Thinking of Pullman, two words come to mind: College town. Nine months out of the year, the city limits are bursting at the seams with students of differing lifestyles.

Although there are outliers, most students living near campus are generalized as social beings with a knack for staying up late and emitting loud noises.

With only so many housing opportunities in a reasonable price range and distance from campus, it is the responsibility of student-renters to be conscious of the larger community.

Living in a breadbasket surrounded by the Palouse wheat fields creates a unique situation for the residents of Pullman, where students and “townies” must coexist in the same neighborhoods.

In this small town that holds WSU’s constant hustle and bustle at its center, college students tend to forget that many of their neighbors are in fact residents, who have families and daily agendas that don’t align with loud music and partying during the witching hour.

Sarah Campbell, a WSU kinesiology senior who lives more than a mile off campus in a neighborhood with a majority of non-students, sheds some light on her living situation.

“It’s nice. There’s not parties going on right next to your house constantly,” she said. “It reminds you that college is a job and living with neighbors who aren’t in that transitional phase of life helps me live a healthy, consistent lifestyle.”

This perspective is vital to reaching a happy medium between students and residents, but what about locations closer to campus?

Ryan Gosselin, a senior international business major, said he has families as neighbors about 200 feet from campus.

“I think they have to accommodate knowing they are this close to campus, which can be unfair to them,” Gosselin said. “We have to be conscious of little kids running around, it’s just about being respectful and being a good person. I have to think and act as if I live in a real neighborhood.”

Some students think their non-student neighbors have no business living close to campus if all they care to do is call in noise complaints. However, the Pullman Police Department hardly receives noise complaints on the areas most densely populated with student residents.

There were only six noise complaints made last Saturday night following WSU’s upset over University of Southern California. Of those six, the average complaint was over a mile from campus, according to the police log.

Being a Coug fan comes with strong loyalty, and even residents who don’t attend the university seem to be fine with letting students carry on with the celebration.

It can be easy for students to think selfishly when it comes to non-student residents living among them, but all residents of Pullman deserve respectful and courteous neighbors.

Students who live off campus or outside of university housing have to realize that being a good neighbor is a small piece of the larger picture that is, and always will be, adulthood.