At the Campus Community Coalition meeting Tuesday, students and residents discussed with city and town officials how to create an effective dialogue between the groups in the neighborhoods of South Hill and Collegetown to deal with excessive noise. Many ideas were proposed, but no concrete suggestions emerged.

Debate also centered on the recent changes to the town and city noise ordinances.

The law allows a police officer to issue tickets without first receiving a complaint. Several students spoke up and said they had no problem with police busting loud parties, but they took issue with the law’s wording and said they wanted restraints on the police’s ability to regulate noise.

Scott Rosenthal, a junior at Cornell University, said he had seen the noise ordinance abused by police officers.

“I think the real problem is the policy can be abused and is being abused,” he said. “I live on Linden [Avenue], and I’ve seen instances where students were written tickets for being on the porch, or for having a computer playing music out a window. I think you have to be pretty naïve to believe that if you give police this great power to write tickets that it’s not going to be abused.”

Lauren Signer, chief of police for the city of Ithaca, defended the changes to the noise law. She said she had heard from many residents that the law had been successful in defusing loud parties.

“We’ve had many full-time residents complain that there was some form of retaliation [for making a complaint],” she said. “One of the reasons for the noise ordinance was to try to remove the complaint function from the residents and give the police power to decide whether to issue a violation to residents.”

Tompkins County Sheriff Peter Meskill said the law had done its job well and addressed the issue of police abusing their power.

“If you want to raise hell, you’re going to pay the price because that’s what the residents want,” he said. “If you have a complaint, come talk to me in my office, and we’ll have an investigation.”

At one point, a mediator read a quote from an anonymous student who said police “look at [students] like cash cows” and asked for opinions about the validity of the statement.

Signer cupped her hands around her mouth and said, “Moo, moo, moo.”

The group also discussed creating better communication between students and permanent residents. While all who spoke applauded the idea, few had effective ideas about how to create change.

Robert Holt, director of Public Safety, said Ithaca College- sponsored get-togethers with students and residents held at the beginning of the year were the first step to establishing better dialogue. He said he was encouraged that students actually did appear to know their neighbors, but there is still more work to be done.

“If you don’t have a relationship with your neighbors, you’re against each other,” he said. “You know your neighbors at home and that’s why they don’t call the cops on you when you park your car funny. It’s pretty basic, and it does work.”

Senior Zack Ford, student body president, said he would like to use the resources of on-campus organizations like the Student Government Association to reach out to students on behalf of permanent residents.

“Just because [students] are only here for two or three years, they are no less a resident,” he said. “But also, the folks who are there permanently deserve respect.”

After the meeting, Meskill said part of the responsibility with curbing noise lay with the college.

“[Ithaca College] has taken over a lot of private housing and created clear rules about alcohol on campus, and therefore all the alcohol and kids go off campus,” he said. “The college needs to provide real activities that students are interested in if the college really wants to make a difference. Talk is cheap.”

Gary Anderson, president of the South Hill Civic Association, supported the noise law because residents who work early in the morning need sleep, he said. But he said he wants to continue meeting with new generations of students to encourage good relations.

“Within two years, a quarter of the people on my block will have changed,” he said. “We’re not going to solve it tonight, or even this year.”

At the meeting students also said they would like to see more information about the history of rental buildings put online so students could more easily. Ithaca Mayor Carolyn Peterson said she had set money aside in the city budget to do just that.