<p>I still say that when the administrators start getting a handle on this, it will stop. A lot of money is being wasted sending kids to college only to have them flunk out mid year. Just because “it’s always been this way”, doesn’t make it O.K. And just because some kids are able to binge drink through their freshman year with the only ramification being a few compromising photos, other kids are dying and throwing their futures way off course. Just a little bit of adult supervision would be nice.</p>
<p>Barrons, I grew up in a college town and my house was a five minute walk from the football stadium. Other than a sign posted on the street outlining the game days when parking was restricted, and some heavy traffic on those days, our neighborhood was basically not affected by college life. There was a four family house at the end of the block that rented to students which had old couches on the sidewalk for a few days in June after move out day and before the city could haul the trash away, and everyone knew to go the beach or out of town on Freshman move-in day so as not to get stuck behind a U-Haul. But that was it.</p>
<p>I have friends who live near college campuses now- some that rate pretty high on the party scale, and it is a nightmare. Kids urinating on your steps, trash thrown around the street on weekends, cars vandalized on game weekends. Some of these folks live a lot further from the football stadium than I did growing up and it amazes me that someone can stagger all that way, dead drunk, and still have the energy to deface another person’s property.</p>
<p>These are not blighted, inner city neighborhoods filled with the urban poor. These are beautiful communities with graceful and even some historic homes, on pretty streets with long histories of town/gown relationships. But the kids drink steadily from about 5 pm on Thursday until late Sunday night.</p>
<p>I could easily have been one of those people who bought a house in a community like that, thinking that living near a college was a pretty cool way to raise my kids. (It was a cool way to grow up. We used the college’s skating rink, pool, library, and even borrowed cafeteria trays to sled down their hill on no-school days. Plus free admission to performances, concerts, etc. for folks in the neighborhood. It was great!)</p>
<p>Who buys an expensive home near a college and worries about strangers vomiting into their rose bushes? Only to discover that the local police claim their hands are tied, and the campus police don’t have jurisdiction off campus?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>But BLOSSOM. Some of those kids are going to grow up to be rich and successful! Why shouldn’t they have their fun, dude! </p>
<p>YK for all barrons’ posturing of the Great Conservative Capitalist, you’d think he’d appreciate that the owners of those homes worked hard for what they have, and they shouldn’t have to deal with a bunch of drunk college students vandalizing their property.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I didn’t discover it. You posted the link to Wisconsin’s PACE survey data. </p>
<p>Very comprehensive, too. Excel spreadsheet of their survey binge drinking rates and all other data going back 10 years. It’s clear that the UW-Madison administration is concerned.</p>
<p>When I buy a home I look at the neighborhood and the neighbors. I would never buy an expensive home adjacent to a bunch of bars or Frat Row with the expectation of peace and quiet. Same as I stay away from freeways and airport zones. I seriously doubt much of this popped up in the last 5 years at any big school I know. These things don’t change that much in decades. </p>
<p>Idad, if you did not know that about UW you must have been living in a cave. Every guidebook that gives the “indisider” view ever published notes that fact. As far back as Playboy in the early 70’s it was noted for some partying. They still serve beer and wine in the Union. Back in my day you could buy them with your dorm meal card in the cafeterias. The UW website is great for all types of data.</p>
<p>I see, barrons. So, because you wouldn’t buy a house in a college neighborhood, that gives you and your fellow students the right to vandalize people who did? Well. I wouldn’t buy your car or your computer, so does that mean I can vomit all over them?</p>
<p>
The problem isn’t that Wisconsin students decide to drink. The problem is that 62.3% of them can’t sleep or study when they want to because the environment is disruptive. The problem is that 23.5% have had their property vandalized. The problem is that 15.8% have been assaulted.</p>
<p>The fact that you consider these things natural byproducts of drinking is very telling. Please, let me know if UCSB students have these problems because of the good surfing conditions. Somehow I doubt it.</p>
<p>Barrons, you are entitled to your opinion. But Boston College shares streets with Chestnut Hill, some of the most elegant and pricey real estate in Boston. Some of the most beautiful real estate in Cambridge abuts Harvard’s campus; Swarthmore college is surrounded by gorgeous, leafy neighborhoods, Brown’s stadium is in a lovely old neighborhood on Providence’s East side.</p>
<p>There is no reason why college’s can’t co-exist with their neighbors. The colleges I mentioned seem to have done so for over a hundred years and other than noise and litter, these neighborhoods don’t seem the worse for wear.</p>
<p>Yes, if you buy a pricey house near a college, don’t expect to be able to put your baby to sleep at 7 pm on Saturday night unless you have a well insulated house. There will be traffic around peak move in/move out times. Commencement weekend would be a good time to get out of town.</p>
<p>I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about drunks (students) who regularly disregard fences, gates, and plop themselves down on homeowners front steps and porches and relieve themselves. They vomit over mail boxes. They rip open Fed Ex envelopes left by the front door. They vandalize cars and bang trash can lids on top of cars until the alarms go off. They fit every municipality’s definition of “drunk and disorderly” except that the local police don’t want to make waves by arresting them. The fortunate ones end up in an ambulance and maybe that’s a wake up call.</p>
<p>It is hard for me to believe that a grown up finds anything to justify in the behavior of these out of control students. What is it about drunken revelry and destruction of other people’s personal property that you find so entertaining or defensible?</p>
<p>And since when do property rights only extend to those who live in a town without a college, or a college fortunate enough not to have drunken parties Thursday-Sunday which end up in someone else’s yard?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’ve lived in an expensive home next to a freeway. You didn’t hear freeway noise from the inside. Outside, it was a dull, constant roar, which turned to white noise. I’ve lived in an expensive home under the flight path for an airport. Again, not noticeable inside, while outside you adjust. Perhaps not for everyone, but certainly liveable. Comparing that to having people vomiting in your property’s front yard at 2 in the morning, breaking into the house, tearing off stop signs: there’s simply no comparison. That kind of behavior is not only far more of a disturbance, it’s illegal. Saying that “well, you should have known that this neighborhood has lots of destructive lawbreakers, you should live elsewhere” is going to result in…what, exactly? Do we simply let a neighborhood sink to the lowest denominator? </p>
<p>I’m not getting why a supposed conservative is more sympathetic to a bunch of drunken yahoos than to a bunch of property owners.</p>
<p>When the neighborhood is the 'hood and groups of young men destroy personal property ait’s evidence of the moral decay of America. But if it’s white kids in a nicer neighborhood adjacent to a college, it’s just good ol fashioned fun!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I am apparently living in a cave. I was under the impression that UW-Madison was a good school.</p>
<p>IMO, any school with a 60%+ binge drinking rate cannot be considered a good school. That level of binge drinking is mutually exclusive with an academically engaged undergraduate student body.</p>
<p>What is Dartmouth’s rate, idad? Just curious. They have a drinking reputation.</p>
<p>Idad–that’s ridiculous. UW is a great school turning out a steady stream of very successful graduates. It’s the old work hard play hard. From matching Harvard in CEOs to among the largest numbers of everything from Peace Corps volunteers to Teach for America to in the top 5 of stock investment managers, numerous Pulitzer Prize winners, to leading TV and film directors and executives–without even having a film production program. ESPN was built by a Badger. MTV–built by a Badger. When Yahoo needed somebody to rebuild the company they hired a Badger. Cisco went from a small start-up to a large success under a Badger CEO who now leads the building of the unique Institute for Discovery. . Exxon bought Mobil and grew to one of the largest companies in the World under Badger Lee Raymond. Few if any state schools match that overall record.</p>
<p>Pizza:</p>
<p>Dartmouth has typically had surveyed binge drinking rates in the 50%+ range. 57% in 2004. They showed a dramatic one-year decrease in their 2008 survey to 44%. Campus cultures don’t change quickly like that, so I suspect the 2008 number will prove to be a statistical abberation.</p>
<p>[Dartmouth</a> Alumni Council News and Notes](<a href=“http://dartmouth.org/classes/66/council/index.php]Dartmouth”>http://dartmouth.org/classes/66/council/index.php)</p>
<p>barrons:</p>
<p>I don’t believe that any school with a 60% binge drinking rate can be called a “great school”. Sorry. That’s just the way I look at it. That level of drinking on campus is simply incompatable with widespread academic engagement, IMO.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>So that excuses their behavior? That makes it ok for them to trash the houses of nearby Madison residents? That makes it ok for fellow students to be substantially put out and disturbed by rioting, vomit, etc.? </p>
<p>You have a very odd moral compass, barrons, if you think that the future wealth and success of UW grads, such as it is, excuses anything. The behavior is unacceptable whether we’re talking Eastern Montana State or Harvard. </p>
<p>And again, since you’re such a conservative, where is your sympathy for the property owners who worked hard for what they have and don’t deserve to have students vomit on, tear up or vandalize their property? Well, it’s primarily white middle-to-upper-middle class students, so I guess that’s different. Just imagine your reaction if we were talking that kind of behavior surrounding the neighborhood of a historically black college.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Playing hard does not involve destruction of other people’s property, nor does it mean inconveniencing, bothering, groping, harassing, or vomiting on other students. Perhaps you missed that in Badger 101 or Freakfest 102.</p>
<p>New statistics on Binge Drinking. Maybe some of the parents doth protest too much ? 
</p>
<p>[Older</a> people, too, knock back 5 drinks at a time - USATODAY.com](<a href=“http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-08-17-newbingedrinking_N.htm]Older”>http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-08-17-newbingedrinking_N.htm)</p>
<p>^maybe those are the binge drinkers of yesterday…
</p>
<p>“Playing hard does not involve destruction of other people’s property, nor does it mean inconveniencing, bothering, groping, harassing, or vomiting on other students. Perhaps you missed that in Badger 101 or Freakfest 102.”</p>
<p>Sounds like the Princeton Eating Club parties I went to a few times. I don’t approve of vandalism of property. The rest will happen from time to time when young people get together. Anywhere. There are very few private homes impacted by the drinking at UW as it is confined to the student area.<br>
There is no trouble finding quiet places to study. There are about 40 campus libraries. The dorms are pretty quiet Sunday-Thursday. Also most people at UW (85%) do not live in the dorms at all. Most live in the large student area surrounding campus. So you can pick your roommates for lifestyle better than in the dorms.
Of course at UW the dorm noise may not just be from drunks coming in at 2 am. </p>
<p>[The</a> Badger Herald: ArtsEtc.: Sex 101: What to do in dorms](<a href=“http://badgerherald.com/artsetc/2009/07/18/sex_101_what_to_do_i.php]The”>http://badgerherald.com/artsetc/2009/07/18/sex_101_what_to_do_i.php)</p>
<p>But there are many options at UW so if that does not suit you:</p>
<p><a href=“http://althouse.blogspot.com/2009/11/big-religion-themed-dorm-for-university.html[/url]”>http://althouse.blogspot.com/2009/11/big-religion-themed-dorm-for-university.html</a></p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Huh. So you wouldn’t hesitate to buy a house right around the UW campus, because you wouldn’t expect it to be damaged by the students. Is that correct? Because a few posts upthread you thought that people who bought homes by the campus and were put off by the vomiting, trash, destruction etc had it coming to them for being stupid enough to buy homes so close. Which is it? Does the drinking at UW impact the town residents, or not? Does it impact the other kids in dorms and apartments, or not?</p>