News flash: a laundromat opened up recently. There’s plenty of space and a nice-sized seating area with convenient folding tables, and it offers free wireless Internet, which makes it attractive to college students. One minor problem may be its location – 17th and Diamond streets.
While this business may be relatively close to Main Campus, for some students it seems like every block farther away from the red flags is riskier than the last.
“I’m scared to walk past my block,” junior marketing major April Mauger said. She lives in an apartment on the same square as the Diamond Laundromat.
Mauger admitted she would go the extra distance if it meant avoiding a “bad” neighborhood. For example, she gets off the Broad Street Line at Cecil B. Moore station, even though Susquehanna-Dauphin station is closer to her residence.
“People get mugged during the day,” Mauger said. “But I feel fine as soon as I get to campus.”
Although they may not consciously realize it, the roughly 10,000 Temple students that live on or around campus live in North Philadelphia and are part of its community. So why should thousands of North Philadelphia residents restrict themselves to the safe bubble that is Temple?
For starters, everything students need is here – housing, food, computers, post office, travel agency, banks, recreational spaces and coffee.
Associate Vice President of Business Services Rich Rumer said that these services are important because there is a competitive nature among colleges. He added that students pay the tuition and the General Activities Fee to subsidize operations like this.
Plus, Temple works hard to sprout businesses around campus that will attract students. Rumer explained that the businesses affiliated with the university through programs like Diamond Dollars are marketed by Temple toward students, faculty and staff. In fact, as of January, this program has extended to all enterprises within 500 feet of the campus – including the stores of Avenue North and the 1400 block of Cecil B. Moore Avenue.
But Rumer said that Temple is still in an early stage of development.
“We’re not like University City,” Rumer said.
Rumer said not only does Temple employ a great number of North Philadelphia residents, but it also creates disposable income through the tens of thousands of students.
“If it weren’t for us being here, there wouldn’t be all the people here creating business,” he said. “We’re an integral part of what’s going on.”
As for the surrounding neighborhoods, Rumer said there is not much a college student would be looking for in North Philadelphia because the development has not reached that far yet. Nonetheless, he said that at the current pace, more people will be likely to stay in North Philadelphia because they like the area.
“As we continue to grow, people are happy, people stay here after graduation,” he said. “It’s good for the city and North Philly.”
Vice President of Operations William Bergman agrees that Temple is becoming more of a destination.
“Students go out a little bit further every year,” he said. “We’ve developed such vibrancy here and they’re taking advantage of it.”
Bergman said the university’s developmental decisions are made with the community’s perspective in mind. He meets monthly with community leaders from west and east of Broad Street. He explained that during these meetings, Temple’s representatives try to give a sense of what is happening with the campus, and they discuss any concerns they may have.
Although Bergman said that they do not get a great deal of complaints, a problem that does come up is conflicting lifestyles – for example, noisy houses in a quiet neighborhood.
“We send people to take care of it,” he said. “Not in a policing function, but in a neighboring function.”
Bergman described Temple’s long history of working with its neighbors. He explained that they grow with the university in terms of employment, education and events.
L. Harrison Jay, director of the Community Education Center, also works closely with various prominent members of the North Philadelphia community, in addition to overseeing the operations at the CEC.
Throughout his duration there, Jay said he noticed Temple’s impact on the surrounding community. He sees the development as a “revitalization process,” during which the university is helping to stimulate a business economy in North Philadelphia.
“From my perspective, the community clearly views Temple as a positive resource,” he said.
However, some North Philadelphia residents see Temple as an intruder. Eleanor Farmer, treasurer of the Church of the Advocate on Diamond Street, said that Temple’s expansion was at first seen as neighborhood gentrification.
“I would think a lot of people view Temple as taking over,” she said. “It has taken over buildings and houses. People had to move and they resented it.”
Farmer said she wishes Temple played more of a community role.
“I’d like to see Temple be more community-involved,” she said. “We really welcome that.”
The church’s pastor, Rev. Isaac Miller, said that he observes how the university acts proactively.
“I’m worried about all the things you don’t want to consider,” Miller said. “How things could affect the image of the community. Young people represent an incredible asset. Figure out how to make use of it.”
Miller said he believes the relationship between North Philadelphia and Temple has potential for an enriching learning experience on both ends.
The fear factor, however, still plays a part in Temple students reaching out to North Philadelphians. Farmer understands this, but said she does not feel threatened.
“It’s supposedly a high-crime area,” she said. “I don’t feel unsafe. I try to be careful wherever I go.”
Jay said the stigma surrounding North Philadelphia is irrelevant. He explained that the area holds its own intrinsic beauty and encourages people to “recognize the diamonds that are in the rough.”
Sarah Sanders can be reached at sarah.sanders@temple.edu.
Temple’s ‘community program’ smacks of plantation politics
By Ari S. Merretazon, M.S.CED
Since being hired in May 2006 as the ninth president of Temple University, Ann Weaver Hart, the first female president in the University’s 123 year history has initiated the devolution of its flagship community education program, the Pan-African Studies Community Education Program (PASCEP), a world class model of community education over the last 33 years, under a national eminent domain education movement, some call Community-based Learning.
Community-based Learning is a community engagement model presented as a national education movement in which universities expand their campuses into low and moderate income communities. This movement is presented as a collaborative approach to upgrading community infrastructure, businesses, housing conditions and community collaboration.
Within this model Temple is able to leverage massive amounts of development dollars based on research and socio-economic and housing data collected by professionals, most of whom are white and don’t live in North Philadelphia. This is how Temple has entered the Community-based Learning movement, much like other urban-based universities.
Granted, the concept of this movement is marketable in terms of expanding entrepreneurship, new capital improvements, and strengthening ties to its surrounding neighborhoods. Its process of implementation, however, is likened to an apartheid state or plantation administration.
Here is how it operates within well used principles of apartheid and plantation rule. A new president/administration comes in with a deceptive public relationship strategy of community engagement, collaboration, and promises of community inclusion. The vision of development is done with a standard community impact assessment; department heads are treated as 3/5ths of a human with no rights the administration is bound to respect; successful community education programs are dismantled or downsized beyond recognition under memoranda and news releases from the office of the president indicating a grand university/community vision such as “Broad Street and Beyond.”
The clearest case of this approach is the relocation/downsizing of the Temple University Pan-African Studies Community Education Program (PASCEP). This started only months after Temple’s first women president took office. She, without involving any of the current PASCEP staff in any collaborative discussion and decision-making, decided to relocate PASCEP off the main campus into a much smaller and unaccommodating facility with the distracting name of Community “Entertainment” Center. This suggests that Temple has no intention to continue PASCEP as a quality community education program.
With this apartheid and plantation handling of the director and program, the faculty, alumni association, and supporters are seeking to meet with Pres. Weaver Hart to discuss the negative impact of the relocation and downsizing with goal of keeping PASCEP on campus in Anderson Hall.
Pres. Weaver Hart has yet to give basic recognition, respect to the highly successful program or to its director. She has not responded directly to his letters and information packet about PASCEP which provided her with milestones achieved by PASCEP at its current capacity. To date supporters have received the same boiler-plate form letter response to each of their distinctly different letters of support for the program.
If the relocation proceeds in this apartheid/plantation process, the following successful programs will be terminated: The East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention. This is Philadelphia’s premiere comic book and literacy initiative; The PASCEP Black Male Development Symposium Rites of Passage Program; The PASCEP Prison Outreach; The PASCEP Community Consortiums; and the PASCEP Vendors Association. All of these vital community engagement programs with great exponential positive impact will leave Temple because of the apartheid and plantation incursion of Pres. Weaver Hart.
A vetting of Pres. Weaver Hart reveals, among other things, that she previously served as president of the University of New Hampshire and provost and vice president for Academic Affairs at Claremont Graduate University, neither similar to the Pan-African community in which Temple sets. Her prior education at every higher education level has been from the University of Utah, not nearly the multicultural environment of Temple.
Well, which way forward from here? Do the North Philadelphia community leaders know that PASCEP will never be the same if relocated? Will Pres. Weaver Hart open talks with the PASCEP director and the PASCEP faculty?
When will the appropriate City Council and State Representatives intervene in this local disruption of a successful education program with a grand legacy of community-based learning and engagement for more than 33 years?
PASCEP is at a critical junction. The date set for this unjustified relocation has been set, un-officially, for fall 2008. Why must one successful community-based learning program be displaced by any new ones without a collaborative community process?
To collaborate in theory and practice is when at least two entities with similar interests come together to do something neither could do alone. As a faculty member of PASCEP, I know firsthand that Pres. Weaver Hart has not met with the director of PASCEP as a collaborative partner.
If PASCEP’s director had been included in the decision-making process, perhaps there would have been a relatively seamless transition and supporters of PASCEP would not have to write such commentary and continue to oppose such apartheid/plantation approach to community-based learning.
–ASM –
This article is filled with both blatant and subtle ignorance and even racism. Looking at some of the quotes used in this article proves that these individuals (both Black and White) in Temples administration no nothing about the “intrinsic beauty” that is North Philadelphia.
I begin with the issue of safety around Temples campus. The writer asks the question, “why should thousands of North Philadelphia residents restrict themselves to the safe bubble that is Temple?” Why indeed? Why do some local residents resort to violence towards Temple students and others who appear to be “outsiders”. Could this be a reaction to the destructive, disenfranchising, degrading and dehumanizing way in which Temple University has moved into this community decades ago and slowly pushed it’s residents either out, into poverty or over the edge?
Temple U has been a fixture in North Philadelphia for over one hundred and twenty years, one would think that with that lengthy history in one area of the city and a steady track record of expansion, that the surrounding residents would in some way be better off than they currently are.
Temple U., the economic and educational Goliath of North Philly, with an estimated economic impact of 2.7 billion dollars annually *, seems to have little positive affect on its surroundings. Unfortunately the negative impact of Temple on the community has long been documented. In the late 1950’s Temple, along with city planning and other departments determined that out of 250 non-white families living in the area, 189 were eligible to be placed in low-cost public housing*. Once this was determined Temple wasted no time in moving quickly to claim that land and “re-develop” it for it’s own cause.
Regarding development, Temple claims that it supports the neighborhood by developing area businesses. “businesses affiliated with the university through programs like Diamond Dollars are marketed by Temple toward students, faculty and staff. In fact, as of January, this program has extended to all enterprises within 500 feet of the campus – including the stores of Avenue North and the 1400 block of Cecil B. Moore Avenue.” At first glance this seems like a nifty idea, Temple has its own money, “Diamond Dollars” (as pompous and arrogant a name as any) that students and faculty can use at stores with 500 feet of campus. But as anyone who’s seen North Philadelphia surrounding Temples campus could tell you, the choices of stores are slim to none. The community has been so impoverished for so long, few local businesses could afford to stay open. The newer businesses that have recently opened along Broad street are neither owned nor operated by local residents.
Temples Associate Vice President of Business Services Rich Rumer was quoted as saying “If it weren’t for us being here, there wouldn’t be all the people here creating business, We’re an integral part of what’s going on.”
WOW! Imagine that without Temple present, North Philadelphia might actually be … a neighborhood. What a thought.
“As for the surrounding neighborhoods, Rumer said there is not much a college student would be looking for in North Philadelphia because the development has not reached that far yet.” Again, after over one hundred and twenty years, how much longer should the residents of North Philadelphia wait? Had Temple had the community’s interest at heart long ago rather than focusing on snatching up the property it wanted and neglecting the areas it didn’t want or couldnt co-opt, North Philly would be a markedly different place.
Rumor goes on to say ““As we continue to grow, people are happy, people stay here after graduation,” he said. “It’s good for the city and North Philly.”
Clearly Mr. Rumor doesn’t consider those who have been long-time residents, who are not Temple graduates and who have been displaced and over run as “people”.
V.P. of Operations for Temple, Bill Berghman states that students move further and further out each year and “take advantage” of what Temple has done, but no one has taken advantage of North Philadelphia and its residents more than Temple itself. Major universities and colleges all over the country have learned the games called “Community development” and Community-based learning” in which they sell a city, its residents and local politicians the dream of economic prosperity for all and then proceed to buy up, push out and lock out business owners and families rather than truly “develop” the community.
L. Harrison Jay was quoted as saying “From my perspective, the community clearly views Temple as a positive resource,”. It’s clear to me that Jays perspective is one of misinformation, delusion and most likely is influenced by his head being up the rear end of Temples President, Anne Weaver Hart.
This individual is the brown-faced mouth-piece sent in by Temples administration to herald the destruction of effective community initiatives and programs, while spewing lies and promises to placate the citizens.
Ms. Eleanore Farmer and Rev. Issac Miller both spoke with hope that Temple will eventually recognize its responsibility to the people fo North Philadelphia and act accordingly. As for the issue of safety on the streets of North Philly? Ms. Farmer speaks what most true and longtime residents feel, “It’s supposedly a high-crime area, I don’t feel unsafe. I try to be careful wherever I go.”
Why should North Philadelphia be safe for Temple when North Philadelphia hasn’t been safe FROM Temple?