The Problems

The photos shown below are images of the “home” community of Pitt and UPMC. What you see is only a small sampling of the hundreds of photos that have been taken since 2007. None of these photos was taken on a trash pickup day. The trash and litter problems are daily problems. The trash that is shown near houses, in some of the photos, soon gets scattered, and becomes litter on the sidewalks and streets of our community. This is in addition to the all too common litter of fast food packaging, loose papers, beer cans, etc. thrown onto our sidewalks and streets.

These problems have existed since the time when President and CEO of UPMC, Mr. Jeffrey Romoff, took office in 1992 and every year it grows worse. The photo at the top of this page was taken on the residential street where Mr. Romoff had his headquarters until 2008, when he moved to downtown Pittsburgh. Many of the executives of UPMC, however, still have their offices on this residential street.

Chancellor Mark Nordenberg of the University of Pittsburgh took office in 1996. All of the photos below are within a ½ square mile area of the university. They are a leisurely 20 minute walk from the chancellor’s office in the Cathedral of Learning building.

The university and UPMC have too often blamed landlords, community residents and the city government of Pittsburgh itself for these trash and litter problems. In October 2008, during a meeting at a city councilman’s office, a Pitt administrator was asked if the university could assist with funding to help end the litter problem. His response was: “The litter problem is not the responsibility of the university”; he then remarked that the landlords should pay for any daily maintenance because they receive rent money from the students. He further stated that our community should start a Neighborhood Improvement District, which could take 5 years or longer, if ever, to implement.

At another meeting with Pitt faculty members, two questions were put to them: “How many elderly long-time residents will die before the problems of trash and litter in our community will end? Does anyone care?” There was no response.

The same lack of care and concern has been demonstrated by some of the students themselves. When one Pitt student was asked “Why do you live under such filthy conditions, his reply was simply: “I’m lazy and I don’t care.”

In the photos below you will also see evidence of burned sofas. Some students at Pitt have adopted a horrific tradition started by students at West Virginia University who began to burn sofas in public to “celebrate” their football team’s victories over the Pitt football team. Prior to the 2007 game between WVU and Pitt, WVU’s chancellor announced that any students involved in such activity would be expelled from the university. To the best of our knowledge, no such warning has been issued to Pitt students. It goes without saying that such activities can have fatal consequences not only for the students themselves, but also for other members of our community. Sofas were burned throughout South Oakland when the Pitt football team beat the University of West Virginia team in the fall of 2007; when the Pitt basketball team won the Big East Conference in 2008; when the Philadelphia Phillies won the World Series in 2008; and when Barack Obama won the presidential election in November of 2008.

When the Pittsburgh Steelers won Super Bowl XLIII on February 1, 2009, the problems escalated. “Students in Oakland were prolific with matches” was a quote from an article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Fires were started on at least five residential streets in the area. A car was set on fire and several cars were overturned on one street. A long-time resident woman courageously confronted students wanting to burn a couch in the driveway of her home. The students carried the couch farther down the street and burned it there. For the first time, a fire was started near the chancellor’s residence in North Oakland. In addition, fires were set on the main business street fronting the Cathedral of Learning building with windows broken at four business establishments, a bus shelter was trashed, damage was done to the school’s library and a dumpster was burned outside Pitt’s student union building.

You will also see photos which show that the garbage in outdoor dumpsters has been burned. For the last several years, at the end of classes for the spring semester, some students have actually “taken over” one neighborhood street, having been denied city permission to hold outdoor parties on that street. What has resulted has been a series of drunken parties known as Semplefest. Last year students blocked the street at both ends with burned dumpsters, preventing residents from entering or exiting the street in their cars. Residents were terrified; there were 73 documented offenders involving students and non-students. Among these offenders were 18 verified Pitt students, none of whom was expelled for participating in this illegal “fest.”

When a university does not take strong action to safeguard against such threats to the peace and tranquility of the community which it shares with residents, the results can be more than disconcerting; they can be downright humiliating, as witnessed in one student’s comment to a neighbor who had complained about a particularly noisy and boisterous party going on until the early morning hours: “This neighborhood doesn’t belong to you. This is our neighborhood.”