Evan Goldin | Pop the 'Penn Bubble'

'Are you kidding me?" I stammered, standing on a street corner in Rittenhouse Square on a beautiful spring day.

"No," she said firmly. "You never know what could happen on a bus."

Actually, I did know. Needing to get back to campus in the next 15 minutes, SEPTA would take us back to campus, cheaply and quickly.

But she wasn't having it - she insisted we grab a cab back. And after about a minute of argument, I relented. I wasn't going to win that battle, because her reticence is part of a larger problem: Penn students just don't feel comfortable in their own city.

To some degree, this isn't completely a bad thing. University City is an extraordinarily vibrant place, offering many of the basic services students need, from beer to books to bad haircuts. It's a great comfort zone, and a Penn student could go for years without ever really having to go elsewhere for anything. But there's a reason I didn't go to school in Ann Arbor or Durham: Our campus is smack dab in the middle of one of America's best and most historic cities.

But from day one at Penn, little is done to help remind us where we are.

Well-intentioned administrators tell us "Don't listen to people who say not to go past 40th Street." But that may do more harm than good, because that's often the first time the 40th Street stigma is planted.

That's a shame, since those fears couldn't be further from the truth. Most students have no idea that the blocks southwest of campus are gorgeous, fun and safe.

Nonetheless,"Some people's idea of getting off campus is going to Fresh Grocer," College junior Catherine Lim said. "At most they know how to take a cab to a restaurant or BYO around Rittenhouse Square."

And when students don't feel a bond to this city, they are much more likely to head elsewhere after graduation. Consequently, the city loses smart kids, and Penn loses out on a chance to have a much more active (and nearby) alumni base, which could fill those empty seats at basketball games.

Yet, what's really needed is not a diagnosis for the problem, but a cure. And that's where Rachel Gilbert comes in.

The College junior is born-and-raised Philly, and she wants everyone to get the complete Philadelphia experience at Penn (not just the Disneyland, er, Rittenhouse Square version).

She's come up with the idea of a required class for freshmen designed for the sole purpose of helping them get to know Philadelphia. The class - perhaps a half credit and pass/fail - would consist of a few lectures on the different neighborhoods, issues and offerings of the city. But much more of it would be made up of a number of field trips to on and off-the-beaten path places in Philadelphia.

"If you see these places in a safe, recreational way, you'll . make a more informed decision of whether Philly is a place where you want to spend your future," she said.

More than anything else, such a class would simply get students to expand their comfort zone outside of the 32nd to 40th Street boundary. Students are required to learn a foreign language before graduation, why not require them to learn about their own city?

Homework could be touring a South Philly soft pretzel factory, or riding a SEPTA line from end to end. For the final project, students could explore a single topic (murals, BYOs) in depth, and then all projects could be posted online to encourage other students to explore Philadelphia.

Penn students, after all, aren't naturally adverse to exploration. But we have to change, as Gilbert said, "what's drilled into their heads when they get here."

And if adding another requirement isn't possible, there's another option: A new pre-orientation program. We have PennCORP, where students volunteer in West Philly. But at Northwestern University, students have the option of a program where they live and explore Chicago neighborhoods for a week before school starts, not just the ones near campus. If Penn made its own pre-orientation program, its graduates would surely go on to bring their new hallmates out of the Penn Bubble as well, creating a ripple effect.

It's not the perfect fix, but at least it would make students more comfortable in their own city - they might even take the bus back to campus.

Evan Goldin is a College senior from Palo Alto, Calif. The Gold Standard appears on alternate Tuesdays. His e-mail address is goldin@dailypennsylvanian.com.

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