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Articles
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| Gallaudet’s new rules calm Northeast neighborhood |
VOICE writes, "Gallaudet’s new rules calm Northeast neighborhood
BY BEN WEINSTEIN
Gallaudet University recently extended its conduct rules to include student behavior off campus — a change made after years of complaints about loud, unruly parties in Northeast Capitol Hill neighborhoods.
Students accused of violating the code of conduct off campus are now subject to the same disciplinary process previously reserved for on-campus offenses. And both university officials and Northeast residents say the change has already quieted the neighborhood.
“It was helpful. It was extremely helpful,” Northeast resident Eric Kerensky said, adding that before the recent code amendment, off-campus parties kept neighbors awake on any given day of the week until 3 a.m. “The parties were unbelievable.”"
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But until a new group of administrators reassessed the school’s policy, Gallaudet couldn’t punish students in all but the most serious cases for what they did just blocks away from campus. Kerensky said he and his neighbors were discouraged to learn that the university’s code, unlike rules at other institutions in the city, seemed to turn a blind eye on students once they are outside the school’s gated grounds.
Residents said typical late-night scenes around Eighth Street, NE, included intoxicated partygoers urinating on houses, breaking bottles and screaming until early in the morning. Police officer James Burgess recounted a story about a drunken driver leaving an off-campus house party, with another intoxicated man “surfing on the roof of the car.”
That driver was arrested. But because they are deaf or hard of hearing, rowdy Gallaudet students had been let off easy compared to others engaging in similar behavior, according to residents and police officials.
Kerensky said that when he confronted disorderly students, they would “play dumb,” adding that they displayed an attitude of impunity, as if they had learned most hearing people will back down from an argument with a deaf person for fear of appearing discriminatory. “You’d get their attention while they’re peeing and wave to them, and they’d say, ‘what?’ ... It’s insulting.”
Several officers experienced the same thing. “When I opened the door, it was like, ‘I don’t understand you, I don’t know what you’re talking about,’” Burgess said this week at a police-citizen meeting.
Lt. Barbara Hawkins said that before last spring, officers often just told partygoers to pour out their drinks and go inside the house, partly for fear of appearing discriminatory.
“So that was one of the biggest things we were trying to address,” Hawkins said, referring to the “special treatment” the students received.
But others think a wild Gallaudet student should be treated like any other out-of-control college kid.
“This is not a news flash that college students have parties,” said Near Northeast advisory neighborhood commissioner Anne Phelps. (Residents and school administrators said it is important to note that not all people at these parties were students. Deaf and hard-of-hearing residents live throughout Northeast.)
Resident and Police Service Area 102 volunteer citizen coordinator David Klavitter agreed. “It’s not unlike a typical college community,” he said, adding that people are surprised that Gallaudet students yell and play music at blaring levels — they dance to the thumping bass.
Klavitter said he advocated building a relationship with residents, police officers and the university to solve problems, much in the way other District neighborhoods have dealt with universities in their areas.
Kerensky said he had been trying that tactic for a few years before it worked. In the past few years, Kerensky said he had called the university periodically about the off-campus parties, but until he got in touch with Richard Lytle, he had mostly been ignored. “Richard’s been amazing,” Kerensky said of Lytle, special assistant to the university president.
“Richard’s been really so responsive,” Phelps said. “I was amazed. ... I felt like it was an unprecedented response,” she added of an incident last spring in which Lytle showed up to a late-night party to witness first hand what residents had seen for years.
“For the past few years, Gallaudet has gotten very tough on the alcohol and drug policy,” Lytle said. After being caught twice breaking those rules on campus, students are forced to move off campus.
But, Lytle said, that had the unintended consequence of displacing problem behavior to surrounding neighborhoods. And because the university’s rules did not extend off campus and its security officers cannot leave to deal with off-campus problems, students knew they would not be punished.
After the university changed its code of conduct, students were not only notified of the new policy but had it explained to them. Lytle said Gallaudet doesn’t intend to punish students with the policy. Instead, he said, it wants students to understand that their actions reflect on the university.
“There’s something bigger here at stake than just the right to party,” Lytle said, adding that most students cherish the university and understand their behavior is representative of the student body.
The other key to calming the neighborhood’s problems has been the police, specifically the Metropolitan Police Department Fifth District’s Deaf and Hard of Hearing Unit, Kerensky said. “They are my saints in all this,” he said, singling out officer Myra Jordan. “She understood the psyche there.”
Residents are encouraged with what they have seen so far, Kerensky said.
“This is three-quarters of the way to a success story. ... We’re on the right track ... and we plan to hold them to it.”
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Posted on Sep 12, 2007 19:26pm.
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