GUEST COLUMNIST: Questions and doubts after violence hit home

On Halloween, the neighborhood I call home was visited by the type of crime I -- raised in a Wisconsin town of 5,000 -- had seen only on television. It shattered a night full of delightful manufactured frights and replaced them with the real ghoulishness of violent crime. My neighborhood -- the 4300 block of Larchwood Avenue -- has experience its share of petty crimes, but never, say long-time residents, had anything like this happened. Vladimir Sled, a brilliant researcher, a fiance and a father, was stabbed to death just steps from my front door, coming to the defense of the woman he loved. My husband, my housemates, my neighbors and I watched helplessly as Sled lay dying on our once-quiet street. Minutes after Sled was taken away, student reporters -- I can only assume they were the DP -- showed up. Their first, (and, it appeared, only) question: "Was this a student?" I cannot begin to understand what Sled's fiance, son and colleagues must be feeling. I hope the weeks and months to come will bring them peace and ease the pain. But I can tell you what my life has been like since Halloween. It has been a time of sharp contrasts, symbolized best by the homicide detective's business card hanging on my refrigerator, next to photos of my children at the zoo. I hear the boisterous sounds of my four-year-old son playing happily in our front room, as the adults sit in the dining room with the detective, who asks us yet again what we heard and what we saw. I think my son has missed all of this -- he slept through it, after all -- and yet, at one point, he tells us, "I didn't hear a gunshot." I feel the it-could-have-been-me fear, the one that casues me to look over my shoulder when I walk a block to the deli and jump when cars I don't recognize drive up my street. I also feel absolute, belligerent arrogance when reporters even suggest I might want to move. This is my city, too -- and I'm not leaving. My head wars with my heart. My head wonders, "What social ills casued this to happen, and how can I make a difference?" My heart rages, rightly or wrongly, with an irrational desire to see the perpetrators experience a fate similar to Sled's. On one hand, I know Sled's murder deprived us of a wonderful man -- and of discoveries that could have benefitted us all. On the other hand, I wonder why other murders that night received far less press. Finally, I understand that Penn students are just that -- students, young people whose very presence contributes to the economic well-being of our neighborhood. Yet I also feel intense frustration that some Penn students seem to not understand that -- like it or not -- they are part of this city, and their actions affect the community. Penn students will return home at the end of the semester, at the end of the year, after graduation. But this is our home. As I watched a brilliant man lay dying in front of my house last week, my first question was not, "Was this a student?" It should not have been yours, either. My first question was, as I feel yours should have been, "What can we do to help? And what can we do to keep this from happening again -- to anyone, regardless of who they are or where they come from?" Where is the outrage, the indignation? The outrage is here. You have only to look beyond your campus walls -- the walls of privilege and wealth -- to help us, the community, channel that outrage into a productive force for change. It's the best way I can think of to honor Sled's memory.