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Would the Boston Redevelopment Authority be intimidated by a large mass of glowering BC students?
By adamg on Wed, 01/28/2009 - 6:00pm
Boston College seems to think so - it's going to bus students to a BRA meeting Thursday afternoon at which board members are expected to vote on the school's 10-year expansion plan in Brighton.
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Comments
BRA
Since when does the BRA say no to any developer?
If they cross Menino
The BRA will say no to anything. They are his puppet.
Ludicrous, imho.
BC and other institutions of higher learning here in Boston have spent much too much time expanding into nearby neighborhoods as it is. To reiterate the position on this issue that I took roughly a year ago here on UniversalHub, which I still stand by: The colleges and universities in this area are not in financial trouble. They should put a cap on annual student admissions and have students wait-listed for the following year, if need be. For too long, these institutions have been into making money hand over fist, which is at the root of this whole situation.
Will they be moving in with you?
Most area colleges don't have enough housing for more than a fraction of their students. They never did. When I was at MIT, I was shocked to learn that other univesities like BU only had about 25-30% of the housing needed for their student body. That was 25 years ago, so this really isn't a new problem or an expansion issue.
People can't complain about students living in unsupervised housing, acting like asswipes, and driving up rents if they refuse to accept that unversities can house and supervise these students in campus settings by building.
They can't have it both ways.
It might also ease the housing situation in your neighborhood if your employer laid off half the workers and you had to go elsewhere or move in with your parents ... really the same as what you are asking.
(BTW, I find it amusing that you think that colleges somehow make money off of undergraduates. Do you have some statistics to back up your assertion that BU, NU, etc. are "making money hand over fist"? Or are you assuming that enrollment is for-profit?)
Contentious issue is location of dorms
If you were following this issue closely, you would realize that the contentious issue between the neighborhood and Boston College is not about whether or not to build dorms, it is about the location of those dorms -- next to current dorms in their traditional campus (option preferred by neighborhood) or near to neighborhood houses on the former archdiocese land (option rammed through by BC).
In fact, it's even more upside-down than that: the neighborhood has been arguing for construction of a new campus dormitory instead of conversion of an existing apartment building at 2000 Commonwealth Avenue into a dorm. It's not often that you get a development process in which the neighborhood wants more construction and construction jobs, and the developer wants less.
Thanks
Thanks for the clarification. I'm glad that the permanent residents have evolved in their thinking about students in their midst, and the role of colleges in the local economic calculus. I'd bet the students themselves want the dorms closer to the central campus as well.
I was, however, responding to the twin absurdities that colleges should not accept freshmen, kick out some existing upperclassmen, etc. to pare down their programs to minimal levels, and that they are making money off of the students.
Swirly, be sure to research
Swirly, be sure to research the entire BC issue before trusting the biased comments of one poster.
SwirlyGrrl, if you're talking to me, I stand by my positions.
One doesn't have to live in that situation (I admit that I don't) to realize that when colleges and universities' expansion into nearby neighborhoods continues unabated, it really does
destroy the neighborhoods in question. The idea that I or somebody else would have to move in with my family is pure baloney, imho. First of all, that's an extremely poor analysis. Secondly, if a bunch of students move into a given neighborhood, if they're old enough to go to college and live on their own, they're old enough to show some self-control, as well as consideration and respect for the lifetime and longtime residents of the area, and to not act like a bunch of ass-wipes by playing their stereos at top volume and partying loudly 'til all hours of the night, when other people have to work, or whatever the next day, or by using their neighbors' yards as a toilet or vomitorium. Sorry, SwirlyGrrl, but I think that the people who've complained about a lot of the college kids' excessive noisiness and loud partying til all hours of the night are justified.
Therefore, having said what I've said, I see nothing wrong whatsoever, with college and universities putting a cap on annual student admissions. It wouldn't kill some of these kids to be wait-listed for a year, and therefore to take a year off prior to entering college. Maybe, that wouldn't be a half-bad thing for some of these kids; hopefully they might learn something about self-control, consideration and respect for those around them before going out into the world.
Also, I'm not against having students around. In fact, they help make the city considerably safer, in addition to their other contributions. Howevever, as far as I can see, BU, BC and NU are not in the red, and they probably would not be hurt by capping annual student enrollment.
More students don't cost more
For some schools, this makes no sense at all. Many schools operating budgets are tied to enrollment. Schools which need to spend more to keep students (with increased financial aid) need to find that money somewhere. Students and their tuition are the engine which drives most schools.
Tell the folks at BU that the school isn't in financial trouble, when looming layoffs are a reality.
That's probably true with the smaller schools.
BU, Harvard and NU, for instance, are much bigger institutions. I stand by what I've said.
How do the colleges and universities make money then,
if they don't make money off of student enrollments? It seems that's one of the biggest, if not the biggest way that these large institutions make money.
schools
some schools live off endowments while others need enrollments to move their budget.
Youll notice a lot of smaller schools around NE are adding football teams. I talked to one AD who said schools do this as a way to guarentee 70-100 extra tuition paying males at the school. One football team could be an automatic 4 million bucks if they get 100 freshman in that first year that might not go to the school otherwise.
Research Funding
Science and engineering schools, along with some liberal arts departments, also run off grant funding. This affects graduate programs and enrollment more than undergraduate programs, but research funding counts strongly in the operating budget of technical and medical schools. Research funding also pays professor salaries, and these professors teach undergraduates.
I ride herd on half a million that my organization grants to researchers. I know that R01 grants and research center funding from NIH and CDC alone can get into millions per year per principal investigator. The EU can crank out the euros when they feel like it, too.
As for "how do they make their money": well, they don't make money. They take in money and the spend it. That's what a non-profit has to do.
concerns about the dorm plans, or BC's advocacy for them?
Can someone point to specific concern or concerns being raised about this particular plan for Boston College to expand residential housing?
Is it a matter of the city losing real estate tax revenue or does is it a matter of the effect on the neighborhood? If it's the latter, can you really call Commonwealth Ave a residential neighborhood? Assuming BC is not doing this to expand enrollment, don't all of these students already live in these neighborhoods in rented homes? Is this just about the money?
Undergraduate study is heavily subsidized by educational institutions from annual funds and endowments. Anyone who claims educational institutions are in good financial condition doesn't know what they're talking about. You cannot lose billions in the investment market and not have it affect hiring, raises, expenses, capital projects, tuition costs, and financial aid. Education like health care costs are climbing at rates that makes them unavailable to a large portion of our society. Even students without financial aid grants received subsidy. Tuition covers less than 100% of the cost of their attendance, typically by 20-30%.
Back to the point, what are the concerns about the dorm plans, or BC's advocacy for them?
The idea is...
supposedly BC has committed to the city to house 100% of their undergrads in on-campus housing by a certain date. The concerns raised is that these new dorms will be in the somewhat bucolic setting of the seminary and right in the front yard of folks on Lake Street. They will be in a corner where Archdoicese buildings already exist and pretty well buffered by a wooded area from Lake Street. The concerns seem to be more NIMBYism than anything else.
So I am not sure I can answer your question, but you do bring up a great question for the anti-dorm folks. I can't seem to get a straight answer. All I hear is "I don't like it".
I think residents are scared
that there will be more students going from the main campus to the seminary campus. This will include the drunk ones that come from football games, parties, or other social events on the main campus.
But like someone said before, the Newton Campus doesn't have that much of a problem, although Im not sure how many students are over there and I think most of them take a shuttle.
I guess its going to depend on the size and atmosphere of that other dorm. But I remember going to the newton campus when I was in college and there simply wasn't that much going on over there.
When I was looking into
When I was looking into programs in the DC/Balitmore area I came across was a large dorm complex on the outskirts of town (I think it was near College Park or Bethesda) that catered to a short list of local colleges. Apparently it seemed to work as an overflow for the local colleges. It was a very large complex, and the rooms were very nice, the common areas had large tvs and video games, and a billiards room. I had the impression that they were compensating for the fact that the students were not right on campus. They also had shuttle buses to and from the city and to the local train stations.
Something like this would be great for Boston as we have so many local colleges that need more housing options for students. It would also allow the colleges to move into communities that may be a little less hostile to the presence of students (for the local economy etc) and who may see it more as a blessing then a curse. You would also have the option of placing them in areas where there is more space so they can have greater set backs from local homes. Quincy/Braintree is right on the red line and would be convenient, so would Everett/Revere/Chelsea as they are right near the Blue and Orange lines. Medford/Malden/Melrose may present another option as well. Most of those communities have development plans that welcome younger residents, and could probaly be convinced to put such a development in their respective cities. I know nothing beats living right in the city but at some point that will become less attainable, we should at least think about the future as these colleges get bigger. Wellington would have been ideal for that, in the site of station landing...
It seems however, that, after awhile,
other places that're less hostile to a lot of students moving in would also begin to change their attitudes after awhile, too, and become considerably less receptive to students moving in. This is exactly what happened in nearby neighborhoods, until the life-time and long-time residents finally got up in arms and decided that enough was enough, that they weren't going to take it anymore. It's a no-win situation, really, and it may well be that at some point, colleges and universities in this area will be forced to put a cap on their annual student enrollments.
There are dozens of
There are dozens of communities in the Boston area, they could just keep on moving to the next victim, I mean oppurtunity.
Why "enrolment cap" is not possible
Okay, Miki, lets look at it this way.
Say you work for an employer, and some of the people who work for your industry annoy their neighbors. Can the government step in and say "fire half your workforce so they will leave"? Can they say "you can't hire any more people"? Can they tell people where they can and can't live based on their employer?
Of course not.
Students are humans with human rights. Most are adults. Colleges are not boarding schools for minors. Because some of these young adults act like asshats and annoy people doesn't mean that everybody satisfying the vague description of "student" has their rights revoked because somebody decided that an arbitrarily defined "not from here" means "not having rights". It also doesn't mean the government has any business telling the universities what they can do - the government has no right to do this any more than it does to tell your employer to fire you and half your coworkers because one of your neighbors hates parrots.
I disagree with the first paragraph in your post.
SwirlyGrrl, This:
does not even begin to hold water, imho. An industry with a bunch of people who work for it isn't the same as a houseful of college students who party loudly and/or drunkenly all night, and play loud music and keep the neighbors awake at night. Again, it's a poor anology, and I'm not buying it.
Regarding the college students who're young adults (which is true) who do act like asshats, the instigators/bad actors are often not in the majority, but they don't have to be in the majority to present a problem. Often enough, all it takes is a minority to act out and incite people to act this way who might not act that way ordinarily. If the majority cannot or will not keep the troublemaking minority in line, then they, too, are part of the problem. Also, it's got nothing to do with the government. The universities should get tougher on students who are unruly. Again, I stand by my positions and refuse to buy into the anologies that you're offering.
Also, SwirlyGrrl, who knows?
There may well come a time when colleges and universities will be forced to put a cap on annual student enrollment. I stand by my position that when expansion by college and universities into nearby neighborhoods continues unabated, it does destroy neighborhoods.
Also, SwirlyGrrl, suppose a bunch of students from Tufts or whatever move in next door to you and your family, and then make a habit of partying loudly and wildly 'til all hours of the night, get rip-roaring drunk, yelling, swearing and getting into fights, playing music full blast, and relieving themselves or puking in your front/back yard when you and your husband have to go to work the next day, and your kids have to go to school? Seriously, how would that make you feel? You might want to think about that a bit.
And how is putting dorms in the Seminary going to do that?
All it will do is take the students OUT of the neighborhood and put them into an insular area. The residents of Lake Street are pretty well buffered from the locaiton of the dorms. I however am not insulated from the building near me that is a notorious party-house right in the middle of a neighborhood. This isnt about expansion into neighborhoods, its about consolidation into a campus.
I stand by what I've said.
n/m
Simple - use law enforcement
Students renting houses and apartments are legal adults - otherwise, they couldn't sign a lease or rental contract, now could they? Students have to obey the laws, just like everybody else. I know people who rent to Tufts students, and neighbor them. If those students disobey the laws, the cops are called and they are held accountable.
They also have to abide by their lease agreements, and can be bounced out if they don't behave, just like any other adult.
Funny thing is, the students in our area generally don't cause any problems. That's because most students don't cause problems. They are on too tight a budget and too busy. Ever consider that?
That accountability shouldn't be any different for the students than it is for a house full of young construction workers, or middle-aged divorced guys who like to party. The problem isn't that these people are students - the problem is that there are young people who chose to violate the law. How they spend their days does not matter.
We already have pukers in the front yard BTW - they are high school students who go into the woods to drink. They get the same response to their breaking the law that the aforementioned construction workers or students or middle-aged party house would: somebody calls the cops to run them out of the woods before they get too drunk.
I still ask you this: why does being a STUDENT make you any different or make you have FEWER rights than any other free range adult IN THE EYES OF THE LAW?
You can't answer that, can you.
That's why I think your "opinion" and "grand idea" are garbage ... you can't see how your definition of "student" as "person with fewer rights than a non-student" is problematic in the extreme. You can't understand that it is the behavior of adults and not their current vocation that is the issue here.
Consider this: I was a student from 1997 to 2006. My ten and eight year old sons came to my Dissertation Defense. From 2002-2003 my husband took night classes, online classes, and was a part-time student to finish his undergraduate degree at age 40. How do you define "student" again?
Maybe we should say all parrot owners are second class citizens, to be treated like children even if they are legal adults, too? It makes about as much legal sense. Oh, and biologists can be trouble - remember that woman on Beacon Hill with all her cleaning products??? Let's tell biotech to stop hiring and fire people, and make them move elsewhere. My brother has a form of autism you may be familiar with personally - since I *just know* such people are *always* difficult to have around perhaps they should be restricted too ... see where these sorts of generalizations and categorizations about adults go?
As you may know , I can also
As you may know , I can also be considered a little anti student myself, although I am not.
I think that it is not the individual student, rather its the student body and the student body of all the colleges combined that leads to this "problem". You mention the teenages in the woods puking, while not all teenagers do that we can assume a certain percentage do. If 10 percent of the high school class did that on a regular basis and you had a class of 100 that would be ten students. Yeah I can deal with that, 10 kids in the city puking in the woods, life goes on. Lets say that class size is 1,000 (100 students puking) or 10,000 (1,000 students puking) and so on, everytime you increase the teenage students you increase the puking. Now imagine if your fair city had 40,000 people and 10,000 were students with 1,000 of them puking all over the place and then imagine if the numbers kept on rising until you had 20,000 students.
Its the same concept with college students, while its a small percentage that are offensive its the sheer numbers. Im a very accepting person who has worked and works with autistic people but I wonder how much this city would grind to a hault if it became the autistic mecca of the world and half of the population was autistic. If we built massive numbers of homeless shelters and became the homeless and poor capital of the world IM sure that would be a problem too. If a huge number of the people in Boston were gay it would be a problem because gay people can not procreate without outside assistance and the population would start to shrink. Its NOT the PERSON its the sheer numbers of that type of person.
Fire up the time machine ...
Go back and ban white flight - ban people from leaving the city so there will be no place for the students to invade.
That should solve the problem.
Oh, landlord responsibility? Code violations? Kicking out problem tenants? That's what other cities do - but other cities coordinate their inspectional services departments with their police and fire departments to address problematic housing issues. They also arrange to fix problems and bill resistant landlords.
BTW, the idea that balkanizing the university system to keep people in all their small places so they don't ever think about coming here is truly amusing - how very Massachusettsthink of you. Do you really think such regional and local restriction will really prepare the next generation for the emerging diversity of the workplace and the global economy?
Ive got news for you our
Ive got news for you our current system is not working and is not diverse. I dont care how many colors you see when you look in the classroom they are all the same types of kids and they all go through the same motions and they all associtiate with the same people and do the same things. Sure the names of the acitivities may change, and sure the countries they visit have different names, but they are the same process. The economy is having issues because we had nitwits who all had the same professors and the same internships calling the shots, they didnt know people who were buying their silly loans! I could have told you that giving a loan to my neighbor Mr X was a stupid thing to do, and could see a Mr X from a mile away. There is a reason why the more removed the bank is the more trouble its in, local banks are doing much better then the big boys because they have people who understand the local communities working in them and calling the shots.
The regionalized schools wouldnt just cater to that one region it would bring in people from other areas.
Alternative
Move to JP or Dorchester or any of the other neighborhoods where you don't have to worry about students.
Not quite...
Those neighborhoods aren't all HOLY SHIT STUDENTS like, um, Allston, but students certainly live in them. Also, while Dorchester is large, so the neighborhood as a whole is hardly filled with students, um, UMass is in Dorchester.
There lies the rub, SwirlyGrrl.
First of all, I think the anologies about parrot owners, biologists, etc., are completely ludicrous. The woman on Beacon Hill with her cleaning products--never heard of her. Again, don't expect me to buy into your anologies, because I won't.
Secondly of all, enforcement is the best way to go with unruly students, but, unfortunately, it's often not used, enough.
Thirdly, maybe if the non-troublesome majority of students did more to keep the more troublesome ones in their flanks in line, maybe they wouldn't be subject to hostility from their neighbors in communities that are adjacent to the large institutions in Boston, such as BU, BC and NU.
ShadyMIlkMan had it right when he pointed out that some of the money should be allocated to the smaller colleges around, and the fact that students travel from other areas throughout the country just so they can go to school in Boston is definitely true.
All told, I stand by what I've said so far.
I'll make it real simple for you then
1. Define "student"
2. Explain why being a "student" should give you inferior legal standing, and abrogate your human rights as an adult(e.g. justify wholesale housing and employment discrimination).
3. Provide and explain the legal basis under which you think the government is permitted to selectively intervene in the way the colleges are run.
This is what you are saying. Explain yourself, and support your contentions that students can be treated as subhuman and colleges subject to government intervention.
Short answer: you can't.
Im not on either side.
But cities do have laws which limit the amount of "unrelated" people that can live in one place. That effects students even though it is rarely enforced.
And the "government" does have a right to zone buildings in certain parts of the city. You can't just build wherever you want if that building has an effect on other people.
(I actually like the college atsmosphere of the city.)
True, but ...
Those restrictions apply to any and all who would like to do those things.
What IM is advocating is restrictions based on an attribute of a person or an institution, not on regulations that apply to all.
Do you think that the
Do you think that the measure in Boston limiting how many non relatives can cohabitate was based on a wider problem or on a problem where students will take a 2br apartment and turn it into a 3 or 4 bedroom apartment by converting the living and dining rooms, then filling some of those bedrooms with 2 people each... No wonder why a landlord can charge so much for rent, a few thousand is alot of money for one person to handle, but hey 5/6/7 college kids can handle it.
It is an old law
Quite frankly, these regulations are quite old and likely were not aimed at students at all - they were likely aimed at immigrants packing into tenament housing. Some date from the massive influx of people into the cities during WW II.
I've seen better regulations that link occupancy to square footage - although they keep a family of 8 from packing into a two-bedroom, they also prevent subdivision of property as a work-around.
Nobody's treating these spoiled brats as subhuman, SwirlyGrrl.
I'm referring to college students, many of them who feel this big sense of entitlement to do whatever they please when they please. As for young college students being treated as "sub-human", that's utter baloney. As I said before, many college students have behaved so destructively that they've given college students generally a bad name in the nearby neighborhoods where they choose to reside, and thereby many of the life-time and longtime residents don't want them around any longer.
Moreover, most of these "aggrieved" college students who're claiming discrimination aren't oppressed non-white mnorities who have been victimized by oppression and legal discrimination due to race or color.
What's wrong with saying that colleges have to intervene to give any of their students who really get out of line and behave in ways that're totally destructive to other people around them, namely their neighbors who're often just asking to be allowed to get a good night's sleep, so they can go to work and their kids go to school the next day without being dead tired from being kept awake for most or all of the night by a bunch of spoiled brats who feel entitled to do whatever the hell they want when they want.
The idea that the way universities should be run has anything to do with government is pure poppycock, imho. I don't buy it.
Frankly, if I'd lived in a place for a long time and a bunch of college students who moved in next door decided to hold loud, rowdy, falling-down drunken parties every single night of the week, and prevented me from getting a good night's sleep so I'd be good for the next day, I'd first go and speak to them, politely and ask them to keep the partying down, and not relieve themselves in ny backyard or my porch, or destroy my lawn or garden. Then, I'd give them a chance to rectify that. If, on the other hand, this proved fruitless, I'd call the police and let them deal with these particular students as they saw fit. Giving out-of-line college students a firm hand is not treating them as subhuman or relegating them to ":inferior" status, as you call it, SwirlyGrrl.
All told, SwirlyGrrl, if you don't like my explanations, I say one thing: Too bad!
Your Title Says it All
Try answering the question, Miki:
WHAT IS THE LEGAL BASIS BY WHICH YOU DETERMINE THAT A STUDENT IS DIFFERENT FROM ANY OTHER ADULT, AND A COLLEGE DIFFERENT FROM ANY OTHER BUSINESS?
Ranting like an addled lunatic about how all students are spoiled brats doesn't answer the question. (my husband was 40 when he got his undergraduate degree ... and a father ... and a homeowner ... and, by your all-inclusive definition, a brat).
"WHAT IS THE LEGAL BASIS BY
"WHAT IS THE LEGAL BASIS BY WHICH YOU DETERMINE THAT A STUDENT IS DIFFERENT FROM ANY OTHER ADULT, AND A COLLEGE DIFFERENT FROM ANY OTHER BUSINESS?"
Well colleges don't pay taxes, so they are different than businesses.
And some schools are different than others. Northeastern for one seems to want to have as many students as possible, while Tufts or MIT really don't want to "expand" like other schools.
And I also think that there is money to be made by these schools. People are hired and paid to make money for colleges. Now of course they don't "make money", but they sure as hell have a lot of it!
I'm not saying that all college students are spoiled brats.
The ones with a large sense of entitlement who think that they can disturb and disrespect the other people around them are, however.
SwirlyGrrl: DON'T take what I say out of context.
First of all, SwirlyGrrl, a college or university isn't in the manufacturing business or the food business, or into sellilng merchandise such as tools, clothes, etc., but it's in the business of educating people, mainly, That's an important difference, imho.
Secondly, SwirlyGrrl, I'm not talking about your husband or other older adults who decide to go back to school. I'm talking about these younger college students in their late teens through their early to mid-20's, many of who have a strong sense of entitlement that gives them a God-given right to do whatever the hell they want whenever they want to. Those are the spoiled brats, imho. Moreover, colleges and universities have every legal right to deal with these miscreants as they see fit, and even get the police involved, if need be. I have little to no sympathy for these young adult college students who're totally inconsiderate and disrespectful to their neighbors and then are surprised and angry when they get negative feedback for their actions and behaviour, and possibly in trouble with the local police as a result. Frankly, if I had a son or daughter in college and I got wind of them acting up like that and ending up getting arrested by the cops for that kind of destructive behaviour, I'd give him or her a stern warning to cut out the crap or face no tuition payment for next semester.
Must you curse?
It really doesn't help your argument.
What? You're not making an argument, you're just repeating yourself? Please. Just don't.
These students are dumb tools
That land is a gem. How many of these kids ever skated on the ice at Conte Forum? That's how many will get to use the fields after BC is done building a stadium on it.
My college has a big park right in the middle of it, and it's much better used than BC is proposing. And we rank 18 on US News, way ahead of BC.
As for the dorms, unfortunately it seems most BC students stay up until 4 a.m. yelling drink drink drink. The only reason they're trying to get them in Brighton is that too many lawyers live in Newton so BC thought Brighton would be a softer target.
When I was a student it didn't matter what the administration was for. If they were for it, we were against it. It's sad to see what organization men the students are becoming these days.
Are you serious?
They already expanded into Newton with the...get this...NEWTON CAMPUS. Its full of undergrads. You don't hear much complaining about this.
I don't see what the big objection is to the dorms. I live in the area, I walk my dog through the grounds of the seminary about every other day and I love that place. Yeah it will be sad to see the tranquility of it disturbed, but I would take the dorms and more people any day over the disgusting proposal of a baseball stadium. THat just kills me. Dorms could be added and the beauty of the land maintained, but the addition of an artificial turf baseball stadium will just ruin that place.
The dorms will be located on the corner closest to campus and I doubt many students will wander much out towards the area near the Edison school and Rogers park. I just don't get the fixation on the dorms. They are a much more preferable item to me than the godawful waste that is the baseball stadium.
Also, the dorms will result in minimal traffic impacts, whil stadium events will draw crowds, cars and noise.
They should also put a limit on the number of dormatories built
The number of dorms built should be limited, and put on or right close to campus. They should
not continue to expand deeply into nearby neighborhoods.
One problem
That former seminary campus? Now it is BC's campus (all your campus are belong to BC!). So if you want more dorms on campus... that's where they go. As for limiting the number of students at Boston area colleges, get over it. This is a college town, and becoming more so, and some of us (who aren't students, and who have never even been students in Boston, and who don't even hang out with students) like it that way.
I'm for more students, in more dorms. If they wanted to build one down the street from me, I wouldn't complain.
Again, I stand by my position
Again, I stand by my position that putting a cap on annual student enrollments wouldn't be a bad idea.
Would you like it if the government put a cap on your salary?
It boggles my mind how some people want to live in this dystopian world where success is penalized, freedoms are restricted and the status quo is all we should target. Until the population of the world starts to contract, expansion of everything is inevitable.
Setting enrollment caps is just absurd. How would enrollment caps be determined? Boston College has about 9000 undergrads and 5000 grad students. Harvard has 7000 undergrads and 12,000 grads. BU has 17,000 undergrads and 13,000 grads.
How should you determine the cap? 30,000? That's here BU is at. You want BC to double in size? Are you going to arbitrarily say one school can have more students than another? Please, stop this insanity. It is making my head hurt.
BonBons for Genentech
I remember seeing an editorial cartoon when a biotech firm wanted to build a castle over by Soldiers Field Road and wanted the state to hand over a whole bunch of tax concessions. It had their CEO characterized as a pampered poodle demanding bon bons.
Then there is Raytheon and its demands for fat tax breaks.
The colleges in Boston directly employ more than either of these firms put together. When you consider the employment generated by students buying stuff, that number goes even higher. One might think that Boston would like to keep them around? Sure, colleges get tax exemptions, but they aren't out of line with what the Cities and the Commonwealth were willing to hand out to keep certain somewhat smaller employers from jumping ship.
Baloney, anon-a-mouse!
Some schools are bigger or smaller than others and, yes, do have more students than others. Maybe a better idea would be if all the institutions of higher learning, regardless of their size did put a cap on annual student enrollment. Some schools do that. North Bennett Street School is a good example of that, and it works well. Moreover, trying to compare capping annual student enrollment at colleges and universities is totally ludicrous, because neither of them are even the slightest bit related.
As for schools doubling/tripling in size, what do you think is happening to places like BU, NU, etc? There lies a big part of the problem. City neighborhoods should not be allowed to evolve into one huge college campus, which does seem to be on the way towards happening. If I'm making your head hurt, or giving other posters here on UniversalHub headaches, well....so be it.
I just don't see your logic
Would BC have just been better off if they had been limited to an enrollment of 200 students and stuck in the South End? Should NU not have been allowed to expand out of the YMCA? Where and why do you draw the line? Are you suggesting Boston implement this cap? Where is the incentive? Because Alex Selvig doesn't want students peeing in his front lawn? Because we want to lose the influx of money and brains that come from all over to our city to other cities because our institutions can't compete?
Just because "you think it is a good idea" or because a tiny jewelry-making school did it are pretty invalid reasons. You yourself are saying making comparisons between schools is ludicrous and yet you use a totally ludicrous comparison. I was not comparing BU to BC I was just saying how do you justify that BC can only have half as many students as BU. Just "because"? Give me some logic here. A plan behind your ramblings.
Why shouldn't a neighborhood evolve into a campus? Maybe it should have never evolved into a neighborhood. Maybe we should all pack up, bulldoze, plant trees and give it all back to the natives...
Why shouldn't a neighborhood evolve into a college campus?
I know you fail to see my point...and there lies the rub, anon-a-mouse.
It's quite obvious why not. Why should all the families and/or life-time and longtime residents who were there long before a given college decided to make a whole neighborhood into their campus be driven out? I'll tell you this, buster: I would not want either me or my neighbors to be driven out of a place that I've been residing in for a long, long time just because an institution of higher learning decided to selfishly take over the neighborhood for its own ends, figuring it could make money hand over fist. Therefore, yes, I say that colleges and u niversities should not be allowed to continue their expansion into neighborhoods unabated.
I also might add that this:
is utter bullshit. Or are you being snarky and playing devil's advocate here?
Things Change
Farmers were driven off the land so that subdivisions could be rapidly erected to house immigrant laborers.
I suppose you would have decried that change and went on at length about the noisome bad habits of the "dirty Irish" (or Italians or ...) who moved in as well?
This isn't the same thing. Come on now, SwirlyGrrl!
We're talking about what's happening now, not something that happened two, three or four hundred years ago. Get real.
Plain and simple I dont care
Plain and simple I dont care how nice it makes the area if I (or whoever lived there before) cant live there anymore. They were there before the students, why should they have to go anywhere. Why does Harvard use fake names to buy land, why do neighbors get attacked when they are defending themselves. There are so many dillusional outsiders who seem to think they know whats best for us when they really dont have a clue.
Right on, ShadyMilkMan!!
Bravo!
its great it starts with an earthquake ...
Miki,
When anon-a-mouse and I are arguing on the same side of an issue, it can only mean two things:
1. there is some truth to what we both say
2. repent! The end is Near!
Ha Ha Ha! Really, anon....
n/m
My goodness
I just got home and had a chance to catch up on this and had the same thoughts...my goodness this surely feels strange.
Really though, the folks on the other side of the issue, I get where you are coming from and you passion. I HATE the thought of the seminary being developed. It now means I have to walk through a stadium to get to Chandler's Pond. Yuck! But really, just because "I don't like it" is not really anything to hang your hat on in an argument.
I am open to hearing a logical argument as to why the expansion should be stopped but all I hear is "driving out residents" and "ruining neighborhoods" but thats all subjective. I see the dorm work BC is doing as a positive. My pet issue is the stadium. I don't see the reasonable need for it. I see that as having a much bigger impact on its neighbors. But I would be willing to accept it because I can't come up with anything other than "I don't like it". I just hope they go with natural grass and not that awful fake stuff at least.
I am excited for the work that is underway on Foster Street that Mr. Pahre was so against. I walk Wiltshire Path daily and would love to see more activity over there. It would slow cars down and activate a relatively cold and desolate area.
I sputtered out of energy on
I sputtered out of energy on this lol, I live on the North Shore where the problem is not there, we have our own gentrification issues, but at least we dont have the universities to fight with.
But...
But what happened to that town you left... You're not a townie anymore, and now two communities are suffering for it!
Until you limit the number of people in the world
How is putting limits on the number of dorms a good idea? You have to allow enrollment to increase over time or eventually there will not be enough space in institutions for higher education for everyone. If enrollment is to expand, dorm expansion is appropriate. It sounds like you would like the world to never change.
Maybe we should just bulldoze all of BC and all of brighton and turn it back into a farm.
In a country with a free market economy, you can't just tell all of the colleges "ok, you have to put a cap on enrollment." We want to keep bright minds going to these institutions that help drive our still thriving local economy. As much as I hate the puke, beer cans, and flowers ripped out of my yard, have you ever thought about what this place would be like without the colleges. It would be more like Detroit. Adding dorms to the seminary land is the right thing to do. It will contract the campous out of, not expand it into, the surrounding neighborhood.
If you want to talk about deep expansion into a neighborhood, you have to look at Harvard. WHat they plan on doing is wiping out a neighborhood, the same neighborhood my grandparents live in and my father grew up in. Do you really think this city would be improved by telling Harvard "No more expansion, we don't want you to continue to be the best institution of higher education in the world." Its sad to see a niehgborhood get wiped out, but its the natural step for an ever-evolving city.
Good day.
Yeah, well....
The City of Cambridge really should crack down on Harvard for doing that, yeah. How's that for honesty?
City of Cambridge?
And how is the City of Cambridge supposed to crack down on Harvard for something it's doing in the City of Boston? The neighborhood they're overrunning is Allston, which is Boston.
Can't you at least get your geography straight?
:=)
No shit. ;=)
The City of Cambridge should crack down on Harvard's expansion deep into Cambridge's neighborhoods, and the City of Boston should crack down and limit Harvard's expansion deep into Boston's Allston neighborhood, not to mention the expansion of BU and NU, for instance. Now, is that straight enought for ya?
And then we can all hold hands and sing Kumbayah
As these institutions wither and die.
Why shouldn't these institutions be able to expand - intelligently? And with perhaps greater payments in lieu of taxes?
Any other industries you'd like to kill?
Just look at how Biotech has fucked up Kendall Square. Maybe we can ride AmGen out on a rail after you're through with BC and Harvard.
Don't take it too personally, but I'm glad you're not in charge. I'm happy to live somewhere with several growing, non-cyclical industries.
You think it's good?
Yeah, they should. Harvard is not going to want. They're a big institution as it is, and their campus is not only in Cambridge, but across the river as well.
To digress from this subject a bit: Boston's old West End is an excellent example of this kind of neighborhood destruction. It was bulldozed out of existence, only to be replaced by huge, not-so-attractive high-rise buildings, displacing hundreds, if not thousands of people, and destroying it as a neighborhood and a politica entity. It could've just been re-developed and not destroyed,
However, back to the subject at hand; if students are totally disruptive, unruly and out of control when they party at all hours of the night, they should not be surprised if they get into antagonisms with the longtime and lifetime residents of the area, or even end up being paid a visit by the local police. I've got little to no sympathy there.
Maybe the answer is not to
Maybe the answer is not to continue to feed the monster colleges and universities in the big city. The government can choose to send grant money to other colleges in other parts of the country and allow some smaller colleges to become specialized in areas of research or other endeavors. I actually see two problems with the huge expansions of the big colleges in the college cities across the country (specificly Boston) and that is
A) They are forcing out other residents and essentially gentrifying entire cities into one huge college campus.
B) Many students have to travel across the country to get to the best colleges in the country, thereby draining some areas of the best and brightest students who all choose to go to the fantasy land of liberal college town Boston.
I cant really blame out big colleges for wanting to expand as long as more people want to go to their colleges, afterall everyone wants to be the best at everything, and the more space you have and the more funds you generate you can be all things to all people.
I think cutting off government funding, or at least giving other schools a fairer shot at the funds would essentially clear up a little bit of space in our local institutions.
Oh also anyone who says that colleges dont make a killing on their undergrad students only needs to look at how much places like BU charge per student. Sure lots of kids get grants and financial aide but quite a few are paying almost full price. Combine that with class sizes that need a map to show you where to sit, and a telescope to see thedisplay board from the back (for underclassmen at least) and you can see how the whole thing is almost like a multi level marketing scheme with the Freshman and Sophmores doing most of the heavy lifting, Juniors and Seniors doing a little less, and finally grad students and researchers doing the very least.
This is a problem how?
Sounds like a win to me.
I guess its only a problem
I guess its only a problem if you happen to be someone who lives around here and are one of the local "townies" who are not "caring" and "liberal" enough for the students and former students tastes. Sometimes I feel its like you people just want us all to pack our bags and leave so you can complete your takeover of our hometown and turn it into one giant college campus with a giant game of drunken ultimate frisbee with some chess playing kids in one corner, and maybe a jazz club tossed in there somewhere.
Ive noticed that many of the new folks around here claim to be all about communities, but I dont see them that way. They left their homes behind to come here and mingle with other people just like them. So you live in Newton and belong to the local food coop, yeah wonderful your being a good member of the community! Nevermind that the small town you left behind is falling apart due to everyone moving out, or that city you left doesnt have any leaders in it because everyone came here to play instead. Its easy to be a good member of the community in a place like Newton, Brookline and even Allston/Brighton when all they want from you is for you to show up to a community meeting every now and then...
Which came first?
White flight that opened up units for rent
OR
Students renting in near-college neighborhoods?
Sure, the students drive some people out ... but the students were able to move in during the 1970s and 1980s because people sold and left.
So your going to punish the
So your going to punish the people who didnt leave AND the minority groups that filled in the gaps through expansion into the neighberhoods because jittery white people left town for greener yards??? Are you kidding me?
Fight! Fight!
(Popcorn)
Just pointing something out that you missed ...
What you missed is that the void left from flight from the city possibly resulted in three things:
1) it allowed students to escape the "in loco parentis" atmosphere and crowding/lack of privacy that characterized college living arrangements at the time
2) it enabled residents to profitably sell their multi-unit properties so they could leave the city, retire, etc. or get capital from their late parent's home.
3) it enabled colleges to expand enrollment without investing in residential infrastructure, as the added number of available housing units absorbed the added number of students that came with the baby boom
I'm not saying it is a good thing or a bad thing - it is just a very important piece of history you don't seem to grasp. It is entirely possible and highly probable that the students didn't "wreck" or "invade" the neighborhoods - they simply filled a void and then became overwhelmingly numerous. These sorts of shifts also characterize how an "Italian" or "working class" neighborhood can change over to an "hispanic".
It would be very intersting to see how the estimated student population, estimated permanent resident (census) population, the enrollments of area universities, and the percentage of students in campus housing all track from 1965 to the present.
More from Brighton
The early 80s also saw massive conversion of apartments to condos (I was kicked out of one building that way; fortunately, one roommate was a lawyer, so we were able to get more money than the law required). Many were bought by speculators who didn't live anywhere near the units, so of course they were more than happy to rent to high-occupancy groups of college students.
And I was SOOOO upset when the condo market then crashed and all these investors got hosed, you betcha.
Really?
While I'm sure there was some white flight from Allston/Brighton, wasn't the bulk of it in neighborhoods that had/have few students, like along Blue Hill Avenue and Washington Street (the one that goes through JP and Roslindale)?
I lived in Brighton in the early 1980s. Seems the way lots of students (and, for a time, Cambodians and Brazilians) got crammed in was not so much scared whites fleeing to Natick as landlords figuring out how to subdivide their units and turn boiler rooms into basement apartments and opportunistic homeowners figuring out how to cram more people into a given house (which led to absurdities like homeowners completely paving over their front lawns to provide off-streete parking; and I'm thinking of one house in particular at the corner of Summit and Allston, but it was hardly the only one). And, of course, they got help from the city, in the form of an ISD that didn't much seem to care, except when somebody got burned in a horrible fire or some annoying newspaper wrote about single apartments filled with several Cambodian families or whatever.
An Example
I worked with a guy at Arthur D. Little. His father also worked there, and lived in an Allston 2-family.
Earlier in the game, Generation 0 lived upstairs, and the father raised the son downstairs. The son and his siblings left for college, and the grandparents died when they were young adults.
The father still lived in the 2-family, but subdivided the upstairs unit into two units and rented to students because none of his kids wanted to live there - my coworker lived in Chelmsford. Yes, schools were a big issue, but so was that suburban lifestyle.
When the dad got pushed out during a round of layoffs, he proceeded to sell the place so he could retire elsewhere.
Go ahead - blame the students.
I'm not blaming students for anything here
Just questioning whether the vast majority of students moved into a vacuum created by whites fleeing the city or whether landlords realized the ISD would look the other way. When I think of "white flight" I picture blockbusting in Mattapan or school busing after 1974, not some guy retiring to the Cape.
Mixed picture
There were a whole host of pressures, but you can't deny that the shitty quality of the Boston Schools - where my then tiny niece and nephew were treated like yellow snow by administrators bent on vengence - was a factor in the student infiltration.
Younger folk refused to live in the houses they grew up in because they didn't want to raise their families in the city. Multi-generational households gave way to landlord-tenant households and then to real estate trusts. It wasn't just my coworkers - I knew people who rented in these neighborhoods and had their older, long-term resident landlords sell the place to people who had no intention of owner occupation. That this happened, in part, because an economic downturn forced retirements demonstrates the complexity of the issue. However, the younger generation avoiding the city, and a good piece of that avoidance being the school system, is part of the cause of the student housing takeover.
The way forward is not back
And what's going to fix it isn't trying to roll trends back and undo what's already done. Getting the students out of Allston by fiat is a non-starter. The colleges will continue moving forward, and so will the neighborhoods.
Demographic trends are as hard to fight as falling trees. A mix of economic downturn, white flight, crime, crappy schools, and generational preference shifts caused an exodus of certain types of people from the cities in the 70s and 80s.
At this point, the wash back is well underway. New professionals and families in Boston will end up pricing the students out as apartment tenements are torn down to build nice houses and condos. The colleges have professional planning teams that realize this, and that's why they want to build lots of dorms, in order to protect future enrollment.
I still think the future of Boston looks great.
De-townification
So townies from other towns come here and become un-townies and then they push out the actual townies, for a net loss of two?
I imagine it's likely that many of the people who actually move to Boston (i.e. not the temporary students who complain about jury duty) aren't depriving a particular other community of their presence. That might have happened a few moves ago, or they might be people entirely without home towns. That is to say, Boston college students who actually have home towns as such might be more likely to go back than mid-career professionals moving to Boston on purpose. There's no particular falling-apart community in their wake.
Myself, I've lived in a lot of falling-apart communities. I moved to Boston because I needed a real job. I'll take Boston any day. And, like Swirly says, there's probably a townie who moved away on his own volition for each newb showing up at a community meeting. At least we show up sometimes.
Way to go, ShadyMilkMan.
There's much in your above post with which I agree, ShadyMilkMan. However, as I've pointed out, I do stand by my position that expansion of colleges and universities really has gone too far, and really does need to be limited.