The general manager of the Quinnipiac student-run radio station has accused the university of “turning its back” on students interested in the field in moving to close its community radio station, AM-1220 WQUN.
General manager of WQAQ Emma Spagnuolo tweeted “Right now it seems like @QuinnipiacU is turning its back on so many students who are interested in radio or other forms of audio journalism. I hope this doesn’t discourage students from pursuing this field. Radio isn’t dying. It’s evolving.”
I hope so. @judyolian’s remarks earlier proved it’s unlikely she’ll change her mind on closing the station. Right now it seems like @QuinnipiacU is turning its back on so many students who are interested in radio or other forms of audio journalism… (1/2) https://t.co/FDBiYRuLAC
“I’m incredibly upset about it,” Spagnuolo said. “This semester, WQAQ has 60 radio shows that air every week and there’s one hundred DJs that broadcast. We also have more members on top of that who are more behind the scenes production people…so there’s a lot of students that are interested in radio.”
Spagnuolo said that she thinks there are questions going unanswered.
“I had a lot of members really express their frustration to me,” she said. “Which is why I finally decided to take to Twitter to just try and demand some answers.”
Spagnuolo is not the only one who is disappointed with the university’s decision.
Long-standing member of the Hamden Regional Chamber of Commerce and 30-year resident of Hamden Lew Nescott shared Spagnuolo’s disappointment.
“Her [President Judy Olian] decision to close AM 1220 lacked substantive inputs from the communities who are also active listeners and consumers of the products and services advertised on the station,” Nescott said. “Dr. Olian needs to understand that she is the Chief Steward of a great university where full disclosure and open-debate are the ways in which you conduct business.”
Quinnipiac University vice president for Public Affairs Lynn Bushnell, released a memo regarding the future of Quinnipiac’s Greater New Haven community radio station–AM-1220 WQUN on Jan.11, 2019. The memo stated that the radio station will cease operations June 30, 2019, and that the building and property located on Whitney Avenue will be “retained and repurposed as part of the strategic planning process.”
Bushnell cited changes in the radio industry, specifically AM radio, saying that the number of students who consider careers in radio or want to intern at WQUN has dropped. Bushnell said that the closing will, “shift resources to more closely match the ever-changing needs and interests of our students.”
The decision comes as a surprise to members of the Hamden community. WQUN has been operating since 1997 and has become a source for news, weather and community updates. It acted as a link between the Hamden community and the Quinnipiac student population.
According to ‘News Generation’ 93 percent of people listen to AM/FM radio over the airwaves. This is higher than TV viewership (88 percent), PC use (50 percent), smartphone use (83 percent), and tablet use (37 percent).
Olian held a ‘State of the QUnion’ address in order to respond to students’ questions and listen to their feedback and ideas Wednesday, Feb. 6, during this, she addressed students’ concern about the station.
“When we established WQUN we did it because of the learning objectives of our students in communications that they were doing internships and really preparing for careers in AM broadcasting. For the last few years we’ve only had one or two interns that have actually applied for the role” said Olian.
“Dr. Olian generally asserts that only one to two students applied for internships at the station over the last few years.” But Nescot disagreed, “I can tell you at last report, if you get on their Facebook page, there are currently three students at AM 1220.”
The Hamden community utilizes WQUN when there are emergencies in the town or when residents lose power.
“When Hamden had a tornado that touched down this past May, AM 1220 WQUN was providing updates, literally tactical updates about where to go, where not to go and those can have sometimes life-bearing consequences,” said Nescott. “In terms of serving as a critical community link in the best of times and in the not so best of times, they’ve been there.”
While many of the station members are not Quinnipiac students, there are a few students who have interned and continue to work at the station. Dan Bahl is a Quinnipiac student that works as a fill-in color commentator for Quinnipiac hockey games and as a studio producer for WQUN.
“I love it,” Bahl said. “The people that I’ve met there have been fantastic. I’ve had nothing but positive experiences there. It’s a great group of people. I’m lucky to be able to work there for the short time that I have.”
Bahl suggested that the university could use WQUN to its advantage.
“I think that they should be using it as more of a tool for the journalism department here, I mean, I work for WQUN but that was just because I got lucky. I think it should kind of be the next step after doing student radio.”
There SHOULD be a pipeline between @QUJournalism/@WQAQradio and @wqunnews. Deserving students SHOULD be actively interning, producing and even anchoring at WQUN.
But instead, there's no pipeline, and little student presence. That's not on WQUN. That's on Quinnipiac. https://t.co/BjZ5jJP27q
In response to Quinnipiac’s decision, another life-long Hamden resident decided to take to the community to express her disappointment. Holly Masi created a petition to save WQUN on thepetitionsite.com. The petition currently has over 800 supporters.
“I really hope that the outcry from the students and the public and the business community and the town leaders would actually make them rethink the decision and try to find a different way to make it work,” Masi said.
Masi knows firsthand the benefits that working and interning at a radio station can provide.
“I myself am a product of college radio,” said Masi. “I learned a lot from working both at college radio and I did internships and I worked in a radio station. And I learned so much from that experience that I still have those relationships to this day.”
The decision to shut down WQUN has caused public outcry, within the university community as well as within the Hamden town community. The university administration has until June 30 to reverse its decision and save a radio station that for many, is much more than just a radio station.
A proposal to create a civilian review board to oversee police conduct has split the Hamden Legislative Council, with six members formally backing the idea and one in opposition, according to Facebook posts by councilors Wednesday, Feb. 6.
Council members proposed the idea Wednesday night in the wake of revelations that Hamden Police Officer Andrew Lipford threatened to report a suspect to ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), prompting an internal investigation by Police Chief John Cappiello, Mayor Curt Balzano Leng wrote in a statement Wednesday morning.
The controversy emerged after footage of Lipford’s bodycam was leaked to WTNH news Tuesday, Feb. 5. The video showed the events after Hamden resident Victor Medina allegedly ran a red light and led officers in a chase until he reached his home in February 2018.
Lipford threatened to call ICE after pulling Medina over and threatened to shoot Medina if he did anything he was not told to, in the bodycam footage.
“A civilian review board would hold the police department accountable and prevent incidents like this from happening,” At-Large Councilwoman Lauren Garrett said in a statement on Facebook Wednesday, Feb. 6.
Garrett has said that her main concern about the current proposal of an investigation is that the issue is not being handled seriously.
“I think that any time you are investigating wrongdoing the person should be put on leave,”Garrett said.
Hamden Police Department confirmed Lipford is still on active duty.
“We feel that an internal investigation is not an appropriate way to investigate these matters,” 9th District Councilman Brad Macdowall.
Although a majority of council members have signed onto the Facebook statement, not all 15 members agree on the idea of a civilian review board.
“Our talks have, at this point, been limited to the need for a civilian review board that is independent from the police department and has subpoena powers,” Macdowall said.
Seventh District Councilman Michael Colaiacovo opted out of the joint statement and instead released his own in a Facebook post.
“Everyone, including police officers, are entitled to due process,” Calaiacovo said. “I am saddened that Mayor Leng and some members of the council felt such a strong need to publicly pass judgement on this situation before an investigation was completed.”
Hamden has not sought a civilian review board in the past, Macdowall said. So it is unclear to the six council members what they would want a Hamden Civilian Review Board to look like or how members would be appointed, Macdowall explained.
“[Civilian review boards] vary in structure and power, ranging from only making recommendations to police directors about disciplinary action to having the power to subpoena officers,” according to the Journal of Public Health.
But whatever form it might take, Garrett said that having a police review panel in place could have an impact on future police-civilian interactions like that involving Lipford.
“If we had a review board, maybe something like this wouldn’t catch us flat-footed,” she said.
UPDATE – Feb. 15, 2019
Ronald Suraci, regional director with United Public Service Employees/COPS, showed his confidence in the officers being cleared in a statement he made Thursday.
“It is apparent to me that the media and other individuals affiliated with the Town of Hamden are jumping to conclusions about the appropriateness of the officer’s conduct without the benefit of a complete and thorough review of the facts and circumstances leading to the arrest of Victor Medina on the night of February 8, 2018,” Suraci told the New Haven Register. “Town leaders and the public should reserve judgment and comment of the officers until such time as the results of an untainted and unbiased investigation are revealed. I am confident that when such an investigation is completed that the officers will be cleared of any wrongdoing.”
HQ Press will continue to have updates as the story progresses.
NEW HAVEN, Connecticut — As temperatures climbed into the mid-40s, about 3,000 runners filled the streets of the East Rock neighborhood Sunday morning to raise funds for Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services.
The Run for Refugees 5-kilometer run, which is held each year on the morning of Super Bowl Sunday, raises tens of thousands of dollars for the non-profit and draws local and state politicians.
About eighty Quinnipiac University students and faculty joined a yellow-clad team representing the Global Public Health programs.
Wendy Sewack, assistant director of global public health, helped organize the team.
“Especially because we work in global public health, this is something all our future health care practitioners are going to need to see and be a part of, so we wanted to show our support,” she said.
Sewack said 2019’s IRIS Run for Refugees is the third time QU Global Public Health has sponsored a team.
As the wind chill temperature dipped into negative double digits, the Town of Hamden opened six warming centers where people can go to escape the cold.
Citizens are reminded that warming centers are not shelters and do not provide beds. The spaces, which are located at fire stations, the police station and the Miller Library Complex on Dixwell Avenue, are open 24 hours, however.
Connecticut 211, which serves as a one-stop phone connection to state and local services, has provided links to warming centers beyond Hamden, as well as information for renters without heat, safety tips regarding carbon monoxide and more.
The high temperature on Thursday afternoon is expected to be 16 degrees, while the lows will plummet back to 5 degrees before sunrise Wednesday. Temperatures are not expected to reach above freezing until Saturday afternoon, the Weather Channel reports.
Students at Quinnipiac University brave the below-zero wind chill temperatures as classes carried on as normal Thursday, Jan. 31. Photo by Molly Yanity/HQ Press
America is divided by many issues from income inequality to gun control but one issue more than some others strikes at the core of the nation’s history and beliefs: should illegal immigrants be deported? Deportation has affected families, most notably parents and their children from being separated.
Numbers gathered and provided from the federal Department of Homeland Security showed that the U.S., government actually deported fewer immigrants in 2017 under president Donald J. Trump than it did under former president Barack Obama in 2016.
Although, the figures showed a decline in deportation, under the Trump administration in 2017 there were more arrests of those with no criminal histories.
Kica Matos, director of immigrant rights and racial justice at the Center for Community Change talked about the issue in an article back in April 2018 saying that, “It appears that ICE in the Trump Administration is focused on anyone they can find easily and not people who represent any sort of risk. And the number of deportations looks like it’s only set to grow.”
Hear from people who are close to the situation, currently dealing with the issue, the reason why people don’t want illegal immigrants in the country and if the deportation of illegal immigrants is going to get better or worse in the future.
Since 2017, Hamden has been trying to become more sustainable. First, by joining Sustainable CT with 400 other municipalities. With the financial and networking help of Sustainable CT, Hamden will have a set list of action plans in the spring of 2019.
Kathleen Schomaker, Hamden town’s energy efficiency coordinator, said that Hamden is pushing to limit food waste and recycling. There will be a separate bin for soft recyclable like clothing and bedding.
But for now, Hamden is still putting together the list of action to get going next year.
data-animation-override> “We gotta get our ducks in a row first.”
— Kathleen Schomaker
Hamden is looking to be certified in 2019.
For members of Quinnipiac University, the road to sustainability is a long journey. In 2010, the College Sustainability Report Card gave Quinnipiac University a D. The school was graded based on administration, climate change and energy, food and recycling, green building, student involvement, transportation, endowment transparency, investment priorities, and shareholder engagement. Among these criteria, Quinnipiac failed at three, and got the highest grade of B in food and recycling.
Even in 2018, members of the Quinnipiac University can see that the school is not sustainable.
The solutions must start from recognizing the three R’s of recycling: reduce, reuse, and recycle. Once these issues are addressed, awareness is the next first step.
Some of the major issues include recycling, food and plastic waste.
Quinnipiac students are among the most proactive members on this journey to help QU recycle waste.
QU ISA during a food drop trip
Quinnipiac International Student Association (ISA) helps donate food from Quinnipiac main cafeteria to local communities in Hamden.
Quinnipiac Student for Environmental Actions (QU SEA) raises awareness with “Weigh the Waste,” asking students to scrape the left over on their plate as they leave the cafeteria.
Across the United States, many experienced issues while waiting to cast their ballot this past Nov. 6 and in the days following many states experienced recounts.
In the state of Connecticut citizens experienced long lines at polls, students had issues during their registration processes and election officials held recounts for several races in the days following the election.
Quinnipiac senior, Joe Iasso, has been following the news of the many issues that made headlines after this midterm election.
“It made me upset to look nationwide to see the amount of voter suppression that was going on and kind of look at our own town and say, “‘oh my God, it’s happening everywhere, this is a huge problem,’” he said.
This year, Quinnipiac University had an Election Engagement Committee, their goal was to get 200 students to register to vote prior to the midterm election. This committee was spearheaded by Katherine Pezzella, director of campus life for fraternity and sorority life and Luke Ahearn, student government association vice president. As co-chairs they worked together to help increase civic engagement across Quinnipiac’s campus. This mission started as soon as students walked onto campus.
“Early on in the school year…we were doing voter registration because we figured that was the time most students were more likely to get involved with things on campus,” Ahearn said.
Throughout the course of the school year the Election Engagement Committee held different educational events, non-partisan information sessions and election drives on campus. On election day the committee organized transportation to polling locations, giving students the option to register to take a shuttle. In total the committee registered 165 new voters, but not all of them had an easy time at the polls.
The Election Engagement Committee encouraged students to register to vote in their home towns and request an absentee ballot or register to vote in Hamden by filling out a mail in registration form or going online. Registering in Hamden as a college student is not as easy as it sounds.
Pezzella said, “we know that there’s specific rules for college students and the form has to be filled out in a very specific way where they list not only what campus they live on but what their residence room number is, as well as their mailbox number, so there’s a lot of pieces that may be tricky for students.”
She explained that because the mail in registration form has to be filled out in a specific way, there were several forms handed into the committee that were either incomplete or incorrect. When a form was filled out incorrectly, the committee attempted to get in touch with the student who filled it out to make them aware that their registration would not be processed by the registrar.
“Ultimately we still had about 15 students who never came back to finish that form,” Pezzella said. “I know that there were at least 15 students who may have thought that they were registered to vote that ultimately did not have a complete voter registration.”
After hearing of the issues some students faced at the polls election day, Pezzella and Ahearn sent out a survey to the students they had registered looking to identify those who had issues and to receive more information about those issues.
“In the past, Hamden historically has given students trouble in the voter registration process and the voting process,” Ahearn said.
But in the survey they found only one student who filled out their registration form completely and correctly had an issue. That student was Joe Iasso.
Iasso had submitted a registration form to change his address through the registration drive.
“It’s a pretty simple form you just kind of fill out a new voter registration form and check that you’re just changing the address,” Iasso said. “It should be really simple for them to change in the system.”
On election day he drove to his polling location confident he would be able to vote using his new address, but when he went to check in they told him there was no one registered at that address with his name. An election official was able to look up his information and found out that he was still registered as a resident student on Quinnipiac’s Mount Carmel campus.
“I was apparently the only student who had an issue but to me there shouldn’t have been any issue at all,” Iasso said. “I should’ve been able to go in and vote by the correct procedure but my form wasn’t processed.”
Hamden Republican Registrar, Anthony Esposito, said they made sure that every form was processed.
“If you filled out a form…we made sure that we got every single one of those registrations in before election day,” Esposito said.
Iasso said this is not the first time he has had an issue with Hamden’s voting registration system. During his freshman year, Iasso held a registration drive for Hamden’s mayoral election with other members of the Student Government Association. Like the registration drive held this past election, they had Quinnipiac students fill out the paper mail in registration forms. Iasso said that he went with the SGA president to drop off the registration forms to the registrar’s office. When they got there they handed the forms to Esposito who said he could not process all of them.
“[He] gave us back like 20 that he said were not filled out correctly,” Iasso said.
Esposito explained that a way college students can try to avoid issues with registration is to go online. Misspelling or even the change of a letter makes a difference in whether or not a registrar can legally process a registration form.
“Going online, doing something that students do a thousand times a day it’s entering in the computer address, the form comes up and you just fill it out and when you’re all done putting all the data in you confirm it and send it and it comes here electronically,” Esposito explained.
While this is true for students who are from Connecticut, when students from out of state complete their online registration form, the last step brings them to a confirmation page with their personal information filled out. There is a note at the bottom that instructs students to print out this page and either mail it into the towns registrar office or the secretary of state.
A screenshot of the note that is on the last step of the online registration form that out of state students will see.
If students choose to click the above “Email” option, they are sent an email with instructions that say, “You are not officially registered to vote until this application is approved. Please print your completed registration (see attached), sign and date the application and deliver it by mail or in person to the Town of Hamden registrar of voters office.”
Despite what Esposito said, the form for out of state students is not sent to the registrar’s office electronically. Instead, students’ personal information is filled out electronically into the mail in registration form—the same form that many students typically write into during Quinnipiac’s registration drives.
We reached out to Esposito for comment regarding this but he did not get back to us in time for publication.
Esposito also acknowledges the stigma Quinnipiac students have for voting in Hamden.
“We get that all the time because you know [Hamden residents] say, “they’re not here, they don’t know the local issues,” Esposito said. “They’re going to vote for mayor, they’re gonna vote for legislative council, they don’t know what’s going on but they’re gonna vote anyhow, that’s not fair.”
It is a federal law that gives students the right to choose where they’d like to exercise their right to vote—in their home state or the state of their college. While Esposito believes that students should have this right to choose, he believes restrictions should be placed on students who choose to vote in the state of their college. He thinks the idea of a restriction may satisfy the residents who feel this way.
“I think that students, because they’re really temporary residents, that the offices that they should be allowed to vote for are not the typically local offices but the statewide offices—governor, president, state senator, congressperson,” Esposito said.
He agrees with the residents who believe that college students do not pay close enough attention to the local state senate and state house of representative races—who the candidates are and what issues they are running on.
“If they’re local things, you’re voting for what? What are you gonna vote because your parents say that you should vote and you’ve always voted?” Esposito asked.
Esposito said that he knows voting is one of the most important rights you can exercise as an American citizen. But he believes that citizens should not just vote to vote, they should vote to make an impact.
“If voting is such a great privilege then it should have meaning, then the privilege should reflect that,” he said. “If you’re going to vote, vote for what and how does your vote impact the total vote.”
Student voting was not the only issue in the greater New Haven area. In the state of Connecticut, there were many recounts that continued weeks after the election.
Jorge Cabrera, Hamden resident and Democratic candidate ran against incumbent Republican, George Logan in the 17th District State Senate Race. The result of this race was flipped after a major recount.
“I didn’t like the direction that our state was going in and didn’t [feel] that our state senator was doing good enough bringing resources back to our district, so that’s why I decided to get involved,” Cabrera said.
Going into election day, Cabrera said that his campaign team felt good.
“We had been endorsed by President Barack Obama, we had a lot of supporters, there was a lot of energy and excitement,” he said.
That night Cabrera returned to headquarters with his campaign team and waited for the returns to come in, with the race being so close they realized that they would not know the results until the morning.
“We sent everyone home and thanked them for support,” Cabrera said.
When Cabrera woke up the next morning he found out that he was declared the winner of the race. He began to receive congratulatory phone calls and began preparing for his transition into office with a strategy meeting with the Senate Democratic caucus. But the meeting was interrupted when Cabrera was informed by attorneys that there had been a problem in the counting of votes in Ansonia, one of the towns that vote in the 17th District State Senate race, and there would be a mandatory recount.
The towns that vote in the 17th District include: Ansonia, Beacon Falls, Bethany, Derby, parts of Hamden, Naugatuck and Woodbridge.
“It was confusion; I was asking myself some questions. You know, what exactly is happening?” Cabrera said.
He explained that most of the confusion stemmed from the various different explanations they were given for the recount. One explanation they got was that one of the machines broke down in the middle of the day and that officials at the polling location took the ballots out of the broken machine and fed them through another machine. This giving the impression that the machine counted those ballots twice.
Cabrera was also told that, “absentee ballots were fed into a machine and may have been counted over two hundred times, which we also couldn’t wrap our heads around.”
After the recount it was concluded that it was a scrivener’s error, meaning someone wrote down the wrong number. They then put the wrong number into the computer system.
In the initial reporting, the error, “went from two to 234,” Cabrera said.
When the recount began, Cabrera and his campaign team held a rally.
“The purpose behind the rally was to put a spotlight on the recount process to make sure that the folks that were doing the recount understood that we were demanding that every single vote be counted adequately,” he said. “The integrity of our political system and the integrity of the outcome of this election was critical.”
The recount reversed the original results, with Logan narrowly winning the seat with 50.1% of the votes and Cabrera with 49.9%
Cabrera said, “people often say your vote really matters, in my race it really did.”
We reached out to George Logan, 17th district state senator and the Ansonia registrar’s office and they did not get back to us in time for publication.
Voting issues plagued the U.S. in this midterm election. The question now is how can we move on? And how can we prevent these issues from happening again in 2020?
After a human error reversed the result of his race, Cabrera said he’s been looking into preventing these issues in the future.
“I’ve been talking to other legislatures about possible legislation for more oversight and accountability,” Cabrera said.
He has questions about what kind of training and experience the people who run our elections and polling locations have.
“We have a strong tradition in Connecticut of local rule and local authority over our election process which I think is important,” Cabrera said. “But I think we need to balance that to make sure these kinds of mistakes don’t happen.”
Esposito believes many of these errors, especially the human ones, happen because of the shifts many of these election officials work on election day.
“There’s a lot of reading and recording and you’re asking people who have already put in a 15 hour day to do the recording,” Esposito said. “There could be an opportunity for error at any place.”
He said the long lines in Connecticut for some polling locations are unavoidable because of election day registration. Connecticut is one of fifteen states that offer election day registration which gives citizens the opportunity to register and then vote on election day. Esposito only knows of one town in Connecticut that was able to successfully execute election day registration without a long line. He believes this was because of their staffing, resources and set up.
“We had as many people as we could working here in the office taking on all the people,” Esposito said. “Yet at 7:00 p.m. I had to go out into the hallway and tell people if you’re not standing at the counter with a ballot in your hand at 8:00 p.m. you’ll have to go home, because that’s the law.”
A picture at Hamden’s election day registration polling location with a line of people waiting.
Iasso plans on meeting with a member of the secretary of state’s staff in the near future in hopes to discuss an easier voter registration process for out of state students.
“I would hope that the state would try to find some way to implement a college student system for voting in their town[s], we have so many schools in Connecticut aside from Quinnipiac,” he said. “I hope to be able to make change for all of those college students.”
Quinnipiac’s relationship with Hamden highlights an age-old struggle between college and college town.
As QU’s enrollment continues to grow at a quickening rate, so does its need for housing. But with the student body eclipsing the school’s dorm capacity by a wide margin, upperclassmen are looking to rental units around Hamden for accommodation– a trend set to continue, with university administration officially canceling any and all new dorm construction.
But unlike dorms, not all rental houses are created equal.
“So here is what is supposed to be our storage room/sunroom,” Quinnipiac student Sara DiGiamo demonstrates. “But we have a toilet in here and we have our sink in here from the bathroom because the bathroom is completely unusable.”
DiGiamo has been renting a house with four of her friends since the beginning of the semester. It’s her senior year– and as her college experience wraps up, she knew she wanted an house to spend her final year in Hamden.
As on campus housing gets tighter, and the ‘senior culture’ suggests moving out, Sara is only one of the thousands of QU upperclassmen living around Hamden.
It isn’t always a picture perfect experience, though. Or in Sara’s case, a sanitary experience.
“I was like ‘Oh my God what is this,’” Sara remembered. “Like maybe it’s just dirt. I’m not going to assume. But, no, sure enough it was raw sewage from our pipes.”
It was three weeks ago when the pipes first burst, spewing raw sewage all over the first floor of her Evergreen Avenue rental.
Ever since, her home has been a construction zone. Crews have been coming in and out. Her floors are torn apart. And her landlord? Sara says he’s “M.I.A.”
“He has stopped by I think once during this whole process,” DiGiamo said. “He really hasn’t been effective in helping us with anything. We haven’t had any rent reduction. Meanwhile we’ve had this loud construction for the past three weeks and it’s still ongoing.”
That leaves and her roommates still paying their $4,000 a month rent. Needless to say, they’re frustrated.
But they’re not the only ones.
In a survey created by QNN and distributed to Quinnipiac upperclassmen via Facebook, dozens of submissions echoed DiGiamo’s sentiment.
“They run up the rent knowing full well we as students will pay it because there aren’t many options for housing,” wrote one student anonymously.
Another, putting the pressure on Quinnipiac to “build brand new housing for juniors and seniors.”
A request that now seems to have fallen on deaf ears.
“Plans to build the new residence hall on the York Hill campus have been tabled,” explained Associate Vice President for Public Relations for Quinnipiac, John Morgan.
QNN learned exclusively that the plans for new dorm buildings on the school’s York Hill campus are no longer in motion, after they were approved by the town in April.
The new housing complex was set to include 220 beds for seniors, and by many standards, was a logical decision for a housing starved, rapidly expanding university.
QU administration plans to host about 10,500 students next year, the highest enrollment ever.
A growing student body that continues to strain an already icey relationship between the
school and town.
“I’m hoping for a change.”
Those are the words of Dan Kops, town planner of Hamden. He says that the amount of
students who live off campus is getting out of hand.
“They’re juxtaposed with houses with young couples with children who they put to bed at an early hour. Older retirees who don’t like noise at night,” Kops said. “Ideally, most students would be on campus.”
He says the rising enrollment numbers are not only pushing more students off campus and into the town, but are a breach of an agreement between the town and the school in 2007.
“The problem for the town was, when those dorms (York Hill) were approved, the original dorms, had the university not expanded its enrollment significantly, that would have captured the vast majority of the students living off campus.”
Those plans for York Hill in 2007 outlines a campus that would hold 2,400 beds. Only 1,400 or so were ever constructed, according to Kops.
“There was an understanding, we believe that the conditions of approval made it very
clear that there was supposed to be a one to one match so that if more students were
added, more beds were added,” Kops said. “The university is disputing that. We’re in court.”
According to a 2015 article in the New Haven Register, the university pay a $150 fee every day they are not in compliance with this agreement.
Morgan responding to those assertions with a simple, “I’m not aware of that,” and explaining the university’s stance on how they house their students.
“I think it goes back to the issue that we cannot require students to live on campus. We can offer the amenities, but we cannot require,” Morgan said. “So we do not have any plans to require students to live on university housing.”
Director of Residential Life at QU Mark DeVilbiss says that although they cannot guarantee housing for seniors, there is ample space for the students who do wish to live off campus.
“For seniors, we don’t guarantee the housing, but we’ve always historically been able to meet the demand,” DeVilbiss said. “I can’t share specific statistics, but we house we have roughly 5,000 beds on campus and around (there are) 7,000 undergraduates.”
And as for the loud parties often cited in complaints by town officials and residents,
Morgan says that there is simply nothing the university can do.
“Often times these problem arise in houses that we don’t own,” he explained. “We don’t have jurisdiction. I think the neighbors should really be going back to the landlords to say you know what’s going on with your tenants more so than coming back to the university.”
Meanwhile, those same landlords are getting slammed by town officials, who are
instilling special fees and applications to anyone renting to students.
The application includes lines for the students’ names, license plate numbers and a series
of bullets intended as reminders for how students should behave in a neighborhood setting.
On top of that, the landlords must pay a special $300 fee per application, on top of an extra $150 per house, per year.
Local mortgage broker and landlord Michael Spadaccino says that those fees are not only unique to Hamden, but are simply unfair.
“I have some experience buying in other towns, and they don’t have the same guidelines,” Spadaccino said. “As the owner I should be able to rent to whoever I want and not have to pay the town a fee. Why I should pay them…for the right to rent to college students doesn’t make any sense to me.”
Kops admits that Spadaccino isn’t the only one who’s fed up.
“There are at least 40 landlords and it may be closer to 60 by now who filed a complaint at the state CHRO,” Kops said. (They’re) arguing we were practicing age discrimination with requiring a permit and all the other stuff we require.
The current ordinances are just a couple of years after the town enacted the ill-fated regulation stating any landlord who rents to students must also live in the same dwelling. After drawing heavy criticism for the move to curb off campus housing, the town retracted, and reverted to their current system as well as a four student limit.
All these regulations are commonly understood as a means of limiting off campus options and discouraging landlords in an already tight rental market.
Despite these sweeping measures to keep students at bay, Kops concedes that Quinnipiac students in general are not problematic.
“Most college kids are definitely not nuisances, he said. “The number of students who actually cause problems is actually probably very small.”
That’s something Hamden resident Katie Robidoux can attest to.
She’s lived on student housing hotspot Evergreen Avenue for three years, and has nothing but praise for her many collegiate neighbors.
“There’s a stereotype of crazy wild college students, but it really hasn’t been an issue,” Robidoux said. “I think they’re just stereotyping. And everybody thinks ‘Oh crazy wild kids,’ but they’re just students. They’re there to learn.”
And just a couple of blocks down Evergreen Avenue, Sara DiGiamo is trying to learn through the sounds of a construction site.
Looking back on her situation, she thinks that if there were more choices for housing, on or off campus, she may not be in the mess that she’s in right now.
“There needs to be more options,” DiGiamo said. “People are putting down deposits in September and October so people are running to get the first one they can find and just go with it. Meanwhile they need more time to look through the options.”
As to whether those options will come on or off campus first, is anyone’s guess.
But for now, John Morgan says the school is focusing on evaluating and updating its current dorm situation before any new construction is considered. He also cites the restoration of the power grid following last year’s outages in the consideration to cancel the new housing project.
Tensions between Quinnipiac University and the Town of Hamden have been a persistent theme since the 1980s when the school embarked on a decades-long expansion effort that sent enrollment skyrocketing and clashes between residents, students, and local government.
Quinnipiac University took this huge jump once John Lahey became the President in 1987.
Once the university got bigger and more students joined it created a tension with the town and the college as the town of Hamden was beginning to shift from regular Connecticut town to college town.
Through most of the 2000s, Quinnipiac’s enrollment was between 5,000 and 6,000 undergraduate students. Since that time, the school opened its York Hill Campus in 2007, featuring an athletic center, dorms and a student center less than two miles from its main Mount Carmel Campus.new campus on York Hill, a law school and a campus on North Haven.
The law school was built on the Mount Carmel Campus in the 1990s and moved to the North Haven Campus when that opened with the Frank H. Netter MD Medical School in 2013.
The class that this mostly affects is the senior class. Quinnipiac does not guarantee housing for seniors there are only 40 percent that have guaranteed housing this 40 percent is determined by a randomly generated lottery number that only one person on your group has to have for you to select a room.
Many seniors prefer to live off-campus, in either privately owned homes or in houses owned by Quinnipiac in Hamden neighborhoods. That means more students than ever are living off-campus. This has lead to a increase in the amount of students that are living off campus.
According to the website: www.usnews.com 75 percent of the students at Quinnipiac live on campus and 25 percent of students live off campus
With a growing number of students living in off-campus housing comes common issues that college aged students bring for a small town like Hamden.
Hamden town planner Daniel Kops said “the town does face issues with residents who complain about student behavior in residential neighborhoods.”
One of the most common issues that Hamden faces with student housing is partying and specifically loud noise complaint.
Hamden Police Department
Hamden police said that they had been called a total of 81 times in 2017 and 2018 to address noise complaints or reports of loud parties.
Kops said the most students who live in the community are quiet and fit into the neighborhoods.Some, he added, do not.
“Most students don’t cause behavioral problems but there are some that do and their parties are really disruptive,” Kops said. “There can be trash left everywhere and police called and they can give a bad name to student housing in general.”
Students living on campus have a much different experience as students living off-campus. While on-campus they’re under the jurisdiction of the University and have clear rules and guidelines to follow. If you live off campus students know that there is a certain way you have to conduct yourself so that there won’t be issues with the town and neighbors.
Patrick Brooks a senior who lives off-campus in Hamden said, “If I ever have an event at my house I notify all my neighbors and ensure that they don’t call in a noise complaint. I live in a quiet neighborhood,”
Students living off-campus can also affect the look of the small residential streets in Hamden
“If you have around in some of the residential areas you can see how concentrated it is,” said Kops. “You can see right away where students are living, and it changes the character of the residential neighborhoods since students have a different lifestyle and schedule as a retired couple of a couple with young children (might not).”
Student Housing with multiple cars in driveway
The ever-growing class sizes have created hurdles for both on and off-campus housing.
Residential life is an important part of the Quinnipiac experience, according to university officials. (Note: faculty aren’t involved in residential life; administrators, though, are, and the new president Judy Olien has said that student experience is at the core of her plans.Quinnipiac’s director of residential life, Mark Devilbiss , is responsible for housing. He said his job is to provide the structure for students to enjoy a positive experience while living on-campus or off it, a task made more difficult as the university continues to grow and requires more student beds.
“We’re a residential campus,” said Devilbiss. “We expect students to get a lot from being on campus. We believe students can get a lot from living on campus because they can interact with people who are different from them. We also think it can help their communication skills.”
Quinnipiac’s student body and class sizes have grown along side its reputation. The university’s first-year class has grown each year for a decade
“We’ve had to adapt over time to different class sizes,” said Devilbiss. “A couple of years ago, we increased the number of beds that were available for first-year students, and that’s been important.”
Residential life reconfigured dorms for first-year students to fit eight people. That made it possible for all students to live on campus.
The university has also added bunk beds to dorms to increase capacity.
Moreover, Quinnipiac has moved to reduce tensions with the town through other means. Over the past two years, the university has given Hamden $2.9 million to offset municipal costs associated with off-campus student life, according to an article posted in The New Haven Register.According to an article in the “New Haven Register” last year Quinnipiac donated 1.5 million dollars to the town of Hamden and 1.4 million dollars the previous year.
Former president Lahey sought approval from the university’s Board of Trustees to make the payment as a way to build trust with the town and help with its finances. Under state law, non-profit organizations such as Quinnipiac do not pay property taxes, a fact that enrages some residents.
“It’s one tangible way for us to tell the town of Hamden thank you,” said Lahey in the article. “Towns are strapped these days with the state cutting back and elsewhere with pressure not to increase property taxes more than they have to. It’s another way that we can contribute and hopefully show that we’re not only thankful but we’re good corporate citizens in the towns that we’re located.”
Quinnipiac University and Hamden also have some ideas to try and put the students in a more controlled area.
Kops said, “ We are trying to find ways to improve relations and we are exploring the possibility a zone that has apartments and places to eat and stores and this would be attractive to students and it would be walking distance and this way they could be there instead of spread out in the residential areas.”
Even though recent moves to strengthen the relationship between Quinnipiac and Hamden seem to be working, much more work needs to be done address the needs of the university and residents of the town.
The university is planning to build new dorms on its York Hill Campus to help reduce tensions.
Quinnipiac University dominates the town of Hamden, Connecticut, and as the students transition into the Quinnipiac community they also transition into Hamden. While Quinnipiac University provides housing for students from freshman year to senior year, many students choose to move off campus into residential areas after finishing their sophomore year.
Friends who met freshman year in residential halls such as Irma, Dana, Mountainview and Troup join larger groups to move into off- campus properties. The students begin to intermingle with the residents of the Hamden community, but sometimes the mix is more like oil and water.
Hamden townie, Michele Veiga, 52, Hamden, signed the petition in hopes to make a change to the town she once knew. “Student housing is an issue that will cause us to leave the home we have loved and living in for over 18 years,” said Veiga. “The town needs to realize and appreciate the long term residents, not the four -year ‘here-today-and-gone-tomorrow’ attitudes of the students that is obvious with student housing.”
“Unkempt properties, disregard for family neighbors, pressure should be put on Quinnipiac to provide and enforce student housing,” said Veiga.
The relationship between Hamden and Quinnipiac University has run hot and cold for years and there is now hope that there is a chance to fix it. As the University plans to build a new dormitory on the York Hill campus, the main focus before this groundbreaking addition is finished is to rehabilitate the sometime sour relationships between Hamden and Quinnipiac students living together in these townie neighborhoods, and it won’t be easy.
The goal of the petition is to have 500 residents sign in order to get the attention of Mayor Curt Leng. As of December 12th, 295 residents have signed the petition requesting reasonable regulations for the Town of Hamden.
The regulations that Hamden townies are hoping to pass include imposing strict limitations on the number of permits for student regulations, “A permit will not be provided when the proposed property is within a 1,000 foot radius of an existing student occupied house,” said Pereira. Hamden residents signing the petition want their neighborhoods back and are looking to require stricter rules regarding student activity.
Past Hamden resident Sheila Wallace, Hamden, signed the petition saying, “I was born and raised in Hamden, as a result of Quinnipiac Universities encroachment into Hamden neighborhoods the towns charm has been diminished and Hamden is now negatively unrecognizable,” said Wallace. “I once thought of coming back, no more.”
Tony Pereira updated his statement on Change.org stating, “Thank you everyone for signing, a Quinnipiac person reached out to me, but I’m not getting talked out of this” said Pereira. “We need regulation to protect taxpayers. Keep up the good work and keep sharing and encouraging friends, family and neighbors to sign, share and help make Hamden a town of family neighborhoods again.”
Senior, public relations major Heather McCluskey lived on York Hill during her second semester of junior year after returning from the QU in LA program. She made plans with her closest friends to move off campus into a property that has been passed down over the years to successive members of her sorority, Alpha Chi Omega.
Her house is off of Whitney Ave and is one of two houses, each housing six sorority women, on a single lot. Their relationships with their neighbors on either side couldn’t be more different. To the right side of the house is the landlord’s mother who is said by McCluskey to never to have a problem with the individuals who have lived in the house over the past years. But the same cannot be said of the neighbor to the left of the houses.
Heather McCluskey’s house off of Whitney Ave
“We have a really mean neighbor who loves to call the cops on us,” said McCluskey, 21, of Scituate, Massachusetts. “Sometimes he watches us from his backyard and if we have a few friends over he tries to bust us when we aren’t even doing anything wrong.”
McCluskey said that she and her roommates mind their own business and try not to cause issues with their townie neighbors.
“We had a larger party in the day time and even notified the Hamden police and they gave us the ‘okay’ as long as we were being respectful with the music level and make sure we were not littering,” said McCluskey. “It wasn’t until the party was almost over that the police showed up and they said it was our neighbor who called over 20 times for different complaints,” she added.
Over the past five years there have been over 2,000 “loud party, loud music”calls made to the Hamden Police Department, said the Hamden Police Records Department. Student occupied houses in residential areas such as washington ave, whitney ave, evergreen, and dixwell are among the call list.
Some students such as McCluskey take precautions, such as notifying the police before they have large gatherings or introducing themselves before the school year starts. They have attempted to build relationships.
McCluskey believes that with communication and stopping yourself from prejudging a person the relationship between Quinnipiac students and Hamden residents could be strengthened.
“I think that there is a negative stigma with Quinnipiac students living in residential neighborhoods because since we are in college everyone thinks that we want to have loud parties and disrupt everyone around us,” said McCluskey. “If you live in a residential neighborhood you have more responsibilities to be courteous to your neighbors, and the second you break the relationship with your neighbors they have the right to not be happy with you.”
Professors who live in Hamden and teach at Quinnipiac experience another kind of conflicted relationship. As professors they are capable of forming deep and lasting relationships with students. Hamden residents can not form these relationships when Quinnipiac students become their neighbors.
Professors such as Kenneth Venit, who teaches first year seminar, know first hand what it is like to form unbreakable relationships with students while at the same time wanting to avoid being their neighbors.
“We had a Quinnipiac house on our block years ago, all coeds, there were lots of parties and loud music,” said Venit. “ Hamden Police Department was familiar with that house.”
While Venit has had conflicts in the past with his student neighbors, his daughters have Quinnipiac students living in their Hamden neighborhoods, said Venit, and they have not experienced any problems.
“I have attended a citizens association and two town planning and zoning meetings where Quinnipiac was the topic, attending as a taxpayer and as a Quinnipiac employee,” said Venit. “There was clear hostility present.”
“Some years back we were looking at houses in Hamden for a possible relocation,” said Venit. “We found a nice ranch but a house occupied by Quinnipiac students was too close for comfort.”
Senior journalism major Kirby Paulson, 21 of Boston, Massachusetts. is also among the thousands of Quinnipiac University students that choose to live off campus their senior year. His relationship with his Hamden neighbors is untarnished.
“Our relationship is seemingly pretty good,” said Paulson. “We don’t really interact too much beyond occasional small talk and waves via passing by, but they seem like good people.”
He believes that living in the Hamden community has prepared him for living in other residential areas after graduation. After leaving the hustle and bustle of campus life he enjoys the calming environment that his Ferguson Road house provides him.
“I actually love living in the neighborhood that were in,” said Paulson. “It’s really quiet and low key, we haven’t had any issues with the neighbors and its nice to be in a place where we feel welcome.”
While other students such as McCluskey struggle to keep a healthy relationship with their neighbors, Paulson believes that you can’t say that the relationship between Hamden and Quinnipiac is completely bad.
“The relationship between students and residents runs on a case-by- case basis,” said Paulson. “Some pairs get along well, maybe others not so much. I’m not sure there’s a cookie cutter mold for that.”
Senior Gianna Vassallo, 21 Monroe, New Jersey, lives in a Aspen Glen an apartment complex in Hamden that is populated by majority Quinnipiac University students.
“I feel like most Hamden residents aren’t fond of Quinnipiac students even though I personally think that we respect Hamden and try no to disturb the peace,” said Vasallo. “In my apartment complex it doesn’t seem that Hamden residents have a problem with living in the same complex as Quinnipiac students.”
Senior Marketing major, Sydney Kenyon, 21, Lynnfield Mass, does not have a relationship with her neighbors.
“They have called the police on us once for being too loud”, said Kenyon. “We just try to make as little of a disturbance as possible.”
“I can see how Hamden residents could get frustrated with college students, especially if they have children,” she said. “ It may be hard to implement but if there was a designated area of Quinnipiac off campus for student housing that could be away from resident houses, things could be different.”
It is clear that Quinnipiac University and the town of Hamden need to become better dance partners. Relations with other universities and the town they reside in have taken time to grow, for example the relations between Penn State and State College.
In 2017, Bloomberg named State College as the #2 destination to live in the US with the upside of Silicon Valley. Part of easing the struggle between the two meant breaking the tradition of only hearing from one another when something went wrong.
Resident Assistant Abby McCarthy, comes from a college town back in Massachusetts. “At home the relationship between the town of Westfield and Westfield State University is not as bad as the relationship between Hamden and Quinnipiac,” said McCarthy. “I think in general most of the residents are thankful to have the university in our community because it offers so much to the town.”
“There is a lot of collaboration between the two and that cannot be underestimated,” she said. “If Quinnipiac where to focus on more collaboration with the community of Hamden I think relations would change for the better.”
