The Somerville residents who live around the Tufts campus dread the weekend. Noisy college students and parties have become a considerable nuisance for residents seeking peaceful and quiet weekend evenings. For the most part, they blame Tufts students and fraternities for all of the noise problems. Yet, to blame Tufts students and fraternities for their problems is not entirely just. It is towards the Tufts administration that Somerville should direct its opposition efforts.
This past summer, I had a job at which I worked with one of the Somerville residents who lives near Tufts. This resident explained to me that over the most recent academic years, noise and disturbances created by Tufts students in the residential neighborhoods have increased and created considerable uproar and resentment.
This resident was completely justified when he explained that it was not right for students to disturb families and residents every weekend as they wander about the streets of Somerville. Moreover, this resident was justified when he said that he hated thinking about the possibility of allocating more tax funding to the Somerville Police Department's activity in the Tufts area, so as to control the situation. Yet, have you, as a student, Somerville resident, or Tufts administrator, ever wondered why it is that noise disturbances have been on the rise recently? The reality is that Somerville must not place full blame for this on the students and the fraternities. Why?
The fraternities at Tufts have long offered a social forum for Tufts students. The fraternities at Tufts would host parties for the Tufts community on weekend nights, keeping reveling students on campus. This collective offering to the campus by the fraternities at their own financial expense presented the Somerville community with two benefits. First, as students inevitably seek out parties, fraternity social events keep them on campus, away from the residential neighborhoods where they might create disturbances for community residents. Second, students on campus are under the jurisdiction of the Tufts University Police Department and not the Somerville Police Department. The importance of this is evident: Somerville taxes were not being allocated as much towards the control of noisy students as they are now.
So, why has there been an increase in nighttime disturbances caused by the weekend revelry of Tufts students? Contrary to the University's 'official stance,' the Tufts Administration, led by University President Lawrence Bacow, acts in a manner that is discouraging towards Tufts' fraternities hosting social events. University Administration policy towards regulation of fraternity involvement in campus social life is conceived as over-zealous and often too harsh. The last few academic years have brought many students to attribute a "witch-hunt" mentality to Administrative attacks on fraternal social life liberties. Rather than managing fraternity difficulties simply as they arise, the University Administration aggressively seeks out even the most minor fraternal organization breach of University policy and punishes it, in the opinion of many students, "with wrath."
The punishments imposed by the University are not constructively designed to educate and eventually assist the fraternal organizations in taking a more productive and helpful role at Tufts and in the community. Rather than asking fraternities to do community service or imposing a sanction which might otherwise benefit the community and, ultimately, the organization itself, the University generally imposes monetary fines (adding more 'nickels and dimes' to the University's coffers) and revokes the fraternity's ability to host social events for the Tufts community. This is purely punitive sanctioning.
For the most part, Tufts imposes such sanctions regardless of the seriousness or negligibility of the infraction being addressed. The result of this aggression is the perpetual inability of a large block of the fraternities to host social events at any given time. For the University Administration, conceived by many to be ardently intent upon subduing the Greek system in order to lower its risk of financial liability, the opportunity to impose such restrictions on the fraternities must seem like a divine blessing.
While, to the average Somerville resident, these points may seem trivial, by revoking a fraternity's ability to host social events on the weekends, the University Administration essentially forces its students to find entertainment elsewhere. Unfortunately for our Somerville neighbors, "elsewhere" means off campus and in Somerville's residential areas.
Though I cannot prove that recent increases in weekend disturbances in Somerville's residential areas are directly the result of fraternal organizations' inability of to host social events, unless one is able to prove that college students are inherently rowdier in 2004 than they were in 2003, it certainly seems to be a most logical explanation.
Now, I am not suggesting that the fraternities at Tufts do not infringe on University regulations. Such would be unfair and untrue. Yet, not all fraternal infractions merit sanctions as severe as those imposed for dangerous disregard of University policy. So, next time you believe that Tufts students or fraternities are the cause of neighborhood disturbance and noise, try to reflect about what could very well be at the root of the problem -- unconstructive university handling of fraternity matters.
Somerville residents want a neighborhood free from the disturbances of weekend revelry. As a fraternity officer, my goal is the preservation and prosperity of fraternal organizations at Tufts. Unfortunately, it seems that the Tufts administration is impeding both goals. Though different, these goals share a common hindrance to their achievement.
Currently, Somerville residents and legislators seem to charge Tufts students and fraternities as responsible for the increase in weekend residential disturbances, focusing some of Somerville's public funds and resources towards opposing these two groups. Perhaps it would better serve fraternities, students, and Somerville residents to band together in order to more fully examine the root of the problem.
Jonathan A. Alpert is a junior majoring in International Relations.
