Rethinking campus crime

It's a yearly routine here -- in the span of a week or two there's a spate of high-profile crimes reported on campus: this year it's five armed robberies and a sexual assault. And all of a sudden we have a real-live crime wave on our hands.

Or do we?

Whenever something like this happens, suddenly parents are frantic and students won't walk past 40th Street. This year, numerous posters to the online forums on The Daily Pennsylvanian's Web site suggested that Penn students arm themselves. One poster, identified only as David, suggested that the way to deal with the crime problem at Penn "is to acknowledge that these juveniles are not really human, rather predatory beasts who deserve to be killed by the red-blooded Americans from the NRA."

But truth be told, despite the fear, crime at Penn is down. From 2003 to 2004, according to statistics recently compiled by Penn's Division of Public Safety, crime decreased 15 percent. And even if it hadn't, the truth is that Penn experiences less crime per capita than the United States as a whole. Much less, in fact.

In 2003, according to the Department of Justice, there were 22.6 violent crimes -- homicide, rape, robbery, assault -- committed for every thousand persons living in the United States, and 163.2 property crimes. During the same year, in the area patrolled by the Penn Police Department -- from the Schuylkill River to 43rd Street and from Market Street to Baltimore Avenue -- there were 2.6 violent crimes committed for every thousand persons and 21.05 property crimes. There hasn't been a murder in the Penn Police Department's jurisdiction since 1996.

We are nearly 10 times less likely to be victims of violent crimes at Penn and its environs than the national average, and we are nearly eight times less likely to be victims of property crimes. So why don't we know it? Why are we, from the moment we get in to Penn, told to never walk alone, and certainly not past 40th Street, and to distrust the residents of West Philadelphia?

Maybe it has something to do with race and socioeconomic status. The fact of the matter is that, unfortunately, Penn students live in an enclave of relative whiteness and privilege. African-Americans are woefully underrepresented at Penn: only 7 percent of the student body is African American, while the Census Bureau, which has been challenged for undercounting minorities, estimates the country's total African-American population at 12 percent. So Penn students, who often come from backgrounds in which they are not exposed on any regular basis to minority populations, are once again put into a situation in which their actual experience of media-demonized minorities is all too limited.

"There is a lot of wealth concentrated on this campus, and some of the things you see playing out with reaction to the crime wave are being played out nationally as well," says Sean Vereen, associate director of Penn's Greenfield Intercultural Center. "Students come with an ingrained fear of cities and black people, and that fear is played out when you hear about one incident, and it's on the front page of the DP, and everyone suddenly feels under attack. From what I can tell, students have very little knowledge of the neighborhood, and the ignorance plays into that fear. ... A lot of students have not had experiences with cities or crime, and so that overreaction is very typical."

To be sure, any crime is tragic, and Penn students are at some risk of it: it's the cost of living in any city. Taking precautions against crime -- not walking alone, staying in well-lit areas -- that's just common sense at night, in any neighborhood anywhere. But to adopt a siege mentality, to fear any strange black man on the street as many Penn students do, well, that's just silly. And Penn bears much of the responsibility. Though its policing is often overzealous, Penn should be given credit for keeping us safe but should be taken to task for not doing enough to educate students as to the reality of West Philadelphia, and indeed, American life in general.

There's a vibrant, interesting and safe neighborhood beyond the 40th Street border, and if Penn students finish their four years here having never explored it and with a continued irrational fear of minorities and those lower on the socioeconomic scale than themselves, then Penn hasn't done its job.

Alex Koppelman is a senior individualized major in the College from Baltimore and former editor-in-chief of 34th Street Magazine. Rock the Casbah appears on Thursdays.

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