behind the news

No Raise for the Herald

It is often said that journalism is the first draft of history. Yesterday, the Boston Herald managed to goof on the second draft. In a story about renewed labor tension at Harvard, the Herald reported in its lede, “Just three years after Harvard University reached labor peace with its janitors following an ugly standoff, unrest […]

November 1, 2005

It is often said that journalism is the first draft of history. Yesterday, the Boston Herald managed to goof on the second draft.

In a story about renewed labor tension at Harvard, the Herald reported in its lede, “Just three years after Harvard University reached labor peace with its janitors following an ugly standoff, unrest has surfaced again on campus.” Later, the Herald elaborated: “Harvard’s battles with its janitors became a major news story in 2002, when students took up the cause, demanding a living wage for janitors, occupying offices and forcing a significant pay increase.”

By our count, that’s at least three mistakes.

Let’s begin with the basics: The “ugly standoff” became a major news story in the spring of 2001, not the following year. It was then that 46 students with the Progressive Student Labor Movement (PSLM) rushed into Mass. Hall, and occupied the administrative building — including President Neil Rudenstine’s office — for three weeks. That sit-in sparked large rallies, a counter-protest, a burgeoning “tent city” in the middle of Harvard Yard, and unceasing debate in what was one of the most intensely political periods on the university’s campus in recent decades.

Second, contrary to the Herald‘s report, students had actually taken up the cause long before that point, as the campaign for a living wage — a figure set at $10.25 for all Harvard employees at the time of the sit-in — was already in its third year when Mass. Hall was taken over. (It’s not as if students stormed the president’s office on a whim.)

And the “forcing a significant pay increase” bit the Herald mentions? That, too, is not quite accurate. When the last PSLM members finally left the building, they exited only with “a set of promises to reexamine workers’ issues at the university,” noted the Harvard Crimson. It was only the following January, after a report by another high-profile committee, that the university’s new president, Lawrence Summers, said he would accept recommended pay hikes, and, as the Crimson reported, Harvard would “reopen union negotiations to boost wages for the school’s 1,000 lowest-paid service employees to at least $10.83 to $11.30 per hour.”

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All in all, the Herald‘s article adds up to an oversimplified — and distorted — rendering of recent history. If we were talking about the distant past, that would be one thing, but 2001?

How soon they forget.

–Edward B. Colby

Edward B. Colby was a writer at CJR Daily.