Student won't face charges for turning off alarm during fire

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKK71W3Ft78

Let’s cut to the chase and say what you won’t hear from city officials.

A fire alarm that cries wolf all the time is dysfunctional and almost as bad as having no alarm at all. The very superficial process of inspecting rental properties in East Lansing and elsewhere (a quality inspection process, charging landlords and not allowing them to pass on cost to tenants, would eat into profits) is not going to catch anything like an alarm that cries wolf (or probably whatever caused the fire, if attributable to something having to do with a code violation).

A good landlord talks to tenants and seeks to know if there are problems that should be fixed, whether code violations or not. Student renters tend not to like good landlords because they are too much like parents (really good landlords know how to be available not nosy, but it’s a balancing act, like being a good parent). Unfortunately, landlords in East Lansing are increasingly bad landlords: management companies only interested in maximizing profits or people whose investment advisers told them rental properties were a good investment, without telling them being a landlord is hard work.

College students are easy prey to slumlord behavior—college students tend to put up with squalor—and these absentee landlords are hard to get in touch with, anyway.

But student renters really need to take initiative to complain, and complain a lot. A responsible city government would have a place on its web site for complaints against landlords (by tenants and neighbors), but don’t expect it. I would suggest starting your own landlord responsibility web site (State News can link it), but restrict it to facts, so it can be effective (you can curse the landlord under your breath). Give the address and the landlord’s name.

You don’t have to rent from bad landlords, especially in today’s market, and checking complaint lists can make a real difference, just like reading Consumer’s Reports to avoid buying lemons.

I cannot believe Stuart Dunnings III was not all over this chance to prosecute battered and broken college students for money. I cannot believe East Lansing employs a single person, in this case Pratt, who wasn’t all over the chance to kick the student horse while it’s down. I am legitimately, not sarcastically, SHOCKED. Seriously. The end of days must really be near…

I agree with the above statements. The East Lansing local government really has it out for the students. I have lived in several college towns since graduating from MSU in 2008 and I can honestly say the way East Lansing officials treat their students and younger members of its community is borderline discriminatory.

I remember the one time I had to fight a parking ticket in the East Lansing court because I was issued three parking tickets within 1 hr in the same location. I paid for one ticket and won my court case to not have to pay the other 2 tickets, but I was lectured by the judge that East Lansing has the right to give a student as many tickets as they want even every five minutes and it is within the law.

East Lansing needs to change its ways if it wants to sustain a friendly relationship with the majority of its citizens, STUDENTS.

But the students also need to take action and realize they have a voice by changing their voter registration to their east lansing address. Otherwise they will continue to be discriminated against by officials elected by Discriminatory Voters.

I am glad Parks agrees with my comment

False alarms? Really? Or just kids smoking weed, with a perfectly functioning alarm system that was illegally disarmed by a selfish student tenant. The landlord did his job and provided an excellent fire alarm; the students smoking weed all of the time disarmed it. Everybody knows it.