Editorial : Students at Northwestern University should continue fight to overturn ‘brothel law’
Students at Northwestern University — located in Evanston, Ill. — were rightly up in arms last week after the city threatened to enforce a long-dormant law banning three or more unrelated people from living in the same house.
NU President Morton Schapiro met with city officials in a private meeting last week, after which plans to enforce the ‘brothel law,’ which would have evicted hundreds of students from Evanston neighborhoods, quickly ended.
Although students can sleep easy knowing their living arrangements do not need to change, NU should take the recent scare as a cue to fight for the repeal of the outdated ‘brothel law,’ which the city can still chose to enforce at any time. Likewise, the situation at NU should awaken Syracuse University students to the importance of understanding any leases and local laws associated with living off campus.
In addition to protecting their ability to live inexpensively and near campus, this is an opportunity for NU students to overturn an outdated and now absurd law.
The city enacted the law decades ago to protect Evanston residents from living in dangerous, overcrowded tenements. Though college students may occasionally live in filthy, messy apartments, rest assured that has more to do with a lack of personal hygiene than exploitation by landlords. Furthermore, the notion that three unrelated people living together is immoral or promiscuous, to which the name ‘brothel law’ alludes, should offend women everywhere.
If NU forgets this debacle ever happened, embittered Evanston residents can later choose to fight for the ‘brothel law’s’ enforcement as a way to stamp out the inconsiderate noise, parties and littering that typify college-student neighborhoods.
The Daily Northwestern has done a laudable job reporting an issue that has both peaked emotions and led to confusion and miscommunication among Evanston officials.
The tension between SU’s own off-campus student community and the long-term residents has played a major part in the city’s enforcement of certain positions and ordinances in the East Neighborhood. A prime example of the city cracking down on student behavior came in the abolishment of MayFest on Euclid Avenue in fall 2009.
Similar resident-student and city-student conflicts, such as the one in Evanston, should remind SU students to educate themselves on local laws, contracts and other legal obligations they agree to when living away from the protection of the university.
