I understand the student uproar about the Evanston zoning provisions that may threaten the leases for any house holding three or more unrelated residents. People don’t usually support ordinances that call for their own eviction, and the folks renting out surrogate frat houses on Maple Avenue are no exception. As someone who goes home every night to a house with 12 roommates, I’m not unsympathetic.

But I’d hope everyone could agree on one thing: Ald. Coleen Burrus (9th), who played the villain in the Daily’s recent front-page article about the ordinances, isn’t under the impression that you and your sorority sisters plan on turning tricks in her ward. And truth be told, the people who wrote the zoning code didn’t even have your Busch Light lifestyle in mind.

This whole firestorm started out back on Oct. 28 at a ward meeting held in an auditorium in Tech, by the way, and attended by just five students. I was there when Bennett Johnson, a resident who Evanston Now described as a “long-time community activist,” stood up and explained the history of an ordinance he claimed has been on the books since the 1940s.

The relevant section of the building code is designed to be anti-tenement, preventing slumlords from packing poor people into unsafe, overcrowded spaces. Zoning ordinances like this exist all over the country-probably even in the parts that allow brothels. The business activities of our female students, and the potential effect on the quality of house parties, presumably didn’t factor into that City Council’s decision.

But like so much from that ward meeting, the real origin of the ordinance got lost somewhere between the media coverage, the town hall meetings, the gossip and the hype. It’s been a lesson in whipping up a firestorm out of a few gusts of hot air.

The whole hullabaloo started with two landlords concerned about a visit from a building inspector who had warned them about the existing code. There was no outcry to enforce it, or mandate from the Council or mayor to make a big change. Just two landlords on the business end of a building inspection. It was their complaints that started up discussion about the ordinance, and got the residents at the meeting worked up.

Now anyone who’s ever looked at a building or zoning code knows its packed with enough provisions to shut down every structure in history. This situation was probably a big deal to those two landlords, but it wasn’t front-page news. In fact, the Daily story that ran the day after didn’t even address the issue-it focused instead on poor student turnout.

But then Evanston Now picked the story up. Then the Daily. Pretty soon the Facebook protest group snowballed toward a few hundred students. And undoubtedly the Evanston residents realized this would be a way to put a damper on the party houses popping up on their blocks.

And just like that, we had ourselves a full-blown town-gown controversy, courtesy of two worried landlords and what was probably a slow news day. Never mind that most people living in Evanston had never heard of the zoning codes or that few students would tell you they’ve ever even seen an Evanston building inspector.

But now – who knows? Now the heat is on the city to enforce their existing codes, and on the university to protect their students from something that no one was looking to enforce a few months ago.

All because of one building inspection and a few misunderstandings that grew a standard zoning ordinance into the much-hated “brothel law.” Makes you wish that more people had made it to Tech those four months ago, on the night when only five students would see the first steps toward the Northwestern housing crisis of the year.

Mike Carson is a Weinberg senior. He can be reached at [email protected].