LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Seeking answers to crime

To the Editor: I understand that people are scared. Blaming the University police force and University President Judith Rodin is a good start. But the only way University City will become a safe neighborhood is if students take a primary interest in their community. Rather than nervously jump into an Escort van, we need to walk the streets at night. I know this sounds like a death wish these days, but by taking people off the streets we make them more dangerous. What about the person who wants to walk two blocks to Uni-Mart? A blue light phone that might work and more Allied security guards at the Quad will not protect her. What we need to realize is that we live here, we don't just go to school here. I for one no longer trust the administration to solve this problem. But if we just went out for walks or sat on our steps at night, we could make West Philly a safe neighborhood. Monday night, my roommates and I played football on Baltimore Avenue at halftime of the Eagles game. I saw a few shady characters and had I been walking home by myself, I just might have been solicited to make a $20 donation to the Brotherhood of the Criminally Inclined. I felt good knowing that had these guys been looking for "targets," they weren't going to find them on my block. This is exactly the point. We need to say, "This is my house, my block and my neighborhoood." Because we will always live with fear if we run and hide hoping that Rodin and University Police will protect us. Dante Zappala College '97 n To the Editor: When I was mugged last October, the officers I spoke to said the incident was a fluke. They told me the circumstances were highly unusual, and that I'd taken all the necessary precautions. The criminals, they said, must have been very desperate, because they took a great risk in mugging me in those surroundings, at that time of night, with a gun. Yet hearing that it was unusual didn't make me feel any better. It only taught me that in West Philadelphia, flukes do occur, and they can put your life in danger. It taught me that precautions can only take you so far. It was 11:05 p.m. on a Saturday night when my boyfriend and I were mugged in the middle of the 3900 block of Spruce Street. We'd parked on the corner and were walking back to my apartment in High Rise South when two men approached us with a semi-automatic gun and demanded our wallets. On the other side of the street, Allegro's and Billybob's were busy and brightly lit. Several fraternity houses were just gearing up for the night. It was hardly an ideal situation for the muggers, but what mattered was that they were desperate and they had a gun. Last week's shooting of Patrick Leroy reinforced my conviction that every Penn student is potentially a victim. Being in a group, walking near or on campus and taking similar precautions will not protect against a gun. That is the balance in such a situation; whoever hold the gun holds absolute power. I don't mean to imply that we should not do our best to protect ourselves. I don't want to scare people into hiding out in their rooms when it turns dark. I just want to emphasize the point that it can happen to anyone, even if that person has never before been the victim of a crime. No one here has the privilege of personal safety. There's no such thing as a "fluke." That which was once the exception is rapidly becoming the rule. Libby Copeland College '98 n To the Editor: In light of the recent wave of violence, it is an appropriate time to address a common reaction to inner-city violence -- racism. Last Saturday's New York Times featured a story on violence on our campus, and that frightened me -- not because I am afraid applications to the University may decrease, but rather because a decision to forego applying to Penn will be based on the ever-growing stigma attached to West Philadelphia. This stigma is fueled by internalized racism, and the predominantly black population of West Philadelphia is most certainly not the cause of the violence. The paramount issue is violence, not the color of a person's skin. I am disgusted by graduate students' railing that we should not live beyond 45th Street. This imaginary border is racist and complicit in blaming blacks for the violence and misfortune that besets West Philadelphia. We must break down fears of our neighbors and cherish this racial diversity. Freshmen arriving on campus must understand that our attitude toward diversity extends beyond the physical borders of the campus and into the hearts of West Philadelphians. Penn students are extremely talented, and a collaborative effort on our part could not only improve the situation in West Philadelphia, but could simultaneously begin to defuse the internalized racism within every one of us. Violence in West Philadelphia is most certainly not a call for us to hide in our houses at 41st and Pine streets, or to recommend that our friends and family reconsider applying to Penn. We must look beyond our lily "white" world and aggressively address the deterioration of University City. The problems of racism and violence are human issues that the installation of 300 more "blue light phones" will never be able to change. T. Eric Brandt German Graduate Student n To the Editor: On a summer night two years ago, I was the victim of a gunshot wound to the abdomen during an attempted robbery on Pine Street. While I barely escaped with my life, Al-Moez Alimohamed was slain just three weeks later. Having followed the recent crime wave and shooting at Penn, I am outraged to see that the administration obviously learned nothing from the horrible incidents of two years ago. Even the recently announced initiatives of more cops and blue light phones show a continued misunderstanding of how to improve student safety -- much like the ineffective kiosk system instituted last year. While these measures will help to some extent, they fail to truly attack the heart of the problem -- the failure of anyone in the administration or police force to take the responsibility for a crime wave and a constant willingness to put the blame on the poor urban environment. What the University needs to do is implement a system of accountability when dealing with student safety. This can be done by dividing the campus into distinctly marked regions, and making separate teams of police officers and administrators responsible for overseeing safety in each of these areas. This arrangement will allow the overseers to quickly focus on what can be done to improve safety in their particular part of campus, and will create a channel for them to provide this feedback to the University. It will also make it easy to single out individuals who are not getting the job done. A similar type of plan has yielded phenomenal results with the New York City police. With luck, such a system will ensure that nobody at Penn ever again endures the nightmare Patrick Leroy and I have suffered. Samir Shah Wharton '95