They come and go, but they’re right next door … bad neighbors. We all have them and we all hate them—and some have experiences with them at Eastern.

When she was in college, Aimee Bulthuis, an Eastern alumna and current Springfield resident, paid extra to have a parking spot in her apartment building’s lot. However, another car would always park in her spot.

“After a while, it got annoying finding a parking spot. I didn’t want to get anyone in trouble, but I paid for that spot so I called the police and they had the car towed…It never happened again,” she said. “So I guess moral of the story is just call the police.”

Nick Heine, a senior business major, said he currently lives next to people who let their dog poop in his backyard. He said this would be fine, but they never pick it up.

“I have dogs, so I totally get you can’t control where they go, but I pick up their poop. It’s a part of your responsibility as a dog owner,” he said. “I knocked on their door to ask them to start picking it up, and they were nothing but rude. My next approach is probably going to be the police.”

Eastern alumna Allison Rodgers had a couple living next door to her who would always get in loud verbal arguments.

She said it got to the point that the whole town could hear what they were arguing about. “It would happen at least once a week. One time, it got so bad me and my roommates thought it was going to turn physical, so we called the police,” she said. “We didn’t know what else to do and didn’t want anyone to get hurt.”

Eastern alumna Danielle Kappel moved into her apartment building and could not believe how high her Internet bill was. She soon learned it was not her fault, however. “I knew something was up. It was almost a hundred dollars over what it’s supposed to be. I called Mediacom to see where the usage was coming from the most, and we found out my neighbor was somehow connected to my data,” she said. “There wasn’t anything we could really do, so me and my roommates just started to give them dirty looks every time we saw them.”

Eastern alumna Kimberly Irving remembers that she could not help but stare at the piles of stuff all around her neighbor’s house.

“I loved my house and would always pick up the trash outside because I wanted it to look nice, but it wouldn’t even matter because my neighbors were hoarders,” she said. “They had couches to junk cars to garbage just laying all around. The city went there a few times asking them to clean things up.”

On the other hand, Kevin Brand, a senior business major, considers himself the bad neighbor. He admits that he and his roommates can sometimes be loud and even disturb the people around their house.

“We’ve gotten the police called on us a few times for noise complaints. The first time the police just gave us a warning, but after that we got a ticket,” he said. “I know it’s not right to disrupt the peace or whatever, but we’re in college and won’t get to live like this in a couple months.”

Samantha Benck can be reached at 581-2812 or sfbenck@eiu.edu.