From the Queens Chronicle:
Residents of Jamaica Estates have had a big bone to pick with St. John’s University, the city and elected officials, and Monday they got their chance.
The Jamaica Estates Association held a meeting that night at the Hillcrest Jewish Center to discuss off-campus student housing — where illegal drinking, all-night partying and worse have some residents afraid and others angry.
In recent years, although St. John’s officials say that “the student population of the entire university has not increased,” the volume of complaints has grown concerning about as many as a dozen one-family houses occupied by students close to the Jamaica campus.
The room was filled to capacity during the nearly three-hour meeting, at which scores of homeowners all but finished each other’s sentences, relating stories of loud parties and obnoxious behavior by St. Johns students and their friends.
City codes allow for only “two unrelated persons” to join another in renting a residential unit — so it’s illegal for four or more college kids to live in a one-family house.
Longtime residents insist that unscrupulous realtors are illegally packing college kids into houses on quiet residential streets, and their blocks aren’t quiet anymore. They complained of one such “animal house” on Aberdeen Road that was the recent scene of a drunken bash of some 300 St. John’s students and their pals.
Neighbors recounted public urination and vomiting; a passed out youth on a front lawn, window-climbing, sexual escapades, tipped over mailboxes, and in one case a woman being threatened by a student, who was placed under arrest.
13 comments:
in the late 1960's ,this is the same tactic used by realtors to get home owners on union street, between sanford avenue and maple avenue ,to sell their houses.
the students were from Queens College. shortly all the homes were demolished and six story buildings were built.
guess who profited ? connect the dots.
When I was a student at St. Johns in the early 1980's there was plenty of this going on. This was before they built any dorms and there were a good number of "animal house" places controlled by the fraternities on the other side of Utopia Pkway, neighbors were always complaining then too. Hard to believe it's been 30 years already.
Toga! Toga!
Can we dance with your dates??
We gotta fight, for our right, to party!
Partying is a time-honored tradition, a way to release pent-up energy. Obviously, it shouldn't take place in a quiet, suburban neighborhood, but people still have a right to party.
Speaking of SJU...Cecilia Chang of, I believe, its Asian studies center...a Donald Manes and (most likely) a Tommy Huang cohort....was just indicted for embezzlement there!
Would love to get into escapades with the hot coeds!
Way back in high school, when we lads were trying to decide which college to attend, our English teacher, himself a graduate of St. John's, always disparagingly referred to it as "The Club", as in "country club". He advised against applying to attend if we wanted to get a real education.
Does any kind of learning actually go on there?
Does any kind of learning actually go on there?
It's been my misfortune to be riding on a Jamaica bus as a load of students from SJU boarded. I couldn't believe that these were college students. I know that admission standards have declined over the years, but it was frightening to see how far they had fallen.
It's always been a major party school, probably always will be.
as in society, there are winners and losers from the universities.
do not judge all from those that are losers.
many excellent professors taught at St.John's in the past.
and many graduates went on to excellence in society.we also had championship basketball programs, when we were permitted to be called "the redmen".
a N.I.T.championship and two E.C.A.C championships coached by the great Joe Lapchick.
The N.I.T. was the big one in the 1950's.
read "LAPCHICK" by Gus Alfieri (guard, 1955-59)
To the last "Anonymous" ~
So, is that where we can look for excellence NOW... in a basketball team known as the "Redmen"? From fifty years ago?
To Rich Parkwood ~
Can only add to your comment about the bus-riding St. John's students that I am grateful that they weren't DRIVING.
RE: HELEN:three members of the 1955-1959 ST.John's team were national honor society Skull and Circle members. Dick Engert,Buddy Pascal and Lou Roethel,(also president of Nassau C.C.)
Hugh Kirwan was principal of Christ the King H.S. in Queens.he recently was honored by naming the Hugh Kirwan Performing Arts Center after him.
Ted Schreiber received a $55,000 bonus to play M.L.Baseball in 1958.what did you or your relatives earn in that year ?he retired after coaching sports at J.Madison H.S.
Gus Alfieri was a very successful B/B coach at St. Anthony's H.S. in L.I.,and author.
Al Seiden ,after playing N.B.A.B/B was a successful theater ticket agent.
Tony Jackson played N.B.A.B/B.
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