Cantabridgians Blast Harvard, MIT at Council Meeting

Harvard and MIT were taken to task by Cambridge residents at last night's Cambridge City Council meeting.

Residents and two councillors attacked the relationship between Harvard, MIT and surrounding neighborhoods, calling the universities "irresponsible abutters."

Cambridge resident Robert J. La Tremouille criticized officials of the Inn at Harvard, which is owned by the University, for failing to respond to his pleas for police help when he was recently attacked outside the hotel by a group of teenagers.

"I went into the inn and asked the front desk clerk to call the police, and [the clerk] refused when she learned that I wasn't a guest," La Tremouille said.

The inn's response typifies the "longtime tendency of the University to ignore its responsibility to the surrounding community," he said.

La Tremouille presented the council with an October 8 letter he wrote to President Neil L. Rudenstine which requested that Harvard "publicly and clearly sanction...the Inn at Harvard."

He also criticized Harvard's purchase of retail space in Harvard Square as further evidence of "disregard" for neighborhood residents.

The Cambridge resident also said he disagreed with a proposal by the Quincy Square Design Committee to create a small park in front of the Inn at Harvard, near La Tremouille's home.

"Soon the area outside my window will be another tourist trap," he said.

Mayor Kenneth E. Reeves '72, however, said he disagreed with La Tremouille's posting of signs throughout his neighborhood which alleged that the city council ignored residents' objections and held a secret vote on the Quincy Square project.

"I think it is irresponsible...All deliberations at the Cambridge City Council are public and televised," Reeves said.

"[La Tremouille's] perceptions are so unlike the truth that they can't be dealt with here," Reeves said later in the meeting.

MIT Proposal Approved, 7-2

The council also voted 7-2 to approve a plan by MIT to build a grocery store and retail offices along Blanche Street on the periphery of the MIT campus.

Residents confronted representatives from MIT to argue against the school's proposal.

Residents said they were concerned that the retail center would lead to traffic congestion and displace small merchants in nearby Central Square.

"MIT has given no satisfactory response to the concerns of the neighbors," said Cambridgeport resident Bill Cavellini.

Cavellini detailed six unanswered questions that the neighbors had about the street takeover, most notably that they were never given the chance to see the updated Blanche Street design proposal.

Councillor Katherine Triantafillou and Mayor Reeves also objected to MIT's proposal.

"MIT just does what they want and the city council be damned," Triantafillou said.

But the MIT officials at the meeting said that the residents' questions had been answered satisfactorily and repeatedly in previous public meetings.

Reeves and Triantafillou cast the two dissenting votes to the Blanche Street project proposal.