I did not know that college students celebrating the last day of classes was Buffalo’s number one crime problem. For the past few weeks all we hear around campus is how Byron Brown is putting all his efforts in to stopping our festivities. We are a community made up of thousands of people from all over the United States, and even other parts of the world, who come to this school to get an education and work towards a common goal of success both personally and as a community. There are several groups affiliated with this school that do some amazing things for the city of Buffalo and many other places in the word. Instead of commending our accomplishments our mayor wants to put an end to a celebration that we as a student body look forward to all year and that has been happening for the past several decades. Would it be wrong to ask for a simple “congratulations on working so hard to complete this school year?” We are not the only school that partakes in such activities. Just last weekend I went to Sienna College in Albany, NY where their end of the year party was taking place; Sienna Fest. The mayor of this city did not send in extra forces to try to stop these events from taking place, in fact I did not see one city cop the whole week. They had their campus security patrolling to make sure everyone was safe and acting appropriately. Everyone had a great time and are back to doing their work this week. It is not as if it is a continuous or reoccurring problem, it is one day out of the year where we can all get together and rejoice that the year is over and it is a common practice at a college.
We are told that the surrounding members of the community do not like this day and that we are a nuisance to them. I could understand this if it just happened sporadically and it was an all night event preventing them from getting things done. However they are fully aware when it is going to happen and ample warning should enable them to prepare for it. Also it is in the middle of the day where they are at work and their kids are at school. Everything is calmed down by five or six o’ clock and things are cleaned up by committees at school. On the same note we make up the majority of the housing in the area that any activities take place and in a democracy it is usually the majority that comes out on top. It is similar to block parties which happen all the time.
If these few hours of students hanging out at each others’ houses and venturing around campus is the number one concern of our mayor then our city has a serious problem. Why has no one stood up and said anything to him about everything else that is taking place in our city. Just the other day a group of friends and I were enjoying a 75 degree day in April. We were throwing the ball around and playing kan-jam. Not causing any problems for anyone and not being noisy or obnoxious. Just to be courteous we even asked our neighbors if we were bothering them in any way and they said we were just fine. Buffalo police came by and wrote us tickets. We were on our property and using cups. This is not even the part that is frustrating. Throughout the day one of our surrounding community members (not associated with Canisius College) continuously walked past us and asked us if we wanted to purchase illegal drugs from him. It happened at least three times during the hours of 3:00-7:00 P.M. Now it seems a little ridiculous that a few of us, who are also members of the community, get written tickets for having a few drinks, on a sunny day, in cups when at the same time there are people trying to sell drugs to us. Now if our mayor thinks it more of a problem for a college to have an end of the year party, one day out of the year, what is that saying of him? I propose that he picks another day during the year to increase the police forces and try to stop the selling of drugs, the constant robberies and assaults that our students receive, and the murders that take place in our neighborhood. This sounds like a more practical way to spend our tax money.
Concerned Canisius Students
via facebook group
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