Pack Mentality
Apartments crammed with students are, sad to say, a way of life.
- |
Dear Michael Ross:
I think you're going to lose this one, Chief. Not that it wasn't a noble effort worthy of a Boston city councilor, but the new ordinance that you had pushed for, limiting occupancy of the city's apartments to no more than four undergraduates, is already being called "unenforceable" by both the inspectional services people, and by the various realty companies who rent the apartments in the first place. Of course, the word "unenforceable" means different things to different people. To the inspectional services people, it means, "We don't have enough people to deal with bedbugs, let alone count students. These tasks are not entirely interchangeable." To the real estate crowd, "unenforceable" means, "We'd rent to the Ostrogoths if their checks cleared." Either way, it doesn't look good for your cause. I sympathize, though. No neighborhood wants to host the annual undergraduate Stereo Blare-a-Thon and Projectile Vomit-Off . And I'm not being self-righteous here. Once, in a city in the industrial heartland, I lived in several of these apartments. At one of our nests, the landlord made the mistake of telling us it was due for demolition at the end of the year. Suffice it to say, we spent the semester saving a lot of work for whoever it was that finally showed up to swing that big iron ball. In short, this kind of thing has been with us always, alas, and with 13,000 students living off -campus every year, it likely always will be. They travel in packs, councilor. Maybe all we can do is tag them and study their migratory and feeding habits.
