Tell the Truth
Bay State Banner
March 9, 2006
The greatest challenge for high school seniors is to select the college that will most effectively meet their academic and social needs. It is important for educators to facilitate this process.
Fanatical opponents of the Biosafety Lab in the South End believe otherwise. Members of Operation: Over have embarked upon a strategy of disrupting Boston University campus tours for prospective students. Their objective is for high school students and their families to reject admission to the university.
Operation: Over literature asserts, “It’s time to stop being polite and hit BU where it hurts: their funding.” The reasons they give for the student boycott are based on falsehoods and half-truths.
While it is true that the Level 4 Bio-lab will provide for research on anthrax, Ebola and other dangerous pathogens, there is no evidence that the Bio-lab places the surrounding communities in jeopardy. Other Level 4 laboratories have been operating for years without incident.
It is not true that the facility will be located in a neighborhood that is exclusively low-income. First of all, the Bio-lab will be part of an extensive medical research center replete with high salaried medical researchers and technicians. Although some affordable housing is in the area, so are some of the city’s priciest townhouses and condos. So it is grossly inaccurate to assert that the Biosafety Lab will be located in a “residential, low-income neighborhood”.
Construction of the facility has been partially financed by a grant from the National Institutes of Health, not the Department of Homeland Security, as the student boycott literature claims. The objective of the laboratory is to find remedies against the deadly pathogens if they should be used by terrorists against American citizens. It is not to develop weapons for biological warfare.
Operation: Over describes itself as “a nonviolent direct action campaign against militarism in Boston”. However, Operation: Over does not seem reluctant to hold hostage the aspirations and college decision making process of the nation’s high school seniors.
Prospective Boston University students who insist on the truth will not be fooled.
By Melvin B. Miller, Bay State Banner