Eight Richmond Police Department patrol cars, hundreds of partying Virginia Commonwealth University students spilling out into the streets, loud noise and beer cans everywhere.
Unfortunately, for the many long-term residents of the Oregon Hill neighborhood, which borders VCU, these situations are becoming more common. The latest occurrence described above happened on a recent Friday night, which apparently got out of control after a student posted an invitation on Facebook, drawing in many partygoers to the area.
“For many students that are here, they are away from home for the first time and they can go hog wild. It all comes down to the kids being young, which is not a problem, but they don’t have a lot of experience and some of this stuff hasn’t occurred to them,” said Jennifer Hancock, interim president of the Oregon Hill Neighborhood Association. “The point of view for some of them is that they are only going to be here for four years and they don’t care.”
The residents of Oregon Hill are not trying to pick on or “dog pile” the students, Hancock said. She believes that students have a different perspective than the long-term residents that live in Oregon Hill, because most students know they will only live in the neighborhood for a few years and eventually move away.
Todd Woodson, Oregon Hill resident and former president of OHNA, has called the police many times on partying students, but he said that is always the second step after first talking with his student neighbors about the noise ordinance and keeping the clamor down after 11 p.m., not throwing bottles in the streets and that urinating in yards is disrespectful. He has also spoken with landlords, parents and Dr. Reuban Rodriguez, VCU’s Associate Vice Provost and Dean of Student Affairs, about the increasing number of parties, noise and trash in the area.
“I’m not against responsible parties, but kids urinating everywhere, puking everywhere and passing out in tree wells is a real stab in the heart of quality of life for long term residents,” Woodson wrote in an email. “The students learn by making mistakes- liking putting out the party location on the net where it spreads like wildfire.”
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Click above to hear more from Oregon Hill resident Debbie Anderson, who talks more about the Oregon Hill neighborhood and the landlords in the area that rent apartments to VCU students.
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Long-term residents have also said there are problems with graffiti in the neighborhood, trash from parties that winds up in their yards and lack of parking spaces. Hancock said that some students or younger residents leave their beer bottles in front of their homes at all times in addition to making their recycle bins a permanent fixture on the sidewalk in front of their homes, because it’s “too much effort to carry the bin back to their house,” she said.
VCU student Elle Chang, who has enjoyed living in Oregon Hill, said there is a good mix of residents in the area, from families to students. The college senior, along with other members of the student group Green Unity 4 VCU recently teamed up with representatives from the college’s student government and OHNA members to clean trash from the neighborhood.
“It was nice for members of OHNA to see that students care and are willing to go into neighborhoods and clean up messes they didn’t make or in some cases did make,” she said. “It’s good to see that VCU is lending a hand and wants to help more in the future.”
But, the clean-up effort was only short-lived, according to Oregon Hill resident and OHNA secretary Debbie Anderson.
“A week after students had come through and cleaned up, trash was accumulating again,” she said.
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Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Click above to hear more from VCU student Elle Chang, who talks more about the Oregon Hill neighborhood and how she has had a very positive experience living there.
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Rise in Student Population
The increase in parties, noise, graffiti, trash and lack of parking in the area could be the result of the overall rise in VCU’s student population, said Anderson.
According to Tom Gresham, public relations specialist for VCU, the school’s enrollment has increased by about 9,000 students over the course of ten years, from the 1999-2000 school year until now.
“Over the past several years, it seems like the number of students living in the neighborhood and visiting neighborhood has increased,” said Anderson. “I believe it is related to several factors, such as the new school of engineering and business that has recently opened up and because the general population of the school has increased over several years. They are running out of places for students to live.”
When Hancock was pursuing her undergraduate degree at VCU over ten years ago, she said it was considered to be a commuter school. Now, many parents are buying houses for their children, so they can have a place to live during their college career. When their children graduate and move away, the parents continue to rent out those homes to students.
In addition, more developers are also moving into the area and renovating homes and renting those spaces to students.
Bryan Traylor, who has lived in Oregon Hill for about 15 years and is a local builder, has constructed new homes and renovated older structures in the neighborhood. He likes to keep the historic feel of the area, which during the twentieth century was defined as a working class neighborhood. Many of the residents could walk from their homes down to the river to their jobs at Tredegar Iron Works, Albemarle Paper Company and the state penitentiary.
“I am certainly renting to more students. From the time I went there to now, VCU has doubled in size and Oregon Hill is the closest neighborhood to it,” he said. “I buy a house and put it on the market and I can’t discriminate-if parents of kids want to buy, I have to sell it.”
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Lieutenant Hamlet Hood of Richmond Police Department’s Fourth Precinct, which covers Oregon Hill, said that the recent party that got out of hand in Oregon Hill was the first one to “come up on the radar this season” and that it is hard to pinpoint exactly how many times officers have visited the area in the past few months for out-of-control parties. He explained that the police need to strike a “delicate balance” between the long-term Oregon Hill residents who want peace and quiet and the younger residents who like to be loud and find no problems with throwing parties.
“The kids have to live somewhere and there is only so much dormitory space. You also have two demographics moving into one neighborhood- you have one lifestyle with a diverse culture moving into a place that historically used to be like one big family,” Hood said. “That can become irritating, and from semester to semester residents are dealing with different students and issues.”
According to Hood, the fourth precinct doesn’t have any plans, as of now, to step up their presence in Oregon Hill.
“In cases like on Friday night, we may have had resources and officers that could be there, but it’s not prudent to arrest people when so many other violent issues, like murder, are going on in the city that may need officers’ attention,” Hood said.
Corporal James Deford of the VCU Police Department said that the university’s police department might have to increase their presence in Oregon Hill if they receive more complaints from residents.