Although people of Auburn filled the seats in Tuesday night’s city council meeting, most of them weren’t there to discuss anything on that night’s agenda.
“I would like to see a show of hands of those of you that are here because you’re interested in unrelated occupancy,” Mayor Bill Ham said. Hands flied up all over the room.
Mayor Bill Ham uninterested in changing the unrelated occupancy ordinance for five Auburn University students
Ham at Tuesday’s City Council meeting tells people he is “bewildered” by the calls, texts, emails, and social media posts he has received about the unrelated occupancy ordinance.
Of the raised hands were two Auburn University students: Brooke Buckles and Hayley Bylsma. After being woken up at 6 a.m. by two men at their house in a “family zone” on Dumas Drive in Auburn, Alabama, the group of five girls—each with different last names—was told they had 30 days to move out.
Buckles took the issue to the internet by making an online petition and asking for signatures on social media. Since starting the petition and sharing it to social media on Sept. 28, Buckles has garnered over 10,000 signatures (as of Oct. 6).
“We have never received noise complaints, we do not disturb the neighborhood, we keep a clean yard and respect everyone around us,” Buckles writes in her petition. She says their goal is to overturn the ordinance, which does not allow more than two people with different last names to live in the zone.
“I’m a little lost… on how the thoughts are out there that the city is interested in changing the law as it is,” Ham tells those at the city council meeting. “It’s not on the agenda.”
Yet, people in favor and against changing this ordinance both came to the podium during the citizens' communication portion of the meeting. This line on the agenda gives anyone a chance to speak for five minutes about anything and hear the council’s response. Although it was just one line on the two-page agenda, the citizens' communications lasted over an hour and a half.
Bob Lowry, a resident of Auburn, was the first of many to step up. He lives in the same residential zone as Buckles and Bylsma. “Do not bend to this mass hysteria on social media about this ordinance,” he urges the council during his five minutes. He tells the room that false statements about the incident have been put on social media.
Chip Townsend, an Auburn resident who spoke later in the meeting, also agrees that the petition on social media is “intellectually dishonest,” although he commends the students for expressing their voices.
When Buckles approaches the podium, she asks the council to put themselves in their seats. “We’re students just trying to graduate,” she says, mentioning that she and her roommates are seniors graduating in either December or May.
Buckles spends her five minutes urging the council to start discussing a change in the 30-year-old ordinance.
Instead of “mass hysteria,” Buckles requests that they be seen as students using their voice. Buckles, a senior studying communication, says she is using what she was taught at Auburn to exercise her voice for change.
Robert Parsons closed the discussion on unrelated occupancy by reading a text from his wife that she wrote earlier that day. She was unable to attend the meeting because she stayed home with their three children. In her message, she complains about college students who speed through their streets, often texting while they drive, ignoring young children walking to school. In her text, she also compared the house on Dumas Drive to a “small sorority house” for the homeowner’s daughter and her friends.
“If you do not enforce these codes as currently written, you are setting a dangerous and unsafe precedent which your constituents will be deeply grieved by,” Parson’s wife Ashley wrote.
As citizens' communications came to a close, the room emptied as a majority of the room walked out, further emphasizing the reason why most people were there. They missed the remaining ordinances and resolutions that the council passed unanimously, such as the resolution to spend over $15,000 on parking kiosks downtown this year.
Oct. 6, 2017