I feel as though all we ever hear about here at Notre Dame is the relationship between Notre Dame and the South Bend community - how it's not positive, how our community doesn't have a cooperative relationship with the residents of South Bend, how it needs improvement. I think it is apparent that there's another relationship we have with South Bend that needs no improvement at all: the one between the Office of Residence Life and Housing and the South Bend Police, or rather the Indiana State Excise Police. On Monday, The Observer reported that 86 people were cited at Turtle Creek Apartments.
The article mentioned no complaint about noise or disruption, simply that an "anonymous complaint was received concerning a party listed on MySpace under events and also under people's blogs." I don't know any student that would be so offended by a party simply listed on a social Web page to take the matter to law enforcement officials. I do however know that ResLife has access to Facebook, another social Web page much more likely to list events such as this party. Maybe I am incorrect in that assumption.
The more important point is that over the past couple years, it seems as though the Turtle Creek Apartments, located near the soccer fields, practically on campus, have been targets of mass raids by police.
Students partying at houses farther off campus are more likely to walk home through unsafe neighborhoods or, even worse, simply drive drunk. Maybe the police think that this is a good plan; maybe Notre Dame does too.
I, for one, though, think that these raids, which encourage increasing amounts of students to move further and further away from campus and into the South Bend neighborhoods, are irrational and frankly dangerous. The University notifies us constantly of assaults and attacks that occur as students walk home late at night, sometimes after consuming alcohol - they're just making us walk even farther to return to campus and pushing us even farther away from the Notre Dame community.
Maura Bradley
sophomore
Lewis Hall
Sept. 4
