Perhaps the most longstanding conflict at Jacobs University is that between students and neighbours when it comes to early-morning noise. The issue is much more complex than it appears at first glance.

We all know the situation: it is Friday or Saturday night, 2 am, maybe 3 or 4 am (who cares anyway?). You are drunk (or not), had a great time with your friends at the Other Side, H3, Blue Lounge, at the Freimarkt, Hamburg… What could be a better closure for your partying than continuing the party as good and as loud as you can on the lonely streets of Vegesack or on the deserted grounds of Jacobs University Bremen?  Well…

Noise has always been a problem, from the moment IUB was built and up to the point when Jacobs University came into existence. Vice President for Development Dr. Alexander Ziegler-Jöns addressed of this problem in an email to students in the last weeks. He stated that some serious misconduct and misbehavior had been experienced, including disturbances in the neighbourhood and residential colleges caused by drunken students. Because of having disregarded the security staff and other persons that approached them about keeping their voices down, two former students have been banned from the university.

Recently the Student Parliament debated over a potential solution to this problem. What was unclear from the beginning was, how to define noise? Everyone has more or less an individual idea of it. 

German law though says that "Nachtruhe" (quiet hours) have to be respected from 10pm to 6am in general, whereas College House Rules express that silence is expected on weekdays from 11pm to 7am, and Friday and Saturday nights from 1am to 7am. During reading days and final examinations days, 24 hours silence a day is required. Quiet hours include outside facilities around the colleges and during the time not covered by quiet hours, any noise level must be acceptable to everybody (quoted from Mercator House Rules). Having (too) loud sex can lead to complaints via email, which happened last year as Hana Galal ('09), informed us.

When we asked students to write us their opinion on the noise issue, we did not expect to be able to identify two opposing blocks so clearly. The one block obviously consisted of mostly male, mostly non-German students who more or less tried to justify the fact that they belong to these people who occasionally cause some noise. One student for instance wrote that "...coming from different cultures and backgrounds some people are naturally louder than others." The alcohol consumption was something these students frequently referred to.

The other block, for whatever reason, consisted of female German students who complained about noise before and often had some negative experiences with loud neighbours: "People are blasting music everywhere, and they are sometimes not even aware that they annoy other people, and think if not too many people are disturbed, it is actually okay."

As our little survey of course was not at all representative, we need to mention that there was one non-German student who seemed to be genuinely interested about the silence at night: "When the drunks on my floor were having a shopping cart race at 2am and the RA wasn't doing anything about it, I went and requested they quiet down." 

When it comes to the neighbours, students' opinions seem even more divided. While the one block seemed worried about the University's reputation and saw the need to establish good relationships with the neighbours, others were not that tolerant: "Informing students that this is a residential area and asking them to try to be quiet should be enough. If it is not for the neighbours, this is a free country — they could move," was one opinion we received.  Another student had a more drastic view: "The neighbours are old Germans who need to loosen up a bit and not always be that uptight. Their unrealistic demands about the noise levels and their attempts of disrupting social gatherings by calling the police has just broadened the rift between students and them."

It surprised us how much some students pretended to know about the neighbours. Are they old? Are they that bored? Are they really being "too German"? The best way to find that out is always to ask the affected residents directly, and that is what we did.