According to Roderick Cook at The Daily Pennsylvanian, robbery is just a “crime of survival”, and we must blame gentrification and capitalism, not the actual offender:

Reframing violence

What do you think of when you hear the phrase “violence at Penn”?

Many of us think of interpersonal physical violence that occurs around our school, such as gun violence and theft. Others think about the forms of violence Penn students commit against one another, such as physical altercations and sexual assault. While these things, along with a variety of other person-to-person acts, certainly constitute violence and are forms of real harm, they do not paint a complete picture of violence at Penn. These individual moments of violence are symptoms of much larger violent systems that Penn has a stake in.

We must constantly bring ourselves to stop and consider what structural forms of violence are behind those interpersonal acts described above. When we get a UPennAlert notification about a robbery on or near campus, we must stop and consider what role Penn itself may have played in that situation. We must move beyond calling the act of robbing a store or taking someone’s money “violent.” We must also use this term to refer to Penn’s role in the gentrification of West Philadelphia through the expansion of our university, which forces families out of their homes and perpetuates intergenerational poverty. Poverty combines with systematic racism, leading people to commit these crimes of survival.

Similarly, when we discuss sexual assault, it is just as vital to talk about the systematic misogyny and devaluing of women as it is to talk about the individual offender. We cannot effectively work toward women’s liberation and fight violence against women if we don’t question the practices and policies of certain all-male Penn organizations that keep that culture of misogyny alive and well.