LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: The Wrong Plan to Stop Crime

To the Editor: Ebert's technological insights into solving West Philadelphia's problems are amusing and, quite frankly, ridiculous. Cost-effective cameras might be a nice addition to Great Neck, Long Island, as they could decorate the already established social walls with barbed wire. Pepper spray (oleoresin capsicum) for each police officer is a great idea -- let's close our eyes even tighter so we can't see anything in our West Philadelphia community. Perhaps Ebert's strategies of forming visible, tangible and technological boundaries between the University and the community can work -- if everyone is prepared to come to the University of Pennsylvania with scuba gear. Ebert and every student who lives in West Philadelphia has a responsibility to jump off the (Long) island of ignorance and start diving into true solutions to real social problems. In the words of Benjamin Franklin, "an inclination joined with an ability to serve mankind" is the "great aim and end" of a Penn education. Ebert's absurd and disturbing musings about how to protect the University from its neighbors in the City of Brotherly Love is in absolute contradiction to everything that Penn and Philadelphia are about. Tamara Dubowitz College '96 n To the Editor: As I read Steven Ebert's recent guest column on campus safety ("An Island in a Sea of Terror," DP 2/17/95), I kept waiting for the punch line. I couldn't let myself believe he was serious until I read the final sentence and realized that it was, in fact, not a joke. I am appalled and concerned that Ebert's scheme of video cameras monitoring the campus could be taken seriously by anyone other than Ebert. The very idea that our campus is "an island in a sea of terror" revolts me. Non-Penn affiliated residents of University City are not savage criminals. They are ordinary people, just like anyone else. They go to work, take care of their children, relax when they can. They are white, black, Asian, young, old -- people. Of course, the occasional deviant perpetrates a crime, but these incidents are by far the exception, not the rule. I came to Penn to live in a vibrant urban community, not a paranoid elite campus monitored by video cameras. Now that I am graduating, I will be glad to leave -- not because of any real or perceived fear of crime, but because of attitudes like Ebert's. Jesse Hergert College '95