Fact. About 1% of Holy Cross kids, ca. 30 are locals. A rather tenuous relationship with Wusta by anyone’s definition. For the last 168 years the folks on the hill looked down on Wusta - the heathen below. Last week they finally acknowledged that there is a city at the bottom of the hill and made a public showing of reaching out to the locals. A change of heart? Nope. They smell money - yours.
It’s not about buying absolution for your transgressions, rather allowing the locals into their hallowed presence. For a price of course. In a stroke of genius Holy Cross put a PR spin on their proposed fleecing of the locals – you can be our friend if you buy cheap sports tickets. Now what local can resist a discount? But buyer beware.
The plan is to dump cheap tickets on the locals to boost their poorly attended football games (those HC kids may be smart, but they suck at football) and spin it as reaching out to the community. Can it be that even the HC students don’t go to the games? Hey, there’s plenty of apathy around town - up there too. Maybe its the water.
In case you didn’t know, Holy Cross has the fattest bank account of the 1,083 NPO’s in the city - $75,000,000 and a hefty endowment ($608 million) that grew by $90 million last year. But still they want your money. Last year they got $2,570,983 in government grants. Yup, your tax dollars supporting a NPO with more cash than they know what to do with. Imagine what that $2,570,983 could have done for Wusta – lots of street repairs, more cops and firemen, and more bureaucrats.
Ask yourself how many scholarships did they toss the local’s last year? Although Holy Cross has 230 scholarship programs, not one benefits a local.
Lest we be negligent in our blogging duties, they do have a community outreach program intended to generate goodwill including the recent donation of a broken down bookmobile to the Worcester Public Library. They even gave $80k for its upkeep. Big deal. We’ll just take PILOT cash thank you.
Lest we be negligent in our blogging duties, they do have a community outreach program intended to generate goodwill including the recent donation of a broken down bookmobile to the Worcester Public Library. They even gave $80k for its upkeep. Big deal. We’ll just take PILOT cash thank you.
So we don’t see this as a PR coup, rather PR poop. There’s nothing Holy Cross can do, short of PILOT, that would endear it to the locals who’ve been paying their bills for the last 80 years. It seems to us Holy Cross should be paying the locals to show up, or let them in free. You’ve paid for those tickets with your taxes.
Umm... if they really want to improve relations, then invite the locals to one of those famous Caro St. beer blasts.
Welcome to Wusta!
PS. Wonder how those discounted WRTA college student bus passes worked out for the schools in the Consortium. Another instance of the locals subsidizing the colleges.
