Three students have been arrested or indicted in the past week. The north side of campus has seen two shootings in a month. A female student was sexually assaulted in her off-campus apartment, and suspects have flashed students in two separate incidents.
The crimes are "the perfect storm," said Vice President for Public Safety Maureen Rush.
Ultimately, Rush said, because the crimes are completely unrelated, it's simple bad luck that has caused concern among officials and students.
"There's no doubt that [these incidents] . will raise some people's anxiety levels" on campus, Rush said.
In the short term, officials and experts say, strategies for handling the situation include communicating with the University about safety concerns and placing the incidents in the context of citywide crime trends.
University spokeswoman Lori Doyle said she isn't concerned that Penn's image will be hurt by these incidents.
She called crimes on campus - even those perpetrated by students - "inevitable" in an urban campus like Penn and said "it's going to take a lot more than a few negative media stories to make a dent on [the University's] reputation."
Public relations experts tended to agree with that assessment, but they said there are still steps a university can take in situations like this.
David Kirk, president of thePRguy Inc., stressed the importance of communication about safety issues.
Keeping the Penn community updated about crime problems has become increasingly important in the wake of last April's massacre at Virginia Tech, Kirk said.
Rush said that because a Penn Police officer fired the shots that killed a gunman at Club Wizzards last Monday, it was especially important to inform the University about the incident.
"Having a fatal shooting from the Penn Police is highly unusual. . Clearly this is a huge thing," she said.
Additionally, Penn's strategy of attempting to place recent campus crime in the context of the wider crime epidemic happening throughout the city is sound, according to John Moscatelli, senior vice president and COO of Anne Klein Communications Group LLC.
"Some of the things that happen in and around the campus are completely beyond the control of the University's administrators and the student body," he said, making it important for safety officials to place incidents in context.
Jessica Tubbs, assistant program director of Security on Campus, an advocacy group, agreed, saying that, because the incidents on campus are unconnected, it's difficult to do anything about them.
"There's no explanation . for the randomness of the crimes," she said.
Still, Penn students are concerned - especially because so many high-profile crimes have happened within a relatively short span of time.
"All of a sudden all of these things were happening at once," said College sophomore Sarah Sanchez.
She added that, as a result of the two recent shootings at night clubs on 38th and Chestnut streets, she has begun to attend an earlier Mass at St. Agatha-St. James, a Catholic church located across the street from the site of the shootings. Now, Sanchez said, she doesn't feel comfortable leaving church at about 11 p.m. when the evening service usually gets out.
And though Emily Price, a College sophomore, doesn't feel unsafe as a result of these incidents, she noted that it was "strange" that all these incidents have happened in such a short time span.
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