Show some class, Weston
WESTON - Ah, idyllic Weston. The lush woodlands. The stately mansions. The myopic fancy-pantses.
In the midst of this magnificence sits Regis College, a school that is a magnet for stellar students from Dorchester, Roxbury, Lawrence, Lowell, and Brockton.
Many of them are the first in their families to make it to college, and a lot of them can't afford to pay the tuition.
So Regis offers them financial aid and scholarships. The school does this because providing a good education - and a way into the middle class - for poor and minority students is central to its mission.
Only, Regis isn't Harvard, and president Mary Jane England doesn't have $35 billion lying around. Last year, the school admitted men for the first time in its 80-year history to try to get into the black.
Six years ago, Regis planners came up with a really smart way to solve their financial woes and make sure they can offer poorer students the help they need well into the future. They proposed an upscale elderly housing development on 60 forested acres they own across the street from their main campus.
The complex would include 362 units of housing, which Regis would sell for $750,000 or more. Seniors would also pay a monthly fee for nursing and hospice services that would allow them to stay in those homes for a long time. Nursing and social work students would do internships there. There would also be classrooms, labs, a library, and a child-care center. And elderly residents would become part of the college, taking classes and attending cultural events.
Similar models have worked well at scores of other universities, including Lasell College in Newton. Regis would put the profits back into the school, building up a hefty endowment for tuition breaks.
Nice idea, right?
Not according to some people in Weston. On Beech Street and Colonial Way, where some houses abut the Regis site, some yards sported signs that read "Stop Regis Overdevelopment."
Residents are incensed at the college's proposal. Too big, they say. Too many new people straining the neighborhood. Too many cars.
Never mind that the project would leave almost half of the site untouched, that the tallest buildings would be set back into a hill, and that Regis has offered to preserve its neighbors' leafy surrounds. And it's not like the elderly, well-to-do Regis residents are going to cruise down Wellesley Street at rush hour.
Still, the town blocked the proposal. Regis appealed. Now the matter is being decided by the Land Court. Town officials would not comment because the case is pending.
Weston people are practiced at batting away proposals that threaten their bucolic paradise. After all, this is the same town that killed the Wayside bike trail, a proposal to turn an unused rail bed into a 25-mile bike path that would run from Belmont to Central Massachusetts. Every community on the proposed trail signed on, except Weston. So it foundered.
Residents here have the deepest pockets in the state. They can afford to fight hard or wait the college out.
On Thursday, about 50 incoming freshmen formed several circles outside Regis's Fine Arts center, playing games as part of orientation. Mostly black and Hispanic, they were enthusiastic and excited about the years ahead.
Aralis Santana, the first of her parents' four children to go to college, was there. Since she'll be leaving her family's Roxbury home in a few weeks to live on campus, her education is going to cost about $39,000 a year, England said.
Because Regis is helping her out, Santana will pay only $13,000 of that, which will be hard enough. Her mother runs a day care. Her father works at a cemetery.
It would be wonderful if Regis could give even more to Santana and the rest of these bright-eyed kids without imperiling its own future.
How about it, Weston?
Yvonne Abraham is a Globe columnist. Her e-mail is Abraham@globe.com
