Fighting for Change in the Trenches

Politically minded Harvard students have a lot to be excited about this summer, with several high-stakes political races unfolding in the Bay State. There’s the dramatic election to replace John Kerry in the Senate, and due to Congressman Markey winning the special U.S. senate election, another will be held to represent his current Congressional district—which happens to include Cambridge.

It makes sense, then, that Harvard students would be excited about these nationally covered elections. We come from across the country and around the world, after all, and young people are naturally drawn to campaigns where they see the opportunity to put their idealism to use: to effect some positive change.

But true change is born in the grassroots and won in our city halls. The “young vote” has to realize that we need to get involved in municipal politics. Young voters—like the rest of the electorate—are far less likely to vote in municipal elections. But these races—more than their national counterparts—present us with tremendous opportunities to act on our idealism in truly practical ways.

Many college students voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012 because his message of equality and opportunity resonated with their idealism. If we want to continue to work toward that message, however, we have to get our hands dirty in America’s city halls. The upcoming mayoral race in Boston provides Harvard students with the perfect opportunity to do exactly that, to become involved in municipal politics.

This race is worth our attention, no less, because the education of nearly 60,000 Boston Public Schools students is at stake. Boston operates under what is called a “strong mayor” system, in which the mayor appoints most high-level officials inside the city government, including the school committee. He (or she), by virtue of that power, also has considerable say in choosing the superintendent of schools.

Boston’s next leader is also likely to stay in power for the long haul. The city’s mayors are famous (perhaps even infamous) for their never-ending tenures, and the last time a sitting mayor lost his bid for reelection was all the way back in 1949. Even that defeat occurred only under incredible circumstances—sitting mayor James Michael Curley had once won reelection from the confines of a jail cell, but was later defeated by the interim mayor who had kept his chair warm while Curley was serving his time.

Mayor Curley’s story, thankfully, is not the norm for Boston, but it does serve to illustrate how Boston rarely unseats its mayor. Given the mayor’s power over Boston’s public school system, the future of the city depends on whom the city elects. If we really care about lifting up the downtrodden, expanding the middle class, and helping out the vulnerable, we need to get involved in this election. Furthermore, we all call this city home for four years at the least, so it stands to reason we should care about its future.

If that future is going to be a bright one, Boston needs a mayor who will confront its educational issues. 42% of children in Roxbury, Mattapan, and Dorchester (Boston’s most populous neighborhood) live below the poverty line, the achievement gap is sizable in Boston, and it’s only getting wider. Meanwhile, underperforming schools feature astonishing dropout rates, meager graduation rates, and abysmal test scores.

It might be easy to write off these problems as mere “societal” issues or solely as issues of funding, but both of these diagnoses fail to take account of deeper, systemic problems. Paying our teachers better and being sensitive to the poverty cycles at play in Boston’s poorest neighborhoods are both essential strategies for making our schools better—and the mayor has the power to put both strategies in place. Still, however, they cannot fix the city’s schools alone.

Rather, Boston’s next mayor needs to be a reformer who is willing to fight the political battles necessary to improve the Boston Public Schools. The next mayor needs to make sure that students can choose excellent schools, and that the city can place its most effective educators in the schools that need them the most. The next mayor cannot stand for a system that lays off the Massachusetts Teacher of the Year simply because that teacher lacks seniority. Such policies place politics first, and the city’s students last.

We made our voices heard for Obama, for Warren, for Markey. Now is the time to put our ideals to use in the trenches of municipal politics. We can campaign until we’re blue in the face in the big-name, national races—but the best place to make good on our idealism and activism is our local city hall.

John A. Griffin III  ’16, a Crimson editorial writer, lives in Lowell House.