<p>Shooting tonight (botched robbery at a movie theater) right at the Penn campus. This is the exact intersection where my son lives. A 20 year old Drexel student was shot as well as a non-Penn cop. About 12 shots were fired. The DP site is up and down, but there have been a lot of updates on Twitter.</p>
<p>You, too, can pay $50,000+ for your kid to have these fine learning experiences.</p>
<p>MOWC, 43 years ago, during an interview with a Penn representative, he told me and my mother that “the campus really isn’t in that bad of a neighborhood.”</p>
<p>Needless to say, Penn did not make my list.</p>
<p>(Don’t ask what my mother was doing there during the interview; maybe it’s all mixed up in my mind. Regardless, that’s how I remember it.)</p>
<p>They do the best they can and Penn has a zillion police on patrol. It STILL can’t stop things like this. I consider this basically on campus, even though it technically is across the street from campus. It’s a wonderful campus and a vibrant city. I just don’t think it’s safe. My son wasn’t on campus at the time of this shooting, but all the streets around his building are closed off right now.</p>
<p>Yep. Penn, Chicago, Columbia, NYU, JHU. This is an issue at any urban university, including the selective ones with beautiful campuses and plenty of police protection. As a young man it made me feel a little bold and daring to be attending such a school. Nevertheless I admit, I’m glad my youngest kid showed them no interest.</p>
<p>My S has been a crime victim three times in Berkeley. I feel for you MOWC.</p>
<p>Edit to add: D attends college in Seattle, a nice part of the city, but I still worry. I love urban life and don’t blame my kids at all for wanting to live in big cities, but sometimes I wish they were in the boondocks (and rolled up in bubblewrap, too).</p>
<p>There is crime on any campus. College kids are considered pretty easy targets by criminals. They can be quite careless about their property and don’t always use good sense late at night. I know back in the day we had “incidents” at IU, and I know there have been some problems at Vanderbilt at night. The stuff at Penn is just constant, though, and it gets VERY down-played. A lot of it involves guns, too.</p>
<p>I am glad your son is okay, MOWC, and glad he is almost done (for your sanity, at least!). I work at a university in a high crime urban area & I am very, very careful. I don’t go out to walk at lunch when it’s cold, because fewer people are out. I don’t walk to my car alone after dark. It can be very scary. To be honest, our campus crime statistics are quite low … and crime can occur anywhere. It’s always good to be careful, no matter where you are.</p>
<p>I’m really sorry to hear this and feel for those who were shot. I understand your relief in thinking WC will be graduating soon. </p>
<p>I have never been in a part of Philadelphia that made me feel unsafe. Between the ages of 6 and 9 I rode the NYC subways alone every Saturday morning and walked up a deserted Lexington Avenue. When I ask my mom how she could have let me do this she says “Times were different.”</p>
<p>Last child is in an urban neighborhood where a few murders have occured in recent years. She seems to spend most of her free time with a very tall, very imposing platonic friend and I am sorry that he is graduating this year. I don’t worry on a regular basis but it has been comforting to know he is frequently with her when she goes off campus.</p>
<p>My kids are both “urban kids” and both are attending a school known to be in a “working class” neighborhood. During Parents’ Weekend, our D quizzed her friends (who were freshmen there) about the “inside scoop” of the do’s & don’ts of attending that school. To date, our kids have fortunately not experienced much crime (other than S having wallet stolen when he left it on the university gym’s bench when going to the bathroom)!</p>
<p>We reminded our kids that they have to remember to be aware in an urban environment, just like in our hometown city, especially at night or when there aren’t many people about. When they use the buddy system and reasonable caution, most have pretty good experiences. D admitted that once she was approached by two males who were trying to talk to her & she biked off rapidly in the opposite direction toward campus; fortunately they didn’t follow.</p>
<p>Rural campuses have their problems too, even though they may SEEM more idyllic. For my kids, those types of places weren’t options they would consider anyway, so it’s pretty moot!</p>
<p>MOWC- Penn Parents should be furious an alert wasn’t sent out.
My d works in center city. lives in the Museum area, and has friends who are Drexel grad students. </p>
<p>From the Daily Pennsylvanian- this happened at 40th and Walnut- just before 7:00-two off duty police men fired shots, in fact, the initial report isn’t clear about who fired first- 12 shots fired!!!
The suspect ran away after the robbery attempt.</p>
<p>I think Penn has some tough questions to answer:</p>
<p>From the DP-
Two wounded individuals — a 20-year-old male Drexel University student and an off-duty police officer — were sent to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Neither sustained fatal injuries, Cella said. The incident is currently under investigation.</p>
<p>The police officer, unaffiliated with the Philadelphia Police, was shot in the left shoulder in the lobby of the theater, according to Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Scott Small, who was at the scene. He said that, based on his badge number, the officer may be a member of the state police department in Harrisburg. The officer is in surgery at HUP, Small added.</p>
<p>Small described the Drexel student as an “innocent bystander.” He was shot in the left leg and is in stable condition at HUP. Based on where the victim was standing, Small said, he was likely shot by the suspect.</p>
<p>According to Small, the suspect entered the lobby wearing a mask and proceeded to an employee-only section of the box office. The off-duty officer attempted to intervene and at least 12 shots were fired, though Small said it is unclear who fired first and whether the suspect was shot during the incident, Small added. After the shots were fired, the suspect fled on foot with an unknown amount of money. Rush said he fled westbound on Walnut Street and southbound on S. 41st Street.</p>
<p>NYU is in a better neighborhood than Penn. Not the same kind of thugs. My son feels safe in NYC </p>
<p>Thirty years ago I didn’t want to go to school or live in that neighborhood. I’m sure it’s worse now. And college students are much easier to ‘pick out’ in Philly than Manhattan.</p>
<p>The sheer number of people on the streets of Manhattan make it safer than Philly (on a per capita basis).</p>
<p>MOWC…glad your son is OK. Sounds very scary.
I worked on that campus many years ago. It was terribly unsafe…lots of incidents. It seems they cleaned it up for a while…only to go in reverse with the arrival of roving youth gangs. It’s too bad.
I have a dear friend who lives in the area and raised her children there. She is committed to the diversity of the area, is very involved and and has some terrific neighbors. But safety is a continuing concern. I can’t see here out here in the burbs though…and I know many college students are attracted to that same feeling of energy and vitality.</p>
These schools certainly carry the risk of living in big cities … but I’m not so sure the alternative is so much safer than many folks believe. For example, I have read for female students large spread out campuses with open spaces and sections of bushes and trees can be a higher risk of sexual assult than urban campuses. Unfortunately bad stuff can happen virtually anywhere … and the odds of it happening across settings tends to be a lot closer than most folsk perception.</p>
<p>Colleges MUST report all incidents. The rules governing federal financial aid require that all crime statistics be reported, broken down by types (such as those involving weapons). If a school does not provide the statistics, they could lose their ability to participate in federal aid programs. Finaid laws include regulations regarding crime statistics, illegal downloading, alcohol awareness, “missing students,” and other seemingly unrelated things … probably because no school wants to lose their ability to award aid, so the feds figure how better to make it happen (makes it tough on the finaid boss, though!).</p>
<p>If there wasn’t a university right there would it make this any less of a big deal? No. Here in London there are killings all the time, but people from all over the country (and world) choose to go to (for example) UCL, Imperial, Kings etc because of the fantastic education they will receive.</p>