Pat Janecek knows some of the troubles that may arise while living next to off-campus students. Last year, her neighbors included 14 members of a fraternity whose loud parties would sometimes keep her up until 4 a.m.

Janecek is a member on the board of the Southeast University Neighborhood Association, the oldest volunteer neighborhood organization in Syracuse, whose membership includes the households in the area southeast of the Syracuse University main campus.

At the annual meeting Wednesday evening at the Westcott Community Center, where SEUNA members as well as guest legislators from the Syracuse Common Council came together to discuss prevalent issues troubling the neighborhood and over-occupancy by SU and State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry students living in off-campus apartments.

‘This was the first time where I saw SEUNA and legislators come together to address these issues,’ Janecek said. ‘This isn’t just us and them. It’s us together.’

A city law limits a household to no more than five people. However, city officials, including the mayor’s office, have done little to enforce this law, said SEUNA vice president Mike Stanton.

Stanton posed the example of a 7-bedroom house on Comstock Avenue inhabited by SU students that was recently broken into. The landlord had been told not to allow tenants to sleep on the first floor, Stanton said. One of the bedrooms that was broken into, however, was on the first floor of the house.

Since it is an election year for legislators and leaders of Syracuse, it is important that the residents of the community communicate to city officials that laws like these must be enforced, or else they will not be re-elected, said Beth Brownson, one of the nine legislators present at the SEUNA meeting.

Many SEUNA members suggested putting pressure on the university, reminding it of its responsibility to communicate with off-campus students. According to Laura Madelone, director of the Office of Off-Campus Student Services, who was also present at the meeting, the university will soon have a better means of facilitating this communication.

The university is already in the process of registering all the names and addresses of students living off-campus, in order to keep better track of them, she said. By next semester, all of this information should be compiled.

Madelone cited an instance where a student’s parents had passed away and the student could not be reached because they lived off-campus and the university was unaware of the address. After gathering all students’ off-campus addresses, she said, it will be easier for the university to contact students.

‘This is for two reasons,’ Madelone said. ‘Mainly, it is so the university can get in touch with students in an emergency. ESF has this process already.’

The other reason, she said, was for the university to be able to send information to students, such as notices informing students about city codes and laws pertaining to housing, parking and snow shoveling.

‘As a recent graduate of SU who lived (off-campus) with 14 other students, I don’t feel that the university should be held responsible (for students’ conduct),’ said Laura Martin, secretary of SEUNA. ‘We should work with the city to make sure the landlords are held accountable.’

Many of the problems that Syracuse residents such as Janecek face, like loud fraternity parties, illuminate the problems Madelone said are inherent in SU’s greek system.

‘There has to be recognition by Syracuse University that there is a problem with our greek system,’ Madelone said. ‘We’re about 10 to 15 years behind everybody else.’

Madelone said many of the problems the SEUNA members mentioned to the legislators coincided with problems brought to her by SU off-campus students.

‘I think they have talked about a lot of stuff that concerns both students and residents,’ she said.

As a member of an organization that seeks to better its community by addressing issues such as the ones brought up in its annual meeting, Janecek said she was pleased with the way the legislators and SEUNA members communicated with one another to bring a better understanding on where both sides stand.

‘We’re not the enemy,’ she said.

Published on February 16, 2005 at 12:00 pm