The weekend of April 8 brought some turmoil to the St. Thomas community as a number of surrounding neighbors were disturbed by student behavior that day. Not all students, however, feel that the neighbor’s anger was justified.

“We don’t give [neighbors] a ton to complain about. We’re pretty good neighbors in general,” St. Thomas senior Ellie Rowland said. “We clean up our neighborhood, we’re nice and polite, and then we go out one day and they got mad is kind of how a lot of us saw the story.”

Temperatures rose to 70 degrees that day and many students took that as an opportunity to party outside. For seniors, this was the day of Tour de Franzia, a tradition for undergrad Tommie students where teams tour between four houses drinking boxed wine.

Rowland and her roommates’ house on Selby Avenue was one of the four houses picked to host the event because of its close proximity to campus.

Rowland said that she left her house around 1 p.m. to begin the tour between the different houses.

“When I left my house it was fine. It was pretty contained. There was probably like 30 people in our backyard, if that,” she said.

When she got back to her house, she said there was probably 150 students in her backyard, but it still seemed well contained.

“It wasn’t, in my opinion, disruptive. I mean, it was mid-day Saturday. I’ve seen worse,” she said.

Rowland left again and said there must have been close to 300 people in her backyard when she came back to her house a second time. That’s when the police showed up.

“The cops didn’t care,” she said. “They said, ‘You know, this isn’t our business really. It’s mid-day afternoon, do what you want. We’re just saying that it’s getting out of hand.’”

Rowland and her roommates agreed and decided they should shut it down. So, they asked the police to do it for them.

“I asked the cops to shut it down because I didn’t think anyone was going to listen to someone who was participating,” she explained. “No one really wants to listen to anyone else. They listen to the cops, though.”

According to Rowland, one of her neighbors took pictures of their yard later that night, detailing how trashed it was. The neighbor then sent the pictures to Neighborhood Liaison Amy Gage and Dean of Students Linda Baughman.

“Everyone who had their house registered to the university account and was one of the houses that hosted got in trouble and was brought in to read the reports that were sent in by neighbors,” Rowland said.

Rowland said that she and her roommates apologized to the neighbors, but explained that the neighbors knew the event was happening at their house because they gave them a warning beforehand. She also said that they warned the St. Paul Police Department about it.

“Yeah, I can see from their perspective how it was bad. But, a lot of their complaints just seemed in the moment upsetness,” Rowland said. “I’ve seen worse on campus with Tommie-Johnnie. So, I can’t imagine this behavior being that bad. And also, you chose to live next to a college campus. I can’t imagine that doesn’t come without a disclaimer of that behavior.”

Junior Nick Guggemos challenges neighbors to change the way they think about students.

“I just wish and hope that the neighbors knew that there is a lot more effort being done by the students to protect the neighborhoods then there are of the small majority of students that are kind of disrupting them or damaging them,” he said.

Guggemos and other Tommie students have been a part of a number of different neighborhood cleanups, where the students go around the surrounding St. Thomas neighborhoods to clean up anything trash, from plastic cups to broken glass. Guggemos said there have been four of these in the past couple weeks.

“There are little things that I feel are reasonable to complain about here, but I really think that the neighbors should be thankful and take a positive outlook that we don’t have Spring Jam (held at the University of Minnesota) held at St. Thomas, we don’t have a Mifflin Block Party that they had at Madison last weekend, which is similar to Spring Jam, we don’t have huge football tailgates in the fall like the big schools do, where garbage ends up everywhere,” he said.

Sophomore Connor Barth and his roommates moved into their house on Marshall Avenue full-time at the beginning of the school year and have had a tough time getting one of their neighbors to see the good in them. He explained that this neighbor, who, based on his knowledge, has lived in her house for two years, is under the impression that he and his roommates are the same group of college students that lived in the house the year prior.

On the day of Tour de Franzia, in which Barth and his roommates didn’t participate, the neighbor was disturbed by a different house on Marshall Avenue that was hosting the event, but misunderstood and called the cops on Barth’s house, according to Barth.

“The people who were living in our house last year were really, really bad … We’re not innocent in any way, shape or form either. We’ve gotten the cops called on us and we’ve done stupid stuff,” he said. “She just assumed that we were the same group of kids, which is understandable why you’d be that mad had that been the situation, but, the thing is, that wasn’t the situation.”

Barth said that his landlord attended a meeting in which neighbors could voice their opinions about any frustration they might have about student behavior. Barth’s neighbor was there, stating that she wants her student neighbors kicked out of their houses and expelled if one more thing happens.

“We need to be more attentive of how loud our music is, especially at night. There’s families and stuff. We get that. We weren’t mad at her for any of that. Totally understandable,” Barth said. “But … there’s not much we can do to get on her good side.”

As a result of the Tour de Franzia weekend, Rowland said that the case race, another senior tradition, has been shut down.

“The traditions are super important to us (seniors),” Rowland said. “Just to be able to have one last hurrah is really important to us because it’s the last chance that we can get to do that together.”

According to Guggemos, it has also been rumored that there has been conversation that the Tiff’s and O’Gara’s buses might get shut down. Guggemos thinks that eliminating the buses would result in a lot more problems for students, neighbors and the university.

“I disagree that students are eroding neighborhood relations,” he said. “I instead think that we’ve actually improved those relations.”

Gamiel Hall can be reached at hall0211@stthomas.edu.