A Walk Back From Harvard’s Club Fair

Opening Days has been hectic for us as freshmen, newly arrived in Cambridge. We run all over campus for early morning meetings with our entryways, speak up (perhaps) in our Community Conversations, and are inundated with waves of topically useless information. As we read pamphlets and sit in meetings, we are reminded that we—the class of 2020—are the newest members of the community and everyone is excited to welcome us into our new home.

But there is also a flip side to these idyllic first impressions of the College. Last Friday, as we walked through Cambridge Common on our way back from the Activities Fair, we saw a man lying on a bench in the middle of the park. Normally, this wouldn’t have been an abnormal sight, but he was surrounded by four or five other men, some of whom were pounding on his chest and shouting at him. He appeared unresponsive. We were unsure if we should intervene; but recalling the “bystander effect,” we shared a glance of mutual understanding and ran over.

Most of his friends kept stumbling, mumbling incoherent nonsense. By the time we got to the bench, three other passersby had taken notice, one of whom seemed to know CPR and had begun compressions on the man’s chest. He didn’t look good; his lips were blue and his eyelids were peeled, irises dialed back to the point where no one could see them. None of us knew what was going on, but we tried our best to help. While one of us called 911, the other kept the man’s friends away from the woman performing CPR. They were yelling at her and kept trying to pound on the man’s chest despite her precise pumps.

The man’s eyes were still rolled back and his muscles weren’t moving—he looked like a ragdoll, lying there motionless. His friends became more and more panicked in a muted, helpless sort of way. Fighting amongst one another, one of them barked at the woman. "She doesn’t know what she’s doing” and "you’re not supposed to pump 36 times, you’re gonna kill him…have you ever dealt with a fucking heroin overdose? Don’t think so.” After a few tense moments, the man started to cough and his arm twitched. When she had begun CPR, she had been shouting that he didn’t have a pulse.

The sound of sirens pierced the hysteria of the growing crowd. Two ambulances and a police car had pulled up next to the park. The pace of the paramedics and police officers was notably slow, walking over to the crowd, before ultimately venturing a “Well, we’re here now.” This is not intended to disparage the hard-working men and women of the Cambridge Police Department or first responders, but their lackluster effort to attend to this man could have meant the difference between life and death.

Perhaps this lack of haste was because the man was breathing again. Perhaps it was because they see similar situations everyday. Perhaps it was because this man and his cohort were repeat victims. Whatever the reason, the simple fact is that they did not hasten to his side.

One paramedic asked if he “shot up regularly,” to which a man in the crowd answered that he did and that he probably had a needle on him at this very moment. Indeed, his arms were covered in what looked like track marks. He had no shoes on; his clothes were soiled and torn.

After we got the names of the people who helped for the police, we continued back into the Yard, a gated oasis from the outside. Less than a block away, a man had been fighting for his life.

We wondered: Why had the response time been so slow? Why had the paramedics not rushed over? Why was this happening so close to the place we’re now supposed to call home? After all, we’re conditioned to think: “This is Harvard. This isn’t supposed to happen here.”

The reality is, however, that it does happen here. Massachusetts’s opioid overdose rate is two times the national average. According to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, 488 people have died of heroin and opioid related overdose in the first six months of 2016. This epidemic is disturbingly common in the Commonwealth: the overdose rate is roughly 4.5 people per day. Despite Governor Baker’s efforts, there has been no marked impact on the problem. Nothing seems to be working and the widespread adage “rags to rags to rags” has taken on a redoubling, cyclical nature across Massachusetts.

And what of the man on the bench? After he was taken away by paramedics, what becomes of him? We can only speculate. Perhaps he will receive the necessary treatment to overcome his addiction. It is more likely, however, that he will be spit back out onto the streets, without the support system he needs.

We cannot let this lack of solutions engender us with an attitude of passivity. We cannot, as new members of this community, opt for inaction, looking over our shoulder as the problems of the less fortunate pass us by. We live here now. We are Harvard’s newest class. Supposedly the best and the brightest. The pomp and circumstance that greeted us these past few weeks should not and cannot blind us to the needs of those around us—and those needs do not stop at Johnston Gate.

We must be aware of what goes on in our new community—the good, the bad, and the ugly. It is all too easy at a place like Harvard to view the world through crimson-colored glasses. We cannot hide behind the red brick walls of our dorms and live in blissful ignorance of the pains of our community, while pretending to be the educated and upstanding generation of tomorrow. It is imperative that we open our eyes to everyone at Harvard.

Let us heed T.S. Eliot’s warning from “The Wasteland,” lest this place become a “rats’ alley / Where the dead men [lose] their bones.” Let us all be active members in our community, concerned with the betterment of our home as we start this new chapter in our lives as Harvard students.

Michael J. Ivkov ‘20 and Gabe E. S. Ziaukas ‘20 live in Canaday Hall.