Regarding Professor Pinch’s April 27 Wespeak:
Professor Pinch, in response to my original Wespeak, (April 16) frames the implementation of new quiet house restrictions on Lawn and Home Avenues as simply a matter of enforcing Middletown laws. However, the issue at hand is not one of compliance with Middletown restrictions. If it were about the legality of noise per se, there would be no need to declare Home and Lawn houses quiet, because noise ordinances apply to all housing. Middletown laws make no exemption for any form of University housing; above 45 decibel noise at night is as illegal on Foss Hill as on Home Avenue. Presumably, the administration is not implicitly stating “Home and Lawn houses must comply with quiet laws, but other houses and dorms need not comply with the laws”.
Then why distinguish Home and Lawn Avenue from any other housing at Wesleyan, on or off campus? Although all houses and dorms are subject to the same Middletown laws, some homes on Lawn and Home Avenue are not owned by the University, and residents have complained about noise levels on weekends. As my original Wespeak stated, when these people purchased their homes, they knew, or should have known, that the neighborhood was noisy.
Although, as Professor Pinch stated, “they did not purchase a neighborhood,”they purchased a house in a neighborhood. A real estate product is more than the physical house itself; location is always an important aspect of overall product and its valuation. My point is that if you buy a house near an airport, don’t complain about airplanes overhead; if you buy a house in a noisy neighborhood, don’t complain about the noise.
However, Professor Pinch does make an important point: I should have explicitly addressed my Wespeak to those who purchased a house on Lawn or Home Avenue after the University expansion. Those who purchased their homes before Wesleyan’s expansion had no way of knowing how the neighborhood would change. They did not buy into the neighborhood that currently exists.
Therefore, their complaints have much more merit. That said, the character of an area always changes over time. Property values are always in flux; neighborhoods improve, neighborhoods decline. Although he changes on Home and Lawn Avenues may have been exceptionally dramatic, “nearly 60% of CT citizens have lived in their housing 5 years or less, while 13% moved into their current housing more than 30 years ago,” (http://www.ctkidslink.org/publications/well03CensCtHousng09.pdf), which suggests that the vast majority of non-University home owners purchased their home after Wesleyan’s early-80s expansion.
Thus, I stand by my original Wespeak, with the aforementioned caveat.
Sincerely, Piotr Brzezinski
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