The Sooner, The Better | A tale of two cities

When I arrived here 40 months ago, Philadelphia seemed to be a tale of two cities separated by a proverbial wall.

One Philadelphia boasted world-renowned restaurants, thriving bars, plentiful shopping and historic neighborhoods with hefty price-tags. But that splendor stood in stark contrast to the reality of the inner city — streets humbled by the crushing weight of poverty, murder, drug violence and corruption.

Many Penn students embrace the former and ignore the latter — but they do so at their peril. Unlike our counterparts stuck in college towns, we can learn more from this city than from any book or lecture given at Penn. Indeed, the experience has the potential to change our lives.

On a recent weekend night, these two Philadelphias collided at the corner of 40th Street and Locust Walk — when two men literally drove a stolen car onto Penn’s campus and exchanged gunfire with police officers, resulting in the death of one man. All of this happened in front of students wandering home from a night out partying.

In the aftermath of the incident, students, parents and campus leaders focused their criticism on Penn’s Division of Public Safety for not using a text message alert system. Obviously, student safety merits further debate and other columnists have written on it, but that isn’t my concern today.

I am concerned with where attention wasn’t focused. No one was discussing why two men were willing to risk their lives over a Cadillac. I can’t answer that, but I do know these men were not born wanting to do this.

During my first year at Penn, this city saw more murders than the year has days. Students tend to love citing statistics and consulting charts. And yet, I wonder how many students thought about the broader problems facing local schools, families and neighborhoods that gave rise to those statistics.

Thankfully, some students do.

College senior Marshall Bright is a coordinator for Penn’s Community School Student Partnerships — a volunteer group dedicated to mentoring local children. For Bright, CSSP is not merely a requisite line on a resume. My bet is she will emerge from college with a better education than most students circulating through Huntsman and College Halls.

“Service opportunities are often billed as forces for change in the West Philadelphia community, but I think, just as importantly, CSSP changes Penn students,” she said.

Not every student can get involved like Bright, and not every student should. People should play to their strengths, but they should open their eyes.

I hope each Penn graduate leaves here with a little better sense of the urban world. I hope the Locust Walk shooting does not just result in a better text-messaging system. I hope it sticks with future corporate leaders who will invest in healthy community relationships. I hope it stays with future political leaders who will see crime as more than just a statistic. I hope it gives all of us some perspective on our needs versus those of others.

If geography is fate, then I hope our destinies are manifested by a realization that a problem at 50th Street is a problem at 40th Street, and a problem in the city is a problem in the suburbs.

The world’s a complicated place, and we can’t afford to live behind a wall.

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