My parents hate that I live in West Philadelphia. In fact, they hate the fact even more that technically I could live in the safe confines of our home in suburban Philadelphia, but would rather choose to live at school on a street that 34th Street voted most likely to get mugged on. I get daily emails about the crime logs and incessant phone calls reminding me to set the security alarm, all because we live in the hot bed of crime known as University City.

While my parents are thoroughly convinced that nothing could ever go wrong in the suburbs of the Mainline, little do they know that horrible crime is not just happening in our urban environment, but is also occurring at our neighboring suburban schools.

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A few years back, Cory Bray, who then headed the Penn College Republicans, claimed:

“If Penn can’t protect us,” he said, “we should be able to protect ourselves.”

Bray advocated the allowance of concealed-weapons permits for students. Of course, it was shot down and people thought he was crazy. Bray graduated last year, but maybe he had a good idea — after this we now know that we can’t always trust the security on campus.

In an email forwarded to many listservs yesterday, Undergraduate Assembly Chairman Jason Karsh demystified some of the rumors surrounding the two sexual assault incidents that occurred between 5 a.m. and 10:30 p.m. Monday.

No thanks to the ambiguous DPS email that went out last night, we now have the facts.

4000 Block of Spruce Incident:
-Yesterday morning at about 5AM a female student was sexually assaulted in her apartment
-the victim was not physically injured
-this was reported in the DP and was the 3rd incident of stranger rape that has occurred at Penn since 1994
-they are highly unusual but naturally have a deep impact on the psyche of those within our community

Security Guard Incident:
-A Penn student was offered to be escorted by an Allied Barton security officer, which is normal procedure if an escort sees someone walking home alone and is not currently on a call.
-The Allied Barton security officer, who has worked at Penn for nine months with no prior criminal background, exposed himself.
-He was quickly identified after the incident was reported and was taken into custody.
-He is no longer employed by Allied Barton. - NO UNIFORMS HAVE BEEN STOLEN. Any reports of stolen uniforms are false.

Of course, both incidents are horrible, and my thoughts and prayers go out to the victims of such random, disgusting crime.

What perturbs me the most is that the protocol for informing the campus of these events encourages student gossip and rumor to take over, flooding out the potential real dangers that we may or may not be facing.

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So we all know that Penn students stick out in West Philly, but does that mean we deserve to be the victims of crime?

Crime has increased on the northern outskirts of campus, and, according to Philadelphia Police Lt. John Walker, Penn students are to blame.
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