First of all, I would like to admit that I really enjoy the bells. At my home in Syracuse, NY, we have a similar type of bell in my house. It is a clock that rings a bell every hour and half hour all hours of the night. Hearing the carillon bells at school, which is 3 1/2 hours away from home, brings a sense of familiarity to my ears. Hearing those bells go off during the day reminds me of being home, which helps with the process of being away from home since I am a freshman and everything is new to me. I have never had a problem sleeping at night due to the ringing, and it is no doubt a very loud clock.

Secondly, the bells are not the most annoying noise on campus. In fact, the bells are quite soothing compared to the lawn mowing, weed whacking, beats bumping, horn honking, loud screams I hear throughout the day and night. In fact, at the moment I am writing this, the loud noise of the lawn mowing next to my dorm room is annoying.
It is very irritating when at 1 a.m. on a Friday night I’m trying to enjoy my sleep and there are cars driving through the parking lot listening to extremely loud music on their speakers. If I can hear the music you are listening to in your car from my dorm room, your music is too loud. Or during the day when I am trying to study and car alarms go off for no reason at all, or when people honk their car horns because they are beeping at their friends as they go by. There also happens to be ice hockey events going on even at 11:30 p.m. and there are people who stand outside the arena and talk very loudly, which makes it hard to sleep at night.

Third, I often hear the complaint that the bells disrupt a professor’s lecture. If the professor has a problem with the volume of the bell, they can close their windows or simply ignore the bells and continue to lecture. I have a class in Zurn Hall at 2:15 p.m., and at 3 p.m. the bells go off. My professor seems to have no problem with the bells, and continues to teach without an issue.

Fourth, the reason for the loudness of the bells is so that everyone can hear them no matter where they are on campus. I think the “frequency” in the lawn mowers should be “reduced.” However, they never will be, and neither will those bells, because the bells will stay.