Deborah Gaillardmiller remembers the nights when her children couldn't sleep because of the noise of Union College parties.
On her block of University Place, most of the houses are rented to college students, and nearly every night the music was cranked up, the kegs were dragged out and students celebrated until they puked on the grass.
But last year, the parties were noticeably quieter, and this year, it's possible to sleep even on weekends, Gaillardmiller said.
“They were much better last year,” she said. “When we first got here six years ago, oh my God, it was terrible. The school nights when the kids were trying to sleep – that really got to be a problem. Now, it's much better – it's very quiet now.”
Union college students are saying the same thing.
“It was louder last year,” said senior Noah Cayman, who lives a few doors down from Gaillardmiller. “There would be a party in one of the Union houses, I don't want to say every night, but more nights than not. Whereas this year, if you come in at midnight, 1 a.m. on a Friday or Saturday you might hear something, but not during the week.”
Hearing “something” is a far cry from the complaints neighbors used to have of students holding shouting contests in the street, urinating on the lawns and vomiting as they staggered home.
Last September, police received, on average, one noise complaint every three days. This year, they received an average of one complaint per week.
Neighbors say parties still draw a group, but not a crowd of 40 or more students.
There is still drinking – students threw beer bottles from their porches during a recent celebration – and music can still be heard after dark.
But neighbors rarely hear more than music now, they said, and the drinking takes place indoors rather than spilling out onto the sidewalks.
A reporter watched students party last weekend and found only two parties that could be heard from the street. Both parties ended voluntarily by 1 a.m.
For the past three weeks, a reporter also drove through the area after 10 p.m. each school night but could not find any large parties near the college.
On most nights, all that could be heard was the crickets.
“It is nice – the quiet is very nice,” Gaillardmiller said.
No one is quite sure why it's so quiet – or whether it will stay that way.
POLICE RESPONSE
Neighbors say police responded unusually quickly to noise complaints last year, teaching students to keep it down.
Police spokesman Lt. Peter Frisoni said officers got “very aggressive” in recent years in an attempt to solve the problem, saying officers made an effort to respond quickly to every noise complaint.
Once there, police would give students a warning: If they had to come back later, they would break up the party and possibly arrest the hosts for violating the noise ordinance.
“We haven't had to go back very often,” Frisoni said. “In the past few years we've had much more success – we've been very aggressive in policing the neighborhood . . . It seems to have worked. It has definitely improved.”
Police records show that for University Place alone, residents called to complain seven times in 20 days last September.
This year, there were only three calls in the same 20-day period.
Frisoni stressed that while most noise complaints on that street are for Union College student parties, the system does not differentiate the cause of the noise.
MORE ON CAMPUS
Frisoni and college officials also suggest the change may be attributed to the fact that fewer students live off campus.
In 2003, 375 students were given permission to rent apartments. This year, that fell to 221 students, largely because the college opened a new dormitory, College Park Hall (the former Ramada Inn on Nott Street).
“Certainly as fewer students live off-campus, there will be less student activity in those neighborhoods,” said college spokesman William F. Schwarz.
Some students say the real difference is that most of the offcampus students are now seniors, unlike past years when some juniors were also allowed to rent apartments.
They suspect the quiet can be mostly blamed on the dreaded senior thesis that most Union College seniors begin in September.
“Fall-term seniors don't have the time to party because of the thesis,” Cayman said.
But if that's the case, the parties will pick up after winter term, when most seniors have finished their theses.
“I think the few houses off campus are going to have big blowouts,” warned senior Erica Gierke.
However, students also said they go to local bars now because there are so few parties to attend near the college.
They blamed the college for that, saying restrictions on fraternity parties ruined the party atmosphere.
Fraternity parties must be registered if more than 12 people are going to attend, which means the hosts must take a class on how to check IDs and hold a safe party. All partyers over the age of 21 must wear a wristband if they want to drink, and servers cannot give drinks to anyone without a wristband.
That rule has been in place for years, but students say fraternities actually follow it now that they don't own individual houses on campus.
The college has taken over all the remaining fraternity houses in recent years and converted them to office and dormitory space.
The fraternities have been moved into other college-owned buildings.
PLEASANT SURPRISE
College officials were surprised to learn that neighbors felt the students were less rowdy this year.
“Oh my God – that's tremendous – I can't believe this,” said Thomas McEvoy, college dean of residential and campus life.
But he added that he has no idea why it's happened – although he said the students' theory about senior thesis work is plausible.
“In years past there were more juniors off campus, and they may have had more time on their hands,” he said.
Union has worked to increase the number of activities on campus through its “Minerva House” system, implemented in the fall of 2004. All students and faculty are assigned to one of seven houses, each with its own building with a fully equipped kitchen, seminar rooms, study areas, a great room with big-screen television and a budget for activities.
Still, McEvoy said the Minerva system is probably not a reason for the decline in loud parties.
“I honestly don't think the people attending Minerva events are the same people that would have partied heavily,” he said, describing the events as quiet, “middleof-the-road” activities like video games and coffeehouses.
“I don't know why,” he said of noise complaints being down. “But it's great to hear.”