They're Baaaaaack!

Autumn in Boston. The weather cools, turning the leaves a blazing postcard red. The ducks in the Public Garden, weary from a summer spent entertaining frolicsome and adorably attired children, at last direct their attention southward in anticipation of the long winter. And—on a good week—a half-dozen overstuffed U-Hauls get wedged beneath overpasses on Storrow Drive, sending sickening crunches reverberating through sidewalks already thick with moldy couches and awkward packs of perambulating freshmen. Just like that, hostilities between the citizens of Greater Boston and the invading horde of 265,000, the town and the gown, are renewed, ending a season of open parking spaces, vacant barstools, and general quietude.

The benefits of being America’s College Town are well documented. Beyond the estimated $7 billion they contribute to the local economy and the tens of thousands they employ, the area’s 75 centers of higher learning lend aid and expertise to underperforming public schools and help stimulate Boston’s right brain with museums, theater, concerts, and by far the best radio stations in town, such as Emerson’s excellent 88.9 FM. Plus, having so many prominent research universities lures quality minds to Boston and fosters a culture of innovation, which, we’re reminded, keeps us from becoming a smoking necropolis like Detroit.

But there’s also, of course, a downside. And it’s generally felt on a more personal level, manifesting itself every time students convert your street into their private vomitorium or scream like catamounts at 3:15 a.m. on a Tuesday, even as the morally indefensible amount of money they pay in tuition is invested in a 30-story megadorm complex slated to go next to your house, which is already abutted by a university-sponsored biochemical weapons lab. All that, thanks to institutions that don’t pay property taxes, costing Boston an estimated $100 million in lost revenue per year. It’s not like we have a say in the matter, but still, sometimes it’s enough to make you wonder whether being the Athens of America is worth it—not to mention whether the label is still deserved.