During the weekend, the sleepy Village of Brockport comes to life. College students flood into downtown and pour into local bars. Once the bars close, rowdy students stumble through the village to their apartments, dorms, or an ongoing party.
The more alcohol these students have, the louder the volume of their voices. Their voices carry from the streets and into the homes of townspeople. Like most college towns, this creates tension between the townspeople and the students because they disrupt their quiet lives.
Terry Mitchell has lived in his current house in Brockport for 26 years. He lives on Monroe St. about a half mile walk from the SUNY Brockport campus. Mitchell’s next-door neighbors are college students. He doesn’t mind them but says the sound can sometimes be too loud.
“They’ll have parties, obviously, that’s what they’re going to do,” Mitchell said. “Some nights it carries on kind of late, like during the week. That’s my biggest pet peeve. They used to wake my kids up when they were younger.”
Some students in the past have given their numbers to Mitchell for him to text them if they were too loud, but a majority don’t.
Jennifer Wood also lives on Monroe St. near the campus. She moved to Brockport three years ago. She understands college students want to have fun but wishes they would be more respectful.
“In pre-covid times there were frequent loud large parties on Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights,” Wood said. “You would have packs of students, and the sound doesn’t bother me, the noise, the music, I don’t care about that, but there would be students walking around throwing garbage on our lawn.”
Picking up other people’s trash is not something Wood or her husband signed up for. Wood said they have many wild animals that they’ve befriended that go on their property. They even have names for some of the squirrels who frequently visit their porch. If one of these critters were to eat the garbage, Wood and her husband would be upset.
Aidan Reynolds is a senior at Brockport High School. He says that he also notices trash on the ground when he walks to class in the morning.
“Occasionally I’ll see Bud Light cans,” Reynolds said. “It makes me upset for the environment.”
Now that the number of Covid cases in New York are on the decline and bars are able to stay open later, college students are staying up later too. Local residents are hoping the noise and trash will not continue to be a problem with the pandemic on this decline.
Bringing awareness to college students on how to be more respectful to the local residents will help establish a good relationship between the college and village residents.
