…At least that’s what you’d think if you believed the Globe’s coverage of the Pring-Wilson trial.
Journalists have inflated a simple comparison
of the backgrounds of the two combatants, Alexander Pring-Wilson
(a Harvard graduate student) and Michael Colono (a “townie”), into a claim that class tensions in our
neighborhood are just waiting to erupt:
The case has stoked class tensions in a community of great poverty and
great wealth; Cambridge reserves 17 percent of its housing stock for
government-subsidized, low-income residents, but it also boasts the
highest concentration of million-dollar homes of any large city in the
nation.Given the strikingly different backgrounds of the two protagonists,
some have described the case as a deadly clash between town and gown.— Class
divisions evident in fatal stabbing case (9/19/04)
But prosecutors used the testimony to emphasize his privileged
background in a trial that has brought out long-standing tensions
between working-class residents of Cambridge and the Ivy League
community.— Defense
calls character witnesses in Harvard student murder trial
(10/4/04, AP )
”I was just trying to cover up my head; that’s what you do in rugby,”
Pring-Wilson said in a packed courtroom during the third week of his
trial on a first-degree murder charge, which has played out against a
backdrop of class tensions in Cambridge.—
‘It was the most horrible thing’:
Defendant says he feared for life in deadly fight
(10/6/04)
None of these articles cites any evidence that this fatal encounter
reflects any “class tensions” in Cambridge. We live 2 blocks away from
the Pizza Ring where this fight occurred and can attest that our
neighborhood is indeed remarkably diverse. Besides us renters are $400K
condos and subsidized public housing projects. Yet the most heated
town-gown dispute I’m aware of is between Harvard and property-owners
over land use. You can hardly call that “class conflict” (not when most
properties are near or over the 7-figure mark), and in any event it’s
not the kind of conflict that leads to knifings in the street.
I don’t claim that town-gown relations are always smooth, but to
connect some vague “tension” to a tragic murder is irresponsible
journalism. I dare say it’s the kind of intellectual laziness that
connects some vague “terrorism” to Iraq.
