Fostering neighborly feelings among students

Residents want students who live off campus to take pride in their community. When Penn students decide to move off campus, civic responsibility is probably not the first thing on their minds. But according to permanent residents who share the neighborhood, it should be more of a priority. About 40 percent of Penn's undergraduates leave the sanctuary of the college houses in search of better housing each year. These students, along with many graduate students, often head west -- signing one-year leases with landlords in University City. And while off-campus housing offers a wide appeal to many students, their presence isn't always so appealing to permanent neighbors. When George Thomas, a Penn Urban Studies professor, moved onto the 3900 block of Pine Street in 1969, University faculty and staff were just beginning to vacate the area. Undergraduate students replaced them and the result, according to Thomas, was disastrous. "It became an unmanaged dorm -- smelly, noisy, unsightly and not much fun," Thomas said. "It's really a shame that students in the off-campus market think that's OK." According to Thomas, Pine Street could really be a great place for students and faculty to live together if the students treated their off-campus homes with a "sense of permanence." Further west on Pine Street lives History Professor Lynn Lees, a 25-year resident of the 4400 block. She insists that her student neighbors have made important contributions to the community -- such as patronizing local businesses and making the area safer by increasing the number of people walking in the area late at night. Overall, Lees described her interaction with the students as "positive." However, Lees shares Thomas's complaint that students don't take as much care of their houses as a longtime homeowner would. "The one difficulty with having student neighbors is they don't see themselves as residents of the block," Lees said. "They see themselves as transients." Lees suggested that students could be better neighbors if they picked up any trash outside their houses and asked their landlords to fix up their houses if they become run down. The long-time residents of Regents Square, an area southwest of Penn's campus, have a different approach for building relationships with their student neighbors. Richard Womer, a Penn associate professor of Pediatrics who has lived in Regents Square for 14 years, said that the members of his traditional family neighborhood do their best to include students in community activities, such as a May Fair and a Halloween block party. "We let [the students] know that it's a family-oriented block and they have to be a part of keeping it that way," Womer said. "Some are very participatory and others don't participate at all."

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.