I am a transient. I came to Arizona specifically to go to ASU. When my tour of duty here is done in May, I will likely be gone as quickly as I came.
In the meantime, I occasionally host large, loud parties at my house near campus. I play the drums until midnight. I let my lawn grow until the grass entirely obscures the lawnmower.
With people like me, it is little wonder that Tempe residents love to hate ASU. And with the vitriol that residents and politicians spew at out-of-state students, it is little wonder that so many of us give residents cause for complaints and then book it out of town as soon as we have graduated.
Still, focusing on the constant conflicts between students and residents hides deeper tensions in Tempe. Tempe is thus far failing in its struggle to create a real community out of the ever-shifting patchwork of immigrants from other states and countries.
The sad reality is that we, transient students, are not so different from the majority of residents in Tempe.
If Tempe will become a place to stay for a lifetime, leaders of the community will have to convince the people who have chosen the city to leave their comfort zones.
Conflict will reign supreme until students and residents step outside of their walled-in subdivisions and fenced-in homes and start the messy process of getting to know one another.
Tempe has taken some basic first steps toward this end. Zoning hearings are usually well publicized and neighborhood associations are relatively strong. A few students have even been placed on city boards. Yet the people participating in these activities still constitute an extremely small minority among residents.
The rest of us see a city with little opportunity for our involvement. The growing influx of corporations into Tempe, supported by the city government, is a clear signal of the beginning of the end for local business owners, whose creativity is cherished as the lifeblood of other communities.
New homeowners and renters rarely receive educational materials about the opportunities for political participation available to them. Few residents make the effort to introduce themselves to newcomers.
As a result, most residents remain content to exist in their gated sanctuaries, effectively disengaged from the outside world. Students reflect and exaggerate the ethic of individualism that dominates in Tempe, but students didn't create it.
Reforming government programs alone won't change this. Building community requires us, as individuals, to make the choice to reach out to those who live and work around us. The University should embrace the fact that students must live off campus.
It should encourage students to introduce themselves to their neighbors, exchange schedules and phone numbers and - most daring of all - invite them to their social events. In my experience, the personal connection created by a simple introduction can guard against all but the worst of conflicts.
For now, the University and city maintain a fragile detente. City legislators aim anti-party regulations at students, and keep archaic anti-brothel laws on the books so that they can harass those of us living in neighborhoods.
Students respond to the pleas for peace and quiet by finding ways to be even louder and more obnoxious. Each weekend, armed with red plastic cups and beer-box helmets, we make it a point to stomp all over Tempe.
As students, we can expect more draconian anti-student measures to pass into law. As residents, they can expect more 50 Cent jams at 110 decibels and flaming poops in paper bags on doorsteps near them.
The first step to averting this arms race is jettisoning the rhetoric of conflict. Communities are not built on laws that enforce yard maintenance and penalize students for parties. They are built on the mutual respect of human beings who live with one another.
Until both residents and students join together to take active ownership of this city, Tempe will be just another arbitrarily drawn rectangle on a map, a community in name alone struggling to make peace within borders that signify nothing.
Taylor Jackson is a graduate student studying biology and society. You can ring his doorbell at Taylor.Jackson@asu.edu.
