De Neve residents plagued by noise

In most dorms, students either have to use phones or go into the
hallways to talk to their floormates. Students in De Neve said they
can talk to their neighbors through the walls.

“When you go to the bathroom and open the medicine
cabinet, you can practically have a normal conversation with the
people next door,” said second-year biology student Nicole
Lang.

When asked if he received complaints about noise in De Neve,
Alan Hanson, director of the Office of Residential Life, said
“no one has contacted me directly … but I wouldn’t
suggest that (the problem) isn’t real.”

He said noise in residential-hall-type living is an ongoing
problem.

“The sense I have about what I have heard is that the
experience people are having may or may not be related to wall
conditions,” Hanson said.

No matter what the cause, students said the ability to hear
what’s going on next door, especially in the bathrooms, can
make it difficult for students to live comfortably and normally in
De Neve.

“I turn on the shower when I’m in the bathroom
because the people next door can hear everything. The people
downstairs are loud too,” said first-year psychobiology
student Anthony Nguyen.

Whereas students in other residential halls can play
instruments, generally without the music being carried to the next
room, De Neve musicians often receive complaints from their
neighbors, or even from the people living beneath them or above
them, residents said.

The volume of the sounds from radios, televisions and computers
is also often considered too loud for studious neighbors.

Certain rooms in De Neve have a more difficult time with loud
noises than other rooms. Those located next to the stairs, the
lounge or the trash chute have added noises that seep through the
walls daily, residents said.

“We live next to the stairs, so we can hear people running
up and talking. It sounds like pounding. And people from the study
lounges knock on the wall and lean their chairs up against the
wall. The people above us fall off their beds in the morning and
wake me up,” said second-year Japanese student Jason
Kawamoto.

Residents with rooms beneath them as well as above them also
seem to have more to deal with than those who live on the lowest or
highest floors.

“We don’t make any noise, and we try to be really
quiet, but the people downstairs complain, and it’s not even
us (who are being loud). It’s the people above us. We were
just sitting on the bed and the people beneath us started
complaining,” said first-year business economics student
Priscilla Park.

“It’s hard to tiptoe all the time,” she
added.

Even though complaints are numerous, there are still those
students who accept it as a part of dorm life.

“We try to be good about keeping quiet: we don’t
jump off the beds. We go down the sides. And people are pretty good
about the volume of their music,” said first-year chemical
engineering student Michael Wahl.

“It’s funny because we hear what the people next
door to us say about us,” said first-year business economics
student Ricky Bueno.

Noise may not be such a problem within the floor corridors.
Hanson said he has heard that Resident Assistants on rounds
sometimes have a hard time determining where noise is coming from
when they answer complaints.

“We know that at least the doors to the corridors are
doing a pretty good job of disguising where the source of the noise
is coming from,” he said.

Some residents in halls other than De Neve don’t notice
noise as a problem.

“I’ve only received a complaint once, when someone
told me to turn my music off. The noise hasn’t gotten to the
point where I have trouble getting to sleep,” said first-year
English student Nathan Weatherford, a Delta Terrace resident.

“Most of the noise comes from above us. As far as adjacent
walls, we can’t hear anything. It’s not that much of a
burden to live through, and it’s not to the point where we
have to complain,” said first-year molecular, cellular and
developmental biology student Patricia Calimlim, a Canyon Point
resident.

“We can’t hear normal, everyday activities. We
can’t even hear them if they’re laughing really loud. I
can only hear noises if our next door neighbors close their doors
really loud,” said first-year computer science student
Christine Wang, a Hedrick resident.

Some students compare their De Neve experience to other
residence halls.

“We can hear people running up the stairs and through the
hallways above us. People don’t think about who’s below
them. It’s pretty bad, but De Neve was a little worse because
their walls seemed thinner,” said second-year cybernetics
student Elliot Lee, a Canyon Point resident, who lived in De Neve
last year.

Even if De Neve residents are experiencing more problem than
other residents, they have not expressed this to housing.

“In our quality of life survey each spring, De Neve came
up better rated than some of the other residential halls,”
Hanson said.

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