Ball State students will get to hear about community involvement straight from the mouth of Muncie’s Mayor Dennis Tyler at a discussion today hosted by the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies.
“I feel like when I come to Ball State, I’m in a Ball State bubble,” said Tacianna Oliver, graduate assistant at the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies. Oliver helped organize the event.
Oliver said the horizons of the ‘bubble’ be stretched through community involvement.
“We always look forward to having Ball State students participate in any way they like, and we’ve been very fortunate to have a lot of them wanting to donate their time,” Tyler said. “Hopefully they’ll continue to.”
Outside of campus exists a niche for Ball State students in the Muncie community, Tyler said.
“One of the things I’ve found over the years is that many times, many of these younger children don’t have the parental and adult mentoring at home,” he said. “They really look up to Ball State students and others in the community, and that’s a great area where Ball State could be a tremendous asset to us.”
The demand for assets in the form of volunteers will blossom and grow as the summer approaches, Tyler said. The City of Muncie will be expanding its Parks and Recreation Department as well as its art and culture program.
“We’ve got 14 or 15 additional partners this year that will be partnering with us for our summer and fall programs,” Tyler said.
Those programs include a class that will teach kids to play instruments, a judo program and mentoring programs specifically for younger boys and girls, among others. Today’s discussion will go into better detail of the different programs.
The programs and the new campaign “The Original Muncie” are just a few fronts of change that the city is pushing. Today’s discussion serves to highlight these initiatives, said Oliver.
“It seems like there have been some strides lately in making Muncie more of a community and more of a nice place and making downtown look nice,” Oliver said. “We just want to emphasize the positive things that are going on and what can happen in Muncie.”
Looking nice and being nice are two different things, but Oliver said these two concepts go together.
“I think having town and gown come together and collaborate would make for a more peaceful community,” Oliver said.
The creation of peace within the community through its growth is a concept that parallels the intiaitives by the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies, but that growth must be matched by a population that is willing to help and contribute, according to Tyler.
“It’s always important for the community to buy into the different initiatives that you’re trying to bring forward to improve the quality of life of your community,” Tyler said.
The discussion will be hosted at 2 p.m. in room 175 of the Art and Journalism Building.
