By By Anne Baker, and Rob Tokanel

‘ Despite a poor economy in which many universities seek to cut programs, President Joseph Aoun has made recent statements indicating Northeastern will remain committed to its partnership with the community.
In a Boston Globe Op-ed last Tuesday and in a recent interview with The News, President Aoun stated that operating harmoniously with the community is one of the university’s principle concerns.
‘It is a time of difficult choices and trade-offs, but not a time to retreat,’ he said in the editorial. ‘In times like these, colleges and universities are driven by their core values. Because the contributions that they make to the city are central to their missions, the current downturn is a time to reaffirm, not diminish, their commitment to the city.’
Senior Vice President for External Affairs Carol Scheman said Aoun’s dedication to the community will not come at a cost to the students.
‘The bottom line answer is that we are deeply committed, but not in a way that we are somehow the Mother Theresa of any community,’ she said. ‘This is a partnership that has to be a mutual interest in everything we do.’
Aoun said the co-op program ensures that Northeastern students become members of the community, allowing the school to thrive in its urban environment.
‘As I tried to articulate in the editorial, urban engagement is not extracurricular,’ he said in the interview. ‘This is part of who we are here at Northeastern and it’s part of our educational approach. When you look at experiential education, you’re not looking at it in terms of divorcing yourself from reality.’
Another example of a community-driven initiative for Northeastern, Aoun said, is the Foundation Year program. Foundation Year offers students from Boston public high schools who are not yet ready to be at an institute for higher education a chance to spend three semesters at Northeastern and prepare to continue their education.
‘I consider [urban engagement] to be a top priority, especially in a time of financial retrenchment,’ he said. ‘The economy is not doing well, so society needs us more than ever.’
At Thursday’s interview with The News, the president said the university takes the community’s desires seriously. When asked about the stalled plans for a transportation shuttle, a service that has been discussed and lobbied for by students for years, Aoun said that while he is in favor of a shuttle, the community must stand behind it. Though Boston University and Harvard run shuttles in Northeastern’s vicinity, Aoun said Northeastern puts a high premium on the community’s approval.
‘We want to be good neighbors,’ he said. ‘We don’t face anything that is special that others don’t. We have a heightened responsibility to the community because by definition we believe in a very strong urban engagement.’
According to a Sept. 27, 2007 Northeastern News article, plans for the shuttle stalled after members of the community spoke out against it.
‘A lot of prominent community activists on Mission Hill ‘hellip; expressed their concern and distaste with the program,’ then-Student Government Association president Joey Fiore said in the article.