Hello everyone. I’d like to take this column to discuss recent events concerning RPI students and the city of Troy. The city of Troy and the police department have taken measures that are approaching harassment. Before I go into further detail, I want to stress that this is an issue that impacts every student that lives off-campus and the general RPI student population. This is an issue that very fundamentally affects the relationship between RPI and Troy.
Recently, two fraternity presidents were arrested for apparent noise violations. The pattern seems to involve the police showing up to a fraternity’s house on the night of a party and, without any prior warning, arresting the house president for noise violations. In one instance, when the police showed up, the party had already ended and there was no noise occurring. Despite the lack of actual evidence, the house president was arrested on the spot.
Beyond this there has been some amount of harassment of RPI students, both greek and independent, living off-campus. The most dominant theme of these events is the lack of prior warning by the police before harsh sanctions are applied. This sudden shift in attitude towards the RPI student community flies in the face of the stated desire of community and university relationships. Such relationships are not built on intimidation and harassment.
Some of the other acts recently taken by the police department include the sudden, much harsher application of parking laws in the 12th and 13th street district north of campus. Also, several greek houses were threatened by police that arrests would be made if certain relatively minor violations, such as having an empty propane canister on the front porch, were not alleviated. While the police are quite within their legal right, there is no cause for the sudden and hostile change in attitude.
At the time being there is a lack of information regarding the full picture of why these changes are occurring. A few things are known, such as the complaints made by various community groups to the Troy City administration and the RPI administration about student behavior in off-campus housing. It is worth wondering why there is such a sudden shift when students’ behavior has, if anything, gotten better over the last several years.
There is legitimacy in some of the complaints that are made by the community groups. Certainly there have been instances where parties have gotten out of control and property damage has occurred. However, this is not the rule, this is the exception, and treating the whole student population as would-be criminals is not called for.
Furthermore, if the community groups and the City of Troy want to see behavior change, there are far better ways than setting the police on a mission to arrest students without warning students. This only creates negativity between the groups, and in the long term will lead to more problems. Communiversity is something that needs to work in all directions.
At this point there is much more information that needs to be acquired and discussion needs to occur. Clearly there is a problem and it needs to be addressed somehow. Right now the current approach by the police and the city government is only creating another problem.
I urge students to contact the Troy Mayor’s office to voice your concerns. I will also be spending time with RPI administrators and hopefully Troy administrators to work out constructive solutions. Please contact me with any feedback or comments. Good night everyone.
