Students feel safe despite crime

College junior Kathryn Lee left 30th Street Station just before dawn during Thanksgiving break. With the road only lit by street lamps, Lee said she and another female friend remained anxious during the walk back to school.

"We were scared to walk back from the train station, so we debated about getting a cab," Lee said. "And if we walked, we thought, if worst came to worst, we could use our umbrellas as possible weapons."

But, on campus, Lee and other Penn women say they are not too worried despite a series of crime alerts recently issued by Penn's Division of Public Safety.

In the past few weeks, there have been at least 13 related robberies in the area - a man carrying a screwdriver mugged eight women around campus, and another man is suspected to have robbed and sexually assaulted at least four women in Center City over Thanksgiving break. The latter man has also been linked to the robbery of a female Penn student near Franklin Field on Nov. 18.

No new cases have been reported in relation to these two strings of local crimes, Penn's Division of Public Safety said, and police have not made any arrests.

But most Penn students have not changed their daily routine while on campus.

"Sure I feel unsafe sometimes," Lee said. "But the security guards are so friendly, and . I don't find myself in any real danger."

Her roommate, College sophomore Emer O'Callaghan, agrees that she takes more precautions when walking off campus, but that the robberies on campus have not changed her everyday safety precautions.

All the aforementioned robberies and assaults have involved women who were walking alone in the night-time or early-morning hours.

However, Penn Police are urging females especially to be cautious, even while walking on campus.

A joint task force, made up of Philadelphia police units, is presently investigating these cases.

Penn and Philadelphia police are also investigating the early-morning strong-arm robbery of a Penn employee in the parking garage of the Penn Tower building on Nov. 28. It is not yet clear if the incident is related to either of the two recent patterns of crime, DPS officials said.

Penn Police officials said Penn's campus has dramatically lower rates of crime than the areas surrounding it, especially areas to the west. They also noted a 7-percent drop in crime this year on campus, in contrast to an overall rise in crime across the city.

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