Before the year is out and students hit the books hard and Facebook even harder, there’s one more piece of homework: Perform your civic duty.

Tonight, the Madison Housing Committee will meet to debate and possibly refer an ordinance that affects every UW-Madison student. Proposed by Ald. Bridget Maniaci, District 2, and supported by the Associated Students of Madison’s Legislative Affairs branch, the ordinance would push back the date at which landlords could start showing apartments and leasing out properties for the next year. Currently, this hectic season starts around November — the proposal would push back the start of leasing season to February.

We have previously supported this idea and agree the current system of rentals forces students to rush into living situations and properties that haven’t been examined properly. Students end up rooming with people they don’t know well enough, in apartments they were never comfortable with in the first place. Yet, they sign up for them all the same, because the rush to good properties for a large group of roommates moves so fast. This leads to broken leases, panicked decision-making and freshmen crashing into long-term residential decisions when some of them aren’t even sure if their first semester grades will allow them to stay the next year.

However simple and common sense this ordinance, the landlords in this area will likely come out to oppose it, claiming it would hurt businesses, rush things on their end and make it impossible to function with a full staff the entire year. Students need to be able to bring their stories to bar on the situation as well.

So we ask students for one more push. Attend the Housing Committee meeting and tell the members why the leasing season needs to be shortened.

The meeting will be held in room 260 of the Municipal Building, 5 p.m. Show up, put yourself on the speakers list and let them know students do care about city issues and do have a voice. We do it with safety issues, we do it with alcohol issues, let’s do it with tenant rights issues.