Many volunteers, young and old, greeted one another with smiles as they prepared to distribute about 3,000 informational door hangers to homeowners and student renters living in near-campus neighborhoods. “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” was printed along the top of the door hangers, indicating the Muncie Campus Community Coalition’s attempt to strengthen and unite Muncie neighborhoods.
“We’re very grateful to have all of you here to help us,” Randy Hyman, chairman of Muncie’s Campus Community Coalition, said to more than 60 people in the basement fellowship hall of the First Presbyterian Church on Riverside Avenue.
Kari Jones, secretary for Student Government Assocation, said the CCC is taking a positive step to unite students and local residents.
“I’ve been here at Ball State four years, and I’ve seen a rift between the Ball State community and Muncie community,” Jones said. “The Muncie Coalition is doing a good thing to help bridge the gap and help us all function as one community.”
The CCC, which has been in existence since 2001, is a partnership that includes students, Ball State University administration and faculty, community representatives and government representatives.
The purpose of giving out the hangers is to provide students with information that will help them to become better neighbors and to assure other residents that the community coalition is striving to solve the issues that often arise among students and local residents, Muncie Mayor Dan Canan said.
“We have a mix in the neighborhoods around Ball State of students and residents,” Canan said. “We’ve had a lot of issues because of the mix — parking, trash, noise.”
Volunteers divided into small groups Thursday to distribute the door hangers in an area that stretched south from Bethel to Godman avenues and east from Tillotson to Wheeling avenues.
Steve Watkins, a Muncie police officer and member of the coalition as a neighborhood association president, is pleased to be donating to the cause and is proud to call himself a “professional volunteer.”
“This is a lot of fun to do things like this,” he said as his son Mike, a sophomore at Burris, went door to door to distribute hangers on the opposite side of the street.
The hangers contained several brochures, including a copy of Muncie’s residential parking zones and a brochure from the University Area Landlord Association that emphasized housing codes, city ordinances and emergency and utility phone numbers. Other brochures focused on Muncie’s environmental codes, trash disposal and recycling.
The idea for the door hangers developed out of a visit that coalition members made in November to West Lafayette, where they observed the city’s rental program. The city distributed door hangers to Purdue University students who lived off campus.
Initially, the cost for the hangers was covered by Ball State, the city of Muncie and the University Area Landlord Association. The coalition, however, recently received a $1,000 grant from the Community Foundation of Muncie and Delaware County Inc. that will help with the costs.
“It reflects a genuine collaboration among a lot of different groups of people, all pulling together in a common effort to ensure residents are getting the same packet of useful information to hopefully improve the quality of life in our near campus neighborhoods,” Hyman said.
The CCC asks neighbors to join in its efforts to continue improving relationships between permanent residents and students. Thursday was a huge step in that direction, especially with the turnout of local residents.
“This is as good as it gets,” Hyman said.
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