Emotions ran high and questions filled the air at a recent meeting of the Columbia Savin Hill Civic Association (CSHCA).
After a tame start to the November 4 meeting, the issue of UMass Boston dorms was brought to the floor. The discussion then escalated until a motion was put forward urging the association to make an official unified stand against the dorms project. The motion was promptly seconded.
The motion died, however, in a vote of 20 for and 19 against, which then became 20 for and 20 against as a vote was added by one who originally abstained. The vote was then doubly contested and it was finally decided that an official vote should be taken at next month’s meeting so that all civic association members will have the chance to vote.
Bob Donovan, president of the CSHCA, mentioned after the vote that many of those who opposed the motion were vocal opponents to the dorms project and expressed his personal inclination to wait for more information from the university to avoid being viewed as an obstructionist organization.
Although representatives from the university came to a CSHCA meeting in April, 2002 promising a Community Impact Study to assess the effect of dorms on the surrounding community, little information has passed between the CSHCA and UMB since then. One of the representatives who visited in April was Gail Hobin, who served as a community liaison from the University Communications and Community Relations office. Hobin has since gotten a promotion in that department, leaving the CSHCA with no community liaison.
In August, the UMass board of trustees voted to approve $91.5 million in state bonds for the first phase of the dorms project, still with no Community Impact Study (CIS) in sight. UMB has moved one step closer to a CIS, though. The university hired a company called the Metropolitan Area Planning Council to facilitate the hiring process for the CIS so that UMB will remain one step removed in the hiring process and will be less susceptible to accusations of fixed results.
The woman who brought the motion attempting to oppose the dorms to the floor is a nighttime graduate student at UMB and a teacher at East Boston High. She explained that “they [UMB] do whatever they want,” expressing her lack of faith in the results of an impact study. She also worried about whether she, as a nighttime grad student, would have to compete with undergraduates who live on campus for space in her classes, which are available to both graduates and undergraduates. Also, she wondered what effect the dorms would have on the price of an education at UMass Boston, citing the fact that her students couldn’t afford to go to many other schools besides community colleges such as Bunker Hill. Finally, she wondered whether the university would have to change its mission statement since, as she sees it, UMB would no longer be trying to provide quality education primarily for the immediate community, but would instead be attracting athletes, non-Massachusetts residents, and international students to the school.
Before the motion, the chairs of the meeting announced some issues that the civic association wants addressed by the impact study, including the potential for increased traffic, how the university plans to maintain the new buildings, how ocean views and open space on Columbia Point will be affected, police presence, the potential for an increase in illegal drugs and underage drinking on the UMB campus, and countless other concerns.
Another important issue to the community is what will happen when the traditional-age college students that UMB is trying to attract, get tired of dorm living. What happens when they want to move off campus, presumably into the nearest residential area? One civic association member called it the “Allston-ization” process.
Many were concerned as to how this would effect their community in the time of an already existing and worsening city-wide housing crunch. One member said, “We don’t need an impact study to figure out that 2000 beds is going to impact our neighborhood.” While another member mentioned that the effect could be positive also, citing a recent newspaper article in which UMass Dartmouth dorms were credited as bringing a more vibrant community to New Bedford.
Another perspective was offered by a woman in the civic association, who reminded those present that a student population already existed in their community. She urged the association to take that fact into consideration and instead of discussing the student presence in terms of zero to one thousand students in the community, discussing it as something to something else.