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When did Allston become a gritty killing field?

Read the Globe today and you'd get the impression that Allston is a place where decent people fear to tread, lest they be raked to bits by roving gangs of thugs.

Reporter Tracy Jan is attempting to compare how the University of Pennsylvania revitalized some neighborhood through development with how Harvard is digging big holes in the ground in Allston, which is fine as far as it goes. No need to make Allston sound like the Murder Capital of Massachusetts, when it isn't. Plus, as the Outraged Liberal notes, the article glosses over the fact that while UPenn cleaned up a hellhole not of its own making, many of Allston's problems are due to the way Harvard (secretly) moved in and created a monumental expanse of nothingness:

Let's carefully note the "blight" she refers to is caused by "university-owned lots and storefronts that have sat vacant for years."

In other words, Harvard is committed to trying to clean up a mess it has created. A rather big difference, don't you think?

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Comments

I'm not sure where she went to college, but Jan seems to have "degree-envy" issues that she expresses by picking on Harvard. She's not a journalist, she's more of a blogger, and I wouldn't be sorry to see her vanish from the Globe. Then perhaps she'd start a blog for readers who prefer her half-baked, predictable editorializing to neutral, fact-based reporting. But that wouldn't be me. I'm hardly a Harvard cheerleader myself, but I can't stand how biased and unprofessional she is.

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