Georgetown established the Student Neighborhood Assistance Program with the intention of providing an intermediary between students and the Metropolitan Police Department. Residents would report loud student parties to the SNAP hotline instead of the police, and students would receive a warning from a SNAP representative rather than a citation from MPD. Next month, MPD will begin operating the hotline. By turning SNAP over to MPD, the University is not only doing a disservice to students, but also abandoning its commitment to improving neighborhood relations. Despite its flaws, SNAP should remain under University control.
Under the current SNAP program, residents can call the hotline Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights to report noisy parties. Department of Public Safety officers answer the call and then dispatch a SNAP representative to the party to warn the students that the next complaint will be handed off to MPD. Calls to the SNAP hotline placed outside of hours of operation are forwarded directly to MPD. When MPD assumes control of the program, MPD officers will be dispatched to the scene with the ability to sanction students at their discretion.
This change in policy totally undermines the purpose of SNAP. The goal of the program is to rein in noisy, late night parties without police intervention. Supposedly, residents will be pleased because the noise will stop and students will be happy that they did not receive a noise violation and fine from MPD. If all hotline calls are redirected to MPD, the number of noise violations will undoubtedly rise, since officers will be reluctant to issue warnings and risk wasting time by returning to some houses repeatedly. The already tenuous relationship between students and residents will become even tenser, as students angered by fines and citations will resent their neighbors for calling the police.
As it exists, SNAP is a flawed program. Students visited by SNAP representatives are automatically reported to University authorities and are required to meet with administrators whether or not they receive violations. Often SNAP representatives arrive at the same time as or even after MPD officers, making their “warning” totally ineffective. However, a MPD operated SNAP program is a complete farce. The program will cease to exist since officers will not be required to give warnings upon their first visit to a house. Calling SNAP will be synonymous with calling the police.
The University professes a commitment to off-campus student life and to the preservation of neighborhood relations. Instead of seeking to reform a program that strives to address these commitments, the administration has simply written it off. The ease with which it has forsaken the SNAP program demonstrates that Georgetown is less concerned with solving problems and more interested in abandoning them.
