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Community groups and Police Free Penn are hosting a panel discussion on the university’s relationship with Black Philadelphians

“It’s about understanding the ways that this hugely wealthy institution is complicit in a lot of the systemic harms that Black Philadelphia faces,” said Christopher Rogers, a member of Police Free Penn.

File photo: Darlene Foreman, a representative with Tenant Resident Council, throws water into the air during a protest at 38th and Market Streets, where they shut down the intersection last August. Residents, supporters, and activists gathered at the University City Townhomes at 40th and Market Streets to protest the sale of their homes.
File photo: Darlene Foreman, a representative with Tenant Resident Council, throws water into the air during a protest at 38th and Market Streets, where they shut down the intersection last August. Residents, supporters, and activists gathered at the University City Townhomes at 40th and Market Streets to protest the sale of their homes.Read moreALEJANDRO A. ALVAREZ / Staff Photographer
    by Nate File
    Published 

On Monday night, Police Free Penn and local community groups will hold a panel discussion on the relationship between the University of Pennsylvania and the surrounding Black community of West Philadelphia.

The panel will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Penn LGBT Center at 3907 Spruce St. Representatives from Black Lives Matter Philly, the Coalition to Save the UC Townhomes, and Collective Climb will also speak on the panel, which is free to attend and open to the public.

Police Free Penn is a student-led group at the University of Pennsylvania which advocates for the abolition of the school’s police force, which currently has 121 full-time officers. Formed in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, the group is committed to building a relationship with the West Philly community that might make a complete reimagining of public safety possible.

Christopher Rogers, a member of Police Free Penn and a research fellow with Penn’s Center for the Preservation of Civil Rights Sites, said that the event is a step toward dismantling the idea of the Penn “bubble” in West Philly. To Rogers, the more that people understand the relationship and impact of the Ivy League university on West Philly, the better.

“It’s about understanding the ways that this hugely wealthy institution is complicit in a lot of the systemic harms that Black Philadelphia faces,” he said.

But the event is not only for community members to express how Penn’s presence affects them; Rogers also hopes that members of the Penn community see this as an opportunity to support their West Philly neighbors and learn more about their own responsibility as members of a shared community.

» READ MORE: Why the University City Townhomes are really vanishing — and why it could happen again

“They have an opportunity to do something different that’s going to actually build something that can overcome those harms and challenge the institution to do better,” he said.

“This is [where] the Black Bottom was taken from. It is still a space for Black Philadelphia to be.”