Editor's note: This is the second in a five-part series examining Ohio University's relationship with Athens during the last 200 years.
Athens once was a segregated town - not in terms of race, but rather in the homes of Ohio University students and Athens residents.
But times have been changing since the 1950s, when the university's enrollment took on more students than its residence halls could hold after World War II. The excess students spilled off campus and into homes in the surrounding neighborhoods.
Today houses on Mill and South Congress streets are as much student housing as are residence halls on New South Green, but the students are spreading, permeating more into residential neighborhoods every year.
It is here that the most prominent town-gown battles are waged.
The Freaky Professor
Emeritus Associate Professor of History Robert Whealey, 73, and his wife Lois, 71, are not normal Athenians.
Instead of escaping the city of Athens, with its large student population, noise and traffic, to the outskirts of town, he and his wife have lived almost peacefully at 14 Oak St. since 1967.
I'm not a regular townie
Whealey said. My wife is a little bit different. She is not a good house wife.
Which is a good thing, Whealey said. The loud noise and excessive garbage the students create might otherwise bother them.
But for the meantime it does not. Whealey works until 10:30 p.m. in his office at Alden Library every night, and Lois is involved with 12 different organizations in the city, including the League of Women Voters.
Whealey and his wife met while he was finishing his doctorate degree at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, he said. They came to Athens in 1964 and lived in temporary university housing on Stewart Street, which now is the McCracken parking lot, until they moved to Oak St. in 1967, he said.
We wanted to move right around the corner and walk to work Whealey said. And it is the walk that has kept them there almost 40 years.
Since then the Whealeys have seen their street, which once housed the chief of police, turn into the home of Oakfest, which is patrolled by overtime officers, he said.
Jamie Rathburn, a senior international business major, lives across the street from the Whealeys at 11 Oak St. Rathburn said he does not really know the couple, but he and his roommates try to be courteous.
When we moved in over the summer and we saw them we were like
whoa
that's weird
Rathburn said. But because he and his roommates have not received any complaints from the couple, they really do not take them into much consideration.
In all the years Whealey can recall only a handful of incidents that have upset him, he said. One of these disturbances came during a recent Oakfest celebration. Neighbors, who had promised him their band would stop playing early, still were partying past 2 a.m. Whealey called the police, an unusual move for him.
The student parties don't bother me that much because they're not that often and when they do occur I'm not there
he said.
Inconvenient disturbances
At 8:30 p.m. Alexandra Buckley, of 35 Fairview Ave., is putting her two children to bed.
At the same time, just down the hill, a keg party is starting up on N. Congress. It's a Thursday night. The noise from the party wafts up to Buckley's backyard, in through her closed windows and keeps her children awake. It will be like this until 2 a.m.
Buckley and her family are just a few of the residents in the North Congress Street area that feel stuck. They don't want to cause more problems with confrontation or police involvement, but they are growing tired of waking up every Saturday night because of student noise.
I think the students
you know
just aren't aware
Buckley said.
At the beginning of the school year she and other Athens residents in the North Congress Street area distributed literature and tried to introduce themselves to as many students as possible, she said.
OU senior Jesse Yun, a resident of 116 N. Congress, said he has met some of his neighbors, but he still feels the Athens residents don't try to understand the students.
Residents need to know it's a party school
he said. But he added that if residents called the students directly when they have complaints, rather than the police, they could ease some of the tensions.
Buckley said she attributes the problems that have developed over time - mostly noise and trash - to the over-population from the university.
Lots and lots of people were packing into these homes
