Administration grows wary of party ordinance amendments

Adam Mann, a senior television and broadcast journalism major, addresses the Orange City Council March 8. Mann told the Council that a stricter party ordinance would further divide Chapman students and the community. Photo by Allie Camp

Administrators are increasingly wary of proposed amendments to the existing Orange nuisance ordinance following both March 8 and Feb. 9 Orange City Council meetings addressing the issue.

Despite the generally positive reaction toward the new ordinance, residents have expressed a desire for Chapman to work with the city and enact further amendments that Harold Hewitt, Chapman’s executive vice president and CEO, say would be impossible. As a result, Chapman had no choice but to agree to suspend its expansion, Hewitt said.

“(Student) behaviors are making it extremely difficult for the university to achieve its ambitions,” Hewitt said. “(The administration) agreed that this illegal behavior – we have to have an effective way to stop it.”

Jim Karas, a resident of Orange, addresses the Council about the proposed party ordinance March 8. Photo by Allie Camp

Hewitt said that much of the difficulty in negotiations stemmed from the fact that Orange residents were requesting measures from administration that were infeasible, such as asking Chapman administrators and Public Safety officers to trespass on students’ private property when the police are called to student residences.

“Chapman’s leadership is likely to support the (changes in the ordinance) because we are not able to be directly at student parties,” Hewitt said. “We have no legal right to be there.”

Neighbors also believe that Public Safety should be deputized, meaning the officers would be given the ability to respond to noise complaints regarding Chapman students, because of the current demand for the Orange Police Department to respond to such complaints.

“Currently, there is a big stress on the police to respond to a lot of the Chapman off-campus issues,” said Adam Duberstein, an Orange resident. “In my mind, the more that the police are looking into Chapman’s issues, the less they have time to respond to other emergencies.”

Brian Lochrie, an Orange resident, agreed with Duberstein.

“In an ideal world, I’d like to see Public Safety be deputized to have the authority to manage their students,” Lochrie said.

University of California, Irvine, California State University, Fullerton, and the University of Southern California (USC), all have campus police departments that are deputized, Lochrie said.

“I would hope that that might be able to occur here in Orange, so that way, the financial responsibility could fall to the university,” Lochrie said.

The issue of deputization has already been brought before the Council and denied, Hewitt said.

“We’ve asked the city to consider deputizing our Public Safety department,” Hewitt said. “One reason (the city gave Chapman for not approving deputization) is the general issue of liability, but I suspect there’s more to it.”

Adam Mann, a senior television and broadcast journalism major, doesn’t understand why positive reformations to Chapman are taking so long to occur.

“Change needs to be made,” Mann said. “You look at all these other universities – they seem to have it figured out.”

Many seem to be unaware of the university’s legal inability to interfere in student affairs, Hewitt said.

“Prior to the 1970s, federal regulations assumed that universities had a regulatory obligation to attend to students 24 hours a day,” Hewitt said. “Laws were changed, and subsequent to that period of time, privacy rights and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act came into effect.”

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act dictates that student records can be released to law enforcement agencies and are not protected, but that information requested by school law enforcement is protected from being disclosed to the public, making it illegal for Chapman’s Public Safety department to interfere with criminal student activity.

Hewitt worried that neighbors were angry with Chapman for refusing to break the law.

Executive Vice President and CEO Harold Hewitt

“We’ve been operating that way for four decades, yet our neighbors are assuming that Chapman should be able, somehow, to affect all manner of conduct surrounding the campus,” Hewitt said.

“(The neighbors) just want immediate answers and they demand simple solutions. Those don’t exist – the situation is complicated,” he said. “They don’t understand why if it has been confirmed that those students are Chapman University students, why Public Safety can’t simply walk onto that property.”

Mann believes that Chapman’s student body and administrative approach differs from that of other universities.

“If this happened at (University of California) Berkeley, we would be establishing our Greek row and we wouldn’t be moving until our demands are met,” Mann said.

Mann also compared Chapman parties to events at other universities.

“The parties I’ve been to at Chapman, I don’t think are considered college parties,” Mann said. “They’re large social gatherings. It’s peanuts compared to what you’d see at San Diego State (University) or USC.”

Hewitt encouraged Chapman students to continue participating in public affairs, stressing that students are just as much Orange citizens as long-term residents.

“I think that participation in a civic process is the responsibility of the citizen,” Hewitt said. “I think it would be well for the students to be active in this process. It’s pretty clear. It’s the responsibility of the citizen.”