COLUMN: Eternal Vigilance

From Mark Tonsetic's "Java Daze," Fall '94 MFM certainly never hurts for customers in its privileged space by the Bridge. At least one seat remains occupied long after the java stops flowing and all through the night. Closer inspection and a tip from a friend revealed no caffeine-and-poppy-seed junkie, but an employee from our new and hopefully awake friends at Allied security. Intriguing. And when you turn up something intriguing at the University, it usually means that something shady's afoot. When interviewed, Allied's man-on-the-scene stated that his supervisor had assigned him at the request of the University to guard the material present: eleven plastic tables, forty-four matching chairs, three restaurant-style coffee makers, and an estimated three cases of Coke and Diet Coke. Calls to the University Bookstore and MFM failed to confirm the nature of their contract, but one guesses that any rent MFM will pay covers the cost of security. More on that later. The guard -- almost neurotically conscious about professionalism -- noted that his responsibility extended to the overall safety of the area from act-of-God occurrences, presumably including fire, flood, earthquakes, and the like. A quick visual survey spotted multiple strands of naked lightbulbs overhead as the only possible danger in the vicinity. If God was acting in a particularly twisted fashion, they might sizzle into flames and put on a good show, but probably not severely enough to alert the authorities. Unfortunately -- or perhaps fortunately, depending on your opinion of police powers -- the most an Allied security guard can legally do against crime is alert the real authorities. He whipped out the rulebook they all carry in their prep-school jackets, and flipped to the appropriate page: "[Allied employees] do not have the authority to make arrests." Not even the citizen's kind, apparently. In the case of cappuccino crime, that leaves our muffin man on watch with the power of moral suasion. Without the authority to apprehend lawbreakers, an Allied employee cannot physically prevent the theft of any of the material that the University pays him to guard. But -- as he insisted on assuring me -- he could have the police there within minutes. Three minutes, according to University police statistics. We'll return to that. During the interview, the guard sat facing Van Pelt Library. Which seems sensible. Anyone lifting a table and chairs in the other direction would have to shanghai them past the all-too-visible Bridge and Superblock, in the direction of the Police headquarters from which the "proper" authorities would respond. Yet the only persons in the opposite direction that could possibly have an interest in a new patio set would, by deduction, likely belong to the sorority or one of the fraternities along the Walk, unless the Palladium is out for a cheap coffee maker. The distance from the closest house to the nearest table measures some seventy-eight paces, with about two and a half feet per pace. Adjusting for below-average height provides an estimated distance of sixty-five yards. Average foot speed while carrying a table or chair as fast as possible should be roughly seven miles, or 12,180 yards, per hour. Time from first table to the gates of the first house, approximately twenty seconds. Tack on an additional twenty for actually lifting the table, getting it well-hidden, and any unforeseen variables that Clausewitz lumped together as the "fog of war." Add another three minutes for the most distant house. Given a bit of organization and planning, a few well-disguised perpetrators could be off with a new patio set and coffee bar somewhere in the range between forty seconds and four minutes, while Allied Security delivers its sermon on the immorality of muffin theft. As for alerting the police, the guard interviewed had claimed that he could have the real boys in blue there in a "few minutes." The University Police's own claimed average response is three minutes, though the source interviewed for this statistic was warned by a superior to "be careful about how you phrase that." Three minutes lies somewhere between maybe and almost. Like anyone who's ever been to A.C. knows, almost and maybe are going to lose you patio furniture. As for the overall likelihood of such a scenario, I, apparently unlike my University, credit Penn's Greeks with enough sense and integrity not to make off with plastic tables and industrial-strength espresso machines. The cost to the University for this absurd service is $6.25 an hour, twelve hours a day. That's seventy-five greenbacks per day. Allied supervisors plan to secure the same area until October 31st. Forty days from now, the University will put another $3000 on its Allied tab. God and Judith Rodin know how much it has spent already -- and it's hard to believe that MFM signed a rent contract for which it paid $3000+ in security costs alone. Calls to Hechinger's, National Food Products, and Thriftway provided an estimated total value of the material present at $1500. Too valuable, one assumes, to throw in the back of the Bookstore, the Computing Resource Center, or 1920 Commons at sundown. Economic stupidity aside, it is morally offensive for the University to provide security for a non-University owned business that does not yet occupy a University building and is not under credible threat, especially if said business isn't handing out free breakfast for students on their way to class. This column is written four blocks from the site of a Penn student's murder. At a meeting of the Garden Court Community Association on September 7, Lt. Michael Weaver of the 18th District offered little in the way of practical response, stating, "There is no significant pattern of homicide in this area." Ms. Rodin, I, for one, would like to know why a damned muffin stand warrants $3000+ in protection, while a "pattern" of students have to die before we can get more than a candlelight walk. Mark Tonsetic is a senior International Relations and Economics major from Winter Springs, Florida. Java Daze will appear alternate Wednesdays.