Starting this weekend, Middlebury residents — including off-campus students — need to turn the volume down by 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturdays.
Amid heightened tensions between town residents and college students living among them, the Middlebury Selectboard has moved the start of the town’s daily quiet hours earlier.
The board’s unanimous vote on Tuesday was a culmination of months of negotiations between students and their neighbors on North Pleasant Street and Washington Street Extension, as well as the selectboard.
The change shifts the weekend and holiday quiet hours, which previously began at 1 a.m., two hours earlier to 11 p.m., effective immediately.
The start time for weeknight quiet hours will remain at 10 p.m. Quiet hours are lifted at 7 a.m. everyday.
Town residents can call the police to report “any excessive, unnecessary, or unreasonably loud noise or disturbance,” the ordinance reads. Police determine whether to issue a formal violation of the ordinance, which can result in fines up to $800.
According to selectboard member Andy Hooper, the amended ordinance is a valuable step in resolving the town-college housing disagreements.
“I think it’s a decent tool,” Hooper told VTDigger. “I think that in particular it is very good to involve the police when the neighbors can’t figure things out between themselves.”
Hooper said he believes that the increased conflict between the town and college over off-campus students dates back to the beginning of the 2021-22 school year, when admission deferrals from the Covid-19 pandemic and an influx of students on campus forced the college to send more students to live off campus.
For the 2022-23 school year, 137 students, or about 5% of the college’s total student body, are living off campus, Dean of Students Derek Doucet told the selectboard at a meeting last fall.
The two properties that have caused the most friction — 53 North Pleasant St. and 13 Washington St. Extension — were previously residential buildings that were converted to off-campus student housing in spring 2022. A Boston-based consultant and father of a student at the college bought the properties in late 2021 and turned them into student housing, Hooper said.
Residents of North Pleasant Street and Washington Street Extension areas have been displeased with their new student neighbors’ partying habits and the out-of-town landlord, who they believe has been unresponsive to their noise complaints.
VTDigger could not reach the landlord for comment.
According to John Tenny, whose North Street home borders the 53 North Pleasant St. property, both the college and the police department have failed to address his concerns about students’ rowdiness and destruction of property. Tenny said he has experienced many nights since last spring of dozens of students shouting, playing music on the property, and urinating onto their neighbors’ lawns.
Tenny said he has tried to address the issue with the students living in the house directly, but nothing has changed.
“The students will talk politely when they are not partying and they will promise to act more reasonably,” he said. “But, in fact, they don’t.”
Hooper said that it can be difficult to negotiate with out-of-town landlords because their interests may not align with those of the neighborhood.
“A big part of this is that the local landlords are necessarily more responsive to their neighbors because they see them all the time and they know them in the community,” Hooper said.
In contrast to Tenny’s assessment of the students’ behavior, Middlebury Police Chief Tom Hanley said he has found the students living at North Pleasant Street and Washington Street Extension to be cooperative when he has responded to noise complaints.
Hanley said the police department tends to get more noise complaints about other town residents who are hosting parties or playing music too loudly, rather than about students partying.
While Hanley initially proposed the amended noise ordinance to the Selectboard, he said it remains a work in progress. The Selectboard and police department are looking at a process to grant organizational blanket permits for some events that will go past quiet hours, such as the Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival and college-sanctioned events.
The new noise ordinance comes after the Selectboard spent its August 2022 meetings discussing a proposed change to the Planning Commission’s definition of student housing, in an effort to limit the number of students concentrated at one property in town, and thus reduce the likelihood of bad behavior by those students. The change would have limited student housing to four students per building rather than four students per dwelling.
While the proposed amendment passed the Selectboard 6-1, it was never adopted into Middlebury’s zoning bylaws, as the Selectboard decided against engaging in a lengthy approval process required by the Planning Commission.
Hooper, the sole Selectboard member who voted against the proposal in August, said he generally believes the Selectboard is expecting the college to monitor its off-campus students too much. Having attended a large university where off-campus students were expected to behave like normal residents, Hooper said he thinks these students should be subject to both campus standards and community standards.
“I think that college students are adults. And while they may be immature adults, they should be expected to behave as residents as well as students,” he added.
At the University of Vermont in Burlington, where substantially more students live off-campus — 33% of the undergraduate population — off-campus students are expected to handle disagreements with their neighbors on their own. The university has a Being a Good Neighbor guide for off-campus students, which suggests that they “establish respectful relationships” with neighbors and learn to “peacefully coexist.”
In further contrast to Middlebury, Burlington’s quiet hours are 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. every night of the week.
Through attendance at Selectboard meetings where the noise ordinance has been discussed and creating an online reporting form for residents to submit their issues with off-campus students, the Middlebury College administration has played an active role in mediating the conflict between students and town residents, said Doucet, the dean of students.
“Members of the College leadership team have met with concerned residents and town leaders,” Doucet wrote in an email to VTDigger. “We also work closely with our off-campus students, as well as their neighbors, involved landlords, and town representatives, to ensure respectful coexistence between students and townspeople.”
Despite the changes to the noise ordinance, and efforts by the college, some residents such as Tenny still do not believe enough has been done to address off-campus students’ behavior.
“It’s been a disgusting situation throughout,” he said. “And it continues to be.”