Shower threat diminishes to almost nil Thursday as the sun mixes with fair weather clouds. It’s another beauty of a day with low humidity and highs in the low 70s. We’re keeping away the sea breeze, but the airmass is still “coo…
Massachusetts
Massachusetts town with state’s first EEE human case since 2020 urges sports to move indoors
Days after learning it had recorded the state’s first human case of EEE in four years, a town outside of Worcester has recommended sports practices be held outside of evening hours and moved indoors if possible.
Residents raise a stink about smell in Grafton
It’s the scent of summer in Grafton, Massachusetts.
“It smells like fish,” resident Alison Wilson said on Wednesday. “It smells like decaying bodies.”
Nearby, Pamela Renzoni described it similarly.
“It’s like rotten seafood you would sme…
Motorcyclist suffers life-threatening injuries in Dorchester crash
A motorcyclist was rushed to the hospital with life-threatening injuries after a crash in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood Wednesday night.
Boston police said the motorcycle and a car collided on Talbot Avenue around 10 p.m. Footage from…
Person spotted looking into bathroom in Roxbury, Boston police say
Boston police are searching for a person who is accused of looking into an occupied bathroom at a home in Roxbury.
It happened at a home on Devon Street around 2:30 a.m. Wednesday, according to police.
More details on the situation were not…
MIT says ruling that struck down affirmative action has created a diversity dilemma
There’s a diversity dilemma in Cambridge, with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology saying its incoming freshman class will not be as diverse as previous classes due to a landmark decision by the Supreme Court.
“As a baseline, in recent years around 25% of our enrolling undergraduate students have identified as Black, Hispanic, and/or Native American and Pacific Islander. For the incoming Class of 2028, that number is about 16%,” MIT’s Dean of Admissions Stu Schmill told MIT News.
On Wednesday, MIT became one of the first universities to release demographic data on its incoming class.
“It is not totally unsurprising, but it still troubling,” said Julie J. Park, a professor at the University of Maryland College Park.
Park also served as a consulting expert for Harvard University, back when it was sued over affirmative action. The Supreme Court’s ruling in that case, and a similar one in North Carolina, ended the practice of using race as a factor in college admissions.
“We have decades of research that indicates that there are numerous educational benefits that are linked with engaging with racial diversity during the college years,” Park said. “There are things that can be done, not sure if colleges and universities will be brave enough to try them, but there are things.”
Tufts University Professor Natasha Warikoo agrees, adding schools will now need to double down on recruitment and get creative with financial aid to ensure diversity on campus.
“Affirmative action was a policy that tried to make up those different lived experiences just a little bit, so, you know it is problematic it can’t be used anymore,” Professor Warikoo said. “Diversity creates a learning environment in which there are a range of perspectives in the classroom based on a range of lived experiences.”
In a video statement released Wednesday, MIT President Sally Kornbluth said the school will do more to ensure diversity on campus.
“We need to seek out new approaches, we need to make sure that the opportunity pipeline is wide open and we need to be prepared to think big, and long term,” Kornbluth said.
NBC10 Boston also reached out to Harvard University, Tufts University, Boston University, Boston College and Northeastern for this story. Harvard and Tufts told us they were not prepared to release demographic data, with Tufts saying it may be ready in the coming weeks.
