I’ve been watching the growing controversy between the “new and improved” noise ordinance and RPI students. Normally, I wouldn’t be writing this, but a recent trip to visit my parents in Binghamton, New York has prompted me to write this.

In Binghamton, arrests for noise violations are few and far between, and it’s not because there aren’t any parties going on in the city there. The city council and a neighborhood association, much like the Beman Park one, dug up an old city ordinance that was never enforced. The ordinance stated that in certain residential zones no more than three unrelated persons could reside in a single dwelling, be it an apartment or a house. Bear in mind that a majority of the university’s off-campus population lived in these zones.

Now, parties don’t bring tickets for noise violations; sometimes they bring eviction notices. I guess if I had to choose, I’d take the fine over being homeless. Maybe the grass really is greener here.

RPI students are up in arms because they feel they are being unfairly targeted by the police for noise violations. Maybe what they and the rest of the RPI population fail to realize is that they are paying for the actions of those hundreds and thousands of students that came before them who may have raised hell, vomited on a neighbor’s lawn, blocked a driveway, caused damage, etc. While it is not fair for the residents of Troy to assume that the next batch of students are going to be as bad, or worse, than the ones before, it’s a completely understandable bias. But this bias, like any other form of ignorance can and must be overcome by vigilance and patience.

The point I’m trying to make here is that both sides need to have a dialogue in which they try to understand the other’s point of view. Maybe the residents of Troy forgot what it was like to be a college student. In a few years, the students of RPI may know what it’s like to be a neighbor in a “college town” like Troy.

I warn the RPI administration that this issue is not to be taken lightly. They should be focusing on this issue rather than the fact that the Senate “made a resolution without the Institute’s knowledge” and “the Senate and the Institute should be one ...” I find it extremely ironic that the administration can raise tuition, reduce graduate program funding, and move whole departments around campus with little to no student input. The administration then claims their actions to be in the best interests of the student body. Only when the representatives of the student body speak out as a whole does the administration jump into the fray. Maybe this will set a pattern for years to come. One can only hope.

Jeffrey D. Balcom