Almost two weeks after the Brookline Police Department said the town's relations with student residents have improved since the beginning of the semester, a Student Union representative said apartment property managers may start taking matters into their own hands to ensure that students are not disruptive.
Property managers said they are considering inserting fines in leases for students who "keep a disorderly house or have noise complaints" at a closed-door meeting at the Brookline police station last night among four students, apartment managers, police representatives and town residents, according to Union City Affairs Director Jesse Kramer.
"It was dependent on different property managers," said Kramer, a Boston University College of Arts and Sciences senior. "Measures at Dexter Park might be different than five or six units on St. Paul's. One manager discussed locking up porches if students are too loud, and they were talking about increasing more private security at Dexter Park."
Brookline police Capt. John O'Leary told The Daily Free Press earlier this month that police had cut back late-night patrols after improvement to areas with heavy student concentrations where 23 people -- many of whom are Boston University students -- were arrested or put on summons for public intoxication between Sept. 1 and Oct. 25. O'Leary noted significant improvements on Egmont and Thatcher streets, where most of the complaints have been made.
Kramer said attendees at the meeting also discussed creating a task force between BU students and Brookline residents to maintain open dialogue.
"With the task force, we want to talk more about community residents in general -- maybe something to improve parks or plant rose gardens -- to bring students back to Brookline," said CAS junior Jess Colton, who was also at the meeting.
"We could meet more if more problems come up, or less when we don't need to -- more of a continuous thing than a big deal when something bad happens," she said.
"When you know your neighbor upstairs, it's more, 'I'm disrupting Mr. Smith - I would never do that,' instead of, 'Oh, someone upstairs is complaining about me,'" Colton added. "It's about becoming more integrated in the community."
Colton said the meeting was the first time there has been an open dialogue among residents, students and police, and that rocky relations between students and permanent residents are starting to smooth over.
"It was all sides this time, not just a couple," she said. "Some residents have lived there for longer than we've been in college. We all know the complaints, and things have been getting better, but now it's about finding solutions."
Colton said some noise complaints about students outside their apartments are misunderstandings.
"Kids don't get good cellphone reception inside a lot of these places because they're so old," she said.
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