On Saturday, about 100 freshmen began building what the Community Service Center wants to be a year-long relationship with three Durham communities.
Freshman worked in the Edgemont, Walltown and Damar Court neighborhoods, planting shrubs, collecting trash and getting to know community residents.
The projects were part of a first-year community outreach day which replaced last year's larger scale program, in which over 1,000 freshman spent an afternoon doing activities ranging from collecting watermelons to painting trash cans.
"With Outreach Day last year, we found we were sending people on one-time programs, which students complained about. It seemed like there was something missing,"said Trinity junior Christin Bassett, co-student director of the CSC. Students wanted to continue their work throughout the year, she said.
This year, freshman dorms have been grouped into three clusters, each representing about five dorms or 500 students. Each cluster will work extensively with a single Durham neighborhood and focus on the particular needs of the community for the entire year, beginning with last weekend's outreach day.
Saturday afternoon, about 30 freshman from Hastings, Hanes, Southgate and Jarvis worked with upperclass crew leaders in Edgemont. With the help of many eager neighborhood children, students planted bushes and chrysanthemums at a central site in the Few Gardens housing project and at a satellite community center on Ramseur street, continuing their work despite pounding rain.
Engineering freshman David Pincus had not signed up to participate in Outreach Day but was walking by the group gathered at East Campus and decided to go. "What the hell? I'm here to experience new things. I'm glad I got to see this other side of Durham; before this I had barely left campus," Pincus said.
"I'm elated," said Rosalind Bell, executive director of the Edgemont Community Center. "This shows great community building; instead of isolating the two distinct communities, Edgemont and Duke University, there is a healthy interaction of different populations."
She hopes to continue this interaction by receiving a work-study student intern from the CSC to coordinate an after-school program offering tutoring, an arts program, computer classes, adult education, cultural education classes, and a big brother/big sister program.
The CSC is aiming for dorm clusters to work in their communities at least once a month, said Trinity junior Dawn Techow, experiential learning coordinator for the CSC.
"The new cluster groups should provide work that one, the community wants, and two, that works with the community's existing service groups," Bassett said, "instead of barging in and trying to institute new programs that may or may not be what the community wants."
Julie Harkness contributed to this story.
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