Agreed that spaghetti sauce doesn't have to be tomato based. Just olive oil doesn't cut it, though - you need more than that.

My guess is that the pasta mentioned above is spaghetti "aglio olio e peperoncino" (garlic, olive oil, red pepper), so not just olive oil.

Could be the recipe with the highest ratio taste/effort you can find, something that even a drunk student can pull off a 4 in the morning, so they probably just continued their tradition from the university years

It was most likely garlic and olive oil (and salt and pasta water).

Buttered noodles are good, I have no a priori reason that simple oil wouldn't be also.