Few crimes mar this year's Fling

True to Spring Fling tradition, throngs of students made a reluctant but docile police-enforced exodus at 2 a.m. yesterday from campus parties -- including the largest one, a block party on the 3900 block of Sansom Street -- bringing the year's biggest party weekend to a finale. Although this year's Fling was relatively quiet, police still had to deal with a handful of major incidents: a drunken brawl which left a University student with multiple stitches, four University students who were hospitalized for alcohol-related reasons and 10 reported incidents of vandalism. Preliminary figures suggest that the weekend's crime held largely steady with the crime reported the same Thursday-Saturday period last year, during which more thefts and fewer cases of vandalism were reported. "For the amount of people who attended, and the amount of people who were obviously drinking, people were surprisingly well-behaved," University Police Det. Commander Tom King said yesterday. The exact number of citations for underage drinking issued by the Pennsylvania State Police Bureau of Liquor Control Enforcement was not immediately available. In 1996, 180 citations were issued during Fling weekend, while fewer than 25 were given out last year. King said the LCE issued "a few" citations Saturday, but none to his knowledge Friday. In the most serious incident of the weekend, at least seven men badly beat a male University student outside the Class of 1920 Dining Commons on the 3800 block of Locust Walk at about 2:30 a.m., police said. Police have not yet identified the student. Police said alcohol was "a factor" in the incident, which a witness said was preceded by racial slurs and involved people unaffiliated with Penn. College junior Noah Bilenker, the former chairperson of the Undergraduate Assembly, said that when he saw the wheelchair-bound victim at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, the student's face was so badly cut that "even if I knew who he was, I wouldn't be able to recognize him." In addition, three individuals unaffiliated with Penn received citations for disorderly conduct Saturday night and Sunday morning after refusing to cooperate with University Police officers attempting to move crowds off the streets. In one incident, King said a "nastily intoxicated" 20-year-old St. Joseph's University student was trying to steal one of the barricades placed around the northern sidewalk on Sansom Street during the block party. Security guards from St. Joe's picked up the student and transported him back to the West Philadelphia school. The four alcohol-related hospitalizations included an attempted suicide, the second of the weekend, according to police. The first of the two incidents involved a female student, not a male student as initially reported, who drank peroxide Thursday night. In the second incident Saturday morning, the Philadelphia Fire Rescue Squad rushed a female University freshman to HUP after she cut her wrists in an alcohol-related suicide attempt. The student signed herself up for psychiatric treatment at HUP, police said. In another incident early Friday morning, police found a female University student unconscious and lying near the elevator on the 15th floor of High Rise East. She was quickly rushed to HUP, where she admitted to drinking. Friday afternoon, police found a female University student vomiting in a bathroom on the second floor of the Quadrangle's Morris section and rushed her to HUP at about 5 p.m. Slightly more than an hour later, another intoxicated University student was rushed to HUP from the Stouffer Dining Commons after falling down and hitting his head. But overall, the weekend ran smoothly and according to plan, police said. A Saturday night block party on the 3900 block of Pine Street, which residents said was only planned earlier in the day, was tolerated by police for several hours despite its lack of a permit. But at about 11 p.m., officers broke up the party when they were called in to control hundreds of students at the party that spanned the 3900 block of Sansom Street and 39th Street between Sansom and Walnut streets. The 1:30 a.m. pancake breakfast organized by administrators and students drew many students several blocks away to the Class of 1920 Dining Commons. And at 2 a.m., Managing Director of Public Safety Thomas Seamon, Director of Police Operations Maureen Rush and many University Police officers forced a mass eastward exodus of partygoers from Sansom Street, beginning a round of party shutdowns.

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