Eau Claire isn’t a bad place to live during college.
The tour guides do a decent job of telling their groups of potential students about the campus area. But since there isn’t enough time in one tour, they usually leave out details students should know about the city itself.
Take this advice about the city from a townie. I’ve lived in the area for about as long as I can remember and I know it as well as the pattern of black mildew growing between the tiles of the shower of my student rental.
E.C.P.D. Encounters
I’ll start with the Eau Claire Police Department, because it is likely that most students will have some sort of encounter with them in their four, five, maybe six years of college – even if it’s as minor as a traffic warning.
As the tour guides told you, Eau Claire is a safe place although it’s not out-of-the-question to see some sort of spectacle involving police and raucous drunk people in the college slum and Water Street bar district.
As many have said before, safety is in numbers. That must have been the philosophy of the Eau Claire Police Department on Saturday night.
According to the Eau Claire Police Department Web site, the division has 99 sworn officers, 21 marked squad cars and 14 unmarked cars. I got the feeling most of them were in use Saturday night after at least eight of their marked and unmarked vehicles rolled past my house at a snail’s pace (some numerous times) during the hour I was on the front porch. They must have been looking at the underage neighbors on the porch next door who they twice busted earlier this summer.
The much smaller campus police department (11 officers including the chief) was likely doing the same only they are confined to university areas so I didn’t see them on their rounds.
The officers must want to be extra-cautious about the new crop of freshmen attending house parties and underage drinking in general.
As many an upperclassmen know, the police will chill out a little after the first few weeks of school. They just want the newcomers to be thanking their lucky stars they weren’t issued an underage drinking ticket their first week at college – setting fear in the souls of youngsters may help prevent the house party problems. That’s why there have been raging house and frat parties since the time my uncle came to school here.
Meet the Citizens
Although Eau Claire is a nice city, the citizens aren’t exactly known to be the most friendly people in the world.
Some citizens in the wards surrounding the university have recently asked the Eau Claire City Council to consider raising the ticket price for those who hold loud parties.
OK, I’ll be the first to admit that the biggest problem with house parties is that they can be disturbing for families who have chosen to live in the area. The drunk people walking or taking a Limo Cab back to the dorms can be pretty annoying to the people who just put their kids to bed.
I know because my grandparents lived on Lake Street (five blocks down from Water Street) and rented half of their house to students for many years. They told me the stories. But they found a much better way to deal with the neighbors one-third their age than petition the city council.
As my grandmother told me, “I talked to the kids and they respected me.”
She would tell them to keep their music at a reasonable level and pick up their “soda” bottles from the yard the next day.
After that there was friendly conversation when they met in their front yards. Sometimes they would even snowblow the students’ sidewalks.
My grandparents understood that the students were going to have parties and wouldn’t bother to complain about them as long as she knew the students weren’t getting out of hand.
There’s still time. Talk to your neighbors.
Chances are it’s a lot better than talking with the police.