U. Police arrest three; two others sent to HUP

Despite failing to live up to their promise of preventing students from tearing down a goal post after Penn clinched the Ivy football title Saturday, University Police officials put on a happy face yesterday, saying they achieved their primary goal of minimizing injuries during the postgame frenzy. Although many students suffered minor cuts and bruises in the chaos, only two people were injured seriously enough to require medical attention. The two -- one student and one Contemporary Security officer -- were treated at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and released the same day. Three students were arrested at the scene for "a pure lack of cooperation" with police, according to University Police Chief Maureen Rush. They will be processed by Penn's internal judicial system, rather than the city criminal-justice system, she said. Police and administration officials, citing safety concerns, claimed all week that they would arrest anyone coming onto the field to celebrate Penn's expected victory over the Harvard Crimson to clinch at least a tie for its first Ivy League football championship since 1994. But Rush said yesterday that while it was her hope that students would heed that request, "the reality was we knew they were going to be on the field." Once they realized that, the 50 uniformed University Police officers -- many in full riot gear -- and 100 event staff security guards' objective became stopping students from taking down a goal post. Failing that, they wanted to prevent the post from leaving the stadium. "Our intent was to ensure that people did not get hurt," Rush said. "Obviously the first way you can do that is to not have people trampling each other on the field. So that would have been number one on the wish list." "But in the back of our minds did we believe people were not going to take the field? No," she said. "You project utopia and you understand that you have to be flexible and work with what ends up being the reality." As the final whistle blew to give Penn a decisive 41-10 victory over the Crimson, thousands of students poured onto the field to celebrate the first Quaker championship most of them had ever seen. The security guards were able to repel the first wave of students from getting to the western goal post -- which by tradition is the one that students rip from the ground and throw into the nearby Schuylkill River after a football championship. But students quickly caught on and rushed to the eastern post, which was much less heavily guarded. Rush said she chose to deploy most of her manpower on the western end because she knew that "was the one of choice," and also because the eastern post was designed to fall much more safely than the other, emphasizing that it was built to come down slowly in a safer fashion. "We thought there would be less physical damage to people," she said. "The other one would have snapped and come down much quicker." Once the post was down, officials locked the northwest gate and guarded the others. But that wasn't enough to stop the motivated crowd -- chanting "Ivy Champs" all the way -- from reaching the Schuylkill River. The masses paraded to the locked gate and, using a piece of the post as a battering ram, forced the gate open. Rush said that this presented serious safety concerns, and officials will review a videotape of this part of the incident to decide whether to charge anyone with criminal mischief. "People who were attempting to hold back the students were almost impaled at the gate," she said. Once the gate was open, police changed strategy once again, Rush said, and decided to try to simply manage the two-block trek to the South Street Bridge, where students threw the post into the river. Officers tried to prevent any traffic accidents and made sure that the goal post was thrown into the river, rather than onto the Schuylkill Expressway -- which almost happened during the 1994 celebration. Rush said she was proud of the "flexibility and professionalism" of her officers, and cited them for the relative lack of serious injuries. "I think it could have been a lot worse," she said.