Walking down Foster Street on a busy night, one would likely catch a glimpse of LED lights shining through house windows and hear songs like “Doses & Mimosas” by Cherub or “Hotel Room Service” by Pitbull blasting through speakers.
And by the end of the night, Foster is often lined with red Solo cups and crushed cans.
These houses, many of which are adorned with Boston College flags, are occupied by BC students who live off campus.
Just hours after nighttime festivities wrap up, when the sun rises in the morning, these same streets are bustling with Newton and Brighton residents driving to their early morning jobs and children heading to their nearby elementary schools.
On these streets where both BC students and local residents reside—Foster, Kirkwood, Gerald, Greycliff, Lake, South Street, and more—the transition from night to day tells the story of two different communities coexisting within one neighborhood.
“You know, when you live in a neighborhood, you respect that there’s people that go to work every day,” said John Boyle, a Boston Police Department (BPD) sergeant detective. “And it’s not helpful when people are up till two o’clock in the morning partying, and you’re working a shift the next morning at 6 a.m.—it’s a mutual respect kind of thing.”
According to the BC Residential Life website, the majority of incoming students receive three years of guaranteed housing—these students are required to live off campus during their junior year. Students are allowed to stay off campus for their senior year, but over 90 percent choose to move back on campus, the website states.
Kimberly Mattson, LSEHD ’25, said she knows many people who started planning their junior year housing during freshman year. So, because Mattson and most of her friends received three years of guaranteed housing, they decided to start touring housing options during freshman year as well.
“Everyone’s like ‘You got to secure your housing for junior year,’ and a lot of our friends, they only had three years too,” Matson said. “We met with the realtor, and we were looking at a bunch of houses.”
In March of her freshman year, Ava Ellis, MCAS ’25, sorted out her off-campus housing for junior year. Ellis said the pressure to figure out your junior year housing plans so early can be problematic—sometimes, the people who you choose to live with freshman year are no longer your close friends by the time junior year rolls around.
“Luckily, we all are still great friends,” Ellis said. “But I know not everyone’s had that same experience.”
For some students, the decision to live off campus is part of a last-minute effort to improve their living situation for the upcoming school year.
This was the case for Ian Schoenbaum, CSOM ’25, who said he and his roommates decided to live off campus for their sophomore year. Schoenbaum and his friends tried to live in suite-style housing on campus, but they ended up being placed in doubles in Greycliff Hall, a traditional-style dorm. Schoenbaum and his friends were unsatisfied with this outcome and chose to find off-campus housing instead.
“We had an interesting experience being kind of the only sophomores who lived off campus on one of these Gerald, Foster, Greycliff streets—but we actually loved it,” Schoenbaum said.
For some students, like Schoenbaum, the decision to live off campus for a year is voluntary. For others, living off campus for their junior year is a mandatory reality.
Because students who live in off-campus houses and apartments are situated near non-BC residents, complaints from both BC students and local residents arise. In recent years, the University has taken steps to ease the tensions between students living off campus and their local neighbors.
In 2021, the Boston Marathon was delayed from April to October due to COVID-19 restrictions. On the morning of the rescheduled marathon, herds of students rushed to off-campus streets to celebrate the occasion. After this event, the University said local police received many complaints from residents who were bothered by the behavior of these students.
“Boston Police received a significant amount of complaints from the neighbors about … thousands of students that gathered in the streets where they were blocking the roads, and also we received reports about behavior that was disruptive to the community,” Tom Mogan, the current associate dean of MCAS and the former associate vice president for student engagement and formation, said at the time.
Following these complaints, Mogan asserted that BPD would likely have a lower tolerance for this sort of behavior during the spring marathon. To remedy the situation, Mogan and Shawna Cooper Whitehead, BC’s vice president for student affairs, met with student groups to brainstorm less disruptive ways to alternatively celebrate the marathon.
The solution they eventually settled on was revamping the on-campus programming offered during the marathon. BC’s Division of Student Affairs brought in Jason Derulo to perform in the Mod Lot. The University also enticed students to stay on campus by sponsoring breakfast and food trucks and planning other activities for students to engage in.
But complaints from local residents regarding BC student behavior still persist.
Matt Jones, a Brighton resident, said he moved to his neighborhood in September because he wanted to live closer to his work.
Jones said his BC student neighbors are generally pleasant, but he has experienced issues with students’ noise levels and trash.
“I mean they’re generally pretty pleasant, but they’re loud,” Jones said. “They’re a bit messy— there’s garbage everywhere. They throw garbage on my lawn.”
One resident, who declined to give her name, lives near BC students and said the street she lives on gets noisy at night. As students head from party to party, they talk loudly as they trek up and down the street.
Sometimes, when the ruckus is too much for her and her husband to handle, the resident said they call Andrew Klopstein, BC’s assistant director of off-campus student living, to complain about the noise.
Reilly Gilroy, LSEHD ’25, said her adult neighbors likely called in a noise complaint when she and her friends were playing music outside.
“We have a balcony and we were playing music, and a cop said we had to turn it down because we got a noise complaint, which we’re assuming is from the non-student neighbor,” Gilroy said.
Some students possess a more direct line of communication with their neighbors. This is the case for Schoenbaum, who made sure to introduce himself to his neighbors when he moved into his house during his sophomore year.
“Last year, when we were moving in, we met them which I think was just kind of the appropriate thing to do as students,” he said.
When Schoenbaum and his roommates are playing music, his neighbors will ask him directly to turn it down rather than calling in a noise complaint.
“We’ve had a few instances where maybe we’ll be out on our deck like at night and the neighbors, if they’ll say anything, they’ll just be like ‘Hey, do you guys mind just turning it down a little bit’ and then after that, it’s totally fine,” Schoenbaum said.
This year is Schoenbaum’s second year living in the same off-campus house on Gerald Street, and he said he has noticed some changes in student behavior at night. Last year, his street was rowdier than it is this year, he said.
“People would be roaming the streets on the weekends,” Schoenbaum said. “As for this year, I think Foster is primarily usually the busier street, and I think that you can say that this year as well.”
Lauren Kenny, MCAS ’25, also emphasized that off-campus streets differ in their noise levels and party scenes.
“I would say it’s usually more like kickbacks and chill kind of things that are just like smaller groups on this street,” Kenny said. “I feel like Foster’s kind of a little bit more hectic.”
When Ellis and her roommates moved into their house, Ellis said the landlord informed them that they are not allowed to host parties.
“We have a basement but it’s very strict,” Ellis said. “You’re not allowed to have like parties.”
This has not been much of a problem for Ellis and her roommates, Ellis said—they tend to go out to other people’s houses rather than invite people over. And, when they do play music, they make sure to keep it at a reasonable volume level.
“We only have like a small speaker, and we’re not really over here throughout the night that much,” Ellis said.
Before Mattson moved into her house, the group of students who lived there before her warned her that the neighbors are sometimes uptight about noise and partying
“We try to respect everyone that lives around here,” Mattson said. “Whenever we have people over, we try not to be that loud.”
The BC Police Department (BCPD) collaborates with University offices to ensure smooth integration of students into local communities, said Lieutenant Jeffrey Postell, who oversees BCPD’s community policing, community relations, and crime prevention initiatives. One of these offices is BC’s Office of Community Affairs. Steve Montgomery, BC’s off-campus student community liaison, works under community affairs and aims to bridge the gap between BC students and local residents, according to the office website.
“The Liaison is available as a referral resource to assist in resolving issues or tensions that may arise between students and neighbors,” the website reads.
Kate Goggins, MCAS ’25, has never interacted directly with Montgomery, but she said he frequently drives around to monitor student activity.
“We’ve seen him drive around a few times,” Goggins said. “So he’s definitely there. But we’ve never really had a reason for him to come over.”
Although Schoenbaum knows of situations where Montgomery has stopped by while students were hosting parties, he said he has never interacted with him. Many students refer to Montgomery as the “off-campus RA.”
“I know some other houses have had the RA drop by for various issues,” Schoenbaum said. “We haven’t had any issues with the RA. We’ve never actually met the RA.”
When it comes to off-campus policing, Postell said BCPD supports and assists the Newton and Boston Police Departments.
“The primary jurisdiction falls to the city in those areas—it’s privately owned property that’s being rented out to Boston College students,” Postell said.
Though BCPD is not technically responsible for these geographical areas, the department is constantly in contact with local police departments, according to Postell.
“We are very much an active stakeholder in office campus living issues, safety, and responses,” Postell said.
BPD Officer Stephen Borne said BPD maintains a close relationship with BCPD. The departments coordinate directly to respond to complaints and monitor off-campus streets—especially on weekend nights, he said.
“We have a close relationship that we are in communication back and forth with both BC and us, as far as what goes on outside of the BC campus and particularly with their off-campus housing,” Borne said.
Borne said BPD sends “party cars” that drive up and down off-campus streets on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights. Borne said these cars typically respond to the noise complaints that BPD receives.
“At the end of the day, we do get complaints that the students are carrying on ’till one or two in the morning, and it’s a Thursday, and you know, people have to be up for work or there’s families with little kids or something like that,” Borne said.
Outside of these points of collaboration, Postell said BCPD and BPD come together for neighborhood visits or “knock and talks,” where officers go to off-campus houses to engage with the BC students living off campus and set expectations about student behavior.
BCPD ramps up these preventative measures ahead of “problematic” weekends when off-campus partying and noise is suspected to peak.
“We do that around hot button times—whether it be during the Halloween weekend, marathon weekends, Saint Patricks Day—all the times we see an uptick in the problems in off-campus areas,” Postell said.
Hoping to steer students in the right direction, Borne gives a speech each year at the mandatory off-campus meeting at the start of the fall semester. In this speech, Borne said he introduces safety precautions for students—encouraging them to lock their doors and windows and to ensure their houses are up to Boston code—as well as general tips on how to interact respectfully with the Brighton community.
“That conversation goes really well with the students,” Borne said. “For the most part, we typically don’t have any pushback from them, as far as you know, what’s expected.”
Postell said BCPD officers also meet with local homeowners and residents to discuss what measures would be successful in relieving tensions with BC students.
“A lot of the partnerships there are based on grassroots efforts [and] collaboratively working together for a common goal to make sure everyone is safe,” Postell said.
Boyle said that the local Brighton community welcomes BC students, and he ultimately hopes that students act not only as college students but also as residents of a working community.
“We also remind the students that they’re moving into a community—a hard working community where people are,” Boyle said. “It’s not college life. You know, it’s not the Mods.”
Genevieve Morrison contributed to reporting.
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