Community leaders and student volunteers urged the University to step up its involvement with the local school district and discussed ways for students to be more effective mentors at a dinner at the Carl A. Fields Center Sunday evening.
Gang activity, the minority achievement gap and immigration reform were the main themes of the discussion, which was hosted by the student volunteering organization Community House.
The event served as a forum for local leaders and University students to share ideas about Community House's various projects.
"We want to integrate [the community leaders] into the process so the Princeton volunteers are more educated on these issues," Community House director Marjorie Young said. "It is important to involve many of these people because they are the real experts."
"Although [Community House] does have volunteers and project coordinators working in the community, they don't have an idea how we can help the community as a whole," volunteer Omoye Imoisili '08 said.
Among the attendees were Ben Gering of Princeton Township Police's Community Action Project and members of the Princeton Regional Board of Education Walter Bliss and Ron Plummer.
Community representatives identified the minority achievement gap as a leading problem in the Princeton school district.
"Those gaps that are corresponding to color are not just a function of the curriculum, the teaching environment or community, but all of these factors combined," Bliss said.
To combat this gap, many of the Community House projects — such as Big Brother/Big Sister, Step-Up and Princeton 2 Princeton — emphasize mentoring and tutoring.
"Most mentoring programs have mainly underrepresented minorities," Imoisili said. "There is a mentoring program already in place. We want to know what is their vision of this mentoring."
The students and panelists also discussed a variety of interpretations of gang activity in the Township. Some, such as Gering, said gang activity could become a significant threat in public schools. Others, including Plummer, claimed it was only a feeble imitation of the gang activity in Trenton.
Moses Sanzito, who said he was one of the first Hispanic students to enter the Princeton school system, noted that the Big Brother/Big Sister program helped steer him away from gang activity.
"I think that Princeton regional schools should make an effort to make Princeton University students intervene with [local] students," Sanzito said. "There are a lot of kids that need this."
Sanzito, now 29, said there were only three other Latin-American children in his elementary school when he arrived 19 years ago. When he graduated, there were more than 100.
The panelists concluded that the best way to approach the growing minority population and possible related gang activity is to enhance mentoring programs, such as those provided by the University.
"Every time [the Board of Education] has a need, the University comes up ... as a vast resource only partially tapped," Bliss said. "The best thing the University could do is encourage students to make the community part of their lives."
Several student volunteers voiced similar concerns over the extent of their programs.
"We're just a Band-Aid," Step-Up volunteer Ishani Sud '08 said. "There's this underlying problem we can't really address."
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