Eliot Sherman: Crime is part of the big city package

Oh mercy! Hide the liquor and children; a bona fide crime wave is sweeping across campus! These are truly trying times. I mean, I hear tell of students too terrified of these mean streets to go to class. I find this particularly hard to believe: I've been quite a few things in my day that prevented me from going to class, but terrified was never one of them.

Nevertheless, I have never experienced a real live crime wave before. I was worried about this, as many of you are, so I called my father, who happens to be something of a specialist on the subject of crime. It went pretty much like this:

Me: Hey dad, am I gonna get killed?

Dad: Your grades are terrible! You're worthless. Now you'll never be president of Harvard.

Me: But the muggings...

Dad: Might do you some good to get mugged. Build some character in you. Now leave me alone -- it's martini time.

Okay, so it wasn't exactly like that, but close enough. In any event, it seems that many parents have taken notice of this sudden turn of events. However, ideas on a proper course of action seem varied. I've heard of one parent who said, in what I can only hope was irony, that he was training his daughter in martial arts and firearms and getting her a concealed weapons permit. I can't wait 'til I'm walking home one night and some SDT girl thinks I look a little too scruffy to be a Penn kid and blows me away from 30 paces. That will be fun.

Student reaction seems a little more rational, but sometimes not by much.

My new favorite conversation to overhear on the Walk is the "I wish those scumbags would try something on me" rant. If only! For me, that's right up there with winning a Super Bowl and relocating to the Caribbean. What kind of idiot wants to get mugged? Also, what kind of idiot thinks that just because it's a 16-year-old girl with a knife to your back, it somehow isn't as dangerous? Knives shred internal organs indiscriminate of the wielder's age. Really, people, it's not a contest to see who's the most badass. That's what Madden is for.

It's obvious that we should all be concerned about this recent wave of crime, but in all likelihood, it is just a temporary spike. Take precautionary measures and demand an increase in security, sure, but beyond that it's a little late to cry havoc and let slip the dogs of whine.

Almost all of you came to Penn knowing full well what you were getting into. This is a big bad city. Crime happens. If you think it is your God-given right to stagger home alone at four in the morning wearing several hundred dollars worth of designer clothes and accessories, well, what can I say? You should have gone to Dartmouth. Around here, you have to be a little more careful.

Big cities have rules and you have to play by those rules. It's not a 100 percent guarantee for your safety, but then again, what is? It's really not rocket science. Be relatively sober when going from point A to B, walk with friends and in lieu of friends use 898-WALK. That a student was robbed during the day is indeed a disturbing sign, but it's a far cry from becoming the norm.

I am 100 percent certain that Penn will increase security measures as necessary to deal with the recent jump in crime, if not for the sake of our personal safety, then at least to avoid taking a hit in the rankings. West Philadelphia is the biggest deterrent to potential students and their parents, and because of this, Penn will make sure that threats to the security of students go away and stay away.

I'm afraid the sad truth is that once again, we have it better than most. How many citizens of Philadelphia have their own personal police force? Or a call-in service to escort you around the streets? Or those nifty blue phones? (Actually, much to my dismay, I recently found out that other campuses also have the heralded blue phones. And I thought we were the only ones.) Do you know what the response time of the Philadelphia Police is? It's definitely not the 4.25 seconds averaged by their Penn counterparts.

If all else fails, you can always do what I do to keep myself safe and to keep people in general from approaching me: mutter to yourself in Arabic and grimace a lot. Trust me, it works. Go on, try and give me a flyer. I dare you.

Eliot Sherman is a junor English major from Philadelphia, Pa.

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