Staff Editorial: Community Principles

Here at Penn, relationships between community members seldom go undefined.

Students, for example, share a clear relationship with faculty members. Administrators have broad control over both those groups. And mixed in to that structure is a bureaucracy of committees and advisory groups -- each one of them tasked with the job of monitoring others, and ensuring that common standards of behavior are always upheld.

But one segment of the Penn community has always been left out of that system of oversight: neigborhood businesses and vendors.

Their freedom has seldom been an issue. Despite their reliance on the University for profits, these are independent businesses that happen to share a neighborhood with Penn and its community. Monitoring their actions has never been -- and, for lack of reason, never should have been -- a major priority for Penn's administration.

But that premise was disrupted last spring, when a Penn graduate student became embroiled in a bitter physical altercation while patronizing Campus Copy Center.

This week, Penn attemped to bridge part of the gap widened by the Campus Copy incident by releasing a "statement of principles" for vendors and retailers. The statement -- which outlines the behavior and ideals which the University expects its vendors to uphold -- is both well-intentioned and thoughtful, and should provide a firm framework for decision-making in the event of an unfortunate future incident.

Ultimately, though, the statement has no substantive force -- independent businesses, after all, are beholden only to the law, their own operating practices and the will of their customers.

As such, responsibility for keeping these businesses on task -- for seeing that they are, like us, committed to a safe and protective community -- rests with all of us. Businesses that violate these principles should be shunned; businesses that adopt them, likewise, should be embraced.

It's a simple, yet crucial ideal. And as long as Penn students and staff adhere to their own values, it's one that helps ensure that all community members are held to protect the same basic standards of safety and individual rights.

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