Northeastern University - Cauldron Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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Boston today. things that are normal. Then it does get I think that, probably, when you you down, add in all of Vietnam, all the problems I think city people are particularly of Watergate, throw in busing — those resilient and vibrant, and they can take are abnormal problems ladened on the the normal problems, White said. It problems of crime and taxes and those was the abnormal problems thrown on top of them that depressed them, that gave them a sense of malaise and des- pondency I think hung on the town as you came in in ' 74. It was a hot, muggy day in late Sep- tember 1974 when the Class of 1979

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This is the city: Boston, Massachusetts By Dan Kennedy Kevin H. White sat down on a couch, balanced himself on the edge and pondered the comeback his city has made during the past five years. I think that a city is no different The Mayor talks about his city . . . where it is today and where it ' ll be tomorrow than a single individual inside of it, he said, pausing every few words for emphasis. You can just be depressed for so long. And there are periods in which you get hysterical and upset. As the 49-year-old mayor munched on cheese and crackers in the historic Parkman House on Beacon Hill, wait- ing for supper, he tried to explain the sense of optimism he sees infesting

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arrived at Northeastern. Many stu- dents were seeing the city for the first time and had no idea of what to expect. And it was a frightening, depressing time. One month earlier, Richard M. Nixon had ended six years of shame by resigning his presidency to the first unelected chief executive in history, Gerald R. Ford. The Vietnam debacle was still front- page news every day. American troops were gone, but the carnage they had helped create would not come to its chaotic conclusion for another eight months. And there was busing. Day after day, public school students — the ones that bothered to go to class, anyway — pulled knives on classmates because they were of a different color. Grown men hurled bricks at buses filled with little children. Politicians such as John Kerrigan, Louise Day Hicks and Elvira Pixie Palladino railed against inte- gration and promised to run Federal Judge W. Arthur Garrity, the man who ordered integration, out of town. One Friday night in October, a motorcade of South Boston mothers drove up Huntington Avenue, honking their horns and hollering racial epithets. That ' s as close as racial violence ever came to Northeastern. As far as most students were concerned, that was close enough. Many today would argue that the cynicism and bitterness of five years ago is still here. But there is little doubt that much of the fear is gone. To most people, that is reason enough to rejoice. It ' s a cold, rainy Saturday morning, but inside it is warm. Opera music plays in the background of the elegant St. Stephen Street townhouse, while a grand piano commands the living room. It ' s not the sort of place you ' d expect to find in the inner city, but the