The University is today in the position of a man about to be eaten by cannibals. If he does nothing, he will be eaten. If he resists, he will even more certainly be eaten. The only hope seems to lie in converting the cannibal to vegetarianism.

At the moment the cannibals are in the form of the Boston metropolitan area, which over the last century has gradually encroached on Cambridge until it now threatens to devour it. The first effects have already been felt. The fully matured product is visible in a slum-surrounded university like Columbia or Chicago.

The urbanization pattern is familiar. Rising population density lowers the physical standards of the city. The well-to-do residents emigrate to more attractive suburban areas. The tax base decreases, and the tax rate climbs. Industry is driven out by taxes and the environment. Municipal service grows worse, as the need grows greater. Crime and delinquency rates rise, disease increases, and schools become blackboard jungles. In short, the familiar pattern of metropolitan slum living becomes inescapable.

Varied Reactions

Reactions to this pattern are mixed. Local residents seldom complain vigorously since the situation is essentially a response to residential needs. The citizen may complain that his city is changing for the worse, but before long he moves to a better one, leaving his home to those who have created the problem.

Industry and commerce are less passive, however, because they have more at stake. A home can easily become a tenement or a rooming house, but factories and stores are not so adaptable to the new conditions. Industrialists see workers forced into often unwelcome patterns, they watch tax rates rising, transportation clogged, and find that archaic land use patterns make physical expansion difficult. But industry, like residents, can move on. The expense is great, but seldom prohibitive if the demand for the product is not lost in the move.

Commercial interests are the strongest opponents of the slum pattern, because their investment is normally centered on the local market. A restaurant or haberdashery cannot simply move somewhere else, for to do so means to wipe out the existing source of revenue. Yet to remain means strangulation, as traffic slows, parking problems make stores inaccessible, and the clientele is down-graded.

Commercial interests have already moved to counteract these trends in Cambridge. They have a program, and their efforts are now directed at inducing residents and industry to join them in the fight for a better community.

In Cambridge, as in most other cities, this program has taken the form of Urban Renewal. Last year a committee, headed by local merchant Paul Corcoran, drew up a "Workable Program for Urban Renewal", which described the existing situation, outlined the direction in which the city was moving, and suggested a possible alternative.

Two unusual factors are working in the committee's favor. First, Cambridge has a strong traditional appeal which makes even prosperous residents especially reluctant to depart. Second, Cambridge's biggest industry--education--is so deeply committed to the city that ia cannot consider emigration.

Harvard and its educational neighbors have, however, always stood in a peculiar relationship to the community. As institutions with national support, they import and spend locally a tremendous amount of capital.

As a tourist attraction, a cultural center, and an economic factor, Harvard is one of the city's most valuable assets. The annual payroll amounts to about 25 million dollars. The annual consumption of goods and services comes to another 10 million dollars. Students import and spend still more money, pouring a million dollars annually into housing alone.

Such a boost to the local economy is well worth the tax exemption which the city grants on property used for education. Harvard is still the second largest taxpayer in the city.

Considering these facts the University has a disproportionately low influence in metropolitan government, for the combination of wealth and tax exemption has created a political scapegoat, convenient for arousing voters and avoiding issues. The current parking problem is but one example. One local car in eight is owned by a Harvard student. Yet despite the fact that it has the largest off-street parking facilities in the city, the University is held responsible for the city's insufficient accommodations.

This debate is, however, but a minor sign of the conflict in interest. The effect of the metropolitan pattern on an inherently suburban institution can already be seen. It seems inevitable that the problems will grow more serious as Cambridge becomes more a part of the inner metropolitan ring.