Luck can only go so far on the streets of Philly

Last week, I finally moved into my very first off-campus house. It was all a fluke, really. My parents, whom I am convinced moonlight as secret service agents, are truly uncompromising when it comes to safeguarding the health and welfare of their precious, only daughter. They had, for a long while, adamantly refused to even consider the possibility of off-campus living as an option. Their reasoning sounded completely inane to me.

"Not in the wilds of West Philadelphia, where helpless Penn students are viciously attacked, beaten, dragged through the streets -- no daughter of ours is living unprotected, where young girls are raped and kidnapped to be sold on the black market."

Perhaps a bit exaggerated, but I was the first to brush off their words of warning, to chalk their sentiments up to the overprotective nature of parents of an only child.

It took an incident last week -- that ironically coincided with the big move into my first off-campus house -- to wake me up out of the slumber that is the naivete and total attitude of invincibility that seems to characterize not only the average Penn student, but also the average college student.

In the midst of unpacking boxes and lining dresser drawers, my friend came into my room, closed the door, and in hushed tones broke the news.

One of our housemates, my very good friend, had been robbed at gunpoint the night before just a few blocks away from our house while walking home after dinner.

The attack took place in a very public area at what I would before have considered a very reasonable nighttime hour to be walking down the streets of West Philadelphia. She was with two other people -- one of them a very tall male.

The factors defied all the logic I had before used to legitimize my own actions.

Despite the repeated and often agonizingly repetitive warnings of my parents, I used a very (convoluted) system of risk assessment to make my decisions on whether I would walk home alone at night or not. Would I be walking in a public, well-lit area? Would I be with more than one person? Would there be other people out at that hour? Would one of them be male? But, suddenly, I realized that even if I answered yes to each and every one of these questions, it did not seem to matter.

Thank god, for my past two years at Penn I have not been the victim of a crime (I am knocking on wood as I write this), but my friend's robbery made me realize something that I think has eluded me the entire time -- I am not immune. It could have just as easily been me innocently walking home with two of my friends from Fresh Grocer or from a friend's house or the DP office.

Just as I heard, "Your entire life flashes in front of you right before you die," -- every time I walked home by myself late at night, or decided to take a short cut home or did not wait the extra 15 minutes for the Penn shuttle -- suddenly came to me.

And I realized, at that moment, that I am not invincible. I have avoided tragedy by a shoestring, on luck alone.

As Penn students and members of this community, we all need to come to the realization that we are just as vulnerable to crime, if not more so, than the average Philadelphia resident.

I cannot help but to think back to one of the many conversations I have had about safety with my mother that truly demonstrates the attitude of invincibility I harbored before this incident. She heard on the news that a young woman had been raped near 45th Street.

"Don't worry mom," I sincerely assured her. "The woman wasn't a Penn student, and plus 45th is so far form where I live."

The reasoning sounded so logical at the time, when, in reality, 45th Street is only a little more than four blocks away from where I now reside. But as my mother is also far-too-fond of reminding me, "what do you think -- you have Penn tattooed on your forehead and that will save you? -- no one cares where you go to school when they want your purse...or worse!"

I am just as sick as the next person of hearing that Penn is so unsafe and that West Philadelphia is such a bad place to live. I honestly believe that both of these statements are completely untrue. Instead, Penn students (and their parents) need to realize that along with being residents of any urban metropolis come certain responsibilities and challenges.

Thankfully, my friend and the two other people she was with at the time were not hurt in the robbery, and, ultimately, most of the stolen goods were recovered. And though it was not what I would have considered an enjoyable housewarming gift, it was in a way a fitting (and necessary) inauguration to the world of living off-campus, to a world unprotected by the card-swiping Spectaguards.

The time has come for me to climb out of my imaginary bubble, to shed my superhero tights, and to think not twice, but three times, the next time I decide to walk home alone at 11 o'clock at night -- luck can only take a person so far.

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