At Odds With the City Council

Faced with constant disputes over property development and expansion, Cambridge and its largest land-owner and employer--Harvard--seem to be at war more often than at peace.

But if today's conflicts between town and gown seem contentious and bitter, they pale in comparison to the titanic struggle the two giants fought in the fall of 1938. That was the year when the Cambridge City Council voted to "secede" from the University.

On October 18, 1938, in the heat of a battle to restructure the city government, the council voted unanimously to make the University a separate municipality. Although the council's request was never granted, it left a memorable legacy of the grizzled and sometimes legendary opposition between Harvard and Cambridge from which their modern discord grows.

The controversy grew out of a plan devised by Harvard scholars at the Littauer Center of Public Administration to restructure Cambridge government to incorporate a proportional representation election system.

At that time, Cambridge was governed by 13 councillors, which like many contemporary Eastern city governments kept power and ran their cities by a system of patronage, offering jobs and benefits to supporters. Under the Littauer Center's proposed Plan E, the number of councillors would be cut to nine, and a city manager would be named by the council to handle administrative duties--including employee hiring and benefit dispensation.

The plan, designed in part to decrease the power of the councillors, also would incorporate a system of proportional representation, in which citizens could vote for more than one candidate for councillor, opening up the election process.

But to add insult to injury, it was a Harvard Law School dean who maneuvered the proposal past the city's legal defenses and onto the ballot. City councillors declared a war of words against Harvard when Dean James M. Landis, head of the Cambridge Committee for Plan E, helped force the proposal onto Cambridge's November 1938 ballot.

"Harvard hopes to use the City of Cambridge as a guinea pig for its laboratory experiments" until it is controlled by the University's "disciples of Karl Marx," said Councillor John J. Toomey, when presenting the resolution to sever Harvard from Cambridge before the council.

The council unanimously passed the proposal, which requested that the state legislature incorporate the University as a separate city, responsible for municipal services like fire and police that were provided by Cambridge.

While the University recognized the separation decree as a smokescreen to divert attention from the proposed government restructuring plan and issued no official comment, students and student publications responded to the vote with sarcasm and derision.

The Crimson ran a photograph of Littauer Hall, with the caption "City Hall?" underneath, and The Lampoon, not do be outdone by the city council, demanded status as a "Free City."

Other publications also saw humor in the vote. The New York Times ran a headline the next day that read, "Vote to `Secede' From Harvard is taken by Cambridge City Council."

The war escalated the next day, however, when several Lampoon initiates began goose-stepping down Mass. Ave., carrying the club banner in a march for independence. Councillor Michael A. Sullivan saw the group marching and asked whether they had a protest permit. When the marchers answered that they hadn't, Sullivan attempted to confiscate the Lampoon banner from them.

In the ensuing melee, Sullivan fell to the ground and was allegedly kicked by a student. A Harvard police officer soon broke up the fight at the scene, and no one was seriously injured.

The scuffle, which made headlines, nonetheless heightened tension in the city. For a few days people stood along the "Harvard-Cambridge border"--a hazy line along Mass. Ave near Harvard Square--in anticipation of further skirmishes.

But Dean A.C. Hanford requested that students refrain from additional shenanigans, and students, still chuckling at the whole affair, kept out of further trouble with the councillors.

The state Legislature never responded to the council's request, but the controversy over "secession" indeed prevented the Cambridge Committee for Plan E from convincing enough citizens to support the restructuring measure the next month.

In the November election the council won the battle. Plan E was opposed by a majority of Cambridge voters.

But Harvard won the war. A few years later, the residents of Cambridge voted to incorporate a city manager/proportional representation system.