Well, there's that. We had an actual alumnae living next door to us and she had a tendency to complain about stupid stuff, but needless to say we weren't committing crimes against her or her property. Why must people live the stereotype?

This has literally no effect on whether anything worthy of compensation has happened, or whether/not the guy is right. There's no "golden anniversary" judicial exception.

If we take his accusations at face value, there's no need for a judicial process. Come on.

Why do you assume this? Apparently your innocuous "for discussion" question had a motive, huh?


Right, because you took his claims (WHICH AREN'T OUTLINED IN YOUR INITIAL ARTICLE) at face value. Also, everyone who files suit deserves compensation, right? Oh wait.

Someone has to.

You seem to have an agenda that wasn't initially disclosed . . . any conjecture on that?

You win at lawyering today. Er . . . you won yesterday.

I suspect most of his claims are true because he's gone to the trouble of documenting them on a website.

In terms of compensation, I'm not saying he and/or his wife deserve anything, with the possible exception of a new window. What I'm saying is that, assuming he's not a pathological liar who went to great lengths to fabricate a lot of evidence to back all of his claims, nobody deserves to live with those kind of neighbors.

I appreciate all of the legal advice, and I understand now that there isn't anything to this case in terms of judicial precedent. I can set that aside, but I am still curious about neighborly relations in other college towns.

My experience was at UCSB, where virtually the entirety of the town of Isla Vista, where all of the fraternities and sororities are located, is inhabited by college students. Everyone expects a lot of noise on Thursday-Saturday nights, from Greek and non-Greek houses alike. In other words, it's not an issue...there are rarely noise complaints.

The problem at Berkeley is not that the Greeks are loud on weekends, it's that the chapters that are further from campus and nestled among non-student residents are loud and raucous.

Did anyone on Greekchat have a chapter house that was similarly nestled among the neighbors? Did your chapter butt heads with them, or were you on friendly terms? Were any agreements or compromises made regarding weekends and/or large events? I'm curious to learn about other campuses.

I don't have any conjecture on my agenda or undisclosed motive. I don't know the couple. I do know that if I were in their situation, I'm not sure what I'd do. What would you do?

People say all kinds of things on websites and in complaints that aren't really true or that are highly biased in how they're presented.

What's he's claiming may indeed be true. But I wouldn't rely on his website as evidence of that. And a complaint definitely isn't evidence of that.

Are you suggesting that people misrepresent themselves on the internet? Preposterous!

To clarify, I find it easier to believe that he's telling the truth than I do to believe that he's gone to the trouble of fabricating a bunch of photo and video evidence, especially when he's shown a willingness to settle without any monetary compensation. In other words, it seems to me to be the most parsimonious explanation.

I will declare, regardless of the legitimacy of his claims, that it would be awesome if people talked about things instead of resorting to lawsuits and the like.

You "will declare"? Like Scarlet O'Hara?

At any rate, put such horrible thoughts out of your mind. Resorting to a lawsuit is a typically wonderful and even patriotic thing to do.