As the summer season and record-high temperatures begin to wind down, it’s that time of the year again for those folks living near colleges and universities. You know…THAT time of the year. The time of the year when college students move on to campus or into houses around the campus. The time of the year when two or three neighbors get MAD at this process and start bitching and complaining. In other words, it’s the time of the year when logic stands still.
What do I mean? As one of my old college professors used to say, “You don’t live next to the community pool and complain about the swimming!” I’ve been in and around the Monmouth University area for some 9 years now and each Fall semester the same mind-boggling phenomenon takes place: the people who live in the area around the school year-round are amazed that college students are moving into the same rental house that has been used for college housing for the last 25 years. And “it” begins. What is “it?” This is when the otherwise normal local people start calling the police for everything under the sun.
Last September I had friends moving into a house with their parents present helping to move furniture and the cops were called because the family car was idling on the street as the family moved boxes out of the car. Think about that. Some complete low-life is sitting in his or her house (in this case “her”) and watching every move you make – even the simple act of taking a box out of a car!!! Talk about creepy. And since some of you might be wondering, that house never had the police come back to it because there was never a need (no wild and crazy parties, kids pissing on the front lawn, loud noise, or any other stereotypical BS nonsense). So I hope that neighbor was happy with themselves – they called the police to tell their “neighbors” to move their car because, frankly, they would have looked like complete assholes if they asked this kid’s parents to move the car.
If you’re going to Monmouth University next week…get ready for it. The locals around here love stirring the pot. At the same time, don’t be a moron and be a bad neighbor. No one wants you moving into their neighborhood for 9 months if you’re going to be out of control mental patients. Act like normal human beings and then when these crazy locals treat you like LESS than a human being, you can call them out for it (which I’ve done on a few occasions). And don’t expect logic to play a role in their arguments, either. I went back and forth with a local guy via the local newspaper’s Op-Ed page once. My argument was based around the fact that the university has been in existence since 1933 and this guy knew what he was getting into when he moved directly down the street from it. Do you know what his cockamamie response was?
He bought his house is the 1980’s and the school only “officially” became a university in 1994 – so he has been in the area longer. Think about this – the buildings, professors, students, curriculum, etc. was all the same on one day…then the “college” became a “university” and apparently that reset the clock in this bozo’s head. Moron.
Well, now that I’m completely off track it’s probably a good time to end! Here’s hoping that the incoming college students don’t have to deal with insanity at the local level and that the local people act in good faith, so long as their new neighbors act in good faith.
