I just read with alarm and dismay the article in The Tufts Daily about President Bacow's recent meeting with students, in which the main subject, apparently, was how much the University should interfere with students' drinking ("Students speak with Bacow, vent about campus social life, restrictions," Nov. 17).
Now as far as I could tell from the article, the emphasis in the conversation, or at any rate the students' emphasis, was not on the right things.
I am a new assistant professor in the philosophy department, and we rent a house on Sawyer Avenue. We chose to rent a house right on campus so that I could be close to my family, and also because I wanted to be able to invest my time in my new job as much as possible. But perhaps even more important than all that was our experience during the time that I taught at the University of Chicago.
There, most students and faculty live in the relatively small neighborhood of Hyde Park, and this creates a wonderful sense of community - you get to meet your students on the street and in the local shops and restaurants, and they get to see you outside of the classroom, living your everyday life with your family and friends. We were hoping for something similar to happen here. Pretty soon, however, when the new academic year opened, our life in that house on Sawyer Avenue turned into a nightmare.
Every Friday and Saturday, and sometimes on Thursdays too, there is horrible noise, mostly drunken shouting. We've had students swarming our backyard on several occasions; we've had vomit on our front step; we've had broken glass in front of the house; and every Sunday morning, the street is trashed beyond recognition.
When I came here, I wanted so very much to like my students; and I should say that when I meet with them in the classroom, they are extremely likable and engaging. But on the few occasions on which I had to go outside in the middle of the night to plead with them to let my children sleep, I encountered an altogether different kind of human being: all the day's charm had disappeared, and I was met with rudeness, downright dumbness and aggressiveness.
The issue, I think, is not drinking. The issue is the students' total disregard for their neighbors. I find it appalling, for example, that people so bright, so fortunate and so fundamentally sensitive to the world can come to a point in which they do not mind having University workers clean up the street after them, or in which they do not care that a child might get hurt from broken glass that they left in front of someone's home, or do not worry about waking up their neighbors with their shouting.
It's one thing to drink; it's quite another thing to lose your humanity as a result of doing so.
Avner Baz
Assistant Professor,
Department of Philosophy
