It’s been an extraordinary week for The Daily. As many of you know, we’ve gotten a good deal of attention for our coverage of Evanston’s enforcement strategy regarding a city ordinance about the number of unrelated people allowed to live together.
But we also have had our work publicly questioned. Given those statements, I’d like to briefly explain our position on this debacle.
We strongly stand by everything we have reported on the so-called “brothel law,” including Tuesday’s story which broke the news the city would step up enforcement of the law July 1 and the Northwestern administration had no plans to formally ask the city to rethink that decision.
We have followed this issue since late October, when the city’s top official on building inspection, Jeff Murphy, announced the impending enforcement increase to five students at a joint ward meeting. Three weeks later, we broke the story that city officials (in response to student concerns) had decided to wait on active enforcement until the summer.
In the two months following that story, it was widely assumed that the city would increase enforcement in the early summer.
One of our reporters, Alexandra Kane Rudansky, confirmed that plan earlier this week and even got an exact date – July 1 – from Murphy in a telephone interview. Alex then met in person with Betsi Burns, the University official assigned to deal with off-campus life. Burns told her in clear terms the administration was focusing on preparing students to deal with the ordinance rather than fighting the measure itself.
If you won’t take Alex’s word about those conversations, take the word of the officials themselves. Their words are reflected in the agenda for Tuesday’s town hall meeting, which reads that “beginning in the summer of 2011, the City of Evanston will strictly enforce these requirements,” referring to the law. They’re also in the e-mails sent by Mayor Elizabeth Tisdahl and other city officials who did not correct students angry about impending enforcement changes.
Tisdahl, for the record, admitted Wednesday night she did not read our story before issuing her news release detailing the “misinformation in the media.” Consequently, she agreed to change the wording of her statement in our paper to “misinformation in the community.”
Most of all, the positions of the officials were reflected in the statements by Murphy, Burns and Dean of Students Burgwell Howard in front of 500 students Tuesday night.
It’s clear that the city was indeed planning to increase enforcement of the ordinance on July 1 until the town hall meeting.
Any statement to the contrary is false.
Editor in Chief Brian Rosenthal is a Medill senior. He can be reached at [email protected].
