Boston Police officers and college administrators are still not doing enough to prevent college students from throwing loud parties, loitering on street corners late into the night and leaving trash long the sidewalk, according to approximately 50 Allston-Brighton residents who attended a Boston Police District 14 community meeting last night.
Held at the Boston Marine Health Center, the meeting was scheduled by District 14 to specifically address concerns of residents that arise from the influx of college students to the Allston-Brighton area every September. College administrators from Boston University, Boston College, Northeastern University, Emerson College and Berklee College of Music fielded questions and complaints about on-campus housing statistics, disciplinary policies and alternative ways of dealing with the community to lessen the problems residents continually encounter.
“Our street is surrounded on all three sides by kids and we can’t sleep, especially on a weekend night,” one resident complained. He said his young children are often exposed to the “vulgar” rap music student residents loudly play near his home on Gerald Road in Brighton.
The man also said the problem most often is not a party being thrown but the large amount of foot traffic throughout the neighborhood and the noise that accompanies it.
“People are coming and going from the house, shouting and screaming, and urinating in the streets,” he said.
Allston-Brighton police Captain William Evans assured residents extra measures are employed during September and October, when noise and parties are most often a problem. Extra officers patrol the neighborhood weekend nights specifically to deal with noise complaints; first time offenders are visited by police and “read the riot act” and are often also forced to appear in court; and community service officers filter complaints and notify university officials about neighborhood problems with students.
“On the weekend we put out extra calls to go to parties,” Evans said. Still, he told residents, officers cannot simply look for parties and break them up — as one resident suggested — if a complaint has not been made and they are not disturbing anyone.
“I’m not comfortable with the fact that we run around chasing parties,” Evans said. “If we just start opening up doors and walking into parties I think we’d really be overstepping our boundaries. We tell the freshmen [at college orientations], ‘You can have parties all you want as long as you respect the neighborhood.'”
Most residents agreed the problems students cause in neighborhoods could be solved by making on-campus housing available to all students, something most administrators said they have been working on for years.
“I will be very happy when we get 100 percent of students on campus so I won’t have to ride around in a police car going to parties on Friday and Saturday night,” said Joe Walsh, director of Community Affairs at Boston University.
Walsh said BU is the second-largest private institution in the country in terms of on-campus housing, with 11,000 students living in BU-owned residences. Walsh said the new recreation center and Student Village being built on the BU campus, which will create 817 new beds, is a step toward the goal of providing housing for all. He said the center is aimed to provide more late-night entertainment for students that will deter them from going to parties or bars.
“We’re hoping around midnight and one in the morning people will be down there,” Walsh said.
Many complaints were directed at Bill Mills, Boston College’s associate director of Community Affairs, because the entire class of college juniors is forced to move off-campus due to limited housing available to BC students.
“By 2004 we’ll have an additional 800 kids on campus which will leave 900 in the community,” Mills said, a statistic residents said was still not good enough.
Mills said BC has run out of land and is unable to build high-rise dorms because of strong pressure from area residents. “Neighbors don’t like building up,” he said. Because of the housing crunch and general lack of facilities, Mills said BC has indefinitely capped its freshman enrollment at 8,700 students per year.
“I’m not saying you’re not doing any work, I’m just saying Plan A isn’t working,” one Strathmore Road resident said.
As long as students continue to live in the Allston-Brighton neighborhood, residents agreed all schools should encourage an attitude similar to that outlined by Jeff Doggett, assistant director of Government Relations and Community Affairs at Northeastern University.
“We’re very ‘in your face’ with our students,” Doggett said. “[We tell students] ‘You should go out and meet your neighbor and you should find out when trash day is … you should talk to your neighbors and find out what they think is an appropriate noise level during the day and at night.”
Police officer Stephen Law encouraged residents to continue to direct complaints to police and also urged them to call college administrators whose contact information was provided during the meeting.
“The sooner on in the school year we identify a ‘problem house’ the better,” Law said. “Once we’ve dealt with them, we usually don’t get a problem from that house again. We let them know ‘[the police] are serious and they will arrest you.'”