Image via WikipediaWith trash bags in hand, students and long-term residents of East Lansing roamed the city’s neighborhoods, picking up crushed red plastic cups that littered the streets and yards after Saturday’s game-day festivities.On Sunday, the Community Relations Coalition, or CRC , a nonprofit organization that seeks to build relationships between MSU and permanent residents of East Lansing, hosted its second neighborhood cleanup of the semester, a service project that is hosted the day after major home football games, where MSU students and East Lansing residents come together to clean up trash in the community .
Graduate student and intern coordinator for CRC Olivia Seifert said the event is more than a community cleanup.
“We do it to clean up the East Lansing neighborhoods and make East Lansing beautiful, but we also want to show a presence out in the community to make people realize that everyone needs to demonstrate respect for their community,” Seifert said.
MSU and Lansing Community College students, East Lansing residents, members of East Lansing’s city council and East Lansing Mayor Vic Loomis attended the event.
Participants met at 10:30 a.m. in the parking lot behind the 54-B District Court, 101 Linden Street, and broke into groups, heading to different neighborhoods to clean.
“We love to see projects of this nature where the MSU campus and the neighborhoods and the city come together to help the city,” Loomis said. “On the other side of the coin … it’s kind of unfortunate we have to do this. We should all take pride in our city, be proud Spartans and clean up after ourselves.”
Mutual respect is established when students and residents come together to clean up the community, Seifert said.
Most residents of the East Lansing community enjoy living in a university-centered community and living near students, president of the Chesterfield Hills Neighborhood Association Brandon Scott said. The integration of students and residents allows residents to live in a neighborhood where the everyone has diverse values, Scott said.
But, Scott said in order to keep peace between long-term residents and students, it is important that the entire community learns to respect one another.
“Being obnoxious and inconsiderate is bad, regardless of whether you rent or own, are a student or full-time resident,” Scott said.
Education senior and CRC intern Allison Flanagan said she used to believe that long-term residents in East Lansing disliked the students living off-campus, but once she participated in a CRC event, she realized that was not the case. Flanagan said CRC helped her become closer with her neighbors who live down the street.
“I definitely thought that long-term residents didn’t like (MSU) students, but it actually turns out that they like living in East Lansing because of the students,” Flanagan said.
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