BOY'S TOWN FORECLOSED

It is only a run-down vacant lot on the edge of East Cambridge. Overgrown with weeds and tall grass, littered with broken bottles and rusty tin cans--hardly an inspiring sight. But add to this eyesore 235 play-hungry kids, a brigade of willing undergraduates, and a dash of cooperation from the City of Cambridge. Result: a recipe for civic improvement. A dash of cooperation? None is forthcoming. The local Park Board has contributed only an official frown.

Rejection of the proposed playground is a blow not only to the Cambridge kids but also to better relations between college undergraduates and Cambridge citizens. Since colonial days a seldom crossed no-man's-land of mutual misunderstanding has separated City and College. To the Cambridge citizen, Harvard seems a red-bricked baronial estate, overrun with bow-tied plutocratic playboys. To the student, Cambridge is a necessary evil of place-where, filled with strangers in the street. Mythologies like these can be liquidated. A town-gown playground project is one way to do it.

First fruits of the plan were already in evidence. Local churches, civic clubs and social service organizations joined in enthusiastic support of the students and East-side "gangs." Mickey Sullivan had offered two trucks to help clear the ground. With the approval and aid of the Park Board, the unsightly stumps and trash would soon have yielded to a soft-ball field, track and volleyball courts.

Technicalities brushed aside, the principal objection to the plan was a petition signed by neighbors of the selected site, who claimd that the project would decrease their land values. As the student committee for the playground points out, this claim is open to serious question. Conversion of an eyesore and police problem into a valuable social service for the entire residential neighborhood should raise, not lower the value of abutting land. In failing to rise above the doubtful logic of a few property-owners and provide for the pressing need of hundreds of eager boys, the Park Board has blocked a plan full of promise for both Cambridge and Harvard.