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☂️A chance of rain showers and possibly some flurries, with highs around 48. Sunset is at 7:16 p.m.
Today we have a look at one of the Boston area’s newest colleges. But first: it’s been almost a month since a Boston police officer shot and killed Stephenson King, an unarmed Black man who police said they suspected in a carjacking. Since then the officer, Nicholas O’Malley, has been charged with manslaughter and pleaded not guilty. Activists have called for the release of body-camera footage from the shooting, and King’s family has hired Ben Crump, the civil rights attorney who also represented the families of Trayvon Martin, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. There was a gathering the Boston Public Health Commission hosted in Roxbury’s Linwood Square, where the shooting happened.
Protest these days doesn’t always look like it did six years ago after Floyd’s murder, local political leaders told GBH’s Trajan Warren. Some said there is more fear around public gatherings; others said Black Bostonians are channeling their efforts into policy and legislation.
“Activists [are] still being active. I just think it’s different because it’s not as [much] in the street. It’s in the Legislature,” City Councilor Miniard Culpepper told Warren. He referenced bills about reparations and housing policy. “If you look at the legislation that’s being filed, it’s activist legislation to change policies in the communities.” You can find Warren’s full story here.
Four Things to Know
1. Set your alarms and open your wallets: the MBTA will start selling train tickets to World Cup games tomorrow at 11 a.m. on the agency’s mTicket app. A round trip will cost $80, four times as much as it usually costs to travel between South Station and Gillette Stadium for Patriots games or concerts.
Agency officials said they expect tickets to sell out and believe the price of train tickets will still be lower than other means of getting to the games. In preparation for the World Cup, the MBTA has rebuilt the platform at the Foxborough Commuter Rail station to make it fully accessible.
2. The Russian government last week designated Tufts University and the Fletcher School, its international affairs program, as “undesirable organizations.” Russia’s prosecutor general’s office accused the university and the international affairs school of being “instruments of anti-Russian propaganda” since the start of the war in Ukraine and of supporting LGBTQ+ people “in order to destroy traditional family and moral values of Russians.”
The designation means Russian authorities could arrest Tufts faculty, staff or students who travel in that country — but it might not make much of a practical difference for people in the U.S., said Elizabeth Wood, a history professor at MIT. “They are probably doing their programming, their events, their teaching, without sending anyone to Russia anyway,” Wood said. She added that Russian authorities could target Russians who have worked with the university. “Would they go after people because of this designation? I don’t think so. I hope not. They would typically go after them for some other reason.”
3. State lawmakers are voting this week to change how Massachusetts regulates its recreational cannabis industry. “At a high level, this legislation recognizes that our cannabis industry has matured and that our regulatory framework must evolve along with it,” state Sen. Adam Gómez of Springfield said.
If the bill passes — which seems likely to happen this week — customers would be able to buy more marijuana per dispensary trip, with the legal limit increasing from one ounce to two. The regulatory body, the Cannabis Control Commission, would shrink from five members to three. And businesses that sell medical marijuana would be allowed to outsource their cannabis growing and processing to other companies, instead of handling the whole process themselves.
4. How are Red Sox fans feeling about the team, currently at the bottom of the American League East? “Ask me something else,” said Genevieve Jones of Watertown, a fan who spoke with a GBH reporter. The team has won only two of its first 10 games. They lost to the Milwaukee Brewers last night, 8-6.
It’s still early in the season. But Steve Buckley, Boston’s senior writer for The Athletic, told GBH’s Esteban Bustillos he sees reasons for concern. “They have more or less announced that this is going to be a pitching and defense team and that the offense wouldn’t be on a par with what it’s been in the past. The flaw in that argument is that the pitching and defense hasn’t been very good so far,” Buckley said.
How a small college near Boston is serving low-income, first-generation students
Messina College is one of Greater Boston’s newest schools: it officially opened in 2024, two years after Boston College (which has been around for much longer) bought the land in Chestnut Hill from Pine Manor College. The school now has about 200 students enrolled in associate degree programs and is preparing to graduate its first class. About 40% of students are Latino; most come from public schools in Boston, Cambridge, Springfield or Providence, and students pay an average of $2,000 per year for tuition, room and board.
Students who maintain a 3.4 GPA can transfer to Boston College and earn a bachelor’s degree there. About 40 have already been offered spots.
“We’re looking for students who are first-gen, with high financial need,” Father Erick Berrelleza, a Jesuit priest and founding dean of Messina, told GBH’s Kirk Carapezza. “When I was a college student over 20 years ago, we didn’t have models like this. You just sort of had to figure it out, or you didn’t. You tried to find a mentor, or you didn’t. We want to take some of that guessing out of the equation.”
One of those students is Kaylee Castillo, who grew up in Lawrence and is studying health science. She wants to become a nurse.
“I was kind of scared to go to college because I knew that a lot of people come out with debt,” Castillo said. “I knew loans were a big thing, and I have no clue how loans work. My mom could not tell me. Nobody I knew could tell me.”
You can find Carapezza’s full story here.
Dig deeper:
-How many college grads actually use their degrees? It’s complicated
-Under political pressure, colleges try to recruit more rural students
-Colleges hope to ‘AI-proof’ their offerings as new tech changes job expectations
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