INC NEWS - community input for president's committees

[John Schelp]

Hi Susan,

It's been several days since you received the message
below. When do you think you'll get a chance to post
the email addresses for the five president's
committees so citizens in the Durham community can
provide input? 

thank you,
John Schelp

****

7 April 2006

Hi Susan,

Would you, or someone else at Duke's PR office, please
forward the article below to the president's
committees? It describes the "Out of Control" parties
next to East Campus, back in 2003.

Also, it's not apparent on the new website where folks
can send input to the committees.

When you get a chance, would you please post the five
email addresses for the five committees so citizens in
the Durham community can provide input? 

thanks so much,
John Schelp

cc:
PAC2, Town-Gown, DurhamResponds, INC listservs

****

"We had been led to believe that there would be
aggressive patrolling and enforcement for the first
several weeks, partly as a means to [warn] people that
if they behaved inappropriately, there would be
consequences. For reasons we don't quite understand,
the [Durham] police were not aggressive this weekend,
and they have apologized publicly to the community for
that." 

-John Burness (shifting the blame from the behavior of
Duke students to the Durham Police)

****

'OUT OF CONTROL': Neighbors outraged at off-campus
parties (Duke Chronicle, 27 August 2003)

Many students enjoyed the first weekend of the new
semester with a few laughs, and more than a few beers,
at houses off of East Campus. Many of Duke's
neighbors, however, spent the weekend trying to avoid
drunken wanderers and stray beer cans and trying to
sleep despite music pounding through their windows
from a few doors down. In other words, they were less
than amused. 

Duke students were "out of control," according to many
neighbors and the Durham Police Department, which
admitted Tuesday it failed to carry out a no-tolerance
policy despite an understanding with the University to
do so. 

After receiving a barrage of angry e-mails and phone
calls from non-student residents of the neighborhoods
off East Campus, DPD issued what Senior Vice President
for Public Affairs and Government Relations John
Burness called a "blistering" warning. 

Students living in the Trinity Park and Trinity
Heights neighborhoods received letters Monday from
Capt. Ed Sarvis, commander of DPD's District Two,
which covers much of the area surrounding East,
warning that the DPD will severely suppress rowdy
parties beginning immediately. 

"If the Durham Police Department is called to this
home again, residents on the premises will be located,
and, at a minimum, will be criminally charged with
violating Durham City Ordinances regarding excessive
noise by way of a criminal citation," Sarvis wrote in
the letter. "If the officers responding to the scene
feel it is more appropriate, residents may be subject
to an actual physical arrest and transported to the
Durham County Jail for formal charging." 

The letter continued to warn students that Durham
officers would be cracking down on alcohol violations,
charging not only all those found to be in violation,
but also the residents in whose homes the violations
were discovered. Furthermore, Sarvis wrote that Duke
officials and faculty would be notified of students'
transgressions, as would students' parents. 

"I assume that most of the residents do have
aspirations of seeking employment once they graduate,"
Sarvis wrote. "I should not have to remind you of the
long-term problems you face by having a criminal
record, regardless of how insignificant you may feel
the offense is." Meanwhile, the University offered to
pay for whatever overtime DPD incurs over the next
several weeks in order to ensure that Durham officers
are patrolling the neighborhoods surrounding East
Campus over the weekends, Burness said. 

"We feel quite badly that this past weekend occurred
the way it did, and certainly understand why the
neighbors are very upset," Burness said. He noted that
this is not the first time the University has offered
to pay overtime for DPD. 

Burness said University officials were caught
off-guard with neighbors' reactions to the weekend's
events, as the University had been in discussions with
DPD about enforcing a strict low-tolerance to
no-tolerance policy during the first few weeks of the
academic year. 

"We had been led to believe that there would be
aggressive patrolling and enforcement for the first
several weeks, partly as a means to [warn] people that
if they behaved inappropriately, there would be
consequences," Burness said. "For reasons we don't
quite understand, the police were not aggressive this
weekend, and they have apologized publicly to the
community for that." 

Sarvis could not be reached for comment, nor could
Maj. Charles Tiffin, chief of DPD's investigative
services bureau, who contacted Trinity Park residents
through their online listserv with an admission that
Durham police responded inappropriately to last
weekend's events. Burness added that the University
has been trying to provide students with on-campus
entertainment so that they do not feel the need to
wander off campus to have a good time. 

"We're focusing on reasons to stay on campus, such as
21 Night Stand or the new media room in the [West
Edens Link]," said Vice President for Student Affairs
Larry Moneta. "But it can't be Duke's exclusive
responsibility to solve the off-campus problem. It's a
partnership." Burness said the University had hoped
that Moneta's efforts to entertain students on campus,
combined with the prerogative of Durham police to
toughen up off campus, would send the right signals to
both student and non-student residents off East
Campus. 

Instead, residents faced what many said was one of the
worst starts to a semester in years. Residents from
over two blocks away from the nearest "party homes"
said they could hear music inside their homes. One
resident said there were so many empty cups from Sam's
Quick Shop Sunday morning that it was hard to walk
down the street. 

"The issues we're dealing with have been long-term
issues, but have certainly accelerated with some
exceptional incidences over the weekend," said Don
Ball, a Trinity Park resident. "This weekend was an
example, with several large parties in our
neighborhood, as well as in Trinity Heights. Scores of
students were walking up and down the neighborhood,
being loud and boisterous, and there were lots of
garbage and residual party items left over the next
day." 

Like many residents of Trinity Park and Trinity
Heights, Ball stressed that he was not opposed to the
idea of living with undergraduates in the
neighborhood, but that students simply went too far
with their weekend festivities and not far enough when
it came to cleaning up after the parties. 

"We respect the right of everyone to have a party, but
we do expect people to leave the area clean, and that
the parties aren't so loud that they keep the
neighborhoods up," he said. "And we prefer that
students don't urinate on our houses, which happened
over this weekend." 

Betty Kriegler, another Trinity Park resident, said
her complaints about the past weekend stemmed from
both personal discomfort and from concern about the
well-being of the off-campus partygoers. 

"When I went down at midnight to the corner of
Buchanan [Boulevard] and Urban [Avenue], there were
probably about 200 drunken students going up and down
the streets, and many of them were clearly underage"  
  

Kriegler said. "One kid fell asleep on Watts Street
with his car running. It's plain old dangerous, and
not just for students." Kriegler said she was finally
able to fall asleep after 2:30 a.m., out of sheer
exhaustion. 

"We have had some very good students living in the
houses near our house, but the new group coming in is
obviously not going to act like humans and respect the
idea that this is a neighborhood, and that this might
be their parents or aunts and uncles that they're
keeping awake," she added. 

Kriegler and Ball were only two of many upset
neighbors who said that, under normal circumstances,
they love living near students for the diversity and
youthfulness they add to the neighborhoods. Since this
weekend, however, postings to Trinity Park's listserv
have clearly demonstrated a high level of frustration
amongst Duke's neighbors. 

"The listserv's been going crazy," said Berry
McMurray, another Trinity Park resident. He noted that
students' rowdiness causes concern that property
values will start to drop--a sentiment echoed by Ellen
Dagenhart, who lives in Trinity Park, but also sells
real estate in the area. 

"It's an image problem to have students partying until
all hours of the morning, with people peeing in the
yards, throwing up and acting out badly," Dagenhart
said. "It's tough to sell real estate after a party.
Who wants to live in a dump?" 

McMurray said residents are understandably worried, if
last weekend is any indication of what's to come.
"People want to head it up at the pass," he said.
Although there have been plenty of talks about the
problems students living off campus have been causing
for years, some neighbors doubt the situation will
improve significantly. 

"I personally don't think it will change," McMurray
said. "We have our own issues with the Durham Police
Department in that they don't tend to enforce speed
limits in our neighborhood. So it already appears that
the Durham police don't take this neighborhood very
seriously." Ball seemed more optimistic about the
prospect of improved relations with students. 

"We know as residents that we always go through a
re-education process every year when new students move
in," he said. "It's always a new batch of students, so
we have to communicate what our desires are and teach
and communicate about what it means to be a good
neighbor." Ball added that he lived through a similar
experience some years ago, in which off-campus
students had a rocky start in the neighborhood but
were more well-behaved after neighbors communicated
their concerns.