Re: Waterloo neighbourhood is not a ghetto — June 9

While letter writer Graham McCormick is correct that the normal usage of the word ghetto suggests socially deprived groups forced by poverty into a given area, he can hardly argue with the secondary meaning of “densely populated, poorly kept-up slum area.” The areas surrounding the two universities are just this. Many student houses are poorly maintained by landlords who don’t care or who have given up trying. The houses are often rented out to more than the legal number of students. The entire neighbourhood does indeed resemble a slum, with the occasional family home standing bravely out amongst the detritus around them.

McCormick suggests that humans should be allowed to behave like dogs. Would he be impressed, I wonder, once he becomes affluent, as he expects, to have his seven year-old daughter return from school in tears saying that a man had his “wee-wee” out and that he yelled at her. This actually happened in the quiet neighbourhood where I lived until recently. A child living close to us was accosted by a student, just waking up from the party that had kept us all awake the night before, urinating among the beer bottles on his lawn. This was only one of hundreds of incidents which occurred over the years I lived there until a landlord was forced to take some responsibility for the behaviour of his tenants.

When students learn that they are members of a society which tries to respect public and private property and the right of neighbours to enjoy their own homes in peace, they will be treated like everyone else, with respect, and be allowed to enjoy the peace of the small town McCormick mentions. Until then, in fairness to all those living around them, it is certainly better to “warehouse” them in high rises which, while they are ugly as McCormick says, are much neater and cleaner than the ramshackle houses with filthy front lawns and rubbish-strewn driveways that they replace.

Ann Dubé

Baden