As we get set to go back to school -- my daughter to first grade and my wife and I to the fall semester at UMass Amherst -- it is inevitable that certain issues rise to the forefront. Many of them are academic but increasingly, as the New York Times reports, many concern the growing population of students who are living off campus, inside residential neighborhoods. You can probably guess what tends to happen -- students get loud, party into the night, make a mess of their surroundings and their neighbors get very upset:

ON Halloween 2004, a block party on a street of houses rented to students at the University of Colorado ended with people in costumes running through the streets of the University Hill neighborhood, throwing bottles, setting fires and overturning cars. Police in riot gear used rubber bullets and stun guns to disperse more than 1,500 people.

For nonstudents living on the Hill - a historic neighborhood bordering the university where million-dollar Craftsman-style homes sit next to student rentals with yards full of plastic cups and empty beer cans - it was only the latest, most visible example of a conflict that had simmered for years. “A certain subset of students view the neighborhood as a playground,” said Jane Bliss Stoyva, a 40-year resident of the neighborhood.

On the Hill and in other enclaves like it in college towns around the country, permanent residents, often families with children, share sidewalks with their student neighbors in a sometimes shaky peace. College and university enrollment nearly doubled between 1970 and 2001, to 15.9 million from 8.6 million, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, but many schools have not built new dorms in decades.

I’ve always liked my environment to be peaceful and quiet, especially more so these days not that I’m “all grown up,” being a homeowner with a professional job and a young child. Therefore, I can definitely relate to the frustrations that homeowners feel who live near college students. The bottom line, there are plenty of ways to have fun without becoming a public nuisance, let alone breaking the law.

Let’s hope this is one lesson that every student learns early in their college education.