HUB ENDURES
ANNUAL
FALL ONSLAUGHT By
Charles Van Doren
Education
Editor
 The
annual onslaught of student move-in stories features new residents
like Boston University freshwoman Amber Tweak, 18, of Henderson,
Nevada, as well as many
thousands of unattractive students
BOSTON, Mass. – For many, it's
the first
sign of fall: at the end of every August, the annual onslaught of
stories
about students moving into Boston overruns the metro pages and local
airwaves.
This year, it's no
different. Local news B and C blocks are jammed with packages
of students parking their rental trucks in front of their overpriced
slums in Brighton and Mission Hill. Area residents complain
that they can barely reach any real news through the jam caused by
live shots of ever more witless kewpie dolls burbling
about the excitement supposedly generated by the returning students. Despite the continuing economic slowdown caused
by something that doesn't make for good live television, experts expect
at least 100,000 stories, taped packages, and live standups will hit
the front steps and cable boxes of Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, and
other communities
where unscrupulous absentee landlords are poised to fleece the helpless
out of towners who didn't realize until too late that many of the
area's largest
educational institutions, including Northeastern and Boston
Universities,
don't provide sufficient housing for their undergraduates.
this not just in . . .
As colleges reopen for their fall terms, many are finding it
hard to come to grips
with a phenomenon that seems to grow more serious and tenacious with
each passing year:
feature stories, usually in up-market publications like The New York Times,
blathering on about how hard it is for parents to let go of their
matriculating freshpersons.
What accounts for the increasing frequency of these stories?
Experts disagree, but
are willing to run their mouths for free publicity. "There's no single
explanation,"
said the Spy's
non-resident expert, Prof. Rip N. Read (see credentials at left). "Some
middle-aged reporters find it hard to part with their own little
bricks, and work through their agony by inflicting on the rest of us
tedious tales of so-called "helicopter parents" and obvious stratagems
used by colleges to kick parental asses off campus at the earliest
opportunity after their tuition check has been deposited,"
Read
said. "Other media outlets figure that only schmucks
over fifty
will fork over two bucks for a newspaper and therefore want to fill
their pages with stories they think will appeal to an older
demographic," he said. "It's another sign of the
unhealthy relationship between affluent middle-aged parents and their
newspapers."
Given that nobody
really
cares who is leasing
crappy apartments, at least until cascades of puke drench
their
parked cars, experts believe that the students moving story has an
undeniable appeal. "First, there's nothing else going on this
week, unless some miserable southern city happens to find itself
underwater, and editors and producers still have to fill up vacant
column inches and minutes with something," said Professor Rip N.
Read, Chair of the Journalism and Limo Driving Program at Old
Sludgebury Community College. "Second,
it provides editors with the ability to fill their pages and newscasts
with hot young cheese and/or beefcake, thus appealing to two key
market demographics: horny men and lonely women," Read added. Area
residents react to the annual invasion of student move-in stories with
a mixture of bemusement and weariness. "I've been unemployed
for a year and I'm supposed to care about a bunch of kids schlepping
boxes up stairs?" said a heavy-set middle-aged man who gave his name
only as "Matt." Others are more
favorably inclined toward the annual invasion of move-in packages.
"Hey, if I see a cute guy moving into some apartment on
Commonwealth Avenue, I can just head over there and like hang around
until he comes out," said
Anna Maria Closingtime, 22, of Somerville, self-proclaimed reality-show
prospect and "party animal." Others
are more philosophical. "It's just part of the price we pay
for
living in Boston," said an elderly local man who gave his name as
"Whitey." "Hell, if we
lived in New York, we'd
have to hear about a****** buying $50 million apartments and the even
bigger a****** who sell them. So a few days a year the paper
is
crowded with kids carrying boxes, what's the big deal? Live
and
let live, that's my motto," he said. | 
