Temple president Jason Wingard on shooting of police officer: ‘We need help’

When Temple president Jason Wingard learned Saturday that one of the university’s police officers had been shot, instinct took over.

Wingard, who’s been on the job for all of 20 months, headed straight for Temple University Hospital with his 13-year-old son. Once there, Wingard ventured into a private room where the lifeless body of Officer Christopher David Fitzgerald — his head still bandaged from physicians’ efforts to save him — was being watched over by Fitzgerald’s distraught wife, Marissa.

”His wife was on one side of the body and I was on the other, and I reached across and we held hands over his body, and we talked about the unspeakable grief that she was feeling at the moment,” Wingard said in an interview in his office Tuesday morning. “We talked about the four children that they have together. And what she was going to tell them, and she asked me if she thought it was OK for them to see the body before the burial.”

» READ MORE: Slain Temple officer Christopher Fitzgerald’s death an ‘extraordinary loss,’ officials say

Wingard also took time to visit Fitzgerald’s family Monday at their house. “I met with his parents and with Marissa his wife again and we talked about his dedication to community service, his dedication to young boys — in particular of color — trying to be a role model for them, trying to be a mentor for them,” Wingard said. Fitzgerald “was so proud of Temple University. He was so proud of Philadelphia, an avid sports fan of all the teams.”

Wingard said that he took his son to the hospital because his wife, Gingi, was out of town with her sister. Since then, he has tried to help his son process what transpired that night.

”There was a lot of grief at the hospital, a lot of shock,” Wingard recalled. “People sometimes don’t know what to do with the feelings that they have and the pain that they have. So, there was anger in the room.”

Wingard said his son “picked up on that and wanted to know why such a tragic event didn’t rally people together to be sad together to support one another to make people feel better. He has been in other settings where there are funerals, and he has always marveled at how together everybody is — the hugging, the anecdotes of love and expressions of joy and love as you’re celebrating one another. That’s not what he saw at the hospital at Temple on Saturday night.”

As the Temple community mourned the loss of another one of its members to gun violence, Wingard found himself working hard to extend the circle of consolation that he showed to Fitzgerald’s family to the campus as a whole.

During the wide-ranging interview in Sullivan Hall, Wingard discussed the events of Saturday night, the need for additional assistance to address crime on campus, and his unwavering commitment to move into the neighborhood despite what feels like a cascade of violent episodes.

”There’s going to be some problems, but we are looking forward to it,” Wingard said of moving his entire family into a university-owned house a few blocks from his office on North Carlisle Street, between Norris and Diamond Streets. He and his wife, a doctoral candidate at Temple, have two children still in middle and high school, as well as two in college and one in graduate school. They will move from a seven-bedroom house in Chestnut Hill into a three-bedroom rowhouse. He expects the move to take place in about six weeks.

”We are excited about being able to be full-time residents of the community,” Wingard said. “I believe that that will allow me to engage with the university community in a more meaningful way, but it will also allow me to engage with the residential community in a way that you just can’t do when you commute.”

» READ MORE: Temple Officer Christopher Fitzgerald ‘cared about the community more than himself’

Once he moves in, Wingard will be the first university president to live on or near Temple’s campus in decades. I asked if he had any concerns about keeping his family safe. Last year, there were a number of home invasions involving Temple students. In 2021, Temple student Samuel Collington was fatally wounded just blocks from campus.

“It’s been an unfortunate and unprecedented series of events that we’ve been dealing with,” he said. “It’s not unlike what other campuses are dealing with in other cities around the country, but nonetheless it is hitting close to home here at Temple and we are devastated.”

I drove up North Carlisle Street after we spoke, and noticed numerous rental notices on both sides of the street. He’s going to be surrounded by Temple students day and night. That’s going to be good for them and him.

I commend Wingard, Temple’s first Black president, for immersing himself and his family in the community the way he is planning. Nothing will get better in North Philadelphia — or anywhere else — unless major stakeholders of a community fight hard to effect change, instead of leaving it all behind each night as they make a beeline for the suburbs.

Still, it’s going to take a lot more than the president of Temple living in North Philadelphia to address the neighborhood’s problems.

“We need help at Temple University,” Wingard said. “Our mission is academic excellence and education, teaching and research. Keeping our students safe is important for that agenda, but it’s not our primary skill set.”

Temple can’t do this work alone, he pointed out. “Everybody has to come together to solve this systemic, hugely disruptive problem because we alone, Temple University, cannot solve the crime problem in North Philadelphia,” Wingard added. “This problem is bigger than an academic institution.”