Apathy On The Belt

Phillips Brooks House has tried, and failed, to excite some Faculty interest in the Inner Belt. PBH's idea was to circulate a Faculty-student petition against the eight-lane highway and to call for a halt in planning until a major new transportation study for the metropolitan area had been completed.

The sad thing is not that this project floundered-because of PBH's own bureaucratic tangles-but that it was needed in the first place. Faculty members, many of whom live in the city, have apparently remained oblivious to the Belt and its implications for Cambridge. There has hardly been a stir of protest, though such a stir-had it come early enough and had it been large enough-might have bolstered considerably the campaign against the highway. It might still do some good, but most Faculty members apparently care little that the expressway may go through the center of Central Square and displace between 3000 and 5000 people (about five per cent of Cambridge's residential population).

There is an old cliche that Harvard people don't care about the rest of Cambridge. This case shows how very true cliches often are.