University seeks to appease neighborhood concerns in community email

This past month, Hopkins has been taking steps to mitigate community concerns arising from students living in off-campus housing. Such efforts were outlined in a recent email to all community contacts in the Homewood area — which consists primarily of presidents of various associations — from Jennifer J. Mielke, director of the Office of Community Affairs.

According to Mielke, concerns arose primarily due to the fact that the University was undergoing a transition period, whereby Mielke replaced her predecessor, Salem Reiner, and Student/Community Liaison Jon Walter replaced “Shush Lady” Carrie Bennett.

The point of the email, according to Mielke, was to express the University’s receptivity to concerns and to assure the community that measures were being taken to address its anxieties.

“The purpose of the email was just sort of to let people know — let the presidents of the associations know — that we heard them, the student-community relations concerns that they had expressed,” Mielke said.

These sentiments were iterated in the beginning of the email.

“It has been brought to my attention that some communities have felt that JHU has stumbled a little on student/community relations during the transition between Carrie Bennett and Jon Walter, and Salem and I,” Mielke wrote. “I just want to let you know that these concerns have not fallen on deaf ears and that both Jon and I are committed to working with you and your community to address any concern that is brought to our attention.”

However, according to Mielke, such concerns were not drastic.

“They weren’t like overly out of the norm; I was just sort of more of a reaction like ‘Yes, into the transition, that we’re acknowledging that we’ve heard what you said and we are still — John and I — here to address these issues,’ and then working with Dean Sheppard, we came up with a few more other ideas about trying to address some of the concerns that the residents and community leaders had said, and those were outlined in the email,” Mielke said.

Among the ideas discussed in the letter were an email to upperclassmen emphasizing community conscientiousness, group meetings with houses that have been consistently reported as problems, additional trash collection and increased monitoring and maintenance of Hopkins-owned property trash pickup.

While Mielke maintained that the letter was not a direct response to any one single issue, but rather to a broad range of complaints, she admits that a recent fire at a student house at 200 E. University Parkway did finally prompt the University to notify the community of recent efforts.

“This had nothing at all to do with anything that a student did, but the fire... really, I think, alarmed and concerned the Oakenshawe community. And so they sort of reacted sort of strongly, and obviously they weren’t saying anything at all about the students per se, but it was more like a general sort of public safety thing… That was probably the thing that really sort of said, ‘Wait, let’s just get something out to everybody to sort of say that we’re here, we want to help, and here’s some additional solutions,” Mielke said.

Many residents have recently addressed concerns with the Office of Community Affairs.

“I’ve lived in this house since 1970, and I’ve been around and active in the community all this time —through the good, the bad and the ugly,” Sandy Sparks, a member of the Charles Village Civic Association and a long-time resident of Charles Village, said.

Sparks expressed support for the University’s energies to mitigate concerns.

“I think Hopkins is certainly making lots of efforts with trying to manage the students and the quality of student behavior off-campus, and then there’s trying to guide them as neighbors, and again, I think they’ve done a good job,” Sparks said.

However, Sparks has experienced firsthand some of the difficulties for local residents trying to live alongside Hopkins students.

“I have a particularly bad situation in that I probably live next to the poster house —the Hopkins lacrosse team. So I would say, there’s a long way to go still, in that case in particular, having students respect how the outside of their dwellings should look. The porch is trashy, and they are not managing their garbage or trash removal, and I don’t see recycling happening. Then of course there’s noise that happens way late in the night. So, I would say that this is a great general effort and the follow-up needs to be with specific cases where the students aren’t, though my guess is that the majority of students are following directions and trying their best,” Sparks said.

Sparks particularly noted the progress towards community relations following the creation of “The Shush Lady” position.

“Since Hopkins created, a few years ago, the Community Liaison position that Carrie Bennett held, that was a real step forward and she did a great job. And it’s continuing; it’s a never-ending job. It’s not that there’s going to be drought where everybody can sit back and say ‘oh, it’s fantastic.’ Because inevitably, some incident will happen and each year, it’s a new class of students. So it’s a continually changing group of people that need to learn to adapt to living in the neighborhood,” Sparks said.

Sparks also highlighted the augmented effects that the infrastructure of Charles Village itself has in terms of student behavior, namely the fact that most students are unaccustomed to the lack of privacy offered by row houses.

Mielke also brought up the role that Baltimore housing plays in creating community concerns, specifically regarding zoning regulations. Under current regulations, no more than four unrelated persons can live in a single structure together. Mielke addressed concerns that some Hopkins students are incompliant with such regulations.

“I’m hearing from the community that they’re concerned… It’s very difficult to prove how many people are living in a unit. And some of it can just be the perception of the community that there are more than four people living in a unit, but in some cases, there very well may be, and it’s just difficult to know that for sure,” Mielke said.

While changes in zoning laws are currently in progress, Mielke, a former Baltimore City employee, doesn’t foresee any changes to Hopkins off-campus housing anytime soon.

Ultimately, Sparks and other residents are pleased with the University’s responses to concerns raised by community members.

“In my opinion, [the University is] doing all that they should do and it’s just a matter just of staying on problems as they arrive, and also identifying serious problems and working very closely on those problems,” Sparks stated.

Despite the issues raised, Sparks explained that she — like her fellow residents — enjoys living within the Hopkins community, and they acknowledge the inherent consequences of living in a college town.

“We recognize their age and that a person of that age —what their priorities are,” Sparks said.