Off-East complaints see sharp drop
With Duke's purchase of 12 houses, Trinity Park residents find life quieter
Victoria Ward, The Chronicle, 11/20/06
Since the University bought 12 houses in Trinity Park, residents have reported fewer student-caused disturbances.
Instead of calling to complain about Duke students hosting loud parties, this year, Trinity Park neighbors are socializing with them.
At the beginning of the semester, senior Max Milliken and his housemates hosted a barbeque to meet their Trinity Park neighbors.
Milliken lives in one of the 12 houses purchased for $3.7 million by the University last February. According to an official statement released last year, the properties were bought in order to curb off-campus partying and improve relations between students and Trinity Park residents.
"The complaints for off campus have gone down dramatically," said Sara-Jane Raines, Duke University Police Department administrative services executive officer.
In addition to purchasing the notorious party houses, the University has done more educational programming with students living off-campus, Raines said.
Administrators have also heard fewer complaints from neighbors who call or e-mail various offices, said John Burness, senior vice president for public affairs and government relations.
"Especially in light of last year's issues, students have gone out of their way to be nicer to neighbors," Burness said.
Of the 12 properties, four are still being rented by students who had signed leases before the purchase, said Jeff Potter, Trinity '76 and Law '79, the University's director of real estate administration. Although the house formerly owned by members of the 2005-2006 men's lacrosse team is not up for sale, three houses have been sold, two are under contract and two are still on the market.
The purchase of the houses has contributed to the decrease in off-campus partying, but the biggest factor for the smaller number of off-campus citations has been students' fears of being cited by Alcohol Law Enforcement, said Stephen Bryan, associate dean of students and director of judicial affairs.
"In essence, I think that students are being more responsible in their actions off-campus, staying on campus more or engaging in other activities," he said. "Last year's 194 citations by ALE really chilled them and put the fear of God in them."
Milliken and Adam Rothenberg, a senior who also lives in one of the Trinity Park properties, both signed their leases during their sophomore year. Although they were worried about tense student-neighbor relations, both said they have had positive experiences.
"The neighbors on our street have been very cooperative," Milliken said. "Whenever we are planning to have people over, we tell them, so none of them have ever called the police. The last thing you want as a senior is to have charges pressed against you."
Rothenberg said his house has not received any complaints this year.
"There has been a limited amount of interaction, but they're cordial and we are the same," he said. "We've tried to be respectful by not letting people outside making noise."
Some Trinity Park residents said they have noticed a decrease in student partying since last year.
Lisa Rist, whose home is in front of three of the purchased houses, said students have been much quieter this year.
"[Partying] used to be sporadically very loud and disruptive," she said. "I certainly would not say it was all the time, but when it was really loud, it was often on a weeknight at 2 o'clock or 2:30 in the morning."
Lee Ann Tilley also said she and other Trinity Park residents have been pleased by the difference in partying this year.
"It's so quiet this year," she said. "The guys that have moved around the corner from me are so nice. We just haven't heard a peep out of them."
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news/2006/11/20/News/OffEast.Complaints.See.Sharp.Drop-
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"It's so quiet this year," she said. "The guys that have moved around the corner from me are so nice. We just haven't heard a peep out of them."
Yes, the threat of being charged with rape in Durham, where your rights are as vaporous as air,
really puts a damper on the party spirit.
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Ugh
So, as I keep trying to understand what all is going on with the lacrosse case, I keep finding things that either I missed or missed the importance of earlier with respect to many of the issues being faced by Duke and by Durham. One of the major issues has been the faculty and administration response. Early on, I had said that I was truly happy with how President Brodhead had not caved into to pressures to expel the entire team as well as his decision to reinstate the team after the Coleman Report came out.
However, some things are still very disturbing about the way the administration has proceeded. If the administration really did tell the lacrosse players not to tell their parents what was going on, and if the administration really did recommend a particular lawyer for them to talk to, then the administration has a LOT to answer for. Likely, several administrators should resign if such allegations are true. Beyond that, some quotes have come up from early on that are just truly disturbing in hindsight. This one is from President Brodhead from the Durham Chamber of Commerce (from WRAL):
"If our students did what is alleged, it is appalling to the worst degree. If they didn't do it, whatever they did is bad enough," he said. "Of the things that have pained me about this episode, one of the greatest ones is all the publicity that this has brought, unwished to Duke University and, indeed, Durham."
This quote is from April 20th. The "whatever they did is bad enough" part is just criminally negligent - by April 20th, nothing was really known, and I have gotten more and more angry over people - academics - not using their presumably finely-honed research and analytical abilities to do research and to analyze what was going on in the case.
To then follow this directly with a concern about the publicity of the case, well, it contextualizes the first statement in a sad, sad way. When all this began, I was worried about whether potential students would come to Duke, given the hyperbolic characterization in the Rolling Stones article as well as the microscopic press coverage we had received. While Duke took a little bit of a matriculation hit, it was far less than I had expected.
Now, though, I wonder how many people we are going to lose when they see a school that is unwilling to do seemingly anything to stand up for its students in the face of unjust police procedures and widely reported prosecutorial misconduct that has been pointed out by one of our own law school faculty members. I wonder how many parents will be willing to send their kids to Duke when our undergraduate judicial system has elected to extend its jurisdiction off campus without really having the resources to do so in a fair or just way - a judicial system that put illegally-obtained ALE violations in the citizenship records of its students.
Sometimes I wonder how much longer I can teach at a place where this is the reality. Where the people that are, very rightly, asking for attention to be paid to the problems of race, and gender, and privilege go forth and tie themselves to a case of dubious grounds, and then have nothing to say when their colleague (in the person of James Coleman) describes the mishandling of our students' civil rights and when the facts of the case, as they come out, point in a very, very different direction.
Ugh