UM, towns continue to build relationships

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At one time, Michael Curtis was afraid to let his daughters walk a couple of blocks downtown, but now his neighborhood is what he expected to find when he moved from Seattle to Orono five years ago.

Now it’s the kind of community where neighbors can walk into one another’s homes without knocking to borrow a cup of sugar – or a bottle of ketchup – as was the case last weekend.

“There are polite, outgoing, nice people here now,” said Curtis, seated at his kitchen table, “which is what I expected when I moved here.”

Unfortunately for Curtis, the friendly neighborhood he was hoping for didn’t exist until more recently.

In September 2002, the Pond Street resident was assaulted, allegedly by University of Maine students, while trying to quiet a party at an apartment building in his neighborhood.

He was punched and kicked by at least three assailants, police believe, and he suffered a broken nose, two black eyes and multiple bruises.

His attackers have not been caught.

“I don’t care to pursue it anymore,” he said.

Reflecting on the incident, Curtis touched his face.

“My nose has changed,” he said. “I’ve been to specialists, and it’s not going to get better. But that’s a small thing.”

The incident highlighted issues between the university community and the town and spurred residents and officials to try to make changes.

Although relations between the college and towns where many of its students reside have improved, UM Police Chief Noel March said in a recent interview, “I think it’s a work in progress, and it always will be.” He added, “Since the incident involving Curtis, there’s been great progress.”

People still mention the attack to Curtis, “but mostly it’s good stuff,” he said. “Now people see the results around town.”

Making progress

The most recent step toward improved relations between Orono and the university is a standing meeting of public safety officials, the UM vice president, and Orono Town Manager Cathy Conlow. Old Town recently held a similar meeting with university officials and plans to continue them.

At the sessions, the parties discuss a variety of issues, such as safety, housing, traffic and coming events.

Both towns have adopted ordinances that deal more strictly with rental properties. About half of the university’s more than 11,000 students live off-campus within a 10-mile radius of the college.

In an attempt to curb potential difficulties, ordinances have been established that hold tenants and landlords responsible for events that take place at their properties.

In the past, it was common to see parties attended by 100 students or more quickly get out of control.

“This has been an ongoing thing for decades,” Curtis said. “The street would be full of sometimes totally drunken revelers.”

If one party were broken up, partiers would migrate to the next party in what Curtis described as drunken packs.

“The apartment building on the corner was basically a sports bar,” he said.

In Orono, the Disorderly Property Ordinance has had a tremendous impact, Orono police Capt. Gary Duquette said.

The former noise ordinance was nearly impossible to enforce, and officers would go to a residence five or six times to warn occupants to quiet down.

“It just would never solve anything,” Duquette said.

The new ordinance allows officers to warn occupants once, and if they have to return, the tenants must take responsibility and someone goes to jail, he said. Landlords seem to like the ordinance, too.

“We’ve gotten great cooperation from all the landlords,” Duquette said. “The huge gatherings of the past, I just don’t see them anymore.”

Old Town’s ordinance is similar and states that no more than three nonrelated individuals can live in the same single-family residence.

A process is also in place when officers respond to a residence for a complaint of loud noise.

“Ninety-nine out of 100 times, it’s University of Maine students,” Old Town Police Chief Don O’Halloran said.

The occupants are required to sign a notice saying they were informed of the complaint, and police send a letter to the property owner requesting assistance in curbing disorderly activity at their property.

“Once in a while I’ll get a call back from a property owner or landlord saying thank you,” O’Halloran said.

When officers have to return to a residence repeatedly, it becomes obvious that the building is a nuisance, O’Halloran said. The police notify the university that the inhabitants are habitual offenders, and the two entities work together to try to fix the problem.

Culture clash

In the close-knit communities of Orono and Old Town, the varying lifestyles of college students and longtime residents have the potential to create problems.

“At one time, we had more off-campus students living here than in Orono because rents were cheaper,” O’Halloran said.

O’Halloran said that in Old Town he has noticed parents are buying homes for their college-age children to live in.

“Anecdotally, people are selling houses because the market’s hot,” he said.

The Orono police chief said he hasn’t seen the trend, and neither has a local Realtor, who asked not to be identified.

The Realtor said she has received a fair number of calls over the years from parents looking for housing for their children who plan to attend UM, but she could think of only one instance when she made a sale, and that was in Old Town.

She has seen a lot of homes on the lower end of the market sell recently and says now there are for-rent signs on front lawns.

O’Halloran said people are buying the houses for UM students who will live there with a few friends for three or four years.

“It’s really a trend right now,” he said.

The parents then turn around and sell the house and make a profit because of the current housing market.

On French Island, where the houses are about four feet apart, that can cause problems. People who have lived there for years have a different lifestyle and culture than college students.

“We’ve got a culture clash, basically,” O’Halloran said.

The problem isn’t restricted to one area of the city, but is spread over the 43 square miles of Old Town.

Many problems in the city have to do with the way landlords manage their properties, the Old Town police chief said.

For example, the former Riverplex apartment complex on Bennoch Road used to have habitual problems, but now that it’s under new ownership, there have been few incidents over the last few years, he said.

Duquette and Curtis noted similar situations in Orono.

“If you move into a pit and it’s a pit to start with, you’re not going to feel the need for any responsibility to bring it up to a higher standard,” Curtis said.

The apartments on his street now are under new ownership, and the difference is “huge,” he said.

Should trouble arise

Both police chiefs said they encourage residents to call early if there is a problem, before the situation gets out of hand.

“If it looks like there’s something brewing, give us a call,” O’Halloran said, adding that before police can respond to a problem, they have to know one exists.

Duquette noted that since the assault on Curtis, Orono residents are calling earlier with complaints.

While UM Public Safety doesn’t have jurisdiction off-campus, March recognizes that houses and apartments easily can become party central, even if that’s not the intention of the host.

When dealing with serious repeat offenders, Old Town and Orono police commonly make referrals to the UM dean of students.

“The Student Conduct Code applies to University of Maine students as long as they’re enrolled,” March said.

UM police often assist the two municipal forces in criminal investigations or to locate students on campus whom local police need to interview as victims, witnesses or suspects.

“This is a very safe community, but it isn’t pristine, in a bubble or vacuum,” March said. “There’s no moat or wall that surrounds the university to keep out the bad.”

Alcohol and drug use

All three police officials agreed that alcohol is the biggest problem and the No. 1 catalyst in most criminal activity by students.

“We bring about 500 criminal charges a year,” March said. “Most are alcohol violations.”

In addition to bringing books, laptops and precious possessions from home, college students bring with them social disorders and personal issues. For the most part, students don’t learn criminal activity at UM, March said.

Underage drinking is a frequent violation police find when they arrive at a residence in response to a complaint. Students charge money at the door and in return partygoers receive a stamp on their hand and a plastic cup.

“Alcohol certainly still gives you the biggest problems,” O’Halloran said. Summonses often are given for providing a place for minors to drink and for furnishing alcohol to minors.

The university is a marketplace for drugs, but Old Town and Orono aren’t any different from other communities in Maine fighting the battle against increased prescription and other drug abuse.

“We’re just like everybody else,” O’Halloran said. “There’s no denying that all the drug problems that are across the state are here.”

Problems don’t end with underage drinking and drug abuse. Excessive partying can lead to sexual assaults and fights, police said.

“So much other crime is driven by substance abuse – alcohol and other drugs,” March said.

He noted that UM has seen an increase in drug abuse, specifically noting prescription drugs OxyContin, Ritalin and Adderall.

Part of the problem is that teenagers going to college are without direct supervision of their parents for the first time.

“No towns have an influx of 1,700 teenagers living there without parents [for the first time] every year,” March said.

Education and prevention are large parts of the campus police’s effort to curb excessive and irresponsible drinking.

At motorist checkpoints UM police check for impaired drivers and hand out information on drinking laws and responsibility.

Residence halls have an alcohol and substance abuse awareness program each year where students get a chance to put on beer goggles, which blur vision to simulate the effects of alcohol on a person’s sight.

“It really seems like the university is trying to inform the students of proper behavior when living among residents in the community,” Curtis said. “I also notice that a lot more of the students really are paying attention to how their colleagues are behaving.”

On the other hand, March pointed out that UM students are not always at the root of the problem. People with criminal intent such as drug dealers and sex offenders come to campus, and those can include friends and family, as well as people with no connection to the college.

“They’re not vested in the UM community, and they don’t care,” March said.

The ongoing issue

Even with the changes that have been made, officials say there’s still room for improvement.

“I think that we always can improve on things,” Orono Town Manager Cathy Conlow said.

She noted that the University Town Relations Committee that was formed after the assault on Curtis requires four student members from UM.

“They’ve been having a difficult time getting students,” Conlow said.

Orono’s disorderly property ordinance has proved itself successful, but the town hasn’t stopped there. Officials are continuing to develop a rental property maintenance ordinance and a policy that deals with fire prevention in commercial and rental properties.

Interdepartmental communication in Orono also has improved, according to town officials.

“I feel that the town has empowerment to correct anything that may come up,” Curtis said.

As for Old Town, the city has begun to hold meetings with university officials and continues to work with landlords to curb potential residential problems.

Looking ahead, Conlow noted that communication is a key in developing a good relationship between the university and the towns.

“I think that we always can improve on communication, and it would lead to better service delivery for both the university and the community,” Conlow said.

Curtis agrees that improvements still can be made, but says that things have changed dramatically since he was attacked more than three years ago.

As his neighbor stopped by to borrow a bottle of ketchup to go with lunch, Curtis noted that the sense of community he now feels is the way he always wanted things to be.

“I feel safer now,” he said, “and I feel my kids can be safe here now.”