Much Ado in the Bay State

While to the myopic student, Harvard and the communities that surround it may seem to share little in terms of goals, motivations, and funding, this year has seen town and gown brought together in many ways and to mutually beneficial outcomes.

This past winter, the marked rise of youth violence in Boston caught the attention of Harvard’s Black Students Association (BSA), who decided to take action following shootings in Dorchester and Roxbury. First via letter—and then by meeting with Governor Deval L. Patrick ’78 himself—student leaders from the BSA facilitated the development of a comprehensive plan to curb youth violence in the state. Besides the potential tangible effect of lowering rates of youth violence, the most encouraging aspect of this dialogue was the students’ embracing a cause that does not directly affect them. By thus engaging with the larger community outside of Harvard , the BSA served as a model student-interest organization with a political arm.

Student advocacy coincided with statewide political concern again, with the laudable efforts of those supporting reform to the CORI (Criminal Offender Record Information) system. CORI currently allows for the felonies and misdemeanors of released offenders to be available far too long after the offense, prohibiting these citizens from reentering an honest occupation. This results in the re-arrest of over two thirds of releasees within just three years. Gov. Patrick also developed praiseworthy policy solutions to address this problem, authoring the CORI reform bill that, if passed, would lower the sealing of felony records from 15 years to just 10, and records for committers of misdemeanors from 10 years to just five. By organizing an intercollegiate protest and encouraging campus activity relating to CORI reform, Harvard students have shown their support for this cause and their willingness to participate in the reform of the criminal justice system. But while the student presence has been vital up until now, the battle is not over. The state should do more to aid released offenders trying to reintegrate themselves into society. State-run reintegration programs and even incentives for employers to hire these released offenders would have a notable impact on the futures of former convicts.

As CORI reform shows, protecting the citizens of Massachusetts is a worthy goal, but one whose initial steps can be misguided. The Safe Homes initiative—started this year by the Boston Police Department—involved police teams working with community committees to search for and remove any firearms owned by minors at the permission of the adults of the household. While the intentions of this initiative were salutary, it is essential that awareness of the optional nature of the searches is widespread, and that the officers’ primary intention upon entering the house is to remove firearms, not incriminate the families.

An education-centric campaign that should be supported and continued in the Commonwealth is the recruitment of bilingual teachers from the Caribbean to Boston Public Schools. Recently, Boston’s schools have seen their percentage of Hispanic students rise to 30 percent. To help this demographic, schools have begun to recruit teachers from Puerto Rico. Although these teachers will not be teaching in Spanish, they will have the language skills necessary to help students whose first language is Spanish grapple with concepts that are too complicated for them to understand in English. While this movement should be supported, however, it is not a cure for the problem of minority students falling behind in public schools. A more concerted effort should be made to channel the best native bilingual college students into the teaching profession, in order to serve as role models for younger, bilingual students.

While the rise of violence among Boston youth, CORI reform, the safe homes initiative, and the need for bilingual teachers are issues unrelated to Harvard, they are by no means isolated from our collegiate world. Whether through protest, legislative collaboration, teaching, or simply following the news, students should choose to involve themselves in the policy decisions that affect the lives of our neighbors.

While many undergraduates might feel more allegiance to New York or California than Massachusetts, machinations in the Bay State government have more influence on our academic lives than we might imagine. A Patrick-sponsored $1 billion dollar life-sciences bill would allocate money specifically to Harvard for stem cell research, and hopefully encourage the retention of junior faculty in the sciences. Currently pending in the state legislature, this would serve as a boon to Harvard, but other proposed legislation has threatened the autonomy of the University in the past year.

The proposed University endowment tax, which now has been defeated, would have taxed Massachusetts universities with endowments exceeding $1 billion 2.5 percent of their endowments annually. The motivation behind this bill—presumably to plug state budget holes—did not provide a valid reason for penalizing a few universities for their financial success. Large universities should not be taxed like larger corporations in part because of their beneficial effects on the community. Schools like Harvard and Boston University not only produce citizens that are educated to help their communities, but are also some of the top employers in their area. Taxation could serve as a disincentive for donations that might push the endowment over $1 billion, and the tax was rightfully disposed of. Schools that have sizeable endowments should make a practice of charitable donations, but those should be University-driven and not mandated by the state.

It is undeniable that the state of Massachusetts has many fiscal problems, and the prospect of the University tax highlights this monetary desperation. Patrick’s plan to open casinos—with specific blueprints for three different gambling sites in Boston, Western Mass., and the South Shore—would be a well-reasoned way to generate the needed revenue. The casinos would bring in an estimated $400 million in annual revenue, and would be a boon to these areas. It is crucial, however, not to disrupt the fabrics of the communities, and because of this, the casinos should be as isolated resorts outside of the towns.

The past year has been both positive and negative changes taking place in Boston and in Massachusetts. The efforts of Harvard students to engage in the larger communities have been commendable, and there should be an even greater incidence of college students involving themselves in issues facing the city and state that they live in for four years. Alongside a necessary attention to the safety of its residents, the state of Massachusetts also has the obligation to respect and support the institutions that are in many ways its lifeblood.