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Students In Boston: For or Against?
By irregahdless on Tue, 09/04/2007 - 3:54pm
I have often opined that the large student population here in Boston is a driving force behind what makes this city so great. From the indie rock scene, to the cheap-o food and drink options, to the nerd-hungry companies that set up shop here, I have long felt that I am fortunate to live in a city with such a heavy college and college student presence.
But this weekend, as I was held hostage in my apartment, blocked in by 16 rental trucks and piles of trash, and later awakened by drunken college students screaming at 4am, I began to question how much these co-eds really bring to the city.
Maybe I was just pissed off at the inconvenience of this weekend in particular, or maybe I am just getting old...but either way, I was questioning my pro-college population stance like I never had before.
So I ask you fellow Bostonians to take my poll, and in very binary fashion, decide if the 250,000 college kids make this city a better place, or a worse place overall.
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Comments
Can I vote yes AND no?
I will admit that having all of those people in/around Boston probably DOES make it a better place in the long run.
But from my days living in/around downtown, and being a skateboarding teenager in the city, I can only think back to the great Mighty Mighty Bosstones song, 'They Came to Boston'.
Frankly, it's a mixed bag, imo.
While having the students around Boston definitely does help to make it a more vital, cultured and lively city, and probably a safer place to live, work and/or go to school than lots of other large urban metropolises throughout this country, there's definitely a downside to that, as well:
The fact that many students stage noisy, out-of-control parties, where excessive amounts of alcohol flow, rock music up at full blast, and excessive noise, screaming/yelling and hanging out of windows frequently takes place, causing many of the life-time and longtime residents of a number of neighborhoods much disruption and distress is the real downside of having such a big student population here in this city. There probably should be better police presence around, to keep parties more under control and to make sure that they don't get out of hand like that.
When I read Adrian Walker's Globe column today about how partying college students who resided in the Mission Hill area plucked a 72-year-old lifelong Mission Hill resident's carefully and lovingly planted and cultivated tomatoes off of the vine and threw them on houses or on the sidewalk, thinking it was really a hoot, I was really disgusted. Had these students done that in some other, unnamed areas in the city, they would've undoubtedly gotten their asses beaten all over the place....in no time.
Seriously, though...it's disgusting that people who're clearly old enough to know better can and do act like that...in any case.
I attended college myself, but never, ever did I participate in that kind of destructive behaviour.
I also think that the various colleges and universities in the area should come down harder on students who're that destructive and disruptive to neighborhood residents.
Also, maybe, just maybe, the various colleges/universities here in the area should consider not expanding into neighborhoods so much and make an effort to build more on-campus student housing.
Yeah I used to sing a part
Yeah I used to sing a part of that song out loud on the T: "Jam my bars and subway cars, when the hell is graduation?" Great song.
Course I went to school around here too, and I stayed. Family is here, work is here, good place to be and all that.
So I don't think having students here is a bad thing at all really.
On another note, my sister just started BU and I no longer live near the B line.
Students
What's been helpful to me is to figure out what parts of the area students are not living in, then live there. You give up some convenience, but gain loads of peace and quiet and quality of life.
Which begs a question:
Why should a life-time or longtime resident of a given neighborhood be driven from their neighborhood by out-of-control partying students every night? They shouldn't, imo, and there's no reason why they should have to suffer disruption and distress because of out-of-control partying, either. If students are old enough to go to college, they're old enough to be considerate of their neighbors.
Ahhhhh... the age old question:
Which came first, the college or the homeowner?
I always chuckle a little bit when a neighbor that moved in a few years ago gets mad because he moved to college neighborhood in the city. If i wanted the peace and tranquility of the suburbs, I'd move there. And I sure as hell wouldn't buy property in a college neighborhood (unless that's the atmosphere I was looking for)
In the homeowner's defense,
In the homeowner's defense, it's hard to figure out from an open house on a weekend morning what the neighborhood is going to be like on a Friday night (or a Thursday night, if the weekend starts then). When all the college students are still in bed/hung over, the neighborhood can be pretty quiet.
On another note, there are two things to remember about college students:
1. They think they're immortal, and
2. They think they own the world.
(Guilty on both counts, back when I was a college student.)
Exactly...
@In the homeowner's defense
Those two points, particularly the second one is really at the heart of the issue. I have zero problem living in Brighton 99.9% of the time, and understand by being there, what I am getting into for the most part (a predominantly young population).
I treat my neighbors with lots of respect and expect them to do the same for me...that means it is ok (and expected) for parties to be going on during weekend nights, and for there to be a generally higher noise level than in say Brookline. The problem comes when these students don't return the respect given to them, and are completely out of control and destructive/disruptive into the wee hours of weeknights, and when they litter brazenly, and when they let their own arrogance and sense of entitlement cause problems for the other 90% of the neighborhood.
Right you are, Andrew.
Good points.
It's not about precedence.
As a homeowner in Brighton since January of 1970 I can attest that our neighborhood did not have serious student issues until the late 1980's. The matter has progressively worsened in recent years despite our attempts to reach out to the Boston College student population and to work closely with the BC Administration, Boston City Councillors, Boston Police and The Mayor's Office. But the core of the matter is NOT about right of precedence. It is about maintaining a quality of life for all who live there, whenever they got there.
You get what you ask for
I seem to remember some rather voiciferous Brighton and Allston residents screaming bloody murder that the universities actually wanted to build large dorms on commercial property in the area. The nerve! Local residents couldn't be expected to put up with large numbers of students living in controlled circumstances in already busy areas with restricted access to cars and parking! It just wasn't right!
So why aren't they happy now that the predictable results have come to pass? Didn't they want rental units crammed full of unsupervised asshats and beer, with one car per asshat parked outside? Is there something about "college age population in area must live somewhere" that they didn't seem to understand?