Reg. agency calls student order a ‘fraternity’
Nine Georgetown students who call themselves the Apostles for Peace and Unity have only three days left to comply with a cease and desist order issued by D.C.’s Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs.
photo by Michael Keller
The order is the latest development of an unprecedented town-gown conflict, which has the students into the national spotlight after the group was featured on the front page of The Washington Post on Nov. 11.
The Tuesday before Thanksgiving O’Neill was issued a cease and desist order from Zoning Administrator Bill Crews. The order said that O’Neill is “operating a fraternity house in a R-3 zone,” which would require him to obtain a certificate of occupancy and a “requisite number of off-street parking spaces.”
According to the order, if O’Neill does not comply, either by moving three students out or obtaining the proper permits and certifications, he could be fined or face imprisonment.
D.C. zoning laws prohibit more than six unrelated people from living together in a single residence. Religious organizations, however, have an exception to the law, which allows as many as 15 people to occupy a residence.
The main concern for Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner John Lever is the implications that the students could have for future precedence in D.C. zoning laws.
Lever emphasized what he called the “slippery slope” of D.C. zoning laws, emphasizing the importance of defining “what’s right and what’s wrong for our housing code, our zoning code.”
Following an initial warning on crowding from agency officials who visited the house in September, O’Neill and his friends filed as a non-profit religious organization, called the “Apostles of O’Neill,” on Oct. 2, then changed their name to the “Apostles for Peace and Unity” two weeks later.
On their Facebook.com page, the students have dedicated their group “to spreading peace, unity, and positivity throughout [their] local communities.”
O’Neill and the other eight students declined to comment.
Matt Stoller (COL ‘08), who wrote to The Hoya in response to its critical editorial of O’Neill and his friends, “Apostles Betray Spirit of Law,” wrote in an e-mail interview, “How can he [Crews] say that the Apostles for Peace and Unity is not a religious organization, without first defining what a religious organization is?”
DCRA spokesperson Karyn-Siobhan Robinson answered Stoller, saying that a definition of a “religious organization” was “irrelevant … because the Zoning Administrator [Crews] has defined the organization as a fraternity.”
How Crews determined the group as a fraternity is not very clear; Robinson asserted that he “us[ed] all of the facts that he [had] at his disposal.”
According to both the Washington Post and Robinson, Crews is using the dictionary definition of “fraternity” to classify O’Neill and his friends: “a group associated for a common purpose, interest or pleasure.” Stoller pointed out that such a definition “is equally applicable to a religious organization.”
