An unlikely quartet was waiting for Mike Wallace when he opened the front door of his East Prospect Avenue apartment last night.
State College Borough Council President Elizabeth Goreham, University Park Undergraduate Association President Gavin Keirans, Penn State President Graham Spanier and State College Mayor Bill Welch were at the door waiting to greet him.
The four were members of one of 11 groups traversing State College neighborhoods Wednesday night and distributing information packs on how students and permanent borough residents can be good neighbors.
The pilot initiative, deemed Living In One Neighborhood (LION) Walk, is modeled after a program used at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colo.
The 11 groups planned to visit nearly 250 residential units, borough intern Chelsea Puff said.
Groups were instructed to avoid major apartment complexes and fraternities, Puff (graduate-public administration) said.
Wallace's meeting with Goreham, Keirans, Spanier and Welch morphed into an impromptu discussion of tenant rights.
Wallace (junior-economics) said he and his five roommates were fined $458 each after a health inspector visited over the summer for having a dirty floor and debris in the backyard.
"I wasn't up here during the summer, and it wasn't like that when we left," he told the LION Walk group. "Sometimes you just feel like you're in a bind, and you feel like you have nowhere to turn."
The university and borough officials took turns offering advice and suggesting individuals for Wallace and his friends to contact.
"You have rights, and these issues should be addressed," Goreham said.
Wallace said he was grateful the group knocked on his door.
"You never really know who to get in touch with, so that was definitely really helpful," he said. "It can be difficult to deal with landlords because they kind of peg you as college kids who don't really need any assistance."
Off-Campus Student Union President Pat Gordon said the initiative's name reflects its goals.
"The name 'LION' is great because it shows we are a community -- even if you're a permanent resident or a student," Gordon (junior-information sciences and technology) said. "We really hadn't had anything that had gotten to signify that so far."
The program helps communicate Penn State's emphasis on character, conscience, citizenship and responsibility to off-campus students, Spanier said.
"I have visited college towns throughout the U.S. in the course of my career, and I don't think I've found anywhere that has better relations than you find right here," Spanier said. "We're getting better all the time, because of the people involved, yes, but also because of initiatives like this one."
Welch said instances of "town and gown together" strengthen State College.
"It's not just the borough of State College but wherever the misty horizons of Happy Valley may lie, and I think it's more a state of mind than a geographic location," Welch said. "The way we keep it a happy valley is the willingness to try initiatives like this one."
