It is 12:00 AM, Halloween night and students are raving to loud music, splashing cups of foamy beer from a keg and dancing in the overcrowded living room of a frat house. After slamming down four tequila shots with his buddies, Hunter Sawyer, a junior Communications major at UB, nudges his way through the crowd of outrageous costumes, only to find that the line for the filthy pee-coated bathroom is wrapped around the hallway. Storming down the spiral staircase, he eventually makes it out the front door where he picks the finest bush in sight. Some of his vodka, beer, and the tequila soaked friends do the same. "This is college," said Sawyer. "This is how we like to have fun. Partying till all hours of the night, drinking with our friends till we get sick. That's how we like to have a good time.".
This is not an extraordinary happening in the University Heights, a residential neighborhood around UB's south campus that offers cheap housing and that attracts a larger number of UB students. Students like to party where they live, and the Heights is known around campus as a place to go at night and as the home of most of UB's fraternities. But it is also home to families, professors and long-time Buffalonians and some residents are tired of the loud noise, the red Solo cups littered across the streets after parties and the arrogance of students who think it's OK to pee on plants in public. John Adams, a 43-year-old single father of three, is kept up by the college nightlife most Fridays and Saturdays until early morning during the college school year. He says he often hears glass breaking, random screams and profanities yelled outside his windows, along with the occasional fight, car crash or drunken injury.
"It's unfair to the community," said Adams. "I'm scared to let my children near the windows at night, not only for safety reasons but because I don't want them to see accidentally someone peeing in our yard.