A group of approximately 30 landscape design students from Louisiana State University are learning about Western North Carolina politics the hard way — by trying to get something done.

The students spent last week in Cashiers collecting information for a semester-long project focused on the community. The students will take this information back to school with them where they will compile, sketch and finally make recommendations of aesthetic yet functional elements — such as greenways — to incorporate into the town.

However, collecting information was less a matter of holding a public forum — as was scheduled — and more a matter of becoming door-to-door salesmen. Students held a public meeting at the Cashiers Community Center last Tuesday (Feb. 22) with the intent of talking to residents about their opinions and concerns for the area. Only a handful of people showed up.

Since residents wouldn’t come to the students, the students went to them, said LSU professor and summer Cashiers resident V. Frank Chaffin, who is leading the project.

“We sent our students out to knock on doors,” Chaffin said at a forum held at the Albert-Carlton Library last Thursday (Feb. 24).

Students went to homes and restaurants, hung out at the Exxon station, and talked to anyone they could find. The comments they solicited uncovered what was for them an unexpected rift, an “extremely divided” community of full- and part-time residents — gated-community dwellers and day laborers who built those homes, retirees and international students, store owners and tourists, locals and “outsiders.”

“We’ve been trying to open this as much as possible to anyone who participates in this community,” Chaffin said.

Particularly struck by the chasm, student Susannah Desroches spoke out at last Thursday’s forum, saying it was a disappointment not to be able to talk to more local, full-time residents. As students from generally rural Louisiana communities, they share more with the locals than with the country club members, Desroches said.

“We have a neutrality that can fit your situation very well,” she said. “We hate to get so involved with your politics.”

Desroches’ comments, however, may have fallen on deaf ears. LSU students in attendance outnumbered community members 3 to 1.

Students presented rough sketches and ideas they had developed in the few days spent in the town. Most common in the seven presentations were ideas of preservation and conservation, as well as making Cashiers more pedestrian friendly. Recommendations included an oversized, traffic circle type concept that would route vehicles around the town’s main intersection at N.C. 107 and U.S. 64 and greenways connecting the nests of commercial development closer to the intersection.

Other concepts included viewsheds, playgrounds for children, affordable housing, and privatization. Students said they were “turned off” by the large homes, gated communities and private access that seemed to be the trend in Cashiers.

“It should be allowed to draw young people in, not push people away with signs,” one student said.

Along similar lines, student Daniel Boutté said that a more vibrant community, one with live music venues and additional restaurants, might be had by allowing the sale of alcoholic beverages — a suggestion that was met with hardy laughter.

Seemingly dismayed, Boutté continued, saying residents should look at developing alternative recreation.

“We think there’s probably a few too many golf courses,” he said.

Students have returned to LSU to further develop their plans and establish a Web site for Cashiers residents to communicate with them via a message board. Students will post questions and solicit answers, as well as give updates on the project’s status.

“The main thing we’d like to get from you all is reaction,” Chaffin said.