This One Goes To Eleven

I’ll just lay it on the line: I have a noisy neighbor. He works as a DJ and therefore must make new playlists every week. He is courteous enough to not blast his music at night but it can be a hassle nonetheless. Having paper-thin walls in the dorm does not make this issue easy to deal with but if you’re in a situation like myself and my roommate then you may want to take a gander below.

I guess I’m lucky that I only have one neighbor, as my other neighbors moved out last month (and it wasn’t because I was being loud), but it seems like the DJ has taken whatever decibels those guys left behind and added it to his stereo. We have grown accustomed to it six months later and don’t mind it as long as he doesn’t play music when we are trying to sleep.

Whether you have a neighbor who is in love with their stereo system, just loves to talk at a high volume or crams more people into their room than clowns in a Volkswagen on a Saturday night, there are always some resolution options so all parties involved can be satisfied.

First, if the noise is too much to bear to the point where you’re losing sleep, consult the person directly. Give a knock on their door and just tell them the situation. They likely won’t be surprised if they get a visit from either you or the people on the other side of them since they know they are consistently on the high end of the volume knob.

In the rare case that the person is hostile toward you and ends up being louder more often just to get you angry, the problem should be handed over to your Residence Assistant (RA) and allow he or she to administer any disciplinary action, if needed. To see how to develop a friendship with your RA, please read .

But the odds are in your favor that the person will cease their anti-silent way of life and learn to be more thoughtful to neighbors next to and across from him or her. Your parents and maybe you are paying for room and board, so you should not have to be a victim of someone else’s noise. In an economist’s terms, this is called the “spillover effect,” in which one person’s actions “spill over” into another’s private property. Having a person play loud music so that it is audible in your room is the same as your neighbor at home having a barbecue and having the smells waft on to your property.

Then again, you can simply cope with the noise build up a type of immunity against it. If you subject yourself to the noise long enough, it may possibly be less of a hassle for the rest of the year. My roommate and I are still trying to bolster our immunity and we hope it arrives soon. This can also be good for you when you move into an apartment in the future -- easily tuning out unwanted noise from another room. However, taking car of that issue is far easier because, with enough warnings, those tenants run the risk of being evicted.

There is no need to bring animosity to the table. If you tackle this issue the wrong way then you and others will be in hot water, resulting in major disciplinary action against you. Use your head, but not in the physical sense.

And if you’re one of these individuals who is a noise culprit, please stop. It’ll make everybody happy.