted to accept Professor Wax’s request to represent her on this important appeal,” Eastman wrote in a statement. “In many ways, Penn’s efforts to cancel her are part of a broader, despicable cancel culture of which my own Cal Bar proceedings are a part.” Wax initially sued the University in January 2025, alleging that Penn’s speech policies were racially discriminatory and violated core First Amendment principles. The case was dismissed in August of the same year, but

AI, from front page course, there are very serious concerns about AI agents doing things autonomously, but this doesn’t mean that they’re going to leave humans out of existence. These are very different things.” Just days after Jacob Coxon — the former Anthropic employee whose post sparked a nationwide reaction — took to social media, Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, called for a global slowdown of AI development in a nearly 4,000-word essay titled “We Must Pace the Frontier.” Since then, prominent industry leaders, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, 1997 College and Wharton graduate Elon Musk, and chair of Google DeepMind Demis Hassabis called for a slowdown in AI research. Mechanical Engineering professor Mark Yim discussed how anthropomorphizing AI technologies contributes to the public’s fear. “People talk about whether these computers will become more human,” he said. “But they will never be just like humans because they are not human.” Yim referenced a July incident in which OpenAI instructed bots to solve a cybersecurity puzzle. When the bots hit a wall, they began plotting an attack to steal the answers by breaking out of OpenAI’s systems.

Wax requested that a federal appeals court review the dismissal. That request is currently pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. She filed her most recent suit, for which Eastman is now advising her, last November. This latest effort alleges that Penn has violated Wax’s academic freedoms and breached its contract obligations. “I look forward to the argument in November and addressing for the Court the very significant issues raised by the appeal,” Eastman wrote. Wax was initially suspended following a determination by the Faculty Senate’s Committee on Academic Freedom and Responsibility. The suspension entailed a one-year academic leave at half pay for the 2025-26 school year and permanent loss of her named faculty chair and summer pay. Eastman previously served as the Henry Salvatori Professor of Law and Community Service and Dean at Chapman University’s Dale E. Fowler School of Law. He sought to invalidate votes in four states where Trump alleged voter fraud had occurred during the 2020 presidential election. Weeks after that election, Eastman drafted legal memos suggesting that then-Vice President Mike Pence could refuse to accept certain electoral votes from several battleground states, which would overturn the election’s results after Congress ratified the final vote count.

Wax retained Eastman, a conservative lawyer who previously advised Trump.

Because the bots are trained to be like humans, they are susceptible to human flaws, he explained. “If you’re given an impossible task, which is what they gave them, what would you do?” Yim said. “You might cheat, because it’s impossible otherwise.” Last April, a microbiologist and biosecurity expert at Stanford University recounted an incident to The New York Times in which an “A.I. chatbot told him how to plan a massacre.” According to the scientist, David Relman, the chatbot explained how to modify an infamous pathogen in a lab so that it would resist known treatments. The bot outlined a plan to maximize casualties and minimize the chances of being caught. Last week, Anthropic said that, just this year, it had disrupted several potential plots by scientists who used its leading AI models to conduct research that may have helped develop biological weapons. Because the same type of biological inquiry that can lead to breakthroughs like vaccines can also help engineer dangerous pathogens, the company said that it erred on the side of caution. On Wednesday, OpenAI disclosed six new incidents of “unexpected or concerning” behavior in its AI models, where the systems hid mistakes, fabricated data, or moved files onto the open internet without permission. “These attacks are real,” Hassani said. “AI has a lot of compute in principle, and it can find vulnerabilities within systems relatively easily.” Hassani, who has worked with Google Gemini for the

past year, said that the company has made “tremendous” progress on safety and security and that AI models are “much safer now.” “AI is, in its current state, intelligence,” Marinescu explained. “Intelligence by itself can do a lot, but it doesn’t control the physical world.” Robotics, which does affect the physical world, “has been progressing much slower than AI,” Marinescu added. “By 2030, this outcome seems fairly unlikely.” “Hardware is indeed harder than software because it has to touch the physical world,” Electrical and Systems Engineering professor Pratik Chaudhari said in an interview. All of the experts did agree that there is a place for new legislation to help regulate the technology. “There are multiple layers to security,” Hassani said. “If there are no regulations, we will have a high rate of crimes within the AI ecosystem.” “We don’t want to make regulations that would stifle competition in the domain,” Marinescu explained, but that leads to the issue of liability. “If something bad should happen, how much are the companies or the users responsible?” Other potential harms include how growing automation might harm the labor market, which Marinescu is currently studying. “Some types of jobs will likely be automated away,” she said. “These people might have trouble finding as high-paid a job as they had in the past, and one of the

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things that I’m pushing for is for us to consider reinforced social safety nets.” Earlier this month, Anthropic published a report outlining several possible scenarios of how AI might affect the economy in the coming years. In the prediction model’s most extreme scenario, wages for knowledge-based workers would fall by more than 10% by 2030. According to Marinescu, a regulatory “safety net” would help those who lose their jobs to automation get “longer unemployment benefits, retraining, and wage insurance,” and “cushion the blow” of displacement. Another fear is how AI will impact climate change, according to Chaudhari. “Climate change is still the biggest existential problem that we face today,” he said. “The amount of natural resources that are being exploited by this mad rush to develop the technology is a bit unprecedented.” “I don’t think AI is going to destroy the world, but I think it will definitely affect the world in very big ways, not all of them good, if we don’t do a more measured adoption,” Chaudhari added. Ghrist is similarly less concerned about traditional “sci-fi” fears. “I’m worried about young people, and maybe all people, getting sucked into a deleterious parasocial interaction,” he said. “It’s easy to worry. It’s hard to hope,” Ghrist added. “Optimism is a superpower, but it’s one that requires practice. I try to practice optimism.”

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THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2026

NEWS 7

Student research shines at CURF fall exposition The Sept. 14 event featured work from 382 students across Penn’s four undergraduate schools MAHMOUD STAITIEH Staff Reporter

Hundreds of students gathered in Houston Hall on Monday for the annual Fall Research Expo, showcasing projects on topics that ranged from capital punishment in 18th-century Philadelphia to healthcare services in Botswana. The Sept. 14 event, hosted by Penn’s Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships, featured work from 382 students across all four undergraduate schools. CURF — which celebrated its 25th anniversary this year — funded many of the projects through initiatives such as the summer-long Penn Undergraduate Research Mentorship Program. College sophomore Sinmi Adewunmi displayed her investigation of a new mouse model simulating Fanconi anemia, a rare genetic disease in children. She worked on the project at the Comprehensive Bone Marrow Failure Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia under the mentorship of Perelman School of Medicine professor Peter Kurre. Adewunmi, who had no prior research experience, said PURM’s weekly meetings eased her transition into the lab. She added that her work in the Kurre Laboratory complemented her prior learning experiences in college. “I feel like the liberal arts education in general prides itself on building off curiosity,” Adewunmi said. “That’s what research is: You’re curious about something, you have the resources to scratch that curiosity.” PURM offers first years and sophomores across Penn’s four undergraduate schools the opportunity to spend 10 weeks researching under the guidance of a University faculty member. School of Social Policy & Practice professor Chao Guo ran regular check-ins with students pursuing a project titled “Timebanking and Eldercare: Rethinking Community-based Care.” As they gained familiarity with the work, Guo

READING, from front page “But sometimes there needs to be something that’s holding us together or tying us together in some form of common conversation,” she said. “I think that the Penn Reading Project is used to serve that function.” This year’s readings were primary sources from American history, spanning 1747 to 1968 and including petitions, speeches, newspaper articles, and poetry. The authors ranged from Franklin to “Cherokee Women,” Walt Whitman, and “Natives of Africa.” Sturkey’s lecture focused on moments in American democracy when groups fought for inclusion and civil rights. He explained why teaching that history matters especially as the country celebrates its 250th anniversary. “We’re at a moment where a lot of people are thinking that maybe we won’t have a democracy, and because of those reasons, it’s very important to center the American democratic traditions,”

involved them in more “sophisticated” research activities — including data analysis and interviews. In a statement, Guo explained that it was also a “learning process” for him because it was his first time serving as a faculty mentor. Guo reflected on the experience of watching his students present their work at the expo — which he described as “deeply gratifying.” “Seeing how much they had grown as researchers over the course of the project was one of the most rewarding aspects of the mentoring experience,” Guo wrote, emphasizing that his mentees were able to “present the project confidently, explain why the research matters, and reflect thoughtfully on their own contributions.” CURF Director of Undergraduate Research Ann Vernon-Grey emphasized the importance of Penn’s institutional support for undergraduate research — including through monetary resources and faculty mentorship — which helped make the expo possible. “To be able to set these opportunities up on a grand scale while still maintaining that personal connection is huge for me,” Vernon-Grey said in an interview. For attendees, the expo presented an opportunity to explore intellectual interests beyond their own majors. Engineering first year Alex Wang described the event as a way to “take in new perspectives and learn more information.” “I’ve definitely been interested in doing research since I got here, and seeing what kind of labs people have done work with and what kind of process they did in order to get there was a good experience,” Wang said. Vernon-Grey added that CURF provides students with skills that are transferable to most jobs, even outside of traditional academia. “​​Not all careers require you to do research, but all Sturkey said in an interview. Sturkey also stressed the importance of giving incoming Penn students a window into this field of study. “We’re thinking more about who you are, as opposed to what you will do,” he added. “History skills will make you better at life, a better citizen, better at any job.” Tani, a panelist and lecturer for the event who teaches in both the History Department and at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, also discussed how Penn Reading Project highlights the “skills that the humanities can give” to students. She explained in an interview that she got involved with the project because she “wanted to make sure that this entering class of freshmen know that at this moment, these classes will not only be interesting, but could provide you with vital skills that will make you more valuable going forward in the job market.” “I think we all really believe that close reading, being able to engage with a text in human ways, these will actually be the sought-after skills in the AI moment,” Tani said.

CATHERINE FAN | SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

Students presented their projects at the Fall Research Expo on Sept. 14.

the interesting ones do,” she said, adding that students learn a lot from the experience. “Even if they end up not liking research, they tried it, and they talk about how much they learned about themselves,” she said. “What more can you ask for from your undergraduate years?” To Vernon-Grey, research reflects the goals of the

education system — which she described as the “installation of a love of learning.” Vernon-Grey referenced her time as a biology research assistant during her undergraduate years, describing the experience as “transformative.” Last year, the Fall Research Expo displayed work from over 350 undergraduates.

While Fox clarified that he does not think the Penn Reading Project is “anti-AI,” he said the programming centered around “processing information yourself and coming up with your own understanding of it.” “These are the deepest values of an education, and things that I think the Penn Reading Project has come to really be known for,” he added. Gronningsater also described the Penn Reading Project as a “beginning step in signaling that we broadly think reading is important.” “I think many of us living at this moment in American educational history are aware that there’s just less reading,” she stated. “People are reading fewer books, young people to old people, for a whole host of reasons, so to me at least, there’s something particularly important and vital about bringing back reading as core to what we do.” The event featured several student panelists, including upperclassmen who helped demonstrate a classroom discussion. “Part of what we do in the humanities is we get people in rooms, talking about the human condition across time through different kinds of

humanities disciplines, and what I loved about the Penn Reading Project is, yes, we were in a classroom,” Gronningsater said. Beyond fostering discussion about the material, the event also offered first-year students the opportunity to engage with upperclassmen. College senior Anna Lugovskoy, who is minoring in history, described the benefits of connecting with new students over historical discussions. “There’s that value of showing people what a history curriculum could look like, getting them interested in it,” she said in an interview. Lugovskoy also mentioned the importance of instilling a commitment to the “public good” among students. “History helps you understand these core fundamentals to like American society and like American principles,” she said. “To speak to the entire incoming class and to form an impression of what college could be like, to me, was an incredible privilege,” Tani concluded. “It’s like you get to have some role in shaping their experience of this really important new phase of their life, so that was really special.”

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Hoping to work in journalism or publishing after college? A dynamic panel of six Penn alumni — all of whom worked in different roles at the DP as undergrads — will discuss the early trials, tribulations, and eventual bliss of working in the media. Come get the scoop, as these professionals will field your questions and advise aspiring writers and editors on the everchanging landscape of new media.

LUIS FERRÉ-SADURNÍ C’17 is an immigration reporter at the New York Times. He joined the Times in 2017 and has covered breaking news, crime, housing, and politics for the Metro Desk. MATT FLEGENHEIMER C’11 is a correspondent at the New York Times. His primary focus is long-form profiles of notable figures - in politics and otherwise - for the Times and Times Magazine. BEATRICE FORMAN C’22 is a food writer at the Philadelphia Inquirer and a co-author of Taylor Swift (Spotlight on a Legend), an Amazon-bestselling retrospective on the pop star published in 2024 by Hearst. ASHLEY PARKER C’05 is a staff writer at The Atlantic. Previously, Parker — a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner —spent eight years at the Washington Post, where she covered all four years of Donald Trump’s first presidency, was White House bureau chief covering the first two years of the Biden presidency, as well as the entirety of the Trump presidency. STEPHEN FRIED C’79 is an award-winning journalist and best-selling author who teaches at Penn and at Columbia, where he directs the Medical Journalism Workshop project. He is also Writer-in-Residence at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia & the Mutter Museum. JESSICA GOODMAN C’12 is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of young adult thrillers They Wish They Were Us, They’ll Never Catch Us, The Counselors, and The Legacies. She is the former op-ed editor at Cosmopolitan magazine and has held editorial positions at Entertainment Weekly and Huff Post.

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8 SPORTS

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2026

THE DAILY PENNSYLVANIAN | THEDP.COM

Sports

Editors, past and present, forecast the 2026 Penn football season Current and former editors at The Daily Pennsylvanian predict how the team will fare this year THE DAILY PENNSYLVANIAN SPORTS DEPARTMENT

It’s that time of year again. The lights at Franklin Field are almost ready to be illuminated for the first home football game of the season. As Penn football approaches its 150th season and the start of the Rick Santos era, here’s what current and former editors of The Daily Pennsylvanian forecast for the upcoming season. Bryan Harris — Sports Editor, 98th Board With a new coach, a new quarterback, several new starters, and All-Everything wide receiver Jared Richardson graduated and using his final year of eligibility at Duke, it’s easy to settle on the Ivy League’s official preseason prediction of fourth place for the Quakers in year one of the Rick Santos era — especially with codefending champions Yale and Harvard primed to again battle for the top spot. Sure, the Quakers look like a talented team in transition that may need a year or two to build a championship-level roster. But why take the easy route? That’s boring. I was sports editor of the DP when Penn stunned the Ivies by capturing a share of the title in 1982 under thensecond-year coach Jerry Berndt. It was the beginning of a decades-long campaign of gridiron dominance by Penn, and it made me eternally (well, almost) hopeful and optimistic about the Quakers’ odds of contending for a title. So with Santos now at the helm after a successful run at New Hampshire, I’m picking Penn to finish 5-2 in league play, tied for second with Harvard and behind Yale, who look to repeat under a new coach of their own. Stefan Fatsis — News Editor, 99th Board I have no idea how the Quakers will do this year! But they seem to be stockpiling Power Four quarterback recruits (one this year and one in the high school Class of 2028), which is cool, and the kicker’s first field-goal attempt was a game-winning 45-yarder, which warms my ex-kicker heart (not at Penn, in the NFL — really). Old-guy memory: Would you believe we tore down the goalposts and threw them into the Schuylkill after a miracle win over Harvard a billion years ago? Everyone should just go to a game. Franklin Field is a national treasure. Nick Buchta — Sports Editor, 132nd Board Penn football was ready for a reset. The Quakers have had only one truly contending team in 10 years, and the program has felt stale. Penn’s last two head coaches each had an Ivy title within their first two years — Ray Priore had two of them. Rick Santos comes to University City with less experience than any new Penn coach since Gary Steele — an era that brought few lasting memories to Franklin Field. But Santos also brings change that Penn football has been in real need of. I’m cautiously optimistic that Rick Santos can inject some new energy into the program but skeptical that it will happen right away. Unlike the last two go-rounds, Quakers fans might be waiting a bit before this program becomes competitive. Walker Carnathan — Sports Editor, 140th Board For the first time since 1986, Penn football will kick off its season without Ray Priore on the sideline. The Quakers’ on-field makeover reflects that stark transition. In their first season under new coach Rick Santos, the Red and Blue will trot out a lineup that looks much different from a campaign ago. Six of Penn’s top contributors transferred to FBS schools, and overall attrition decimated the offense — the Quakers will be forced to replace their starting quarterback, two of their top three rushers, and their top four receivers from a season ago. That said, Santos has been active in the transfer portal and on the recruiting trail, and his most critical commitment came at the most critical position: Freshman quarterback Miles Teodecki, who shirked multiple Power

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PEIZE WANG | STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Penn football celebrates during a game against Dartmouth on Oct. 4, 2025.

Four offers to join the Red and Blue, is a rare talent in the Ivy League. Freshman starters are rare in the Ancient Eight at any position, so Santos’ decision to hand the keys to a freshman signal-caller is an even greater endorsement of Teodecki’s potential. Expect growing pains, but with a coach of Santos’ experience and a field general of Teodecki’s pedigree, I expect a solid season in West Philadelphia with more to come in future years. Emilie Chi — Sports Editor, 142nd Board Penn is far from the star-studded squad they were last year. With standouts like 2026 Wharton graduate Liam O’Brien and 2026 College graduate Jared Richardson transferring out, the roster turnover this past offseason is certainly cause for concern — especially the hole left by former coach Ray Priore, who stepped down after 39 years with the program. But don’t fret. Although it’s a tumultuous period of transition for the team, I’m not worried with freshman quarterback Miles Teodecki and Coastal Athletic Association title-winning coach Rick Santos at the helm. Sure, it’s difficult to say whether or not we’ll secure an Ivy League title, but it won’t take away the riveting matchups we will be able to see in the fall. And who knows what Teodecki is going to bring to the field? We might get another “Liamsanity.” It’s intuitive to assume that Penn will place fourth again in the Ivy League standings. But my optimism gets the best of me, and I’ll put Penn at third for this season with a 5-2 record in Ivy play. Ellie Clark — Sports Editor, 142nd Board Rick Santos stands at a crossroads in Penn football history.

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He’s the first external hire since Al Bagnoli took the reins in 1992. The Quakers just became eligible for the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs last season. The NCAA eligibility model shifted to allow all athletes five years of collegiate competition, which I argued allows better player retention and the chance for the Ivy League to become a more cutthroat conference. Although I would love to watch the Quakers hoist the Ivy League crown for the first time in a decade, I think it’ll be a few more seasons before they get that honor. Despite junior quarterback Karson Siqueiros-Lasky being announced as the starter on Media Day, it was confirmed earlier this week that freshman quarterback Miles Teodecki would be lacing up his cleats for the season opener against Bucknell. Santos also announced on Media Day that he’d be debuting a brand-new defensive lineup. While this could confuse opponents, I fear the Quakers are also venturing into unfamiliar territory. While I hope the Quakers will outperform preseason poll expectations, I expect them to start slow while adjusting to the chaos, and ultimately finish toward the middle of the conference with a similarly middling record. Javier St. Remy — Deputy Sports Editor, 142nd Board The Quakers will finish first in the Ivy League for the

SANTOS, from back page first thing we do, we want to lay the foundation of our expectations, our programmatic standards, our core values, and the thing we say all the time is an elite culture has three things: how you act, so your behaviors, how you interact, so what type of relationships you have with your teammates, how connected are you, and then most importantly, how you respond. Most importantly, how you respond to adverse effects.” Between quarterback changes, coaching controversy, and last-second losses, Penn has endured a difficult stretch. Santos hopes to right the ship and won’t take no for an answer. “We’re going to have an unwavering belief that we are going to turn this back into a championship-caliber team. And guys that aren’t all in are not going to make it in this program,” he said. “We’ve been abundantly clear from day one that you have to have full buy in. You have to believe in a team-first mentality,” Santos added. “You have to want to embrace how hard we’re going to work, and if not, then just remove yourself from it, because elite people and performers don’t see eye to eye with people that believe in being average.” Santos hopes to bring intensity to the field, too. He describes himself as a “high energy” coach who works in “the business of winning, make no mistake about

first time since 2016. After a strong start to a 2025 season that saw Penn football win four of their first five games, the Red and Blue suffered a shaky second half to their season in which they went 2-3. However, Penn did show promise in some of their losses. Their loss to Harvard in the penultimate game of the season was a barnburner that saw Harvard take a 45-43 victory. If the Quakers can win tight games like this, it can really carry them above and beyond, given the season is just 10 games long. One of the biggest issues with the 2025 Quakers was their pass defense. Their defense allowed the most passing yards per game of any team in the Ivy while totaling just four interceptions on the season. Though the Red and Blue lost a lot of their defensive centerpieces from last year, newly minted Penn football coach Rick Santos has emphasized the Penn secondary being a fundamental part of this new look for the Quakers. Additionally, a key piece of the backfield, Josh Narcisse, will have more experience at the position of safety, which he was moved to last season after a sophomore year at corner. Though I don’t think it will be easy, I see a world where Penn, with a better pass defense, will be battling with Yale for the top seed in the Ivy. it.” At the same time, though, he knows he’s coaching a group of growing young men and hopes to be a “stable force in their life, so they can be the best versions of themselves.” Although Santos didn’t completely replace the Quakers coaching lineup that former coach Ray Priore left behind, he emphasized creating a sense of continuity for both the program and his coaching style. The opinions of his fellow coaches at New Hampshire were invaluable assets as he crafted Penn’s 2026 coaching staff. He utilized a “core group of guys” who weren’t afraid to call him out whenever necessary. That gave assistant coaches the autonomy and opportunity to have uncomfortable conversations. “I’m someone that always wants to grow and get better, and I don’t pretend to think I know everything,” Santos said. “We had a really good thing in place. So when this job opportunity came up, most head coaches probably don’t do this, but we grabbed dinner … I said, ‘If I get this, is this something you guys would entertain as well? I don’t want to start from scratch.’” At the end of the day, Santos will do whatever it takes to win. He wants this season to feel like a breath of fresh air for Quaker fans, emphasizing a standard where each team “leaves this program better than they found it.” “We want to win. We want to win championships, and a lot of them,” he said. “I want it to be a place of winning and collaboration, and developing elite men.”

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FOOTBALL, from front page was narrowly defeated, 20-17, at home the following week. “It was the first happy ride home for our seniors,” Berndt told The New York Times after the win. “They didn’t know how to handle it. They started singing Christmas carols.” Despite coming into that season ranked the thirdworst college football team in the country, the Quakers managed to claw their way to the top of the conference rankings for the first time in over two decades. The stage was set for the best-selling Homecoming contest in a decade. According to a 1982 article from The Daily Pennsylvanian, a crowd of 35,000 spectators was expected. National media pundits from Sports Illustrated and ABC News covered the tangible excitement on campus as anticipation grew. On Nov. 13, 1982, the Red and Blue held a dominant 20-0 lead going into the fourth quarter, but the Crimson had other ideas, firing off three touchdown passes for a late resurgence. With less than a minute on the clock, the Quakers had their backs against the wall. It was now or never — secure the Ivy League title or settle for second place. A clean pass from Vura was seemingly intercepted by a Harvard cornerback, but the ball never hit the ground, instead finding its way into then-junior wide receiver and 1984 Wharton graduate Rich Syrek’s hands, who made a 19-yard run to Harvard’s 48-yard line. Successive sideline passes put the Quakers in field-goal range. Berndt pointed at then-junior kicker and 1982 College graduate Dave Shulman, who had spent most of the game watching from the sidelines. His first attempt, a 38-yard kick, grazed the goal from the outside, veering a little too far to the left. But it wasn’t over yet — a referee called a yellow flag after a Harvard player ran into the kicker, penalizing the Crimson 10 yards. The Quakers called their final timeout, drawing out the tension as long as possible. All eyes were on Shulman as he came back on the field at Harvard’s 21-yard line. A breath. A kick. A clearance. An Ivy League championship. Penn fans clad in navy blue flooded onto the field, taking the goalpost down with them. It was, as a former DP sportswriter put it, “the Miracle on 33rd Street.” “One of the great things about that [19]82 season was to start something, and not being a one-off,” Vura said. “It just became a purpose. It became a legacy, and that’s one of the great things that I really appreciate that I’m a part of with my teammates, that the [19]82 team really promoted

SEASON, from back page against the Lions, who were the Ivy League co-champions in 2024, ended with the Quakers dashing the Lions’ Homecoming hopes with a 35-21 victory. That result was the opposite from 2024, when the Quakers suffered a 23-17 loss at Franklin Field — their first home loss to the Lions in nearly 30 years. Next, the Quakers will square up for another evening game at home against 2025 Ivy co-champion Yale on Oct. 23. The Quakers have won four of their last 10 matchups against the Bulldogs, with the last two matchups ending in losses. In 2024, a Friday night lights game on Penn’s Family Weekend ended with then-starting quarterback Aidan

JOSH, from back page give him the best opportunity to maximize his potential. “I kind of realized going through AAU that the NBA was not calling my name. And I realized if I wanted to seriously go pro, the NFL, playing football was my best chance. I really had a good skill set that was kind of geared towards football,” Narcisse said. “So from there, it was just about identifying what sport I could use to advance myself in life, not letting the sport use me.” Sports weren’t the only thing that got serious for Narcisse after middle school. At that point in his life, Narcisse also began to become more aware of his surroundings. From an early age, he understood how fortunate he was to come home to a two-parent household, something that was atypical in his neighborhood. “Growing up where I’m from, there’s a lot of broken homes or kids that are struggling or trying to figure it out for themselves and having to grow up really quickly,” Narcisse said. “And so even though I did have my mom and my dad and my little brother at home, just a byproduct of being in that environment was that I was allowing myself to kind of fall into some of those things.” In high school, he was forced to mature quickly. “I had a lot of friends who got involved with things that were going on in the streets,” he added. “Just a lot of things pulling us in different directions trying to distract us from accomplishing things in life.” As the oldest in his family, Narcisse didn’t feel like anyone was looking out for him as he watched longstanding groups fragment over things he “didn’t really understand.” He was forced to adapt to his environment. To develop a tough exterior. To act like the older sibling he never had for his younger brother. “Growing up, there was a lot going on. Just violence and shootouts outside,” Narcisse said. “It’s crazy things that kind of change your perspective and make you grow up a little bit faster.” This realization and a newfound desire to focus on sports prompted his transfer to Archbishop Stepinac High School before his sophomore year. Prior to that season, he

KARSON, from back page “Karson would call you in the middle of the night or text you, ‘Hey coach, do you see how they played this? Do you see how they align like this?’” Karl Calhoun Jr., SiqueirosLasky’s high school football head coach at Seminole, said. “He loves getting opinions from his other receivers,” Mitchell said. “He loves collaborating with other guys on the field, just talking ball, understanding where everybody’s heads [are] at.” Like when he watches Marvel movies, Siqueiros-Lasky dissects game film. How does the defense respond to this play? Why did coaches draw up this game plan? What is the opposing team trying to do? “He always wants to know the ‘why’ behind things, and he doesn’t settle for just understanding procedure,” junior wide receiver Connor “CJ” Johns said. All that studying translates onto the field. “He reads the defense extremely well. It’s almost like he knows what they’re doing … before the snap more times than not,” Mitchell said. Siqueiros-Lasky used to watch three to four hours of film every day, and now, as he competes for the starting quarterback position, Mitchell sounds a little worried for his teammate: “He’s probably gonna watch an insane amount of film this year.” There are levels to this. The quarterback isn’t one to do anything half-heartedly.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2026

SPORTS 9

the legacy and set the standard that still stands today.” That standard was evident in the 1980s. From 1982 until 1988, the Quakers claimed seven Ivy League championships. Since 1982, Penn has claimed 17 Ivy League championships, the most of any Ivy League program in the past 43 years. Former coach Ray Priore, who served on the Quakers’ coaching staff for 39 seasons, was at Penn for 12 of those championships. “I was doing the math with it, you know, you say, 39-40 years, roughly 30 kids a class, give or take, and you’re talking about over 1,200 student-athletes that you had a chance to work with,” Priore said. “And each was unique, goal-driven, had their own needs, ambitious, successful. You have some great times and moments of sad times when different things happen.” Priore started his head coaching career on a high note, taking down then-No. 4 Villanova for the first time in over a century in his first game at the helm of the program. He carried that momentum into conference play, claiming an Ivy League championship with 11 All-Ivy selections, including 2015 Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year and 2015 College graduate Tyler Drake and eventual three-time Super Bowl champion and 2017 Wharton graduate Justin Watson. Although Priore wanted to stay on top of the conference, championships took a back seat to playing a “Penn kind of football” and a “family-first” philosophy. Despite the dominant era of the 1980s, Penn football has spent much of the modern era being viewed as an underdog by the rest of the conference — or at least that’s how former players see it. After all, the 1982 Ivy League championship that put the program back in conversation with the best of the conference was secured by a threesecond 21-yard drive in a crumbling Franklin Field. When the Philadelphia Eagles shared Franklin Field from 1958 to 1970, the Quakers had to adapt, turning over the stadium each Sunday to their NFL counterparts. Before Franklin Field was renovated and refurbished, student-athletes would walk back and forth from Franklin Field to the Hollenback Center locker rooms off the Schuylkill Expressway. In the early days of the program, players would even be bused out to Lancaster, Pa., for practices before returning to campus for their classes. On the field, that reality translated to a type of grittiness and physicality not found elsewhere in the conference. With Andy Coen as the offensive coordinator from 2000 to 2005, the Quakers employed a revolutionary scheme on the offensive line that facilitated several linemen’s transitions to the NFL. The guys up front learned to excel at different positions by playing multiple sides of the ball during practice. Multiple plays were regularly called at the line of scrimmage, allowing players to adapt when approached with unusual

defensive formations. As defensive coordinator, Priore emphasized neutralizing specific high-power receivers to limit opponents’ scoring opportunities and force them to scramble. The offensive line pressed onto the opponent’s side of the field like an unstoppable force, while the immovable defensive line held it down in the back, limiting scoring opportunities for the opponent. Trench warfare could be brutal, but the Quakers were more than prepared. “We had some great, great, great players, guys that went on to play professional football, but we also won a lot of games because we outworked the opponent,” former Penn football safety, 2004 College graduate, and current Atlanta Falcons coach Kevin Stefanski said. “We were playing a brand of football that traveled into cold-weather environments, and we could play tough defense, and on offense [we had] the ability to move the ball with some great quarterback play in the time I was there,” Stefanski added. 2003 College graduate and All-American Penn football safety Vince Alexander viewed the team as “gritty” workhorses. “You know, we’d go out there, it was like punch him in the mouth football, right?” Alexander said. “We always had an attitude, it’s the guys from Philly against everyone else.” “That’s how it was before I got there, it’s how it was when I was there, and I think that’s how they still like to be today,” Alexander added. But the true embodiment of a “Penn kind of football” was former assistant coach Dan “Lake” Staffieri. A tried and true Philadelphian, Staffieri bled Red and Blue. As head freshman coach for the Quakers, he led his team to 13 Ivy League championships. When freshmen were finally allowed to compete at the varsity level in 1993, Staffieri stuck around as a spiritual advisor of sorts. Even when Penn football wasn’t the talk of the town, Staffieri made sure Philadelphians knew when the Quakers had a home game coming up. He’d pair his Ivy championship rings with a red plaid beret, a classic “P” sweater, and a megaphone while riding around campus in a helmet-shaped golf cart. Staffieri’s unwavering belief in the program, in bettering yourself as both a player and a person for the good of the team, rubbed off on the few Penn players fortunate enough to make it to the pros. “I kept all of his sayings in my locker in Kansas City,” former Penn offensive lineman and 1991 College graduate Joseph Valerio said. “I brought a tremendous amount of pride to what I was bringing to the Chiefs organization based on what it was that coach Staffieri had instilled in what it meant to be a great teammate and to be a leader.”

“That was the epitome of what Penn football meant for me,” Valerio added. Valerio is noteworthy in his own right. Despite focusing on baseball until his junior year of high school, the Philadelphia native was recruited by then-head coach Ed Zubrow for a spot on the offensive line. During his career with the Quakers, Valerio was selected to play in the East-West Shrine Game and received first team All-America honors, among other accolades. National notoriety confirmed what the Ivy League already knew as Valerio gained a cult following for catching touchdown passes as an offensive lineman on the Kansas City Chiefs, including a pass from legendary quarterback Joe Montana. Despite his success on and off the field, Valerio knows none of this would have been possible if the Quakers hadn’t taken a chance on what was then a “very skinny, physically underdeveloped person.” Penn football has a living, breathing history, with each player making a testament to those who came before. Take freshman quarterback Miles Teodecki, who will make his first career start for the Quakers in the season opener against Bucknell on Sept. 19. After mutually parting ways with Kansas State in December 2025, Teodecki flipped his commitment to the Quakers despite offers from Power Four programs like BYU and Cincinnati. It seemed like a shock to outsiders, but those who know Teodecki, like his namesake, 1996 College graduate Miles Macik, weren’t surprised. After all, when Teodecki ties his cleats and throws his first pass at Franklin Field, he’ll be treading the same hallowed ground his father, 1997 Wharton graduate and former quarterback Steve Teodecki, dominated. And perhaps in two years, Macik’s own son — a sophomore in high school who’s just starting to consider the possibility of playing college football — will be running wind sprints and perfecting passes on Franklin Field alongside his chosen cousin. “It’s kind of cool to have that relationship with my best friend, who’s one of my teammates, and his son, who plays the same position as my son,” Macik added. “He wears number 12 because that’s what his uncle Steve wore, and that’s what Miles wore and is wearing at Penn, and he really looks up to Miles a lot.” Family ties have shaped the legacy of Penn football and will do so for years to come. Legacy is a running theme on the gridiron, as is the brotherhood players join when they choose to don the Red and Blue. “Franklin Field is the best classroom that anybody can learn in, and we’ve had many classes on that field,” Priore said. “From semester to semester, I think our kids have done a great job. It’s building young men for the future and for success.”

Sayin being sidelined for the rest of the season due to an elbow injury — and Penn would finish the night with a 31-10 loss. Last season was another blowout for the Quakers, where 110 yards lost through penalties culminated in a 35-13 loss. The Quakers then continue with two games on the road, with a Halloween matchup in Providence, R.I., against Brown, and a matchup against Cornell in Ithaca, N.Y., on Nov. 7. Penn has won eight of their last 10 games against Brown. Last season, a 28-21 victory against the Bears also saw the Quakers put up a season-high 364 passing yards. In 2024, the bout against Cornell ended in a 67-49 victory for the Quakers in a game dubbed “Liamsanity” — which still remains the highest-scoring football game in Ivy League history. But just one year later, Cornell flipped the script against the Quakers with a 39-17 blowout on Penn Homecoming, marking the Quakers’ second

consecutive Homecoming loss. On Nov. 14, the Quakers return to Franklin Field in time for Homecoming for a pivotal matchup against reigning Ivy co-champion Harvard. The last two matchups against Harvard have ended in heartbreak. In 2024, a 31-28 Homecoming loss for the Quakers came by way of a walk-off field goal in the final two minutes. The narrative repeated last season in Boston, where the Quakers came home with a 45-43 loss from a last-second field goal. The Quakers close out their season on Nov. 21 with an away game against Ivy rival Princeton. This will mark the 117th matchup against Princeton, with four of their last 10 games ending in a win for the Red and Blue. Last season, the Quakers took down the Tigers, 17-6, for their first win since 2022 in what would also be Priore’s last game as coach. Just days later, Priore stepped down after 11 years at the helm and a 52-38 overall record.

had never taken organized football particularly seriously. Now he had to learn on the fly, make new friends, and adapt to a new environment. The transition marked a major turning point. “I feel like I just shifted my focus from kind of being involved too much into things that was going on in my community [to] then focusing more on what was good for me long term, like my family,” Narcisse said. Narcisse credits Archbishop Stepinac for being the place where he bought into the process of achieving greatness in football. It was where he learned to love the game and became focused on the sport. Still, after his junior year of high school, Narcisse transferred once again to play his senior year at Paramus Catholic High School in Paramus, N.J., in search of better competition and a new environment. “Some people thought I was crazy because even after my junior year in New York I wasn’t recognized for any type of postseason all-conference or all-state award, [I] didn’t even have my first D-I offer yet,” Narcisse said. “But I still had that belief and vision for who I could be and a deep conviction about what I had to do to get to that place, even if it meant leaving behind a familiar place to approach the unknown. I think you have to be comfortable switching up your environment because sometimes you have to see more to be more.” Narcisse was throwing himself into the unknown, trusting his instinct on what was best for him. He was a star at Paramus Catholic, earning all-conference recognition. The defensive back’s aspirations were higher than ever before as he made the transition to the NCAA and Ivy play. Before the season started, Narcisse believed he would earn the starting spot in his first year and be an All-Americanlevel player. But, while Narcisse traveled and practiced with the team, he did not see the field his freshman season. “God is funny, because it wasn’t me. I spent the entire year pretty much on the bench. I was fortunate to travel and get that experience, hanging out more with the vets, getting meaningful practice reps, but the freshman All-American was actually my roommate, Malachi Hosley,” Narcisse recalled. Even though the situation was different from what he had been expecting, Narcisse did what he needed to do for the team. He adapted, and perhaps most importantly, didn’t

feel sorry for himself. Instead, Narcisse focused on what he could control, putting his head down and noticing the things he could do to take himself to the next level. That experience was humbling, Narcisse said, but it also allowed him to understand the habits needed to be successful in college football. “Taking care of my body, going above and beyond with my preparation, watching film, and just finding all the different details that’s going to separate me from everybody else,” Narcisse said. The following year, the then-sophomore would play his first full season of college football. The cornerback finished the year with two interceptions, three pass breakups, and 20 total tackles. Penn ultimately finished fifth in the Ivy League, but Narcisse made a statement with his second-year campaign. The next year, with a full season under his belt, the defensive back was gearing up for another breakthrough year — until he was forced to adapt to something new, again. Going into his junior season, Narcisse was asked to play safety instead of his previous position of cornerback. He initially thought he’d be rotating between the two positions, but once fall camp started, he quickly realized he wasn’t playing corner at all. “Now there’s another learning curve for me, right? Freshman, sophomore year, I was learning how to play corner, and then my junior year it kind of got reset, and I have to learn how to play safety, and it’s different,” Narcisse said. “It’s both defensive back, but it’s definitely a different style of play that you have to adopt.” “Even back then through all the difficult challenges that I had to face in terms of learning that new position, I knew it was going to be good for me, for my career, diversifying my skill set, putting different things on film,” he added. When faced with the task of a new position, Narcisse did as he always had done when face-to-face with a challenge: He adapted, putting the team before himself, turning a situation many would consider an obstacle into an opportunity. Narcisse describes his collegiate career as “not a linear progression.” He didn’t play his freshman season; his sophomore year was a breakthrough, and his junior year was a whole different challenge. He went from a position he was comfortable in to one in which he was tasked with running the entire

defense. Narcisse admits to having struggled last year in the new role. “After last season, I felt like I let a lot of people down. And so, just after that, I knew the only thing that I can do is I can sit here and I can feel sorry for myself, or I can attack the off-season and focus on being the best player I can possibly be,” Narcisse said. All of the collective experiences he’s had have shaped Narcisse into who he is. Now, as one of the team’s captains, Narcisse has progressed into a more complete player, and above all else, a leader. Senior linebacker Joey Holliday has spent the last three years playing alongside Narcisse. Coming in as freshmen in 2023, the two defensive players have seen each other grow over time. “One thing that I’ve grown to admire about Josh is that he’s a really good speaker, and I think that over the years he’s grown in his confidence as a leader on the team and somebody who is expected to keep the guys motivated and get the guys going,” Holliday said. “It’s been awesome to see.” Since he started taking the sport seriously in high school, the defensive back has had a career of incredible heights and challenging moments. He’s learned to adapt to new environments and situations and get the absolute best out of himself every step of the way. He transferred schools twice to give himself the best opportunity possible. He used a freshman season on the bench to learn how he could improve. He took the switch to safety as an opportunity to take his game to the next level. Through it all, Narcisse has trusted that everything will fall into place. “Ultimately, when I look back at last season, my junior year, I didn’t even scratch the surface of what I can be, who I can be, not just for myself, but for my team and this program,” Narcisse said. As he gears up for his fourth year, the senior is confident in what he can do. His freshman year, he waited. His sophomore year, he dazzled. His junior year, he learned. Now, Narcisse is ready to break out. “If you want to talk about seeing a jump, we’ll talk about that at the end of the season,” Narcisse said. “My jump from sophomore and junior year to my senior year. That’s going to be the one that everybody remembers.”

“If he’s gonna do [it], he’s gonna do it right, and he’s gonna give 100% on what he does,” Mitchell said. He’s the same off the field. Siqueiros-Lasky makes his bed each morning. He reminds his teammates about homework or exams. He let Mitchell copy his handwritten cheat sheet for a Wharton class. Johns said, “I don’t think there’s been a class that we’ve been in together where he hasn’t introduced himself to the professor and asked a question on the first day.” “He’s not the type of person to just use AI to find the answers,” he added, “but he really wants to understand the method behind the madness, and he won’t wait till midterms or finals come up to do that. He’ll take it upon himself, just because he wants to have an understanding [of that] material for himself.” That’s the thing. Whether it’s movies or film or economics class, Siqueiros-Lasky wants to understand everything. And he wants to understand people, making a concerted effort to get to know freshmen on the team, asking them questions that aren’t “just baseline questions, but things that are really going to force you to think and even question some things about yourself, maybe,” according to Johns. “In terms of being a friend, he’s always forced me to think [deeper] about what motivates me or what drives me,” Johns said. After 2026 Wharton graduate and former starting quarterback Liam O’Brien graduated, Siqueiros-Lasky knew it fell upon him to lead the team. “Liam demanded a lot of guys he played with, but he also had a good rapport with him,” Mitchell said. And when Siqueiros-Lasky initially tried to fill in and keep 93

players accountable, “it was just coming off the wrong way because that foundational relationship wasn’t there.” So over winter break, Mitchell and Johns encouraged Siqueiros-Lasky to reflect on the type of leader he wanted to be — and to understand he didn’t have to be the same as O’Brien. “Your play style isn’t the same as Liam’s, so why would the way that you lead have to be similar too?”Johns said. Siqueiros-Lasky took their words to heart and led with curiosity first. “He was really more keen on building those relationships that he hadn’t built yet. And I feel like that’s made him a better leader, that’s made us a closer team. And I think that was a pivotal moment for us early in the offseason that kind of led us into spring,” Mitchell said. His teammates, in turn, wanted to understand the junior quarterback, too. First years would pull him aside during practice to ask for his feedback, wondering if they made the right read. And Siqueiros-Lasky always makes time to answer their questions. “If I can do something positive for that person, like advice or coach, that’s just something that I really want to do,” he said. He is drawn to mentoring, coaching the Seminole girls’ flag football team, tutoring math, and serving as a tennis camp counselor back home in Orlando, Fla. SiqueirosLasky knows what he’s capable of and what he has to offer. “Everybody believes in him,” Calhoun said. “He’s a believer.” That was never clearer than when Seminole was playing against its rival, Lake Mary High School, at home during

Siqueiros-Lasky’s senior year. Seminole was down 28-22 at the two-minute mark when they recovered a fumble. In a race against the clock, Seminole hurried to bring the ball upfield. Siqueiros-Lasky, then captain, was “very adamant” the team would do what needed to be done. “Karson stepped in their pocket, threw a beautiful pass,” Calhoun said. “He got it on the money — it was at least like 40, 50 yards in the air — and dropped on the dime to our receiver … Karson was tough. He threw a beautiful pass. He never panicked, and he took us to the promised land.” Seminole went on to win the game 29-28, handing Lake Mary its first loss of the season. Johns sensed that confidence when he first met Siqueiros-Lasky in fall 2023, when Penn football commits took an official visit to campus. Siqueiros-Lasky introduced himself to the group casually, saying, “I’m from the O.” Johns remembered how Siqueiros-Lasky was unapologetically himself in an environment where “you don’t want to come across as the person who’s weird or awkward.” “As a quarterback, you have to be the most confident person on the field, I mean, you’re running the whole offense … For me, it was the first indicator of how good he could be,” Johns said. Now, Siqueiros-Lasky is entering a new season at Penn. Watching film, asking questions, staying curious and confident. He could do it all day. And his teammates have noticed. “Whenever I’m on the field, I take pride in protecting him because that’s my best friend,” Mitchell said. “That’s my guy.”

NOAH JEONG | SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

Penn’s defensive line squares up against Cornell’s offensive line on Nov. 8, 2025.

SPORTS

THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA • FOUNDED 1885

PHILADELPHIA, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2026

VOL. CXLII

NO. 21

Rick Santos is in the business of winning The former New Hampshire coach comes to the Quakers with a 37-14 career record, a Grey Cup, and a Walter Payton Award LUCAS MILGRIM AND ELLIE CLARK Senior Reporter and Sports Editor

Penn football is at a crossroads, and its new coach, Rick Santos, knows it. Player compensation, the transfer portal, and new eligibility standards are dominating the conversation both in and outside of the Ivy League. After years of national rankings with no postseason payoff, the Quakers are finally eligible for the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs. What a time to join a football program! Santos is the first coach hired from outside the program since 1992, and he’s got big shoes to fill. Since Jerry Berndt established the championship standard for Penn football in 1982, all but one coach since has claimed an Ivy League title within their first two seasons leading the program. The pressure is personal for Santos. He worked closely with former Penn coach Al Bagnoli during his three-season stint at Columbia as a quarterbacks

coach. “I think learning from Coach Bags, him being a legend here, knowing of how good Penn has been in the past,” Santos said in an interview. “Having him as a resource in this process, I called him quite often to get feedback and pull back behind the curtains.” And it was Bagnoli’s advice that led Santos to make the difficult decision to leave his alma mater, New Hampshire, where he served both as a standout coach and Walter Payton Award-winning quarterback. The academic strength of the Ivy League and its ability to retain players season after season were key selling points for Santos. “We’re all about the recruitment and development of our young men in our program, and I think the transfer portal was a little overbearing, always having to re-recruit your entire roster every single year,” Santos said of his time at New Hampshire. “It was kind of wearing

our staff down.” Now, Santos can focus more of his energy on the field, where he brings the knowledge and experience as a quarterback with professional experience. He had a short stint in the NFL as an undrafted free agent for the Kansas City Chiefs, but he found his footing in the Canadian Football League, earning a Grey Cup — the CFL equivalent of the Super Bowl — with the Montreal Alouettes in 2010. It’s safe to say championship pedigree is in Santos’ blood. He took to the field as a first-year starting quarterback at Bellingham High School after an injury took out the original starter. It was “baptism by fire” for the junior varsity standout according to an interview with Santos’ former high school coach Dale Caparaso. But, Santos adapted, holding onto the starting position until he graduated. By the time he graduated, Santos was a three-sport

letterman, earning all-state honors on the field and a state championship on the basketball court. When he came to New Hampshire in the fall of 2004 with football as his only athletic focus, Santos was determined to exceed expectations. Moving from fifth string to starter in the span of a season, Santos began rewriting the Wildcats record book. Since he hung up his cleats, Santos coached at the high school level before returning to New Hampshire as a wide receivers coach. After a brief stint at Columbia, Santos returned to his alma mater, rising through the ranks before becoming coach. Although Santos boasts an impressive 37-24 career record as the Wildcats’ coach, he hopes to emphasize winning and building on the strong culture he developed at New Hampshire. “We talk about culture all the time,” he said. “The See SANTOS, page 8

CATHERINE GARCIA | SENIOR DESIGNERS

Josh Narcisse believed in the process. It worked

There are levels to Karson Siqueiros-Lasky

The senior defensive back has turned every obstacle into an opportunity

The junior quarterback’s passion for the sport translates to success on the field

JAVIER ST. REMY Deputy Sports Editor

HANNAH CHANG Senior Reporter

Athletes often talk about trusting the process — the philosophy that hard work will lead to future results. But, progress isn’t linear. Life throws curveballs at you. No one knows this better than senior defensive back Josh Narcisse. From a freshman year that saw him sidelined all season to a junior season when he had to switch positions, the Penn football standout has always adapted to unpredictability. Although his family lived in the Bronx and Yonkers, N.Y., Narcisse mainly grew up in Peekskill, N.Y., a small

city just over an hour north of New York on the east side of the Hudson River. Narcisse has always found himself drawn to athletics, transitioning between several sports as he grew up. First, it was track, which he admits his parents signed him up for to avoid him running around the house. In middle school, he started playing basketball, playing for recreation leagues and traveling with his Amateur Athletic Union squad. It wasn’t until high school that he decided football would See JOSH, page 9

Breaking down Penn football’s matchups in the 2026 season JUSTIN LEE Senior Reporter

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completion rate, Penn ultimately fell, 44-30, against the Mountain Hawks. A vengeful battle against the Mountain Hawks precedes the start of Ivy League matchups, where the Quakers will go head-to-head against Dartmouth in Hanover, N.H., on Oct. 3. Penn also kicked off Ivy play last season against 2024 Ivy co-champion Dartmouth, ending in triumph with a 36-24 home victory. Dartmouth has proven to be a formidable opponent for the Quakers, with Penn having only won three of their last 10 matchups. For their last game on the road in 2024, the Quakers fell short with a 20-17 loss. This season, this pivotal matchup also serves as the Homecoming game for the Big Green. One week later, on Oct. 10, the Quakers will face off against the Howard Bison during Family Weekend. This marks the first time in the program’s 150-year history that the two schools will compete. Last season, Howard ranked fourth out of six teams in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference with a 2-3 conference record and a 5-7 overall record. The matchup against Howard serves as the final non-conference opponent in the Quakers’ season. From here, the Red and Blue continue Ivy play with a string of six conference opponents — starting at Franklin Field on Oct. 16 against Columbia. The last matchup See SEASON, page 9

Brave New World,” they talked about the film’s marketing. Should Marvel have kept the Red Hulk as a surprise? How will this movie fit into the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s convoluted storyline? He likes to think things through. “I like the movies that kind of mess with my brain a little bit and make me confused,” he said. It’s no surprise that Christopher Nolan’s movies are among his favorites, ranking alongside psychological thrillers like David Fincher’s “Fight Club” and Martin Scorsese’s “Shutter Island.” His interest in movies extends to watching game and practice film: figuring out the holes in his game, getting inside his coaches’ brains. See KARSON, page 9

Freshman Miles Teodecki named Penn football starting quarterback

The Quakers open on the road with a game against Bucknell

In a matter of days, Penn football will take to the gridiron, launching a new season and with it, another shot to claim the Ivy League championship crown and qualify for the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs. Last season, the Quakers put up a 6-4 overall record, going 4-3 in conference play to place fourth in the Ancient Eight. This season will be coach Rick Santos’ first with the Quakers and the first time since 1992 with a new coach who came from outside the program. With familiar and new opponents alike, here’s everything you need to know about the Quakers’ 10 matchups this season. The Red and Blue, led by freshman starting quarterback and top-1,000 recruit Miles Teodecki, kick off their season on Sept. 19 against Bucknell. The last rodeo between the Quakers and Bucknell was an eventful one. The 31-21 victory for the Quakers marked the 50th career game for former coach Ray Priore. For their first game this season, the Quakers look to continue their 10-game winning streak against the Bison dating back to 2003. Just one week after facing Bucknell, the Quakers return to Franklin Field to take on Lehigh (3-0), which currently sits at the top of the Patriot League standings. Last season, despite then-starting quarterback Liam O’Brien putting up his best performance at the time with a 75.7% pass

Though he favors Doctor Strange or Hulk, Penn football junior quarterback Karson Siqueiros-Lasky resonates with Captain America’s mantra: “I can do this all day.” Or in the Marvel buff’s own words: “I could sit here and talk about movies all day.” And he doesn’t mean merely talking about how a movie made him feel or how cool that one particular fight scene was. There are levels to this. Siqueiros-Lasky likes dissecting plot holes and character flaws. He and junior offensive lineman Ryan “Mitch” Mitchell discussed the X-Men casting lineup and the Spider-Man actors, agreeing that Tom Holland is, naturally, the best Spider-Man. After the duo watched “Captain America:

The Texas native is the Quakers’ highest-ranking signee since 2000 JUSTIN LEE Senior Reporter

With a new football season comes new faces on the gridiron. Penn football announced that freshman three-star quarterback Miles Teodecki will be the team’s starting quarterback this season. This announcement comes just days before the Quakers’ season-opener match against Bucknell (1-2) this Saturday, where junior quarterback Karson Siqueiros-Lasky was originally expected to make the start. “Miles Teodecki is going to start,” coach Rick Santos told The Philadelphia Inquirer. “It was a quarterback competition from the moment fall camp started.” A graduate from Vandegrift High School, Teodecki put up a formidable performance on the field under his last two seasons starting for Vandegrift. He accrued 5,755 passing yards with 69 touchdown passes. Teodecki brought Vandegrift their first-ever state championship in the 2024 season. He is ranked No. 731 overall among high school quarterbacks and the No. 54 quarterback in the nation, ultimately becoming the only top-1000 ranked recruit for Penn since 2000.

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Teodecki received offers from multiple nationally ranked institutions like North Texas and JMU before originally signing with the Kansas State Wildcats. However, Kansas State’s newly appointed coach Collin Klein planned to adopt a playstyle that had limited playtime for Teodecki. Teodecki ultimately flipped his commitment to the Red and Blue — and is no stranger to Penn football. His father, Steve Teodecki, played as a quarterback for Penn from 1993 to 1996. This season marks the first time since 2021, under Aidan Sayin, that a freshman quarterback will play as a starter. Sayin ended his football career as the Red and Blue’s all-time leader in completions and boasted the second-highest in passing yards with 7,177 yards. Last season, the Quakers, under starter and then-senior quarterback Liam O’Brien, finished the season with a 6-4 overall record and 4-3 in the Ivy League, ending fourth among the Ancient Eight. O’Brien, who was also a captain, finished the season with the second-highest passing yards in the Ivy League with 2,376. CONTACT US: 215-422-4640