It’s election season. We’ve seen several now in our tenure as Northeastern University students. Every year it’s the same thing. This councilor makes this promise, that candidate says that. One trend that we have also been noticing is that nearly every candidate and incumbent finds it necessary to sound off about how he is going to handle “the student problem” in Boston.
This time around, we find councilor-at-large Stephen Murphy, backed up by Councilors Yancey and Tobin, trying to pass a measure that will charge each college in Boston $100 per student, per semester, to cover the cost of increased security measures taken during Red Sox/Yankees baseball games.
That’s $2,800,000 charged to Northeastern University alone, which will without doubt fall into the hands of the students who have suffered through increased tuition each year.
Students should oppose the arbitrary fee proposed as election fodder for a losing incumbent city councilor as it places an undue, unneeded and undeserved burden on an already taxed student population. Also, aside from the fact that the proposal is capricious and arbitrary, it is blatantly discriminatory. In last Thursday’s “Daily Free Press,” Councilor Murphy, the chief sponsor of this initiative, who is desperately trying to cling to his quickly sliding away City Council seat, was quoted as saying, “I didn’t exactly see any senior homes emptying out to riot after the Red Sox won last year.”
That statement, in and of itself, shows the sheer disregard that the city council has for students.
If the city wants to charge every student a fee, knowing full well that not nearly all students took part in or will take part in rioting, they should just as well track down each and every Boston and area resident who was present during Super Bowl and baseball riots and charge them, their families and their friends $100 every six months. It is the same concept as charging tens of thousands of students a fee for something that they have never had any part in.
We students are a measurable demographic, not altogether different from gender, nationality and religion. We are a numbered group of people living grouped together in communities. Off campus, we are huddled together and gouged on rents, living in Boston’s most dangerous neighborhoods. We students represent a minor percentage of all Boston residents. We are discriminated against by government policies featuring made-up fees that would give the City of Boston enough money to handle a decade’s worth of riot police, even though zero incidents were reported on our campus during February’s Super Bowl victory.
Last year, our City Council tried to give the police a listing of who we were and we lived so that we could be monitored like criminals. Now, the City Council is out and out assuming criminality by charging each of us money that we can’t afford to cover the unknown costs of possible crimes that we probably will not commit. Does this sound odd to anyone else?
– John Guilfoil is a junior criminal justice major and the executive vice president for Student Affairs; Ashley Adams is a junior international affairs major and the president of SGA.
