Students living in Sansom East have been complaining all semester that their downstairs neighbor -- the restaurant Pizza Rustica, located at the corner of 36th and Chestnut streets-- is too loud.
Wednesday night, those students were given the opportunity to speak with Pizza Rustica owner Rosemarie Certo and discuss their problems openly. Although the number of students who showed up was much smaller than the number that have lodged complaints, Certo said that she took the complaints very seriously.
"We don't take these lightly," she said. "It's in our best interests to be good neighbors. We certainly don't want to hurt anybody."
Sansom East Resident Assistant Dale Erichsen and Michelle Ray, the director of the Graduate Student Programs at Sansom West, were in attendance acting as liaisons between the restaurant and the students. Erichsen and Ray have been fielding students' complaints all semester.
"The students have complained that the music is particularly loud on Thursday night," Erichsen stated. "The problem is that people are trying to study just above the restaurant."
Last semester, Pizza Rustica began to host a house dance party on Thursday nights.
The students -- graduate students from various schools at Penn -- had already lodged complaints before the Thursday night event started, but the new dance parties compounded the problem.
"These students are mostly medical, dental and law students, so they're particularly interested in succeeding," Erichsen said.
Sansom East and Sansom West face each other across 37th and Chestnut streets. While the residents of Sansom East are all graduate students, Sansom West houses undergraduates in the first ten floors.
Sansom West is farther down the block from the restaurant, so residents have not had any problems with the noise.
"Anytime we see that there is a student that expresses a legitimate complaint, we feel that we should address it," Ray said.
"There was a large enough response for us to take some action," she added.
Certo said that the restaurant had responded to the complaints filed last fall, even trying to alternate the nights they hold dance parties between Thursday and Friday nights.
"We first cut the outside speaker, thinking that that would help," Certo said. "This is an old building, though. There are cracks all over the windows and doors. We can't help that."
While students agreed that the sound was muffled, there is still the problem of the vibrations coming from the bass.
Graduate School of Education student Chiu-Hsuan Ho said that "the vibrations were still very distracting."
"Maybe other students don't have to work as hard as I do, but last semester I had to take a rest every Thursday -- I was forced to," Ho said at Wednesday night's meeting.
Senior resident of Sansom East Kevin Colina, a dental student, hopes the problem can be resolved in a friendly manner.
"We do have some issues that we want to be resolved," he said. "Nobody wants this to be a bigger deal than it has to be. We don't want to turn down business but we're also in the business of academics."
After being told that the most likely cause of the vibrations was the restaurant's surround sound, Certo had left the surround sound off at last Friday's dance party, believing that would take care of the issue.
"I'm very surprised that there was still a problem," Certo said. "I thought it was solved."
The students did agree that there were less vibrations, but they felt that it was still an issue.
While there was no resolution reached last night, Certo agreed to go up to some of the students' rooms and experience their dilemma first-hand.
"We hope to be able to discuss it more after tonight," Ray said. "It was definitely a move forward."
Both Certo and the residents agreed to hold further discussion after Certo made a visit the rooms last night.
