At Penn State a small tent city pops up outside Gate A of Beaver Stadium every home game. Student camp out to get the best seats for each home game. I ask students what makes the experience so great for them.
Eat 'n' Poop Nightmare
Nittanyville
Caitlin Monroe has been working at her town's local Eat 'n' Park for five years, but it was one of her very first shifts that she remembers most vividly. When Monroe was 16, she recalls a strange and smelly customer exiting the restuarant as quickly as he entered leaving a mess behind him that Monroe would never forget.
In January, President Trump visited Philadelphia for a GOP retreat. During the retreat President Trump made remarks about the city’s murder rate.
"Here in Philadelphia the murder rate has been steady, I mean just terribly increasing," said President Trump.
His remarks received rebuke from both the mayor’s office and the Philadelphia Police Department. In looking at data from 2010-2015 for the violent crime rate and homicide crime rate per the hundred thousand in Philadelphia, there is some foundation in the claims that President Trump made, the crime rate is steady, but is it “terribly increasing” as the President claimed?
In focusing on the data, reported by the Marshall Project, a nonprofit newsroom that collects FBI crime statistics for about 70 cities, Philadelphia has had a steady decline in violent crime from 2010 to 2015. From 2014 to 2015 there was a slight uptick in violent crime per the hundred thousand when the crime went from 1,021 to 1,028. Violent crimes are classified by the FBI as robberies, aggravated assaults, rape, and homicides.
Homicides per hundred did not see the same steady decrease as the overall violent crime did. From 2010 to 2012 the homicide rate increased, then it declined sharply from 2012 to 2013. From 2014 to 2015 the homicide rate again rose from 15.9 per hundred thousand in 2014 to 17.86 per hundred thousand in 2015.
University of Penn Criminology professor Richard Berk points out, “In some large cities, homicides have increased, but violent crime overall has declined. In other large cities, it is the reverse.”
The latest data from the Brennan Center for Justice just released for 2016 further refutes President’s Trump’s claims about crime in Philadelphia. Per their findings, the overall crime rate is down 1.8%, with a larger decrease of 5.8% in violent crimes. The murder rate, in fact, has decreases from 3.8% to 3.2%.
“Interpreting data such as these can be very tricky,” says Berk, “one year cannot be a trend, and it takes at least several years for real trends to be identified, it will take several years to know, and it will be changes driven by particular neighborhoods, not entire cities.”
The statistics that the murder and crime rates in Philadelphia were steady support the President’s claim, but there is no statistical evidence to support his claims that crime is increasing in Philadelphia. As Beck stated, crime trends cannot be predicted from year to year, so the slight upticks in violent crimes and homicides shown here hardly give the President’s claims credit. The city, and the country may have to wait another year or two before it can be empirically concluded that the President’s stance on rising crime is of any value.
Regardless of whether the President will be proven to be correct in the future, it isn’t an issue that he should be concerned about as violent crime as Professor Berk points out is “ highly localized”. It is hardly a citywide issue, let alone a national issue, as the crime issues concern neighborhoods within a city. It is an issue that should be left to the councilmen, precincts, and courts of the area, not the President.
The President and Philadelphia Crime
Increase in Pennsylvania Parks Visits
In March the L.A. Times reported that National Parks visits increased by 7.2% from 2015 to 2016. The article attributes these increases to low gas prices and mild weather in the spring and fall, which created ideal park visiting conditions. The article also credits campaigns from the National Park Service such “Find Your Park,” a campaign designed to celebrate the National Park Services 100 year anniversary and “Every Kid in a Park,” a campaign led by the White House that wanted to have every fourth-grader visit a national park between September 1st, 2016 to August 31st, 2017. The L.A. Times article focused on some of the more popular parks nationwide to report how the large crowds were affecting the parks. In looking at the data from the National Park Service we see how these factors have affected the fourteen National Parks in Pennsylvania as well.
Most of the parks in Pennsylvania did experience an increase of visitors that was seen nationwide with an overall 11.43% increase in visitors. As with the national trend, the more well known parks in Pennsylvania had record number of visitors with Independence Hall reaching 5 million visitors. Other sights like Flight 93 had 385 thousand visitors, but lesser known parks such as Friendship Hill and Steamtown National Historic SIte also had record number of visitors.
The map highlights the 14 Pennsylvania national parks visitors. The various size points indicate the value number of visitors to each park in 2016. it also shows the increase in park visitor for the past five years.
Pennsylvania is a state that is filled with history due the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. Independence Hall, the location of where the Declaration of Independence was signed by the Founding Fathers, was the most frequently visited park in Pennsylvania with 5.1 million visitors in 2016 alone, a 17.5% increase from the year before. Valley Forge, another park located in Philadelphia, was a distant second place with 2.4 million visitors,but still a 13.28 % increase. Another park in Philadelphia which had the most notable increase in park visitors is the Thaddeus Kosciuszko Memorial. Although the park does not see nearly as much foot traffic as Valley Forge and Independence Hall with only 2,794 in 2016 and 1,261 in 2015. It still saw a 121.6% increase from 2015 to 2016. This extreme increase in visitors to the Kosciuszko Memorial could be attributed to the increase in visitors to Independence Hall since the Kosciuszko Memorial and Independence Hall are only a short walk from one another. Independence Hall saw about 750,000 more visitors in 2016, so it is entirely possible that tourists with the main goal of visiting Independence Hall, and using the National Parks as their guide of sights to visit, took the short stroll over to the Thaddeus Kosciuszko Memorial for a brief visit to fill their day.
Jonathan Parker, Chief of Interpretation and Education, at Valley Forge, also credits the influx of visitors to the centennial celebration of the National Park Service and marketing campaigns.
“Those were a big reason that we we saw an increase in visitors,” says Parker, “the marketing made more people aware of what was going on with the parks.”
Even though Valley Forge saw an increase of 14.83%, Parker says they did not experience any long lines or overcrowding like many other national park did. Parker believes that Valley Forge’s increase in walking tours helped avoid these types of issues and says that his park’s visitor satisfaction lies at 90-95%.
Although most Pennsylvania State Parks had some increase in visitors, two parks actually saw a decrease in visitors from 2015 to 2016. The first is the Delaware Water Gap, experience a very slight decrease of a margin of about -1.54%, which amounts to about 57,000 fewer visits. While the Johnstown Flood Memorial saw a starker decrease of -5.2 decrease. There is no clear reason as to why these parks saw decrease, while the majority of the nation and state
parks saw increases. One factor could be that the Delaware Water Gap and Johnstown Flood Memorial don’t hold as much historical appeal as some other Pennsylvania national park do.
Like the nationwide increase in visitors, the centennial anniversary of the National Park Service and “Every Kid in a Park Campaign” seem to be the main contributing factors to the increase in park visits in 2016 in Pennsylvania’s National Parks.. The question remains will this trend in increase in visitors continue. The only way to determine if the parks will enjoy a continued increase in visitors is to wait for the data on 2017 park visits to be released.