The College Fix

‘The results speak for themselves,’ newspaper says

In a lengthy, in-depth investigation, the student newspaper at the University of Pennsylvania carefully documented the number of times President Donald Trump has referred to Penn, his alma mater, since he first announced his candidacy for president.

“The results speak for themselves,” Alex Graves wrote at The Daily Pennsylvanian. “Since May 16, 2015, Trump is documented to have referenced his education 93 separate times.”

That number “was derived from aggregating instances of Trump saying words related to either Penn or to his time as a student,” Graves writes.

Since mid-2015, Graves writes, “Trump has said ‘Wharton’ 52 times. Over the same time period, he has noted that he went to an Ivy League school 12 times, and referred to himself as a ‘good student’ (or some variant like ‘great’ or ‘excellent’) 27 times.”

Trump has only referred to “the University of Pennsylvania” twice, Graves notes.

Graves’s article even features a helpful selection of graphs in order to help the reader see a data-driven breakdown of all the times Trump has referred to his alma mater.On Mar. 18, 2016, for instance, Trump referred to “Wharton” once. He also referred to himself as a “good student” once, as well.

On Dec. 2, 2015, meanwhile, he referred to “Wharton” twice.

In addition to a timeline of Trump’s mention of his alma mater, Graves provides a breakdown of the specific states in which Trump has referred to Penn. The reader learns, for instance, that he mentioned the school three times in Alabama, five in North Carolina, and twelve in Iowa.

“In general, Trump seems to equate going to Wharton with intelligence,” Graves notes.

A qualifier at the end of the article states that the piece is part of a “data journalism” project.

Read the data journalism piece here.

MORE: Over 1,000 associated with U. Penn’s Wharton School: ‘Donald Trump doesn’t represent us’

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