George Carlin said it best: “(Expletive) the children.”

If the Curry Student Center is ever searching for a new motto, there it is.

The university Web site describes the student center as “a celebration of diversity and student life, a place where students, faculty and staff can feel at home.”

Unfortunately, the aforementioned students, faculty and staff are forced to “feel at home” alongside many of the kids who live in the surrounding community. All of this would be fine except these high school kids are, well, high school kids. They scream into cell phones, travel in full entourage, and often serve little purpose but to disrupt our Husky colleagues during lunch and/or study break.

After a barrage of student complaints, it appears there is only one logical course of action: The university needs to make the Curry Student Center accessible only to those with a current affiliation to NU. Or, at the very least, they should require a minimum age of 18 to enter the facility, without a member of the NU community.

Some in the community will cry foul, but it’s not the purpose of the university to parent these children. If it is, let some of these rugrats sweat through an organic chemistry class, or bumble their way through an inane co-op, or at least receive that $30,000 bill that comes in the mail every few months.

Not to go Augusta National, but with students essentially footing the bill, aren’t they entitled to some semblance of exclusivity? What obligation do the students of NU have to supply a community center? It sounds selfish, but at the current tuition prices, you’ve paid for the right. And hasn’t NU already paid for a recreational center (SquashBusters) for these kids? How much longer before incoming freshmen are forced to adopt a teenager during I Am Here?

The less aggressive, and perhaps more politically correct alternative would be for NU to simply take action and teach these kids that the student center is a university building, not Who’s on First on a Saturday night.

Granted, this would require NUPD to take time away from its assumed schedule of frisking Mission Hill student-residents for Steel Reserve and step in. If the university won’t consider banning unattended children from the student center, the NUPD could at least use their authority to deter the behavior that has apparently become acceptable.

Is it unfair to ban all of these kids from the Curry Student Center based on a few bad apples? Neighbors will cry these kids have no place else to go, the same neighbors who complain endlessly about NU students who found it to be more cost-effective to move off-campus. The recurring theme of their argument is that NU students are impeding their peace and quiet. Well, if they can draw a line in the sand, why can’t we?

We’ve already got a motto.