Hey you!

Congratulations!! Winning the Series was really awesome. Yeah, oh, what’s that? You rioted on Broad Street? Yeah? NIIIICE!

You totally threw champagne bottles on Pattison Ave? You and and some random dudes were smoking cigars ’til four? Sweet! You ran up and down the city with all the other Philadelphians throwing trashcans and dancing on taxicabs? Holler! Got arrested? Me too!

That’s all really cool. Except it’s also kind of sad.

Why? Because unfortunately, many Penn students’ involvement in the post-game riots marked the height of their respect, interest, and involvement in the city. It’s true, many Penn students and groups do a lot of utterly amazing work in Philly. And it’s also true, a lot of Penn students and groups love throwing downtown parties. Our community service track record in Philly is pretty good. Our social track record in Philly is even better.

What’s awful, though, and the problem I’m talking about, is our collective attitude towards the city in which we live.

It’s unrelated to whether or not we are a great service-oriented University. Too many Penn students think of my city as “Not New York” or “A Shithole I’ll Leave the Day after Graduation.” We disrespect Philly and its citizens. There is a sense on campus that Philadelphians not associated with the University are not worth the time of day.

It’s a pompous, Penn-tastic notion that when we are forced to interact with Philadelphians we’re coming down from our Ivy Horse to bless the common idiots with our great vocabularies and Europe-traveled selves.

This sentiment is not just too bad because it’s false. It’s too bad because it really screws Penn in the end.

Bad attitudes towards Philly cause animosity from Philadelphians towards the University and its students. That certainly doesn’t help the campus crime rate. And when you tell someone that you’re a Penn student and they react a little less than impressed, well, that’s because the last Penn student they met was a complete asshole. And finally, a negative attitude towards Philly causes you, the Penn student, to miss a ton of great things about this city — great things besides Zee Bar.

I’m not saying my city is perfect. It isn’t. Lots of things need to be addressed, among them the city’s ability to retain talented graduates for local jobs.

But let’s be honest. My hometown is probably better than yours.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 4th, 2008 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.