Town vs. gown, Brookline style
BU students who just want to party are finding themselves at the fisted end of the long arm of the law in Brookline, the BU Daily Free Press reports: Brookline Police have made 18 quality-of-life arrests since Sept. 1, mostly of BU students. But at least one Brookline resident told the paper that the cops seem to have a vendetta against BU students:
... The Brookline cops are out hunting BU students," Jackson said in an email. "If you are a student and happen to be walking, standing or sitting in this area, they will arrest you or put you in protective custody for the night." ...
Brookline Police report on three incidents over this past weekend, including:
Occurred at 12:31AM (10/07)- 61 Thatcher Street
Police responded to a call of a loud party and upon entering the apartment witnessed underage drinking, the hosts were identified as Boston University Students and both residents will be summonsed to court for, Furnishing Alcoholic Beverages to a Person under 21, and Minor in Possession of Alcohol.Occurred at 11:13PM (10/06)- 735 Washington Street
Police responded to a call of a loud party and upon arriving noticed several underage youths outside the residence drinking alcohol. Upon entering the dwelling police saw approximately 100 youths exit out of the back of the residence. ...
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Back when I lived in Brookline
I regularly spoke with Captain O'Leary on this very topic. The bottom floor three bedroom unit in my otherwise owner-occupied building was rented out to four (sometimes five) men who went to BU. They were louts from central casting from day one, hour one. They moved in their keg before they moved in their couch. The parties were 3 or 4 nights a week, and most nights I could get a contact high walking in the front door. All good fun but my neighbors and I needed to work in the morning, and I didn't think that my infant daughter needed the contact high - she was nursing enough as it was and didn't need the munchies. We met with the tenants, whose attitude was that they would move out in June, at which point we could enjoy our homes, and until then we could go pound sand. Besides which, they told us, most of them were banned from BU housing for bad behavior and bad grades.
Captain O'Leary was a gentleman and very helpful in getting after not only these young fellows, but also their landlord and their university. Things never got 100% better, but settled down a lot. In the end, the "kids" are only part of the problem - their landlords need to take responsibility for their buildings and condos, and the universities need to take responsibility for their students. If the Brookline Police can make this happen, bless them.
Vendetta against BU students?
I doubt very much that they have a vendetta against the BU students. More likely the students are responsible for loud parties that create noise and mayhem in otherwise peaceful neighborhoods. Why just last night, someone was blasting rap music out their window onto Babcock Street near Harvard Ave. Not a very neighborly thing to do.
Yeah, seriously
I can believe that the cops might react more harshly to some of the student behavior than to similar behavior coming from taxpayers, simply because their patience gets worn thin by obnoxious entitled students. But actively seeking out and targeting students? I have a hard time believing this. If you act like a responsible and neighborly person, there's no way the police or anyone else will know what your occupation is or have any reason to look at you twice. If you want to be treated like a resident, act like one.
BTW, every fall on the b0st0n livejournal community, there are a couple dozen posts from incoming students wanting to know how they can get resident parking when their car isn't registered here, how they can get library cards and pets and other things requiring proof of address when they aren't actually on the lease of the apartment where they live with 5 other people, and so forth. And they wonder how the police and others instantly realize that they don't blend in as local residents?
No sympathy.
It sounds as if these particular tenants really did get what was coming to them!! No sympathy for them here, since they clearly copped lousy attitudes from the beginning. This sense of entitlement and "do whatever the hell one wants when they want" attitude is what got these louts into trouble in the first place. It sounds like they're learning their lesson(s) in the not-so-gentle-world out there. Serves them right, imo.
The thing about Brookline
If Brookline allowed some of the older housing to be torn down in redeveloped - into nice buildings, or even into dorms that attracted more law-abiding students - they might have less problems. Unfortunately after living in Brookline for a couple years we moved out because there was no place we could afford that didn't feel like "student-grade" housing. A lot of Brookline old-timers seem to feel that they tried redevelopment in the 70's or 80's and it was the worst thing that happened to the town, but hundred-year-old walk-up apartments without air conditioning, parking, elevators, or fire sprinklers that can't legally be expanded or rebuilt because of new zoning restrictions, are often going to attract people more interested in kegs than quality of life. At least that was my observation.
A little story about exploitation
I worked with a woman who graduated from MIT the same time that I did, and had a friend who moved from the dorm to an off-campus apartment for his senior year.
He and his roomates leased a large and well-located but thoroughly dumpy apartment not far from MIT that the landlord preferred to rent to students because he wanted big money without having to do any of that silly "up to code" stuff. He demanded three months rent up front, pretty standard for the time.
Come move out time, the landlord refused to return the security deposit, citing all the "damage" done to the place. Said damage being present at the beginning, of course, and well-documented at move-in. The four tried in vain to get their money back.
Then one of the lessees, a young man with the last name of DERSHOWITZ called his uncle and ... well ... the rest of the story is obvious, now isn't it?
How can a landlord that is so greedy, exploitative, and unscrupulous be so ... so ... STUPID?
brookline zoning restrictions
I understand what you are saying, but I am not sure I buy your argument. Brookline housing is in high demand and therefore very expensive. It is cost effective to buy a run down hundred year old walk ups and then gut renovate it. Renovated condos fetch $500 per square foot whereas new construction generally runs $700 or more per square foot. Therefore any new housing is going to be priced out of the student market independent of zoning. Apartments that don't change hands can support lower rents because the owners bought them back when prices were lower. Tearing down these buildings and constructing new ones would only increase pricing.
Many other areas are facing similar problems. MIT and Harvard are attempting to relieve the student housing crunch by building Dormitories in Cambridge. They are facing opposition from the residents who want to stem University expansion into residential neighborhoods. Harvard is facing similar opposition in Allston as is BC in Newton and Brighton.