U. examining safety of windows

Following the suicide of Wharton junior Jose Joseph, University officials say they are evaluating the safety of the windows of Penn's high rise dormitories.

All of the windows in the three towers in Hamilton Village are currently fitted with stops that prevent them from being fully opened. However, many students remove the stops during the school year to allow more air flow or simply to get a better view.

Although University officials say the stop on the window in Joseph's Hamilton College House room was intact, administrators say that they are still searching for ways to prevent tampering. Director of College Houses and Academic Services David Brownlee said that the University has a responsibility to examine the issue in depth.

"I think that as responsible human beings, we have to look at this very seriously and closely," Brownlee said.

High rise residents say that removing the stops can be a bit of a chore, but is not impossible.

"It took about an hour to do the whole apartment," said College junior Jacob Dickstein, who lives in Harnwell College House. "Most of them you had to unscrew. Some of them take some beating but they will eventually come off."

Dickstein said that he removed the latches for a variety of reasons, including more ventilation.

"They're a pain and I like to be able to open the windows all of the way," Dickstein said.

Brownlee stressed that each room is inspected prior to move-in every year to ensure that the stops are present. But while he said that it is impossible to construct a building that is entirely safe, he added that Penn is now considering the safety of the high rise windows very carefully.

"We're going to look at them again, and we're going to look very hard now," Brownlee said.

Although Brownlee did not specify any particular measures that may be implemented to make the windows safer, Director of Housing and Conference Services Doug Berger said that University employees were already going through to make sure that the stops were in place.

"Actually, they're going through the building as we speak," Berger said. "They started [Monday] morning."

According to Berger, the workers are not only "evaluating the stops and replacing the stops," but also examining the possibility of using tamper-proof screws to keep them in place.

Brownlee said that the stops were not on the windows specifically to prevent people from jumping out, but rather to ensure general safety.

"I think the surmise is they're there to keep people and things from falling out," Brownlee said.

With the stops in place, most high rise windows open roughly nine inches.

But while administrators debate how to make high rise windows safer in order to prevent a repeat of Friday's tragedy, some students are questioning what new stops would accomplish. When asked if he believed that improving the stops might help prevent tragedies such as the one that occurred on Friday, College sophomore Robby Sikka replied "not at all."

"If someone is that desperate, they'll resort to any means," Sikka said.

Sikka said he had taken the stops off of his high rise window to allow better air flow, and said he had no problem removing them.

"It took me like 30 minutes," Sikka said.

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