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Harvard kids strangely unmoved by crime across the river
By adamg on Wed, 09/23/2009 - 9:16am
There's a wonderful headline in the Crimson today: Harvard Students Remain Largely Unaware of a String of Violent Crimes in Boston:
... [A]nother student, Elizabeth H. Thompson '12, when informed of the incidents, said, "I've walked into Boston at night once or twice and I probably wouldn't do that anymore." ...
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Comments
Cambridge treats itself like
Cambridge treats itself like it's own little city separate from Boston and Harvard then cuts itself off from Cambridge. Each house then cuts itself off from Harvard. So pretty much unless it happens in the "house" you are living in on the Quad you do not hear about it.
Really more a comment on the Crimson than Harvard students
Who thought up the story?
Why should Harvard students be concerned about crime in parts of Boston they've probably never even heard of, much less visited?
It's not like there are murders right on campus or something. Oh, wait ...
The Real Headline...
should have been, "Crimson Writers Pissed They Don't Work for the Herald."
In other news, last weekends shootings were bad, but does anyone else actually believe we're going through a major spike in crime? I take it back, the real headline should have been, "Crimson's New Writers Surprised City Not Like Back Home in the Suburbs."
And shouldn't they be
And shouldn't they be focusing on Central square, East Cambridge and East Somerville?
All of which are much closer and have their own problems with crime.
Scare / Death / What can kill you "news" stories are probably as old as newspapers, but it has me wondering when the first documented one was printed.
The Crimson is a good paper
The Crimson is a good paper because it updates daily and has a focus on the Harvard area so anyone who deals with Cambridge tends to read it. It also covers many different stories and has rotating writers every year so it also can be rather interesting.
The Crimson is a bad paper because it updates daily and has a focus on the Harvard area. It also has a rotating staff of writers who write about the SAME STORY every year and use old drawn out stereotypes to make their stories sound pithy and relevant to the days news.
You are right what do they care about crime in Dorchester, how does it even remotely affect them. It is especially even less relevant because Harvard is not free of crime and Harvard/MIT were included in the most "dangerous campuses" of America that was posted yesterday.
How is that different ...
from people who have lived in Boston or other neighborhoods of other communities most or all their lives and have never been to certain other areas where they don't live ... and don't even realize there is a river four blocks away?
... and why should they be "moved" by it?
I doubt many Harvard students routinely travel into the areas that are described here. It's not like these crimes happened at the Hatch Shell or the Common or Haymarket.
If a murder happened in Waltham Center (about the same distance from Harvard as Dorchester is), would that really affect Harvard students significantly? Hyde Park is even further away.
I'm also amused by the idea that any Harvard students would be expected to read the Herald.
Crimson's non-story
Take any campus around the country, and it's standard operating procedure for many students to be oblivious to the everyday issues of the city or town surrounding it.
It's not just Harvard students. How many of us who went away to college (heh, in my case, a 45 minute drive from home!) can claim to have been keyed into the major news events of the local community?