<p>More murders than Chicago, L.A., and NYC even though it is a fraction of the size. What is Penn doing to stop the carnage?</p>
<p>Hey we know what the campus boundaries are......we keep up the campus security.....what else can we do? Classes have ended and who knew such carnage was going on? Hey....thanks for the heads up.</p>
<p>Is Penn doing anything to work with City goverment to propose solutions? It sounds completely out of control there.</p>
<p>Hey.....it is totally out of control and across the bridge is NewJersey. Who knew it could get this bad? I am about to depart for safer environs. Cambridge....likely they have a handle on crime. This place is insane, totally.</p>
<p>Are Penn students organizing protests in Harrisburg? Or do they not care? You would think there would be more pressure on the PA state government, especially after VT (Virginia Tech), the Amish school house shooting where five young girls were gunned down in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania last year, and now the mass bloodbath in Philly.</p>
<p>You would think but ya know......Harrisburg is a trek from campus.</p>
<p>I think the State needs to send in the National Guard. Then again, the gov't couldn't even do that when New Orleans was completely destroyed, so I guess I won't get my hopes up. I wish the Penn administration or someone there would stand up to this outrage, though.</p>
<p>a) No Penn students care
b) Activism changes nothing
c) The national guard? What would this accomplish. If you think this would actually change anything I'd reevaluate how you see the world
d) What would "pressure" do? If someone wants to kill someone, someone is going to kill someone. VTech isn't some failure on the part of the government.</p>
<p>If VT shows anything about safety, the surrounding environment does not make the campus more or less safe.</p>
<p>I thought all National Guardsmen were in Iraq or Afghanistan? I mean why would we bring them in? They cannot get the job done in Iraq?</p>
<p>Gentrification. </p>
<p>If you are against kicking out the poor people, I guess you could take your tuition money and help them buy houses, get jobs, etc. </p>
<p>My vote goes for gentrification though.</p>
<p>Really, if someone wants to kill people in this country they can. They can do it with legal guns and illegal guns. Nothing is going to change human nature and crazy people.</p>
<p>Venkat89, you are ignoring the fact that most of Philadelphia consists of weed-strewn empty lots and tens of thousands (22,000 at last count -- more than all the other cities in the Northeast, combined) of abandoned, empty shells of buildings that are either fire traps or crack houses. Those areas aren't gentrifying anytime soon. Have you seen them? Meanwhile, the lack of any controls on handguns means people are being slaughtered every day on the streets there, and Philadelphia is quickly becoming the laughingstock of the entire country. If students and community leaders (like the President of Penn, or the CEOs of the banks there) don't rally to do something to stop it soon, such as passing very strict gun laws or sending in troops, thousands more people are going to die in Philadelphia and the city is going to be forever stigmatized, like Camden New Jersey. It's a shame people aren't doing anything. I guess we'll have to wait until 11 random tourists are gunned down in front of the Liberty Bell before people rally to do something to stop the violence. Do you remember how someone walked into a classroom in Scotland about 5 years ago and shot a few kindergarten kids to class? After that the UK made owning or having a handgun an extremely severe crime, and the country's gun death rate plummeted to 1/34th that of the United States.</p>
<p>Oh please. Did you know that Washington D.C. has a higher crime rate than Philadelphia?</p>
<p>Georgetown, GW, a lot of other colleges are in DC. Heck, even the White house, the US Capital, Congressional offices are there, in a city with a crime rate higher than Philly (which should mean something, judging by what you say). Of course, none of that affects anything.</p>
<p>If the entire US government is fine living in a city with a crime rate like that, there's no reason Penn should be affected that much in analogy. There's no reason why Penn should use its security guard to clean up the city.</p>
<p>Why should anyone at Penn care? Students aren't likely to get themselves in any of the situations that end in murder. Last I checked, there weren't many black crack-addicts strapped with gats on Locust Walk or in Rittenhouse Square or down in the Old City. And Philly isn't as bad as a lot of other major American cities.</p>
<p>Aurelius, the tourists in D.C. are undeterred even with the killings around Georgetown and the National Mall. But they don't have a killing every day, so it isn't as bad as Philly. <a href="http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/07/travel_dc_crime.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/07/travel_dc_crime.html</a></p>
<p>Nodnard, your reasoning is odd. If Penn students shouldn't care about hundreds of murders happening all around them, why should anyone care about, say, hundreds of thousands of people dying in Darfur 12,000 miles away?</p>
<p>St. Louis, Compton, Detroit. Who says Philly is the award winner?</p>
<p>
[quote]
But they don't have a killing every day, so it isn't as bad as Philly.
[/quote]
Yes its worse in DC than in Philly. Maybe you should get your number right first. DC's homicide rate is 40% more than Philly's. </p>
<p>And yes, nobody in DC seems deterred and they still get an amazing amount of tourists and government buildings there. Similarly, no one is deterred to go to Penn in regards to what goes on in Philly.</p>
<p>Have you watched local news in DC? It starts to get depressing.</p>
<p>Even if it isn't the "award winner", it is darn close. And just a thought - you have to remember that nobody really cares about reading news about St. Louis or Compton. Most people don't even know where Compton is. Every time a murder happens in Philly, which is at least once or twice per day now, it gets press all over the country. That means the 11 killings in Philly this weekend are the equivalent (in the eyes of the nation) to dozens of killings in a random midwestern city like St. Louis or Detroit. That's not going to be good for Philly's reputation. I know I'm being cynical here, but it's the truth. Meanwhile, even if you don't care about that stuff, the fact that literally hundreds of kids are being gunned down in your city (or your state) should be cause for alarm, I would think. Are students just too obsessed with their Ipods or something?</p>
<p>You know what's funny? The U.S. has higher crime rates than almost any other modernized western country in the world. Why do people even go to American Colleges? Let's all go to Oxford or something. It's much safer there.</p>