Speaking Out

Intersection Out of Control

Like other intersections on campus that are a risk to those of us who work or attend classes at Penn, the intersection at 40th and Locust Sts. poses a greater risk than any other intersection ever. Vehicles heading east bound on 40th Street never stop at the required stop sign that is posted at the corner of Locust and 40th. Countless times vehicles never stop and pose a risk to everyone who crosses this intersection. Once in a while the Philadelphia Police or U.P.P.D. does have a car, a marked car, at this particular corner but not for a long period of time.

Because of the posted officers that are at each corner from 8 a.m.-9 a.m. for traffic detail on Walnut St., a place which at one time that was out of control and where students and staff were at risk when crossing, is now under control. Therefore U.P.P.D. should detail an officer at 40th and Locust Sts. at this time also to gain control of the out of control violators who continue to speed through the required stop sign.

I hope an official at Penn Police Department will listen to this request at this particular intersection, 40th and Locust Sts. is very much out of control and getting worse.

—Charles King, Jr., Facilities Services

Response from UPPD

The University of Pennsylvania Police Department (UPPD) is actively involved in numerous traffic safety initiatives. Traffic safety and in particular the safety of pedestrians and bicyclist remains to be a high priority within the UPPD Patrol Division. The Police Department, in concert with several other University Departments, meets monthly to review traffic safety initiatives, identify problematic areas and also communicate on a regular basis with Philadelphia Traffic Engineers to resolve these issues. We have made numerous recommendations to the City of Philadelphia which will ultimately enhance traffic safety at various intersections. Specific to the intersection of 40th and Locust Street the following “safety enhancements” were recommended to the City:

• Installation of corner “bulb-outs” which will extend the 40th Street west side sidewalks further into the intersection, decreasing the number of steps in order to cross 40th Street and Locust Street.

• Installation of larger and more visible “STOP” signs.

• Installation of larger neo-plastic crosswalk markings.

Some of the safety issues which have been addressed by the University and recommended to the City Traffic Engineers are protracted projects, while we have been successful at implementing safety initiatives such as the installation of the “No-U-Turn” signs along the 38th Street corridor which has dramatically decreased the number of vehicle/pedestrian/ bicyclist accidents in that area. The UPPD is an active participant in PA State-sponsored programs such as “Share The Road” and “Buckle-Up.” In the last year members of the UPPD issued over 2,000 traffic citations directly related to unsafe driving and 5,000 parking citations. Monitoring of traffic and issuance of citations has a direct impact on traffic safety. Specific to the 40th and Locust Street intersection, it has been identified as a “Selective Enforcement Area” which is closely monitored by uniform patrol officers. With all of these initiatives and overt actions by University of Pennsylvania Patrol Personnel we are making every effort to make University City safe for pedestrians, bicyclists and motorists.

—Mark Dorsey,
Chief  of Police, UPPD

One-way Southbound on 37th

In preparation for the reconstruction of the façade at the Inn at Penn, 37th Street, between Chestnut and Walnut is now one-way southbound. Trailers have been dropped on the west side of 37th St. between Sansom and Walnut and  barricades were erected in front of the trailers. The next part of the project will be the erection of scaffolding around the hotel starting from the Walnut street entrance  eastward to and including the Bookstore entrance at 36th and Walnut. The walkway will be covered from the overhead scaffolding during this project.

There will be no street parking on the north side of the 3600 block Walnut as the scaffolding will project to the curbline.

Philadelphia Parking Authority has been notified; meters have been removed on 37th Street and “NO PARKING ANY TIME” signs have been erected.

—Captain Joseph D. Fischer,
Commanding Officer-Patrol Division, UPPD

Tips for Bicycle Commuters

Bicycle commuting can be healthy, economical, safe, and enjoyable. With a SEPTA strike now underway, I would like to offer some timely tips for new and “re-cycled” Penn bicycle commuters:

• Start your trip on the web. The Bicycle Coalition of Philadelphia has compiled a useful set of resources for bike commuters, including route maps and safety tips, at www.bicyclecoalition.org/bikethestrike.html. You can also learn more about safe biking in Philadelphia from the Share-The-Road initiative at http://share-the-road.org/bicyclists.htm. Additionally, Penn’s own bicycle policy at www.upenn.edu/almanac/v49/n09/bike_policy.html provides a wealth of pertinent information for campus cyclists.

• Ride on the road, not the sidewalk. The common misconception that bicycles belong on the road only where there are marked bicycle lanes is simply incorrect. Adult cyclists not only can ride on the road throughout Philadelphia; by law, that is where they must ride. Both the Pennsylvania Vehicle Code and the Philadelphia City Code prohibit bicycling on the sidewalk in the Penn campus area. Cycling is also prohibited on Locust, Smith, and Hamilton Walks from 8:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m. (See www.upenn.edu/almanac/volumes/v51/n13/uppd.html for details). 

• Follow the rules of the road. In Pennsylvania, bicycles and automobiles are governed by the same vehicular code. All stop signs, traffic lights, and other road markers apply to cyclists in the same way they apply to cars.  Be aware that cycling against traffic is not only dangerous, it is illegal, and can result in ticketing and fines.

•  Make sure you can be seen on the road, even in the dark. With the autumn days growing shorter, high visibility is critical for anyone who commutes in rush-hour traffic wear light-colored or reflective clothing, and use headlights as well as taillights to ensure that you are visible to cars and pedestrians under low-light conditions.

• Don’t risk a “no-brainer”; wear a helmet. A helmet that meets the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) standard can minimize or prevent a head injury during a fall or crash. If you participate in a qualifying Keystone health insurance plan, you can receive a reimbursement of up to $25 on a new helmet purchase.  (See www.site65.com/pdfs/ibc_child_safety.pdf for details.)

• Secure your bike when you’re not riding it.  Lock any removable parts, such as quick-release wheels or seat posts, to your bicycle’s frame.  Lock the frame itself to something that cannot be disassembled, cut, or removed.  Employing two different types of locks (e.g., U-lock and cable) makes your bicycle a less inviting target for theft, while registering your bike with Penn Public Safety at 4040 Chestnut Street increases the chances of recovery if the bike is lost or stolen. (For details on how to register, call 215-898-4485.)

Wishing a smooth commute for everyone sharing the road.

–Jennifer Yuan,
   Electronic Publications Specialist, ISC Communications Group

Seeking Justice and Respect

This letter is written primarily in response to the 17 scholars who signed a letter entitled “Conceptual Plagiarism Absurd” (Almanac October 11, 2005), which we feel is not only inaccurate but also disrespectful of the research, intellectual property, and distinguished career of Professor Elijah Anderson. While we recognize that these scholars have a right to an opinion, we categorically reject the unfortunate tactics and vocabulary employed in their letter as well as its suspect conclusions.  

Our purpose is not to engage in a debate about ‘conceptual plagiarism.’  Our colleague Elijah Anderson never used this term, nor do we use it. Because a detailed account of the appropriately acknowledged as well as the 22 inappropriately unacknowledged similarities between Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas’ Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood before Marriage and Elijah Anderson’s previous work (most notably Code of the Streets) has been addressed elsewhere (Almanac October 11, 2005), we will not revisit that topic here.

However, we wholeheartedly agree with Professor Anderson’s conclusion “Should the field accept … claims to the originality of Edin and Kefalas’ book, these scholars will have succeeded at seriously obscuring indebtedness to previous scholarship. [Their book] exhibits enough unacknowledged similarity to [Anderson’s work] that it constitutes an unfair use of another’s scholarship.”

It is essential therefore that we not remain silent in the face of the dismissive letter from the group of 17 scholars, which simply rejects out of hand the concerns raised about Edin’s overlap without attribution of Anderson’s work, and moreover disrespects a distinguished scholar (& his work) by implying that his concerns in this regard are “absurd” and may be rooted in a “fundamental misreading” of the texts.

We do not believe that such dismissive language would have been used if the author of the original work was a White male. But it seems that the work of Black scholars merits little or no respect for its originality, insight, or contributions. We can ill afford to allow this disrespect to continue.  To do less continues the pattern of abuse and misuse that plagues our history. Unless we seek justice through such acknowledgements, our silence makes us all accomplices in the process.

Rodney D. Coates, Miami University of Ohio

BarBara M. Scott,  The Association of Black Sociologists, Northeastern Illinois University

Judith Rollins, Wellesley College

Essie Manuel Rutledge,Western Illinois University

Vasilikie Demos, University of Minnesota, Morris

Andrew Billingsley, University of South Carolina

David Covin, California State University, Sacramento

Stanley Aronowitz,  CUNY Graduate Center

Patricia A. Bell, Oklahoma State University

Judith Blau, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Edna Bonacich, UC Riverside

Charles Jarmon,  Howard University

Marc Silver, Hofstra University

Rhonda F. Levine, Colgate University

Augustine J. Kposowa, UC Riverside

Walda Katz-Fishman, Howard University & Project South: Institute for the Elimination of Poverty & Genocide

Hernan Vera, University of Florida

John Sibley Butler, University of Texas

Mary Romero, Arizona State University

Sam Marullo, Georgetown University

Anthony Lemelle, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Duke University

Charles M. Payne, Duke University

Wornie Reed,  University of Tennessee

Kenneth A. Gould,  St. Lawrence University

Allan Schnaiberg, Northwestern University

Robert Newby, Central Michigan University

Ronald L. Taylor, University of Connecticut

Maynard Seider, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts

Juan Battle, CUNY  and Hunter College

Robert Davis, North Carolina A&T State University

Levon Chorabajian, University of  Massachusetts, Lowell

Lauren Langman, Loyola University, Chicago

Thomas A. LaVeist,  Johns Hopkins University

Maxine Thompson, North Carolina State University

Marlese Durr, Wright State University

Rose M. Brewer, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

Anne Warfield Rawls, Bentley College

Shirley A. Jackson, Southern Connecticut State University

David Fasenfest, Editor, Critical Sociology,  Wayne State University

Arthur Paris, Syracuse University

Nikitah Imani, James Madison University

Najja N. Modibo, Indiana University Purdue University

Noel A. Cazenave, University of Connecticut

Frank Harold Wilson, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

B. Ricardo Brown, Pratt Institute

Bruce D. Haynes, UC Davis

Paul-Jahi Price, Pasadena City College

Johnny Williams, Trinity College

Peter Seybold, IUPUI

Donald Cunnigen, University of Rhode Island

Lynda Dickson, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs

Annemarie Harrod, Belmont University, Nashville

Shawn R. Donaldson, Stockton College of New Jersey

Michael Hodge, Morehouse College

Michael Joseph Francisconi, University of Montana Western

Glenn S. Johnson, Clark Atlanta University

Carl Jorgensen,  UC Davis

Eric Margolis, Arizona State University

George Snedeker, SUNY/College at Old Westbury

Paul Paolucci, Eastern Kentucky University

Patricia Case, University of Toledo

Sherrill L. Sellers, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Carrol B. Cox, Illinois State University

Tanya Golash-Boza, University of Kansas

Jennifer F. Hamer, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Amon Emeka, University of Southern California

Johnnie M. Griffin, Indiana University, South Bend

Carla Day Goar,  Northern Illinois University

April Linton, UC San Diego

Keri Iyall Smith,  Stonehill College

Sandra Barnes, Purdue University

David L. Brunsma, University of Missouri

Beth Schaefer Caniglia, Oklahoma State University

Ronnie A. Dunn, Cleveland State University

Warren S. Goldstein, University of Central Florida

Georgina Murray, Griffith University, Australia

John M. Talbot, University of the West Indies, Jamaica

Kristine Wright, California State University, Long Beach

Michael Briguglio, University of Malta

Daryl Meeks, California State University, Long Beach

Don Wallace, Drexel University

Yvonne J. Combs, Brevard Community College, Florida

Kathryn Brown-Tracy, Three Rivers Community College, Conneticut

Marino A. Bruce, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Vashron Chapple, Public Health Educator

T. Rasul Murray, scholar, New York City

La Francis Rodgers-Rose, International Black Women’s Congress, Norfolk, VA

Pamela Guthrie, Vera Institute of Justice; City College, CUNY

Albert Sargis, Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library for Social Research, Oakland, CA

James E. Johnson, researcher, Penn alumnus, Galloway, NJ

Renee E. Spraggins, Special Populations Branch/Population Division, U.S. Census Bureau

Karen S. Glover,  Texas A&M University

Tamara L. Smith, Loyola University, Chicago

Vanessa D. Brooks, New York City College of Technology

Darryn C. Roberts, Miami University of Ohio

Tamar Diana Wilson, University of Missouri, St. Louis

Felice Jones-Lee, Stony Brook University

Michelle Christian,  Duke University

Dave Overfelt, University of Missouri, Columbia 

David G. Embrick,  Texas A&M University

Toroitich Cherono,  Howard University 

Willie Oliver,  American University

Spencer Hope Davis, North Carolina State University

John Barnshaw, University of Delaware

Thomas Volscho,  University of Connecticut

Vernese Edghill, Howard University 

Andrew Van Alstyne, University of Michigan

Khaya Clark, University of Oregon

Nathanael Matthiesen, UC Irvine