With Bill 13, UBC may soon have the power to regulate noise on campus. While it is unknown what effect this may have on students, it appears to be very fortunate for the University Neighbourhoods Assocation (UNA), the municipal-like body that governs market housing on campus. The UNA has been preparing for this and is in the midst of a consultation process about a proposed noise bylaw which could be put in place not long after the passage of Bill 13.

The UNA has made it clear that their intention is only to regulate their own neighbourhoods and that any rules they might put in place would not apply to campus at large. But if UBC wanted to put in place campus-wide noise rules, it would be convenient to have an already-written blueprint to model them after. That would be a big mistake.

The UNA’s draft rules are extremely vague. Essentially, any noise that could be interpreted as a disturbance to someone else is against the rules. This could conceivably include evils like TransLink’s community shuttles or crying babies. That’s not an absurd exaggeration. The September UNA board meeting actually had residents on record complaining about excessive noise caused by children playing at the playground.

By making everything against the rules, the people who end up defining what’s unacceptable are the ones who will lodge a complaint at the drop of hat. That’s not a good idea. Nor is it smart to have nebulous rules, and allow the RCMP to determine how best to interpret and apply them. If a set of reasonable guidelines laying out what noise is acceptable and what noise is excessive cannot be developed, then putting in broad prohibitions on noise doesn’t solve the problem—it simply replaces it with a different one.

That is assuming there actually is a noise problem in the UNA. If people’s biggest complaints are concerning the sounds of children at play, life must be pretty good. The UNA is also in the process of developing rules around parking even though a survey at the beginning of this school year found that non-resident parking in the neighbourhoods was not a problem.

Hopefully the consultation process will improve the bylaw but the end result will probably still be inappropriate for a university campus. If the UNA wants to adopt it for themselves, then so be it. But please leave the rest of campus out of it.

Neal Yonson is an editor for the blog UBC Insiders.