But the University’s highest governing board did not respond, and the neighbors decided to take their complaints to the public stage, on a weekend when they knew the board members would be in town.

The night before Commencement, about 350 community members marched to Harvard Yard and spent the night there.

During the ceremony, Graham and about 50 others jumped onto the stage and remained there for 20 minutes. Graham says she took the microphone from University President Nathan M. Pusey ’28, and when the sound was cut off, she switched to a bullhorn instead.

Graham says one of the Commencement speakers had been speaking about “the oppressed people of the world.”

As she stepped onto the stage, Graham says she told the audience, “Harvard lives right in the center of the oppressed people of the world, right here in Cambridge.”

She notes that many of the students had helped the community members organize for their cause, and some even got on the stage with them.

“The students were very active in community politics...It was a time of unrest, and the students did their job and they did it well,” Graham says.

The Riverside residents didn’t leave the stage until members of the Corporation agreed to meet with them immediately, and the activists and the Corporation huddled for four hours as Commencement ceremonies continued, she says.

The University agreed to donate a plot of land in Riverside for affordable housing.

But Graham says this did not change the “arrogant” way in which Harvard officials treated the residents of the Riverside area.

“They thumb their nose up at this community and they have been thumbing it for years,” Graham says.

Moving Forward

The old distrust that Riverside residents harbor against Harvard has often surfaced in the recent zoning negotiations.

When councillors and Harvard representatives began to discuss new proposals for the University’s sites, some residents expressed frustration that these ideas hadn’t been presented earlier in the process—such as when a Harvard representative sat on the Riverside Study Committee, the neighborhood group that developed the Carlson petition.

“Harvard basically did not view the study committee as a forum in which to have a discussion,” Wysoker says. “The kinds of negotiation…that I hope are happening between Harvard and councillors now could have gone on during the study committee had Harvard been willing to so.”