By Jaci Schneider, Copy Editor
Beer bottles litter gutters, dingy couches occupy porches, and cars park in the front lawns of rundown houses in parts of the Cedar Creek Neighborhood surrounding campus.
Although parts of the neighborhood remain clean and well-kept, one office on campus is working to ensure that the neighborhood around campus does not degenerate into a ghetto in the next few years.
The Office of Neighborhood Relations is raising awareness among students that they do not need to leave ACU to make a difference in the world; they can start in their own neighborhood.
Vicky Anderson, director of the Office of Neighborhood Relations, has been researching the relationship between the university, its neighbors and the city of Abilene for more than six years.
“As a citizen of Abilene, ACU must accept the responsibility of working with our neighbors and the city to improve the quality of life in our neighborhood,” she said in an e-mail.
Anderson said the problem of a declining neighborhood near a university is not a problem unique to ACU.
“The need for universities to address the blight and declining quality of life of the neighborhoods in close proximity is a problem with most universities in this country,” Anderson said. “Some have begun addressing the problem and some are just now realizing there is a problem, but all will be affected in some way.”
The Students’ Association began brainstorming ways to rectify the deteriorating neighborhood last spring, and the solution, thought up by former SA president Layne Rouse, class of 2005, was Project Abilene. SA hasn’t forgotten the idea, which has been renamed “Neighbor for Neighbor,” but after meeting with several different campus offices, executive officers decided SA didn’t have enough resources to carry out the project on its own.
The Volunteer Service-Learning Center and Service Action Leadership Team have taken over parts of the idea and incorporated neighborhood service into their offices, said Justin Scott, SA president and senior political science major from Whitehouse.
Students can participate in neighborhood service this Saturday by participating in Service Saturday, said Rita Harrell, administrative coordinator of the VSLC. Groups will help with yard work, fence repair and clean-up for several houses in the Cedar Creek neighborhood.
Last semester, students passed out fliers letting neighbors know about Service Saturdays. People who wanted help called a phone number, and the VSLC set up the site for groups to visit.
Anderson said she is hoping to make a significant difference in the neighborhood by encouraging those students who go work at the homes to get to know the people they work with.
“When that person becomes real, with feelings and hurts and needs, just like the rest of us, that person becomes a neighbor, not just someone who lives at that house,” Anderson said. “We feel that through their changed perspectives, students will come to understand that service is not just a project, but a lifetime commitment.”
The office plans to further facilitate relationships by offering short seminars to sophomore students preparing to move off campus to educate them about off-campus housing. They will learn about renter’s rights, lease agreements and landlord responsibilities, among other things, Anderson said.
“We understand that learning to live on their own is part of the holistic education of our students,” she said. “We want to make the resources available to them, so they can rent off-campus housing feeling well-prepared.”
Anderson said she also wants to come up with a system where students can grade the property they rented as a resource to future renters.
SA will also work on student awareness by planning a neighborhood awareness week or day this semester, Scott said.
“The main thin is to bring people together,” Scott said. When neighbors get to know each other, they will become less suspicious of each other’s actions, he said, and residents might not be so apprehensive when students move in nearby.
Dr. Mimi Barnard, director of Residence Life Education and Housing, has also placed bulletin boards in freshman residence halls to make them aware of good citizenship while they live in halls and when they move off campus.
Anderson is also working with the Cedar Creek Neighborhood Association, which serves people living in the community bound by Ambler Boulevard, Judge Ely Boulevard, North 10th Street and Treadaway Boulevard.
“By becoming more involved with the neighborhood association, we have been able to assist in growing that association and increasing the awareness of the assets and challenges facing the neighborhood,” Anderson said. “It has been through the neighborhood association that we have become aware of families within just a few blocks of our campus that need assistance.”
One way the office has become active this semester is by distributing surveys to houses in the neighborhood. Anderson said she hopes the surveys will give her an idea of what residents want their neighborhood to be.
“The Neighborhood Relations office is doing this not because it’s the right thing to do, but because we want to do it,” Anderson said. “ACU’s mission statement ‘educating students for Christian service and leadership throughout the world’ must begin in our own backyard before we can truly change the world.”
