By Dakota Jones, C '17

View photos from the event here, and the DP article here.

On Tuesday night, the Penn Government and Politics Association invited former Senator Mark Pryor (D-AR) to speak at Penn. 140 students came to hear the Pryor speak about his experiences as a Southern Democrat; he fielded a multitude of questions about how to fix the American political system, the Democratic Party, and his experiences in the U.S. Senate.

Throughout the session, Pryor repeatedly spoke about the problems that are associated with money and politics. During his initial presentation, he presented a chart of all the different organizations that wealthy donors such as the Koch brothers used to fund candidates during the 2014 election. Pryor stated that there is “so much money out there floating through organizations that voters have no clue about.” 

Pryor also touched on the problems associated with political polarization throughout the session as well. He strongly asserted that the nation is currently too polarized to function, specifically noting that many legislators are afraid that bipartisanship could cost them their jobs. According to Pryor, “The Senate is broken, and the American people know it.”

Overall, I believe that the event was a rousing success because it gave me a chance to hear from a type of politician (a Southern Democrat) that I would never encounter in my home state of Alaska. It was definitely exciting to see him speak at Penn.

GPA kicked off the Fall 2015 semester with a bang Thursday night, hosting an event titled “Leaning In: A Panel Discussion on College Women in Politics.” In addition to the GPA Executive Board, the new GPA Women’s Liaison, Rebecca Heilweil, significantly contributed to the planning and execution of the event. The event was co-hosted by the Penn Women's Center and the Penn Association for Gender Equity — formerly the Penn Consortium for Undergraduate Women.

The panel brought together six women familiar with these issues on a campus-wide scale: Arielle Panitch, Jennifer Knesbach, Yessenia Moreno, Jane Meyer, Avivah Hotimsky, and Dr. Litty Paxton. (You can read the students’ bios here and Dr. Paxton's here.)

Dr. Paxton, the Director of the Penn Women's Center, guided the conversation from the individual scale to the national one, asking poignant questions on various topics ranging from personal background to the role of male peers. The five upperclassman women responded in kind, speaking to their diverse experiences in widely differing settings. Most referenced the tension of leading their respective student groups in light of the default expectation of a leader: a man with his default image, sound, presence, etc. Moreno (of Penn for Immigrant Rights and a former member of the Undergraduate Assembly) was quick to pinpoint intersectionality as an important facet to recognize in this matter, and commented on her own Hispanic identity and desire to run for office in the future.

Dr. Paxton used the concept of the pipeline of women in politics to lead into her question of how the national scene affects each panelist’s local experience. For Meyer, current UA President, the question brought to mind her internship with Senator Gillibrand’s office and its culture of strong professional and political mentorship. In the view of Knesbach, current Political Coalition Co-Chair and Vice President of Penn College Republicans, the low representation of conservative women should not be overlooked, while the idea of a gendered party is outdated and inaccurate. Similarly, Hotimsky, the other PoCo Co-Chair, referenced the discouraging lack of female CEOs on Wall Street, impressed upon her by her finance internships the past summers.

For Panitch, current Legislative Director of Penn Democrats, international women’s issues hit closest to home. As a Persian and Arabic major set on pursuing a career related to foreign service, she spoke of her greatly limited choices of countries in which to study abroad. Given the violence and harassment faced by women in countries like Jordan, she has had to reconsider the future of her political involvement in a region she is passionate about.

By the end of the event, advice for the freshman women in the audience included learning to say no when one is expected to say yes, seeing past the gender barrier to follow one’s passion, and finding a mentor/sounding board for one’s professional and personal development. The panel largely agreed that some level of mandating sexual violence prevention education could be a beneficial way for Penn as an institution to promote gender equality. An audience question on Secretary Clinton’s email scandal inspired Dr. Paxton to ponder whether it was necessary for the one specifically political question to the panel to be about Secretary Clinton, given that the email scandal has been news for weeks now. Another audience question exposed the matter of vocal fright and its professional and feminist implications.

Read The Daily Pennsylvanian’s account of the event here.