The contentious relationship between Georgetown neighbors and University students hit a new low this week with the rise of DrunkenGeorgetownStudents.com. The site is run by Stephen R. Brown, a cantankerous Burleith resident with a camera and limited website design skills and publishes damning photographs and commentary about the weekend partying habits of his student and “young professionall [sic]” neighbors. The photos, which show Georgetown students socializing on their balconies, backyards, and roofs, originally identified party locations by address.
After receiving numerous complaints from students, Brown’s original host server asked Brown to blur students’ faces, remove their addresses and eventually asked him to remove the site entirely. Unfazed, he relocated to DrunkenGeorgetownStudents.blogspot.com. Members of the Georgetown community should continue to voice their opposition to Brown’s tactics, regardless of which host server is currently foolish enough to publish them.
Brown’s website is shameful and petty at best, and illegal at worst. Accusing his subjects of being “frequently violent and unreasonable,” and referencing their “crimes related to alcoholism and ‘puiblic disturbances [sic],’” students pictured on Brown’s site might be able prove a false-light claim under D.C.’s Public Defamation Law. According to the Citizen Media Law Project, part of the Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, students could sue for false light “when a false and offensive statement is made about them to the public and causes them distress.”
Legal issues aside, Mr. Brown’s site goes beyond reporting and recording crime, veering into vigilantism. Speaking to students on his blog, he said he hopes “this locartion may stand between you and a good job [sic] … Perhaps in the future you will feel a little twinge that perhaps the time you kept your neighbors up all night is the reason they said they chose the other candidate.” Purposefully harming the reputation of the University and its students is not only mean-spirited, but will discourage future communication between neighbors and the University.
The heartening reaction by Georgetown students and administrators to Brown’s site show that the campus community can get results when it is united and committed to a single cause. Too often in debates between the University and residents, neighbors accuse students of being childish and unengaged in local issues. Certainly those claims hold less water today, when one of their own acts as thoughtlessly as Brown has over the course of the last few weeks.
Hiding behind his camera and a serious misappropriation of the First Amendment, Brown pretends to be fighting for the rights of his community, but his site is little more than grandstanding. Kooks like Brown can gain momentary attention with their loud and shameful tactics, but in the end, reasonable discourse and the University community will win the day.
A BIT one-sided, I’d say….
HELLOOOOO??? Where the heck is the rest of the story? This looks pieced together from online searches with no real investigating. Come on, even if he is wrong, you can write better than this type of gossipy piece!
As a parent with a student at Georgetown, I have been following the discussions regarding the relationship of Georgetown residents with Georgetown University residents. One would think that the community at large would welcome the advantages Georgetown University affords them. I do know other colleges in residential communities that have been treated with far more respect and civility than it appears Georgetown residents offer to Georgetown University. While there may be disadvantages the positives far outweigh the negatives.
Community groups and University groups should be able to focus on those positives and find a more accomodating approach to a productive dialog to resolve their differences. Limiting services to students (such as GUTS issue, and parking),posting pictures in an attempt to intimidate students, or making crude comments in public meetings is not a productive use of time and resources to solve the issues at hand. Good faith discussions should be just that, good faith that both parties are looking for a solution to common issues and not an opportunity to force one sides agenda.
Keep writing and communicating your issues. I applaud your efforts. Eventually people with a vision of a community that benifits from the positives of the University and acknowledges their part in the negatives may be forthcoming with a more productive problem solving approach to common issues.