A Crime-Free Cambridge

Last week an unidentified man behaving suspiciously fired a gun at a Cambridge Police Department officer in Harvard Square. The gunman, police determined after his arrest, had robbed several Harvard College students. A few days earlier, a man walking through Harvard Yard after midnight was robbed at gunpoint. In front of Thayer Hall, the alleged offender stole his wallet and fled the scene.

A string of several other armed robberies over the last two weeks preceded these two incidents. Harvard’s safety apparatus subsequently sent advisories to students and faculty in the community with tips on how to avoid being a victim of a robbery—or how to avoid bloodshed once a crime has commenced.

More than anything else, the rise of these robberies can be explained, it seems, in plain economic terms. As the recession continues for many debt-ridden and jobless individuals, increasing numbers of the economically afflicted are resorting to violence as a means of relief, likely to feed or house themselves or their families.

It is clear this desperation is tormenting our nation, from Boston to other metropolitan centers in which modern-day Hoovervilles are still cropping up. (To impart a family anecdote, one relative recently told me that a kid—probably not even in his early teens—jumped him in New York City as he was getting to his car to drive home from work.)

The recent criminal acts and attempted ones—it goes without saying—have frightened the living daylights out of many a Boston student. As I’ve told friends, the incidents have stopped me from making late-night Pinocchio’s pizza runs for academic fuel or getting after-hour pharmaceutical supplies from our local CVS.

Although the acts seem more visible with colleges in session, the crime problem across the Massachusetts collegiate landscape shouldn’t come as a surprise. The data here, compared to other university cities and towns, show Harvard and other Massachusetts schools to be victims of crime disproportionately.

In the Daily Beast’s compilation of the nation’s least safe schools, Tufts was ranked first and Harvard second. Three of the state’s other universities (MIT, Lesley, and Northeastern) made the top 30, and the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth branch made it within the 50-mark.

The recent Cambridge incidents and similar ones across the Bay State’s campuses testify to the online news magazine’s ranking and are reason for serious concern. Between the six of them, after calculation of the Beast’s report, there have been two murders, 222 rapes, 462 robberies, and 1948 burglaries. These numbers are more than problematic—they threaten the very livelihood of a most promising and diverse student population.

There is not a single policy prescription for correcting what has become a persistent crime issue. But the successful approach to fixing the problem will not derive from cut-and-dry liberal or conservative government policy; neither welfare nor law and order is the answer.

Instead, the community’s response should be innovative solutions born out of partnership between Boston’s universities, Governor Deval L. Patrick, and his colleagues in the Massachusetts State Assembly. First, as a practical matter, university police forces must combine intelligence and work collectively to provide ample security, especially in vulnerable campus locations where previous crimes have been reported or occurred.

But more is in order: Boston’s public and private universities should organize a series of forums on campus safety and economic security. In a united effort, with support of each university president, such an inter-collegiate alliance could orchestrate community engagements, such as city-wide soup-kitchen days, classes, and counseling hours for homeless men, women, and children of every creed and color, and larger campus-based initiatives to put people back to work.

These might include (but are certainly not limited to) the creation of campus greenhouses to be constructed, operated, and housed by homeless citizens and those in severe economic distress. Harvard and its peer schools must experiment with programs intended to combat crime and generate sustainable employment opportunities.

Coordinated inter-campus dialogue and projects of this nature can elicit a clear road for the passage of poverty-fighting and job-creating infrastructure measures across Massachusetts. Violence is not the answer is the message that will ring clear.

This is an opportunity for the newly re-elected governor and our major universities to collaborate. It is at the core of their respective charters to perform these functions—to protect our children and to ensure them a crime-free future.

Alexander B. Heffner ’12 is a history concentrator in Mather House.