As the old adage goes, good fences make good neighbors. Each neighbor stays within his own boundaries, eliminating worrisome quarrels for land. It’s a line that has kept people living in close proximity to one another in friendly relations. For Northeastern, however, it seems there are no fences, which may be why we’re such bad neighbors.
Northeastern is well into the process of developing Parcel 18, a tract of land the university owns in Roxbury. The school has already broken ground on a high-rise residence hall slated for the spot and is currently in negotiations with the Marriot Hotel to build a new hotel in the space. These actions have managed to alienate the citizens of Roxbury, a group of people we should be befriending.
It’s not necessarily our obligation to seek the approval of Roxbury citizens. After all, Northeastern has to do what is in its best interest, and building a new residence hall is certainly within those interests as an institution. A fancy new residence hall will attract students and help ease strained relations with permanent Boston residents due to the excess of students living off-campus. A hotel will bring in much needed revenue, which could help support programs of all shapes and sizes.
There’s no reason not to keep relations with Roxbury as friendly as possible, but it seems Northeastern is almost going out of its way not to. The Boston Resident’s Jobs Policy, a good-faith agreement required of all construction sites in the city, stipulates that at least 50 percent of the total employee worker hours in each construction project be Boston residents. At Parcel 18, that number is currently 21.2 percent. The policy also states that at least 25 percent of the workers should be minorities and at least 10 percent should be women. But Northeastern has failed to meet its agreement in those categories, too. The total work hours for minorities and women are 23.6 percent and 2.5 percent, respectively, at Parcel 18.
What’s more disturbing is Northeastern’s uninterested attitude toward the plight of the concerned Roxbury community. It’s understandable that Roxbury citizens would be worried about Northeastern continuing to buy properties in the area, which may infringe on the community and give the sense that Northeastern is taking and giving little back. It would make sense that the university would want to ease these concerns, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. As seen by the past summer’s protest by the Lower Roxbury Residents Leadership Group, the Roxbury community is clearly still upset.
In a letter that Robert Gittens, Northeastern’s vice president for public affairs, sent to the Roxbury community in July, he said the university has held more than 40 meetings regarding the plans for Parcel 18 and has planned to release a community benefits package, detailing how Northeastern and the development of Parcel 18 would benefit the community. To date, Northeastern has still not released the finalized package, after multiple promises that they would.
Such actions are doing little to help Northeastern’s shoddy reputation in the community. Many students live and thrive in the Roxbury community, and these decisions reflect poorly on them. How can the administration expect the Roxbury community to respond positively when it doesn’t uphold its promises?
We may not be obligated to give Roxbury anything, but if we’re going to be living next to each other, the least we can do is try to get along. We need to make a clear effort to reach the community and demonstrate to them that, by taking the land, we’re moving Northeastern students out of apartments. By building the hotel, we’re giving the community job opportunities. We’re doing the best we can to make this co-habitation as easy as possible. At the very least, we owe them that.
