Diamondback Online - The University of Maryland's Independent Daily Student Newspaper

Issue date: 4/2/08 Section: Opinion

"Small communities grow through great harmony, great ones fall to pieces through discord" - Sallust
City Councilwoman Stephanie Stullich's move to increase the penalties for noise violations in the city is yet another measure representative of the city's short-sighted approach to improving the lives of College Park residents.

For the most part, the needs and wants of students and residents are aligned. We all want to live in a safe town in close proximity to the university and other institutions in the area; but in the instances where the goals of residents and students are in opposition, the city has a history of disenfranchising students. The city has repeatedly treated students as if they were second-class citizens by holding special elections during winter break when students weren't in town to vote and sabotaging the compromise last year that would have preserved a fee waiver encouraging student-friendly housing developments on Route 1.

The attitude of many on the city council in understandable. After all, who are these measures hurting? Students? Students who don't vote? Students who don't stick around College Park very long? Students whose income tax goes to their home districts because they don't bother to change their address to College Park?

This attitude is the primary cause for the city's mediocrity as it frames too many issues as a battle between residents of the city and members of the university community.

Perhaps that's unavoidable when you have city politicians who have made their political careers in trashing the university and listening attentively to anti-student residents. And maybe that's understandable when one considers the challenge students and the university pose to the city's tax base. After all, the university is the largest landowner in the area, but as a non-profit institution they are exempt from taxes and are still paying the city just $5,000 a year based on a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement negotiated decades ago.

We could all imagine what the city would be capable of doing if it had more tax revenue. But other college towns also have this problem and deal with it by trying to unite their various constituencies. Instead of viewing residents, professors and students through separate lenses, they work to create towns where professors choose to live, alumni decide to remain and students are empowered to participate in local politics.

Yet, instead of looking at the university and its student base as a potential source of future residents who have strong ties to the area, the city looks at students as a threat to the well-being of its voting constituency. Those darn students, with their cars clogging our streets, their parties interrupting our sleep, their drunken antics attracting these criminals.

All of these are clearly nuisances, but the city's approach of increasing restrictions is detrimental to creating a livable community. They're plugging holes in the dam instead of doing something about the water.

If the city council stopped these attempts to disenfranchise students and tried to create a city in which the campus community felt welcomed and choose to live in after graduation, College Park would be a better place. Instead of eliminating the fee-waiver zone along Route 1, the city should have supported the construction of student-friendly apartment complexes. The developments would have been a boon to old town, by easing rental pressure upon it, decreasing the frequency of students walking its streets late at night, trips which in turn, attract criminals to the area, and stopping the noise violations and degradation of its historic houses due to years of renter's neglect.

Granted, these are highly optimistic and long-term outcomes, but this sort of thinking doesn't seem to be on the minds of many elected officials. The only way to have substantial improvements in the area is to lay the foundations for a community of long-term homeowners who are committed to making College Park a great city in which to live. With the city's current approach, we're doomed.

POLICY: The signed letters, column and cartoon represent only the opinions of the authors. The staff editorial represents the opinion of The Diamondback's editorial board and is the responsibility of the editor in chief

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