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Juliet Gharibian, first-year undeclared (foreground), and Katie Brechtelsbauer, second-year biology, find studying in their De Neve Plaza dorm room difficult at times. “You can feel the bass through the walls,” said Brechtelsbauer.

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De Neve Plaza, completed in 2002, houses a number of students who can hear each other through the walls.

In most dorms, students either have to use phones or go into the hallways to talk to their floormates. Students in De Neve said they can talk to their neighbors through the walls.

“When you go to the bathroom and open the medicine cabinet, you can practically have a normal conversation with the people next door,” said second-year biology student Nicole Lang.

When asked if he received complaints about noise in De Neve, Alan Hanson, director of the Office of Residential Life, said “no one has contacted me directly ... but I wouldn’t suggest that (the problem) isn’t real.”

He said noise in residential-hall-type living is an ongoing problem.

“The sense I have about what I have heard is that the experience people are having may or may not be related to wall conditions,” Hanson said.

No matter what the cause, students said the ability to hear what’s going on next door, especially in the bathrooms, can make it difficult for students to live comfortably and normally in De Neve.

“I turn on the shower when I’m in the bathroom because the people next door can hear everything. The people downstairs are loud too,” said first-year psychobiology student Anthony Nguyen.

Whereas students in other residential halls can play instruments, generally without the music being carried to the next room, De Neve musicians often receive complaints from their neighbors, or even from the people living beneath them or above them, residents said.

The volume of the sounds from radios, televisions and computers is also often considered too loud for studious neighbors.

Certain rooms in De Neve have a more difficult time with loud noises than other rooms. Those located next to the stairs, the lounge or the trash chute have added noises that seep through the walls daily, residents said.

“We live next to the stairs, so we can hear people running up and talking. It sounds like pounding. And people from the study lounges knock on the wall and lean their chairs up against the wall. The people above us fall off their beds in the morning and wake me up,” said second-year Japanese student Jason Kawamoto.

Residents with rooms beneath them as well as above them also seem to have more to deal with than those who live on the lowest or highest floors.

“We don’t make any noise, and we try to be really quiet, but the people downstairs complain, and it’s not even us (who are being loud). It’s the people above us. We were just sitting on the bed and the people beneath us started complaining,” said first-year business economics student Priscilla Park.

“It’s hard to tiptoe all the time,” she added.

Even though complaints are numerous, there are still those students who accept it as a part of dorm life.

“We try to be good about keeping quiet: we don’t jump off the beds. We go down the sides. And people are pretty good about the volume of their music,” said first-year chemical engineering student Michael Wahl.

“It’s funny because we hear what the people next door to us say about us,” said first-year business economics student Ricky Bueno.

Noise may not be such a problem within the floor corridors. Hanson said he has heard that Resident Assistants on rounds sometimes have a hard time determining where noise is coming from when they answer complaints.

“We know that at least the doors to the corridors are doing a pretty good job of disguising where the source of the noise is coming from,” he said.

Some residents in halls other than De Neve don’t notice noise as a problem.

“I’ve only received a complaint once, when someone told me to turn my music off. The noise hasn’t gotten to the point where I have trouble getting to sleep,” said first-year English student Nathan Weatherford, a Delta Terrace resident.

“Most of the noise comes from above us. As far as adjacent walls, we can’t hear anything. It’s not that much of a burden to live through, and it’s not to the point where we have to complain,” said first-year molecular, cellular and developmental biology student Patricia Calimlim, a Canyon Point resident.

“We can’t hear normal, everyday activities. We can’t even hear them if they’re laughing really loud. I can only hear noises if our next door neighbors close their doors really loud,” said first-year computer science student Christine Wang, a Hedrick resident.

Some students compare their De Neve experience to other residence halls.

“We can hear people running up the stairs and through the hallways above us. People don’t think about who’s below them. It’s pretty bad, but De Neve was a little worse because their walls seemed thinner,” said second-year cybernetics student Elliot Lee, a Canyon Point resident, who lived in De Neve last year.

Even if De Neve residents are experiencing more problem than other residents, they have not expressed this to housing.

“In our quality of life survey each spring, De Neve came up better rated than some of the other residential halls,” Hanson said.