‘Stop these ridiculous parties’: TCU neighborhoods are uniting to take a stand

Neighborhoods that surround Texas Christian University’s campus have formed a larger neighborhood association called the Safe Neighborhood Alliance as community members grow increasingly irritated by parties and noise near their homes.

Group leaders hope forming a larger group will amplify their voice when it comes to sharing their thoughts and displeasure with the university and law enforcement about fraternity parties, noise, and future issues that could arise around matters such as construction and campus expansion.

Neighborhoods represented in the Safe Neighborhood Alliance include Westcliff, Westcliff West, Bluebonnet Hills, Paschal, University West and University Place. The group has met about five times over the past few months and has grown to roughly 20 members.

The group could grow larger as word is spread to other residents and members of surrounding neighborhood associations.

“TCU had no solutions other than to build more dorms, which takes a lot of time,” said Janet Williamson, a leader of the Safe Neighborhood Alliance who lives in Westcliff. “So all of us are coming together to come up with solutions. We need quicker solutions, and we realized how many neighborhood associations are being affected by this poor behavior [from students].”

TCU ‘takes every noise complaint seriously’

TCU’s Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Mike Russel told the Star-Telegram he was not aware of the Safe Neighborhood Alliance but believes the university’s Neighbor-to-Neighbor program is helpful in addressing such issues. He said the school takes every noise complaint seriously.

“Keeping open communication about issues affecting students and neighbors is helpful to everyone,” Russel wrote in a statement. “TCU responds to every complaint or concern about any TCU student behavior off campus. For loud parties, if we know the names of the students who hosted the party, and we have credible information linking them to a policy or law violation, the Dean of Students office initiates our conduct process. “

Williamson said there are two main reasons why the Safe Neighborhood Alliance was formed. The group is concerned about dozens of student-occupied homes that it believes are ideal targets for theft and burglaries when students are on break. And the group wants to do something about the noise and parties that have long caused students, community members and the university to butt heads on potential solutions.

“Ninety-nine percent of the students are lovely, and we really like them,” Williamson said. “It’s the 1%, mainly fraternities, that we’re having problems with. So the second part is to stop these ridiculous parties that are in our neighborhoods, that are so loud our houses just vibrate.”

Alliance to hire off-duty police

The Safe Neighborhood Alliance is collecting money to pay off-duty police officers to patrol the neighborhoods in the alliance. Members of the alliance say noise and parties are the worst during TCU football games, when the Fort Worth Police Department is already stretched thin.

Safe Neighborhood Alliance leaders also hope their organization works alongside the Neighbor-to-Neighbor program TCU runs to connect students and community members, hoping it can inform students living on their own for the first time how to be considerate neighbors.

TCU’s Neighbor-to-Neighbor program has been in place for several years, but started to lose its effectiveness around the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, said Lexi Lovett, a member of both the Neighbor-to-Neighbor program and the Safe Neighborhood Alliance who lives in Bluebonnet Hills.

Lovett hopes the Safe Neighborhood Alliance can fill in the gaps in the Neighbor-to-Neighbor program.

“The Safe Neighborhood Alliance is looking for people that can find solutions to issues that we’re all having,” Lovett said. “Just constantly having hundreds of students in one house that probably doesn’t have the capacity for that. So I think that’s where the Alliance comes in. And if TCU doesn’t move forward with the Neighbor-to-Neighbor program then we still have something to fall back on.”

The Neighbor-to-Neighbor group met with TCU leaders Wednesday, Jan. 14, with city officials and law enforcement also present. They discussed ways the program can be more effective moving forward.

“The Neighbor-to-Neighbor program was designed to help neighbors and students have open communication,” Lovett said. “After COVID, it kind of dropped the ball, and now it’s not an effective program in any way. I could still believe in the program if it was updated, but right now it’s just not effective.”

Martha Jones, a member of the Neighbor-to-Neighbor program, believes the program can be rebooted and effective.

“Before COVID, the Neighbor-to-Neighbor program was really working,” Jones said. “It helped neighbors reach out to students, and I still feel very strongly that it will help eliminate a lot of problems. It had every organization working together to come up with common solutions for problems. City staff, TCU staff, neighborhood leaders, panhellenic groups and student body representatives.”

The Safe Neighborhood Alliance has not yet met with TCU officials but members hope they can in the near future. The next step for members of the organization is to call homeowners near TCU and ask them to contribute to their GoFundMe to hire off-duty police for additional protection for the area. A number of homeowners have already contributed, Williamson said.

Fraternity parties a focus

Another main goal of the Safe Neighborhood Alliance is to limit the amount of fraternity parties in their neighborhoods, or at least better enforce the city’s noise ordinance. Fort Worth currently has a sound limit in place of 70 decibels during the day and 60 decibels at night. That is about the equivalent of a loud vacuum cleaner. Residents in the area say that law is not only being broken, but shattered.

When community members have gone to TCU officials complaining about parties, they’ve often been told TCU can’t control what students do off school property, Williamson said. When those same community members take their concerns to the police, there hasn’t been much action taken, members of the Alliance said.

About half of the noise complaints to law enforcement from the Westcliff neighborhood from Aug. 1, 2024, through Nov. 20, 2025, were canceled without a police report being filed, according to an analysis by the Star-Telegram. The university has stated it takes every complaint seriously.

Fort Worth City Council member Michael Crain, whose district includes much of TCU’s campus, has previously been involved in discussions between disgruntled community members and university administration. He previously told the Star-Telegram that he’s taking a more active role in bolstering the Neighbor-to-Neighbor program.

Even as tensions rise between students and residents, most members of the Safe Neighborhood Alliance, including Jones, enjoy living near TCU, interacting with students, and being part of the university community. Jones enjoys meeting the new students who move in on her street at the beginning of semesters and makes it a point to introduce herself.

But Jones and her fellow Safe Neighborhood Alliance members feel like they are at a point where something more needs to be done about the “1%” of students who give the entire student body a bad reputation.

“I’m really pro-students,” Jones said. “I don’t want to sound anti-students because I love college students. The first thing I do when a student moves in is I go across the street, I introduce myself and I get their numbers. I think overall, people are just frustrated. Because they feel like this has gone on for a while and nothing gets done. So something just has to change.”