<p>No, surrounding streets don’t count. They just have to report crimes on campus, and even that law is a fairly new law. </p>
<p>Thank you, toneranger, for suggesting checking crime rates. Even though crime can happen anywhere, IT HAPPENS ON SOME CAMPUSES MUCH MORE FREQUENTLY THAN OTHERS. And yes, I was screaming that. I would even take it a step further, and tell anyone looking at schools to read the local newspaper, which will have a wealth of information on the surrounding area.</p>
<p>Yes, I’m just a naive suburbanite, with a son in an area where crime has jumped dramatically. He’s in the process of finding an apartment for next year so we are both paying attention to what is going on near his campus. In fact, he forwarded a text he recieved from his university last night. Someone was shot two blocks from campus.</p>
<p>JHS- Philadelphia IS a gritty city. I have spent plenty of time in the city (although, yes, I grew up in the sheltered suburbs). As an adult I have spent many, many weeks in the city on business. I have lived in a number of major cities and Philadelphia has a tougher, grittier (sorry, I think it’s a good word) feel. The service people tend to be more surly and obviously unhappy with their lives (with exceptions, of course) and you need to watch your back. My kids are far from sheltered, and know how to take care of themselves. That doesn’t change my basic view of the Philadelphia “vibe”. It isn’t unacceptable to many people, but to act like Philadelphia is going to seem the same as Dallas, Chicago or Portland is simply incorrect.</p>
<p>teriwtt, If your daughter’s job is right next to MIT, I wouldn’t worry too much about her personal safety. I’ve had kids living and working in the area (both on and off the MIT campus) for the past 6 years. Several years ago, there were some problems with gangs of 11 to 14-year-old kids on bicycles who were attacking and robbing pedestrians, but I think the police have done a good job ridding the area of them.</p>
<p>You DO need to warn your daughter about traffic safety. My D was struck and injured by a bicyclist as she was waiting to cross Mass Ave a couple of years ago, and her friend was hit by a truck when she was crossing Mass Ave the previous year. Fortunately, neither of them were injured seriously.</p>
<p>As a Penn Alum I can attest to the fact that West Philadelphia has always been less “gentrified” than other parts of the city. Of course when I was there, Prof. Ben Franklin was always warnings us of the perils of RedCoat Musket Ride-Bys.</p>
<p>Back when I applied to schools, Yale and Columbia were considered in “tough” areas, but people still applied, attended and thrived. Back then the University of Texas still carried the stigma of its shootings, today it is Virginia Tech, yet young people are attending those schools and thriving. </p>
<p>College is a transitional approximation of the real world and in the real world bad things happen. You can do everything right and still be swept up in insanity, just ask the people sharing a plane with that fanatic on the Delta Amsterdam - Detroit Christmas Day flight. Crime exists. But living in fear is an option. You decide what situations you want to put yourself into and you decide how fearful you want to be, just don’t delude yourself into thinking one place is completely safe and others are guaranteed tragedies waiting to happen. The vast majority of Penn students graduate without criminal incident. </p>
<p>But all that is irrelevant. So I will offer you a simple solution to all this anxiety. If Penn is “too gritty” for you, then don’t apply. If you’re already there and fear for your safety, then transfer. But if you do transfer, take Yale, Columbia, Hopkins, USC, Chicago, Case-Western, Virginia Tech and a few hundred others off your list.</p>
<p>This is a very accurate description. If you can’t see this, then you live in a Northeastern, urban bubble and consider this the norm, which it is NOT for many other urban areas around the country.
I love the Penn campus and Philadelphia, but the conditions around the campus are not typical of every urban campus and I am at a loss why anyone besides the administration feels the need to minimize that aspect. Some kind of denial going on.</p>
<p>Sorry, MOWC and broetchen, but I really, truly have no idea what you are talking about.</p>
<p>I have lived in Philadelphia for over 25 years, but I didn’t grow up here. I have spent meaningful time in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Washington, NYC, Chicago, Boston, and of course New Haven. At one point, I was even in Nashville for weeks at a time. And central Pennsylvania, where people think that Philadelphia is one of the outer circles of Hell.</p>
<p>I affirmatively like Philadelphia. It is pleasant and fun. I don’t find people here surly or unhappy with their lives. It is nowhere near as wealthy as New York or Chicago, or as hip – if that is what you mean by “gritty”, then I guess you are right. People are prone to display a little “atty-tude” if they think you are looking down your nose at them. I don’t notice major differences compared with Chicago or New Haven. The major difference compared to New York is that people are not conditioned to kowtow to the trappings of power and wealth – there is nothing like the class-consciousness that permeates life in Manhattan, at least. There is less superficial friendliness than in the West or the South, but that’s true all over the Northeast. (You want to see less superficial friendliness, try Maine!)</p>
<p>And MOWC, if you can’t see people feeling safe west of 40th St. here, it’s because you haven’t ever spent real time in the city as an adult. The area just around Penn – say 40th-42nd – seems a lot more sketchy to me than the areas west and southwest of that, because the areas that are full of transient undergraduates feel unsettled. There is no real neighborhood, just a bunch of kids who aren’t paying attention. As you go out father, the students get mixed with what my daughter called “real people, people with jobs, and children, and dogs”, and things are a lot more stable.</p>
<p>No, people have MAJOR attitude just doing their jobs. The social lubricant that is politeness and something approaching customer service is utterly lacking at many, many places around campus. Of course, there are exceptions, but the most of the employees at the McDonald’s, the overpriced grocery store you referred to, the CVS, the WaWa and other establishments around campus are “surly”. I think it is sad to think that the climate around the Penn campus (despite or because of all its police/Penn police presence) is only a concern to sheltered suburbanites.</p>
<p>Broetchen- You are correct. Last August during move-in, we got yelled at in the deli near campus for taking the “wrong” container off of the counter to use as a take-out box for the remainder of our meal. Lovely. I realize I’m spoiled because here in Nashville it would have been “Here, honey, let me help you with that”, but it was pretty representative for West Philly.</p>
<p>Is it possible that people who live there become enured to the rudeness and open hostility and it just doesn’t register any more?</p>
<p>Perhaps the deli workers are all graduates of the Soup Nazi’s School of Customer Service.</p>
<p>and JHS, superficial friendliness is not what is lacking. I have spent time in Maine, there is no comparing West Philly “attitude” with Maine reserve.</p>
<p>Off topic but I’ve vacationed in Maine quite a few times. I’ve experienced the “Maine reserve” more in tourist areas than in rural places. </p>
<p>Last fall S’s dog met a porcupine and lost the skirmish. The people at the Coop Cafe couldn’t have been more helpful. We met other interesting people at a church supper. So nice that we patronized their business the next day. S helped them at home with their TV service. In turn, that might have given them a different perspective on New Yorkers.</p>
<p>I’ve lived in major urban centers pretty much all my adult life. I think the area around Penn is a little dicey, and if my D were to go to school there I’d want to spend some time with her reviewing the “street smarts” she developed growing up mostly in NYC; it only makes sense to be on your toes and avoid trouble. But frankly I’d be far more concerned for her safety if she were going to a school that had a reputation for heavy partying. Far more college students die in motor vehicle accidents than in homicides, and most of the motor vehicle accidents involve alcohol. I’ve seen estimates that 80% of the physical assaults on college students are perpetrated by other college students, in most cases after one or both parties have been drinking. Date rape and acquaintance rape are far more common among college students than sexual assaults by strangers; again, alcohol and/or drugs are often involved. And from what I’ve seen, alcohol abuse and the crimes and accidents associated with it, while problematic almost everywhere, are far from uniform across all campuses. So I think if we’re really concerned about our kids’ safety, and not merely threats to their safety from street crime which is just one small piece of a much larger puzzle, I think we need to broaden the frame of this discussion.</p>
<p>“There is less superficial friendliness than in the West or the South, but that’s true all over the Northeast. (You want to see less superficial friendliness, try Maine!)”</p>
<p>I really was going to stay out of this but this comment is so offensive to me that I cannot. For you to be so touchy about the use of the word “gritty” but then to turn around and talk about “superficial friendliness” is quite telling.</p>
<p>Born and raised in the South, nothing about the friendliness of the people here is superficial. Would you prefer me to say that people in the northeast are cold, rude and obnoxious? I’m not one to stereotype and I recognize that people in the northeast have a different temperament and style perhaps than those in the South but I would never make such offensive remarks.</p>
<p>MagnoliaMom, I think for those of us originally from the northeast, a lot of what is perceived as warm Southern hospitality does come across to us as superficial. It may not be meant to be, and I’m sure it’s not, but we all don’t find it evidence of true warmth. It took me a while, after moving to the midwest, to get comfortable with the idea that if I was walking down the street, and someone drove by, that we were supposed to wave with one another. They call it friendly – it felt superficial and stupid to me. One person’s friendly is another person’s fake fawning. And vice versa, of course. One person’s efficiency is another person’s coldness.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, I recognize that people are different in different parts of the country. What I find unacceptable is the need some people feel to insult people who are different from themselves. You call it being direct, some here might call it an excuse to be rude and mean to someone. For what gain? I don’t get it and never will.</p>
<p>But superficial friendliness is not accurate at all. People in the South are genuinely friendly as in they care enough to stop and ask about your family. And the next time you see them, they’ll remember the details of your life that you shared with them. That’s being caring, not superficial. To me superficial is walking down the street, bumping into someone and blowing by them because you couldn’t care less that they exist…that’s superficial.</p>
<p>"Would you prefer me to say that people in the northeast are cold, rude and obnoxious? "</p>
<p>What do you call this? In the north, people just say what they mean, in the south, they pose it as a question. Sorry MagnoliaMom, that doesn’t make it nice.</p>
<p>collegekidsmom, I was being sarcastic and that was not clear in my post. For that I apologize. That is the reason for the rest of my comment below that followed…as in “I would never make such offensive remarks”.</p>
<p>“Would you prefer me to say that people in the northeast are cold, rude and obnoxious? I’m not one to stereotype and I recognize that people in the northeast have a different temperament and style perhaps than those in the South but I would never make such offensive remarks.”</p>
<p>collegekidsmom, if saying what you mean is offensive to me, then so be it. But it is offensive and that I do mean.</p>
<p>I think people from different parts of the country have different expectations and there are definitely differences in mannerisms, but I still maintain that Philadelphia is unusually difficult. Two of my law partners had a big case there that lasted several years and they were in Phila very frequently. One of them grew up in Alabama and one in Oregon. I actually found myself defending my home town on many occasions, because my friends absolutely hated it and had one bad experience after another. Even our own local counsel was so rude and arrogant that he brought my tough (female) law partner to tears. And that was OUR COUNSEL! (who we fired, by the way) These two lawyers go out of their way to not even go through the Philly airport on the way to somewhere else! This is just a random story, and I see the good and bad about the place (and proudly support the sports teams) but it is not easy livin’.</p>
<p>MagnoliaMom: various other posters DID in effect say that people in the Northeast are cold, rude, and obnoxious. My entire city was characterized in terms like that by a couple of posters who had temporarily abandoned superficial niceness.</p>
<p>In my experience – and I have less of it in the South than in some other places – genuine niceness is a pretty common trait. I find it everywhere; most people ARE genuinely nice, and a few aren’t. When I said that people in the South and California are more superficially nice, I certainly didn’t mean to suggest that meant they were all rotters beneath the skin. I meant that they smile and say “Hi” a lot more than people around here do. And that’s NICE; it’s pleasant. But smiling and saying “Hi” a lot doesn’t mean that they are fundamentally better people – most of them are great, and some aren’t, and you can’t tell one from the other by the superficial politeness anymore than you can around here where there’s less superficial politeness.</p>
<p>“Superficial” was not meant as a criticism in any way.</p>
<p>Edit: WOWC, call me next time. I promise you we won’t make ANYONE cry, even opposing counsel. A few years ago, when I was with another firm that did absolutely no litigation, I hooked a friend from Dallas up with a friend of mine here as local counsel, and the two of them got so tight that the Texan stopped going to hotels when he came up here for hearings, and instead just stayed with his local counsel.</p>