<p>Come to think of it, neither have I (seen any white kids walking around campus/West Philly).</p>
<p>Forget about kids, you guys have some of the sickest professors out there. One that murdered his wife, one that was involved with chil pornography…</p>
<p>and everyone’s favorite mistried russian female wharton student!</p>
<p>LMAO @ penns ghetto reputation.</p>
<p>When someone said 9-13 year olds would not be scary, I thought “black kids actually mature pretty fast”. And yet, I didn’t even know they were black, I kind of just pictured the group that way when I read about it. I guess I’m racist?
Anyway, my cousin is black and he was about 5’8" at age 12. </p>
<p>I have to agree that Penn’s security is a MAJOR problem - it would not be ignorant to choose a school over Penn in part for the safety issues. But, it’s still my top choice.</p>
<p>why is the OP scared there like little…you could probably easily mess them up…you’d have to be a boob to get robbed bya nine year old</p>
<p>He’s not wrong to be scared, most of the crimes in Philly aren’t committed by nine year olds. </p>
<p>In fact, the fact that nine year olds have gotten into crimes like these shows how extensive the problem is among people older than them (who became their role models, it looks like). Fear is a good interpretation, “I can take on little kids” is missing the whole point.</p>
<p>Penn cannot hope to singlehandedly solve the crime problem that is a manifestation of the myriad failures of the city, state, and federal government (and civic choices made by the black community) probably dating all the way back to Reconstruction.</p>
<p>Perhaps someday Philadelphia will have a competent mayor (who would choose to spend his day governing rather than waiting for an iPhone), and our country will have inspired leadership. Until then, however, Penn cannot singlehandedly solve the social and economic problems that plague West Philadelphia.</p>
<p>The only thing Penn can really do with any measure of effectiveness is a campaign of aggressive gentrification on every front, in every direction. That is what Penn has been tacitly doing for the last decade and what it will continue to do as long as it has the money to do so.</p>
<p>I never said it was Penn’s fault, I just said it was dangerous. In the end, the fact that Philadelphia is bursting with crime and the fact that Penn is Philadelphia is all that really matters to the OP.</p>
<p>^ Gimme a break. :rolleyes: Philadelphia is not “bursting with crime.” While certain already high-crime areas have been experiencing a recent uptick in crime rates (as have such neighborhoods in Boston, Baltimore, etc.), the city has not become some sort of post-apocalyptic danger zone overrun with crime. From a recent Philadelphia Inquirer article:</p>
<p>“Violence is largely confined to poor areas, a study found.”
Every big city has a crime problem, and the differences between cities at any given time are merely a matter of degree.</p>
<p>Anyone who thinks otherwise is either a Chicken Little, or a determined Philly/Penn detractor.</p>
<p>While it’s true that most shooting victims are “not choirboys”, crime does cross over to other groups. There was a high profile case they other day where a gang of teens (a little older than the pack that was “wilding” around Penn) knocked an elderly Chinese man to the pavement in NE Philly - he later died of his head injuries. A storekeeper was shot and killed during a holdup the same day. Etc. Your odds overall are pretty good but the murder rate is sort of the barometer of other crime because it is a sign that there are a lot of people around in this City (hundreds each year) who don’t care if they commit the ultimate transgression. If there are hundreds willing to kill, then there are thousands willing to mug you and tens of thousands who would like to steal your bike, etc.</p>
<p>Yeah, I thought Philadelphia was the only city to keep a daily count of the homicide toll on the news. A toll which surpasses NYC’s. </p>
<p>I’m not a Philly hater (though I’m getting away in August and can’t wait to walk the streets fearlessly), I just can’t ignore that it’s not very safe.</p>
<p>“Every big city has a crime problem, and the differences between cities at any given time are merely a matter of degree.”</p>
<p>At some point, a matter of degree becomes a matter of kind - e.g. the difference in temp between the surface of the sun and the surface of the earth is literally only a matter of degree.</p>
<p>In the case of the crime rate, when one city has a murder rate that is 4 or 6x higher than some other city (and comparable differences in other crime rates because murder rate is just a shorthand for the overall crime rate) then at some point the higher crime city really begins to have a different “out of control” feeling to it - somehow you sense it in the air that you are in a dangerous crime ridden place and there are physical signs - the Chinese takeout places have bulletproof glass, really heavy duty crime gates on the shops, burglar alarms going off, etc. Phila was better for a while but now it’s starting to have that “going downhill” feeling again and you’re an ostrich if you pretend that Philly is just as safe as Stamford or even NYC. Yes, your chances of getting killed are small but there is a real and growing problem to which attention has to be paid.</p>
<p>I wonder if 45 Percenter is even from Philadelphia. I can’t see any reason why a Philadelphian would claim there is no argument at all for Philadelphia having crime problems.</p>
<p>And Penn isn’t the only college in Philadelphia, so we’re not insulting Penn when we say Philly is unsafe. Drexel and Temple are also unsafe.</p>
<p>Temple is in North Philly, actually, which is almost the equivalent of Baghdad. Despite all the crime at Penn it is actually one of the “better” parts of Philadelphia, if you can call it that (Drexel is right nearby there, too, and it helps that there is a river on one side!). Regarding Philly’s homicide total, I agree that hundreds of killings so far this year is out of control - almost at the level of Baltimore, Detroit, Saint Louis, or New Orleans, if not worse. However, in all honesty, you may be safer at Penn than you are at a rural or suburban school. The reason? Driving. Car accidents kill thousands of college students all across the country per year, and if you look at the history of many suburban campuses you’ll immediately recognize the danger there (of course, Penn has seen its share of students dying in car accidents, or being run over by them on campus, too, but it doesn’t dilute my point). Random killings kill less than a half dozen, certainly no more than 10, across the whole country each year. Use the security services and you should be fine.</p>
<p>north philly the equivalent of baghdad?</p>
<p>sounds rather unduly harsh to me.</p>
<p>last time i checked there are no improvised explosive devices being set off along north broad street.</p>
<p>and the relative quality of philly drivers (read: horrible) probably negates the increased probability of students having a chance to exercise poor driving skills at non-urban schools.</p>
<p>Edit: half a dozen per year with the exception being the 30+ people killed at Virginia Tech last year, which, sadly and unfortunately, just helps prove my point.</p>
<p>Tenebrous: Last I checked, about 15-20 soldiers from Philadelphia have died so far this year in Iraq. Compare that to 221 (as of earlier this week) people killed so far right in the city itself, with much of the death toll (actually, both death tolls, but that’s another story) affecting people in North Philly. I have friends who live in North Philly, actually, and trust me, it is a lot more of a concern to them than Baghdad.</p>
<p>i agree with the seriousness of the situation in philadelphia - i’ve seen the figures, including those most recently published in the inquirer this past week, and my brother works in north philly - we have no illusions about what is going on in those neighborhoods.</p>
<p>still, it seems rather inappropriate to compare the violence in philadelphia to that occurring in a city that is the center of a conflict in which perhaps 70000 civilians and almost 4000 americans have died to date.</p>
<p>“Penn it is actually one of the “better” parts of Philadelphia”</p>
<p>You really have to define “Penn” narrowly as being the central campus. You really don’t have to go too far before “Penn” ends and the “ghetto” begins, a ghetto that is more or less indistinguishable from N. Philly. And the ghetto dwellers have no problem visiting campus in order to mug you/ steal your laptop, etc. despite the zillion cameras etc.</p>
<p>As for N. Philly not being Baghdad, there have been a number of news stories about troops who survived a tour of duty in Iraq only to get shot on the mean streets of their home town. The flip side of crime victims being mostly from one subgroup (the same subgroup as the criminals - mostly young black males) and not the general population is that if you are in that group the mortality is not insignificant - homicide is the leading cause of death for young black males.</p>
<p>I’m not trying to minimize Philly’s crime problems in any way. My point is that, as the article I posted supports, the increased crime rate–including homicide–is pretty much limited to areas that were already high-crime areas. Yes, it’s definitely a problem that needs attention, but we haven’t seen increased murder and crime rates in, e.g., Center City, Manayunk, Mt. Airy, Chestnut Hill, the far Northeast, etc., etc. For better or for worse, the recent spike in the murder rate has not driectly impacted all–or even MOST–of Philadelphia or Philadelphians, and it’s inaccurate and unfair to paint the entire city with a broad brush stroke as, in effect, a city under seige.</p>
<p>As recently as the 1980’s, if not MORE recently, NYC had well over 2,000 homicides a year (a rate similar to Philly’s current rate). However, like Philly, they mostly occurred in the worst crime-ridden neighborhoods. The city didn’t collapse, the desirable neighborhoods continued to boom, and NYC remained a choice destination as it is today. Washington D.C. has often had one of the highest murder rates in the country, yet few people shy away from Georgetown or any other part of Northwest DC because they’re afraid of becoming a crime victim.</p>
<p>Yes, Philly has a crime problem, and it needs to be fixed. But it’s not a unique problem that hasn’t been faced by–and that doesn’t continue to be faced by–large cities throughout the country. And it’s not going to overwhelm the city and bring the whole place down.</p>