Bad Neighbor Policy

CONCEIT HAS ALWAYS colored Harvard's relations with the city of Cambridge. Although the Bok administration may admit it less than previous administrations. University officials still believe Cambridge should be honored that Harvard has descended upon it. And, to some residents, it even seems that Harvard is asking surrounding communities to sacrifice their own interests just to keep the University happy.

But the locals are no more pleased with Harvard's presence than they would be with any other neighbor that uses up more tax money than it provides, seeks to buy up and tear down the house next door, or tries to impose a memorial on them that would flood backyards with traffic from all directions. They aren't overjoyed by it, but Cambridge residents do realize that Harvard may have some interests that will always run counter to community objectives. The most visible neighborhood leaders have always recognized this problem, and on numerous occasions have tried to go through the University's various mechanisms to talk with those who are making Harvard's policy for the city.

But one point that came out of the community leaders' March summit conference with three members of the Board of Overseers was that the locals are fed up with the regular channels for dealing with University-city relations. These residents are disgusted because they are forced to deal with a phalanx of Harvard offices that view every suggestion as a threat and every meeting as a confrontation. Their disgust is compounded by frustration that occurs when Bok's Mass. Hall guards tell even neighborhood alumni that it is a waste of the president's time to meet with them, and by the weariness that is produced each time a resident comes to chat with an administrator and finds himself seated at a bargaining table forced to swallow Harvard's set of non-negotiable demands.

At the moment it is not apparent whether the Overseers sympathized or even grasped what the community leaders had to say at last month's meeting. The letter Overseer Adele Simmons '63 sent Bok describing the meeting gives no indication that they did understand. But even if the Overseers did sense the community leaders' anxieties it probably would not matter. A Government and Community Affairs Officer would simply provide Bok with a disclaimer of any neighborhood protest, pointing out all sorts of distortions and inaccuracies in the community leaders arguments.

The discrediting comes even easier in this case because the community relations people need only tell Bok that it is simply the same old ineffectual people banging again on the Mass Hall door. And they would be right. Each one of the leaders has been grinding the community axe for so long that its blades are all but worn away. Harvard Square Task Force head Oliver Brooks has been a thorn in Harvard's side ever since he pushed for community input when building Harvard's low-cost housing projects of the '60s. Pebble Gifford was instrumental in compiling the Harvard Square Comprehensive Policy Plan that Harvard routinely dismissed as inaccurate and unhelpful. Brett Donham '60 is a long-time critic of Harvard's housing policy and James Herold '66 represents the Agassiz Neighborhood Planning Group that criticized Harvard last year for giving too little notice of its doings up at Sacramento St. It is no surprise that these people are behind the movement for change.

CHARLES U. DALY and Donald C. Moulton, vice president and assistant vice president for government and community affairs--two officers whose names came up extensively at the meeting--have little to fear from the above cast of characters. These residents have always felt that Moulton and Daly have had little to do with the behind-the-scenes plotting for the Agassiz area and the bizarre, expensive and widely unpopular plan to divert the Red Line down Mt. Auburn St. to Brattle St. They realize that it is not just Daly or Moulton or, for that matter. Harold Goyette, director of the Planning Office, who pushed for a Red Line extension to the MBTA subway yard that would make it even more attractive for the Kennedy Memorial to come to Cambridge.

The neighborhood association leaders, for the most part, perceive that the problem is much bigger than the public relations men in Grays Hall. They know that Daly and Moulton are thrust into the tough situation of dealing with many diverse Cambridge groups. And they know that Bok wants his public relations men to exercise defensive talents, to spot troublemakers, neutralize them under a barrage of committees, interim reports and drafts, and then let them wither away, causing Harvard as little pain as possible.

The people who gathered at Donham's house to plead with the Overseers were still demanding a change in attitudes--a switch from a belief that Cambridge is a part of Harvard to one of Harvard's being a part of Cambridge, as one of the residents put it at the meeting. They want Harvard to own up in advance to what it plans to do in the community so that there would still be time to talk--and no change in personnel can do that. That change has to come from upstairs.

But in all the years that these constant complainers have fought Harvard, they have learned a few things, one of which is that if there is a chance for incremental change, then that chance must be taken. The suggestion that a visiting committee be formed to check out Harvard community relations is that type of unsatisfying yet necessary change. Appointing a visiting committee to be a watchdog may show that Harvard needs a few new officers, more experienced and willing to deal with neighbors. They hope that the new people would even consider presenting their community views to Harvard, rather than always acting as a bargaining agent against local interests. This willingness to compromise comes in part because even the conservative alumni living in Cambridge are now willing to concede that the people in charge of community relations exacerbate what the conservatives have always viewed to be irreconcilable differences between the University and the city.

Unlike the current Advisory Committee on Community Affairs, which convenes only when Daly wants it to, and even then may be ignored by him, a visiting committee could regularly check into neighborhood gripes and then report them to Daly's higher-ups. The committee, for example, would probe into how the community relations people managed to alienate so many Cambridge residents, particularly alumni, in its handling of the Agassiz confrontation.

The committee would find out why the current personnel failed to detect opposition right in Harvard's own back yard to the Kennedy Museum and instead threw in its chips with mayor Walter J. Sullivan and the Kennedys--about the only two interests, besides Harvard, vested enough not to see community antagonism rising.

Few neighborhood leaders who have met with the Overseers, however, envision such a visiting committee coming about in the near future. They recognize how important the infrequently convened Board of Overseers would be in a showdown with Bok on the issue of community affairs. But even more realistically, the leaders know that it is tough to convince people in the administration how bad the problems really are, when direct confrontation between residents and community affairs staffers occur so infrequently.

BUT DESPITE THE apparent fact that the Overseers may care more about softening the bludgeoning than about not hitting the community at all, these community warhorses made a wise move by letting some of them know the problems exist. To get Harvard to recognize that it should be frank in its relations with the community is a fine ultimate goal, but these residents now realize that they must force Bok to see first that they are unhappy with the people he currently has employed to deal with them. By letting the Overseers do some of the bargaining for a change, it will be that much tougher for Daly to convince Bok that everything is fine in Cambridge, and that it is just the same old bunch of dissidents saying the same nonsense. And it will be that much easier for Bok to see who is causing some of the problems, solve them, and move Harvard closer to being as good a neighbor as possible to the community.