Guest Column: It's Time to Begin Mandatory

he University "The Boy died in my alley Without my having known. Policeman said , next morning 'Apparently died alone.' 'You heard a shot?' Policeman said. Shots I hear and shots I hear, I never see the dead." I was reminded of this Gwendolyn Brooks poem earlier this semester as I was sleeping at a friend's off-campus house. Around 4 a.m., I got up to go to the bathroom. At the same time a violent fight began outside on the street. In my semi-conciousness, I thought little of it and continued to go about my business. After three years of going to school in Philadelphia, this was nothing special. I listened to the swearing, the screaming, the breaking of glass, and then emerged from the bathroom into the dark hallway where one of my friend's housemates stood frantically trying to decide what to do. Figuring she thought I was a burglar, I reassured her that everything was all right. Of course, nothing was all right. Her panic arose from her fear that one of her friends might be coming in at that moment, passing through the bottle-fight gauntlet on the street. Furthermore, she thought she had heard one of the fighters outside being seriously hurt. The police arrived moments later, and I went out to survey the damage. The combatants had fled, leaving nothing but broken glass. The cops could offer no help in explaining what happened. Everyone returned to bed, but few went back to sleep. It was just another night in West Philadelphia. One group of my friends tried to make a collage of all the crime stories reported in the University area. In six weeks, they had covered half a wall with news clippings and decided to stop so they would not crowd out their posters. A good deal of the crime goes unreported, as students feel nothing will ever be done about it anyway. One friend was beaten up last year by four local youths directly across from President Hackney's home. However, my friend didn't report it because he feared his parents would find out through The Weekly Pennsylvanian and want him to come home. The trustees come to town to discuss the future of the University and spend three-fourths of their time dealing with crime statistics. Fear grips our campus. Increasing the size of the police force will do nothing to decrease the amount of crime. We want to put a band-aid on the cancer of our society. I promise you that this will not work. Gwendolyn Brooks' poem comes to mind because it questioned the poet's complicity in the murder of a neighborhood child in the alley: "I have always heard him deal with death. I have always heard him shout, the volley. I have closed my heart-ears late and early. And I have killed him ever." As students, faculty, administrators and employees of this University, we are responsible for our environment. When a male student gets shot in front of Smokes (as happened my freshman year) or a female student in a backpack robbery attempt gets dragged a block by a car, we helped to pull the trigger, we grabbed the bag. To quote Brooks: we have "joined the Wild and killed him/with knowledgeable unknowing." "On what do you base your logic?" you may ask. "I wasn't even a student here last year when those things happened." Granted, we do not participate in these crimes; however, we directly collaborate to create the society in which we live. Our inaction in combating homelessness, drug abuse, broken families, a decrepit education system and the rest of the mammoth list of daunting societal dilemmas is exactly what makes these problems appear so incorrigible. Clearly, something must be done. I could use this essay to encourage my fellow students to become involved in the community, but I doubt that I could say anything that they have not heard before. In helping others, you help yourselves. The time devoted to service is never wasted time. One person really can make a difference. If everyone did their one bit of good, then we'd live in a much nicer place. These are all time worn expressions. But barring the advent of a mass popular movement to combat the increasing instability of this city, we at the University must move boldly to stop the madness ourselves. Stop the madness of students getting shot while moving into their apartments. Stop the madness of two out of five Philadelphia residents not knowing how to read. Stop the madness of tennagers carying guns to school. We must act proactively not just for the welfare of the University in the '90s, but into the next century. The time has come for mandatory public service for all students in the Penn community. I know the arguments against this before they even reach the letters-to-the-editor box of the DP. Some may say, "We come here and pay good money for our education, not to perform welfare work for a city that can't even balance a budget." This rebuttal is well-founded. We students didn't really break the branch off the tree that was used in beating an Economics graduate student to death four years ago. The city in which we happen to go to school turns out to be one of the worst managed in the country. This can't be our fault. But if you could do one thing to prevent a fellow student from losing his or her life while travelling home from the library late at night, wouldn't you? Some may say, "I'm busy enough as it is. I couldn't possibly find any time for community service." There's never enough time, but somehow everything gets done. As students, we make time to do the things we have to do and then divide the remaining time up for things we want to do. I believe that once you get involved in community activity, it will become something you want to do. Furthermore, one only has to devote a few hours a week to services such as the West Philadelphia Tutoring Project. How will helping a third grader learn math prevent crime? The third grader will grow up having a role model for success and an education, two factors that help keep the child out of trouble. Before dismissing this proposal as an idiotic liberal raving, remember that William Buckley, Jr. shares the same central notion. To paraphrase the conservative pundit, mandatory public service, like gravity, is something we could accustom ourselves to and grow to love. In the meantime, as you forcefully walk home from Steinberg-Deitrich at three in the morning, reflect on what Gwendolyn Brooks had to say about violent crime: "The red floor of my alley Is a special speech to me." Jeffrey Howell is a senior English major from Seekonk, Massachusetts. Harold Ford's column, which usually appears in this space, will appear on Monday.

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