With the exception of the occasional salad shoplifter, few Penn students have ever been fortunate enough to venture into the depths of the Penn Police headquarters.
And the Division of Public Safety is looking to change that.
As of yesterday, the DPS will host free nightly tours of the Penn Police station -- located at 4040 Chestnut St. -- complete with a peek into the station's jail cell row.
"This is in response to requests we have heard from the student body," Vice President for Public Safety Maureen Rush said. "Penn students want to be more intimately involved with police personnel, and this is our response to that."
Rush added that the tours are part of a plan to incorporate student input into the DPS.
In taking the tour -- which started at midnight -- we first visited the dispatch center, where we were given full access to the CCTV cameras and permitted to zoom into each freshman woman's room individually. The detail was incredible.
From there, we moved to the offices of Vice President Maureen Rush and Police Chief Mark Dorsey, which unfortunately were rather dismal and a definite low point of the tour.
Yet the experience was redeemed when we traveled downstairs into the lock-up area of the building, where we were surprised to find several ex-students locked up from crimes committed up to seven years ago.
Tour members are given carrots to feed to the convicts through the bars.
On the inaugural tour, only one member sustained a minor injury from being bitten.
To conclude, students are shown the police parking lot and handcuffs and crowbars at a reception following the tour.
In addition, the DPS tour includes a variety of food and drinks. Tour guides provide students with unlimited soft drinks, and a reception after each tour features pizza and ice cream from Scoop deVille.
"We are very anxious to have students join us," Rush said. "We are willing to do whatever it takes, even if it means bribing them with food."
However, the relationships students will form with DPS staff members during the tour surpass any culinary incentives.
True to their aim, the DPS tours will surely be the key factor in bridging the gap between students and the department despite what Rush called "innate differences" between police and the student population.
