<p>Students and parents alike are concerned about safety at Penn. Like other urban universities, Penn sees its fair share of crime. Penn has implemented many public safety measures to help reduce crime – including the Penn Walking Service.</p>
<p>One way to be safe is simply to learn when and where crimes tend to occur on campus. A new web-site, <a href=“http://www.phillycrime.org%5B/url%5D”>www.phillycrime.org</a>, provides an easy way for people to browse all reported crimes at Penn, in a simple google-maps interface.</p>
<p>Even a quick look at phillycrime.org reveals several useful trends in the reported crimes at Penn:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>On campus, Chestnut St. seems to have fewer reported assaults (aggravated or simple) than Walnut St, during the academic year. </p></li>
<li><p>Chestnut St also has fewer bike thefts than Walnut St.</p></li>
<li><p>In the last 6 years, virtually all reported homicides occurred outside of the Penn-Police patrol area (43rd to the river, Market to Baltimore). </p></li>
<li><p>Several incidents of rape, however, including day-time events, have occurred on campus – particularly on Spruce St. </p></li>
<li><p>Spruce street also sees the highest rate of reported underage drinking. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>Hopefully, this source of information will allow students to learn more about the crimes reported on and near campus.</p>
<p>I agree with what I believe WhartonAlum is indirectly stating. While I have heard that Penn is less safe than Ivies than other schools, the data and imaging means nothing if it is not placed in the relative context of other schools/cities.</p>
<p>The data and imaging are not meant as a comparison between Penn and other universities, but as a comparison among different locations within and around the Penn campus.</p>
<p>It is clear from the data that certain streets are much safer at certain times than others (for avoiding certain types of crime). Of course, this type of information can't help you to judge Penn's safety relative to other universities, but it certainly may help students and faculty at Penn to be more informed about crime in their neighborhoods, and to choose safer walking routes etc.</p>
<p>I wouldn't say that some streets are necessarily safer than others, rather the statistics reflect the relative concentration of students (and people in general). My first instinct would be to say that there are more crimes occuring on Walnut than Chestnut purely because it has much higher foot (and bike!) traffic than Chestnut. And as for Spruce and underage drinking...well, the high concentration of both frats and freshmen on Spruce probably goes some way to account for that one.</p>
<p>Not that the site isn't interesting, but there isn't necessarily anything inherently safe or unsafe about different parts of West Philly.</p>
<p>Oh, I entirely agree that foot-traffic and overall density play a large role in determining crime patterns, yes.</p>
<p>But I do think that some areas of West Philly are demonstrably safer than others. In addition, crime waves (repeat crimes by the same perps) occur at weekly timescales -- and knowledge about about recent activity in a specific area may be helpful in avoiding such a wave.</p>
<p>If your intent really was to "help students and faculty at Penn to be more informed about crime in their neighborhoods, and to choose safer walking routes etc." then why are you posting the information on CC, where the audience is primarily high school students and parents? Post it in the DP or on Penn's campus where you will actually reach the audience you are supposedly trying to reach.</p>
<p>So I am echoing Stambliark in that it seems that you are intending to reach prospective students and parents and therefore a comparison of top school's cities would be more in line with your true intents.</p>
<p>The site is designed to inform people near Penn about crime patterns and recent crimes in a easy-to-use interface. If the site <i>were</i> intended to provide comparisons between universities, then it would include data on other universities. </p>
<p>Posts about the website have been limited to the CC Penn Forum, and several Philadelphia forums. I'd be happy to post to the DP, but I am not aware of a public forum there.</p>
<p>I don't see why you would doubt the intent of the site on the basis of any content at the site or anything posted here (although if you have competitive feelings of your own with other universities, that might explain why you're looking for comparison between them).</p>
<p>If the site is designed to inform people near Penn about crime, it should be directed at people who are near Penn, not people on CC. Besides, if you were directing the site to people at Penn, the information is completely redundant as it's just copied from the Almanac which comes out every week and is available online.</p>
<p>When you repeatedly post this information on CC, you are making it look like you are directing your site at high school students and parents who are not yet at Penn. So just the fact that you post here at ALL makes people doubt the intent of your site.</p>
<p>Therefore, we are saying that if you are going to continue to promote yourself on a forum created for students comparing colleges, you should include other colleges on your site. Then it will actually be useful for people on CC. Otherwise it looks like you are just trying to make people hypersensitive about crime in Philly when they have no understanding of Penn or Philly yet to begin with.</p>
<p>Okay, fair enough. I will try to add other cities if it would be helpful to people on CC.</p>
<p>I thought that some people who read the Penn forum at CC are actually currently at Penn, which is the only reason I posted here.</p>
<p>(And, PS, I am not trying to promote myself whatsoever. My intentions were and always have been to make known a possibly useful tool to people livining in West Philly).</p>
<p>Like I said the first time, I think this is a good service I just think you are promoting it in the wrong place.</p>
<p>There are people who are currently at Penn on here, but come on - this is College Confidential - it's main audience is prospective students and parents and they make up the vast majority of people here.</p>
<p>You can send the DP a 'tip' about the service and it would probably make it in on a slow news day (which is most every day of course). Until then, it doesn't serve as good a function on CC and won't until it tells prospectives how Philly crime compares to Harlem crime compares to Boston crime etc</p>