Opinion By Richard Saunders
I don’t understand why so many UMass students have to live in our downtown and in our neighborhoods.
Why can’t they stay in their place? They have their own campus, and that’s where they should live. I know, UMass provides more on-campus housing than other state universities, but it’s not nearly enough for me.
We should stop the development of new housing that might be rented to college students. I’ve started a website, imhereshutthedoor.org. If you want our town to retain its character and integrity, join me.
UMass has expanded to the point where our quality of life is threatened. It’s time to take back our town! Make Amherst Great Again!
Students are just not like us real Amherst residents. They have different habits that clash with the way we live our lives. Have you seen all the cars parked in front of some student houses?
It’s simply a question of values. Property values, that is. I’m worried that if students infiltrate my neighborhood, I’d lose some of the enormous value I’ve accrued in my house from the run-up in prices the last five years. Who needs that?
Please don’t call me “anti-student.” I just don’t want them living in my neighborhood. And don’t call me prejudiced; I met a graduate student recently and I told him I was surprised at how clean and articulate he was.
Have you seen them out there on their lawns, playing beer pong? I’d much rather see lawn signs for Town Council candidates or those “In this house…” signs. Many of these students are so unkempt, I don’t want to look at them. And why do the young men wear their hats backwards, anyway?
Plus, I worry about crime – I’ve seen students walking around downtown carrying open containers of beer. That’s against the law! And every time I see someone jaywalking on North Pleasant Street, he looks like a student.
They make noise and disturb the peace of our neighborhoods. They talk to each other on the street late at night! And those weekend parties — Why can’t they have their parties on their own campus?
Sure, we real Amherst residents make noise too. I can hear the lawnmowers, leaf-blowers, barking dogs, chainsaws, tree removal, house remodeling and birthday parties for 3-year-olds. But those are our people, and those are our noises. They don’t bother me, not like noise from students does.
Students just don’t have any respect for our community. Every time I see a pizza box lying by the side of the road, I yearn for the days when all the litter you’d see was bags of dog poop.
And how about our roads! They are worse than a third world country’s roads, all because students are driving their cars over them. Students wouldn’t need cars if they stayed on their campus. And who has to pay to fix our roads? Amherst taxpayers, that’s who!
Have you noticed that it’s getting harder to find a parking space downtown? That’s because students are taking all the best spaces.
I know, I’ve heard that those five-story dorms downtown have saved our budgets from cuts. Yes, I’ve heard that each of those buildings pays hundreds of thousands of dollars in property taxes a year, helping to pay for our schools while adding little to our school expenses.
But I don’t like the way those buildings look, and they clash with my mental image of Amherst as a small town. So I say no more downtown dorms – they should build more dorms on the campus, even if we don’t get any tax benefits from them. And if the revenue shortfall means we have to lay off teachers, hey, I’m OK with that. I don’t have children in the public schools.
We have the tools to stop the development of housing for undesirables. We can prohibit anything but single-family homes in most parts of town. We can establish strict minimum parking requirements. We can ban anything over two stories. We can encourage Hadley and Sunderland to build student housing near UMass.
We can even declare a moratorium on construction or label our neighborhoods “historic.”
And if the scarcity of housing gets worse and keeps driving prices up, I’m fine with that. I own my home and I’m happy to see its value continue going up.
I say send students back where they belong: on campus, away from us self-respecting year-round residents. Amherst should return to the way it was back in the 1960s, before UMass started expanding, when we had a hardware store and a supermarket downtown, not pizza parlors and bars. Those were the days.
Richard Saunders was one of the many pseudonyms used by Benjamin Franklin. It is borrowed here by Amherst Current co-founder Nick Grabbe.
THE AMHERST CURRENT 
The rant made me smile this morning, and I loved that I had to think for a moment whether this was serious or satire. Thank you!
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Comment from Ray La Raja
This piece does a great job using humor and over-the-top exaggeration to get at a real question– who actually ‘belongs’ in Amherst, and who gets to decide that? By taking the usual complaints and turning them up to eleven, I think this piece makes us step back and consider some assumptions we all slip into (definitely me) during town–gown debates. It’s funny, and nudges you to think about how much of the tension comes from stereotypes rather than the real issues, which are primarily structural problems facing Amherst. For me it lands because it’s playful and uncomfortable at the same time. Mark Twain is smiling…Thanks Richard Saunders.
Ray La Raja
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Thank you Mr. Franklin. Who knew you could be so prescient – and remain so funny! Enjoy Paris where they would NEVER support student housing in private neighborhoods 😉
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No need to worry about where students live! College-age folks are well know for their impulse control, moderate partying and respect for their neighbors. Their cars belong on the lawns of their rental houses, because their excise taxes are going to fix streets and roads in their own towns. Their party debris and puke should grace everyone’s lawns to remind us how much fun it can be to live off campus.
No need to worry about overdeveloping Amherst. It’s about time we get some boxey out-of-place buildings downtown. The quaint atmosphere held over from last century is really so cloying, so passe.
No need to prioritize or care about the concerns of those working class people who should realize it’s time to move out and let some landlord buy up their modest house and let it fall into disrepair while they rent it to students at $1000+ per bedroom.
And no need to take concerns of those not eager to propel Amherst forward, as snarky editorials should clearly show them their folly.
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After the catastrophe at Olympia Place,I find it hard to enjoy your humor towards students.
A moratorium would allow the town to inspect other frame buildings .
I went to the site , and can’t get this question answered. Why were there not concrete stairwells left standing ?
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John,
If you want our town to be more bucolic, you should endorse denser construction hidden away in the woods – just like Olympia was. We can’t force UMass to limit enrollment or build dorms, so any argument built on those foundations is fatally flawed. The best thing we can do is build smart; doing so will get the cars off the lawns and property tax dollars into the town’s piggybank.
If you want to see what a regional downtown looks like without students, go check out Greenfield, Belchertown, or Palmer. Though I appreciate the character of those towns, I prefer the multicultural energy (caused almost entirely by the students) of college towns like South Hadley, Northampton, or Amherst.
David,
Why don’t we just pretend there’s a moratorium and inspect right now? It’s not like we’re prohibited from inspecting while construction is ongoing. In fact, outside of the practically-in-Hadley Campus View project, there is no student housing under construction.
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Evan :
5 floor frame buildings are a money grab, without regard for safety. Put your family in a tinderbox building without a way of escape ? Not me thank you , grateful for no deaths . Learn from this and save the rhetoric.
I am not interested in your circular reasoning . The facts are the facts . There is a pile of ashes at Olympia Place .
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I wholeheartedly agree that we need more housing in Amherst, and that housing students is one way to generate much-needed revenue. I don’t think though, that mocking people who see things differently is a good strategy. If we are to see increased support for housing in Amherst we need to build coalition and not alientate potential allies.
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Count me as one of those bewildered and thoroughly undecided about how the debate reflected in this satirical piece and the comments following it should come out. It’s expected that every person in Amherst should have established their opinions in cement. And I can’t get there. I know that, on principle, students should get the same respect as residents of the Town as anyone else. I know that their presence is crucial to the vitality of Amherst. And I also know that, with several single-family residences in my neighborhood poised to change hands, one or more student rentals beginning in the center of it would surely change the character of this place where we live. So the Naismith-Varner dialogue is right where the action is these days in Amherst. I just wish that the University were choosing to chart its future a bit differently. I appreciate Mr. Grabbe’s attempt at humor, but…….
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