<p>"These crime stories are terrible PR for Penn and Gutmann knows this - 1 idiotic act with a gun or knife can outweigh years of work by 100 brilliant faculty researchers in the public mind."</p>
<p>Couldn't have stated it better myself. Whether or not other cities have these kinds of problems is inconsequetnial, when compared to its peer schools (Ivies, Stanford, MIT, etc.) Penn is generally seen as the most unsafe, which can be a dealbreaker in the public's mind and prospective students, primarily females.</p>
<p>I agree that being perceived as safe is as important for Penn (and other schools) as actually being safe, and Penn needs to work vigorously on both.</p>
<p>However, here's some interesting crime statistics for the Ivies from 2004, which may surprise some of you:</p>
<p>Note that while Penn had the most robberies--albeit only twice the number of Yale, which is half Penn's size--Penn had far fewer forcible sex offenses than Harvard or Yale, and the same number as Dartmouth and Cornell. Penn also had one third the number of aggravated assaults as Harvard, and far fewer burglaries than Harvard (less than one seventh the number of Harvard), Yale, and Princeton. In many jurisdictions, by the way, residential burglary is treated as equivalent to violent crime, because of the potential risk of harm to the victim in the event of confrontation.</p>
<p>Again, it's incredibly important that Penn work to improve both the reality and the perception of safety on and around its campus, and I'm not trying to minimize that in any way. But the statistics to which I linked above may surprise some people who assume that Penn is the most unsafe among the Ivies.</p>
<p>The disparity in statistics can in part be explained by reporting policies, which can differ between schools - what one school calls an "aggravated assault" might be classified differently by another school. </p>
<p>Also, Penn's crime problem does mean increased security - while some schools have open campuses where pretty much anyone can walk into the dorms, for an outsider to get into a Penn dorm is not easy.</p>
<p>As I said before, the armed robbery statistic is most telling - armed robbers are the most violent type of criminals - the type who will stop at nothing, even murder if necessary to get what they want. Armed robbery is also harder to reclassify as something else.</p>
<p>Percy, "robbery" does not just mean armed robbery. Robbery is defined as the wrongful taking of property from the person or presence of another through the use or threatened use of force. This covers a wide range of conduct, from a purse-snatch to a couple of kids grabbing a bike from another kid to the quintessential armed robbery where property is demanded at gunpoint. Again, not to minimize the problem in any way, but to assume that all or even most crimes classified as "robbery" were perpetrated at gunpoint by homicidal criminals ready to kill to get what they want, is just not accurate or helpful.</p>
<p>Also, the determination of what constitutes, e.g., an "aggravated" assault versus a simple assault is not left up to varying interpretations by individual schools. These terms are clearly and unambiguously defined by the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, which is the standard used by law enforcement agencies throughout the country to report crime statistics:</p>
<p>As I said earlier, I'm not trying to split hairs, but inaccurate, sensationalistic, or inflammatory statements don't inform the discussion, and really only obfuscate the issue. Unfortunately, crime is one of those issues about which everyone has an opinion, but few are well-informed.</p>
<p>In Philly, guns are so common that it would be surprising if a robber DIDN'T have one, when everyone else in the hood is packin'. Look at the number of police that have been shot in Phila. this year, the # of guns that were shooting at the Bongo club, etc.
Just because the FBI puts out a standard doesn't mean that local departments follow it - some may choose to reclassify crimes in the interest of making their stats look better. You're very naive if you think this kind of manipulation doesn't go on every day.</p>
<p>Percy, in my legal career, I've served as a prosecutor in several major cities--including Philadelphia--spending several years in each city. I am not naive, and would suggest that I perhaps have a bit more knowledge about and personal experience with this subject than most other posters on this board. You, on the other hand, are an undergraduate in college, and have no personal experience or empirical basis to support your assertion that major city police departments--including Philadelphia's--regularly falsify crime data reported to the FBI under Uniform Crime Reporting regulations (which, by the way, would itself be a felony under federal law, including Title 18, United States Code, Section 1001--making false statements to a federal authority).</p>
<p>But don't just take my word for it. Read the Crime Log in the DP and see (1) how many robberies there actually are over several weeks in the immediate vicinity of the Penn campus, and (2) how many of them involve the use or display of a gun. You'll see that armed robbery (i.e., where a gun is displayed) around the Penn campus is not nearly as common as you imply.</p>
<p>And after you've done that, go back to studying Finance and Management--finals are approaching! :)</p>
<p>i'm sick of people whining about every little thing that happens at penn/philly. this is the world in which we live people-things happen! philly is no worse than any other city of its size, after all...</p>
<p>There's not a simple answer for that, Sam Lee. However, it is important to remember that safety depends a lot on your knowledge of the city and how to behave when you are there. The same applies to living in a town, village, or rural area. Along those lines, suburbs and rural areas are actually MUCH more dangerous places to live, because of the increased frequency (and speed) of car accidents. Even after considering risk factors like differing crime rates from one place to another, a college student who does not drive, such as one who lives in a place with everything nearby, may actually be between 50 and 200 times safer than a college student who drives on a regular basis, such as one who attends a suburban or rural college. I'm not saying you shouldn't take precautions and learn the secrets of street smarts (which applies whether you are in a city or in a rural area), but overall your chances of being killed or injured in crime are actually extremely low (unless you are involved in illegal activity or have a spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend with violent tendencies). Every year, several thousand college students die in random car accidents -- almost the equivalent of a VT massacre every DAY. Excepting the VT massacre, in a typical year fewer than 5-10 are killed in random crimes around their campus.</p>
<p>That said, crime in places like New Orleans, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Baltimore is really out of control, with hundreds and hundreds of murders per year in each, which is why it has been featured so often this past year in the international news media and is by far the #1 concern of those communities. Although like I said above, most of the crime affects those involved in illegal activity (the vast majority of the victims and perpetrators have past criminal records), people should still be much more outraged than they are that pre-teens are being gunned down in the street for no reason other than they didn't get out of the way of someone's Cadillac Escalade, or that babies are getting killed by stray bullets. The violent crime is very much disproportionately a problem affecting inner-city minority communities, and to a certain extent can only be solved through the political and social actions of the affected groups, not by outside intervention, but that doesn't mean we can't all be more active in protesting and trying to change what is happening, both through our political actions as well as our daily decisions.</p>
<p>what i was wondering was if there's something about the mid-atlantic area--the demographics, the history, the politics...etc. that make the crime problems tougher to deal with. i was wondering because these cities (dc, baltimore, philly, camden) are around the same region. or maybe that's just a coincidence.</p>
<p>coincidence...but remember- st. louis, detroit, compton, chicago, atlanta, dayton, oakland, new orleans, tampa, dallas, etc. aren't in the mid-atlantic region... crime happens everywhere; it's a fact of life.</p>
<p>Basically these are older industrial cities - you have problems in other regions as well - Detroit, Chicago, etc. Basically what happened was you had a large group of Southern agricultural laborers (descendants of slaves) migrate to Northern cities in the period from WWI to WWII - unneeded on cotton farms due to mechanization, needed up north to work in war industries. South always had more violent culture than North - both among black and white, dating back to colonial days. Migrants take violent culture with them. Then after WWII, jobs disappear - manufacturing moves to Asia, etc. Due to poor schools, etc. ghetto residents not equipped to take jobs in modern economy. So you have a large group marooned with no source of income, historically violent culture, not assimilated into Northern culture. Crime results.</p>
<p>No I'm not overstating - that blacks (who unfortunately account for a disproportionate amount of the crime in older Northern cities such as Phila.) brought their culture (where disputes over seemingly trivial matters are often settled violently and sometimes with guns) with them from the rural South and that this was a culture that they shared with and learned from Southern rural whites (as well as many elements of black American speech, cuisine, etc.) is something that is not widely understood. Southern whites have moved on from that kind of "hillbilly" culture but unfortunately it has survived in the code that many urban black men live (and die) by. Once you understand the roots of the behavior it becomes easier to understand, but it does not explain why that culture has survived, while (for example) Sicilian immigrants (from an equally violent and ill educated rural culture) have largely assimilated into the broader American culture. Certainly racism has prevented assimilation - blacks can never "disappear" into the melting pot in the way that whites can, even if they wanted to. Timing was a big issue - Italians came to the big Northern cities a generation or 2 earlier and had made it out of the slums by the time that urban factory jobs disappeared. The biggest issue today is the ongoing failure of the educational system to prepare ghetto residents for jobs in the modern economy - this is the surest way to assimilate people into mainstream (non-criminal) culture but the up escalator of American education that worked so well for the Jews and other earlier immigrant groups and continues to work well for Asians, has not done the job for blacks (and Latinos). Partly this is due to neglect (Phila. spends maybe 1/2 as much per student as the wealthy suburbs) but part of it is that black culture (again in common with rural southern culture) does not consider high academic performance by children to be a badge of status for parents - it favors other symbols more highly. It's very hard for the school system to change fundamental cultural values like this. Many other factors too - the lack of intact 2 parent families, lack of suitable role models who are not drug dealers, on and on.</p>
<p>"part of it is that black culture... does not consider high academic performance by children to be a badge of status for parents - it favors other symbols more highly."</p>
<p>Whoa, somebody is not afraid to use blanket statements... I would definitely have to disagree w/ you on this one-first off, "black culture" doesn't even exist. Where are you getting your data (in ref. to your comment on black values)? What are these "other values" you speak of? Perhaps it's my strong distaste for generalities that causes me to say this, but I don't think you can say that an entire race of people devalues one thing or another-individuals (including blacks) have their own thoughts/opinions on diff. issues. I'd like to know how you came to the conclusion that blacks don't care about education. "Fundamental cultural values?"-come on!</p>
<p>Observations about an entire race or culture obviously do not rigidly apply to each and every individual in it, but they still have predictive value or else we have no ability to offer explanations for anything. I think AA studies people would be the first to tell you there IS such a thing as black American culture (just as every other group has it's own culture). You are fooling yourself and you will have no ability to make any useful changes in our society if you pretend that there is no such thing. Again, this does not mean that all people should not be respected or equal before the law, etc. but being equal and being identical is not the same thing.</p>
<p>One clue to what a culture values is to look at its heroes - in black American culture the big heroes are rappers or athletes, etc. </p>
<p>There is good reason why education was not historically valued in black culture - until very recently even if a black person made the heroic effort required to get thru college and professional grad school despite all the barriers, due to racism there would be no job available to him anyway. People respond rationally to incentives/disincentives.</p>
