The neighborhoods of Southeast Como and Marcy-Holmes are a prime choice for many students to live off campus. The neighborhoods are made up of many different types of residents, from young families with children to faculty of the University to senior citizens. These neighborhoods provide proximity to campus, a prime reason to choose to live there.

Students often forget that when choosing to live in one of these neighborhoods, they are joining an actual neighborhood. Many seem to disassociate their new home with the likeness of the neighborhood they grew up in. Students often disrupt these neighborhoods without any regard for their permanent residents. Most disruption comes on the weekends. Students wander through the neighborhoods at all hours of the night, talk on their cell phones, yell at friends, throw beer cans in lawns, pee behind bushes and steal election campaign signs or anything in sight.

The problem is that these lawns and bushes are actual people’s lawns and bushes. The residents of these neighborhoods live each week knowing that their property will be torn up and littered on the weekend, that they probably shouldn’t go outside on a Friday or Saturday night and that they better shut their windows and turn on some music or they will never get any sleep. Then they wake up on weekend mornings and pick up the trash in their lawn and try to replace that campaign sign.

Although they are still living close to the University and feel that their neighborhood is composed of mostly students, students should look around during the day to notice the diverse community they are a part of. Students should work toward becoming more active or at least concerned members of their new neighborhoods.

The student communities living next door are increasingly disrupting the lives of members of the Marcy-Holmes and Southeast Como neighborhoods. Students should be more considerate for their neighbors, and for other (not necessarily their own) neighborhoods that they torment on Friday and Saturday nights. The behavior wouldn’t be tolerated at home, why do students think it should be tolerated here?