Next time students run riot on Fordham Road

Posted by TheYank at 9/21/2009 9:25 AM EDT

I only just came across this story from last Monday. A family in Dundalk, Co. Louth found themselves living in a neighborhood with a large population of students from the local Institute of Technology.

This is what the Daily Star says the McNamee family had to endure:
parties every weekend;
broken glass & syringes outside their house;
late night carousing;
drinking in the road;
climbing on cars;
driving on lawns;
condoms in the grass;
and, recently, women walking naked up and down the road.
Needless to say that McNamees were ticked off about this. What struck me, however, was the fact that they said that the students had made their residential area "like the Bronx."

I went to college in the Bronx and I have to say I don't remember anything like this, probably because the college I attended was for serious, well-mannered young men and women hoping to play a positive role in society. My guess is the McNamees are talking about Fordham's students. Next door to Fordham is the Bronx Zoo — enough said! However, next time Fordham's students escape the confines of the zoo the residents might well say that the students had made their neighborhood like Dundalk.

Actually, I doubt Fordham's students get up to this much anti-social behavior in the neighborhood around the University. And, I know there used to be and probably still is the occasional minor tiff between Manhattan College's students and the residents of Riverdale. Still, what the McNamees had to endure sounds extreme.

Students and families are a bad mix. Even I, as a courteous and gentlemanly young student, kept hours that would not suit families with young children. I doubt much has changed. Music and noise - even without parties - until 2 or 3 or later were, and I'm sure still are, the norm.

Fortunately for me and for the residents of Riverdale, NY I lived on campus for the full four years of college. So, my penchant for relaxing by shooting a hockey puck off the fire hydrant in our hallway only disturbed other students, who were equally good at disturbing me.

I know a lot of students like living off campus and for some it works out well. However, for the most part, students make awful neighbors. Universities should - if possible - try to ensure that students live among each other and not where families are going to be subjected to the drunken revelry and bacchanalia that is, whether we like it or not, a part of student life.