alt Hacker NewsStarted looking and found out there's some much worse, and far more obvious cases that need to implement these reforms. [1]
UPenn is THE most obvious. Sitting on a $20,000,000,000 endowment fund that went up +170% over 10 years while Philadelphia rots with drug use, poverty, and gun violence.
BTW, amazing site to be horrified by gun violence (and vaguely fascinated). Look upon the awfulness of Philadelphia. [2] Sitting in their safe little haven while East and South is wounding murder land with overlapping murder / wounding statistics. (12k from 2014-2023, 190/100000 urban) [3] Northwestern and the violence everywhere South in Chi-town is maybe a personal second choice. ($13,700,000,000, +74%, 26.9k, 280/100000 urban) [4][5]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universit...
[2] (Guns, Philadelphia) https://www.thetrace.org/2023/02/gun-violence-map-america-sh...
[3] (Location, UPenn) https://www.google.com/maps/place/University+of+Pennsylvania...
[4] (Guns, Chicago) https://www.thetrace.org/2023/02/gun-violence-map-america-sh...
[5] (Location, Northwestern) https://www.google.com/maps/place/Northwestern+University/@4...
Replies
> UPenn is THE most obvious. Sitting on a $20,000,000,000 endowment fund that went up +170% over 10 years while Philadelphia rots with drug use, poverty, and gun violence.
Why is it UPENN's responsibility to solve these issues? This is Philadelphia's problem, the university is just a business operating in the city.
You left off
(Drugs) https://www.cbsnews.com/philadelphia/news/mexico-depicts-phi...
> UPenn is THE most obvious. Sitting on a $20,000,000,000 endowment fund that went up +170% over 10 years while Philadelphia rots with drug use, poverty, and gun violence.
Endowments have strings attached that limits the use of funds, the endowed money isn’t just a general slush fund: https://www.acenet.edu/Documents/Understanding-College-and-U...
Also, an endowment is meant to be perpetual, so only a small fraction of it is spent every year to ensure the principal amount doesn’t go down. “Don’t kill the golden goose” in other words.
Just want to point out that Philadelphia’s homicide count is down ~40% from last year. And Penn’s “haven” looks similar to the other affluent commercial corridors throughout the city.
Thetrace.org is in fact pretty sweet looking. Interesting that philly seems to be shot to injur and next door camden seems to be shoot to kill.
What is the argument here, exactly?
They are not sitting on it. They spend about 5% of it annually.
philadelphia rots? please. I grew up in baltimore. philly is not what a rotting city looks like.
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So if a university has money, learning there should be free?
If you don't have guns, you won't have gun violence, but I guess the second amendment won't be changed any time soon.
Is there a coherent argument tying A to B here? Schools have large endowments and are also sometimes located in violent cities. Is it your contention that one causes the other, or even could in theory affect the other? Otherwise I don’t see the point, you might as well bring up the number of potholes in Philadelphia too.
Also Northwestern is in Evanston, not Chicago. Two different cities.