For this video we decided to challenge the corporate mindset and machine that exists at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. At Penn, it is clear to students in the College, the Nursing School, Engineering, and even Wharton that Wharton and Huntsman students are prioritized by the University. Wharton students are considered to be of the highest status at Penn, and culture here revolves around these students, who are provided with innumerable privileges, opportunities, and support by the University, while all other students are not considered worthy of these advantages.
This makes us wonder why the University holds these students in the highest regard. The majority of the board members at Penn are corporate leaders, and it only makes sense that they would find Wharton to have the most importance in their University. Wharton students are being trained to become “super soldier” businessmen and women who will generate profit for the corporate giants who control this university, either by landing jobs in their corporations, or by becoming corporate giants themselves and giving money to the University, and the corporate giants and control it.
On a campus that revolves so much around this corporate mindset, creative students are often pushed to the wayside, and people that are creative - but are also in Wharton - are forced to push their creativity aside. Penn students are given the message that they are less important if they are not businessmen or women, and often feel that working in finance is their only option, and their only chance at success.
To criticize and call attention to this issue, we created signs asking students who they were before entering the “Wharton Factory,” and placed them on and around Huntsman Hall, the center of the business school's operation. We would like them to think about who they would have been without being pushed into this corporate power spiral.