For College Park City Councilman Robert Day, two issues have plagued student-resident relations throughout his term on the council: trash and noise from loud house parties.
“There was a point where there was very little communication between students and residents,” said Day, who has represented District 3 since 2011. “… We have made great strides.”
To fight one of these issues, the University of Maryland’s Student Government Association, Panhellenic Association and Interfraternity Council have teamed up to launch a weekly College Park city cleanup effort during the fall semester. About 30 students from the SGA, IFC and PHA participated in the first city clean up effort on Sunday at 11 a.m.
Student volunteers from these groups will walk through the Old Town and Calvert Hills neighborhoods each Sunday through Thanksgiving break picking up trash, said A.J. Pruitt, SGA vice president of student affairs. Pruitt, who previously served as deputy student liaison to the city council, said this is a “great opportunity for students who live in the community to give back to it.”
“College Park isn’t just a place where we may stop over for four years, but hopefully is a community that [students would] be interested in staying in after graduation,” the junior economics and government and politics major said. “I think that what is holding College Park back from being a great college town is the fact that both sides of the equation — whether it’s students or whether it’s long-term residents — haven’t fully bought into each other.”
The issue of student-resident relations is something the SGA student affairs committee plans to focus on this semester, he added.
Amy Gill, PHA vice president of community excellence, said the initiative is a way for students to show their respect for the community and show the values of their organizations.
“[Students] forget that there are other people around,” said Gill, a junior communication and marketing major. “I think that’s where the residents see a lack of respect, and I think our students kind of see it the opposite way, saying [residents] don’t respect us as a ‘college town.’ So I think a lot of it is just a miscommunication between the two.”
While there are always some tensions between the two groups, Mayor Patrick Wojahn said the cleanup initiative shows long-term residents that students care about the city’s appearance.
“Oftentimes the city looks like kind of a war zone after all the celebrations of the weekend,” Wojahn said. “So it’s great to see students chipping in and taking some ownership over the way the city looks.”
For junior computer science major Jenna Hunte, the city cleanup effort is a good way to both clean the city and complete required community service hours for her sorority, Zeta Tau Alpha. In her experience, she said there’s not much interaction between students and other city residents.
“It seems like … we’re the college students and they’re the ones that live here, and they don’t really like us,” Hunte said. “It’s never hostile, it’s just very much like two separate worlds.”
Anne Morrison, who has lived in College Park on and off for 70 years, said she thinks relations between students and residents are “mostly good.”
“You can’t grow old in a town full of young people,” said 82-year-old Morrison. “The students are generally respectful, and you know they get a little trashy sometimes, and a little loud sometimes, but most of the time it’s nothing that we don’t like.”
The cleanup effort will improve communication, Day said — something that the city has been missing “for a very long time.”
“There was this wall between the students and the city, and that wall is being torn down and that’s the best thing possible,” he said. “We’re all trying to move toward making this a better college town, and I think we’re getting there. Slow, but we’re getting there.”
