College Students are Not Children

As I have mentioned in previous posts, I live in a neighborhood that is infested with ill-mannered college students. They are so immature that they think it's funny to perch couches atop parking meters, smash bottles in the street, and throw garbage onto resident's lawns (I saw this firsthand the other night at 4 a.m. when I was awoken by some loud mouthed whore).

Yesterday I was flipping through the local news broadcasts and they were all running a story about how the city's building inspectors were going to off-campus apartment buildings to make sure they were all up to code. Last year, a party-college about thirty miles down the pike had an off campus fire that was the result of a smoldering couch that caught fire. Of course, the fire alarm had the batteries removed. I guess the remote needed a couple of double a's. But blame the landlord!

You all know that I went through grief to get my landlord to fix my door after three years of it being barred by a large 2x4. I have lived in my building since 1994, and I have seen kids come and go. They'll take a beautiful apartment and turn it into shit in 4 months. What really pisses me off is that these colleges (there are two on opposite ends of town) all have an orientation for students and parents. Why can't they bring up the fact that the city requires garbage to be bagged in city bags that have to be purchased? No, these kids just throw it whereever. Or how about suggesting that the students NOT get any pets? The cunts that previously lived below us let their cat out once they got a yappy dog that they never took care of either, and now we have yet ANOTHER cat roaming without a home, because they got bored with it. Or even, I know I'm stretching it here for their little minds, let them know that there ARE noise ordinances, and screaming WOOOOOOOOOOO! at the top of your drunken lungs at 3 a.m. is not funny, it's not cute and as soon as I find out which new car your daddy bought you, it's getting keyed.

This is the reason it took me so long to get my door fixed. These kids ruin everything that they are given. They think nothing of putting their heads through the walls (the football players couldn't play for a REAL college team, so they have to prove their worth somehow, I guess).

The next time I see a pair of 'rents dropping off their spawn, I'm going to ask them why they are sending their children, their precious dna, to a school that is smack dab in the middle of growing urban decay and drug shoot outs. Last night, they thought it was funny to light off some kind of loud explosives. It could have been gunshots, but I don't really care anymore. If one of them is lying in the street, let 'em bleed to death. It's not my problem and it's one more parking space that's now open.

My landlord just put up yet another banister required by building codes on the front steps. I give it a week before they knock it loose for the umpteenth time. I just hope the building inspectors see it functioning and upright before the little turds have a chance to pry it loose again.

Maybe I'll call the student affairs director and him/her know that residents don't really care about whether or not a second floor porch rail can hold 5 intoxicated students without breaking. I mean, they're in COLLEGE, they should know a few laws of physics, right? Maybe I'll suggest that instead of having the Key Club have an outdoor slumber party to increase homelessness awareness, perhaps they can go around with garbage bags on a weekend morning and pick up after their fellow classmates. That at least would be a cause that would at least show some kind of effect on the community.

I've never seen worse behavior coming from young adults as I see coming from "college students."

Not only are they useless, but they are destructive, entitlement-minded nimrods who will somehow graduate college, find a job, marry, procreate and talk incessantly about their college daze.

I live in an area in PA where there are 4 very big colleges. I drive through the neighborhoods where these so-called "students" live and it looks like a ghetto. People - usually people from a PA neighboring state - buy up a lot of the area's big, old stately mansions and turn them into college housing. What a disgrace. The landlord is out of the area so he doesn't give a hang what the place looks like.

Meanwhile, these assholes are damaging property, trashing the houses and nobody cares. Neighbors complain but nothing is done purposely so when the neighbors eventually get fed up and move, another slum lord asshole can buy the property and rent it to students. It's like a cancer eating away at the neighorhoods of a college town.

KidFreeLuvnLife:
I think we're from the same area. Are those stately mansions you mention named after a certain beer? If so, one is on the corner of my street. In fact, my friend's mother was one of the children of that beer-baron family name. She said she lived in that home with servants growing up, and she could walk home at 2 a.m. and not worry. As the families began to "give" the properties to the college, the neighborhood grew worse and worse, she said. It's a shame, really, as some of the buildings are quite lovely, with victorian and turn of the century features.

Recently, the college purchased a piece of land with a small garage on it that bordered my apartment building. It was nice to go on my back deck and be completely enclosed by the garage and the two trees that grew next to it. It was so secluded, that DH and I could go out naked at night in the summer and soak up the night air, without anyone seeing us. Now? Not a chance. The college ripped down the garage, cut down the two trees and paved it over (insert Joni Mitchell Big Yellow Taxi lyrics here - That's Right. Big Yellow Taxi, NOT Paved Paradise, you fucking idiots!). Now we can see all the way to the next street over, and any star gazing has been screwed as now the lights from the huge parking lot drown out the night sky.

I've already ranted about these wastes of human meat, so I won't repeat myself. The University of Vermont has students out on street corners trying to get the message out to fellow students: It's not cool to make noise, litter, or relieve oneself on someone's shrub at 2AM. No idea if it's actually working.

They're all entitlement minded, just like their parents.

Not that I don't go bar hopping and get liquored up frequently, but I I'm not a walking public nuisance afterward.

CF VTer, you wouldn't have a link to the story on that would you? I would love to send it to the dean of off-student housing that I just called. I know this woman takes complaints seriously, as the asshats from a few years ago got mighty pissed at me that they got called into her office due to my complaint. I'd like to send the info off to her, maybe give an idea to the students who DON'T piss on other people's property.

Ya know, I went to a big school, I mean, a really BIG school. I lived off campus, even next to Frat Row in my senior year, and I never saw such idiotic behavior as I do from the idiots in my hometown. There was no roaming of boozed up students in the middle of the night where I went to school.

The sad thing about what's happening in our town is that the college only gives between 65-75k per year in lieu of taxes. That's right. All those buildings and land in prime downtown area, and they only cough up that much. BTW< tuition for this school is upwards of 16k per year/semester. I nearly fell over from the arrogance of one student who proclaimed that they (students) shouldn't have to pay parking tickets because of all the revenue they bring into the town. WTF? What revenue? Their parents buy all their crap from whatever local Mall-Wart they live by, not from locally owned stores.

I know this is a CF board, but these "legal adults" are the products of the BNP mindset. Yea, the future's so bright, I gotta wear a bullet proof vest. Ugh.

I hate it when I hear about young people acting like asses. These morons give the rest of us a bad name! My husband and I are 22 years old, and we live in a college town (I'm getting my M.A. from the university in town). We are responsible, seldom drink (and when we do, it's ONE DRINK), and are both well-spoken and educated (my husband went to culinary arts school and is now employed as a sous chef in a local restaurant). Even when I was an undergrad and living in a college dorm, I was an adult and I acted like one. I was more often the exception than the rule, but I'm grateful to my parents for raising me to be a positive contribution to society, rather than a lazy entitled brat.

I also notice idiotic behavior from the students in the apartments the school rents; I'm going to be a sophomore this fall and I'm shocked at how immature these 'adults' act. I remember last Halloween being at my neighbor's apartment and my roommates and their drunken friends hurling beer cans at his window. A few weeks ago while walking home from class, someone hurled a soda can off their balcony and landed a couple feet in front of me and exploded. Someone painted graffiti all over the mailbox next to the apartment building and when no one confessed, everyone got fined in order to repair the damage (only about a buck, but still). My roommate's boyfriend and friend were wrestling in the bedroom and they knocked a huge hole in the wall, which we had to pay for. The list goes on, and it's only my first year!

The thing that gets me is that at least one student Darwinizes themselves each year. Last summer - before I got there - someone fell off their balcony, and some dumbasses go balcony-hopping when they live on the tenth floor. As far as I'm concerned, people this stupid deserve to be removed from the gene pool; it's kind of scary to think that these people may one day graduate, hold jobs, and have kids. I'm ashamed to admit some of these fuckers are my classmates.

I've gotten word that the school is involved in a five-year project to make some new apartment buildings closer to the school. The building they're going to use is allegedly an old insane asylum. The current buildings have studio and one-bedroom apartments, but the new building is going to have two-bedroom apartments...and school officials believe they're going to be able to cram six people into one apartment. Thankfully, I'll have my degree by the time this happens - can you imagine the insanity this will cause? People will be flinging beer bottles and furniture off their balconies and into the road.

ok, insane asylum, my first reaction is.. no change of clients there.. then i think as i live near a mental hospital for the criminally insane (really nasty people there, moors murderers, nilssen and a few others) it has an atmosphere, dear god imagine sleeping in a room that people so sick lived.. you cant tell me it would affect them.. but then again a lot of student are monsters, we just creating a new level.

i know when they demolished my school, and built houses, they can hear kids roaming the houses, and these are normal kids.. insane people.. dear god watch for serial killers etc.. come from there

*********************************************************************************************************************************
I just post the stories, for interest.. for everyone

Lord, what fools these mortals be!
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III, Scene ii

Voltaire said: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

H.L.Mencken wrote:"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. Albert Einstein

Imagine these destructive, vile little beasts as your students and you will have a glimpse into the hell that is a college professor's life these days.

I have another ten years or so before I will be able to retire comfortably, but I have considered it.

As the senior member in my department, I am no longer required to teach the bonehead, elementary composition classes and have the freedom to teach only literature courses. Even with that freedom, the quality of the students has slipped every year in memory.

Honestly Mercurior, it can't be much worse than the apartments we live in now. There's been a lot of suicides in the apartments - my friend Justin told me that the guy who used to live in his old apartment had killed himself in the bathroom. Another student who used to live in my neighbors' old apartment hung himself in the closet. I'd think people would be more creeped out being in rooms where people died than being in rooms where mentally ill people were treated, but that's just me. I don't know if any of you believe in ghosts, but the apartment buildings are allegedly haunted...probably with the spirits of the students who offed themselves. If you look for haunted places in Pittsburgh, Allegheny Center will come up.

I'm in my 30's now & still don't understand why college students get to still be "kids". I'm confounded anytime I hear parunts refer to their "child" who's in college, & how they dote over them and treat them like they're 12 year olds going to summer camp.

When I graduated high school, I was an adult- THAT'S THAT!!! There was none of this in-between 4 year party bullshit. It's as if todays you don't have to start your own life until you're well over 25 & it makes me ill.

NotQuiteSure Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> CF VTer, you wouldn't have a link to the story on
> that would you?


http://www.sevendaysvt.com/nc/columns/local-matters-news/2006/students-ask-classmates-to-keep-it-down.html

I hate college students more than any other form of "children". They're distructive, thoughtless, stupid, wasteful and generally I consider them lower than shit wrapped in skin. Unfortunately, I live in an apartment building full of them. Fortunately, they aren't the partying kind, just the lazy, entitled, idiotic kind. You know, the ones who think "2 parking spaces per apartment" means you, all 6 of your roommates and every friend you have can park there. Or "your garbage goes in the can with the number of your apartment on it" means put your garbage in any ol' can, except yours, then you never have to take it out because you are a lazy piece of shit who can't remove the lid from a can to put the garbage bag IN it, and can't manage to drag a garbage can 10 feet to the curb...or move the empty can the 10 feet back to where the cans are stored.
I know, I know someone shouldn't be expected to LOWER themselves to doing the MANUAL LABOR of actually picking up after yourself when you're pursuing HIGER EDUCATION, but unfortunately, the same parents who probably pay the rent, bills and buy the cars aren't coming down here to pick up after your worthless ass.
You know, the more I think about it, the better a draft looks. Get those dumbasses out of here and teach them that the rest of the world isn't going to worship, or wipe, their asses like Moomie and Duhdie do.

"It truly is the one commonality that every designation of humans you can think of has, there's at least one asshole."
--Me

Thank you, CF Vt. I have already shot off an email to the associate dean of student affairs with that link included in it. We shall see what happens.

CF VTer Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> NotQuiteSure Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > CF VTer, you wouldn't have a link to the story
> on
> > that would you?
>
>
> http://www.sevendaysvt.com/nc/columns/local-matter
> s-news/2006/students-ask-classmates-to-keep-it-dow
> n.html
>
>

ITA, Feh!

We had our requisite "Malibu Barbie" intern (typical UCLA sorority whore with big knockers, airhead and zero work ethic) who got canned when she failed to show up for work for two days in a row. "The surf was great, and it's not a real job anyways, and I'm not getting paid, so how can you fire me?" Easy, honey. I am not the one who was her preceptor, but I know him very well and he gave her a failing grade for the semester. I loved listening to her whining, crying and threats, but she got her F and will not be doing another internship for a while.

She was just another useless self-esteem toxic, overpampered little bitchprincess who thought just showing up and filing her nails or poking her big boobs in everyone's face would earn her an A. Surprise, surprise to the little twat...she was expected to work and didn't like it.

I had no idea why we selected her instead of the guy with the 4.0 average and the plan. Had I money in the budget for an intern, I would have hired him. I know the preceptor where he did his internship, and he was superb.

If anybody cares, this is the email I shot off to the associate dean of student affairs for the local university. I've blanked out some personal identifiers. Sorry if it's long. I have not received a reply back, but you know I'll post it, lol.

----------------------
Ms. XXXX:

I have spoken with you in the past and recently discussed some issues with your administrative assistant the other day.

My husband and I have been enduring the antics of your off-campus residents on a daily basis, which effects the quality of our lives. I understand it is my choice to reside where I do, but being a lifelong resident of the city of XXXXX, I do not believe I have to remove myself from my domicile to placate the partying lifestyle of invading students to our street.

We live on xxx Strete between XXX and XXX Streets. Every night this semester has been a challenge for us to retain our sanity. Even at 4 in the morning, I am awoken by the inebriated screeches of your students. This is not tolerable. I have watched students throw garbage on city resident's property. The one time I was brave enough to confront the individual committing this act of laziness, he used profane language to express his thoughts in regard to his non-existant right to litter. I have watched students urinate in the street, apparently too lazy to walk into the house that just poured their beer.

Two nights ago, I heard three loud bangs, which I could not discern if they were gunshots or explosives. I don't have a problem with this on Independence Day, but I do when we live in a town where shootings are becoming more the norm. Do you mention this to their parents when they are dropping them off during orientation?

I also am extremely annoyed by the lack of foresight that prompted someone in your organization to turn the parking lot behind EXXX Hall into "greenspace". If you haven't noticed it before, look across the street at that large expanse of grass and trees. It's called the River Commons. It is a public area. I do not understand why it is not good enough for your students, especially when they have a free shuttle to transport them to KXXXX Park for any type of physical education and/or personal recreation. This alone doesn't bother me. What DOES bother me is that you used XXXXXX City police to shut down the northbound lane of traffic on XXXXX Street to accomodate parents dropping off their offspring (I hesitate to use the term children, as the majority of students are now 18 and responsible for their own actions). This would not have been necessary if the parking lot was not a dirt covered future greenspace. Is this going to be a common occurrence? Does this mean 4 times a year (fall sem move in, fall sem move out, spring sem move in, spring sem move out), our understaffed police department will be forced to play traffic cops, because someone decided greenspace was a better use for the area behind EXXX Hall? May I also remind you that the amount paid in lieu of taxes to the City of XXXX is a pittance, in relation to the area of land the university controls.

May I suggest that you bring up a few things when orientation with parents time comes again? Can you remind students that XXX City has a blue garbage bag ordinance? Can you remind students that there is a noise ordinance in effect? Can you let students know that not everyone within a hundred yards of XXX University is not necessarily a student, and some of us actually have to get up for jobs in the morning? How about having one of the community activist organizations, like the Circle K club going around on Saturday and Sunday mornings picking up garbage from the previous evenings festivities, so residents don't feel as though we live in a slum. Also, college is not a time to be taking on a new pet. More than once, sadly, I have seen students "dump" animals that they cannot take home, and now we have a feral cat problem. The same goes for dogs. I don't care if they have an animal, but please, clean up after it. I do not see any students with dogs clean up after them, and have had the displeasure of stepping in said messes on more than one occasion.

Recently, I noticed several news stories on the local television stations about city building inspectors going around to off campus student housing in the city, to make sure the premises are up to code and safe for the college kids. Guess what? They're 18 and not children anymore. If they don't know better than not to take out batteries out of fire alarms or hang off of weak balconies, then by all means, let me nominate them for a Darwin Award. I know common sense isn't scored in the SAT's, but it really offends me that our city personnel have to prioritize what is already a herculean effort to make sure ALL city renters have a safe place to live, not just college students. For what it's worth, I had to wait three years, (yes, three years), to have a problem with my apartment rectified. The problem was of a clear fire code violation and was not caused by my stupidity or lack of respect for property that is not my own. No, it had to wait because my landlord was too busy fixing things that were destroyed by last years batch of over-indulged college students.

In closing, I am providing a link to an article that is showing how one universitiy's students are tackling the student/townie respect issue. You should be able to click right on it.

http://www.sevendaysvt.com/nc/columns/local-matters-news/2006/students-ask-classmates-to-keep-it-down.html

Ms. XXXX, I appreciate your attention to these matters, and in the past, I know you held a proactive view of these problems. I look forward to seeing my city grow, but not at the expense of turning my quiet, tree-lined avenue into the new Bourbon Street of the North. It seems the offenses are always coming from the same residences, namely 78 XXXXX Street (the first floor, bunch of girls, always partying on their porch into the wee wee wee hours of the morning), as well as the large three floor apartment (68? XXXX Street ). They usually throw one to two keg parties per week.

I am declining to sign this email, as retaliation does not seem out of the question for some of these people. I'd just like you to know that not everyone sees your students as the perfect little angels their parents think they are, and they have driven better people than I out of this neighborhood.

Thank you for your kind attention to this matter.

XXX Street Resident

I feel the need to rant here. I am an assistant to a professor at my grad school. She teaches grad level courses. I have to help her with study guides, homework, grading exams, etc. Several of the students in her class cannot write properly - bad grammar, spelling, horrible communication skills, can't follow directions. One even says she doesn't know how to summarize an article. Come on - this is GRAD SCHOOL, people! How do these folks get in the door? Are the standards that low these days?

She even makes her students staple a form to their assignments that says they have used Spell Check, and made sure they wrote in complete sentences! Remember, this is GRAD SCHOOL! Then, after they've done their homework and submitted it, she sends them ANOTHER form that EXPLAINS the homework, with all of the answers! I don't think I have had it that easy since high school.

NQS, very good letter! If you REALLY want to get your point across and have these concerns be heard, find out who the Trustees of the offending college are and write ALL of them letters - address them to their homes. Calling the President's office of the college will most likely get your their names. Tell them you have a kid who goes there or something. Trustees are the people of the community that give a lot of money for scholarships, etc., to the colleges. Colleges actually have very few students pay their own way, most go to college by way of these wealthy philanthropists. If they get pissed and cut off funds, the college is fucked. Trust me, this will get your point across loud and clear. I worked for a small liberal arts women's college in my area for a short time and I know how this shit operates. Money talks.