Mary Haley, Marketing Chair & Asst. Features Editor
As I walked back home from my afternoon class last Monday, I was greeted by a man on a bicycle, with a handful of newspapers as a “special delivery to the residents who live here” — my apartment building.
Before I could even read the headline, my eyes were immediately drawn to a photo of the same building I was walking into, plastered on the front cover of The Riverdale Press, along with a caption of the full address of my apartment building. I then looked at the title, a question of if myself, my neighbors and my classmates were solely to blame for the described “noise” in the Bronx.
Many of the Manhattan University students that live off campus, but live within a particular radius of MU’s campus (also known as “resi-commuters”), that I know, had seen the article, laughed about it and gone about their day.
But what about the students that live in this building?
To say it was jarring to see a photo and the address of my apartment building on the front cover of The Riverdale Press would be an understatement. Quite frankly, it makes me fearful for my safety.
A few other anonymous female tenants have similar feelings about the building, and with the publishing of the photo and address, their concerns have become exacerbated. I had the opportunity to swap stories with them.
When they first moved into their unit, they had a few friends come over. While they took photos on a balcony, a stranger saw and came into the building, covering their peephole and telling them he was their friend and needed to be let in. The same person would repeatedly come by and stare into their windows – for a week.
“Like two days before that, I said there was a guy that just kept walking around the front of the building, like, I wonder if he lived here,” an anonymous female tenant said. “It just made it creepy for them to know, this might be a college apartment, or these might just be two girls alone in this apartment.”
After my roommates and I were robbed over the summer, I’ve always been on high alert about my general day-to-day behavior in the apartment building. As soon as we returned to campus after having almost all of our belongings stolen, my roommates and I immediately bought a ring camera that supervises the people coming in and out, and “the noise” that “reaches intolerable levels,” as described by The Riverdale Press article.
Two student tenants who also asked to remain anonymous touched on this in a text conversation with me, one of them having lived there longer than the tracked duration of the noise – which the article cites as having been recorded for “over a year” by a local not associated with the university.
“Firstly, I would like to acknowledge that the article is not only a gross misinterpretation of the type of noise that occurs at the property, but also makes claims that are entirely false and could have been avoided with a simple Google search,” the anonymous tenant wrote. “The property is in no way affiliated with Manhattan University, in its entirety aside from the fact that some units are rented by students. The gatherings that occur are within the bounds of the student code of conduct and New York City’s ‘Quiet hours’ policy, and times that were not have already been resolved with the university and local law enforcement that have notified us of the complaints. Not a single resident at the address has ever felt the need to even mention noise, let alone going to the extent of lying on behalf of the residents and school through the avenue of a neighborhood newspaper. We are not in pain, we do not need help, we are not trying to terrorize the neighborhood, we are trying to enjoy our time at school, since when is that a crime?”
Now, I understand the complaints of noise, as I didn’t grow up in a neighborhood where you could hear a pin drop. In fact, most MU students didn’t. It’s the Bronx. It can be loud and disruptive, but there’s also 1.4 million people in this borough trying to live their lives as best they can, at all different times of the day and night. As a resident of this building, I can attest to how my neighbors have put their best efforts forth to coexist with one another, with the university and with city-wide policies.
It is very disheartening to me that an esteemed, Pulitzer Prize winning publication would publish a photo of a student dominated apartment building — with the address — on the front page of their newspaper. In fact, this is not even the first time it has happened.
In the fall of 2021, The Riverdale Press published another article about the same plea – and another photo of the steps of a house rented by students, with the address mentioned multiple times throughout the article.
“If the noise is affecting people, something should be done, yeah. But I don’t like the way that we were put on the forefront of everything,” another tenant said. “Being blamed is more of speculation. And then on top of that, it makes other people in the building kind of targeted to the noise, even if we’re not contributing to the noise. And then on top of that, it puts us in danger, with everyone knowing that this is a college apartment.”