I Don’t Have Luck With Neighbors

When I live at home, I have to deal with my asshat neighbor, although the issues with said neighbor only really are a problem in the summer. I assumed that I’d only have neighborly troubles at home, but since the semester started three weeks ago, it looks as though a bitter dispute, at the very least, is bound to break out between my roommate and I with our neighbors¹.

The root of the issue is noise. It’s a pretty common problem in dorm-style living, and usually noise issues are resolved by knocking on the door of the noisy room and asking its occupants to quiet down. And most of the time, that’s enough to take care of the situation, and it keeps the Resident Assistant (RA) out of the situation and there’s no documentation of the incident to go on anyone’s record. Except when the noise is at such a level when you can clearly hear lyric-for-lyric what song the neighbors are listening to and they speak at such a volume that you know one of the girls lost a hairpin and a boy who was hanging out in the room found it by searching under her bed, there is a problem.

My roommate and I have both asked our neighbors to be quiet on separate occasions multiple times in the past two weeks². We have always been mindful to ask them to lower the noise level during “quiet hours”³ even though they are generally loud all the time. Last night, however, was the final straw. When we asked them to be quiet, a boy in the room yelled a slur against my roommate after she had taken barely two steps away from the room. In response, one of my neighbors started making insulting (and false) comments about my roommate and me.

This, more than anything, is what is prompting my roommate and me to take further action about this situation. It is no longer adequate to just ask them to be quiet and hope that they respect our request (for the record, they usually don’t). My roommate and I are discussing our options and will not hesitate to file a formal complaint about this situation if necessary. It’s not just about the noise anymore; it’s about the disrespect and rudeness. We have never made slurs against or insulted our neighbors, much less done anything that warrants that behavior targeted at us, and we will not tolerate it.

1. Two new girls moved into the room next door as the old occupants moved out at the end of last semester. [↩]
2. It’s only been three weeks into the semester and we decided to let the noise slide during the first week back. [↩]
3. Quiet hours are from 11pm – 8am weekdays, 1am – 10am weekends. [↩]

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.