Some neighbors are fed up with the noisy student behavior that comes with the warm weather, but Neighborhood Liaison Amy Gage is working with Undergraduate Student Government in hopes of getting student leaders involved in creating better relations between students and neighbors.

Limited parking, overpopulated houses, noisiness, and littering are just a few of the issues between neighbors and student houses brought up at the monthly West Summit Neighborhood Advisory Committee meeting for March, which WSNAC co-chair Rachel Westermeyer said had an unusually high attendance. The amount of student rentals in the area is only growing, she said.

Westermeyer summed up her goals for the St. Thomas community in two words: safety and respect.

“I wanted to get on an issue I felt everybody could own, and I think safety everybody can own,” Westermeyer said. “The second part of that was respect.”

Todd Letkauskas has lived in the neighborhood since 2002, and he said he has seen both sides of the spectrum when it comes to students living in the neighborhood.

“I’ve had kids who’ve moved in and moved out—great kids. I’ve had a party bus come out in the middle of my house at 12 o’clock, 2 o’clock in the morning,” Letkauskas said. “I’ve got two kids, young kids.”

Though these issues are nothing new to Gage, she is now talking to student leaders to try to increase student engagement in neighborhood relations.

“We need (USG) as student leaders to engage in issues in the neighborhood and to help raise our reputation in the neighborhood,” Gage said. “We need to make sure that ‘All for the Common Good’ is true in the neighborhood as well, and I believe we need students to be part of that.”

Local landlord Kevin Degezelle, who owns 16 student rentals in the area, believes negative reputations of houses with trouble in the past can unfairly transfer to students moving into those houses.

“I don’t think sometimes neighbors give kids a fair chance when they’re moving in,” Degezelle said. “The neighbors, they do want to be heard, but it is a two-way street.”

USG Executive Vice President Sarah Schuler said that not only can students be unfairly labeled with negative stereotypes, but neighbors can be as well.

“That small handful of students gives a bad reputation to the rest of the students, and there are some neighbors that give a bad rep to the neighbors,” Schuler said. “Really just breaking down those barriers is the most important part—getting rid of those stereotypes.”

Gage said her meeting with USG actually came at a time in which she has already started seeing more student involvement in neighborhood relations.

“It was kind of sandwiched in between these two robust WSNAC meetings with more student engagement than we have had in WSNAC since I came here in June of 2014,” Gage said. “We’re starting.”

Some initiatives, such as student trick-or-treat houses, have already engaged student houses in neighborhood activities. Gage hopes this type of student involvement will make an impact in neighborhood relations, no matter how small.

“It’s not going to change years of perceptions, but it is going to help,” Gage said.

USG Vice President of Public Relations Bobby Martin has been involved in neighborhood activities himself by shoveling neighbor’s driveways with Sigma Chi’s shovel brigade. Martin said that student involvement in the community starts with student leaders but has to continue from there.

“It definitely starts with student leaders, but it can’t be only student leaders that are making an effort toward this,” Martin said. “There are some people who do bad things in the neighborhood, but the good things have to outweigh the bad.

Kassie Vivant can be reached at viva0001@stthomas.edu.