Harvard University Housing is an outright school-yard bully. In every sense of the word, really, but especially in using its clout to harass, intimidate, and manipulate Harvard students.
Well, certain students.
This beast has many tentacles, each with its own name and set of corresponding bureaucrats, deans, and on-the-ground “enforcers.” Whether it’s Harvard Housing, Harvard Real Estate, Student Affairs, or one of the many others, they’re all in the same business (and it’s definitely treated like a business, with local residents and even students) and use the same dirty tactics as one another.
There will be several videos updates and/or written pieces on my own experiences with the long list of stunts they’ve pulled–to my great financial, academic, and even health detriment–over the years, and especially lately. They’ve done so much it would be impossible to fit in a single video, unless it was like movie-length. I’m talking like Godfather 2 or Return of the King long.
It’s important to keep in mind that, regardless of which tentacle, or what personnel, are involved: these “tentacles,” collectively, are the keepers of one of Harvard’s most valuable assets–its many-many properties. Harvard owns a gigantic portfolio of real-estate property in Cambridge, around the campus. But also well beyond it–all over other parts of Cambridge, across the famed Charles River (Allston), all around Boston proper, and even in California. They’re loaded. And ruthless in growing their quiet empire.
As you’ll see below–and in my future videos and pieces–to make matters worse, they work hand-in-glove with other powerful University and local entities to “protect their territory.” That goes from Harvard Financial Aid–a close second-place (or perhaps even first-place) on the list of worse Harvard bullies–whose outright dirty tactics are generally targeted toward middle- or lower-class local residents and a certain kind of Harvard student, on campus.
Is this everyone at Harvard Housing or Harvard officers? Of course not. There are some wonderful people on their staffs–from the managerial, to the administrative, to the maintenance guys and gals doing the day-to-day work to keep their properties in tip-top shape.
That’s why their properties are great places to live. Great location for students, well-maintained, and integrated into various aspects of your student experience.
The problem–at least in part–is that they are keenly aware of that. And, they wield the power of being “your landlord” (and, at the same time, part of your university) to mess with you–from various directions, by virtue of working with other university offices–even if they simply feel like it. Worse still, they will suddenly go from yay-university-housing to threatening, litigious, remorseless landlords.
Just this week we saw a prime example of what I’m talking about here–and across this campaign–about Harvard’s different treatment of students who don’t fit a “certain description,” one way or another.
Three days ago, the Harvard Crimson published a piece on how Harvard was denying “international students on financial aid” winter housing–in an arbitrary and inexplicable change of a long-standing practice (a theme we’ll return to quite a bit in coming pieces).
Since not all international students are able, or can afford, to go back to their sometimes far-away home countries for the over-month-long winter recess, they often opt to stay on campus and advance their work, or participate in pre-planned events and mini-courses designed specifically for those who remain local between late-December and early-February.
Maybe those are intended only for certain people?
NOTE: this was aimed at not just students who are “international,” but those on financial aid. (Just see the first line of the article’s image.)
I wish I could say this was a rare case of poor judgment or mistreatment by Harvard leadership but, when I saw this story, it rang all-too-familiar. I’ve had the same, and worse, done to me by my own division of the Harvard Housing behemoth. More times than I can count, truth be told. Also in connection (collusion, even, which I discovered, by lucky accident) with Harvard Financial Aid (a short video on how graduate-student funding works is forthcoming) and other high-level administrative offices–through back channels and secretive methods where their ends justify their means. If I didn’t have the proof, you wouldn’t believe it. And, often lasting weeks or months at a time–if not permanently, as I’ve seen with a good number of former colleagues and students.
I don’t know about you but, for me (and pretty much everyone I’ve talked to), having the roof over my head–and all of my earthly possessions–under threat, through use of dubious tactics, outright scary threats, callous disregard for your appeals to reason and prior policy, not to mention the complicity (or willful disregard) of Financial Aid, Academic Programs, and other high-level offices, is pretty darn stressful.
I will tell my own stories about being subjected to this side of Harvard, more than once or twice, soon enough–and you wouldn’t believe them if I didn’t have abundant proof for each of them (so stay tuned for that)–but, thankfully, the story of the so-called “international students on financial aid” has a happier, and much quicker, ending.
(NB: This may sound paranoid at first but, I assure you, it’s no-where close to that. All of the said “proof” mentioned above is backed up in various places and in the hands of multiple family members, should something “happen to me.” Yeah it’s like that, especially if Harvard thinks it might get embarrassed by simply telling people what they say and do.)
So there’s a twist–kinda. Just this morning, The Harvard Crimson announced that the decision against those unfortunate international students had been reversed. However, in typical fashion, and as you’ve seen with other “decisions” in my personal case:
[Housing] did not specify why the students’ [winter housing] was previously rejected and why the decision had been reversed.
-The Harvard Crimson
So, no explanation for the arbitrary (and massively stressful) decision, and no explanation for the lifting of it? Not even a real apology? This is sounding even more familiar. We can only speculate, about what happened: was this just another “power move” by Harvard to keep, again, certain students quote-unquote “in line”? To remind you, as I’ve said in previous videos, which “category” you belong to?
Get used to this pattern, because you will see it again in my own case, repeatedly–very similar to these unlucky “international financial-aid students,” though significantly longer, repeated, and generally more menacing. You’ve seen at least one prime example so far–where the Dean of Students Office “worked with” Financial Aid and Housing to “solve”–as it was represented to my face–a (completely manufactured) problem, while irresponsibly and willfully ignoring clear-as-glass evidence of “my innocence” (in fact that I was the victim of an actual attack) and playing dumb about their own, published, and well-known-to-them Code of Conduct.
Even when I sent them the actual rules, on the off-chance they were unaware of it.
In other words: to threaten, intimidate, and harm me and my academic work and health. Probably for the same reasons. To remind me what category I belong to. Or, to discard me out the back door because I’ve worn out my usefulness for Harvard.
In my case: Did they explain the whys? No way. Did they acknowledge the outright, blatant mistake? Of course not. Instead, I devoted two months (in fact, far more, since some of the effects of that “dirty” bullying lingers to this day, technically months later) working beyond-full-time as a “professional e-mail writer” (as I’ve aptly termed it), going to the court, talking to advocate groups, and making as much noise as I possibly could by myself. I wasn’t lucky enough to have The Harvard Crimson on my side.
Then, just like the international students here, they mysteriously “lifted”–in fact, slyly postponed it, as you’ll soon learn–their resolute agenda(s), whatever that is or whatever their rationale is for it. It’s anyone’s guess what that actually is–but I think a lot of you can come up with good ideas of the most likely reasons. Again, more on that in a soon-to-come update.
I couldn’t be more happy that these international students had The Crimson on their side to make enough “noise” for them. And, moreover, that they “only” had to endure this arbitrary bullying of “regular” students by one of this university’s dirtiest and worst bullies–and its bully-allies in other offices which, in almost every case, they deliberately send you back and forth from, like calling customer service for your laptop or cell-phone provider, to wear you down.
But what’s the moral of this story?
When someone shines light on Harvard’s mistreatment, misconduct, and abuse of those it habitually bullies–working-class students and, quite often, graduate students, international students, and other groups who don’t fit the “right” description–they back off.
Just like the school-yard bully, you have to stand up to them to make them stop.
But when the bully is as big and powerful as Harvard, you’re going to need some serious backup, or out you go–having had your life, as in my own and others’ case, permanently harmed by having dared to actually accept their admissions offer (and hard recruitment efforts theretoward) to the quote-unquote “most prestigious university in the world“–not realizing there were some serious strings very-much attached.
I mean, they are the best. Even the best at intimidating, harassing, threatening, pressuring, shaming, accusing, disregarding, gaslighting, and plain-and-simply messing with their students.
Let’s face it: It isn’t about us students. It’s about them, and Harvard’s precious brand. It’s not a pleasant reality, but the writing is on the ivy-covered brick walls. It’s about big-time donors and maybe their children–and then “the rabble,” the rest of us.
It’s about Two Harvards.
In short: I need you to help me shine a big spotlight on this bully. They’ve taken more than enough from me–and from a lot more people than I ever imagined who are like me, not unlike these “international students on financial aid” (why do they even carry that label?). Harvard needs to not only answer for their actions (or willful inactions), but their arbitrary throwing of their weight around, just for the sake of it, or to remind you (yet again) of “your place,” and scramble your life in the process.
So why? Your parents worked for a living. They sacrificed. They worked overtime and extra shifts. Then, you–armed with that work ethic–worked your own A** off to earn your place at the Harvards of the world. That’s something to be proud of, not be bullied over.
To quote up-and-coming hip-hop vocalist, Chris Webby: “we pop our blue collars.”
Maybe that all needs to start with a real apology–to all of us regular students. For making us “regular students” to begin with, and constantly reminding us that they’ve done so, rather than treat us all as simply students.
