Calm Before the U-Hauls

Wicker furniture? Owned.

A couch draped with a sheet on the porch? Rented.

He paused by a home a few down from his, where a small mountain of trash was piled at the curb.

It's a sign of the season as students move and landlords clean a house to prepare for the next group. Similar piles can be found in yards all around College Park. In a yard choked with tall weeds, a foosball table with a broken spine lay next to an empty case of beer, an orange velour chair and a big plastic water gun.

Pitt doesn't mind rentals -- he owns a home with graduate student tenants. The students next door to him are quiet as church mice, he said. He just thinks the balance has shifted too far in a neighborhood that wasn't designed for so many people and so many cars.

Same with the drinking and partying. "I can promise you we partied equally as hard" at U-Md. in the early 1970s. "The difference was the mixers. The beer trucks were actually on campus -- not in the neighborhoods."

As for the students, many of them said: Why live here if you don't like college students?

And who goes to sleep before 10 p.m., anyway?

Most people want to live on campus, senior Sasha Karimi said, but it's impossible. The school gives precedence to freshmen and sophomores. "Everything is easier on campus," he said, from getting to classes and events to seeing friends.

Some local leaders say there's a 5,000-bed shortage at the university. Jan Davidson, associate director in the Department of Resident Life, said more students live on the U-Md. campus than ever. There are 1,575 students on a waiting list for on-campus housing this fall. Last year, there were 1,006. In 2005, 891.

Danielle Kogut, a junior, said her rental home is better maintained than some family-owned homes. "My neighbor, her yard is completely filled with junk and cats that roam into our yard constantly." As the liaison from student government to city leaders, she hears the complaints. "The knee-jerk reaction for a lot of students is, 'Well, these people moved into a college town.' "

But things have changed in town. "There was a big push to push alcohol off campus," Kogut said. "Now it's in the neighborhoods. "

One of the biggest problems is that permanent residents often lump students together, said Andrew Friedson, U-Md. student government president. A bad neighbor could get singled out. "But if it's a student, then it's, 'Look at that! St udents.' "

They're coming back. There are more cars. In a week or so, the parties will kick up.

"One of the things that attracted me to the area was the huge student base," Pitt said. When he moved to College Park more than 25 years ago, he loved the idea of living near the university. He walks to football and basketball games. His wife walks to the Metro to get to work. His 12-year-old daughter walks to school. They get to events on campus.

When there's a big Terps win, he said, he can walk onto his deck and hear the roar of the whole city celebrating.

He laughed. "But then they start burning couches."