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September 16, 2010

Super Bowl paper scores Oxford trip for Walker

DeborahWalkerThe Steelers’ 2009 Super Bowl victory indirectly was responsible for Pitt student conduct officer Deborah L. Walker’s invitation in July to the Oxford Round Table in Oxford, England. The annual event is an interdisciplinary forum for the discussion of contemporary issues that affect the public good. This year’s presentations centered on the theme “crime and punishment.”

Presenters, known as delegates, were selected on the basis of papers they submitted. Reviewers at Oxford University evaluated those papers on their quality and contribution to the particular field of knowledge. About 40 delegates, who were housed at Oxford’s St. Anne’s College, attended the 20th annual roundtable.

“I was so honored to have an opportunity to go to one of the great scholarly places of the world,” Walker said.

Her paper, “Responding to Crime at an Urban-Based Research University — The 3 Cs: Celebration, Chaos, Collaboration,” focused on Pitt’s response to the chaotic aftermath of the Steelers Super Bowl victory on Feb. 2, 2009. More than $300,000 in property damage resulted during the celebration.

Walker used a PowerPoint presentation on her paper, including a videotape made by a Pitt student of the fires and damage that took place on the night of the Super Bowl.

The turmoil resulted in 25 Pitt student arrests. Students were charged with a variety of offenses, including arson, underage drinking and aggravated assault.

The heart of her presentation, Walker said, focused on the proactive approach taken by Pitt’s central administration immediately following the events. Pitt’s response included establishing a celebration task force to address how to prevent future problems, and alerting students about responsible celebration through ads in The Pitt News and in letters from the Pitt police commander and residence hall directors posted across campus. Walker herself posted a warning about potential consequences on Facebook.

She said Pitt’s response was well received by her fellow delegates at Oxford. “One judge from Cook County, Illinois, said he was absolutely astonished that the senior administration handled it the way they did, because a lot of universities would not even address it,” Walker said.

Other presentations of note, she said, were “The Bible and the Death Penalty,” “Profiling Should Not Be Based on Race, Religion or Gender From a Practitioner’s Viewpoint,” “Who is a Serial Killer? Why Does He or She Kill?” and “The Potential Legalization of Marijuana in California.”

“One delegate would present for a half-hour, then a three-person panel would lead the discussion of the topic for the whole group,” she said. “I was assigned to two panels. It was up to the panelists to have the questions ready for discussion.”

Walker also got a feel for British life at the roundtable. “The delegates had to dress for dinner. I liked the formality of dinner. We don’t see that here. In America everybody is in such a hurry.”

True to the British culture, every day included tea time at 10 a.m., she added.

“The one thing I really couldn’t adjust to was baked beans and mushrooms at breakfast. But they had ‘normal’ breakfast food, too.”

During down time, the group took walking tours of the colleges at Oxford and visited an English pub. Walker even got in nine holes of golf, which she said is her passion.

But the surprise of the trip was an unexpected taste of home.

“One day I was out shopping and I had a Steelers T-shirt on, and this young man who was studying at Oxford said, ‘Hey, Steelers!’ I found out he was from Homewood, which is where I grew up. It turns out I went to school with his mother and father. Now that’s a small world.”

—Peter Hart

Filed under: Feature,Volume 43 Issue 2

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