Off-Campus Student Services delivered cookie dough and contact cards to 80 student houses Friday in an effort to help student-neighbor relations in the community.

Area Manager Josh Hengemuhle said students can bake the cookies and bring contact cards to neighbors, so they get to know each other.

Hengemuhle said each participating house will get two packs of frozen cookie dough from Food Services. Each pack also has a contact information card for students to fill out to give to their neighbors.

Hengemuhle added this is a better solution to neighbors calling the police when student parties get out of hand.

“If it’s late at night and it’s a little loud and not even a crazy party, but just the music’s a little loud, it’s not likely a neighbor’s going to get out of their PJ’s, walk over and ask you to turn it down,” Hengemuhle said. “But if they don’t have your phone number, they can’t get a hold of you. So often their only resource is to call the police.”

“We know students are poor and baking cookies for their neighbors maybe isn’t the highest priority on their financial spreadsheet,” Hengemuhle said. “If we can help facilitate and encourage that, that’s kind of the idea.”

Hengemuhle said student demand for participation doubled the event’s original size.

“We originally had said the first 40 that signed up but we had so many sign up we figured we would double it and try to make it work,” Hengemuhle said.

Senior Cali David said she signed up for the event to get closer to her neighbors.

“We want to be better friends with the neighbors,” senior Nick Snidarich said. “It goes with the litter cleanup event we do every other weekend.”

Junior Bobby Ranallo, Off-Campus Student Services student leader, said he hopes the event will change how neighbors view students.

He said he wants people not to think of St. Thomas as people throwing loud parties and passing out on the lawn. Ranallo wants neighbors to remember the student who brought them cookies and introduced themselves and said, “If you ever need anything, this is where I am.”

Ranallo is one of four student leaders working for Off-Campus Student Services as a neighborhood student adviser. Their main goal is to serve off-campus students living nearby through programs like the cookie drop-off.

Ranallo took the lead on the cookie drop-off project because he felt like it would be a good start to improving students’ relations with their neighbors.

Cynthia Johnson and Briggs LeSavage contributed to this report.