When relations between permanent residents and their student neighbors become tense, who are they going to call?
Their neighborhood resource coordinator.
The group, a project of the Community Relations Coalition, is in its second year helping to improve the relationships and overall appearances of neighborhoods around East Lansing.
The program involves partnering MSU students with permanent East Lansing residents in their communities to create more of a sense of community, breaking down many of the barriers between the two groups.
And that community feel is exactly what attracted finance and German senior Ed Ledermann to the position.
“I lived in Lansing last year and I didn’t meet a lot of my neighbors,” he said. “They were all permanent residents and kind of standoffish so I was interested in getting back into a community atmosphere.”
Ledermann’s co-coordinators are Kelly Healy, a dietetics senior, Ashley La Croix, a social relations junior, audiology and speech sciences senior Sara Posius, Stacey Smith, a marketing junior and Leslie Zack, a social relations senior.
“Ideally we would like to have as many students as we can afford out there,” Community Relations Coalition President Nancy Schertzing said. “We had such success with the volunteers out there last year that the question is not why we expanded but why we didn’t expand more. And the answer is money.”
Each student volunteer receives a stipend of $2,500 for the year.
All six of this year’s volunteers are taking an internship credit seminar in the urban planning department and are also teamed up with their Neighborhood Resource Partner, or full-time resident, to schedule events for their community.
Posius and Smith are both trying to implement volunteer clean-up crews to pick up their neighborhoods on Sunday afternoon’s following the party weekend.
“I’ve had the opportunity to meet a lot of my neighbors and a lot of the concerns the permanent residents have are about the garbage,” Posius said.
The groups also plan to host block parties or neighborhood ice cream socials so more neighbors will meet.
Marijo Spencer, an 18-year resident of East Lansing, joined the group as a partner this year to try and develop better relations with her neighbors.
“I’ve lived in East Lansing for a long time and I have concerns over what’s been going on between the permanent residents and students, especially in the past few years,” Spencer said. This change in residents perspectives is what drew Healy into the program after a year as a coalition member.
“I got to see how much the NRC got done last year and I was excited for my own chance,” she said.
