Harrison residents evicted for loud music

After months of noise violation reports, four students have been evicted from Harrison College House this week, a rare occurrence according to College House officials.

The students -- Engineering senior Nitin Rampat, Engineering juniors Sunava Dutta and Navajeet Chatterji and College sophomore Nikhil Kamran -- were notified last Thursday that they had one week to vacate their 10th floor room.

By tomorrow, the four students said they will have moved into off-campus housing.

While some residents and faculty members in Harrison say unrelenting noise violations necessitated the eviction, others have expressed discontent with the accusations and the conduct of House Dean Frank Pellicone.

The police responded to over 20 complaints about the room over the course of the semester, according to an e-mail statement from Rampat, Dutta, Chatterji and Kamran.

Calling some of the noise violations "egregious," 10th floor Graduate Associate Ethan Prater said that students as far as the eighth and 12th floors had complained.

Their music "is significantly loud, and it's always late at night," said a Harrison resident who did not want his name published.

Adding that the excessive noise had been a problem "since the beginning of the year," the resident said that Rampat, Dutta, Chatterji and Kamran were also being investigated in connection with vandalism complaints.

Yet, the eviction is "basically just about noise," according to Pellicone, who would not comment extensively because of a current investigation by the Office of Student Conduct into the situation.

While Faculty Director of College Houses and Academic Services Phil Nichols would not comment on the specific eviction in order to respect the confidentiality of the matter, he noted that house evictions in general are not standard operating procedure.

"It happens, it's rare," he said. "God knows we take it really seriously."

Nichols added that "the only reason anyone is ever asked to leave a residence is if their presence is inimical to the community," if there has been a pattern of "anti-community behavior."

"As far as I know, they were given other alternatives" to moving out, Pellicone said, noting that in his three-year stint as house dean, no other students have been evicted from Harrison.

The residents, however, said they tried to compromise with their GA and the house dean by lowering the volume of their music.

Some other Harrison residents say Rampat, Dutta, Chatterji and Kamran were treated unfairly.

"It's bullshit -- they're getting kicked out and they haven't even made any noise," 10th floor Harrison resident and College sophomore Jose Marcial said, calling most of the allegations against the students a "conspiracy."

"No one in the University believes them.... They can do nothing about the situation," Marcial said.

Another Harrison resident said that Pellicone had previously made exaggerated noise complaints to him and threatened to evict him.

Pellicone "has been pressing to get me kicked out of housing with noise complaints," said the student, who did not want his name published.

"He tried to evict me, and I decided it was best to turn off my speaker system and lay low."

Denying all of these allegations, Pellicone said such complaints were "absolutely not true."

"Generally, if a noise violation comes to my attention, I speak to the students involved and we can work out a resolution," Pellicone said.

Nichols noted that noise complaints are usually remedied between individual residents. If the residents are unable to come up with a resolution, resident advisers and graduate associates facilitate communication. It is only after a pattern of complaints that house deans and faculty masters become involved.

When the situation reached the level of the house dean, both the anonymous resident and evicted students said that they found Pellicone's approach intimidating.

"The dean's behavior has been unacceptable and unprofessional," the anonymous resident said.

Declining to comment on his behavior, Pellicone said that "I'm hoping this matter can be resolved quickly and fairly. I'm confident that it will be."

Friends of the four say the eviction has been unsettling.

"Obviously they were really upset about it," Engineering sophomore Vivek Pandya said.

"It's pretty harsh to be told you have to move out in a week."

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