University of Kentucky receives reports of parties, promises to enforce student code
After receiving several reports of house and apartment parties over the weekend, the University of Kentucky announced Monday that it will be enforcing the Code of Conduct on students who gather at those events.
The university says it is working closely with the Lexington Police Department and other city officials to keep tabs on student actions that can spread highly contagious COVID-19. Reports of parties were being given to the university so that it can enforce its Student Code of Conduct, which now includes social distancing rules and applies to students even if they’re off campus. Multiple harmful or law-breaking behaviors can cause suspension or expulsion.
In addition to accepting information from police, UK posted an online form and has a hotline at 859-257-3755 and email at studentconduct@uky.edu for others to report alleged on- and off-campus code violators.
Lexington police received around a dozen calls about noise disturbances near the UK campus over the weekend, police spokesperson Brenna Angel said. The complaints were about houses and apartments common to students on streets just off Waller Avenue near South Limestone and East Maxwell Street near Aylesford Place. Police wrote six citations for violating the city’s noise ordinance.
The university was notified of about 11 total citations, most of which were for noise violations; others were alcohol-related or other offenses, UK spokesperson Jay Blanton said. Lexington police notify the University of Kentucky Police Department of the violations, and UK police passes them on to the university’s disciplinary office. That office then reaches out to the students to begin the university’s disciplinary process.
Concerns over parties and gatherings have increased as students began moving back into dorms this past weekend. Students living near to campus have been moving into near-campus houses and apartments since leases renewed at the beginning of the month. The first day of school is Aug. 17.
“We trust that our students are going to return to campus committed to keeping each other safe as they pursue their academic and personal goals,” said interim UK Dean of Students Trisha Clement-Montgomery in the university’s press release. “The code exists to protect our community, and we hope that students are mindful of our shared expectations both while they are on and off of our campus.”
COVID-19 cases numbers are growing among students, as the university works through its plan to test all of its on-campus students at the start of the fall semester. According to the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department, 130 UK students who are quarantining in the county have tested positive.
That number doesn’t include students from outside the county. The university’s official public testing data lags behind the health department because the university completes all of its contact tracing for a particular day before publishing the data.
Other universities in the state are seeing similar spikes as they begin testing students. Western Kentucky University announced that 161 students have tested positive since July 1. Forty-five of those positive tests have come since the beginning of August, the College Heights Herald reported.
Greg Guenthner, a resident of Aylesford Place since 1995, was skeptical of UK’s ability to enforce the student code off campus. Guenthner, an executive board member of the neighborhood association, sat on the university’s now-defunct University Neighborhood Advisory Council for almost nine years. The council consistently discussed UK’s struggle to enforce its student code off campus, he said.
The police shouldn’t be involved in the process, Guenthner said, and the university’s reporting forms aren’t very good. He said the reporting hotline is only manned during business hours on weekdays — not during typical party hours — and the online form requires that those using it get a student’s name.
“No one’s going to approach a party and ask for the names of people who aren’t following the governor’s mandates on the pandemic,” Guenthner said. He said if the university really wanted to limit the spread off campus, then there should be a 24-hour hotline that a university employee, not a police officer, responds to immediately.
UK junior William Cunningham, who lives on Aylesford Place, said Monday that the university was doing the right thing. Pointing to the uncertain status of the college football season and the fact that all of his classes are online, Cunningham said students and the university should do all they can to limit the spread of the virus. He said his social media feed has filled up with students disobeying mask-wearing and social distancing guidelines.
“It’s not personal, it’s for safety, so it’s understandable,” said Justin Ayre, another UK junior who lives in a neighborhood near Waller Avenue where moving vans and front yard cornhole sets were ubiquitous. When asked if he’s seen students disobeying social distancing guidelines, he gestured up the street and said: “Literally any other day.”
Ayre said he understands why UK is carrying out the policy, but he doesn’t expect student parties to stop. The university can punish a student, he said, but that doesn’t necessarily remove them from the neighborhood. If landlords pursued punishments, then maybe students would listen, he said.
A proposed city ordinance that would’ve given civil citations to landlords who kept serially unruly tenants has been stuck in a city council committee since January after the proposal was met with backlash from landlords. An older, harder-to-enforce ordinance against party houses is still in effect.
Through the university conduct policy, students can be charged with violations covering harm or threat of harm or violations for breaking federal or local laws or UK policy.
A harm or threat of harm violation includes “conduct that causes injury or a reasonable expectation of injury to the physical or mental health or safety of another person.”
In a previous statement, Blanton wrote that students who violate the university’s social distancing policies will be met with educational meetings and continuously escalating penalties.
“The Office of Student Conduct’s goal in our first meeting is largely educational, explaining why the expectation exists and finding a way the student can comply in the future,” Blanton wrote in a statement last week about students who don’t wear masks in class. “This will likely come with at least an informal or official warning. Ongoing incidents of refusal to wear a face covering and attending class in person could result in more severe outcomes, including conduct probation. Each step will come with some sort of educational outcome. The outcome of a specific incident is based on the unique facts of the case.”
According to the university’s list of penalties for conduct violations — which it calls “Restorative Actions” — informal or official warnings are the least severe penalties. A conduct probation has more teeth and sets a student up for “more severe restorative actions, up to and including disciplinary suspension or expulsion from UK” should poor behavior continue while on probation.
This story was originally published August 10, 2020 at 10:06 AM.