Professor of English
I appreciate the thoughtfulness of the many comments on the
Fairmount Housing Proposal, both as these postings address the social learning
of students and as they detail the myriad pragmatic difficulties that such a
housing project would bring to the center of the village. Because I concur with much of what has been
said I will not repeat those sentiments here; however, I would like to add the
issue of safety to the mix.
As someone who has lived in the center of the village, for
more than two decades, I would add that a significant difference in my
experience over the past few years centers on the proliferation of what
students refer to as “after-hours parties,” by which they mean the extension of
the party scene from the downtown bars to their private apartments after the
bars close down in the early hours of the morning. Such nonstop partying has brought about some
profound changes. First, this trend has
created an environment in which some students are on the village streets at all
hours. (I have observed students
carrying on, on the streets outside of my residence, at 5:00 am and 5:30 am.) Second, the proliferation of after-hours
parties has doubtless encouraged students to drink for lengthier periods of
time. (When I phoned the Hamilton police
regarding an after-hours party—on May 7th (the Wednesday morning of
final exam week)—an ambulance had to be brought to the scene to collect one
female student who was completely incapable of walking out of the party by
herself. Others had to be escorted out
of the party, held up by officers.) Finally,
and not least of all, after-hours partying encourages large groups of students
to congregate in places which are not meant to contain such numbers of persons safely.
(Some after-hours parties, located on the same street, have easily
involved a hundred (or many more) students in a single dwelling, virtually all
of them congregated inside a single structure.)
I’m wondering now what happens when students follow their
friends the short distance from the center of the village to the new apartment
block for after-hours parties. Who will
monitor its occupancy at 2:00 am? In
2013, Boston University had to deal with a tragic incident created by a fire
that broke out in a house that was filled much beyond occupancy with partying
students. The building could not be vacated quickly, resulting in the death of
one student; other students and some of the fire fighters who responded to the
call for help suffered serious injuries.
(See: http://www.bu.edu/today/2013/linden-street-fire/)
I would add, as well, that not all of the parents of college
students are convinced that off-campus living is the best residential option. Last summer, when a member of my family did
the college tour, one institution with which Colgate has continually compared
itself (but is currently ranked much higher), advertised to parents that “98%
of our students live in college housing and we will soon be moving to 100%”, a
detail that many visiting parents apparently found an attractive feature. At first, the parents’ response rather surprised
me. But it was echoed in a conversation
I had two months ago, with the mother of a graduating senior. She confessed that she had allowed her
daughter to join a Colgate sorority only
because it would mean that her daughter would live in on-campus housing
which, she thought, would be “safer than other options.”
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