swatparent

A good way to really look at campus crime is through statistics that they all publish.

I think that Penn is a great school, however, on our campus tour, there were drunk/drugged men sitting on a bench in the middle of the tour route who were swearing loudly when we passed by, but also asking for money at the same time. That might be an unusual occurence, but it did not make me think highly of the campus environment.

alipes07

This is a terrible story, especially considering the man just moved there to start a new chapter in his life, not end it.


Its pretty depressing that we're at the point where walking home alone through the streets of a major city is considered a danger. Not to change the direction of this thread, but this really has to be addressed.

swatparent

It's been risky to walk through the street of many cities for decades. Where do you live?

aj725

In total agreement with Michael -- having gone to college and grad school in Philly for 7 yrs fairly recently and having grown up right outside the city -- it's an outstanding place. There is crime, but almost all of it is centered in certain neighborhoods, certain socio-econ groups and involves drug related offenses. Thousands of students go to college and grad school there each yr and young professionals work there and they are not touched by random acts of violence in any way; they are able to go to school/work, take the subways, go out to clubs/restaurants, ball games etc. and live completely normal lives without having to worry.

Just because a sensational crime like this -- in a iffy neighborhood -- makes the news, there is no rational reason to start questioning Penn. Let's be honest -- if your kid got into Penn undergrad or Penn Med or Wharton -- would you tell them not to go because of a perceived crime problem?? If you did, you'd be denying them a tremendous opportunity. But hey -- less competition for everyone else who would do anything to go to those schools and wouldn't run scared due to a few news stories!

swatparent

Yes, he would easily have gotten into Penn, but opted for ED to Swarthmore, and a large part was the area that Penn is in. My other child got into Penn Law and opted to go elsewhere, due to not wanting to be in Philly. I am not saying that Penn is not a great school, but it is not a nice area in some people's eyes.

MichaelNKat

In all cities, there are streets where you can walk alone at night and streets where you can not. In the best of cities, there are times of the night that you shouldn't walk alone even if the streets are safe during other hours. That's the reality of city life for virtually all cities. Which in no way, shape or form is to suggest that a victim is at fault, that's obviously a twisted way to view any person who is the victim of violent crime. However, knowing the streets and neighborhoods is essential to making sound decisions that minimize or eliminate the risk of harm. In the instant situation, the route that was walked from 4th and South to Ellsworth and Passyunk requires going from one safe area to another through areas that have not been remediated or are in a state of flux. These are areas that are not safe to walk through late at night. It is very possible that the Zabel "picked up" a miscreant, during the more than 12 block walk, who followed him home at 1:30 am. That could be an explanation for a killing that occurred in what has been for many years a pretty stable and safe neighborhood.

alipes07

The whole concept of walking home, minding your own business being considered a dangerous situation is really sickening.

paying3tuitions

MichaelNKat writes eloquently about Philadelphia. If this had happened around Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore, I'd be writing about the greateness of my city, and spilling ink to differentiate geographnically that the med school is located differently from the central university, where the JHU undergrads attend, so nobody would worry excessively.

This tragedy is tp an individual. In such an unusual story, what lessons we can learn from it that apply to all urban areas for residents and nonresidents alike? What to say to our kids of same age, moving there or nearby, to be street-wise. Then realize nobody is immune from tragedy but we still want tips to reduce risk factors.

We're assuming that this student was either ill-informed about the different neighborhoods, or making assumptions because of race or his rural hometown origin. We don't know what happened because he can't speak to us, but his story can. The question is: which messages do we take from such a story?

I feel all I can do is warn my kids about the basics of urban street safety, realize that more crimes are committed to lifelong residents of poverty areas than passers-through, determine to reduce the poverty neighborhoods acre-by-acre, person-by-person through education (as Zabel must have dreamed).

It is no condemnation of any particular city that it happened in Philly, and simply our obsession with colleges in general that even causes us to leap towards wondering if this applies to UPenn, which it really does not. The lessons learned are equally meaningful for students at CUNY (which I can envision) or USC (which I can't, quite, but read about on CC so make parallels in my mind), maybe UChicago, namely: learn about walking through ADJACENT neighborhoods or areas when you leave the campus envrionment. Don't not apply there, any more than someone wouldn't apply to Cornell because there are dangerous waterfalls if you don't walk carefully near them. A lot of life is risk analysis and risk reduction.

I would send my kid anywhere he needed to go to learn and work, and I have, from urban Israel to urban Harlem. If I felt general discomfort about all urban areas of America, I'd not send them near any city because kids explore. I'd try to teach them whatever parents teach their kids who live in the same neighborhoods, and take those precautions and more, but still hope that they live with eyes wide open.

I'm still considering why these kids are paid so little as teaching interns, because I have professional concern as a teacher and think they do essential work at the frontlines of poverty to work in public schools like this. Kudos to them.

Rest in peace, Mr. Zabel.

sueinphilly

Every bank within 1/2 mile of my house has been robbed, repeatedly. I will ONLY use a drive thru. They are on a main road and these robberies happen in broad daylight. Armored guards were killed nearby last year. My neighbor had gold chains ripped from her neck a few weeks back as she was sweeping her walk.

And this is in a "better" neighborhood

MichaelNKat

You are right, no one should have to worry about being at risk when walking home minding their own business and what happened to Zabel is sickening. The sad thing is, however, across our country, both in our cities and in suburban and rural areas, there are places and times where engaging in such innocent activity does create a risk of harm. It's endemic to our society and not unique to our cities, let alone 1 city in particular.

sueinphilly

Northeast Times
crime log for northeast philly for a 2 week period.. This is just for a section of the city, not all of philadelphia.

I live very close to this bank
Northeast Times

Nobody died in these crimes, but they are happening every day in my neighborhood. I have had a 10 year old car stolen (buick regal) and a few years ago someone broke my car window, popped the hood and stole the ignition wires out of my 1991 civic while parked in front of my house. I park in the back now.

alwaysamom

This is such a heartbreaking story. I've thought a lot about it since first reading the linked article. Having grown up in the Philadelphia area, and still having friends and family living there, I hear the news frequently and have been amazed in the past few years with the crime statistics in the city. I wouldn't have discouraged my kids from applying to a Philly college but I probably would have had some concerns, maybe even more so than I did about NYC. We've lived in urban areas for many years and our kids are all pretty conscious of safety, have all taken self-defence courses, but even at that, it's impossible to guarantee that they'll remain safe. We can put them in a bubble and protect them forever but at what cost. This was one reason for my comments on the going to Paris thread. An important part of raising kids is setting limits but an equally important part is knowing when to loosen those reins and let them explore. It's never easy and I worry as much as any mother but, at some point, it has to be done and we have to realize that harm can come to kids regardless of what extraordinary measures we may take as parents to protect them.

We had a double murder here in Toronto last weekend that is similar to this one in Philadelphia, in some respects. The two victims were recent college grads from affluent families and just starting out on their careers in the city. They had watched an NBA final at a friend's condo and shortly after leaving to drive home, realized that they'd taken a wrong set of keys so they headed back and were sitting outside the building in a car owned by one of their dads waiting for the friend to come down to exchange the keys, when the two boys in the front seats were shot and killed. The girlfriend of one of them was in the backseat and wasn't hit. The police think that the car's tinted rear windows hid her and thus the gunman didn't even know she was there. No arrests have been made and the police have no idea why someone would have done this. They speculate that it could have been something as simple as someone resenting the fact that these kids were driving a Range Rover.

I had a long conversation with one of my Ds about this case and we discussed how when something like this happens, both here and the case in Philly, there is extensive media coverage (it was the front page story here for a week, including extensive coverage of the funerals and memorials). The sad part is that shootings like this happen, in Philly regularly, in Toronto far less regularly, but most of the time it's a case of young black men killing other young black men. Those cases do not garner the attention, nationally or even locally, that cases like these two 'high profile' cases do, and that is something that really needs to be addressed if we want this type of violence to ever stop.

I'm not condoning peoples' behavior due to their socio-economic status, nor excusing how kids deal with the horrible hands that they are often dealt in life. What I think is essential is that these issues need to be addressed in meaningful ways so that the kids who are committing these horrendous crimes, never reach that point. It's being done here in Toronto, in sometimes frustratingly slow babysteps. We are not used to this type of violence here. As a comparison, those two kids killed last weekend were the 24th and 25th murder victims of the year in a city almost twice as large as Philly where Beau Zabel was the 139th, and where, at this time last year, the city had 181 murders. There is something very wrong with this picture.

I've always believed that education is the primary way of addressing these problems. It is a sad irony that Mr. Zabel was murdered while pursuing a career meant to assist individuals who were probably facing challenges in life much like his killer. Another part of my discussion with my D was about Barack Obama's campaign for the presidency. We both were ardent Hillary supporters before switching over to him when Hillary withdrew, but wonder if perhaps having a successful black man in the White House might be of some longterm assistance to the inner city black communities across the country. Will his inspiration extend past the college aged kids who love him and reach those kids who feel that they have no future? Will he address these issues and advocate for policies to assist? I truly hope so.

I'm curious about how much these teaching fellows earn. I might have missed that in the readings I've done. Does anyone know? Is it really so low that a second job is required or was the job taken at Starbucks perhaps taken to get him through the summer until the school year begins in September?

sueinphilly

Philadelphia Teaching Fellows :: Being a Fellow - Salary & Benefits

41K to start plus other benefits including rent reductions for certain neighborhoods

aj725

I don't think he was working at Starbucks because the pay is so low, but because the teaching fellows position had not started yet and he probably needed income in the interim; I did read that he liked the job and wanted to hang on to it as a second job during the school yr. 41k is actually more than I thought they would make and is a decent salary for Philly; it would certainly allow someone to live in a nicer area -- not exactly Rittenhouse but an area where safety is less of an issue.

MichaelNKat

alwaysamom, when you compare Toronto to Philly, I think you raise a load of cultural and societal differences between Canada and the United States which impact on issues such as violent crime. The culture of violence and, yes guns, that we have in the US, across our country, both within and outside of cities is often in stark contrast to what is found in other countries. Couple this with our failure to address the array of social issues that play a role in promoting crime and it is hardly surprising that as a country or that in comparing cities in the US with Cities in other countries our statistics look bad compared to others.

SueinPhilly, I know the neighborhood of which you speak. I live 10 - 15 minutes west of there. The irony is that in what you call a "good neighborhood", I would have a greater risk of being the victim of a crime walking at 11 or 12 at night in the shopping areas along Cottman Ave than walking around in center city Philadelphia. I would sooner have my daughter walk from the Walnut St Theatre back to her apartment at 11:00 on a Saturday night than have her walk past the Roosevelt Mall.

The point is that when one speaks of crime in Philadelphia and whether Philadelphia is perceived as a good place to go to school, people don't realize that Philly is actually a pretty large county, not just center city, with a vast expanse and diversity of neighborhoods. There are places where you can enjoy all the city has to offer without a real risk of being a victim of crime and places where you will be at risk. My observation is that students who go to Temple, Penn, Drexel UArts and other schools located in or adjacent to center city Philly are able to enjoy all that the city has to offer without being at risk, as long as some common sense is used.