Somehow, residents of Fortwood and UTC students who reside in fraternity houses scattered through the neighborhood need to learn to get along, everybody agreed during a meeting Wednesday evening at the university.
Nobody, however, knew exactly how to make that happen.
"It's not you against them," Paul Burke, "house dad" at the Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity House, told about a dozen Fortwood residents and city officials who attended.
"You're not going anywhere and we're not going anywhere," he added. "We need to get along."
But neighborhood residents such as Janice Heath did not appear to be buying that message.
At least three nights a week -- Thursday, Friday and Saturday, when the frat houses hold their parties - Mrs. Heath and her husband get little if any sleep. She said the problem is so bad that sometimes they go away for the weekend so they can catch up on sleep they have missed.
Sometimes, she added, the parties and loud noises extend into the work week. This past Monday, for example, things got so bad that the police were called.
The officers arrived during a lull in the parties, however, and left when they found no violations.
"Fifteen minutes after the officers left, a kid came out of the frat house, stood under our window and yelled, 'I got weed! Anybody want any?" she noted.
At that point, police and UTC representatives agreed, she should have picked up the phone and called police again.
"I'll make sure that when those calls come in, officers go out and check them," a Chattanooga Police Department representative promised.
Further, he noted, police can run stings on frat houses where there have been complaints about underage drinking and drug use, much like those used to determine whether business establishments are selling alcohol to minors.
But there are also things police cannot do, he noted, including citing the students for being out on the street late at night.
"If you're over 18, there is no curfew," he told the group.
Nobody denies that living next door to a house full of red-blooded college students "full of testosterone" is not easy, Mr. Burke said.
That's why he gave his phone number to residents of Fortwood as well as police officers and UTC representatives after he came on the job this past April, he said.
To date, he said, although complaints have been made to police, he has not gotten a single call from a Fortwood resident alerting him when there is a problem.
"If you have a problem with the water in your house, you don't call the water company," he said. "You call a plumber . . . I expect to get calls."
Further, he said, while it is true that there are loud noises in the neighborhood, many of those noises have nothing to do with frat houses.
For example, he said, when he checked the noise level at the intersection of Oak Street and Central Avenue, he said, "The decibel level from the traffic was 72 to 77."
But when he stood outside the Lambda Chi house, with the stereo playing full blast in the basement, "the reading on the sidewalk was about 48 . . . I couldn't get it to go up to 50 (the maximum permissible decibel level."
Mrs. Heath and other community residents did not dispute that. But much of the traffic that creates that noise, she noted, consists of vehicles traveling to and from the frat houses.
"The bottom-line issue is the alcohol," she told Mr. Burke. "That's what's causing the noise. That's what's causing the traffic problems."
Mr. Burke took a deep breath.
"I swore I wouldn't bring this up tonight, but last June you and your husband went away for a weekend," he told Mrs. Heath. "And while you were gone your son had a party where there was alcohol consumed . . . We didn't call the police, we didn't complain. But this problem happens everywhere, not just in frat houses."