🪧 BU RAs are unionizing

It's Thursday, Boston.

🌡️ Make sure you get outside today. It’s gonna be in the 60s! If you close your eyes, it almost feels like April.

👀 What’s on tap today:

• Police body cams

• Pricey Pats tickets

• Local UFOs

Up first…

HIGHER ED

Picketing the dorms

Boston University resident assistants are moving to unionize. “We thought we could probably do this ourselves,” said Andrew Severance, a sophomore RA at BU, after seeing the RA staff at Tufts do it, too.

BU refused to voluntarily recognize their union, so the school’s RAs filed with the National Labor Relations Board with the hopes of becoming officially recognized via election this spring. If they win, here’s what they want:

❤️ More support during difficult moments. RAs are often on the front lines when dealing with student conflicts and crises, and “the front lines need support too,” Severance said. This could come in the form of more paid training and providing RAs with easier access to mental health resources.

💵 Better compensation. BU covers RAs’ housing costs (between $11,000 and $20,000 a year) in exchange for them enforcing rules in the dorms. Most RAs receive meal plans, but if they're placed in an apartment-style building with a kitchen, they're out of luck. One student told BU Today that she had to take a retail job on top of her RA job to pay for groceries. The plan is to ask BU to equalize compensation for those not receiving a meal plan — and to offer a direct stipend.

🤒 Medical benefits. “If you’re involved in some kind of health emergency … you are still expected to show up to work,” Severance said. BU does not recognize medical leave for RAs which is something “you would otherwise kind of expect from a job.”

🧑‍💼 Be seen as employees, not just student workers. “I have a BU badge that says I am a resident of this building and I work for the university," Severance said, “and I’d like to be treated as such.” Severance thinks we’ll see a “better BU when the people who work for the university are able to support themselves and the people they oversee … We can't do one without the other.”

BU spokesperson Colin Riley said the university does not comment on labor matters.

CITY

Quick & dirty headlines

👮 Cambridge police will get body cameras. This program comes in the aftermath of the death of Arif Sayed Faisal, a 20-year-old UMass Boston student who was shot by officers last month. But when exactly they’ll get them is still TBD. Despite calls from protestors, the city still doesn’t plan on releasing the name of the officer who shot Faisal, but said they will look into other reforms (like bolstering mental health resources) to prevent these kinds of tragedies.

🍎 City Council approves elected school board committee. But that might be as far as it goes. Mayor Wu recently made it clear that she doesn’t want to switch over to an elected committee (as mayor, she’s the only one who can appoint said committee members). The city’s school committee is responsible for passing the district’s budget and hiring the superintendent, and it’s one of the only non-elected school boards in the state. We’ll just have to see what happens once the proposal hits her desk.

🏈 Pats tickets are getting pricier. Tickets for the 2023 season will see the first stadium-wide hike in 15 years. By exactly how much though has yet to be shared. But to help soften the blow, they’re making game-day parking cheaper. Parking passes for season-ticket holders who park on the east side of Route 1 will only be $25 per game and parking on the west side will be free. Plus, if you register to park in delayed-release lots and wait 75 minutes after the game before you leave, you’ll get a $50 gift card.

🌊 Local ocean temps are rising dramatically. The Gulf of Maine had its second warmest year on record in 2022 (53.66 degrees, to be exact). It’s warming faster than the vast majority of the world’s oceans, according to a report released by the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. These rising temps have not only had a major impact on the local fishing and lobstering industries, but are also pushing southern water species further north, ultimately messing with the food chain.

ONE LAST THING

UFOs over Mass.?

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s … Elon Musk?

Okay, it technically wasn’t Elon Musk, but if you’ve seen a strange line of lights in the sky the last few nights, they were likely part of Musk’s Starlink, a group of satellites providing internet to the most remote areas of the U.S.

Given all the unidentified object sightings lately, many people are looking at the sky with a closer eye. But rest assured, it’s just the work of the guy who owns Twitter. Not aliens.

🌠 Thanks for reading! Now if you see Elon Musk in the sky, it’s time to worry.

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