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You can always tell a Harvard man; you just can't tell him to stop chasing dogs with a stick
By adamg on Sat, 06/26/2021 - 10:34am
Cambridge Day reports on a bit of uproar surrounding Radcliffe Quadrangle: Nearby residents had long used the space as an unofficial dog park, but when a Harvard student started chasing dogs with a large stick last month, the university responded by banning unleashed dogs. Cambridge Day reports that when one dog owner confronted the H-Man and threatened to call police, he responded by calling his house dean.
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Comments
Young Master McGregor?
So unfair that the university came down on the side of (checking notes) the university.
Yes
Sure looks like the U responded to the neighbors abusing their
righter,permissioner, habit of using university property by banning dogs from the place.No bad dogs, only bad owners.
Dog owners acknowledged in interviews that there is a sign, albeit small, in the quad that says dogs must be leashed. The rule has not historically been enforced, they said.
How about, "Speeding drivers acknowledged in interviews that there is a sign, albeit small, that says cars must not go over 25 MPH. The rule has not historically been enforced."
Welp, I guess its ok then.
I don't think that's equivalent
Speeding vehicles are inherently transient. People hanging around an "unofficial" dog park are rather static, and likely predictable. So I'm sure if Harvard people were aware of how that land was being used and could have enforced the signage rather easily had they wanted to.
A-holes
A-holes
Harvard Needs Coyotes
Wile E and the Gang have put quite a dent in the toxic amount of "off leash recreation" that has plagued the Fells for a couple of decades.
A few coyotes would protect the garden from the rabbits, scare off Master Stickman, and drive away the entitled dog owners. Seems like a win win win scenario to me.
Lupi Esse Additae
I'm 100% on board.
Humans can also fetch..
Sticks...
Back in the 1970s at least ...
... people did not use this as a dog park.
Can't find a more entitled
Can't find a more entitled human being than a dog owner around here.
Ah, our Kambridge Karen
“Harvard is not on the moon, or another planet. They are in our town,” she added. “We belong here.”
Lady, Harvard beat you to the neighborhood by hundreds of years. You don't own the town. And they aren't obligated to let you use their private property.
Perhaps some Harvard kids can let their pets crap all over your tony lawn at your multi-millionaire dollar house down the block and see how that plays out.
The dog owners quoted in the
The dog owners quoted in the article are infuriating.
How have they been good neighbors by breaking the rules by letting their dogs run around unleashed?! They “belong” there even though it’s private property? The guy chasing them with a stick is the hero of this story.
What’s your stance on forest hills cemetery…
Also private property…..
Can I take this one?
This is a rare time when Kino and I may agree.
No dogs in Forest Hills Cemetery now. No off leash dogs in any cemetery ever. They will piss and shit on people's graves. You can't get less respectful than that.
Not really talking about the dogs...
Just about the concept of private property and people walking around forest hills, not bringing their dogs. If they banned people walking around with strollers and joggers, he would not agree. (although he is probably a robot as well).
Aha!
So THAT'S who all the Harvard graduates running our country have learned that they don't have to follow the rules from!
Goddamned Harvard Quad dog owners!
Magoo sez
Magoo wonders if a dog poops in the Harvard quad park and Magoo is not there to smell it, does it smell? Magoo.
This is exactly why the
This is exactly why the streets need dog lanes.
In a slap fight between
In a slap fight between Harvard and annoying dog owners, for whom am I rooting less???
Some dog owners are the worst
I'm talking to whoever let their dog shiit in my front yard 3 days in a row... and didnt pick it up.. I wanted to catch them but I think it was a middle of the night dog walker.
$20 camera from Amazon will
$20 camera from Amazon will help.
It would probably get stolen
But we could see who stole it :)
Did this punk actually strike
Did this punk actually strike an innocent creature with his stick? If so, he deserves a thrashing.
So easy to hate on dogs.
Did this dog actually run
Did this dog actually run through somebody's vegetable garden? If so, someone should drive it off with a stick.
So easy for dog owners to ignore the rights of others.
Civilization vs savagery
When someone parks illegally and blocks a driveway, a civilized person responds by calling for a tow truck; a savage responds by vandalizing the car.
When someone illegally lets their dog run through a garden, a civilized person shoos the dog away and calls animal control; a savage responds by attacking the dog with a stick.
These are not particularly difficult distinctions to draw.
Wait
I had perceived you all along as someone who actually lives in Boston, but then surely you would know that when people block driveways and you call the city, they send a cop, who then says they'll send the first available tow truck, and then one never comes, and the person parks their car across your driveway every day for weeks to take the T downtown.
(And no I'm not advocating vandalizing the vehicle either. But just...where are you getting that it's possible to get a tow truck out for blocking a driveway?)
Try judo
Seriously, judo means using someone else’s momentum. I haven’t tried this (I don’t have a driveway) but you might try calling a private tow company who holds a city contract. They can’t tow until the police ticket the car, but they have a $$ incentive to get the ticket issued quickly; they have greased a lot more political palms than you have, and they might be able to get a faster response out of the city.
Possible explanaion
I thought Bob lived in Beacon Hill where certainly all tow requests are quickly dealt with vs calling in Roxbury, Dot, Mattapan where city services are less rigorously provided.
Yeah, $queaky wheel and all that
Having drawn the kind of winning lotto ticket that has me living in a mostly high income neighborhood, I don’t have any real data, my sense is that we probably get a level of city services that, unfairly, other neighborhoods don’t always get. Or maybe it’s not the income; it’s that between the state house and city hall, there is always press around. Although our voter turnout is low enough in some municipal elections that I end up shaking my head and thinking “with turnout like that, it’s a miracle we get our streets plowed and our trash picked up.”
No, he didn't. So what's your
No, he didn't. So what's your point?
The Harvard student should
The Harvard student should have politely asked the dogs to please put their leashes on.
On the contrary..
On the contrary, the Harvard student should have looked at the owner and said, "Get your fucking mutt out of that garden; if I see you here again with your dog off leash I'll call the cops"
Of course they want to remain
Of course they want to remain anonymous. These racists expected Harvard and Cambridge police to teach an international student with an accent a lesson. Despicable, but very typical for this area.
"International?" "Accent?"
I see nothing in the UHub article or the linked article to suggest that this was an international student. Where are you getting this information?
Harvard and "Private Property"
First, the dog owners seem like entitled a-holes who are in the wrong here. But lets not forget that this so-called "private property" is owned by a so-called non-profit institution that doesn't pay taxes on this land in question and has a portfolio bigger than the economies of many medium-sized countries.
Harvard doesn't keep this land open to it's neighbors out of their goodness of their heart. They know if they tried to close off the quad, they'd be opening themselves to a PR nightmare that would probably lead to some additional, well-deserved scrutiny over their paltry PILOT payments.
https://www.wickedlocal.com/story/cambridge-chronicle-tab/2021/04/28/har...
You are doing the same thing
You are doing the same thing as saying that undocumented immigrants don't pay taxes. They do, just not income taxes. Same here, Harvard and its employees pay a lot of taxes. There would not be Cambridge, if not for what Harvard brings.
That is some utterly tortured reasoning
It is not the same thing by any stretch of the imagination. Your slippery slope argument could just as easily be rendered: "When you say Jeff Bezos doesn't pay taxes, you are doing the exact same thing as saying that undocumented immigrants don't pay taxes. Bezos does pay all kinds of taxes, even if his true tax rate was 0.98 percent."
Complaining about a university with a 40 billion dollar endowment getting all kinds of tax breaks is by no means whatsoever the same as an idiotic gripe that undocumented immigrants, many of whom have no obvious path to residency or citizenship, don't pay taxes. The former is a valid critique of inequity. The latter is benighted support for it.
Reading is Fundamental
For the love of god, read what I wrote and address that, not some made up strawman argument. I didn't say they didn't pay any taxes. Or read the article I clicked that explains PILOT and how those payments doesn't come near to what a commercial property owner would pay.
But....
>> doesn't come near to what a commercial property owner would pay.
... it's NOT commercial property.
And the land IS open to the public, with only minimal restrictions. Just not to unleashed dogs.
Has anyone here tried to defend an argument for unleashed dogs
in the quad? Even once?
A lot of defensiveness about Harvard's "private property." I don't see anyone defending the entitled Cambridge residents who let their dogs run in places even when signs say they shouldn't. (They obviously shouldn't.) I see two people rushing to defend Harvard's tax breaks despite its 40 billion dollar endowment.
And above, I see lots of people saying a Harvard student has every right to chase dogs with a stick on multiple occasions, which is rather disturbed behavior, rather than, as Bob says, shooing the dog away and/or talking to the owners and saying he will call campus police.
She said she understands it’s
She said she understands it’s a “privilege” to use the green space. Still, she said, dog owners have been “good neighbors” and deserve respect. “Harvard is not on the moon or another planet. They are in our town,” she added. “We belong here.”
That's the most Cantabridgian thing I've ever heard.
I understand
It's a privilege. But I have a right to that privilege!