COLUMN: Know your city, know thyself

From Michael Pereira's, "The Raw and the Cooked," Fall '97 From Michael Pereira's, "The Raw and the Cooked," Fall '97 Witness a bout of stale stereotypes. In this corner, we have "The Ivory Tower," also nicknamed "The Steamroller" and weighing in at millions of pounds. And in this corner is "The Urban Jungle," the underdog in today's matchup, but with a wicked left hook. The fighters refuse to shake hands. Ding, ding. And so on, as we continue the dull and lurid stalemate that is Penn's relationship with West Philadelphia. Penn has played the roles of colonizer and native, enemy and ally -- a contrived schizophrenia. Service here suffers from confusions as yet unresolved: Who are "we?" And who is "the community?" Any working relationship must first address definitions, which in turn will define the language of policy. Penn has realized regional autarky is not a tenable position -- the University is not an island. But boundaries are as much a matter of perspective as geography, an ambiguity that has stunted Penn's social success. Its back to that ancient, impossible injunction -- "Know thyself." And Penn has yet to reach the mirror stage. The University knows its neighbors through the media prism and devises protocols for (inter)action accordingly. Penn continues an American tradition of public service with the idea that an 'ethos of citizenship' involves a spirit of 'service.' Old republican ideals considered public service (distinct from manual labor) the duty of any aging bourgeois. Our very own Ben Franklin cited "an Inclination join'd with an Ability to serve Mankind" as part and parcel of good citizenship. But the history of public service in the last century has been one of gradual privatization, a shift in responsibility from government to the individual. Early efforts such as the Civilian Conservation Corps in the wake of the Depression enlisted over three million unemployed for public projects. But by the '50s, educator Lewis Mumford lamented modern America as "inept in everything that involves reciprocity, mutual aid, two-way communication, give and take." More recently, the national service initiative -- AmeriCorps -- became a focus, or rather, a casualty, of balanced budget bickering. Now the issue of service is immanent in any definition of citizenship, just as conceptions of citizenship inform the process of education. In this syllogism, service and education seem like logical bedfellows. In practice, however, and in Philadelphia, the twain prove difficult to reconcile. In a letter dated April 3, to Harris Wofford, chief executive officer of the Corporation for National Service, University President Judith Rodin promises "By 2000, we will expand the number of academically-based community service courses offered at Penn from 50 courses in 1996-97, involving approximately 700 students annually, to 100 courses involving over 1500 students each year." These efforts are laudable, but also limited. The process of academically-based civic renewal is an on-going experiment -- bounded both financially and philosophically -- with no real frame of reference save its own goals and ambitions. As English Professor Peter Conn reluctantly put it, the education fix is like driving a bus and building it at the same time. Individual efforts may be successful because of and in spite of their narrow focuses; but taken together, literacy projects like America Reads and Conn's English 401 only scratch the surface of urban revitalization. A mutual relationship with West Philadelphia requires more than isolated gestures of service. It requires partnership wherein both sides benefit because both sides share a stake in progress. Public work and private interest are not mutually exclusive. Nor can they be. Beneath every show of goodwill lurks a sublimated germ of healthful selfishness. But the community can also give back to the University; in fact, it must give back in order to secure a more permanent partnership. Just as Penn must call West Philly home, so must local residents feel comfortable with the University. This involves hiring residents for campus jobs, hosting community events on campus and improving the Mayor's Scholarship program. Violence is a reality in West Philadelphia -- untoward personal experience has convinced me of that. The University recognizes this inasmuch as it blemishes appearances; but beyond cosmetics, Penn does little to tame that violence. Penn's service efforts might even suffocate the people they're intended to help. No gift is freely given. And in the present one-way trade of resources, a silent resentment will inevitably erupt in violence. Thus Penn's regimen of public service needs rethinking. As it stands, it creates dependents, not partners. It mixes genuine effort (usually on an individual level) with sporadic, desultory gestures (at the institutional level) which only confuse or alienate 'beneficiaries.' Penn becomes an impregnable castle with hidden meanings and obscure intentions. This does not have to be the case. West Philly is not culturally bankrupt, nor is it a wasteland; however, for most Penn students, it remains an undiscovered country, an enigma:-- in a word, an adversary. Local media misplaces the blame for urban ills, reinforcing the illusion of hopelessness. And consequently, many students feel like temporary residents of the community with little concern for its well-being in the long-run. On Penn's side, this sense of transience is a major obstacle to overcome in the evolution to partnership. Penn students must participate according to a notion of 'temporary permanence', not as friends or foes, but merely as members of West Philadelphia.