Tag: Cherelle L. Parker

After Lincoln University’s homecoming in October ended with seven people shot, including one killed, the rural Chester County township where the school is located plans to pass new regulations on large events.

Several officials in Lower Oxford Township said there have been ongoing problems with parking, trash on neighbors’ lawns, disturbances and, in some cases, crime when the 1,650-student university hosts events. After the Oct. 25 shooting, when thousands of people gathered for homecoming, emergency personnel had to use all-terrain vehicles to transport patients on stretchers because ambulances could not access the campus, given how many cars were parked around the venue, they said.

“We have had meetings with people at Lincoln,” said township supervisor Noel Roy, who oversees emergency management. “They’ve been somewhat reluctant to do what needs to be done to try and control the situation.”

Lincoln University has declined to answer specific questions from The Inquirer, but President Brenda Allen at a board of trustees meeting last month acknowledged that changes were needed, especially around the school’s large events, and that the school has to do a better job of collaborating with the township.

“Our top priority remains the safety of our students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community,” the school said in a statement to The Inquirer Thursday. “The university continues to refine our safety measures and protocols.”

At a township supervisors meeting this week, university officials pledged to work with the township.

“We want to come together because we are a part of this community as well,” said Venus Boston, Lincoln’s general counsel.

Yeda Arscott, Lincoln’s associate vice president of facilities and program management, told supervisors the university is considering several steps to improve safety, including ending all outside events at dusk, eliminating open invitations, requiring guest registration, and canceling large events such as Spring Fling. The school also is looking at parking and safety protocols, she said.

“This shows real commitment,” said Arscott, who lives five minutes from Lincoln, “but real safety requires joint planning between the township, Lincoln, other major businesses, our neighbors, and emergency services.”

Township and Lincoln officials said they plan to meet privately to discuss solutions.

“Our goal is to work with Lincoln to make this better,” said Kevin R. Martin, chairman of the board of supervisors. “We need to think this through, but we also have a sense of urgency because it does affect our community.”

Chester County Commissioner Josh Maxwell said county officials and the university also will meet in January to discuss best practices for emergency services and student and community safety.

“It’s important that the kids feel safe,” said Maxwell, who also is an adjunct professor at Lincoln. “No one wants this to ever happen again.”

The shooting remains under investigation. Jujuan Jeffers, 20, of Wilmington, was killed, and six others, ages 20 to 25, including a student, were also shot. Zecqueous Morgan-Thompson, 21, of Wilmington, was charged with possessing a concealed firearm without a license. Neither Jeffers nor Morgan-Thompson have any known connection to Lincoln.

Arscott also urged township leaders to “broaden the conversation beyond event permits” and look to address the problem of gun violence.

“We were a victim, too,” Boston said.

Tensions with neighbors

The proposed township ordinance would require those seeking to hold special events to apply for a permit 30 days in advance and outline how they will control the number of guests, traffic, alcohol, and security, said township solicitor Winifred Moran-Sebastian. The township could approve or reject applications.

Township supervisors last spring passed a parking ordinance to cope with access problems created during past large events at Lincoln, but parking at homecoming still led to issues for emergency responders.

Several residents who attended this week’s meeting were skeptical of Lincoln’s intent to make improvements and called for larger fines than the $1,000 proposed in the ordinance.

“I feel my life is in jeopardy with how things are being currently managed,” said Lincoln neighbor Celestine Getty, fearing what could happen if vehicles were unable to get to her house in the event of an emergency.

Vanessa Ross, who has lived about a half mile from Lincoln for 14 years, said crime and disruption have happened at large Lincoln events for half those years.

“There is no excuse whatsoever why the college cannot increase their police force and install the metal detectors that are necessary,” she said. “I can’t even go see Barry Manilow in Philadelphia without going through a metal detector.”

Founded in 1854, Lincoln is known as the first degree-granting historically Black university in the nation. Its 429 acres are nestled in a township of farm fields with a little over 5,000 residents, the majority of them white. Racial tensions have come into play over the years, with township residents saying they have been unfairly accused of racism for raising safety issues.

Allen, the Lincoln president, has not pointed to racism as a factor in the conversations about safety, said Boston, the university’s solicitor.

A storied institution with recent safety issues

Lincoln has a storied history. The first presidents of both Nigeria and Ghana are Lincoln graduates, as are Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, and poet Langston Hughes.

The school has received $45 million in gifts from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Jeff Bezos. And Allen, who in 2020 had survived an internal battle to oust her and had her contract extended to 2030, was named a top historically Black college leader by a national nonprofit in 2021.

But over the last decade, the university has struggled with safety issues.

In spring 2023, two women were shot and injured on Lincoln’s campus during its annual Spring Fling event. In 2022, a student was fatally stabbed during a fight inside a dorm by the sister of a student. During an on-campus dance in 2018, 15 students were taken to the hospital following a brawl in which a security officer was assaulted. In 2016, there was a robbery and shooting on Lincoln’s campus following homecoming. And in 2015, Lincoln tightened security after shots were fired in a dorm.

Some residents said it’s time for the township to put in additional controls.

“We can no longer wait and see or hope the university will simply do the right thing,” said Andrew Cope, who lived near Lincoln for nearly two decades and still owns property there. “The pattern is too long, the consequences too severe, and the community’s trust too damaged.”

Carmina Taylor, who led Lincoln’s parent association from 2013 to 2016, said she has had longstanding safety concerns.

When a student was killed in the dorm in 2022, Taylor told The Inquirer she had previously sounded the alarm: “I had said, ‘If Lincoln doesn’t do something, we’re going to have a death on campus.’”

The university’s response to the homecoming shooting, said Taylor, who got a master’s degree from Lincoln in 2011 and whose son graduated from Lincoln in 2016, is “beyond fluff.”

“Until someone does something from the outside to bind them,” she said, nothing will change.

Security expert Brian Higgins said measures, including controlled entrances and screening of guests with hand-held wands, metal detectors or bag checks, are typically used for large crowd events. He acknowledged that imposing strict guest screening may not create the welcoming, upbeat environment characteristic of college homecomings.

“But in light of what happened, it’s very prudent to do so,” said Higgins, president of Group 77, a public safety and security consulting firm, based in the New York metro area.

Higgins, whose company has colleges among its clients, said drones increasingly are being used as part of safety monitoring at large events. Traffic control measures and the setting of crowd size limits are other issues the school should consider, he said.

Anthony Floyd Jr., who was police chief at Lincoln in 2013 and also had been a Philadelphia city cop, told the supervisors at the meeting that better coordination is needed between the community and the university. The school’s police chief and president should attend the supervisor meetings every month, give updates on safety and security, and be held accountable, he said.

Lincoln says it’s working on changes

Last month at a Lincoln board of trustees meeting, Allen, the president, said the campus had been focused on restoring a sense of safety for students and making sure they and staff had counseling support. Allen, a 1981 Lincoln graduate who has led the school since 2017, said the university was examining “safety protocols, parking, traffic, registration for guests,” and the process for inviting guests as part of its review process.

Allen said the university is seeking feedback from the student government association and faculty and staff.

Roy, one of the township supervisors, said parking restrictions put into place earlier this year were not heeded, and the township had to tow 60 cars the night of the homecoming shooting.

“Every time they towed a car, another car would pull into that space,” he said.

An event that would draw 10,000 people to a township with half that population and no police force is concerning, said Moran-Sebastian, the township solicitor. Lower Oxford relies on Pennsylvania State Police for law enforcement. For the homecoming event, the university requested state police, but only got two, Arscott, the facilities’ head, said.

Township officials have been frustrated with the responses from Lincoln in the past. When a meeting was held in November 2024 to discuss parking-related problems during the previous Spring Fling event, Allen said she didn’t need the township’s help, said Deborah Kinney, township secretary/treasurer and codes enforcement officer. Kinney said she had suggested an event process that would have included a plan for parking.

“So we decided we needed to be proactive on our end, not just for our residents but for their students,” Kinney said. “It’s not the students. It’s the outside influences that are coming in to these events.”

She also said that in 2024, Lincoln accounted for 183, or 26%, of the township’s emergency calls.

Veronica Carr, a 2016 Lincoln alumna, said she had been concerned about safety when she was a student, and conditions seem to have gotten worse. She did not attend homecoming.

Carr, who works for an African American heritage consulting firm and lives in North Carolina, said she is concerned that two people have been killed on the campus in less than four years.

“Obviously, something is lacking,” she said.