Villanova criticized for lack of public response to plan to bus homeless to the school’s campus

Villanova University alumni and others took to social media Monday to say they were puzzled by the school’s lack of a statement about a plan by Norristown’s council president to bus people living homeless to the campus.

People also criticized the school for not endorsing the work of a 20-year faculty member who’s been advocating for the past year on behalf of people living in encampments in Norristown.

Villanova is being “inundated” with messages to come up with a “more principled response,” said sources close to the university, who added that there was a team at Villanova working on a “compassionate response” from the school.

A university spokesperson did not have a comment.

Last week, the head of Norristown’s municipal council said he planned to bus people living homeless in the borough to the Villanova University campus.

Thomas Lepera, the municipality’s president/councilman at-large, said he’ll offer $500 gift cards to everyone who boards the bus at the end of June. The money would come from donations, Lepera has said. Norristown, the Montgomery County seat, has no homeless shelter.

Lepera is choosing Villanova because Stephanie Sena, an anti-homelessness advocate and anti-poverty fellow at the university’s Charles Widger School of Law, has been working on behalf of an estimated 160 people experiencing homelessness in Norristown.

Sena has been an anti-poverty fellow at the law school for three years, and a faculty member in Villanova’s Center for Peace and Justice, a department focused on social justice, for around 20 years. She also runs a homeless shelter in Upper Darby.

Lepera denied the busing plan in a Facebook post Monday. He cursed Sena during a meeting last week to work out help for those living homeless, according to Sena and Eric Tars, legal director of National Homelessness Law Center, D.C., who had also attended the meeting. Lepera denied using foul language.

Asked to comment on Lepera’s plan and Sena’s work to help those who are unhoused, Villanova issued a statement late last week that seemed to many observers to be an effort to place distance between the school and Sena:

“The work being done by Stephanie Sena is part of her personal advocacy efforts; it is not being done on behalf of, or at the direction of, Villanova University.

“… Villanova University has had multiple conversations with Norristown officials to clarify Ms. Sena’s role as being independent of Villanova.”

Charles Burrows, a former student of Sena’s and now an attorney with Legal Aid of Southeastern PA in Norristown, said in an interview Monday that it struck him as “odd” that Villanova would not have offered a full-throated endorsement of Sena and her work.

“Over the years, the school has publicized her work a lot,” Burrows said. “They’ve talked about her in news releases, blurbs, and various news stories about the great work Stephanie has done at Villanova.”

Sara Goldrick-Rab, who resigned last year as founding president of the Hope Center for College, Community and Justice at Temple University, commented on Twitter Monday and later said in an interview: “Villanova has bragged about Stephanie as one of their own when she opened a homeless shelter. They traded on her values and name when she brought the money into the school. But when things get difficult, they turn on you and make statements like this one.

It was stunning to me.”

Tars agreed, adding, “I’ve seen Villanova support Stephanie’s work in the past, and I would hope that, though she didn’t ask for the university to be brought into this, now that Lepera has put them there, they would stand with her.”

When Sena was working as an advocate for those living homeless in Kensington two years ago, she was criticized in Kensington by community leaders and residents there as an “elitist,” a term Lepera has used. Sena had sued Philadelphia to defend street encampments of people who are homeless.

“I’ve come to represent all that’s bad and evil in the world,” Sena said at the time, referencing neighborhood animosity toward her. “I’m too much of a lightning rod.”

She was then invited by officials from Upper Darby and Delaware County to create a homeless shelter, the Breaking Bread Community. The facility, opened last December, also includes space for advocates who will help guests with services that can lead to permanent housing. Law students from Villanova, as well as members of the school’s Anti-Poverty Society, volunteer aid. Local officials have publicly welcomed the facility

Hafiz Tunis, a member of the Upper Darby Township council, said last year, “People from across party lines are supporting this shelter, because they see the need.”

Staff writer Susan Snyder contributed to this article.