Many students enjoyed the first weekend of the new semester with a few laughs, and more than a few beers, at houses off of East Campus. Many of Duke's neighbors, however, spent the weekend trying to avoid drunken wanderers and stray beer cans and trying to sleep despite music pounding through their windows from a few doors down. In other words, they were less than amused.
Duke students were "out of control," according to many neighbors and the Durham Police Department, which admitted Tuesday it failed to carry out a no-tolerance policy despite an understanding with the University to do so.
After receiving a barrage of angry e-mails and phone calls from non-student residents of the neighborhoods off East Campus, DPD issued what Senior Vice President for Public Affairs and Government Relations John Burness called a "blistering" warning.
Students living in the Trinity Park and Trinity Heights neighborhoods received letters Monday from Capt. Ed Sarvis, commander of DPD's District Two, which covers much of the area surrounding East, warning that the DPD will severely suppress rowdy parties beginning immediately.
"If the Durham Police Department is called to this home again, residents on the premises will be located, and, at a minimum, will be criminally charged with violating Durham City Ordinances regarding excessive noise by way of a criminal citation," Sarvis wrote in the letter. "If the officers responding to the scene feel it is more appropriate, residents may be subject to an actual physical arrest and transported to the Durham County Jail for formal charging."
The letter continued to warn students that Durham officers would be cracking down on alcohol violations, charging not only all those found to be in violation, but also the residents in whose homes the violations were discovered. Furthermore, Sarvis wrote that Duke officials and faculty would be notified of students' transgressions, as would students' parents.
"I assume that most of the residents do have aspirations of seeking employment once they graduate," Sarvis wrote. "I should not have to remind you of the long-term problems you face by having a criminal record, regardless of how insignificant you may feel the offense is." Meanwhile, the University offered to pay for whatever overtime DPD incurs over the next several weeks in order to ensure that Durham officers are patrolling the neighborhoods surrounding East Campus over the weekends, Burness said.
"We feel quite badly that this past weekend occurred the way it did, and certainly understand why the neighbors are very upset," Burness said. He noted that this is not the first time the University has offered to pay overtime for DPD.
Burness said University officials were caught off-guard with neighbors' reactions to the weekend's events, as the University had been in discussions with DPD about enforcing a strict low-tolerance to no-tolerance policy during the first few weeks of the academic year.
"We had been led to believe that there would be aggressive patrolling and enforcement for the first several weeks, partly as a means to [warn] people that if they behaved inappropriately, there would be consequences," Burness said. "For reasons we don't quite understand, the police were not aggressive this weekend, and they have apologized publicly to the community for that."
Sarvis could not be reached for comment, nor could Maj. Charles Tiffin, chief of DPD's investigative services bureau, who contacted Trinity Park residents through their online listserv with an admission that Durham police responded inappropriately to last weekend's events. Burness added that the University has been trying to provide students with on-campus entertainment so that they do not feel the need to wander off campus to have a good time.
"We're focusing on reasons to stay on campus, such as 21 Night Stand or the new media room in the [West Edens Link]," said Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta. "But it can't be Duke's exclusive responsibility to solve the off-campus problem. It's a partnership." Burness said the University had hoped that Moneta's efforts to entertain students on campus, combined with the prerogative of Durham police to toughen up off campus, would send the right signals to both student and non-student residents off East Campus.
Instead, residents faced what many said was one of the worst starts to a semester in years. Residents from over two blocks away from the nearest "party homes" said they could hear music inside their homes. One resident said there were so many empty cups from Sam's Quick Shop Sunday morning that it was hard to walk down the street.
"The issues we're dealing with have been long-term issues, but have certainly accelerated with some exceptional incidences over the weekend," said Don Ball, a Trinity Park resident. "This weekend was an example, with several large parties in our neighborhood, as well as in Trinity Heights. Scores of students were walking up and down the neighborhood, being loud and boisterous, and there were lots of garbage and residual party items left over the next day."
Like many residents of Trinity Park and Trinity Heights, Ball stressed that he was not opposed to the idea of living with undergraduates in the neighborhood, but that students simply went too far with their weekend festivities and not far enough when it came to cleaning up after the parties.
"We respect the right of everyone to have a party, but we do expect people to leave the area clean, and that the parties aren't so loud that they keep the neighborhoods up," he said. "And we prefer that students don't urinate on our houses, which happened over this weekend."
Betty Kriegler, another Trinity Park resident, said her complaints about the past weekend stemmed from both personal discomfort and from concern about the well-being of the off-campus partygoers.
"When I went down at midnight to the corner of Buchanan [Boulevard] and Urban [Avenue], there were probably about 200 drunken students going up and down the streets, and many of them were clearly underage" "We have had some very good students living in the houses near our house, but the new group coming in is obviously not going to act like humans and respect the idea that this is a neighborhood, and that this might be their parents or aunts and uncles that they're keeping awake," she added.
Kriegler and Ball were only two of many upset neighbors who said that, under normal circumstances, they love living near students for the diversity and youthfulness they add to the neighborhoods. Since this weekend, however, postings to Trinity Park's listserv have clearly demonstrated a high level of frustration amongst Duke's neighbors.
"The listserv's been going crazy," said Berry McMurray, another Trinity Park resident. He noted that students' rowdiness causes concern that property values will start to drop--a sentiment echoed by Ellen Dagenhart, who lives in Trinity Park, but also sells real estate in the area.
"It's an image problem to have students partying until all hours of the morning, with people peeing in the yards, throwing up and acting out badly," Dagenhart said. "It's tough to sell real estate after a party. Who wants to live in a dump?"
McMurray said residents are understandably worried, if last weekend is any indication of what's to come. "People want to head it up at the pass," he said. Although there have been plenty of talks about the problems students living off campus have been causing for years, some neighbors doubt the situation will improve significantly.
"I personally don't think it will change," McMurray said. "We have our own issues with the Durham Police Department in that they don't tend to enforce speed limits in our neighborhood. So it already appears that the Durham police don't take this neighborhood very seriously."
Ball seemed more optimistic about the prospect of improved relations with students.
"We know as residents that we always go through a re-education process every year when new students move in," he said. "It's always a new batch of students, so we have to communicate what our desires are and teach and communicate about what it means to be a good neighbor." Ball added that he lived through a similar experience some years ago, in which off-campus students had a rocky start in the neighborhood but were more well-behaved after neighbors communicated their concerns.
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