The second I stepped out of the gates, I took off my red lanyard and let out an exhausted sigh. The spring air felt different out here — more like a city than the insulated Harvard Yard. There were people walking about in groups, hanging shopping bags from their elbows, and giggling through exciting conversations. I took another deep breath and shifted my gaze to my destination: The Harvard Shop.
From the moment I checked into Visitas, the Harvard experience was as grandiose as the media portrayed it. Professors taught sample lessons about cutting-edge technology in giant lecture halls. Student organizations spoke about senators and presidents like distant relatives who bid their visit with one phone call and the “Harvard Name”. Towering marble libraries held millions of volumes, all brimming with knowledge. All around, I could feel the ancient buzz of the institution and the promise of “unlimited resources” and “infinite opportunities.”
It all felt wonderful, overwhelming, utopic, and somewhat like a dream. Coming from a small, forested town in the Pacific Northwest, it was hard to find the words to respond to my immigrant mother’s questions about “What’s it like?” The truth is, everything about Harvard felt so powerful. So lavish. So hard for me to wrap my head around.
But now that it was all over, my feet planted just outside the gates, I stepped toward The Harvard Shop across the street. Still swirling from the weekend, it took me longer to process the yelling. I didn’t know which direction it was coming from, but soon, I noticed a group of people clustered around the sidewalk, peering downward. Concerned, I snapped out of my haze and ran towards the crowd. Someone was hurt. I rushed up to a gap between the crowd and looked down at the source of the commotion.
A young Black man, no more than 25 years old, was sprawled on the ground. His eyes, opening and closing — mostly closed. His mouth was moving slowly like he was trying to get out words, but the loud voices overpowered him. I had seen this before, this man was overdosing, struggling to stay conscious. Almost in confirmation, the man next to me shouted, “He’s overdosing!” and the group quickly tightened around the man in concern.
At this point, some people knelt down and began to shake the man by his shoulders, another putting two fingers to his wrist, searching for a pulse. More yelling, more despair. The crowd closed in, and I, unmoving from my position of paralysis, was left with a sliver of vision through the circle — an image that hasn’t escaped my memory.
Stark contrast against his brown skin, long neon red locs splayed outwards from the man’s head and upon the burgundy bricks. From my distance, his hair looked like blood, fresh crimson, leaking out onto the sidewalk. I realized then, that this man was going to die in front of my eyes. It was such a contrast, the porous, worn bricks, walked on by some of the most infamous individuals of our nation, yet, still, the deathbed of an unhoused man.
A person moved in front of my vision, and I stepped back. Slowly, I turned around and walked toward The Harvard Shop. “Not here. Not here. This can’t happen here.” Refusing to watch — refusing to bear witness to the full breadth of tragedy — I turned on my heel and started walking. Shaken and not entirely present, I found the sweater my friend had requested I buy for her.
Nearly ten minutes and fifty dollars later, I stared across the street as a paramedic lifted a white sheet over the man’s face, lifting his body into the ambulance. The illusion of comfort the weekend had given me was gone.
What did it all matter for anyway? What did it matter if these bricks were walked by George Washington or the President of South Korea or Kim Kardashian? What did any of the resources or fame or prestige matter if a man’s life was lost just 20 steps from the towering iron gates of the cradle of change and opportunity? How many before him have been lost? How many lives?
The issues of poverty, racism, homelessness, and substance use are the same as back home in Bellingham, Washington, but instead of my city’s $53 million budget, the power of Harvard’s $53 billion endowment was titanic. The scale of Harvard consumed me again, but the utopian spell was broken. I realized then that Harvard is not immune to the world. More importantly, Harvard is not immune to its local community. We cannot and do not learn in a vacuum.
In fact, the very resources, buildings, classrooms, and dorms that I use as a student are a product of Harvard’s seemingly never-ending land acquisition and expansion into Cambridge, Boston, and neighboring communities. Long-term and often covert projects undertaken by the University have displaced residents and gentrified local areas.
Most notably, Harvard has extended its STEM campuses and infrastructure into the Allston-Brighton neighborhood, a project nearly 60 years in the making. Classified as a “charitable” non-profit, Harvard is exempt from paying property taxes. While the University has been anonymously purchasing and developing a third of the Allston-Brighton neighborhood through proxy companies, the City of Boston has become burdened with nontaxable land.
The city’s inability to collect tax revenue on Harvard-owned land in turn harms the city’s residents. By benefiting from municipal services such as road maintenance and the energy grid infrastructure without paying its share, Harvard in turn drives up property taxes for small businesses and homeowners. This inequity leaves long-lasting and deeply harmful systemic effects, making Boston and Cambridge more expensive to live in and leaving municipalities with less money in their piggy bank — diminishing the budget on social services that help keep communities healthy and vibrant.
Despite other cities’ efforts to make colleges and universities like Harvard contribute their fair share to the community, they ultimately cannot force educational institutions to pay their share. PILOT, or Payment-In-Lieu-Of-Taxes, is one program that Boston and Cambridge has established to help the cities compensate budgetarily by asking property-tax exempt institutions to pay a portion of their assessed property taxes. The City of Boston asks Harvard to pay about $13.7 million, but the University has consistently only payed about 80% of this amount, with more than half of its payments coming from “non-cash amounts,” citing the Arnold Arboretum and the Law School’s pro bono program and community benefits.
While many in our student body are aware of the visible symptoms of displacement, the underlying and powerful players in these local issues, like Harvard, often go without blame. Student groups like Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard have called on Harvard to pay their share of PILOTs and invest dramatically in affordable housing — actions that could help remedy Harvard’s neglect and harm. However, due to the completely voluntary nature of PILOT programs, entities like Harvard severely underpay what the community demands from them.
These financial considerations illustrate how Harvard destabilizes communities and causes harm to its neighbors. Through gentrification fueled by a land ownership monopoly and a tax-exempt designation, Harvard has contributed to the housing crisis that perpetuates the cycles of poverty, substance use, and systemic racism. When people are displaced, bought out, or uprooted by corporations and institutions alike, the resulting insecurity and brutality of being unhoused are shown to cause substance use disorders among our community’s most vulnerable: our Black, Brown, Indigenous, and immigrant neighbors.
This brings me back to the bricks, the hair, the blood, the blood once pumping in the veins of the man on the sidewalk — the blood of so many before him and so many who have and will die because they don’t have stable housing, support, or the resources they need to live. The blood on the hands of Harvard. The blood on my hands now, too.
The blood is on all of our hands. It is our collective responsibility as students, residents on stolen land, and now community members of Boston and Cambridge to hold Harvard and so many other power-holders accountable for their actions. It is our collective responsibility to remain educated and aware in a different way than any degree can afford us. At the very least, we must keep our eyes and ears open to the real world beyond the wonderful bubble of opportunity we are so privileged to enjoy.
Now, we too are threads in the fabric of this institution, with the power to undo and stitch together its story and history with each of our individual voices, influence, and actions.
