Town-gown relations centered around student behavior have been deteriorating this year, according to Director of Community Relations Barbara Rubel.
With residents of the surrounding neighborhoods increasingly cutting off contact with the university, the only outlet for their frustration is becoming the police.
"Interestingly enough they have stopped talking directly to the university because they got so aggravated about what was going on with the students," Rubel said. "We talk now more with the police than we talk with the neighbors."
While these tensions were thrust into the limelight with a recent e-mail to the student body highlighting incidents of emergency-room aggression and pub-night urination, these events are only the tip of the iceberg.
What has most concerned neighbors, Rubel said, is the constancy of student rowdiness.
"It becomes a constant irritation. If it were only one party after one big event once in a while, I think most neighbors would find a way to tolerate that," she said.
But eventually, she said, they lose hope.
"They feel that we can't seem to do anything to improve the situation, so they stop talking to us," she said.
The concerned neighbors
Most of the complaints that Rubel's office hears about are from the Somerville neighborhoods surrounding campus, specifically from around Conwell Ave, Chetwynd Rd. and Curtis St.
Last year, the residents of that area banded together to form the C-3 Neighborhood Association, with the goal of soothing rising tensions.
"I think they may have originally came together just to commiserate, but soon decided that there were things they could do," Rubel said.
Now called the West Somerville Neighborhood Association, there are over 100 people on its e-mail list.
The group, however, has cut off communication with Rubel's office, leaving the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate as its sole point of contact.
TCU President Neil DiBiase said that he has been in contact frequently with the group's leader, Edward Beuchert, and that he has noted increased urgency in their complaints.
"I think they're getting more and more frustrated," DiBiase said. "Why would they [avoid] calling the police and notifying their elected officials when the problem is not abating and is getting worse?"
A breaking point?
While these tensions had been mounting, recent events prompted DiBiase to express frustration in an e-mail to the student body.
Specifically, Health Service received complaints from the Lawrence Memorial Hospital about aggressive behavior by Tufts students following Fall Ball.
And during the first senior pub night at the Liquor Store in Boston, there were reports of students urinating on the walls and vomiting.
Health Service Medical Director Margaret Higham said that the hospital raised the concerns during one of the regular conversation between her staff and its employees.
She said that they felt "abused" by the behavior of the students.
"There was a lot of frustration and unhappiness in their tone of voice," she said. "Drunk people are difficult and obnoxious to deal with."
This type of behavior after Fall Ball was not a deviation from previous years.
"The past couple of years I know that weekend has been challenging," Higham said.
The university moves forward
The Senate was supposed to sponsor a community barbecue on Friday, but the official opening of the Interfaith Center that day, combined with recent events, prompted the body to delay the event.
Instead, there will be a town hall meeting next week to discuss how to react to the mounting complaints.
Previously, the Senate had sought to mend town-gown relations through a liaison program that never really got off its feet. Its goal was to pair students living off-campus with members of the community, with the students serving as points of contact for their neighbors.
But DiBiase said the Senate felt the program would only be successful if the contacts established could have time to grow. With students usually only living in a given neighborhood for one year, that did not seem possible. "The transient nature of students makes it difficult for neighbors to feel connections," he said.
Currently, the Senate is focusing more on "macro-level" concerns, he said. Part of this will involve soothing the neighbors and preventing retaliation against students.
The Programming Board, for example, needs to have a good relationship with local bars so that its members can schedule pub nights.
It is still unclear what effect the last pub night will have on this relationship. Representatives from the Liquor Store did not return a request for comment, and DiBiase said that he is not sure whether this bar, which has hosted pub nights and senior week events in the past, will continue to do the same in the future.
"I don't know. I hope so," he said.
There are also larger concerns. The university is planning on building the Steve Tisch Sports and Fitness Center, but first the city needs to approve permits, according to DiBiase.
"That's not going to happen with community relations continuing to deteriorate," he said.
Part of this "macro" approach will involve the continued distribution of information to the student body, with the hopes that more knowledge will lead to better behavior.
DiBiase hopes his e-mail to the student body will be a good first step.
"I think we have tons of smart students and when you approach them with the knowledge that you're dealing with ... the results are generally positive," he said.
Meanwhile, Rubel's office is working on establishing better relationships with landlords.
"The only piece that's missing right now is a real direct link direct link to the landlords," she said, noting that students living in houses with absentee landlords typically elicit the most complaints.
Inevitable problems?
But there's only so much that Rubel's office and the Senate can do.
"Honestly, when push comes to shove, we're not going to have senators going around telling people to turn down their music," DiBiase said.
And even with increased efforts, complaints are unlikely to disappear. Higham, for example, said that student intoxication is something that hospitals across the country have to deal with.
The solution, DiBiase said, is balance. He said that the relationship between the town and university is "definitely a two-way" street, meaning neighbors need to understand that students have the right to enjoy themselves, as long as they are not too intrusive.
"They pay rents that are unbelievably high and I think that they have the right to have a social life," he said.
If students are unable to achieve a balance, though, the rest may have to be left to police or university discipline.
University President Lawrence Bacow said that while he is hopeful that DiBiase's e-mail will have a good effect, he supports disciplining students when they deserve it.
"I have absolutely no problem holding students accountable for behavior that is outrageous by any standard," he said in an e-mail.
Even if offenders are held accountable, Rubel said that most students will not be affected.
"Far and away the majority of students who live off-campus don't create any problems," she said, noting that those who do cause disruptions create exceptions in a usually comfortable relationship between Tufts and the local community.
"In many ways we enjoy better relationships with Medford and Somerville now than ever before," she said. "The real fly in the ointment is the behavior of off-campus students at night."
