The Norman City Council Oversight Committee, for the 17th time since 2016, discussed potential amendments to Norman’s noise ordinance Thursday amid recent OU fraternity concerts featuring notable musicians.
Conversations centered largely on concerts hosted at OU fraternity houses along ‘Greek Row,’ an area covering portions of Elm and College Avenues. These events, which have drawn artists including DaBaby and The Chainsmokers to Norman, have previously raised concerns among residents about noise and safety.
On March 27, rapper DaBaby stepped onto a stage on Beta Theta Pi's front lawn. His voice bla…
Members of the committee acknowledged the benefits of these concerts and live music more broadly to the Norman community.
“I don't think, I hope nobody's trying to kill music in Norman, because that was a big part of my college career, listening to live music,” Ward 8 Councilmember Scott Dixon told OU Daily Monday.
However, council members also shared the complaints they’ve received from constituents and seen in discussions online.
“Recent University adjacent professional grade concerts… have shook peoples’ homes and in the past I have seen video on windows shaking in historic homes (so that’s the original glass) that had been subsequently cracked by extreme vibration,” committee chair and Ward 4 Councilmember Helen Grant wrote in a Friday afternoon Facebook post.
A slideshow presented at the meeting also identified several issues that have made it difficult to regulate these fraternity gatherings, including limited resources and the difficulty of accurately measuring noise generated by the events.
To address these issues, the committee emphasized the importance of spacing out concerts to minimize impacts on neighbors.
“I think one in a weekend is reasonable, but maybe three in a row isn’t,” Dixon said. “I'm old. I like to sleep. I don't mind missing one night's sleep, but three in a row, that's a little much.”
Council members also raised the idea of implementing a tiered application system for noise variance permits, which are required for all events producing more than 80 decibels of noise under Norman municipal code. They emphasized the need to distinguish between large, multi-day events like Norman Music Festival and smaller, fraternity-organized concerts.
“We agreed that there does need to be some kind of middle tier. As for what that looks like, that's something that staff is going to research and bring back to us,” Ward 6 Councilmember Kyle Steele told the Daily.
The committee plans to revisit the issue in the coming months following further research by city staff and consultation with an audio engineer, according to a separate post by Grant.
This story was edited by Audrey McClour and Spencer Windholz.
