EDITORIAL: A greener Schuylkill

Plans to landscape the banks of the Schuylkill add welcome recreational options to the area. Plans to landscape the banks of the Schuylkill add welcome recreational options to the area.Three weeks ago, the Penn Police posted a set of pictures of students tearing down the goalposts in Franklin Field on their website. Along with the photos -- actually stills taken from a videotape -- was a request that students with information about the identity of the dangerous criminals in the photos should contact the police. Personally, I don't believe this is an effective way to go about solving the goal post issue. I don't think students are going to turn each other in, even if you could identify anyone in the fuzzy, pixelated photos. If the tearing down of goalposts is truly dangerous -- and it has resulted in at least one death at another university -- then the police ought focus their efforts on finding a safe way to preserve a tradition that means a lot to students. Hint to Maureen Rush: Sending hundreds of riot cops and security guards to do battle with an already agitated crowd of students over a few tons of aluminum is not a good way to preserve anybody's safety. But the tradition itself -- and student enthusiasm -- are worth preserving. You know, they could have Physical Plant employees remove the post and lead a group of cheering students to the Schuylkill. I am honestly surprised that Penn hasn't turned this into one of the Ivy League traditions they mention in the Admissions material that goes out to prospective students. More importantly, while the police are busy assigning blame, why aren't they examining their own mishandling of the goal post debacle in an effort to avoid another potentially dangerous situation the next time Penn wins the title. From where I stood, in the top tier of the bleachers, the opening of the confrontation with police and guards really looked like it was going to turn into a riot. As a student, I was truly scared that both police and fellow students would get hurt. It was a good decision to have the police ultimately back off, but there were officers who hit students and students who hit police officers. All it would have taken was for one of those confrontations to get out of hand and a lot of riot cops and students would have been hurt. But don't blame the cops or the security guards. These are just regular women and men who probably would have rather been in the stands or at home watching college football themselves. Let's lay the blame squarely on the heads of the Police Department who decided to ask these men and women to go out on a Saturday afternoon and defend a pair of goal posts with their bodies. There is no way the Penn Police response can be justified. There is no sane reason to deploy more riot cops against their own students than Penn saw in all the years of the Vietnam War. There was also no sane reason to attempt to lock thousands of students into Franklin Field, creating a situation where many students could have been crushed and hurt. For some odd reason, it seemed Rush did everything she could to ensure that their would be some kind of riot. And for what reason? It can't be concern for student safety, because the situation she created on Franklin Field was far worse than the unsupervised alternative. It appears that she just couldn't back down. Once the Penn Police said the goal posts would stay up, it became a pissing match between students and police leaders, a contest to see who would win out. And that is a profoundly dangerous situation that should not have happened in the first place and certainly should never happen again.