Senior Elana Nemitoff decorates cookies with neighborhood children

The event, a seasonal party hosted by the Neighborhood Voice Community Council, is a part of an ongoing effort to reach out to the neighborhoods around Ames Place, Trinity, Kingsland, Greenway and Melville Avenues.

In the past few years, these neighborhoods have been host to numerous complaints concerning noisy and unruly student behavior.

“I think, from students’ perspective, the relationship [with the neighbors] have been going very well this year,” senior Ashley Brosius, the student liaison between Washington University and its neighbors, said.

The University’s faculty and students have been working to improve the school’s relationship with the neighborhoods after a string of incidents in 2010 which led to a number of student citations and arrests. One step was the creation of Neighborhood Voice Community Council.

“The council has really given the students and neighbors an opportunity to get to know one another better [and] to strengthen the ties between the campus community and the local neighborhood,” Brosius said.

The council includes students and faculty members who serve as liaisons between the University and the local community. They meet monthly and hosts block parties each season.

“We are seeing a lot of improvement with the relations with the neighbors,” Ashley Swanson-Hoye, the residential college director for University apartments, said. “The block parties and the neighbor meetings have been beneficial for students and neighbors to come together, not as us versus them.”

The council has also been looking to create new events in which both students and neighbors can participate. Alley Art, for instance, will be a painting contest to beautify the dumpsters in a University City alleyway.

Many neighbors have also been invited to the men and women’s basketball game on Feb. 12th.

Sunday’s party featured soups from the St. Louis Bread Company, and each table had materials for blowing bubbles.

Both students and faculty at the event said that the relationship with the community has improved significantly over the past year.

“I haven’t heard of any incidents recently. I think that the University has been trying to do a lot to promote awareness across the student body,” junior Alex Ferris said.

Ferris is a resident of Greenway Place, known as one of the “problem areas” in the past.

“I think [the council members] do a great job,” Professor William Lowry, a neighborhood resident, said.

Neighbors in attendance shared similar positive sentiments.

“I think the students sincerely want to be neighbors,” local resident Cindy Finkenkeller said. “I like living next to a University. I think University students bring life to the neighborhood.”

In addition to the council members and local students who live in the neighborhood, various student groups, such as Alpha Phi Omega and the North Side Association, also volunteered at the event.

The North Side Association is hosting two stations in the neighborhood that allow students and local residents to sign cards welcoming soldiers home from their deployment abroad.

“We are working with Thurtene to bring together the spring block party,” Swanson-Hoye said.

The next council meeting will be on Feb. 15th.