Blaring stereo music, loud parties and drunken collegiates. Are these good-natured college students just letting off a little steam or are those darn kids ruining the neighborhood?

Some State College Borough residents are becoming increasingly concerned that the town they love is becoming one big "student ghetto." While most residents say they realize students are important to the town, they also want to preserve their neighborhoods and life-styles.

The Borough Planning Commission is now reviewing a report compiled by the Neighborhood Conservation Action Plan Project Management Team, an advisory board created by the commission that consists of both community and student representatives.

A wave of bad feelings from both student and neighborhood association leaders followed the action plan's release last month.

Students involved say their concerns were not given serious consideration by the management team.

"I felt like a token on that organization. I would go there, say something and they would skip over it," said Judy Falce, president of the Organization of Town Independent Students.

However James Deeslie, president of the Highlands Civic Association and a member of the project management team, disagreed. The aim of the report was not to force students out of the neighborhoods but to keep the areas balanced, he said.

"What it is, is not anti-student but pro-neighborhood preservation," he said. "We all know that we have a very diverse community. We like the fact that we have thousands of young people here."

But an abundance of students living in the residential neighborhoods is causing many families to move outside of the borough, he said.

"If you have a predominance of students on a block you're not going to have families," Deeslie said. "It would be just a horrible thing to think that block after block would be destroyed."

The report lists several problems associated with the student presence, including: noise, poor appearance of many houses rented by students and decrease in property value. All of these can create a domino effect and the neighborhoods are soon over run with students, the report concluded.

Yet with an enormous amount of students seeking off-campus housing, a solution may be hard to come by.

Debbie Benedetti, spokesperson for University Admissions Office, said as of last semester, 37,623 students were enrolled at University Park.

And only 12,500 can be housed on campus, said Michael Yarnell, of the University's Housing and Food Services.

"I can really sympathize with them but I think it's ridiculous to think that you are going to stop it. The University can't house all its students," said Falce.

There are 2,537 single-family houses and 759 duplexes in the borough, said Robert Crum of the Centre Region Planning Commission.

Of those, about 800 have been converted into student housing, said Borough Zoning Officer Herman Slaybaugh.

Solutions offered by the project management team include:

-- Annual housing inspections to insure that zoning and building code regulations are enforced.

-- The distribution of information packets to students on local laws and encourage the University to build more on-campus housing.

More controversial suggestions deal with the zoning and the control of conversion units, any single-family home, duplex or townhouse located in family-oriented neighborhoods that have been converted to student housing and are occupied by three or more unrelated persons.

The project management team report states that conversions should be no less than a quarter mile apart; parking spaces for all properties should be limited to three; names of the owner and occupants should be posted outside for convenience of the zoning officer when inspecting, and limiting the number of people living in conversion homes to three.

Peter Everett, planning commission chairman, said while the group did present some good ideas, many might be illegal.

"The people who wrote that are kind of stressed out because the students are moving closer to them and they may have over reacted," he said.

Falce also said residents have a stereotypical image of students.

"I think they need to understand that the definition of student is changing. There are a lot of non-traditional students that make up this University," she said.

The borough council and planning commission are currently reviewing the report and residents say they are worried it will be lost in the legislative process.

"I'm very afraid that if this take the usual route, it will be watered down and all our work will be in vain," Deeslie said when the plan was presented to the commission at a meeting.

A middle ground can be reached through better cooperation between the University, borough officials, students and residents, Falce said.

"They're reacting to a problem instead of planning strategies to prevent these problems in the future," she said. "There (have) always been these student ghettos."