Sebastien Angel | Penn should act, not just react

Sometimes, all Penn needs is a kick in the ass.

On Jan. 22, Amy Gutmann unveiled a plan to beef up Penn security, increasing the Division of Public Safety's budget by 22 percent. The number of Penn Police officers was set to go up 20 percent; the number of security guards, by 50 percent. Gutmann devoted millions to add more security cameras and lighting.

All of this didn't happen in response to a comprehensive, rigorous study about crime prevention in West Philadelphia. It happened because somebody got shot at 38th and Sansom streets a week before.

Not surprisingly, University officials backed away from saying that the shooting directly led to the budget increase. Still, they didn't exactly offer strong denials, either.

"We have to sort of shock the environment by doing a lot and by doing it now," Vice President for Public Safety Maureen Rush told The Daily Pennsylvanian when the plan was released.

Whether Penn made that quick decision for public-relations purposes or because of a sudden, zealous spike in its desire to protect its students is debatable. But one thing is clear: Penn doesn't respond to poor lighting on street corners, it responds to people getting shot.

There aren't a lot of shootings in the Registrar's Office, though. So in the world of class registration, the Class Buster controversy of this past week is probably as close as we're going to get.

Class Buster, a program created by a still-anonymous developer, allows Penn students to quickly claim highly coveted open spaces in certain classes during the course selection period. The program checks Penn InTouch every minute and, once a spot opens up, sends a text message to students' cell phones.

When the program was released on Thursday, the Registrar's Office forced students to go down one of two paths:

n Compromise their security by revealing their PennKeys and passwords to a person who won't even reveal his or her name and trust whatever information that person's program gives them.

n Put themselves at a calamitous disadvantage relative to Class Buster users in the add-drop game of musical chairs.

That is not an acceptable dilemma, particularly at a school that charges its students so much to take courses.

But the pre-Class Buster system wasn't all that desirable, either. If you wanted to get one of the last spots in a coveted class last spring, for example, the only way to do it was to visit Penn InTouch as often as possible and manually check whether a spot had opened up.

Rewarding students who constantly keep their cell phones on vibrate to get notifications from Class Buster is only slightly sillier than rewarding the ones who constantly hit refresh on Penn InTouch.

It's a fair bet that the situation of this past week won't reappear in November, when the add-drop period for spring 2007 begins. The Registrar's Office will probably have done something about it, although they have declined to name any specific changes. They might amend the registration process, or they might provide a University-backed alternative to Class Buster.

But as was the case with the 38th and Sansom shooting, it has taken a ruckus for Penn to take notice of its weaknesses and actively try to correct them.

Of course, it's a little unfair to indict Penn for sleeping on the job on the basis of a few isolated incidents. A massive university can't constantly have its finger on the pulse of every single aspect of campus life.

What's more, there have been instances when Penn has made strides toward self-improvement with little provocation at all (the purchase of the postal lands, for example). And there have been incidents to which Penn could have made a harsh or reactive response, but didn't (such as the World Cafe Live riots of last year).

I recognize the need for Penn to maintain good public relations, but it isn't necessary for outside circumstances to constantly dictate what Penn's internal actions.

The University's refusal to play follow-the-leader with Harvard University in its condemnation of early admissions is one good sign, and hopefully Penn will continue down that path. It would be nice to know that careful planning is driving our security efforts, rather than the fallout from the latest campus shooting.

Sebastien Angel is a College sophomore from Worcester, Mass. His e-mail address is angel@dailypennsylvanian.com. Overnight Celebrity appears on Wednesdays.

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