Providence is home to several institutions of higher learning — most famously Brown University, and also Johnson and Wales, Providence College, Rhode Island College, and the RI School of Design. As a small city, many residents live near one or more of these schools, and are affected by them in various ways, including exposure to excessive noise, mostly (but not only) from students.
And as is true of most U.S. colleges and universities (and around the world), all of them have written codes of conduct for students that include being responsible members of the community in which they reside. The Noise Project has aggregated the noise-related sections of each school’s student rules and regulations (see bold blue links in the gray box below).1
If you are exposed to excessive noise from people / locations / sources associated with one of these institutions — including and especially students living off campus — you should report it to the school administration so they are aware of the issue, can implement their publicly-stated policies and ameliorative processes, and be held accountable for enforcing their own conduct regulations. If the noise is happening right now, contact the school’s campus police — use the bold blue links below for a specific school’s reporting procedures and / or contacts. If the campus police say they can’t help, contact the Providence Police as you would for any excessive noise report. You should also report recurrent noise sources to PVD311 to create a record for the city government to act on. Brown • Johnson and Wales • Providence College • Rhode Island College • RI School of Design
You should also alert your City Council member about recurrent student-noise issues. One third of Providence’s wards have colleges in them, and another six [?] are adjacent to the first five wards and have significant numbers of students living in them. In other words, student conduct is a city-wide issue.
| Name of School | Neighborhood | Ward | City Council member |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brown University | College Hill | 2 | Helen Anthony |
| Johnson and Wales | Downtown | 1 | John Goncalves |
| Johnson and Wales (Harbor Front) | Washington Park | 10 | Pedro Espinal |
| Providence College | Elmhurst | 14 | Shelley Peterson |
| Rhode Island College | Mount Pleasant | 5 | Jo-Ann Ryan |
| Rhode Island School of Design | College Hill | 2 | Helen Anthony |
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1 Although students living off-campus are far more likely to affect other Providence residents, we have also included on-campus conduct policies to contrast their stringency with the far-more aspirational perspective of the former — which sends its own message to both students and community members. It’s worth noting that both on- and off-campus conduct polices are often widely dispersed among multiple pages on schools’ websites and online documents (even when they all reference the same issue), and key elements can be difficult to find without a long and extensive search. See links above.