A New Salvo Against Harvard

Harvard has always been a popular target of the City Council, but some of this year's most vocal criticism has come from an unexpected source-Councillor William H. Walsh.

A two-term Council member, Walsh has won both his elections as a forceful critic of rent control. As a real estate lawyer, he has often been a natural ally for business and condominium developers.

"I don't think there's ever been a development project that Bill Walsh... didn't like, no matter how big, no matter how ugly," says Gladys P. Gifford, president of the Harvard Square Defense Fund.

But in the current Council session, Walsh has spent much of his time arguing that the city's largest developer-Harvard-is getting too much of a free ride.

Recent weeks have seen a rash of Walsh-sponsored proposals designed to make sure Harvard pays its fair share for city services.

Prominent among these efforts was an investigation of the payments Harvard makes in lieu of taxes on buildings used for affiliated housing, such as Peabody Terrace. At a Council hearing on the matter, Walsh described the alternative payments an example of "the Derek Bok philosophy" of avoiding responsibility to the city.

And at last week's meeting Walsh criticized a proposed restructuring of water payment rates as too kind to institutions, saying afterwards that the plan exemplified the city's "fear of the power of the universities."

Walsh says his current positions toward the University stem from a dinner for the Council that President Bok hosted last summer. At the meal, Walsh says he noticed a deterioriation in the state of relations between Harvard and the city.

He says he realized at the dinner that Harvard's support for city activities had fallen off. In particular, he says the University has reduced its help to the school system, such as assisting teachers and donating used equipment.

Harvard's Associate Vice President for State and Community Affairs Jacqueline O'Neill replies that the University recently gave a used bus to the North Cambridge Catholic High School, a private institution.

Now, Walsh says, the University receives benefits from the city without giving city institutions anything in return.

He adds that his recent proposals do not represent a change of heart.

"I've never had a pro-Harvard position," says Walsh. "Harvard is a neighbor, and you have to work with a neighbor."

The relationship between Harvard and the city is so complex, he says, that it took most of his first term for him to grasp it. Now, he says, he has the experience necessary to combat the University.

"You hear words like 'affiliated housing,'" he says. "But it took more than a year to get to the bottom of it."

Liberal City Councillors in Cambridge are generally backed by the Cambridge Civic Association, while conservatives, such as Walsh, run as Independents. But Harvard-bashing is not limited to either side.

Traditionally, such criticisms have been the domain of Mayor Alfred E. Vellucci, whose creative attacks have often left Harvard officials' heads spinning.

In his 32-year tenure on the City Council, Vellucci has proposed annexing Harvard Yard by eminent domain and paving it over, forcing the University to secede from the city and establishing a community garden on the overpass between the Yard and the Science Center.

Walsh says his proposals are of a different nature than Vellucci's.

"The mayor is very critical in general," he says. "I'm much more critical on specific issues-payments in lieu of taxes... areas in which Harvard can help."

"I don't think anybody can steal a march on Al Vellucci," says William Noble, a leader of the Cambridge Tenants Union. "He's sort of a unique person in the city."

'Very Receptive'

While Walsh may be critical of the University in public, Harvard's O'Neill says he doesn't handle controversies like an adversary.

"Whenever I have called him to express the University's point of view he's been very receptive," she says. "We have a very good working relationship."

Fellow Independent Councillor Walter J. Sullivan Jr. says Walsh's concerns are no different than those of the Council's other Independents.

However, Sullivan says Walsh's experience as a lawyer gives him expertise that the other Councillors lack.

"He just came up with some new things to hit them with," says Sullivan.

But a few city residents are skeptical of Walsh's recent activities.

"I think he's just using the issue opportunistically-just trying to get publicity," says Noble. "For a number of the Independents, there's been a tradition of Harvard-bashing."