Keep your guard up

When students awoke on the first morning of summer session classes, they were greeted first not by professors and classmates but rather by yellow caution tape draped over the stairway to the 37th Street SEPTA terminal.

The shooting on Tuesday, which left one dead and one injured, has been the third on campus in the past six months: Engineering junior Mari Oishi was shot in the leg in January, and William Hurt was murdered in the Philly Diner on Christmas morning.

The Department of Public Safety cannot reasonably be expected to know beforehand when random acts of violence are going to occur. But that Tuesday's shooting took place across the street from a college residence should be warning enough. While the $5 million increase for public safety announced in January helped relieve crime on campus during the spring semester, we cannot naively assume that trend will continue.

And while DPS cannot be blamed for a lack of vigilance -- -- the number of visible guards in uniform has increased substantially in the past months -- Penn students should not have to live in fear that the public transportation stop across from the Quad will be the site of a shooting. Students, especially in the summer, should feel free to use the time they are spending on campus to explore not just the University but the city of Philadelphia as well.

Unfortunately, we live in a less than ideal world, and because Penn is a campus in an urban environment, the perils and pitfalls of said environment are inevitable.

DPS must do everything possible not only to apprehend the perpetrators of this act but also to try their utmost to prevent such things from happening throughout the summer.

Even though summer is here and Penn's occupancy is lower, for both students and DPS caution should be the watchword, not complacency.

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