Who should accomodate who?
 

You always hear about non-college citizens that live in/around college communities/campuses forming groups to combat the loud noise and partying.

Now, I'm not saying we're allowed legally to act uncivil just because we're college students, but I mean cmon, this is nothing new.

I compare it to living near the airport and people complaining about the noise.

Do you think schools should come down on the students with Nazi like restrictions (such as at SDSU) or just say "Look, it's a college. If you don't like it, MOVE!"

I think that if they don't like it they should move. I posted this before about my ex. He moves onto West 3rd St. in the Village here in NYC. For those of you familiar with the neighborhood, it is ALL bars, clubs and restaurants on that block. He would call the cops SEVERAL times every night about the noise. Uh, DUH!!!!!!! What do you expect living in that neighborhood?! I feel that for the most part, college students support the college towns they are located in financially so people need to quit complaining and thank them. I know this sounds harsh but it is COMMON SENSE!!!!!!!

Re: Who should accomodate who?
 

We had this problem on our campus. Now I don't expect neighbors to put up with giant parties and constant noise, but there was one fraternity in particular whose neighbors would call the greek life office and/or the cops at LEAST once a week to complain about the "raucous parties" at the XY house. If they had five people in their backyard in the middle of a Sunday afternoon for a BBQ, the neighbors would complain. (I should note that the fraternity was dry, and not at all known for their partying.) :rolleyes:

I do think if you move into a college neighborhood, especially if you move next door to any sort of student housing, you're going to have to expect some level of noise.

But I think it all depends on the neighborhood. We also had problems with students moving a little further away from campus, out of the traditional "student neighborhoods" and into quiet residential neighborhoods and throwing weekly parties. That's not cool either.

I believe that people living near campus' should understand the noise and rowdyness of a campus, but I also believe that as members of a community, college students need to be respectful. Afterall, not every college student wants drunk people yelling in front of their dorm/house/apt at 3am when bars close. I think there needs to be a common ground to noise levels.

I think, especially as greeks, we should realize the benefit of having a supportive community and work to create that atmosphere. It goes both ways, neighbors live in a community for 20+ years, we are there for four/five... I don't think they should lose the right to sleep because we are young and stupid.

Colleges should facilitate community discussions if necessary and help mediate if they are going to take a role. I don't believe that either side should really be 'punished' unless there is something outlandish going on.

If you move into a college town, next to student housing, and start complaining, you're an a-hole. No argument there.

But if the college has grown over the years and kind of "taken over" the town and the people who have lived there forever - I mean in houses their family has owned for generations - I can see where the residents have some sort of complaint. The point is, the college should have a plan for growth and expansion and work with the town. Too many colleges overadmit and don't have room in the dorms, so even if the students don't WANT to live off campus they have to.

Or if the college buys up land in the town, it goes off the tax rolls, and that makes things even worse on the townspeople - so even if the students are angels, there's some natural antipathy there. Clarion's definitely dealing with this and I'd bet the other state schools here are too.

That's what's going on at SDSU. There's a HUGE campus redevelopment program that includes a trolley station, numerous new apartment buildings, frat row, hotel, etc, much like the UCLA Westwood Village.

My theory is that in the early 90s, when the Greek system here was at it's strongest, greek parties were greek only. When that stopped, a bunch of new risk management problems arose (more than before), and the school decided to stop working with us and started imposing gastapo-like restrictions on us. The parties then spread out around the school because frat houses weren't THE place to party at anymore. I also think this is a HUGE reason membership is down; people know they don't have to be greek to get into a party, so they figure "why bother when they'll let me in for the fun stuff?"

So, now it's spilt so far that we've lost the community's support, and now they're becoming more harsh every year. I understand where they're coming from of course, but I think the greeks are more responsible about it. The ones who always cause trouble are military and other non-SDSU students who are also allowed in.

I just think they should stop pointing the finger just at us and look at who really wants to act rowdy around here. We want to party, but we know we don't to lose our charter.

There is a problem with noise at St. John's University in Queens. Until recently the students were commuters or lived in the community because they didn't have dorms on campus. They built dorms a couple of years ago, and now the residents are complaining about diminished quality of life issues. They tried to prevent the dorms from being built, but they failed. The dorms were built, thousands of students walk through their community, and on the weekends it is chaos. It's not just the noise. Drunk students stumble around and puke on their lawns practically every weekend. I feel really bad for the residents. They could not predict this when they bought their beautiful houses and moved in.

I don't know about other universities, but my college has been careful to involve the community in the plans of expansion, and hold community sessions. We have worked hard to create a relationship where students know better than to mess with private property (which is downright wrong) and the residents have been understanding when the music is too loud.

The thing is that neighborhood change, and there is a large risk to living on the edge of a campus, but I don't think that the risk should mean people stop respecting the quality of life in the surrounding neighborhood. There are definate advantages to having high quality neighborhood surrounding a college.

Re: Who should accomodate who?
 

There should be mutual respect.

I was born and reared in a college town. My parents built their home out "near" the college and by the time I came along, the college had expanded to across the street. One block down the street were three fraternity houses.

Since it was a small town, the college was an import part of the community. Most of the local high school students went on to attend the college as had most of their parents. Many joined fraternities and sororities. As such there was a lot of community outreach. And out of that, came mutual respect between "the locals" and the college students.

I think it helped that the Greek houses were all well kept. Many of the members grew up in town and did not want *their* neighborhood to look bad. So all the houses looked great.

As the Greek system expanded, a few chapters begin to build out of town. They were able to have more "loud" parties but for the most part, did not. Again, I think it all came down to mutual respect. Frankly, no house wanted to be known as an "Animal House".

In any case, I don't recall any issues between the town, the college and more specially, the Greeks. Nor do I hear about anything from the members of my family and friends that still live there.

And the same can be said where I went to undergraduate school and graduate school. Both the town and the colleges get along.

Thats terrible. :mad:

Perhaps part of it is that San Diego is not known as a college town. San Diego does not need, nor identify with, the university the way my home town and other college towns do.

Like other people said, there should be mutual respect.

It's one thing to move to a neighborhood knowing full and well that it is right by a college campus, bars, etc. and to expect peace and quiet 24/7, and another to have lived there already before the campus spread out.

At my school there is a strip of bars (right across the street from the University) where there are also plenty of apartments. When my friend & I were looking at places to live, we very briefly entertained the idea of living there because of it's closeness for campus, but quickly decided against it, because we know sometimes things get loud & crazy in that area. So we decided to live away from the campus.

When the talks began for our new Sorority Row, lots of people who lived across the street from the lots that the Row would be built on got all angry that they didn't want loud noise and late night parties going on across the street from them. What I never understood about that, is that for one thing, NPC sororities are not allowed to have any alcohol in the houses, much less host all-night loud parties (of course they probably wouldn't have known that), and that in most of those apartment complexes, there is already enough noise problems as it is... since they are located a block from the school plenty of students choose to live there, and make noise of their own. :rolleyes:

I've lived near the fraternity houses for about a year now, and during that entire year, there have been MAYBE 5 nights that there were SUPER LOUD SUPER LATE parties that kept me up. But hey, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em! hehehe

OK, I'm done now :)

Actually, that is good advice. Many of the fraternities "big" parties usually happen at founders day or homecoming. So there are a lot of alumni in attendance. Since many are local, they keep an eye on things and keep it from getting too loud least they get the police called on them.

When you say village, are you referring to Greenwich village? Just curious (I'm from Long Island).

we have a HUGE problem with this on our campus. because 85% of the campus lives off campus, many of them live within a 3 mile radius of campus. there are many older couples that live in the apartment complexes in the area where the college students live and they complain, but it comes down to: who came first, the chicken or the egg? i mean do you kick out all the college students and then they have no place to go or do you kick out all the older people who have possibly lived in that area long before the college students took over.

i lived in an apartment complex where it was about 95% college students. i could never understand how all these older people would want to live in that area......because that complex was known for it's parties. someone had mentioned that the complex used to be nothing but older couples when it was first built and it was just a few years ago that many college students decided to move out there.

some complexes in our town won't let college students live there. now i dont think this is fair because a complex would NEVER be allowed to say: "now non-students are not allowed here" but it's complicated. what i dont get is why many older couples move into neighborhoods full of college students when renting rates are much higher compared to moving about 5 miles away from campus.....it's amazing how much cheaper it is once you get out of that campus radius

Noise
 

I live in a smaller city called Halifax in Nova Scotia Canada, about 360,000 people. The city has 4 universities 3 of them 5-10 minutes from one another walking. What I am getting at is these schools have been there since about 1802, 1818, and one around 1920. The 4th university is about a 30 min walk or 10 minute drive away and has been there since 1878. These Universities have been there long before the people who live in the surrounding neibourhood. If you dont like a little bit of noise it does not make sense to move into an area in the middle of three universities. There are plenty of places to live that are not surrounded by students. If it gets to the point where complaints have to be made constantly, I think I would just want to move out of the surrounding area, its not as if these people did not notice the schools when moving in. When there are that many students in such a small area there is bound to be some noise.
There is a huge importation of students in the area, more the 50% of the students in the city are from outside of it and all live around campus do to lack of university housing. There will always be some noise, its something to be expected.

Zeta Psi Fraternity
Dalhousie Universtiy