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Directing Traffic: A Climate Change in Mt. Hope?
I read an inspiring article today in the Providence Journal, titled, Walking the Line: A climate shift at Perry Middle, by Linda Borg. The article immediately made me think of an analogy between the problems at the Perry School and the problems we experience in Mt. Hope. According to Ms. Borg, Perry Middle is poised to address the academic deficiencies revealed by standardized testing. But the first order of change at Perry Middle had to be to address the horrendous disciplinary problems that so disrupted the academic program.
Directing Traffic Journal Photos/Gretchen Ertl
Hats off to our public school teachers at Perry Middle who face a daunting task each and every day they go to work. They came up with a program to study and address the disruptive behavior that so negatively affected the school. They strive to change the culture of disruption and disrespect that became entrenched at the Perry Middle.
Statistics revealed several interesting aspects of the problem: only 15% of students got in occasional trouble; only 5% of students constituted the chronic, repeat offenders. However, those 5% required 65% of the school staff’s time.
In a nutshell, these few, very disruptive individuals, wreaked havoc in the school and disrupted the academic environment for the other 95% of students. Not only that, they took away an inordinate amount of the schools resources from the other 95%, so that their problems could be dealt with.
I have long maintained that a similar dynamic exists in Mt. Hope and that most of the quality of life problems such as litter and drug dealing, vandalism and petty theft could be laid at the door stop of a very small percentage of Mt. Hope residents. If our population is approximately 6,000, then our 5% would be about 300 residents. I doubt if we even have that number of bad eggs in our basket. Yet this small, disruptive percentage negatively affects the quality of life in Mt. Hope to such a degree that some residents move elsewhere, some don’t walk down their own community’s streets or use their own park. And all Mt. Hope residents suffer from the stress and fear created by a climate of crime. Homes are being broken into and cars are being broken into on a daily basis. Drug use and drug dealing can be witnessed on a daily basis.
Litter & Vandalism, A Symbol of Mt. Hope Culture?
I propose changing the culture of Mt. Hope from a culture where criminals are comfortable and feel entitled, ( and believe me, our criminals feel very comfortable and very entitled dealing and stealing in Mt. Hope!) to a culture where honest citizens feel comfortable and entitled living and working in Mt. Hope. Comfortable to go to work in the day and to sleep at night without worrying about their home or car being broken into, entitled to walk down their community’s streets and not feel fear or see drug use and drugs being sold openly.
That is why I proposed a community wide Mt. Hope Crime Watch to kick start this change of climate. We have ordered our first 15 Crime Watch signs. The CW is a long term project and it must gather steam, not lose steam. The CW alone will not solve our problems, and it is not designed to arrest criminals or stop all crime, but it must function on a more symbolic level, as a symbol of the change in climate, a change in the culture, as honest citizens take back their streets and community from the small, (< .05) percent of very, disruptive, even criminal residents who have cast Mt. Hope is such bad light for so long. The CW is but a small, though important step on this path.
We need to take other steps, though, in order to enact this culture change. We need to convince our civic leadership, the Mayor. etc. that Mt. Hope is ready for change, that it can no longer be business as usual here in Mt. Hope. It will not be accomplished by one or two lones voices crying out from the wilderness: it will take concerted, coordinated effort by a coterie of committed individuals and leaders willing to make the committment of time and effort neccessary to make a difference. We need to stay the course and not let the passive nay-sayers nor the ambivalent wafflers discourage us in our committment.
A change in culture will not take place, though, unless we have a counter balance of at least 5%, consisting of citizens who feel adamant about the climate shift. That is one reason that I proposed a strong recruiting drive to reach residents and to build GCCC membership to over 200 residents. We need active members, leaders, who can work within a team concept, not free lancing, but developing a cohesive agenda, a plan of action, and systematically pursuring it through to completion.
In order to change the negative aspects of life in Mt. Hope, drugs, theft, litter, vandalism, I believe it is necessary to focus unrelentingly upon these negative aspects, to shine a bright light upon them, because these are problems that thrive in the shadows. These problems don’t like to be talked about openly, they don’t like to be illuminated.
At the same time, I believe that we can also focus on what is good about Mt. Hope and even contribute to the positive quality of life in Mt. Hope. But again, who will make that contribution? I am not talking about the shallow, clichéd, local boosterism so prevalent in some community organizations, but an organized effort to do something positive, something physical, something that requires a commitment of time and energy. Surely some GCCC members who value positive community contributions can step forward and form a Community Relations Committee, within GCCC, to set up programs that make positive contributions to the Mt. Hope Community. It must be part of the culture change. We must make a postive contribution beyond the elimination of the negative.
I have stressed recruiting for the last 4 months and again I stress recruiting. Recruiting for the GCCC and for the Crime Watch. We need more members, we need more leaders to work within our organization. We need to kick off the chains of discouragment and generate ideas, create, innovate, workshop, and renew our committment to our community. Mt. Hope is, afterall, our community.
John Twomey
Posted at June 15, 2005 11:28 AM