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Council attacks concerns
In an attempt to address the concerns of South Side neighborhood residents about large, out-of-control student parties that plague the neighborhood, a council met Tuesday at the St. Cloud Police Department Law Enforcement Center in downtown St. Cloud.
The "St. Cloud Underage Drinking Prevention Meeting" was the third time students, residents, business owners and law enforcement officials have met in the last six weeks. About 20 people attended the meeting. The group is primarily made up of members the Neighborhood University Community Council (NUCC), working in conjunction with Minnesota Join Together (MJT). MJT is a nonprofit organization focused on preventing underage alcohol consumption.
In the group's previous two meetings, attendees worked to come up with goals and ideas about how to prevent underage drinking in the university community and crack down on large, unruly groups of party-goers while still listening to students' concerns.
Residents of the South Side neighborhood, specifically the area between Fifth and Ninth Avenue South and between Division Street and 13th Street South, have complained about large house parties and the noise, lewd signs, underage drinking and public urination associated with them. Some residents also fear for students' safety; party-goers have been seen climbing on roofs and passed out underneath cars. A few students have been involved with altercations, leaving them with serious injuries.
Community activist Jerry Middelstadt lives at 402 Sixth Avenue South. He has seen just about everything during the five years he has lived in the neighborhood.
"We call it 'Lemming Way,'" he said of Sixth Avenue. "Thursday nights, it's just like a flock of lemmings heading down to the bar and at 1:30 in the morning, it's the same way coming back, except that they're a lot noisier. I have to go out every morning and pick up garbage off my lawn. I have to pick up beer bottles that they throw against my garage."
Some weekends partying is worse, Middelstadt said - it tends to come in waves. Last September's Move-In Day was especially bad. Most students do not cause problems, Middelstadt added, but those who do are frustrating.
The underage drinking group has two goals: to focus on the dangerous, irresponsible behavior, inappropriate use of alcohol at problem houses in the South Side neighborhood and to address and reduce the amount of marketing to SCSU students that encourages binge drinking and unsafe decisions around alcohol.
Representing SCSU at Tuesday's meeting were Vice President of Student Life and Development Nathan Church, Public Safety Director Miles Heckendorn, Faculty Association Representative Aspa Rigopoulou-Melcher, Student Government Representative Dave Plourde and a handful of students.
The group discussed a variety of ideas and strategies, including better education and awareness targeted at students and parents, more law enforcement presence in the neighborhood, incentives and measures to make landlords accountable for the actions of their tenants and promotion of non-alcohol alternatives such as bowling and coffee shops.
After discussion, the group voted on various alternatives. Council members were unable to decide on a specific marketing strategy, so it was decided that dialogue on marketing strategies would continue.
On the "house parties" side of the goal, however, the group wanted to focus on enforcement and put additional police officers in the neighborhood and in downtown St. Cloud.
MJT has allocated $7,500 in funding for this St. Cloud underage drinking prevention group, though the group must still submit a grant proposal to MJT. Accordingly, the group decided to allocate $5,000 to cover the cost of increased law enforcement presence, spilt between the downtown area and the university neighborhood. Officers working under this grant would likely patrol on bikes.
The remaining $2,500 would go towards education under the "marketing" half of the goal. Additionally, the group also wants to meet with the landlords of neighborhood properties to encourage them to be more in touch with the behaviors of their tenants. It also suggested to Nathan Church that SCSU start addressing irresponsible alcohol consumption as part of its "Respect and Responsibility" workshop that all first-year students must attend.
"There is a direct link between sexual assault and irresponsible drinking which some aspects of that are already covered in 'Respect and Responsibility,'" Church said. "I don't think it would be that big a shift in the orientation and because we're really looking and including 'Respect and Responsibility' topics as we expand the first year connections program. I think it may be the kind of thing that could work out neatly within the mission of that particular instructional program. There's a good connection between them."
Church went on to say that he believed the underage drinking prevention meetings were already producing successful results.
"You've got members of the university community, the law enforcement community, the hospitality community, students and residents dialoguing about these issues," he said. "I think that's very significant. I think for really the first time in the history of the city there's cross-communication about a problem that I think the city's known about for a long time.
"I fell good about representing the university and the university shouldering the responsibility and seeing this from the other members of the community."
SCSU junior Josh Arnold came to the meeting as both a student and resident of the neighborhood.
"I'm here because I love in a house off of campus and it applies to me, what's going on here and I want to get my input heard," Arnold said. "I thought it was important to see what was going on here and what I can do to make a difference. I think we will end up getting something done, I think people have their heads together in the right place."
Dave Plourde is the Student Government chair of urban affairs.
"My purpose is to try and link the campus and the community," he said. "Where this links us is the fact that the majority of the conversation was student drinking and party houses when it's a whole citywide thing. Where Student Government gets involved with that is the members of Student Government are supposed to be elected representatives of the students, so if the students have a problem ... they should be able to go to the Student Government and represent their thoughts or concerns."
Plourde went on to say that Student Government wants to let students know what rights they have as members of the community, a community where they are often treated as "lower class individuals." He said he believed that more of the grant money should be used for education, however.
"It's all enforcing and not changing the behavior ... It's the education that changes the person over time," he said. "If no students believed in education themselves, then why are they at college?"
Sheila Nesbitt, community organizer from MJT and facilitator of the underage drinking prevention group, said more people, particularly students, have been coming to the group each meeting.
Nesbitt is not new to this scene. She has worked with a similar council in the college community of St. Paul, the Zero Adult Provider Coalition, which has changed the atmosphere of that neighborhood since its inception in 1999. She is impressed with the progress the St. Cloud group has already made.
"After three meetings - in six weeks, basically - this group came from never having met together as a group to having a proposal for $7,500," she said.
That money may seem like a small amount, she added, but "we look at it as seed money and we also focus on policy change. There are a lot of strategies that can be very expensive, but really, policy change and changes in the environment are shown to be some of the most effective strategies."
Middelstadt stressed that attitude change was also an important element.
"I don't want to come down and be the bad guy," he said. "My wife and I, we go introduce ourselves to the kids that move in and we want to be friends. We've told them that we'll help them with their landlord problems and we tell them, 'You can do what you want, but just be responsible.'"
The grant application for MTJ's funding will be finalized by Friday. MTJ will decide whether to award the grant to the St. Cloud group on Monday.
The next St. Cloud Underage Drinking Prevention Meeting will be March 18, 5-7 p.m. in the Jacob Wetterling Room in the lower level of the St. Cloud Police Department. Anyone is welcome to attend.
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