Every spring semester, hundreds of students make detailed preparations to move off campus. Almost a rite of passage, this exodus from the residence halls has often been described as a liberating experience. Yet the amount of separation from AU gained from a move off campus might soon contract.
Due to recent pressure from neighborhood residents, AU officials are pursuing adjustments to the Student Conduct Code that increase its application to students living off campus. If they wish not to provoke student outrage, university administrators should proceed with extreme caution before they institute this arguably unnecessary expansion of rules.
The Eagle acknowledges the inordinate amount of criticism AU officials have received from residents at recent Advisory Neighborhood Commission meetings. Neighbors claim that AU officials have demonstrated an apathetic attitude in regards to ensuring that off-campus partying does not disturb residents. Current avenues available to residents to enforce community rules — the Metropolitan Police, official complaints — have not produced satisfactory results in their minds. Coupled with AU’s controversial proposal for additional dorms in the Nebraska Parking Lot, these disturbances have soured neighborhood-university relations as of late.
No university wants to be known as a disruption to its surrounding community. With the AU’s new campus plan soon to be proposed to the D.C. Zoning Commission, the university would like to point to neighborhood support as part of the proposal’s merits. It seems AU’s administration will cave to these demands and expanding the Student Conduct Code’s jurisdiction is likely.
Serious doubts can be raised as to how widespread these neighborhood complaints really are. Of the 3,500 AU students that live off-campus, three houses have been identified as consistent problems by the university. Even AU officials can understand how unreasonable it is that the behavior of a mere three houses be used to change the policy for 3,500 students. We would hope that AU administrators would be able to put this in perspective for over-reactive residents at ANC meetings.
Officials may point to the pending approval of AU’s campus plan and say their hands are tied — the ANC must be appeased. Yet this is not entirely true. While we understand the importance of getting favorable community reviews, the fact of the matter is that the endorsement of the ANC has limited impact on the D.C. Zoning Commission. For AU’s last campus plan, ANC voted 4 to 1 to reject the proposal. Nevertheless, the plan made it through the Zoning Commission and was approved. The ANC holds no iron-grip on AU’s fate.
The Eagle finds it ironic that the ANC has chosen to hold the campus plan hostage over complaints of student disrupting the community. The plan’s aim is to increase living space on campus, likely decreasing the number of off-campus complaints. Nevertheless, while neighbors have chosen to act irrationally, AU can proceed otherwise. We urge AU officials to examine all of their options before assuming an expansion of the Student Conduct Code is their only option. The majority of students has acted responsibly and deserve their off-campus independence.
