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"Their fears had grown like Topsy," Rohlf said. "We got the real story [out] on each of the community's concerns," she said, "like, no, we weren't burying radioactive animals in the ground."
There were also fears about the university's growth, which Donald Garber of Setauket, who became president of the citizens council this year, said often fueled frustration when residents would find out about construction projects "after the fact, or find that a structure that was supposed to be set back from Nicolls Road was cleared to the roadway."
Establishing good relations is "mutually beneficial" to the institution and the community, said David J. Maurrasse, an assistant professor at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs and the Urban Planning Department, the conference's keynote speaker. "Your ability to do what you want to do is intertwined with the local community."
Communicating with the community. That, Maurrasse said, "helps break down the walls."
"What I think is most important is continuing the outreach and continuing the dialogue," said Melissa Connolly, assistant vice president for university relations at Hofstra University, on why she attended the conference.
Connolly said Hofstra has tried to do that through a number of programs, pointing to the 30-year-old Hempstead for Hofstra/Hofstra for Hempstead Scholarship Fund for residents, and the Saltzman Community Center, which provides child care and reading and writing clinics to the Long Island community, with specific emphasis on residents from nearby Hempstead and Uniondale, to name just a few.
Reginal Lucas, president of the Duncan Estates Civic Association in Hempstead, which represents about 200 homes clustered around the Southwest edge of Hofstra, is heartened by recent interaction with the university. "The current president, he seems to want to talk to us and ask our opinion," Lucas said of Hofstra President Stuart Rabinowitz. The civic association even meets on Hofstra's campus now. Lucas, a Hofstra neighbor since 1977, recalled a time when he said the university "just did what they wanted without considering the community ... Sometimes, you've got to consider the community, especially when you're building overpasses and buildings."
Stony Brook's Rohlf pointed to numerous programs in which the university reaches out to the community. There's Mini-Med School, a seven- week course that's free to the community in which health care issues are discussed in "a very entertaining, humorous way," she said. Kids College, where faculty and staff from Stony Brook's Health Sciences Center give interactive presentations to elementary school students on a variety of topics. And Astronomy Nights where the public is invited to presentations, for example.
These programs and the Citizens Advisory Council, especially, are part of efforts to "really open up a dialogue," Rohlf said.
"Overall, I think it was a sincere effort by the university," said Vincent Donnelly, a past president of the council. "As issues came up, they tried to work on it.”
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