“In a Presidential, high-turnout, election, you have 58,000 people vote in Cambridge. In a low-turnout gubernatorial election… you have 46,000 people vote, but in a municipal election, you have maybe 23,000 people.”
That’s Burhan Azeem, MIT graduate and newly-elected member of Cambridge City Council.
“The city council… might write off Harvard students, as people who aren’t going to be invested [in politics].”
That’s Luke Albert ’23, Government concentrator and regular campaign volunteer.
Harvard students, it appears, do not like to vote on the issue of who should run Cambridge.
The popularity of politics in general is undeniable at Harvard. In 2005, the Institute of Politics (IOP)’s endowment had reached $100 million. Partisan groups ranging from the Harvard College Democrats to the Harvard Republican Club and beyond regularly campaign, canvass, and get involved in controversy, while the Harvard Votes Challenge encourages students of all political stripes to, in the words of Harvard President Larry Bacow, “Register to vote, inform yourself of the candidates and the issues, and cast a ballot.” I personally remember hearing these words at Convocation for the class of 2022, and I have never forgot the thunderous applause that greeted them.
The popularity of politics in general is undeniable at Harvard.
“In general, there are a lot of opportunities for students here to get involved in politics in a very real and tangible way… from the IOP to the IRC [International Relations Council] and a lot of different smaller organizations as well,” says Justin Tseng ’22, a Social Studies and East Asian Studies concentrator who was recently elected to Medford City Council. “Exposure to policy, policymakers, politicians—I think a lot of those opportunities are available here on campus and a lot of students are taking them.” We cannot accuse Harvard’s student body of failing to be engaged citizens on a national-politics scale.
At the same time, though, Tseng points out that “We give a lot of importance to federal politics here,” arguing for the merits of “paying attention to what’s happening at the state level or at the local level.” This, too, is tough to deny. Currently, 49 recognized Harvard College student organizations classify themselves as “Government and Politics,” but only one (Harvard Undergraduate Voters Choose) mentions the word “Cambridge” in its description on TheHub. Eleven mention the word “National,” nine, “America”—although one of those is the Harvard Organization for Latin America. If the old adage is true and we know Harvard students by the company they keep, they are singularly uninterested in what happens politically in and around Cambridge.
While undergraduates, fed and housed by the University, may believe that they have nothing to gain from voting in local elections, many of my interviewees pointed out that this was a simplistic view. “The buzzing issue around Cambridge is housing, considering the high cost of living here,” Albert argues. While this does not necessarily immediately translate into increased room and board fees, “it really impacts those who make our educational experience, and that is grad students.”
He is not the only person to worry about this: in 2020, HGSU-UAW published a summary of their newly-negotiated first contract and introduced the section on parking and transit benefits with “Given rising housing costs near Harvard’s campus, student workers are increasingly living some distance away.” If students want to be able to go to office hours in the evenings, then they should consider advocating for policies that make living on campus an achievable proposition for the people who run them.
Cambridge recently passed the Affordable Housing Overlay, amending zoning laws to allow for larger affordable-housing developments, but this by no means ended debate on the matter. Albert, who is quite optimistic about the Overlay, still summarizes the situation as “Housing’s huge.”
The question of where you want to be and how you want to get there came up in other senses as well. Theodora Skeadas ’12 ’16, a Harvard College and Harvard Kennedy School graduate who ran for a position on Cambridge City Council in the recent election, mentions the issue of cycling. “This fall, there was a pretty dynamic debate around bicycle lanes,” she says. “The city is implementing a network of protected bicycle lanes around Cambridge, which I’m excited to see.” However, this led to a number of problems, in particular “an associated loss of parking spots… I can get on a bike and I can ride around; someone who’s older might not be able to do so with such agility.” The decision in favor of an expanded network of cycle lanes was not a sure thing.
In fact, it is surprising that it happened at all, given that opposition to it was, as Skeadas says, “very generational.” “City Hall… skews older, because older people tend to have more time—often, if they’re retired, they have a lot more time—and they can advocate for their interests more loudly,” she explains.
According to Albert, while the median age of registered voters in Cambridge is around 35, that of those who actually vote in municipal elections is 57. As Skeadas says only half in jest, “It sounds like it’s 60 if you’re just listening to the voices that are speaking.”
In an environment as small as local government, who is pushing which agendas can really make a difference. Given low election turnout, Albert says, “Each individual and every vote can have a major influence on these city counselors and on who sits on the city council.” Similarly, Azeem says, “The same 50 or 100 people will come to speak at City Hall… even if you think [a proposed bill] is generally popular, having no-one come and speak at Monday night’s meeting-hall meetings can be very disappointing.” Students are missing out on opportunities to push for policies which benefit them.
“Each individual and every vote can have a major influence on these city counselors and on who sits on the city council.”
– Luke Albert ’23
This need not be the case. Harvard students in particular are very well-placed to get involved in local politics, not least due to the importance and prestige of their institution in the community. Tseng even attributes “a little bit of a better reputation” among the voters of Medford to his Harvard status: “I think some voters might look at it and say, ‘You know, I can trust the Harvard student because they’ve worked hard, because they’ve gone through receiving a certain education.”
Harvard also has a culture receptive to organizing (witness the graduate student strike and attendant protests), and this can lead to great things. Azeem recalls “an iconic moment, about four years ago now, when the Affordable Housing Overlay was being passed, that many students that I had been organizing from MIT and Harvard showed up and spoke in favor of it.” This, he says, “really turned the dial” on the issue, turning it from a highly-controversial hot potato to a much more politically acceptable proposition.
Harvard’s undergraduates can also receive unique benefits from being engaged with the Cambridge City Council. The most obvious one is experience with civic engagement, something which can be surprisingly hard to find on campus. Skeadas said that she had gone on to the Kennedy School after four years at the College because “That’s where students who are civically-minded go.” She praised the Phillips Brooks House Association (PBHA), where she “very much felt at home,” but “outside of PBHA, and maybe the IOP, though I was less engaged there, there wasn’t as much of a focus on civic engagement at the College.”
Luckily, making your own fun is very much an option. Tseng enjoyed the opportunity that running his campaign provided to “leave the Harvard bubble and talk to voters… about what they’re concerned about, what they’re worried about, what values they hold, to have that discussion, and to be exposed to something very different to what we’re exposed to here on campus.” Surprisingly, the second part of Bacow’s charge, to inform oneself of the issues at play, can be the most rewarding.
The cynics will, at this point, retort that the purpose of politics is to get what you want and hang statespersonship. Here, too, Harvard College undergraduates can get good things out of local politics. While Harvard can seem like a political juggernaut that rides roughshod over Cambridge politicians to the point of deciding every year how much tax it feels like paying, the reality is more complicated.
“At the end of the day,” says Albert, “as long as the Cambridge government is operating within the law, they exert authority and power over Harvard.” This authority is expressed through zoning laws and other local ordinances, through the regulation of other businesses in Harvard Square, but also through softer power. Discussing HGSU-UAW’s picket lines, Albert says that “A lot of [Cambridge’s] elected officials will show up and be there in support of HGSU, and that can make a major difference.” Nor do Council members only put pressure on Harvard on their own: Azeem claims that “Harvard and MIT want to do so much with City Hall, City Hall negotiates with them so much, and [engaged students] can also use that as a direct lever of power to get things from the universities.”
“Harvard and MIT want to do so much with City Hall, City Hall negotiates with them so much, and [engaged students] can also use that as a direct lever of power to get things from the universities.”
– Burhan Azeem
Cambridge City Council has not been afraid to argue with Harvard in the past. On April 5, 2010, as universities downsized after the 2008 financial crisis, City Council Order Number Five resolved “That this City Council go on record requesting that Harvard and MIT cease further layoffs and any cuts in hours, salary, or benefits and engage in an open and transparent dialogue with all stakeholders including staff and the community.” While the minutes of the University Relations Committee contain no record of a response from Harvard, then Vice President for Human Resources at MIT Alison Alden wrote a letter in response giving more details about the financial problems and decision-making that had led to the layoffs at her school. While Cambridge’s universities absolutely can fight City Hall, they do not ignore it.
Local government gets things done in other ways as well. It provides opportunities for incremental improvement: Azeem talks about “[leaving] a better city for the students who will come after you.” Albert agrees that some things take time, but he says that “The impacts are real and tangible now. A bike lane can be put up in a matter of weeks… all of this stuff is very real.” During the pandemic, Cambridge closed Memorial Drive, near the Charles River, and created a pedestrianized open space for socializing, which quickly became popular with students. The discussion about this began as early as late March 2020, and the Council formally asked the City Manager to explore the possibility on April 13. Cambridge politics may deal with smaller issues than the federal or even state varieties, but that just means that some of those issues can actually be easily resolved or, at least, quickly improved upon.
Although voting for this election cycle is over, Harvard students who want to get involved with Cambridge politics have a number of options. The most basic ones can often be the most effective: Azeem says that “One of the wonderful things about [local politics] is that everyone will respond to you. If you’re a Harvard student, and you send me an email, there’s a 100% chance that I will respond… even if you want to sit down and have a meeting, that’s totally possible with me, but also with most City Councilors.”
For those looking to contribute more seriously, Skeadas mentions neighborhood associations, including one for Harvard Square (where she was “always one of the youngest… voices in the room”), and the Cambridge Democrats for those who politically lean that way. Tseng’s recommendation is to go to Council meetings and to read the documents that result from them, to “Be curious and go click on some random document, see what City Council’s talking about, talk to our City Councilors.” All interviewees suggested making one’s voice heard in small meetings, in one-on-one conversations, in town halls, in all the places students are allowed to but never expected to come.
The most important requirement, possibly the only real one, is a mindset that views Cambridge City Council as something worth your time. Harvard’s students are busy, with competing calls on their time, and many of them simply do not know what Cambridge has to offer. Three out of fifteen respondents to an extremely unscientific poll of the class of 2022 were unsure whether they were eligible to vote in the most recent municipal election. Figuring this out can be difficult. For students who want to make change in and around Harvard, though, figuring it out is exactly what they should be doing.
“In an ideal civic world, Harvard’s acting as a partner with the Cambridge government… for students in particular, that’s exactly why they’ve gotta care about both,” Albert says. “They’ve gotta care about what Harvard’s doing, and they’ve gotta care about what Cambridge is doing.” You can’t have one without the other.
Michael Kielstra ’22 (pmkielstra@college.harvard.edu) has been told by multiple people in local government that Parks and Recreation is accurate.