University Hill: the homes and the neighborhood surrounding the college campus of the University of South Carolina, home to college students and southern patriarchists alike. University Hill is roughly located directly in between Five Points, a common place to find drunk millennials at bars, and USC, home to 32,000 wayward and in-debt scholars. But apparently, this area was once populated with “a wide variety of families and homeowners in clean houses with groomed lawns,” as according to an article written by a local traditionalist and enthusiast to non-unruly and boring lifestyles.

But, no, apparently, the neighborhood is now riddled with integrity-absent 20-somethings who refuse to follow the norms of not littering their yards with beer cans and crushed red Solo cups. As according to a Columbia resident of the Shandon area, also roughly directly between Five Points and University of South Carolina, “they [rowdy, trashy college students] are always having parties and music noise [how dare we] and the houses are overcrowded. It’s not even a neighborhood anymore.”

Now that last bit really got me. Like, sir, I understand you have been living in the same house for well over 100 years, but the definition of a “neighborhood” really has not changed. Apart from the term "suburbia" that evolved from the housing boom in the 1950s, a neighborhood still consists of a collection of houses located near each other along a street or set of streets.

Returning back to this interviewee who has represented Columbia’s best and brightest for the past 100 years, his lawn and home stick out like a Guinness at a table of Bud Lights. “This was a family neighborhood when I moved in. It turned a 360.”

I’m no expert at math, but I think they mentioned something in my several hundred dollar calculus class about degrees of a circle. And as far as I know, going 360 degrees around a circle brings you right back to where you started.

But, like I said, I’m no expert; just a regular, ole college kid spending thousands on a current education.

Moving further into this divine article, the Vice President of the University Hill Neighborhood Association, (yes, there is a watch group filled with snitches that keep on the prowl for particularly rambunctious young adults) throws her opinion into the hat.

According to her, the reason the neighborhood has been run of sophisticated beings and frankly turned on its head is because the land (slum) lords that run this town, don’t actually live in town. As a student of USC, it’s no new news that much of the surrounding houses are owned and rented out to students. It’s also known that those houses are rented by 3 major slum lords that refuse upkeep of their properties and rent out verifiably condemnable houses to students who don’t know any better. But that’s an article for another day.

What the VP is getting at is that the slum lords should be held accountable for their tenants’ behaviors and antics. But last time I checked, my landlord was not my mom, I’m an adult and I am absolutely more than willing to discuss your opinions about how I spend my free time like a civilized adult instead of being a narc and calling the police. “If we had a problem with their property, we could call them up,” or, I mean, you could just come on over and discuss it with the people that actually pay rent, occupy the property and signed a legal contract stating so. But after doing some research on the contributors of the piece, I know you all are lawyers and you should understand how a rental agreement works.

So students, from what I have learned from experience, if you see a neighbor clearly in distress at the end of his driveway, do approach him and politely ask if there is a problem. Because you guys, like me, probably like being completely disrespected by someone I have never met in my life, an adult no less, and being threatened to be prosecuted based on a small 30 person gathering.

I will also mention, as I did to our neighbor, that this sort of thing doesn’t happen often to which I was verbally assaulted and told that:

1. I had no integrity because clearly he could smell alcohol on me (confirmed: I am 21 years of age, the legal drinking age of the United States as are my roommates).
2. He could clearly see a beer pong table set up in my backyard (confirmed: MY backyard, which he would have to try very hard [it’s impossible] to see from his property.) Also, which to my knowledge is no illegal thing as we were using water.
3. Also indicated that clearly there was underage drinking and that I was supplying it. (I’m nobody's mom so, no, I do not have any control over anyone other than myself. Also if I was able to supply drinks to over 30 people, do you think that I would be living a small apartment in Columbia? No, sir.)
4. My African-American veteran friend clearly did not have the same values as himself (I’m not joking).
5. He refused to accept our apology AND shake our hands.
6. He wants our landlords to evict us.

Clearly values of respect for others have changed in the hundred years he has lived here, but I was raised to be polite to those around me, especially those older than I. And I learned how to shake someone’s hand when I was a toddler, so maybe he just skipped that step and went straight to having a stick up his ass.

As to the couple mentioned in the article who had “been in their house since 1910” I hope they had a great 125^th birthday as most people start living in houses usually in their 20s.