Earlier today, we ran a post about the general sentiment that the Citizens Association of Georgetown and residents feel toward the 2010 Campus Plan draft that the University presented in November, as shown in the first public meeting about the plan ever to discuss a coherent strategy to combat it.

For the sake of brevity—and it was still kind of a monster post—we isolated a presentation that CAG Vice President Gianluca Pivato, of “fuck off” fame, gave about the information CAG compiled when it researched the impact of students on the neighborhood.

It’s town-gown tensions by the numbers.

Pivato demonstrated the impact students living in Georgetown and Burleith have had on the neighborhood in terms of the space they take up, the trash they generate, and the 911 calls and arrests they invite. Pivato was clearly going for shock factor, and he got it, most of all with a Google Map which boasted a red marker for every undergraduate household in Burleith and Georgetown, and a blue one for every graduate student household. With more than 400 markers total appearing on the screen, the map elicited a gasp from the audience.

According to Pivato, who based his numbers on what seemed like thorough research through neighborhood listservs and city-reported statistics, the neighborhoods around the University could be described in terms of …

… the number of students currently living in Burleith and West and East Georgetown, and the number of houses they occupy. Currently, 1,109 graduate students live in the area, and Pivato and his team were able to confirm that they live in at least 79 houses, which they except to rise to at least 124 houses when their enrollment numbers increase. “[This] will considerable displace undergraduates” further into the community, he said. Undergraduates living in Georgetown and Burleith number 1,305 and occupy over 350 houses.

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Spring is in the air, and Burleith residents are concerned that the noise from partygoing Georgetown students is, too. So the Burleith Citizens Association has offered new a way to combat students students’ noise and “nuisance properties”—a database where residents can make their complaints about noisy, unkempt, or trash-filled properties a ‘historical record.’

In an e-mail to the Burleith listserv, BCA President Lenore Rubino advised residents to call 911 in addition to Georgetown’s party-busting service, the Student-Neighbor Assistance Program, when they want to report a noise problem. (“MPD has always advised us to use 911.”) But she also said that residents should use a new e-mail address to make an additional record of the problem house.

“Document what happened by sending an email to the BCA at
burleith911@gmail.com,” she wrote. “This new email will enable the BCA to maintain an historical database of all calls and events.” The database, the BCA said, would give neighbors a way to provide additional oversight on noise issues when talking to the Metropolitan Police Department and the Georgetown administration.

“Try to include as much information (address, time, description of noise). While the BCA welcomes photographs and videos, please make sure you follow privacy laws,” Rubino wrote, recommending the Wikipedia page for “Photography and the law.”

Meanwhile, the University is preparing for Spring partying, too. On March 24, Anne Koester, the director for Student Affairs, sent an e-mail out to the Georgetown community reminding residents of SNAP’s services.

Photo from Flickr user Ivy Dawned used under a Creative Commons license.

At the beginning of the 2008-2009 school year, the Metropolitan Police Department began party patrols to monitor Burleith and West Georgetown from 8:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. five nights a week, including weekend nights,  according to e-mails exchanged between Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners and MPD Second District officers.

Michelle Milam, who at the time was lieutenant of the PSA in which Georgetown is located (PSA 206), said that the patrols were concentrated in Burleith, where the majority of complaints were coming from. That concerned ANC Commissioner Ron Lewis, who said his West Georgetown constituents were just as disturbed by the noise as Burleith residents. He wrote:

[P]lease, let’s end these back and forth e-mails … Just tell us, please, short and simple, that there will be equal patrolling by the “party patrol” officers in west Georgetown and Burleith.”

Milam replied, “Yes, there will be active patrolling in all parts of Georgetown by PSA 206 members.”

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Looks like our neighbors are tired of hearing about how awesome our slices of Philly P’s are. In response to a large number of neighbor complaints, DPS officers have been patrolling the Prospect, 35 Street, and 36 Street corridors to crack down on late-night student noise.

Denise Cunningham, President of the Citizens Association of Georgetown, first referenced the patrols in the May 2009 CAG newsletter [PDF]:

Community representatives meet with Georgetown personnel monthly and this topic has long been on the agenda. It was also discussed at great length with President Jack DeGoia at a recent meeting where very candid and helpful dialogue took place. The topics at the top of the list are student housing, student behavior and transportation.

A very positive recent result from these meetings is the installation of roaming Department of Public Safety officers on the Prospect, 35th and 36th street corridors to shut down late night noise from students making their way back to campus.

In an e-mail, Associate Director of the Department of Public Safety Joseph Smith confirmed that DPS officers have been patrolling all areas of West Georgetown that are University-owned.

Smith wrote that when the officers come across students being too loud, they will “diplomatically seek their compliance.”  He also said that officers do not routinely issue citations for noise, but may take down a student’s information “when appropriate.”

This is the first of seven installations of  “Better Know an ANC Commissioner,” Vox’s interviews with the representatives that comprise Advisory Neighborhood Commission 2E. The ANC is Georgetown residents’ primary voice in local government. When the average student marries a homogenous conception of “the neighbors” with “the Man” that puts him or her down for making noise, he or she is thinking of the ANC.

Ron Lewis’ kingdom (above) sits Northwest of the University in the middle of the Georgetown neighborhood. The former CAG member was reelected to his second two-year term on the ANC in November. Students may know the new ANC chair’s name: last year, he co-sponsored the unpopular off-campus keg ban.

Below, Lewis, an attorney who has moved between government jobs and business ventures discusses changes ‘the neighbors’ would like to see in GUTS bus routes, noise violations, community safety, and said keg ban.

You co-sponsored a controversial off-campus keg ban with [former student ANC commissioner] Jenna Lowenstein [COL '09]. What was the rationale behind that?

Our position was very clear—was that there should be the same rules about kegs on campus or off campus, and that it wasn’t fair for either the students or the community to push parties off campus, which having stricter party rules on campus does. Since the University had decided on a keg policy on campus-what we were saying was that you need to make it fair.

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Georgetown’s student body didn’t exactly receive a warm welcome back in their inboxes this Wednesday. In a campuswide email and in typical no-notice style, Georgetown administrators told student that the Metropolitan Police Department “are again authorized—and intend—to issue 61D Citations for excessive noise”—which land for any rowdy students unlucky enough to cross MPD with a fine and an arrest record.

When they say “again authorized,” they mean of course the MPD crackdown that accompanied the administration’s monstrously harsh alcohol policy last September. The crackdown included a flurry of alcohol and noise violation citations. But where did the pressure for MPD to resume handing out noise violations come from?

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