Evanston’s plan to begin enforcing the so-called “brothel rule,” which makes it illegal for more than three unrelated people to live together, has justly been excoriated on these editorial pages. If enforced, it will have a negative effect on Evanston’s housing stock and tax revenues, as well as Northwestern students, their safety and sense of community.
Given Evanston’s track record of cutting off its nose to spite NU’s face, it’s unlikely that they will change course. Perhaps we should try to look for potential upsides to this situation. What good could come of it?
First, it will be a spur to Northwestern’s creative communities. Communication students studying stage design could get extra credit by building sets in student apartments to camouflage the rooms and belongings of fourth, fifth and sixth roommates. Ingenious rotating bookcases could hide extra rooms from prying inspectors’ eyes, or giant piles of dirty laundry could be rigged to disguise cozy loft beds.
Second, this law’s enforcement could advance new and socially progressive definitions of kinship among NU students, getting us away from stale hetero-normative nuclear family arrangements. Parents could adopt some number of their son’s or daughter’s potential roommates, enabling large numbers of newly-minted siblings to legally rent apartments or houses. While this might cause some complications for financial aid calculations, surely our best students in the Kellogg Certificate Program can figure that all out. And Professor Michael Bailey, in consultation with the Genders Studies Department, could help work out whatever new incest taboos, or lack thereof, would be applicable to such arrangements.
Third, NU students who had to move farther from campus, especially to Rogers Park, should look on the bright, if dangerous, side: unlimited partying. Chicago cops have better things to do than police student parties (absent gunfire), so the sort of wild bacchanals that currently get an Evanston apartment cited as a nuisance would matter not a bit in Rogers Park. True, students also would not have access to the crisis intervention that the Dean of Students office often provides, but the Red Line runs all night and will get you almost to the emergency room at St. Francis for some post-Deuce stomach pumping. This distance from NU’s safety net will make NU students more self-reliant and daring, both things that look really good on an internship application.
Maybe Evanston’s legislators will see the light and let this misguided law return to its dormant state. But if they don’t, here’s hoping NU’s students live up to their reputation for brains and creativity.
Bill Savage is a Senior Lecturer in English at the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. He can be reached at [email protected].
