It's Always Sunny in Killadelphia

If you watched the news in Philadelphia this afternoon, you might have noticed that the two lead stories both had to do with violence related to the University of Pennsylvania, where I am a student (Go Quakers!).

The first story concerned a shooting that happened last night at 12:30 inside Wizzard's, the strip club that I live across the street from. Allegedly, as Penn campus police were entering the club on a public disturbance call, a gunman shot a DJ with whom he had been fighting. When the guy refused to put his weapon away, one of the officers opened fire, killing him. The club has since been shut down for, I believe, fire code violations.

This, of course, is not the first instance of gun violence in the immediate area -- about a month ago, there was another incident outside of Club Koko Bongo, a glorified bar located in the same building complex as Wizzard's, where "10 officers and one sergeant were conducting crowd control [...] when one man pulled a gun and fired toward the crowd." One police officer was shot in the leg (she was not critically injured) in the ensuing battle, and the gunman was killed.

The second story had to do with former Penn Economics professor Raphael Robb, who today pleaded guilty to "voluntary manslaughter for killing his wife as she wrapped Christmas presents last year." Apparently, Robb and his estranged wife, Ellen, were arguing "about a trip she was taking with their daughter and whether they would be returning in time for the daughter to return to school." The discussion grew heated, Robb's wife pushed him, and he -- fearing that she planned to leave him and "keep him away from his daughter" -- just "lost it," beating her to death with a chin-up bar, which was apparently the first blunt object that he could find. Robb then rearranged the scene to make it look as if a burglary had taken place. According to the Associated Press, he "faces a likely prison sentence of 4 1/2 to seven years."

I'm not really sure where to start unraveling all of this, except to say that dealing with violence increasingly goes with the territory around here. I remember seeing the flashing lights of police cars outside my window as I went to bed last night and thinking little more of it than "I'll have to check out the news tomorrow." Of course, you kind of expect the occasional burst of violence in the part of the city -- West Philadelphia -- in which the school is situated. While I've never personally had a problem, we all recognize that it isn't the best neighborhood. What you really don't expect, though, is for your professors to beat their spouses to death with a steel bar. Besides being really bizarre, the story is also pretty terrifying, if only because Professor Robb seemed like such a nice guy (I never had him, but my roommate did and enjoyed his class).

Ultimately, though, Philadelphia -- which has recently been battling a rash of crime throughout the city -- is not the only place where there is violence. In fact, it's damn near everywhere these days -- not only in the newspaper but in music, on the screen and, of course, all over the Internet. As a culture, we are awash with carnage, whether it is being glorified, or criticized, or just plain reported.

In some way, then, maybe it's a good thing that these latest incidents have brought the problem so close to home for us Penn students, as a reminder that, even though we live in the collegiate bubble, there's a whole world out there that's falling apart. I'm not sure how we're going to fix it but we better start soon, because I have a feeling that the violence isn't going to stay outside of our windows forever.

Sources:
Koko Bongo
Robb
Wizzard's