By Glenn Billman, news staff
Students, administrators and Northeastern University Police Department (NUPD) officers gathered Wednesday for a community meeting to discuss the way Northeastern interacts with the surrounding neighborhoods, especially regarding student housing and development.
Approximately 25 students attended the first Student Experience Town Hall at the Alumni Center on Columbus Avenue, which Student Government Association (SGA) Executive Vice President Suchira Sharma and SGA Senator Jake Grondin began organizing in January. Sharma and Grondin, who are are running on opposing slates for SGA president and executive vice president, respectively, planned the town hall to facilitate productive interactions between the university and the student body with a focus on Northeastern’s effect on the community.
“The university often makes a decision that’s published in Northeastern News and then a student newspaper reports on the student feedback from that,” said Sharma, a junior business administration major. “Why not just get everyone in a room together and have that conversation there?”
Attendees asked the six-person panel of administrators and NUPD officers questions about housing, policing and gentrification. Panelists included Vice President and Chief of Campus Planning and Development Kathy Spiegelman, Vice President of City and Community Affairs John Tobin and four NUPD officers: Chief of Police Michael Davis, Deputy Chief of Police Ruben Galindo, Lieutenant Meghan Caine and Sergeant John Farrell, the crime prevention coordinator.
Paulina Ruiz, SGA vice president for student services and Sharma’s running mate for SGA executive vice president, voiced accusations that Northeastern violated agreements from the Institutional Master Plan (IMP). The IMP outlines Northeastern’s growth initiatives, and all large institutions, such as universities and hospitals, must involve residents and elected officials in creating IMPs and then submit them to the Boston Planning and Development Agency.
City Councilor Tito Jackson previously accused Northeastern of reneging on agreements made in the IMP with Roxbury Crossing residents. In January 2016, Northeastern amended the IMP, which was previously agreed upon by the university and Roxbury residents, to increase the square footage of the future Burke Street residence hall. Amendments, unlike the original IMP, do not require community engagement and can be made by notifying the Boston Planning and Development Agency.
A referendum on the most recent ballot intended to resolve this issue and proposed giving residents of surrounding neighborhoods final decision-making power in university development projects when those decisions are supported by a majority of the affected neighborhoods’ residents. The results of this referendum, which was proposed by Students Against Institutional Discrimination, will be announced Tuesday.
Ruiz, a sophomore psychology major, alleged that enrollment is greater than Boston’s goal of 15,000 undergraduates and that there aren’t currently on-campus accommodations for 75 percent of undergraduates, as the document mandates. News analysis of housing data confirmed this, showing that of the 14,290 undergraduates at the Boston campus in fall 2015, 39.1 percent lived off campus, up from 36.3 percent in spring 2011.
Spiegelman countered that some students are out of the city for co-op and study abroad and are not counted toward those goals. She also pointed out that the construction of the new residence hall on Burke Street will help house more students on campus.
Spiegelman said the co-op program’s goal to integrate students into the community is at odds with the local communities’ qualms with students moving off campus.
“There’s a little bit of a conflict between what the university would like to see on behalf of its students and what neighbors want to see on behalf of the students, and the idea is to kind of come to a combination,” Spiegelman said. “And more important than that, to make students living in the neighborhood not a bad thing. Ideally, we want any of you that end up living off campus to be considered welcome and not a negative.”
Tobin acknowledged past issues with transparency and said the present administration aims to create quick-acting, open solutions.
“Moving forward, all agreements signed have to go through the whole IMP process and can’t be made somewhere in a sub shop, or an office somewhere,” Tobin said. “We’re going to talk about it; it’s going to become part of the Master Plan. Everybody’s going to be in on it, and it’s going to be very transparent.”
Spielberg emphasized the positive role Northeastern strives to have in the community.
“We have a series of commitments to try and do business with small, local women and minority-owned businesses,” Spielberg said. “We have Northeastern Crossing that came out of the Master Plan, a whole series of efforts to try to connect what we do here with things that the community benefits from.”
Students asked NUPD panelists about how they handle student behavior off-campus, especially regarding community complaints about the students who live in low-cost housing on Mission Hill.
Farrell said after years of neighbor complaints about noise, parties and other disturbances, the Boston Police Department (BPD) now allows NUPD to patrol Mission Hill Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. NUPD also works with BPD, the Office of Student Conduct and Conflict Resolution and the Office of City and Community Affairs to counsel students on how to be better neighbors and to discipline them when necessary.
As a result of these efforts, Farrell said complaints from Mission Hill residents have decreased drastically.
“Take the Hill for example,” Farrell said. “Northeastern students make up the vast majority of the students living there, but people aren’t calling for Northeastern’s head like they used to because our students are responding.”
When talking about creating a stronger connection between the university and its community, Davis said Northeastern and NUPD are not detracting from the community, rather they are contributing to it.
“We are a true asset to this community,” Davis said. “We’re not some sort of gentrifying albatross, you know, pushing people out. We’re not that, at all. And we have a police department that’s positioned correctly, I think. We’re going to de-centralize a little bit in the future to weave ourselves deeper into the community.”
SGA Director of Senator Outreach Nathan Hostert, a freshman political science major, said the meeting was a valuable opportunity to gain insight to the university’s plan and ask tough questions to administrators. Hostert is one of the campaign managers for Alex Bender and Grondin’s slate for SGA president and executive vice president.
“I think that around the board, SGA could do a better job, the administration could do a better job at just bringing more students to the table who maybe don’t feel included,” Hostert said. “There are so many passionate students on this campus that don’t have that avenue to get their concerns to the administration, and I think a town hall like this is a great first step to making sure those voices are heard.”
Sharma said that while she was a little disappointed with the attendance, the town hall was a good first step to increasing communication between students and the university. Sharma and Grondin both said they hope to make the town hall a semesterly tradition to encourage faculty-student engagement.
“I think that a lot of students, depending on what organization you’re from, you have a lot easier or more difficult access to administrators, and a space like a town hall, we set up the meeting for them,” Grondin said. “You just get to come, you can voice your concerns, there’s really no restriction on what types of things you can bring up, what questions you ask. The administrators are right there.”
