This is what apathy looks like.
Photo: Via chrisdaniel
“Three over occupancy,” whispers Assistant Dean of Students Betsi Burns, in response to a student’s use of the phrase “the quote unquote brothel law” at Monday’s Winter Quarter town hall meeting. Burns quickly stands from her chair, smiles at the crowd of no more than four dozen students in her perfect Northwestern-purple pantsuit, and raises her voice to a deadening crescendo: “Let’s use the right terminology here. Let’s not sensationalize this issue any more than it’s been sensationalized. It’s the three over occupancy ordinance, okay?”
Semantics are important here. After all, Mayor Tisdahl used the phrase “the non-existent brothel law” at an ASG meeting last March. But whether or not you approve of the usage of the term “brothel” is moot. Title 6, Chapter 18 of the Evanston city code still includes one definition of family as “a group of not more than three unrelated persons living together as a single housekeeping unit in a dwelling unit.”
Northwestern is all about flavors of the month. Specific instances spark outrage, students mobilize, a meeting is arranged, but is actual change ever enacted?
Flash back one year ago, today. The Daily ran an article about the ordinance, sparking an outcry more vociferous than any other student response we’ve experienced at Northwestern. Medill junior Alex Kane Rudansky, who reported the original story, said that the student body reaction was completely unexpected: “We had no idea that it was going to be like this.”
More than 500 students packed McCormick Auditorium that evening for a town hall meeting. “There was a palpable anger you could feel on campus among the student body,” said Ethan Merel, ASG external relations VP at the time. Nearly half of the student body signed an ASG petition calling for an amendment to the ordinance; others sent letters to local aldermen. But by the next evening, an email appeared in students’ inboxes from Dean of Students Burgwell Howard, which definitively stated that the city did not plan to enforce the ordinance more strictly. Apparently President Morty Schapiro had swung in and done his work. And with that, the campus clamor died.
Attendance at the quarterly town hall meetings sponsored by the Office of the Dean of Students since has been sparse, jumping from five to as many as 40 students. The majority of the students in attendance at last Monday’s meetings were there to voice support for the Collective, a newly formed group aimed at addressing segregation and instituting an appreciation of diversity on campus. Last week, 150 students showed up for the group’s “Caucus Against Racial Prejudice.” Northwestern is all about flavors of the month. Specific instances spark outrage, students mobilize, a meeting is arranged, but is actual change ever enacted?
Dean Howard connects low attendance at town hall meetings to students’ busy schedules. He realizes that the no-more-than-three-unrelated ordinance is not a “front of brain issue” for all students, but he rejects the notion that students don’t care. “It is something all students are interested in,” he says. Merel takes a more anthropological approach when explaining students’ apparent apathy to the ordinance: “With students or the American population as a whole, it’s natural to get excited and then lose interest,” he says. “I don’t believe just temporary outbursts on the issue are the most productive. We need a sustained effort by the student body to prove this is an issue we really care about.”
A city inspector walked into the home unannounced and began to take pictures. “I felt my privacy had been violated and that violation was certainly illegal.”
In this case, student’s expectations that the ordinance would not be enforced lulled them in to a false sense of security. When off-campus residents returned to Evanston this fall, some were met with unexpected notices of city inspections.
Michael, a senior living in an over-occupancy off-campus house, and his roommates took specific precautions before a city inspector came to their house on the first day of school. They took apart beds, hid extra mattresses, and attempted to remove any evidence that could prove more than three people were living in the home. Even with their lengthy preparations, Michael said he and his housemates were unprepared for the city’s “intense” inspection. “The inspector visited all of the bedrooms, asked who lived where, checked names on the mailbox and on things lying around the house,” he said. “The inspection was entirely about checking the occupancy of our house. The inspector seemed very concerned with matching the names on the lease to a specific bedroom.”
Andrew, another off-campus senior living in violation of the no-more-than-three-unrelated ordinance, didn’t always have the luxury of preparing for a planned visit. While two inspections to his house, which was under construction for much of the summer and fall, were planned, on one specific occasion, a city inspector walked into the home unannounced and began to take pictures while contractors worked to finish renovations. “It struck me as offensive,” Andrew says. “I felt my privacy had been violated and that violation was certainly illegal.”
49 of the 52 properties listed for inspection were student residences.
Neither Michael nor Andrew has heard back from city hall since the last inspection. They sit in a comfortable limbo, blissfully unaware if the city will plan any further inspections or enforcement. This limbo is unsurprising given the fact that there appears to be little consensus about the current state of enforcement. Steve Griffin, director of community and economic development for the city of Evanston, said enforcement of the no-more-than-three-unrelated ordinance has not changed in the past year, nor does the city have plans to change said enforcement in the future. Yet Burns confirmed the city’s plan to increase enforcement come July at Monday’s town hall meeting.
In an interview last week, Griffin stressed that the city’s inspections of off-campus houses this past fall did not differ from past years. He said these inspections focus on the condition of properties and the dangerous aspect of buildings. Citing the list the city released last fall of 52 rental properties under investigation, Griffin said, “Not all 52 were over occupied.” According to Dean Howard, however, 49 of the 52 properties listed were student residences. “I don’t like to see any time there’s a city law or ordinance that unduly impacts Northwestern students,” he said at Monday’s town hall meeting. “If this is a city wide ordinance, why wasn’t this number more broadly skewed across the city?”
“There’s a lot of potential for things to change for the worse if a bad law passes,” said Steven Monacelli, ASG Community Relations VP.
But like the city inspections, the list of properties under investigation seems like all talk. Griffin confirmed that 44 of the properties on the list were tabled. Tyler, another senior living in an over-occupancy off-campus house, said his home was on the list, but he and his housemates have yet to be contacted by the city for a formal inspection. He says he’s not surprised that student outcry has waned over the course of the last year. “The first round was more drastic with the general sentiment that people could be evicted and thrown out into the streets,” he said. “This time around, it doesn’t have the same sentiment. People seem content letting the issue run it’s course.”
It’s hard to convince students to care about the ordinance when they’ve grown accustomed to the city talking a big game, but never putting forth any form of enforcement that directly affects undergrads’ lives. It’s a modern-day boy-who-cried-wolf cycle that’s proving hard to break. But some students on campus, like senior Alessio Manti, remain committed to galvanizing student support to amend the over occupancy ordinance. Along with a few friends, Manti founded Sincerely America, which he describes as an activism-centric group that aims to combat the otherwise apathetic nature of our generation. In the fall, the group gathered around 400 signatures for a petition to amend the over occupancy ordinance. Manti is passionate that amending the ordinance is a cause students need to get behind: “Up until now, we’ve talked about these laws as an issue of implementation,” he said. “But as long as they are on the books, we need to assume they’re going to be enforced.”
And now, more than ever, might be the time for students to get involved if they have a hope of enacting real change to the ordinance. At Monday’s city council meeting, Mayor Tisdahl appointed ASG Community Relations Vice President Steven Monacelli to the Landlord Licensing Committee. The committee will determine if the city council should move forward with a proposed ordinance that would require landlords to apply for rental licenses. The city says the license application process would ensure that rental properties are safe and livable.
But the no-more-than-three-unrelated ordinance would become much easier to enforce if rental licenses become a requirement in the city of Evanston. “I’m not exactly sure why students haven’t been more upset,” Monacelli said. “There’s a lot of potential for things to change for the worse if a bad law passes.” Still Monacelli says he remains optimistic that committee will allow for a forum to discuss housing regulations within the city, specifically concerns about over occupancy enforcement.
Change is also taking place at the university level. At Monday’s town hall meeting, Dean Howard introduced students to Tony Kirchmeirer, the university’s inaugural Director of Off-Campus Life. Kirchmeirer will work with Burns and Howard to beef up the school’s resources for students living off-campus, an area that Howard said received “short shrift” in his first few years as Dean of Students. And last night, the City of Evanston and the Interfaith Housing Center of the Northern Suburbs sponsored a tenants’ rights and responsibilities workshop.
While the average student may think discourse surrounding the over occupancy ordinance all but died out last January, developments continue to occur—they just require some digging. The puzzle that is the no-more-than-three-unrelated ordinance is difficult to decipher with countless intricacies and nuances. But the pieces are all out there waiting for a committed group to put forth a sustained effort to assemble them and make a real, long-term impact.
Additional reporting by Shiraz Ahmed
Thanks for intruodncig a little rationality into this debate.
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