As Pinto and Flounder step inside the Delta house for the first time in "Animal House," they negotiate - among many things - drunken party goers resplendent in togas, an empty keg tossed through a glass window and empty beer bottles aimed at their heads.
Granted, this is a dramatization that many homes in East Lansing consciously try to recreate on a weekly basis, but it's still a movie. And movies are fiction. Those of us who choose to live off campus don't exactly maintain our dwellings with the care of a homeowner. We know where we are is a temporary residence, and sometimes we treat it accordingly.
Which creates a growing "presentability" gap between homes that rotate students in and out year after year. Outgrown landscaping, patchy lawns and slanted porches certainly look unseemly, but they're what some of us call home. While those of us with off-campus homes - not apartments - think affectionately of our downtrodden slum, it's undeniably not pleasant to look at, and even less desirable to live next to.
Last Wednesday, the East Lansing City Council even handedly addressed the issue by enacting an ordinance that allows "permanent residents" to petition against nearby homes becoming new rental property. If two-thirds of permanent neighborhood residents vote to restrict a home from becoming a new rental, their neighborhood stays clean of renters - meaning students.
There are certainly exceptions. Not all who rent in this city are students, and not all students are renters with the social conscience and home-care mindset of Boon, Otter and the rest of the Delta brothers. In fact, a viable number of students prefer a quieter homestead than the likes of Gunson or Beal Streets can provide. But the crux of the ordinance essentially lies in who wants to live next to whom, which raises some concerns.
The worst-kept secret in East Lansing is that permanent residents wish the rowdier students would move out from next door. The second worst-kept secret is that the rowdier students wish they didn't live next to a family. For the most part, permanent residents congregate in certain areas, distinguished by their actually plush lawns and freshly painted exteriors, and students give credence to the notion of "student ghetto."
The only foreseeable problem could be if the permanents band together and make sure that another house isn't lost to the slow-growing student ghetto. Such an event could produce a shortage of student housing near campus, and invariably drive rent charges sky-high. But for every person actually trying to sleep at 1 a.m. on a Saturday morning, there is a student who shovels an elderly couple's driveway. The relationship between renters and permanents is give-and-take.
The ordinance accounts for this. There are certainly pockets of permanent residents who would like to see a young family in a house rather than would-be partyers. But the would-be's don't want to live there either, and there are still plenty of students and residents who fall somewhere in the middle.
Keeping the option open for permanent residents is a good move in strengthening the community. Those who might feel slighted, don't read into it. You're moving in four months, anyway.
