In response to a report made by Trinity Heights residents, Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta, announced that Duke will take steps to help curb disruptive behavior by students living off campus.
Duke's response to the report came in a community meeting held in Asbury United Methodist Church Wednesday night following months of negotiations with the Trinity Heights Neighborhood Association. The meeting was attended by residents, students, city officials and Duke officials.
"We take seriously the collaboration with the neighborhood associations and with the city to try to find a way we can ensure reasonable living opportunities for our students as well as reasonable high quality of life for the neighborhood," Moneta said.
Most of the recommendations of the Trinity Heights Task Force report, drafted at their last meeting in November, were not completely met or discussed, but Moneta told residents that he would follow up with progress on the recommendations in a few months.
The recommendations made in the residents' report included implementing Duke University Police Department patrolling of off-campus fraternity houses, adopting a zero-tolerance policy for off-campus fraternity parties, increasing efforts to educate students on proper behavior and building fraternity homes on Central Campus.
"We want to get to a place where we won't be woken up at night or have broken bottles on our driveways," said Trinity Heights resident Christine Westfall, who requested the initial meetings with Duke officials to discuss complaints. "At the same time we want to continue to enjoy living with students in neighborhoods."
Instead of taking some of the report suggestions, Moneta said Duke would attempt to address the problem by hosting off-campus housing receptions for students living off campus, easy online complaint forms for residents to report off-campus fraternity disturbances, educational tools for students regarding residential laws, door-to-door efforts to educate students and a housing fair in January for property managers and neighborhood associations. He handed out a memo to residents outlining these suggestions.
"[The memo] does not necessarily follow the recommendations line by line, but frankly I think we have accomplished far more than those recommendations require," he said.
Sophomore Andrew Brown, Duke Student Government vice president for Durham and regional affairs, attended the meeting to represent the student voice on the issue. He expressed disagreement with the zero-tolerance policy adoption recommendation made in the report, which would subject students to fines and citations for bad behavior on their first offense. He added that communication was key to improve student-resident relationships.
"In terms of the zero-tolerance policy for Duke Police, frankly I think sometimes there are better things that the police should be doing instead of staking out houses," he said.
City Council member Mike Woodard said he wants to bring the problem to the attention of property owners and landlords.
"They really have been missing from these conversations over the last six or seven moths," he said. "We need to find ways to get them to the table as we continue to talk."
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