Today in the Daily Pennsylvanian, Maureen Rush compared the recent crime spree at Penn to a bad George Clooney movie.
Three students arrested, two shootings, and two flashings. It sounds like the makings of a Penn version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas”. Hopefully in the next week there’s four embezzling scams and five bikes stolen, so we can keep this thing going. But Rush sees the recent crime spree differently.
The crimes are “the perfect storm,” said Vice President for Public Safety Maureen Rush.
The perfect storm? Really? Wouldn’t “the perfect storm” of crime involve more than a couple of guys whipping their members out? I don’t remember that in Ocean’s 11. “All right, Danny, you block the guards. Frank, open the safe. Then Virgil and Turk will expose themselves to random girls!”
All things considered, these crimes aren’t “the perfect storm.” Multiple shots were fired twice on campus and no students were hit. To me, a more appropriate quote for Rush would have been to say the crimes were “a lucky break” and could have been much worse.
Tags: crime, Maureen Rush, perfect storm
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December 6th, 2007 at 9:01 am
When people use the term “Perfect Storm,” they’re more likely referring to the movie’s source material, the bestselling nonfiction book by Sebastian Junger. In it, Junger borrows the term “perfect storm” from meteorologists. A perfect storm is when a combination of multiple factors combine and feed off each other to create a potent, overwhelming weather event.
Rush is concerned that the flashing escort may lead to a decline in students using walking escorts just at a time when street crime is on the rise, and that the number of unescorted students may lead to a further rise in crime. Thankfully, that hasn’t happened yet, but her use of the analogy is perfectly apt.