UT Arkansas

What Life is Like for Locals in Fayetteville

At the beginning of the semester, a young man came to my door and introduced himself as Nate, my new neighbor from Texas. This is common in Arkansas, where the University of Arkansas offers in-state tuition for Texans for some god-forsaken reason, and Texans appear to have gentrified our once affordable town. Nate wanted to introduce himself and tell me that they were planning a 21st birthday party. He assured me that they would be quiet at a decent hour and that it was just a party. They were responsible, respectable young men.

He was displaying his “I’m a nice guy card.”

Ted Bundy was a “nice guy.” Jeffrey Dahmer was a “nice guy.” John Gacy was a “nice guy.” I try not to buy the “nice guy” card anymore. Your manners need to match your actions to benefit from the nice guy card.

This American Life did a show about what being a “good guy” will get you. Of course, the currency for being a nice girl doesn’t play out the same way. But if you’re a dude, you can literally get away with murder for being a nice guy, and people will defend you to the death for it, even after you’ve committed multiple horrendous murders. Even if your girlfriend calls the police and tells them she thinks you, the “good guy,” are the one doing the murdering.

I went to bed to the sound of Nate’s party. Loud music. College kids screaming. Hundreds of them. The street full of Ubers. Let them have their fun.

I woke up at 1 a.m. People had puked in my yard. People had peed in my yard and left toilet tissue and trash in my yard. Somebody cut the cord to my surveillance video camera in the backyard. The house was thumping, and college kids and Ubers were clogging the sidewalks and street. A fire truck wouldn’t have been able to make it down the street for an emergency.

The cops came and appeared to shut the party down. Nate and his friends yelled to the crowd, “If you’re not sleeping with a brother, get out.” Great. It’s a fraternity party. That makes more sense. It took another hour for the Ubers to get all of the kids out of the party. I didn’t get to sleep for another hour after that.

I talked to my neighbor, Mildred, about it. She said that Nate told her he went to Cross Church. She said he must have known that she was a Christian. She said that all that partying didn’t bother her a bit.

So Nate gets the “nice guy” pass and the “I’m a Christian like you” pass.

Nate has had three parties so far this year. It’s only October. He doesn’t graduate for two more years.

October 29, he was on my front porch with some baby’s breath flowers for me, trying to get some more “nice guy” credits, letting me know they were having another party.

I gave him an earful. I told him about the puke, and the pee, and the cut video cord, and the inability to sleep. I told him that this is my LIFE, and he was disrespecting it. I handed his flowers back to him, and he said, “You don’t want them?”

“Nope.”

He said, “We’ll try to post people on the sidewalk to keep them out of your yard.”

He hadn’t heard me at all. He was going to do what he wanted to do. Not really a nice guy, just manipulative.

October 30, as I sat in my hot tub soaking from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. I counted 96 Ubers. Each of them was loaded with college kids. Screaming, puking, drunk, out-of-control college kids with no respect for my quiet neighborhood or my personal property. By the way, it was Thursday night. I had to work the next day.

I wonder how the owner of the house will feel about the letter I am going to send her with the pictures and videos of what is happening in her home. My good friend, DeDe, thinks that is probably the best approach to dealing with this. I wish I had Nate’s parents’ phone numbers. But they may be the “boys will be boys” type of parents. It does appear to be a frat party. They probably wanted them to have this experience in their lives.

A former police officer at my work suggested getting them on code violations. Another friend suggested complaining to the University Conduct Office. Another friend said I should save up my cat poop for the next party and strategically place it as a deterrent. I bought another cable for my surveillance video camera, and I can use that to talk to people when they are in the act of peeing in my yard at the next party. I hate to think about possibly having to move to have a normal life. I have lived in this house for 29 years.

The party on Thursday, October 30th, went until 1:30 in the morning. I sent Mildred pictures of the people peeing in her yard. I wasn’t going to take pictures of that, but the police asked me if I had video evidence, so I started documenting them in the act. Mildred agreed that it was terribly disrespectful. I don’t know if it was disrespectful enough to nullify the Cross Church credentials. But we’ll see.

Welcome to the University of Texas at Arkansas. This is what happens when your local university, with an enrollment of 34,000, overgrows the city it occupies and invites people from other places to pillage our low cost of living, cheaper than Texas tuition, safe streets, and picturesque beauty. We lose the thing that made it beautiful to begin with. These kids don’t have any investment in keeping the city safe and livable. They are just using it like a toilet, the way these hundreds of kids used mine and my neighbors’ yards. They have no accountability, and they get to go home to their lives in Texas after they have trashed our quiet neighborhoods. In 2000, the enrollment total was about 15,000, less than half as much as it is now.

A dozen or so frat boys were cleaning up the day after. This was the trash load from the party. Wonder how that rent house is faring on the inside with all this partying. I don’t know why I’m covering their license plate. Unsure of the laws about it, probably.

And I promise you, I had no intention of spending my Thursday night being the “get off my lawn” lady, taking pictures of girls in costumes squatting in my yard. You know how awkward and weird it is to approach people preparing to squat, or actively squatting to pee in your yard, and telling them to stop while taking their picture? I just wanted to go to bed like a normal human so that I could get up early and go to the gym the next morning. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen either.

I’d love to give Nate the “nice guy” handshake. But he needs to earn that. However, I’m sure there will be more parties. The question is, when.

The next day, the University of Arkansas football team suffered an embarrassing loss.