Tensions between students and local residents are at an all time high, with a published letter in York’s The Press today, calling for government policy to ‘prohibit potentially disruptive gatherings of students’.
The letter, written by Vanessa Windass of Badger Hill, claims that ‘the peace of Badger Hill was shattered last Friday after midnight with booming music from a student house party’, further claiming that ‘students [were] displaying a flagrant lack of consideration for their living environment’.
The news comes just weeks after 85 of the 90 householders in Thief Lane and Newland Park Drive, invited York MP, Hugh Bayley to the area, as a means to raise the issue in parliament. Thief Lane resident Ann Allenson, vented her fury, claiming that ‘students seem to shun any contact with us’ and were ‘causing distress to mainly the elderly residents’.
However one Thief Lane Student we spoke to said, “That lady should mind her own business, we may be a bit messy but we certainly aren’t bad enough to warrant our actions ‘distressing’, and to be frankly honest – the old people on this road seem a heck of a lot more unfriendly then us students; their the ones that ‘shun’ attention.”
The battle looks to continue between residents and students, although with almost weekly reports in The Press from troubled members of the public it seems like the issue seems to bother residents more-so than students.