SU President backs students in response to the recent Jesmond noise complaint crisis

Picture this – you've just moved into your house with your mates, decked it out with speakers and ridiculous amounts of fairy lights, the floor is already sticky with various unknown substances and the party is raging.

Everyone is having a great time, bangers are playing and just as everyone is frozen, waiting for the beat to drop, there is a loud knock at the door.

It's the police, standing in front of an angry neighbour in rollers and a dressing gown.

After a couple of reprimands, evils in the street from the resident you annoyed last week, and the possibility of a fine, ASBO or even exclusion from uni (who knew?!), your exciting second year can begin to look a bit glum.

The stand off between students and local residents in uni towns is well known, leading to intervention from the local council and sometimes the police. It's a problem easily solved by communication and cooperation – if the representation of the argument wasn't so one sided to begin with.

It seems that the Students' Union President is on our side. Ronnie Reid told The Tab Newcastle: "I think Newcastle students in Jesmond have had a hard time of it. Recent disparaging articles about our students in Jesmond do not paint an accurate picture of our student body."

He also reminds people that "the economic, social and civic good that students do in the community and wider city far outweighs the anti-social incidents caused by a small minority."

Interestingly, our Vice Chancellor doesn't mention that he shares Ronnie's ideas in his recent email to students.

The message purely focused on the negative impact that parties held in "inappropriate premises" – our own homes – have upon the local community. Right, so the next time I want to host pres, I should take it all the way back to the high school days of hiring out the local village hall? WKD and disco lights – inviting.

It's so interesting that while our illustrious Vice Chancellor has no issue reprimanding students in a condescending way ("exercise your maturity and judgement") we receive no guidance on how to deal with residents who may well be unreasonable in their methods of controlling local noise.

Screenshot of Newcastle City Council's house party video

This harks back to the council's patronising videos on 'super parties'. Maybe our authorities had a meeting to decide how best to not appeal to students? Did they all sit down over coffee and discuss ways to create antipathy between us and locals?

Students don't want to anger neighbours. For the most part, we are actually lovely people and not the lazy, noisy nuisances we are often painted to be.

Perhaps if the council were to stop promoting patronising videos on house parties, and residents were to use more reasonable, cooperative means of expressing their anger than calling the authorities at every opportunity, students would be more open to the mutual benefits that good relationships would bring.