Dawn Androphy | The missing half at campus events

One of the greatest things about Penn is that there’s always something going on. The first time I ever walked onto campus, I remember being shocked by the number of student-organized events being advertised on Locust Walk and on bulletin boards everywhere.

While I’m thankful for all the events that the Social Planning and Events Committee, in particular, organizes for students, I still feel like they’re really letting Penn students down.

When Passion Pit and DJ Tiësto were announced as the Spring Fling artists yesterday, I thought back to all of the wonderful events that SPEC has hosted this past year. I went to a good number of them — from concerts to speaker events — and have been entertained at just about every one.

The Olivia Tremor Control delighted my ears, and Aziz Ansari made me laugh out loud. But the more I think about it, the more I realize there was definitely something missing in these performances: women.

As a freshman, I’ve only experienced about a year’s worth of SPEC-sponsored events. Still, it struck me as odd that I couldn’t recall, off the top of my head, a single SPEC event featuring a woman. Was it possible that not a single woman had been featured in a SPEC event all year?

It turns out that I was wrong. But, unfortunately, just barely. After looking over all of the events that SPEC has advertised on its Facebook page this academic year, I was only able to find two occurrences where women were brought to campus by SPEC. No female speakers were booked at all.

It seems that SPEC hit its peak back in the fall. A barely existent peak, yes, but a peak nonetheless. Gang Gang Dance, a band brought by Jazz and Grooves, had a sole female member (out of five total members).

The trend of virtually nonexistent female representation at SPEC events this year will continue with Spring Fling with its all-male lineup. SPEC hasn’t brought a female artist to Fling in seven years, since Sonic Youth and Cat Power performed.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure that Passion Pit and Tiësto will go over very well with the Penn community and make for a very fun Fling. But I’m not prepared to buy any argument that there were no female musicians of equal or greater quality who were available.

The fact that the Fling concert is one of the widest-reaching campus events of the year, means that the artists that SPEC picks for this event must be subjected to greater scrutiny. Fling isn’t just any old campus event. It sets the tone for the weekend that contributes to Penn’s reputation as “the social Ivy.” It’s an event that students speculate about and look forward to for months in advance.

In a world where more and more female artists are making their mark in the music industry, it’s very unfortunate that none of these women were asked to headline Spring Fling. By not including women as Fling performers, SPEC is choosing to not fully include women in the Spring Fling tradition.

Needless to say, this is all a bit pathetic. I’m not saying that SPEC needs to enforce a strict 50/50 policy with regard to gender representation, but I think that they could at least make a little bit of an effort to bring female performers to campus.

Penn women make up about half of Penn’s student body and we deserve appropriate representation amongst campus performers.

Therefore, I challenge SPEC to work towards parity in their performance selections, and I challenge Penn students to demand that SPEC follow through. It’s what the Penn community deserves.

Dawn Androphy is a College freshman from Saint Louis, MO. Her email address is dawnandr@sas.upenn.edu.

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