Community

SLC: Yonkers or Bronxville?

by Katie Boudreau

Saturday October 4, 2008

Sarah Lawrence Works on Relationship with Yonkers
By: Katie Boudreau

Sarah Lawrence has always had a somewhat distant relationship with Yonkers. The citizens of Yonkers have always been somewhat hostile toward Sarah Lawrence College, mainly due to misconceptions or previous negative opinions.

One of the possible reasons for the ill will is the college’s choice of address. The college uses the wealthy town of Bronxville as its address for all recruiting and publications purposes. Sarah Lawrence is actually located in the more modest town of Yonkers. “Defining the college as Bronxville instead of Yonkers is a huge signal to Yonkers about who the college wants to identify with,” says Irene King, the director of Community Partnerships.

When Community Partnerships first started and King came on board, she had to go visit all of the service organizations in Yonkers. King says that, “for the most part the organizations had a very negative impression of the college. They saw it as a rich girls’ school. They didn’t even know it was coed.” King went on to say that, “Community Partnerships wants to repair that image.”

Community Partnerships is one of the main forces on campus that is trying to repair relations between the college and Yonkers. King says, “We’ve made a concerted effort in the last few years to focus all of our devices on student work in Yonkers.” Community Partnerships tries to emphasize exactly what their name implies, partnerships within the community instead of community service. King says that to go into the community as if they are the downtrodden needing saving is what hurts community-college relations in the first place. It is important to go in emphasizing that the students are there to work with them instead of being the main power source. “We want to bring all of our resources to the community, sharing what we have with the people in our neighborhood,” says King.

One of the initiatives that had been working to strengthen relations with Yonkers was the work done by Dean Hubbard, a previous professor at Sarah Lawrence. “Dean made huge inroads with the day-working community in Yonkers,” says King. He focused largely on helping the day workers become more proficient in English. When Hubbard didn’t get tenure though, this work came to a crashing halt. “It is a huge loss to the college that we are not able to continue on with that work because there is no manual in place to keep things going,” says King.

Other initiatives like working with the Elm Street Community Center and Iglesia San Andres have helped to repair the relationship between Yonkers and Sarah Lawrence. Ray Reid, the director of the Elm Street Community Center, where students go to help kids with homework or reading says that Sarah Lawrence students “have been absolutely fantastic. They have shown great resolve in helping the young people.” One of the main obstacles in repairing the college’s relationship with Yonkers is pointed out by Rev. Yamily Bass-Chote from Iglesia San Andres when she says that “for a long time I had never heard of Sarah Lawrence reaching out to the community” Many people in Yonkers have such a negative view of Sarah Lawrence because they have not seen the efforts of the college in the community, just as Bass-Chote hadn’t seen any Sarah Lawrence work within Yonkers. They think of Sarah Lawrence as excluding itself from Yonkers instead of joining it. When the community does see the college’s input into the community though previous opinions are easily altered. As Bass-Chote says, “After I started my relationship with the school, it was wonderful. The students have always been very competent and independent in working with us.”

Although Sarah Lawrence’s relationship has been strained with Yonkers in the past, with Community Partnerships focusing specifically on Yonkers now and students getting more involved, these relations can hopefully be mended.