How students can take over City Hall

Part 4

by Michael Crowley

Although the actual acts of registering and voting could hardly be simpler, there are reasons why students might not want to -- and possibly shouldn't -- sign up and get involved locally.

Registering to vote could jeopardize some students' eligibility for financial-aid grants from their home states. As of last year, though, only seven states offered need-based scholarships to their students.

Some might wonder whether it's even appropriate for students to get involved in the city's politics. In plenty of neighborhoods, especially Allston and the Fenway, residents see students as noisy, drunken, vandalizing enemies. And they argue that since most students are only around for four years, they're little more than visiting aliens.

To that, counters Nucci, "Unless you've lived in Boston all your life, you're always going to be an outsider."

And to those who would argue that these four-year transients don't have a right to participate, students could respond with that political slogan everyone learns in school: "No taxation without representation."

Figures estimating students' annual economic impact on Boston are hard to find. But a rough approximation, based on broader studies, suggests that they easily pump hundreds of millions of dollars into area businesses. Few students earn enough money to pay income tax in Massachusetts, but every one of them pays sales tax at supermarkets, restaurants, and record stores.

Finally, although any given student may spend only four years here, the city does have a perennial student population whose interests and politics are more or less consistent. If forward-looking students sacrificed an hour or so of their lives to register and vote, they could begin a tradition whose benefits would be reaped for years to come. Voting, then, might become a form of school spirit.

Back to part 3 - On to part 5

Michael Crowley can be reached at mcrowley[a]phx.com.