Community meeting assesses Univ. relationships

First GTCCA meeting gives light on progress of community ambassador program in Towson area

By Olivia Obineme

Published: Sunday, September 20, 2009

The Fall academic semester has been in session, and so has the Greater Towson Council of Community Associations, as members gathered to discuss community issues and concerns in the Sheppard Pratt Conference Center Thursday night.

Those in attendance listened to a presentation from the Baltimore County Office of Planning and from representatives of associated organizations and institutions, including Towson University.

Assistant to the President for governmental relations Jennifer Gajewski represented the campus at the meeting and gave a report to the members of the GTCCA on what the University has in store this year.

One topic Gajewski touched on that sparked questions and comments was about police patrol in the Towson area neighborhoods.

“Last year we did do grants with the Baltimore County Police, but we didn’t start the first semester,” Gajewski said.

“This year we started the first week of school, but we’re only a few weeks in.”

There were some in the meeting who spoke their concerns about off-campus neighbors, but there were those who did emphasize that the University has a lifeline for residents to call if they are dealing with any inappropriate behavior.

“The lifeline number has been out there for a while. It works and there are neighbors who voice their concerns,” Gajewski said, referencing the Student LIFE Line service.

“They know they have access to us. If we don’t know what’s going on, we can’t do anything about it.”

The University has given the TU’s police precinct a grant to have additional police officers on staff for all the weekends, especially from Thursday to Sunday night, according to co-chair of the University Relations Committee Mike Ertel.

He also mentioned police will be on-call for the dates of Homecoming night and Halloween weekend, but said that residents must speak out if they want something done.

“If you have a problem house or a nuisance house, what [police] need is the address of the house and number to see if the residents are TU students,” Ertel said.

Towson neighborhood residents can also voice their complaints to Student Affairs at Towson by sending them an e-mail.

As one method to ameliorate the tension between the community and off-campus residents, Ertel did discuss the progress of an ambassador program that is being utilized at Towson Manor Village.

The program has also been tested in Burkleigh Square.

“So far, it looks like it’s working,” Ertel said.

“They’ve identified a few situations where we may do a mediation between neighbors and a house that’s having some problems, but in general, a lot of the measures we’re doing seem to at least be mitigating some of the problems we’ve had.”

In any case, the meeting showed that the University and the GTCCA are hoping to continue the team effort on resolving any issues between them.

“Everyone is working together, which is the way it should be,” Gajewski said.

“We can’t do it ourselves, the police can’t do it by themselves and the neighbors can’t do it by themselves.”

Courtesy of The Towerlight

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