Having lived his whole life on the same side of North Harvard Street in Allston, former Harvard employee Robert W. Alexander takes pride in his neighborhood.

Crippled by mass layoffs last summer, the Harvard Union of Clerical Technical Workers enters this year’s round of contract negotiations with squared shoulders.

The land set aside for the Allston Science Complex was supposed to become a world-renowned nexus of interdisciplinary science research—but what happened?

A report written by Harvard Lecturer Joshua Humphreys and issued by the Center for Social Philanthropy at the Tellus Institute suggests that the “higher-risk, higher-return” manner in which the University invests its endowment has worsened the financial crisis.

The Cambridge Police Department hired a new spokesperson, 23-year-old Daniel M. Riviello, on Friday, ending a four-month long search.

In a joint statement issued on Monday afternoon, the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers and the University announced the topics currently being discussed in negotiations in an effort to maintain a sense of transparency in the process, according to HUCTW Director Bill Jaeger.

University officials say they continue to consider the conditions of previous agreements they made with the City of Boston before the December halt of construction on the Allston Science Complex in brainstroming plans for Harvard’s development in the neighborhood.

Although its year-long moratorium on property purchases in Allston will expire in two weeks, Harvard does not intend to purchase more real estate in the neighborhood in the coming months, according to University Executive Vice President Katharine N. Lapp.

The revelation that Director of the Institute of Politics Bill Purcell–who announced his resignation this week–will take on a role in the Allston planning process was cause for more frustration among Allston community members.

The Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology Department’s plans to eventually inhabit the Allston Science Complex are growing increasingly uncertain, though biology professors have begun the exodus from their long-standing Cambridge facility to make way for the incoming stem cell researchers.