Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2007. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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San Francisco Examiner - September 6, 2007
Kelsey Volkmann
Another Hopkins student, Marci Naranjo, heard that 4,000 people sleep on the streets every night.
Engineering major Rishi Trivedi discovered the city's patchwork of safe and dangerous neighborhoods.
Call it Urban America 101.
On Wednesday, for Johns Hopkins University's Freshman Day of Service, some 650 students fanned out in the city. They packed lunches for female AIDS patients, peeled potatoes for homeless men and women, weeded parks, painted picnic tables, planted flowers.
And they learned lessons you don't get in the classroom.
"A lot of students don't go into the community. They're too busy doing research or hitting the books," said Tiffany Chen, a junior art history major who organized this year's event, which spanned 30 sites.
"Some students aren't attached to the city. They figure they'll only be here for four years."
While not a requirement for orientation, resident assistants visited each dorm room to rouse students' interest in the service day, first designed nine years ago to counter student apathy.
At Wyman Park Dell next to campus, more than 100 students painted a shed, shoveled crud from the side of the road and trimmed trees.
"With their energy and youth, the work they were able to do in two hours would have taken us three or four weekends," said Betty Hill, a Maryland Avenue resident devoted to cleaning up the 16-acre park, which fell into disrepair after its caretaker retired.
A few blocks away at Bunting Meyerhoff Interfaith and Community Service Center, students packaged lunches and hygiene kits with toothpaste, shampoo and soap for female AIDS patients.
Freshmen Heather Ehrlich, of Philadelphia, and Tabitha Moses, of Oxford, England, painted flower boxes on the streets of Remington, where drug dealers ruled a decade ago.
"I didn't like the drug dealers, but I'm 74; I was too old to move," said Bidful Privette, as he sat on his front steps near 28th and Huntingdon.
"But it looks a lot better now."
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