EDITORIAL: No way to negotiate

In all respects, University officials went about the vending proposal in the wrong way. But while it may have been a first-time realization for some, not much about the issue has really changed in the past year -- despite countless meetings and hours of "negotiations." The proposal sent to City Council earlier this month is, for all intents and purposes, equivalent to the version Council tabled last spring. Among its provisions, the ordinance would regulate locations where vendors can operate, prohibit the use of electrical generators one year after its enactment and establish a Vending Advisory Board to review vending regulations and recommend applicants for certain locations. While we support the proposal as written and the motivations behind it, and while we believe that the process must move forward toward approval and implementation, we cannot condone the way University officials handled this issue. Penn made a commitment to negotiate and should have done so in good faith. But the final version sent to Philadelphia Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell doesn't show much evidence of compromise beyond some reformulation of the makeup of the advisory board. And several groups -- including the Penn Consumer Alliance, the University City Vendors Alliance, the Undergraduate Assembly and the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly have voiced strong objections to it. University officials should have either worked with other area groups to hammer out a true compromise or gone at it alone from the beginning. As they were handled, the vending negotiations certainly didn't improve Penn's standing with the community.