Permanent residents in the Syracuse University area heaved a communal sigh of relief Friday when word circulated that classes would be held on this spring’s SU Showcase.

After five years of granting students a day off from class, Vice Chancellor and Provost Eric Spina announced Friday that SU Showcase, April 19, will be a regular instruction day.

The decision was not a direct response to neighbor complaints about the off-campus parties on Euclid Avenue, MayFest, held on the day of SU Showcase, Spina said. But rather an attempt to emphasize the day’s intended ‘academic purpose.’

Regardless of the catalyst, neighbors are calling the decision a long overdue step in the right direction.

Harry Lewis has lived on Lancaster Avenue for 50 years. He’s become a staple in the South East University Neighborhood Association and a well-known advocate for neighbors over the years. SEUNA has been pushing the university to reinstate classes since the block party first started in 2005, said Lewis, the group’s treasurer.

‘I’m thrilled. MayFest was very high on our list of concerns, mostly because of probable injuries and the fact that it became one big, continuous drinking party,’ Lewis said.

SEUNA submitted a letter to SU after last year’s MayFest detailing a number of problems residents experienced that day. The letter listed complaints of public urination, profanity, lewd behavior, littering, destruction of property, and open container violations, Lewis said.

‘And those are the same things we’ve seen year after year,’ he said.

The change is a welcome one, Lewis said, but he only sees it working if the university agrees to impose penalties on those students who may choose to skip class on the day of SU Showcase. SEUNA suggested this to SU in a longer letter sent in early October, but the group has not heard back, Lewis said.

Lewis does not support Student Association’s push for a separate day off for students, unless it takes place on campus with more regulations. Lewis listed Cornell’s Slope Day as an example of a successful on-campus student celebration.

Cornell’s Slope Day is the last day of regular classes before finals. The university sets up a gated party with musical acts and food and alcohol available for purchase. The party has security and students are given wristbands to denote who is of legal drinking age.

Since 1966, Jack Graver, a SU mathematics professor, has lived on Livingston Avenue. He said he’s had very few complaints living near students over the years.

Graver recalled Labor Day, a few years back, when a party behind him got so loud he threw on his bathrobe ran outside and knocked on the door at 2 a.m. When the door opened, it was one of his students who stared back at him.

‘We kind of looked at each other for a second, and then, he said, ‘I guess we’re a bit noisy huh? We’ll stop.’ And they did.’

For the most part, Graves has seen sensible behavior from students but said he opposes both SU Showcase and the MayFest partying because it cut in on instructional time.

‘As a teacher, it really places havoc if in the middle of everything there’s this vacation,’ Graver said. ‘I thought it was a mistake to cancel classes right from the beginning.

‘It’s also never done what it says it was going to. It’s not an academic day on campus. It’s party time. There are plenty of party times over the weekend. We don’t really have to break in the middle of the school year for an additional one.’

Another university neighborhood resident, Dan Smothergill, has lived there since 1973. He’s glad SU took a first step in ending the off-campus block party, but said he found the most unsettling part of MayFest to be the disregard for city codes and the law.

‘My major complaint was the city and the police department sort of looked the other way to lots of violations of law – things that if they’d been going on in any other part of town, especially one of the poor black parts of town, would have resulted in hundreds of arrests,’ Smothergill said.

‘It was as though since these were middle class kids attending the university, it was a different situation,’ he said.

He’s glad the city won’t have the ‘mammoth job’ of cleaning up after a block party, Smothergill added.

For SU, Corey Driscoll has fielded neighbor complaints about MayFest for the past two years as the community relations associate for the university’s office of government relations.

The day can be an overwhelming one for neighbors, particularly families, she said.

‘These are residents, these are families, these are people trying to get to work whose children are walking home, and what happens during that day is not really conducive to a residential neighborhood with crowded sidewalks and broken glass,’ Driscoll said.

Despite the favorable neighborhood reaction, Darya Rotblat, SU director of off-campus and commuter services, said she understands student disappointment.

‘Students want the day off because they feel it’s a day of relaxation. They feel they only get one day off spring semester, and like the block parties are a tradition,’ Rotblat said.

Rotblat has seen the number of students attending the block parties grow over the years. That’s more bodies on second story roofs, she said, more students aimlessly walking across the street and more overcrowding. In addition to the safety concerns, Rotblat doesn’t like the reputation the day gives students.

‘MayFest and the block parties make the news and make students at SU look like all they do is drink and have crazy parties,’ Rotblat said. ‘I don’t like that students get that viewing.’

jmterrus@syr.edu

Published on October 27, 2009 at 12:00 pm