At six feet tall, Daniel Friedman’s sunflowers grinned down at the measly petunias next door and glanced over at the flower boxes outside Friedman’s high front windows. Friedman and his neighbors had enjoyed watching the flowers grow since June, and they reached their peak just as classes began at Georgetown this fall.
Late one Friday in early September, someone ripped one of Friedman’s sunflowers out of the ground, leaving just a small dirt hole. By the following Saturday, nothing but a lone, beheaded stalk was left of what had two weeks earlier been Friedman’s experiment in front-yard gardening. Even that remaining stalk disappeared the next evening.
“It’s disgusting,” Friedman said. “A few students chose to be disrespectful. They chose to steal and destroy.”
Friedman was so upset at these transgressors that he purchased a half-page advertisement in The Hoya offering a $500 reward for information about the disappearance of his beloved sunflowers.
The four-block radius in which Friedman lives-between Prospect and O streets and 33rd and 35th streets-has epitomized University-resident relations in the past year. Tragedies and transgressions range from irksome to grave. The death of Daniel Rigby (MSB ‘05), who lived in the heart of this four-block area, raised the stakes of what has been a contentious relationship between off-campus Georgetown students and residents and the mediating role of the University.
two sides of the same story
Peppered evenly throughout this neighborhood, students and residents have clashed more often than not in West Georgetown.
The usual resident complaints abound: noise, door slamming, trash found in odd places on Saturday and Sunday mornings. But these complaints are dwarfed by larger issues: bricks thrown through windows, urination on front stoops, name calling, broken car windows and antennae and doorbells rung at 3 a.m., for example. Reported acts of this magnitude have increased over the past last year.
Students take issue with being pigeonholed. They claim that not every transgression occurring within the neighborhood has been carried out by students who live in it. Students, while facing these accusations, are also victims of the same vandalism that plagues their non-student neighbors. Students argue that they are being punished for actions of past residents of their houses. As a result, University officials say relations on these blocks have reached a boiling point.
“Last year was especially bad on this block,” Charles Vansant, Director of Student Affairs, said. “There is understandably some frustration with the things that have happened this year because it’s a longer history than just what’s happened in the seven weeks we’ve been in school.”
But calls to the Student Neighborhood Assistance Program hotline, a program provided by the University that serves as a mediary between off-campus students and Metro Police, are nearly equally split between West Georgetown and Burleith. Of the 98 calls SNAP fielded between Aug. 22 and Sept. 20, 47 percent were complaints pertaining to West Georgetown and 53 percent to Burleith.
This four-block area in West Georgetown is merely a microcosm of the problematic relationship between residents and students in Georgetown.
vibrant or violent?
Friedman moved to Georgetown a year ago. Only six years out of college himself, he chose the area because he thought it would be a fun place to live. Like other residents he cited the vibrancy and liveliness of the neighborhood as the reasons why he moved and still remains. But his optimism has waned this past year. Friedman expected more from Georgetown students.
“You guys are all intelligent, well-mannered, smart kids,” he said. “You have to be that way to get here.”
Friedman added that the noise, though loud, doesn’t anger him. Instead, the lack of respect for property and personal space incites his ire. “It just mounts and mounts,” he said.
Friedman attributes such disrespect to drinking.
“The problem is called alcohol,” he said. “On Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, you get blitzed and you act like different people.”
Friedman is not alone in his complaints. A resident of 35th St., who wished to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation from the students on his block, tells tales of obscenities and late-night curbside parties.
The situation wasn’t always so bad, this resident claimed. Offenses were milder in the years between 1998-2000. The embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya led to heightened security for Secretary of State and Georgetown resident Madeline Albright. A security officer sat in an alleyway on 35th st. between N and O sts. 24 hours a day, which, the resident claimed, was reason alone for the students not to act up. They didn’t know who the Big Brother-like authority was or what he could do.
Victoria Rixey, the president of the Citizens Association of Georgetown and a 35th street resident, admitted that the situation has worsened in the recent past. Last year was “probably the worst of any possible situation between students and residents,” she claimed. One house on the block played the consistent antagonist in countless Friday night showdowns, inciting complaints from residents and students alike.
The University attempted to meet this problem head on. The Office of Student Affairs called all residents of the 1300 block of 35th St. and the 3500 block of O St. to a 7:30 a.m. mandatory meeting only weeks after moving in. At the meeting, Vansant warned students that they had stepped into a volatile situation. But the tone of the meeting was discursive, not accusatory, emphasizing the need for respect and reason rather than anger from both residents and students.
animal house
At 4:37 a.m. on a September Sunday morning, the Metro Police Department received a complaint from a resident of 35th St. and dispatched a few police cars to one of the so-called “problem houses” on the street. The cop pounded at the front door of the alleged offender. When it opened, neither party got what he expected.
Paul Detjen (CAS ‘06) and one of his roommates had just arrived home with two friends from a late night out. As four of their other five roommates were already asleep, they did not turn on either music or the TV. Instead, they grabbed a bag of cookies, poured four glasses of milk and plopped down on their living room couches. When the police barged in, Detjen his friends were perplexed to find four MPD vehicles and one Department of Public Safety car parked on their street, lights flashing in the early morning.
“We were literally drinking milk and eating cookies,” Detjen said. “The police were just as confused as we were.”
MPD had received a complaint about their house and arrived to find the most innocuous of pastimes. The students were not told who lodged the complaint. The police left soon after they had arrived.
By now, Detjen said, he has become friends with local cops due to the frequency of the complaints lodged against his house. But Detjen’s residence has yet to receive an offense from the police. He claims that his house suffers from the actions of past residents of the block.
“I don’t think the residents realize that the students that live in this neighborhood aren’t the ones who will destroy their property,” Detjen said. “We know that the same problems could easily happen to us, being the heavily trafficked area that it is.”
Detjen’s experience is not unique. Thirty percent of SNAP’s September dispatches resulted in “no incident found,” meaning that no violations took place.
Students who vandalize often do not discriminate between student and resident houses. Another resident of the house, Nick Korn (CAS ‘06) has come across other students urinating on their stoop. Once, he said, he found someone urinating into his garbage cans from the very top of the front stoop. Their housemate’s car, as well, has suffered broken windows and side-view mirrors.
“I’m angry, but I’m not going to go blame the Georgetown student body as a whole,” Detjen said.
acronyms galore
Last year these blocks set a rocky precedent and this year off-campus quality of living, or lack thereof, has come to the fore of campus discussions.
Programs such as the SNAP hotline and the Alliance for Local Living seek to move students and residents along the road to better relationships. Vansant encourages residents to call SNAP rather than MPD, if only for the sole reason that their response time is quicker. It is also beneficial to the students.
“SNAP is like the Resident Assistant-they just report incidents,” he said. “If there’s not a problem, then I know. If there is a problem, then I know. SNAP works both ways. It’s almost always to the advantage of the student.”
While a call to SNAP inevitably results in a meeting with Vansant, MPD dispatches often result in what many consider worse: $300 noise violations.
“It’s not perfect, but it’s a good-faith effort on the part of the university that benefits everyone,” Vansant said.
Many residents, though, are not satisfied with SNAP alone and are calling on the University for more creative and stringent solutions to what they view as a quality of life issue. Adopt-a-Block, a new Georgetown University Student Association initiative presented last week, fits the creative criteria for solutions, offering student organizations the opportunity to “adopt” blocks in Burleith and West Georgetown. The initiative, GUSA President Kelley Hampton (SFS ‘05) said in a written proposal, will organize students to be a positive influence in the neighborhood in a more formalized and personal way, beautifying blocks and planning community events.
“Both sides go overboard-students are confrontational and adversarial, yes, but then so are their neighbors,” Hampton, who is also an off-campus resident, said. “No one wants to lose ground.”
ALL meetings, too, serve as a forum for neighborhood communication. Led by Rev. Kevin Wildes, S.J., the group brings together university and community members from all sides of the town-gown issue-police, landlords, residents and students-to facilitate feedback among the factions.
Detjen and three of his housemates attended last month’s ALL meeting, as well as Friedman, Rixey and other residents of the block. Such discussions, while not yet materializing discernable change, are its impetus.
“So much of the problem results from people just not understanding,” Rixey said. “I see this block as a little test case.”
tragedy strikes
Dan Rigby died on the morning of Sunday, Oct. 17 in an electrical fire that consumed the basement of 3318 Prospect Street. The house had several fire code violations. The blaze that took Rigby’s life had wide-reaching implications for all of the 1,000 students living off-campus.
Rigby’s death sparked inspections by the D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs in townhouses throughout the community. To date, more than 50 students have been evicted from their homes in the past two weeks, and the numbers will continue to rise until every townhouse in Georgetown and Burleith has been checked. The 150 violations have run the gamut from missing or inoperative fire alarms, blocked windows and exits and unsafe storage to maintenance problems such as electrical wiring and ceiling height.
Rigby’s tragic death moved the larger issues involved in off-campus student houses to the fore. Students have been forced to advocate for their safety, sending requests for inspections to the DCRA and dealing with the possible consequences. The University, for its part, has stepped forward to assure housing for affected students. And residents, witnessing the abuses of area landlords, have offered their support to students as well.
Board members of CAG, a large number of whom are lawyers, have pledged their help to off-campus students. Last week’s meeting of the board featured a discussion revolving around landlord abuse of students. The meeting resulted in quickly-materializing plans for a November or December renters’ forum featuring experts on the legal and financial implications of leasing a Georgetown townhouse. CAG has also discussed the possibility of offering legal support to recently evicted students.
“It’s not good for our happy little neighborhood, either,” Rixey said.
Residents have an incentive to see students living in safe conditions, just as students have an incentive to form amicable relationships with their neighbors.
reconcilable differences
By definition, resident-student relations change every year. They require stamina on the part of residents who grow weary of greeting new faces and awareness on the part of students whose way of life is not the same as their older neighbors. But sometimes such mutability offers a chance for change, for a positive renewal of what has hit rock bottom and must come back up.
Just as both residents and students tell different sides of each story, both have different solutions. Friedman insisted on respect as a matter of course, saying that he doesn’t have to know his neighbors to command their respect for his property.
Detjen, on the other hand, insisted that more could be gained from trying to create a neighborhood relationship based on respect instead of fear. He suggested a town meeting but feared that it would turn into a middle school dance, with residents on one side of the room and students on the other side.
“Still, at least then we wouldn’t be a faceless, drunken student body,” said Mike Zoch (MSB ‘05), who lives with Detjen. “We would be certain kids who live on their block.”
One thing that is not debated is the importance of the relationship itself. “You represent the institution at the most basic and fundamental and interactive kind of level when you live out there-neighbors recognize you not as you, first, but as a Georgetown student,” Vansant said. “I want you to feel that responsibility. Part of your responsibility is to represent your institution, because it is yours-it’s always yours. You represent the university in the most real way.”
There is no clear solution to the problematic relationship between residents and students: Georgetown will never have a leash for off-campus students, so the same issues will always cyclicly resurface. Still, there are rallying points. The need for healthy living conditions has provided the impetus for much-needed and much-deserved dialogue.
A dialogue that used to revolve around parties, garbage cans and enrollment caps is now turning towards legal rights and safe living conditions. The gravity of the situation is understood by both sides, opening lines of communication that have been closed for years and perhaps making possible a healthy town-gown relationship. But both sides must act to ensure that the discussion spurred by the recent eviction frenzy continues.
When the DCRA evicted all 15 of the students living in the School of Foreign Service fraternity house on Prospect Street last weekend, Jeanne Lord, Georgetown’s Associate Vice President for Student Affairs, carried boxes along with the students who lived in the house. That same week, CAG board members sat around a table and discussed the ways they could aid the present and future of Georgetown students living off-campus. Such activity, combined with talk that does not seem to be quieting down, promises healthier future relations between off-campus students, Georgetown residents and the University.
