Picture this -- trash-lined gutters and darkened street corners. Floundering businesses and soaring crime rates. A college that some have criticized for trampling its neighbors and one community in dire disrepair.
When University President Judith Rodin seized the reins at Penn, these were some of the challenges she faced -- and has since attempted to remedy -- in the surrounding community.
With the imminent administrative turnover as Rodin prepares to step down next summer, many of these issues still remain, and, many agree, will be one of the key priorities on her successor's agenda.
But under Rodin's direction, Penn has taken significant strides to improve relations between the University and the West Philadelphia community --despite the fact that there are still miles to go.
Strained relations with the community long predated her arrival, and the need to improve town-gown relations was made clear shortly after her arrival, when a Penn graduate student was murdered in West Philadelphia. That, among other things, prompted the University to begin more aggressively addressing the problems in the relationship between it and the community.
"It's a complicated, textured, frequently frustrating process, but it is better to engage in it than the alternative," Rodin said. "Instead of only focusing on crime, which was a major symptom, we tried to really build back infrastructure and capacity to go for systemic change."
While Penn "saw the need to secure the campus and secure the area, [it] did not see the need for a wall," Vice President for Public Safety Maureen Rush said.
When Rodin came to Penn, the University was "more of an island," she added. "Now... we're all in this together."
Convincing the surrounding community of this, though, has been an ongoing struggle. It has also been a process that has required plenty of collaboration.
"They really had no choice, because of the scale of the changes that were being considered. You couldn't do that without some interaction and some input from community members, or all hell would have broken loose," said Ira Harkavy, associate vice president and director of the Center for Community Partnerships.
An initial step came in the form of Rodin's early promise to locals that Penn would expand no farther west than 40th Street -- an issue that had created mistrust in the past.
Implementing the West Philadelphia Initiatives -- a collection of five goals that include facilitating economic and commercial development, improving public education and creating housing and home ownership opportunities -- was also integral.
The goals put "into place a set of mutual incentives that drive the community and the institution in exactly the same directions," Vice President for Facilities and Real Estate Services Omar Blaik said.
Another major step came in 1997, when Penn formed a partnership with locals through the establishment of the University City District -- an organization seeking to revitalize the University City area, providing funding for services ranging from putting bike patrollers on the streets to adding lampposts to formerly darkened streets.
But Rodin's list of initiatives also called for economic regrowth in the area, so once community members and students began to feel they could safely walk the streets, the University turned to another goal -- aiding local businesses.
Director of the Center for Community Partnerships Glenn Bryan noted Penn's "efforts to have locals in the [retail] mix." Milan Marvelous, a West Philadelphian who recently opened a comic book store on 40th Street, is one such example.
Still, although Marvelous said he appreciated Penn's efforts in "maintaining graduates" and establishing "personal attachments" to the neighborhood, he described the six months it took to set up shop as part of a "complex process" that was a "little slow-paced."
"It was grueling to get that time frame stretched out," he continued, and said he had heard of other potential stores dropping out because the process took too long.
While Marvelous represents a new addition to Penn's retail landscape, Phil Paul, who owns West Philadelphia Locksmith, located at 39th and Walnut streets, said he has appreciated Penn's efforts to economically revitalize the area through its initiatives.
"New people filled up these [vacant] stores," he said. "People don't mind coming down here. It was always a hairy place. They've made a tremendous improvement."
Blaik said that "the conviction that the University's goals are inextricably tied to those of the community" has been crucial to this attention to local business.
Many would argue the same point.
Penn is "a model for what other urban universities can do," Grossbach said.
But others in the community have called Penn a corporate monster.
"We saw the programs that they were doing" after Rodin came to Penn, said Larry Falcon, a member of Neighbors Against McPenntrification. They are "strands to the web of displacement," which has forced lower-income families out of West Philadelphia.
Relations have "gotten worse," Falcon added. Penn "need[s] to work directly with the community... meet people from the community who are part of the decision-making process."
In contrast, Grossbach expressed his support for Penn's efforts. He described Penn's practice of buying dilapidated, abandoned houses on otherwise occupied blocks and improving the building.
"Is that gentrifying the area, or is that solidifying the rest of the block?" he asked.
Still, Falcon said that Penn's "satellite entities," such as the West Philadelphia Partnership and the UCD, that it claims were created to help the community, in reality simply create "a layer of distance" between the University and the community, further worsening the situation.
Jacob Nachmias, a psychology professor and resident of Garden Court, a neighborhood in West Philadelphia, expressed mixed views. He said that while the University's efforts thus far have "been very positive" and "there's never been a time when things have been as good," Penn should contribute more to West Philadelphia schools.
He said it appeared that the Sadie Mossell Tanner Alexander-University of Pennsylvania Partnership School, the elementary school at 42nd and Locust streets, was "being advantaged compared to the others" with which Penn is involved.
Additionally, Nachmias' wife Vivianne, a Medical School professor, expressed her discontent with the fact that the Penn-Alexander School remained vacant and unused over the summer, while the facilities at other, more run-down schools housed summer programs.
In response, Bryan, of the Center for Community Partnerships, said that Penn had just "recently secured funds for out-of-school options" at Penn-Alexander that would change that, noting, this is the point at which "you move to the next level, which is how you open up the school."
Still, Penn's hand in the Philadelphia school system has been extremely evident over the past 10 years.
"Before President Rodin, the Graduate School of Education had a number of individual outreach programs in West Philadelphia schools," Associate Dean of GSE Nancy Streim said. But "all of the involvements were fragmented."
Streim called the Penn-Alexander school in particular a "result of the coordinated vision that [Rodin] brought to the West Philadelphia Initiatives."
Still, Streim said that looking toward the future, Penn could do even more for local schools.
"I would like to imagine a future where the Kelly Writers House or the Weiss Technology House or some of the other service organizations have an annual ongoing program and presence in the local schools."
Others agree that there is certainly more to be done on all fronts.
"I don't think [Penn] can assume that it has done its bit and that the community can take care of itself," Grossbach said.
"We have to sustain what we've done," Bryan said.
The next step, he continued, is moving Penn's community organizations toward greater autonomy and independence from the University.
About this series Penn is a very different place now than it was back in 1994, when University President Judith Rodin first took the helm. And now that Rodin has announced that she will leave her position in June, the University is apt to see more changes in the future. For the next week and a half, The Daily Pennsylvanian will examine a variety of issues, events and people on and around campus that have been affected under Rodin's decade-long tenure. Topics will range from Penn's reputation in higher education to the build-up of retail around campus to expectations for Rodin's successor.
