By Hao Lu, News Correspondent
Starting his community work at his childhood church, Bruce Bickerstaff, a 65-year-old Roxbury resident, has been enjoying his life by interacting with people and contributing to the neighborhood, as well as bringing peace and justice to where he lives.
Bickerstaff has been living in Roxbury for 20 years. He came to Boston from Ohio in 1971 at the age of 25. Now he works in the community as chairman of the Roxbury Trust Fund and the Zoning Board of Appeals for the City of Boston.
“I’ve been engaged in the community of Roxbury and Dorchester politically, civically for a long time,” Bickerstaff said. “It’s all about the future. Our future is our children and making more accessible and friendly the interface between the community and the universities.”
Right now Bickerstaff is engaged in the Northeastern University Community Task Force with other members from the community to work on Northeastern’s second Institutional Master Plan, which will be in effect from the end of this year until 2023.
“We are still having the conversation about building more housing space, possibly making suggestions that how the institution can put more students beyond freshman and sophomore [year] live on campus as oppose to the community which can drive up the costs of living for housing, disallowing families and working folks to live in the communities,” Bickerstaff said.
He suggested two things Northeastern could do as a responsible neighbor: are regularly track the numbers of students who live off-campus and give the community members access to the university’s academic and research resources.
“They could recruit more formally with Boston public schools,” Bickerstaff said. “Boston schools have the need for tutors and quality advisers to help bring the level of education up, and the institution could be quite useful in that area.”
Similar to what is happening in the Fenway and Mission Hill neighborhoods, Bickerstaff said, the problem Northeastern has with Roxbury is also the overwhelming number of students living off campus, which will drive housing prices up and bring public safety issues to the community.
“There are going to be some impacts negatively and positively,” Bickerstaff said. “You can talk to some people, like Mike’s Donuts, the students do provide quite a bit cash to their coffers, this is positive. But if you look at statistics of the housing prices over the last decade, you will be shocked by the price of property that challenges folks with families to come in and buy at an affordable level.”
Bickerstaff said community members would be willing to have several conversations with President Joseph Aoun about important IMP issues.
“It’s difficult to see who and where we are as a community until we hear from him. We hear his voice from behind a giant mask, but we never see the person who’s running the operations. It becomes difficult to trust what is talked about in the meetings when there is always a kind of limbo,” Bickerstaff said.
Besides getting involved in this community work, Bickerstaff has been a barber since 1984. Now he is a master barber who works only for private clients.
“In terms of interaction with people, there is nothing better,” Bickerstaff said. “I’ve met governors of states, captains of finance, actors, actresses, leaders of countries, you know, it’s something that brings everybody into a common place. When you put the cape on a person, you know who they are, and you will get and share their story.”
Having engaged in community work for decades, Bickerstaff does not feel like he will ever end this lifetime job.
“Retire? Yeah, when I’m dead,” Bickerstaff said as he laughed. “My interests will always be around by environment, you know, by [my] community, the country and then the world. As long as I’m here, I will contribute somewhere in order to bring peace and justice as I can. Until we come to some kind of understanding among human beings, there is always a job to do.”
