Noisy Dorm Neighbors.

Post Reply New Topic

I'm a sophomore at the university. The last year I was here, I had no problems with anything; not even with having a quiet place to study at night. This year, I have been granted a single dorm room through disability resources because of my Aspergers Syndrome. Things are working out fine.....except for this one drawback of the dorm: my dorm neighbors are so damn noisy! They slam doors, blast their music so loud that I can feel if vibrating through the walls, yell across the hallway, and they run around like kids on a sugar high. This happens day and night.
Having AS, my sensitivity to noise (as well as any other stimuli) is amplified. This has been going on for weeks, and I have been growing increasingly frustrated. And I'm not the only one; there are several others who have complained, yet nothing has happened.
I cannot and will not lose my room just because some people on the floor I'm on won't turn down the volume.
Please, is there any advice you can give me to get past this?

Sidenote: I've already tried the plugs, ignoring the noise, and gently asking the people to turn down the volume but nothing has worked so far.

If the noise occurs late at night (after about 11 pm) or before about 7 AM then try telling the warden or the boss of the hall.

Banging doors are one thing but wild partys and loud music are something which many halls will clamp down on if it is late at night.

Maybe the rest of the hall are fed up and want to go to sleep.

_________________
Health is a state of physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity I am not a jigsaw, I am a free man !

Diagnosed under the DSM5 rules with autism spectrum disorder, under DSM4 psychologist said would have been AS (299.80) but I suspect that I am somewhere between 299.80 and 299.00 (Autism) under DSM4.

Suggestions:
-There's a sound effects record I bought years ago that simulates an air conditioner. Played through a powerful stereo with a subwoofer, it creates a wall of white noise with enough bass in it to drown out another bass. A normal white-noise machine can't block out bass, but this can, or at least muffle it tremendously. Better than earplugs.
-Call the police
-Play music at full volume that they won't like (country, disco, religious maybe, or old Hitler speeches, whatever will annoy them)
-Ask the local newspaper or TV station why someone on the Spectrum is being harassed in this manner and why such a clear violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act is tolerated at the university, which has created a hostile environment for its students and is apparently just a party school with no desire to nurture its students in a healthy environment.
-Make the above comment on YouTube or Facebook or both -- although that might attract a lot of haters and thump-de-dums defending their right to be a**holes, so maybe that's not a good idea. But might be worth a shot.

Hope this helps. I know how you feel. I despise thump-de-dums.

I wouldn't play old Hitler speeches, lest someone think you actually believe in them... Country and religious sound like good bets to me. Calling the police is probably also good; if they have alcohol/drugs they'll either be caught, or keep it much quieter in the future to avoid another police visit after their close call...

You are in Arizona so you are covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act. You might need an additional accommodation if the university isn't willing to quiet your stupid neighbors down.

Please do something about it. This is exactly what happened my sophomore year of college last year. I had to drop out. Being Aspergers, you just cannot cope with this. Trust me, we are genetically made to have a mental breakdown if this lasts.

Does your dorm have quiet hours? If they do, then there is no excuse for them not to quiet down. Threaten to take them to the highest authority if the Housing department.

I had noisy neighbours and honestly after the 3rd night of noise until 2am I called campus police. If they're not breaking quiet hours there may not be much you can do -unless you talk to them and the RA about it together and try to come up with a compromise.

Find out when quiet hours are -ours were Monday-Thursday 11pm and Friday-Saturday 12 or 1am. If it's after that you could call it in to the RA or campus police and they'd deal with it. Personally I was pretty patient about it giving them until 1am on a weekday and 2am on weekends and I'd already asked nicely but after three nights in one week it got pretty annoying and my bedroom was the joining wall so there wasn't much escape.

The problem went away after I called campus police tho.