The 'Bridge
Harvard Square is Our Business
Two-thirds of Harvard sophomores, juniors, and seniors live in a food desert. According to the Department of Agriculture, every River House except Adams House lies in what is defined as a “low-income census tract where a significant number or share of residents is more than a half mile ... from the nearest supermarket.” Three such census tracts exist in Cambridge, and the campus of MIT also includes one, as does Boston University’s East Campus across the river.
Most Harvard students experience this area quite differently. As sociology graduate student Caitlin Daniel noted in an interview on the topic, “even people living in the same neighborhood can experience access very differently, depending on where their daily routines bring them … depending on whether they have reliable access to a vehicle, depending on what their budget is.” The river isn’t a “low-access zone” for anyone with a Harvard meal plan when dining halls are open, and it makes sense that we don’t buy enough food to support a local supermarket. It is not the fault of individual students that these food deserts exist on and near our campus, but the fact remains that around the city, living next to university students correlates with a lower level of access to affordable food.
Cambridge Police Can’t Police Themselves
Last Friday night, a black Harvard College student was arrested after a physical confrontation with law enforcement. In the hours that followed, the Cambridge Police Department announced it would conduct an “internal review” of the events that transpired, as is their policy. This may seem like a good first step, but in light of the seriousness of the incident, which the Harvard Black Law Students Association has described as police brutality, it is worth observing how the department has previously handled similar cases.
The police department has argued that the violence perpetrated by their officers Friday night was necessary. This was also their tactic barely more than a year ago in Nov. 2016, when a CPD officer used pepper spray on a crowd of hundreds of students at the CambridgeSide Galleria to see the rapper Desiigner and Celtics player Jaylen Brown. A statement from the department reported that the event had turned chaotic and that the spray was “used by police to manage and disperse the crowd inside the mall after the crowds grew more aggressive.” However, a volunteer working at the event disputed this account, stating “[t]here was no mayhem before that. [An officer] sprayed, and it sprayed everybody in front of her. Everybody in front of her just scattered.” But the department’s justification implied its officers had something to fear from the crowd, which included many young Cambridge residents of color. Accounts of the event indicated that the opposite was true; the only reported injuries requiring medical care were the result of pepper spray. Even then, the department admitted no wrongdoing in the use of non-lethal force on members of the crowd. And people shook their heads in disappointment, and nothing meaningful seemed to change.
Message in a Bottle
My favorite way to break up with people is by letter.
No, that’s not true. Rather, the only way I know how to break up with people is by letter. There’s simply something about that highly charged, traumatically emotional, in-person exchange that I can’t handle: the desperate reading of facial expressions, the vulnerable body language, the nervous shaking, the words—confused and incoherent—forced upwards through a constricted throat, threatening asphyxiation.
Don’t Let Cambridge Get Into Its Zone
Harvard, MIT, and Lesley University employ nearly 22,000 people at sites located in Cambridge. Out of the city’s top 25 employers, eight are biotechnology companies, two are research and development firms, and five are software and internet technology companies. These companies’ workers combine to make another 19,300 individuals, meaning that even without counting graduate students, more than 40,000 people work in Cambridge at its universities and the high-paying employers in its “knowledge economy” that stem from their presence.
If each of these people lived alone, they would occupy nearly 78 percent of the total housing units in Cambridge. Even if each household had an average of two employees in those fields, it would still take more than a third of the city’s housing stock to house each person who works at a university or technology company in Cambridge.
PILOT-ing a New Way Forward for Harvard
“We have taken the route of communicating our concerns in a transparent fashion…. The result is a model for town-gown relations. We know it is far from perfect. But we are working together and determined to make it successful,” Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone and then-Tufts University President Lawrence S. Bacow wrote in a 2009 Letter to the Editor in the Somerville Times, describing the relationship between Tufts and Somerville.
When he led Tufts, Bacow spoke frequently about the importance of strong community relationships. In 2004, he negotiated a plan to formalize the payment of community benefits to Somerville and Medford, where Tufts is located, including it in a September update to the university. After a conversation with Somerville Alderman Jack Connolly, he inaugurated a tradition of “Community Days,” bringing Tufts affiliates and Somerville and Medford residents together. Now over 15 years old, the annual event combines student performances with presentations from community-based agencies and city departments.