Georgetown Students Return, So Do the Noise Complaints

Georgetown University students returned en masse to the neighborhood over the weekend and now University officials and neighborhood leaders are trying to nip potential problem houses in the bud.

Ida Bergstrom lives on the 3800 block of T Street and has not previously had any issues with noisy student neighbors.

So when she was kept up Monday night by "a 'pep' rally, including marching in unison, from about 3-4 a.m. this morning" she was not sure whom to call about the noise. Bergstrom asked neighbors on the Burleith, whether she should call Georgetown or the police or both.

Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner (ANC) Ed Solomon said he saw Bergstrom's email and spoke with her Tuesday morning first thing. The University also followed up with Bergstrom's husband later in the morning.

Now that the is in place, the ANC and the University are working together to tackle issues with students living in the community.

Solomon said the ANC and GU need to know about problems to address them. So while calling 911 or Georgetown's SNAP program during an incident might help restore quiet that night, the next day a call to the ANC and the Off Campus Student Life will go a long way to making sure it does not happen again.

"We are all over this," he said about noise in the neighborhood.

The partnership between the ANC and the university marks a shift that can be credited to the resolution reached in the recent campus plan agreement.

Stacy Kerr a spokeswoman for the university said GU is taking two "tracks" to address impacts of students on the neighborhood.

The first is "working cooperatively with neighborhood leadership to... systematically resolve the issues."

The second is to address incidents on a case-by-case-basis, meeting with students, meeting with neighbors when they receive complaints.

Kerr said the University has already begun efforts to . Food trucks are parking on campus Thursday through Saturday nights and Georgetown changed its on-campus party registration requirements to match those for off-campus parties.

Kerr and Solomon both urged residents to contact the ANC and GU about any issues so they can address problems together.

Your ANC Commissioners' contact information is available on the ANC2E website.

Office of Off Campus Student Life can be reached via phone 202-687-5138 or email ocsl@georgetown.edu.

Georgetown's SNAP (Student Neighborhood Assistance Program) offers a 24-hour phone line to report student behavior off campus. SNAP will send representatives to a reported address to break up parties or other issues reported Thursday - Saturday from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. during the academic year 202-687-8413.