We are a nuisance.” This is what my friend said to me as we were getting ready to move into our first off-campus house last fall.

Of course, “we” didn’t mean all five of us together. “We” didn’t mean Northwestern students as a whole. And she wasn’t using the royal “we,” either. “We” meant our physical house, at 1106 Garnett Place.

Thanks to the previous year’s tenants, our house had been placed on Evanston Police Department’s nuisance list, which tracks properties prone to noise violations. Any property may be placed on this list “after two or more offenses occur on a property within a six-month period.” But it is left up to the police chief’s discretion as to when the property may be taken off the list.

After a house finds itself on this “Naughty List,” It is then up to the owner of the property to help plan a “corrective action,” or to face a fine. But because it is students, for the most part, who live in these residences, each individual landlord can choose how to handle the problem with his or her lessees.

I understand that, although this law is basically a pain in the ass for NU students, it is a good thing for the Evanston community. Sometimes we are loud, and sometimes this is unfair to our neighbors.

Not everyone thinks it is a good idea to crowd an apartment on Thursday night with drunk students yelling and playing loud music, but especially not the people who live next door. People who live in Evanston should be able to complain if we violate their rights, and EPD is right to help implement a solution to this problem.

Evanston is wrong, however, to keep properties on the nuisance list once the tenants who were responsible for the violations move out.

Last year, each weekend we saw cop cars stationed – even lurking, if you will – outside our house, regardless of how many people were inside. If we were to get a noise violation, then our fine would have been higher than if we weren’t on the nuisance list. Basically, we would have been punished for the behavior of our house’s former tenants.

Our landlord was not required to tell us that we were moving into a nuisance property, so she didn’t. Because, according to the nuisance ordinance, only property owners are held responsible, she had no obligation to alert us of the issue.

Evanston should rethink its nuisance guidelines. When new tenants move into a residence, the residence should be taken off the nuisance list. In the mean time, landlords should be required to tell new renters if they are moving into a nuisance property.

If Evanston decides not to change its rules, however, we as students are not powerless. Off-campus residents, try to get to know your neighbors. If you plan to have a party, simply tell your neighbors beforehand, and maybe offer them your phone number. That way, instead of calling the police to complain, they can call you.

This debate over nuisance properties is a problem that only adds to our infamously poor town-gown relations. If Evanston won’t take the first steps to alleviating our strained relationship by modifying the nuisance ordinance, then NU students should do so by trying to be better neighbors.

Anne Gooch is a Weinberg senior. She can be reached at [email protected].