City's Newest Citizens Get Acquainted With Cambridge

There's a whole lot more to Cambridge than just Harvard Square.

Just ask any one of 30 freshmen who took a five-hour long walking tour of their new hometown yesterday with Cambridge Mayor Francis H. Duehay '55 and two Harvard students.

Yardlings from as far away as India, Mexico and South Dakota gathered at Memorial Hall and trooped down Cambridge St. to explore the farthest reaches of "the real city."

Let's Get Acquainted

The voyage was one of several orientation outings sponsored by the Freshman Dean's Office this week to acquaint Harvard's greenest students with their urban surroundings. After a Sunday night lecture about how to look at a city and what to take advantage of, about 500 freshmen boarded boats the next day for a tour of Boston Harbor and nearby Georges Island, according to Associate Dean of Freshmen W.C. Burriss Young '55.

Yesterday, different groups of freshmen learned about ecology between Fenway and the Boston Common, walked through the North End, and toured Boston City Hall and the State House.

The off-beat tour through Cambridge exposed students to "the other side of the tracks," as one speaker put it, including a look at the city's housing projects, poultry shops and arts centers.

"This is a city of contrasts," said Dr. Emilio Carillo, a local Hispanic leader who spoke about ethnic issues affecting local residents. "Right here in Cambridge we have the richest and the poorest census tracts in Massachusetts."

After Carillo's talk at the Harrington School, several students chatted in Spanish with an administrator while others discussed volunteering opportunities with representatives of the Portuguese and Haitian communities in Cambridge.

"To tell the truth, in my four years around Harvard Square, I don't think I ever got this far into Cambridge," said John Barnes '69, who briefly spoke to the freshmen in the school's auditorium about the local Central American community.

College Role Models Wanted

Later on, at the Washington Elms public housing project, community activist Janet Rose emphasized the need for active college role models in the city's poorest neighborhood.

"We hated Harvard and MIT students because they take our houses," Rose said during lunch near the projects. "Then somebody said, 'Let's get students working with the neighborhood,'" said the mother of two Harvard students, nothing that many local children lack things like sports and computer instruction.

"You get to Harvard and you don't know there's people between Harvard and MIT," Rose said.

From there, the students journeyed to the recently-restored Cambridge Multi-Cultural Arts Center for a glance at posters by schoolchildren supporting peace efforts with the Soviet Union. Duehay followed with a quick explanation about the city's unique nuclear disarmament commission, which advocates a peace curriculum in city schools.

Along the way, the small band of tourists even stopped at City Hospital to meet the now-famous local health commissioner who made the Department of Defense halt the testing of deadly nerve gases in the city.

Most of the freshmen on the tour said they hadn't yet traveled much beyond the Square and jumped at the chance to familiarize themselves with a different part of Cambridge.

"I wanted to discover the place I'm going to live in for the next four years," said Marco K. Malisani of Turin, Italy. Malisani got an early introduction to one of the area's most colorful political figures, 70-year old City Councilor Alfred E. Vellucci, at the Dante Aligheri Italian cultural center in East Cambridge.

Vellucci--known throughout the city for his love of students and skirmishes with their institutions--gave the freshmen their first taste of town-gown tensions.

"Something happened after World War I--a whole lot of good programs disappeared which created a relationship between the city and the universities," the former three-term mayor said about the days when Cambridge high school graduates were admitted to MIT free of charge.

Eye-Opening

"The interesting thing about this tour is how little I knew about Cambridge," said Jessica L. Mark, a North Cambridge native who graduated last spring from nearby Rindge and Latin High School, who along with Duehay and the Public Service Program's William Gump '85-86, planned the day's itinerary.

"I always knew Cambridge was an academic community, but there's so much more," said Gary L Negbaum of Manhattan.

While he hailed the program as a success, Young said yesterday he wasn't so sure it would be offered again, explaining that "you can't get the mayor of Cambridge trotting around the streets with students every day