TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — Most University of Arizona students return to Tucson next week. Many of them live off-campus and are not only students, but members of those communities.
One of those neighborhoods is West University, where Henry Werchan has lived for almost 30 years.
“We didn’t have a fence before at our house, and our first introduction was we woke up on the first day of school and our backyard was filled with cars,” said Werchan. “Students just looking for somewhere to park. They parked in our backyard.”
Since then, Werchan has been happy to co-exist with the students in his neighborhood.
He represents West University on UArizona’s Campus Community Relations Committee, which has been around since the ‘80s.
Neighbors from the 10 adjacent neighborhoods meet monthly with university and city representatives.
“It’s been a really valuable opportunity for the neighbors to let us know what they’re experiencing with university students living in the neighborhoods,” said Julie Katsel, Assistant Vice President of Community Relations for UArizona. “But it’s also been a really important way for the university to share with neighbors what’s happening on campus, what we’re doing to address any concerns they might have.”
Those concerns come up in meetings or through the university’s neighborhood hotline: 520-282-3649
The most frequent are issues like parking, trash and noise.
“A lot of the noise violations, we’re hearing less from neighbors,” Katsel said of the past year. “I think that we’ve been really in the last few years on this education piece.
“During COVID and during the pandemic, neighbors were acutely concerned about large gatherings. And it wasn’t just a nuisance at that point, they were concerned about health and safety issues. And so we responded in a really aggressive way by spending a lot of time out in the neighborhoods and talking with students where they live. Not just where they go to school, but we would go out and talk with them where they live as well.”
Committee members like Werchan knock on their neighbors’ doors when problems come up.
“Usually if you talk to them, usually it’s okay,” he told KGUN. “I’ll be honest, for instance, the high rises that were built over here [have] been a little bit more of a problem there because, first off, it’s so big you don’t get to know everybody… We know our neighbors kind of by first name. We usually don’t have issues.”
Most of the time there’s a mutual respect between neighbors in these communities and the students, who Werchan is used to seeing and hearing in his neighborhood.
“Got so used to the university and all, like, over the Christmas holidays, it gets so quiet, can’t sleep at night cause it’s just too quiet,” he said with a laugh.
