Does nobody who works at City Hall live within 2 miles of fraternity row? I’ll tell you what, asshats; on weekends I can go out to my mom’s house 3 MILES OUTSIDE OF TOWN and I can still hear those asshats’s stereos! BUM-BUH-BUMP-BUH-BUMP, all freaking weekend. And all weekend people are calling and complaining about the noise, and I can send officers to ask them to turn the shit down, but they don’t have to turn the shit OFF because they have - da dada DAH! - NOISE PERMITS! Until 1:30 A-fucking-M!
Leaving aside the complete fucking stupidity of playing music that loud anyway (why go to a party to hang out with friends if you can’t, like, CONVERSE with them?) the frat houses are situated at the edge of campus IN A RESIDENTIAL NEIGHBORHOOD. Most people around here work for a living, and this being the crappy town this is, I guarantee most of’em don’t have the weekends off.
Remember last year, Mr. Mayor? Remember when some irate citizen called YOU in the middle of the night to complain the cops weren’t doing anything? You called and bitched and made them shut it down, even though the noise permits YOUR OFFICE ISSUED didn’t expire for another half hour. Makes a difference when it’s your sleep being interrupted, doesn’t it, you baldheaded self-important little prick? Here’s an idea; next time the local fratboy morons come into the office asking permission to destroy the peace of all and sundry for a 3 mile radius, tell them to take their beer bongs and their subwoofers and cram’em. Quietly.
Having gotten into a bit of noise wars while in college, I have to second this: Bagpipes are trump. If you can just barely begin to match volume you’ll win.
effing business majors who thought that everyone followed their stupid exam schedules, always having massive after mid-term parties the night before science majors had major mid-terms. Always.
Wouldn’t it be better to broadcast christian hymns at a loud volume on Sunday mornings right when religious services are going on? I know that would make me cry.
Hmm. If there is a legal method for the frat houses to make so much noise, there must be a legal mthod to oppose them, too. Find out when and how these permits are issued; they should be public documents, Then when the permits are due to be renewed, file written protests or petitions with multiple signatures opposing their renewal.
This won’;t work if the city created the permits solely to extort money from the frats. But City Hall can ignore irate citizens in pursuit of the almighty dollar for only so long. If nothing else works, call the Mayor at home every time there’s a problem. He’ll get the point.
Hmm. If there is a legal method for the frat houses to make so much noise, there must be a legal mthod to oppose them, too. Find out when and how these permits are issued; they should be public documents, Then when the permits are due to be renewed, file written protests or petitions with multiple signatures opposing their renewal.
This won’t work if the city created the permits solely to extort money from the frats. But City Hall can ignore irate citizens in pursuit of the almighty dollar for only so long. If nothing else works, call the Mayor at home every time there’s a problem. He’ll get the point.
Since this “noise permit” has to be granted by the town authorities, putting political pressure on them is the way to resolve this.
Contact the local City Council person about this. And have others do so, too. Calling them at home late at night when this happens is a good way to bring it to their attention in a personal way. And ask the police to speak to them about it – they don’t like being called out on this, only to find they noisemakers have a permit. Ask the police ot oppose their next request for a noise permit.
If that doesn’t get a response, then bfing out the big guns.
Get someone to start runing against the City Council person in the next election. Write up a campaign flyer referring to this, and explaining why it illustrates that the current City Council member has “lost touch” with the residents, and ignores them in favor of City Hall inside politics.
You don’t even have to spend money printing a lot of those flyers. Just print one, and send it to the City Council member’s house. Or get a list of his supporters/contributors, and send a few to their houses. Word will get to the Council member very fast.
Next time there’s a noisy party like this, go around at 1am and knock on doors in the neighborhood, saying: “It’s not a usual time for this, but since that party is keeping you awake anyway, I’m going around trying to get contributions for my campaign against the incumbent Council member, who allowed them to get a noise permit that runs till 1:30am, keeping us all awake. Would you like to contribute something to this campaign?”
Let the local news media know about this “Midnight Doorknock” – they’ll love a story like this. Especially tell them if you manage to get any number of campaign contributions from this.
It won’t take much like this before the issue of noise permits is on the agenda of a City Council committee. And your City Council member is being very publicly concerned about this ‘problem’ in his district.
My girlfriend used to live in an apartment building where the central common area was packed with loud, all-night parties on weekends and yammering jackasses every other night of the week. I always wanted to bring in dozens of shouting people at six in the morning for a coffee party.
I live in a college town. We have noise ordinances governing how loud your music is in your car and governing how late party goers can be a bother to their neighbors. Of course these policies are never enforced. My friend, who lives right next to a property rented by a bunch of partiers calls the police a few times a week, they sometimes go over to tell the kids to shut up but they’re right back at it the next night. It sucks. The college drunks also go on a vandalizing spree practically every weekend but not much is done about that either.
They issue noise permits around here, but with the anti-student attitude, they wouldn’t give the results posted here. The level of noise allowed is so low as to be ineffective in protecting partiers. Even someone snoring in their beds can be loud enough for a citation. The parties that I go to never bother getting permits, as it just tell the PD “PArty here! Come for the noise, stay for the alcohol violations!”. They have been written up a couple of times, and they don’t even play music! The noise is just from people talking, etc.
Around here, its easier to tell the neighbors what is going on and to come over and let you know if its too loud, that way they might ask you to keep it down rather than dragging the police into it.
The neighborhood where I used to live was a pretty quiet one. The only problems were from newbie residents who didn’t grok the “rules.”
One night some college kids were having a beer blast across the street, complete with blaring bad 80s pop at volume 11. And since it was Summer, my windows were open, as were theirs.
So I got a clever idea. I figured a bunch of college kids wouldn’t want an old fogey like me hanging around. So I rang their doorbell, and when a partier came down, I said “Listen, either turn the noise down, or at least invite me in.” The guy answered “Come on up, dude!”
I was here first. Oh, not before the colleges themselves, but I was born, raised, and became a tax-paying citizen before these little snotnoses had learned their ABCs.
Are you kidding? He’s lucky the 50 or so drunken fratboys that were still conscious didn’t beat him into a pulp. My cops found him a couple of blocks away wandering around in circles in someone’s front yard.
Meanwhile I fielded a call from another fraternity about yet a 3rd fraternity that was throwing beer bottles at their house.
Oh, yeah, it was alumni weekend. Having never attended one of my own alumni weekends, can anyone tell me: Does that mean there were alums (i.e., ADULTS) in attendance at this last weekends frat parties? Or do graduates generally not revisit the beer bongs, date rapes, and projectile vomiting of their youths?
