By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
The roles were reversed at the Princeton Senior Resource Center on Tuesday, where Princeton University students were teaching their elders the joys of using an iPad.
The students came as part of Community Action, a weeklong pre-orientation program at the university that introduces incoming freshmen to one another as they do community service. Earlier in the week, the students worked at a nursery school to cut hedges and perform other tasks.
In all, 11 freshmen and four upperclassmen leaders of the program spent part of their afternoon at the center and Borough Hall for a computer lab with seniors.
”It’s very interesting to go into the Princeton community to see where we’ll be for the next four years, but also to get off of campus and meet everybody,” said freshman Megan Harewood, a Brooklyn native. “It’s just always nice to help out whenever you can or with whatever you can.”
Community Action came to the center for the first time last year. From that grew a community service project in which a smaller group of Princeton students visited the center on Tuesday afternoons during the school year to help the seniors with computers.
”We thought that this was just a great opportunity,” said junior Mark Benjamin, one of the upper classmen leaders at Community Action. “We need more volunteers. I’m hoping to get some of these guys to join this upcoming year.”
The center hopes so too.
Barbara Lundy, a retired IBM employee who coordinates the computer lab at the center, said the seniors enjoy their time with the students.
”They’d rather have a student help them than me. I’m sort of boring too much like themselves except I know more about computers. But otherwise I’m not as much fun as these kids are,” she said.
Yet finding time to volunteer can be a challenge for young students at one of the nation’s best universities. For them, it can be tough to break out the “orange bubble.”
Mr. Benjamin said “a lot of people don’t get off campus and they get kind of just sucked into work and everything. It’s just a great opportunity to get off campus and meet people who have tremendous stories to tell.”
He knows that from first-hand experience.
”The people we’ve met here, it’s been incredible,” he said. “You meet a lot of cool people.”
The center, serving Princeton and surrounding area, provides programs, lectures and other events for adult population from 50 and upward. Weekly computer classes run the gamut from introduction to iPads to Skype.
”I think there’s a high level of interest in using computers because people know that it is the way to stay in touch with their families,” said Susan W. Hoskins, executive director of the center. “One of the things that we’ve seen a lot is people coming in saying ‘I need to have an email account so I can communicate with my grandchildren’ or ‘What is this Facebook thing all about?’”
”I don’t have a faintest idea how it works half the time, said Slattery Tyler, 80, about her computer.
She was happy for the help she received this week.
”Remarkable, patient woman,” said Ms. Tyler of the university student who assisted her Tuesday. “I’m sure that to young people, we must sound like the village idiots, like ‘what the (heck) is this woman doing with a computer?’”

