Photo illustration by Benjamen Purvis

On a recent Wednesday afternoon, my friend Caroline and I embarked on a brazen mission in Brookline: to buy a vape pen. We zigzagged through twentysomethings shuffling to and from Blank Street Coffee and Anna’s Taqueria until we made our way to a Sunoco gas station. Caroline (who asked not to use her last name given the stigma surrounding nicotine use) pulled out her ID and asked for a Crave vape. The cashier responded with a shake of his head. “2001? Nope,” he said. “I can’t sell this to you.”

Caroline is 24, well over the 21-year-old legal age that we saw clearly listed on a sign to the left of the mini mart’s front door. Yet there was another sign inside the store. It was printed on plain white paper, emblazoned with the Brookline town seal, and read: “The sale of tobacco or e-cigarette products to someone born on or after 1/1/2000 is prohibited.”

In 2021, Brookline started a quiet anti-nicotine revolution as the first municipality in the world to implement and uphold a version of the “Nicotine-Free Generation” policy, an idea whose seeds were first sown by the surgeon general in the 1980s. Designed to stop the next generation—and beyond—from getting hooked on nicotine, it cuts people off by birth year rather than age. That means if you were born on or after January 1, 2000, you can never buy tobacco or e-cigarette products in Brookline at any point or for any reason for the rest of your life. For now, the law effectively splits the adult population in two: those who can and those who can’t, people who might be separated in age by only a day. Eventually, as time goes by, no one here will be able to buy themselves a nic fix.

In response to the restriction, local retailers (including the Sunoco Caroline and I visited on our little mission) sued Brookline over the legality of the bylaw. The case made its way up to the Supreme Judicial Court, with Brookline prevailing in 2024. That decision paved the way for more than a dozen other towns (including Somerville, Chelsea, Needham, and Newton) to adopt similar policies. Now there are bills before the legislature that, if passed, would prevent anyone born after January 1, 2006, from ever buying nicotine products (aside from those that are FDA-approved) anywhere in Massachusetts.

Innovative yet controversial, tobacco-control legislation like this is old hat for Massachusetts, which was a leader not only with the smoke-free workplace law in the early aughts but also with raising the legal purchase age to 21 and the ban on all flavored tobacco products, including menthol cigarettes. “We want to continue to build on what’s been done before. I believe the next frontier is this Nicotine-Free Generation policy,” says state Senator Jason Lewis, who represents towns north of Boston and is behind the Senate version of this bill on Beacon Hill. “If this becomes law, it will contribute to the ongoing cultural shift away from using tobacco [and nicotine] products.”

Meanwhile, groups like Cambridge Citizens for Smokers’ Rights—and plain ol’ citizens in general—fear the policy is a clear example of the government going too far, calling the ban everything from downright ridiculous to one that robs people of their individual freedoms guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution. Some municipalities, including Worcester and Bellingham, seem to agree, shooting down proposals for Nicotine-Free Generation policies in their communities. Now, opponents of the bans—supported by convenience-store trade associations worried about a loss of sales revenue—are upping the ante, seeking to pass a state law amendment that would nullify these municipal bans altogether.

It’s safe to say that the battle lines have been drawn on nicotine—and it’s getting ugly. But is Massachusetts leading a revolution to save us from the dangers of tobacco and nicotine, or are these policies just the latest step toward becoming a full-blown nanny state?

Last May, nearly 100 Reading residents packed into their town hall, spilling out of the meeting room and into the hallway and an overflow area next door. A film crew from Korea captured it all for Tobacco War, a documentary looking at Massachusetts’ world-leading tobacco-control efforts. On the agenda that evening: a proposed amendment to the Board of Health’s tobacco sales regulation that would ban the sale of e-cigarette or tobacco products—which includes all products containing nicotine—to anyone born on or after January 1, 2004.

The long list of speakers included Mark Gottlieb, executive director of Northeastern University School of Law’s Public Health Advocacy Institute, which has worked extensively on tobacco policy and clinical addiction, as well as Harvard doctors and professors, select board members and Reading residents. Kathleen O’Leary, a Reading nurse practitioner who has specialized in nicotine dependence for the past 13 years, was one of the few who spoke. “I used to just see cigarette users, and I now see vaping or cigarette and vape users,” she testified to the board. “I’m seeing more youth than adults triple-using: cigarette, vape, and Zyn.” When it was time to vote a few weeks later, the Board of Health passed the ban 4 votes to 1. Reading suddenly became the next Massachusetts community to lock an entire generation out of nicotine.

The logic, according to anti-nicotine advocates, is pretty straightforward: If you want to break the cycle of addiction, you have to stop it before it starts. What worries health professionals most is nicotine’s highly addictive quality—considered on par with heroin. Meanwhile, despite copious research on the effects of tobacco, there isn’t any long-term data on the effects of nicotine on its own, yet health experts warn it can cause cardiovascular problems and alter brain chemistry—something of particular concern for teens and young adults with still-developing brains.

When it comes to tobacco, there is little need to rehash its well-established negative health effects—for smokers themselves and bystanders alike—nor those of the mouth-cancer-causing chewing tobacco and dip. While tobaccoless nicotine products like e-cigarettes might help users avoid the harmful effects of tobacco (in fact, they were originally designed to help wean people off it), the problem is that’s not who’s actually using them. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), of the adults younger than 25 years who reported current e-cigarette use, 72 percent had never even smoked a combustible cigarette.

A screenshot from Ooze’s vape retail site, Oozelife.com

What’s more insidious, nicotine opponents complain, is that companies intentionally market their products toward a younger generation that’s barely at the legal age to smoke. Take the Ooze Movez wireless speaker-vape pen combo (did we mention it lights up in rainbow colors, too?), or vapes shaped like guitars or teddy bears, or the countless teen-friendly flavors of vape cartridges (though the sales of these are already banned in Massachusetts), from passion-fruit lemonade to tropical rainbow blast.

In turn, this marketing approach has prompted advocates to push for an urgent policy response. They say there is more than enough to worry about when it comes to nicotine and no reason to wait to act until decades-long longitudinal studies are completed. “It may be determined in the future to be more dangerous than smoking,” says Maureen Buzby, a regional tobacco inspection coordinator in Melrose and prominent advocate for the municipal Nicotine-Free Generation policies across the Mystic Valley. “We don’t have decades of data, but should we wait to have decades of data before we try to stop this, or should we just let it happen and then find out how bad it was?”

The masterminds behind Nicotine-Free Generation policies have arguably hit a stroke of strategic legislative genius. Their bans are almost always passed by Boards of Health—where the right of approval lies only with a select few board members, sometimes as few as three. Even more advantageous for ban supporters is the fact that those most prominently affected by the bill can’t advocate against it. After all, many of them are too young to buy nicotine or tobacco products, can’t vote, and aren’t really in a position to speak out against it—at least not without getting in trouble with their parents. That night in Reading, not a single person who would be affected by the ban stood up to oppose it. And perhaps not surprisingly, half a dozen under-21 regular vapers who live in towns where bans exist declined my requests to speak for this story.

This town-by-town strategy has proven successful in Massachusetts before. It was used to get lawmakers to pass the smoke-free workplace law in 2004 and again in 2018, when the state became the sixth state to raise the legal smoking age to 21. Both of these policies faced backlash in their time, a response that is viewed by some advocates as par for the course for any boundary-breaking initiative. “In Massachusetts, local communities become incubators for new public health policies; it’s just the way we’re set up here. It’s been a tradition,” Gottlieb says. “I think if we can get somewhere between 50 and 100 towns and cities to take this on, it will make it a lot easier for the state legislature to go forward.”

The ultimate goal? Nothing short of social transformation. “Now, here in Massachusetts, we can’t imagine going into a restaurant, bar, nail salon, school, or hospital where people are smoking. That’s the goal of this nicotine policy,” Buzby says. “We’re hoping that a generation down the road feels the same way about smoking as we do about seeing people smoke in our workplace—that it just is something wildly unimaginable.”

Massachusetts residents who opposed Governor Charlie Baker’s 2019 ban on selling vape products showed up to protest outside the Department of Public Health building on Nov. 22, 2019. / Photo by Suzanne Kreiter/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

Even if the true health risks of nicotine are still unknown, opponents say the dangers of passing such a ban are abundantly clear. “We’re talking about a future generation of adults who are going to be restricted from making choices, and it actually doesn’t really even matter what that choice is,” says Emily Weija, a supporter of Cambridge Citizens for Smokers’ Rights, an advocacy group that has been fighting anti-tobacco legislation for about 20 years. For her and many others, the issue is less about tobacco or nicotine and more about personal agency. “What other things are we going to restrict adults from choosing? It just infantilizes a future generation.”

Oh, and if those principled objections weren’t enough, there’s a far more practical problem: The bans are basically useless. Just ask Jeffrey Singer, a senior fellow in the department of health policy studies at the DC-based libertarian think tank the Cato Institute. “It’s not going to work,” he says, adding that the bans might even “stimulate an illicit market, which is going to make using these substances more dangerous to the people who use them.”

Turns out he has a point. Massachusetts already has a booming illicit nicotine market. At a raid earlier this year in Dorchester, for instance, authorities seized 700 packs of unstamped menthol cigarettes, along with cocaine and cannabis. “We’ve created such a thriving marketplace that illegal sellers are coming here,” says Peter Brennan, executive director of the New England Convenience Store and Energy Marketers Association. “And they’re targeting Massachusetts.”

Then there’s the cross-border shopping problem. Thanks to the state’s menthol cigarette ban, consumers have already learned that they can easily cross state lines to buy whatever they want. As a result of the 2020 ban, consumption of menthol cigarettes dropped a mere 5 percent—not much of a behavioral shift. What did change, though, was where smokers bought them: Sales decreased in the Bay State and increased in bordering ones, according to a JAMA Internal Medicine report.

It wasn’t lost on us that my friend could have legally bought cannabis in Brookline yet not a nicotine vape pen.

Still, the real irony hit me that afternoon out with Caroline. After we got booted from the Sunoco, we kept walking until, a few minutes later, we came across one of Brookline’s cannabis dispensaries. We didn’t go in, but it wasn’t lost on us that Caroline could have bought a federally illegal substance in Brookline yet not a nicotine vape pen, which is a legal product across the nation. “Adults in Massachusetts are deemed competent to choose to buy alcohol or marijuana. Both of these are intoxicants,” says Stephen Helfer, head of Cambridge Citizens for Smokers’ Rights. “But according to the Nicotine-Free Generation policy, they don’t feel adults have the judgment to purchase tobacco or nicotine products. And tobacco and nicotine do not intoxicate people.”

The inconsistency gets even weirder when you consider that, though the jury is still out on the long-term health or cancer-causing effects of nicotine, as Singer points out, alcohol was recently deemed a carcinogen by the U.S. Surgeon General. Yet no moves have been made for a generational ban on alcohol. (After all, we all know how that kind of prohibition went last time.)

Unsurprisingly, opponents of the ban have gone beyond just complaining—they’ve gone on the offensive. In mid-January, Lynn Representative Daniel Cahill and Senator William Driscoll filed counter-bills—supported by the New England Convenience Store and Energy Marketers Association, the Retailers Association of Massachusetts, and the Massachusetts Package Stores Association, among others. Their proposed law amendment aims to strengthen the state’s 21-plus age restriction on tobacco, alcohol, cannabis, and gambling, making it the law of the land to “preempt, supersede, or nullify” any town-based policies. That means no town could legally go further than Massachusetts law, and all current Nicotine-Free Generation policies would be null and void. “It’s hard enough to do business in Massachusetts already. There’s already enough government regulation of our lives, and this is just one more step,” says Brennan, who notes that his member retailers are losing more than $100 million in revenue every year as a result of the menthol and flavor ban currently in effect. “I think common sense prevails at the state level.” (These bills, as well as the Nicotine-Free Generation policies, are awaiting legislative committee review.)

For Caroline, the cashier who denied her a vape in Brookline was just a small bump in the road. We walked a short 10 minutes until we crossed over into Boston and popped into the Bluemoon Smoke Shop, where my friend easily purchased what she was looking for. Not a fan of nicotine, I looked on with slight disapproval but said nothing. In my opinion, the way it should be.

This article was first published in the print edition of the August 2025 issue with the headline: “Does Nanny Know Best?” 

Photo by Drone Home Media / Cheryl Cotney, Compass Chestnut Hill (Listing Agent)

1. Pick Your Price Point

Looking for lots of space? Though there are a few single-families on the market in this neighborhood, you’re more likely to find two- to five-bedroom condos in new buildings with amenities such as central AC and garage parking (starting price: around $1 million). If you don’t need that much room, cozy studios and one-beds in older buildings can be snagged for as little as $400,000.

2. Plot Your Commute

A less-than-30-minute ride on the Green Line will keep your commute downtown short and sweet. For those who work outside of the city, the commuter rail has a stop at Lansdowne Station on the Worcester Line. If you have a car, a resident parking sticker gives you access to street parking, which is usually plentiful (except when the Sox are playing a home game, of course).

Eddie Hou of Jennie & Eddie/The Luxury Living Boston Team at Regatta Realty (Photographer and Listing Agent)

Photo via Boston Globe/Getty Images

3. Take in the Vibe

The area’s claim to fame has long been Fenway Park. But it’s also seen a surge in development recently, including 401 Park, which transformed the former Sears complex. Next up is 1400 Boylston Street, which will turn a dated Star Market and parking lots into office and research space and restaurants, as well as Fenway Corners, a 5-acre redevelopment next to the ballpark.

Photo by Andrey Denisyuk/Getty Images

4. Check out the Culture

Formerly a muddy marshland bordering the Back Bay, Fenway had humble beginnings for what is now a thriving part of the city. Home to the Museum of Fine Arts and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the neighborhood also has plenty of green space thanks to the Emerald Necklace, a 1,100-acre park system that stretches through Fenway and neighboring Brookline, Roxbury, and Jamaica Plain.

5. Scope out the Schools

Many of the city’s 250,000 college students live in Fenway, home to Emmanuel, Northeastern, MassArt, Simmons, and Wentworth, among other schools. While there are no public elementary schools in the neighborhood—younger kids get their education in J.P. or the South End—there is the public Fenway High School, Boston Latin, and Boston Arts Academy, as well as the private Boston University Academy.

Photo via Boston Globe/Getty Images

Illustration by Zohar Lazar

I’m happy it’s about to be summer. Peaches are in season, and I can constantly wear shorts—a big win all around because, to be frank, I have admirable quads, which is still the best thing from having played catcher in Little League.

I just have one wish: That this summer is better than last year, which isn’t a high bar. Last summer was a loser, not in a 2020 way when I had to wear a mask to ride a bike by myself, but by every other metric, the summer of 2023 kind of blew. It started off rainy, then it got swampy hot, and that was really it, except for three nice days in August. The state also decided it was a good time to close the Sumner Tunnel for two months, just as the city was getting back in business. Oh, and the Red Sox were less-than-mediocre for the same high-ticket prices. At least the powers that be made some of the T free, which is a decent deal even if a train is partially on fire.

None of that matters, because regardless of whatever improvements have been made, or not if you’re a certain ball team, I’m solid in my prediction that this summer will be the worst summer ever, more than last summer and more than the summer before. In my world, every summer is the worst summer ever because my kids, 12 and nine years old, are no longer in school. They love that. Me, not so much, because when they’re in school, they’re there until 2:30. Now they’re at a different camp each week, which, if we’re lucky, runs until 12:30, but more likely noon. Some weeks, it’s only for four days, which is fantastic because the only thing summer needs is more long weekends.

I love my kids, but seriously, all you people running camps, you could keep them for longer. I think you’d like them. They’re funny and silly, and at least one of them will help clean up, but to appreciate all of that, you need time. And by time, I mean way more than three hours. I hate to play “back in my day,” but at a certain period in history it was called “day camp” because it lasted, you know, the whole day.

I want them to come home dirty, sweaty, and tired. Mostly tired. Now, they just come home hungry because it’s almost lunchtime and thirsty because they didn’t touch their water. They did get to have candy and chips because the camp sells them, and amazingly, how much my kids love a camp is in direct proportion to the snack selection.

Really, I just want them to come home later. Five p.m. would be the dream; 3 would be sweet, but I’d take 2. How about they’re gone long enough to miss a meal?

This isn’t a call to end summer vacation, a thing that exists merely because it has existed. Sure, there’s an appeal to not disrupt the learning with two months of, well, not learning, and as Jack Schneider, professor of education at UMass Amherst, says, it could be a chance to reimagine school and give attention to the stuff that gets pushed aside, like music and art and anything else that’s not on the test. It would just require a few things to fall into place. Staffing—i.e., teachers—which would mean more money. A willingness to give up the long-ingrained eight-week break. Already those are two hard nos, but there’s an even harder one.

Air conditioning.

My kids’ schools are hot in January, and they already dislike math. They’d like it less if they had to fight through a fever dream.

So summer break isn’t going away. Fine. Kids need the time off, and while I’d love for them to go to camp, what I really want is for them to feel some danger while they do it. As it stands, I bring them, then collect them. Where’s the suspense in that? I want them to have what I had, which is getting picked up at 7:30 a.m. by a high school junior in his Impala. He’d be blasting Foreigner or Van Halen or something else I had no say over. But because I was the oldest, I got to sit shotgun and be in charge of finding a new tape in the glove box. That job had me stoked. Seatbelts? It was 1981.

In between, at camp, we did things like run through high-powered sprinklers, drink juice out of buckets, and play whip-this-ball-at-someone’s-head in a wrestling room that had zero supervision. And that was just day camp. I was also lucky enough to go to overnight camp, where they’d take us to Weirs Beach on trip days. There, the only thing the counselors would say was, “Don’t go by the superette. That’s where the bikers hang out.” Or they’d drop us off at Hampton Beach, where we soon had to face big choices. Do we buy taffy? Do we buy a bong? Do we buy a poncho with Bob Marley’s face on it? Then we’d realize, “We’re 14 and have three hours to kill. We can do it all.”

And we survived. We didn’t have phones or watches to give us the time or directions. We just wandered around, bought fried dough, and managed to meet up at some vague location on a beach. That’s why summer matters. It’s the time when kids answer the great question, “Can I figure this out when I’m not being watched over by caring, nurturing adults who have my best interests at heart and who never tell me offensive jokes?” Scary? Sure. But that’s kind of the point. “Kids can experience a little apprehension,” says Laurie Kramer, professor of applied psychology at Northeastern University. “It’s good.”

Did all of the above make me the street-smart, tough guy I am today? If by street, you mean low-traffic roads with inconsistent sidewalks and little business district to speak of, then, “Yeah, step back when I’m picking up bagels.”

Two problems prevent my kids from having this summer of intrigue. One is price. Camp was never cheap. It’s even less cheap now, and I’ll be honest, I don’t have extra cash lying around. The other is that risky stuff’s not done anymore. Now, camps go on trips to water parks and roller-skating rinks, where it’s “safer” and “cleaner” and “less biker gangier.”

What a bummer.

But again, as a fairly responsible parent, if a camp laid out a plan of: We’re gonna find the scuzziest place, the kind of place where no amount of hand sanitizer can penetrate, and let the kids loose, I’d think, Maybe not. Then after I saw my wife’s face, I’d bump it up to, No effing way.

But here’s a thought. Why even tell me? My parents knew this about sleep-away camp: Drop-off day. Visiting day. Pickup day. They cared about me, but they didn’t need the particulars. You know what’s ruined the fun and hurt parenting more than sleep philosophies? Weekly updates. I receive them from teachers, superintendents, and coaches. I get it. You’re involved, and you want to let us know all the good work you’re doing and all the extra time you have to search the Internet for quotes from Maya Angelou and/or Rick Pitino.

Here’s my suggestion: Keep more to yourself. Knowing isn’t always so helpful. My parents weren’t expecting to be kept abreast, mostly because it wasn’t a thing. Maybe the camp sent out a newsletter. A newsletter. It took the whole summer to write. It had to be typed. If there was a mistake, it had to be retyped. Then it had to be photocopied. Then put into envelopes, which had to be addressed, stamped, and taken to a post office. By the time it arrived, the fact that three kids were stranded on the other side of the lake for 45 minutes six weeks ago was irrelevant.

I wish I could have parented in that age of ignorance, but as a dad in 2024, the truth is that I’m always going to know way too much about what my kids are doing. I just need to figure out a way for them to have a taste of havoc this summer on my budget. Could I take them out myself and help them find trouble? Sure, I could, but I want to be able to say, “I have no idea why they decided that was a good idea” to my wife and be telling the truth. I want them to have this fun without me having to witness it.

I’d be happy if they got together with their friends, got on their bikes, and buzzed the neighborhood making skid marks, yelling about Demon Slayer, and clanging their bells, causing every cavapoo in every window on every street to yip uncontrollably. And every day, they’d end up at the convenience store, touching everything, buying nothing until they got up to the counter, all of which annoys the owner, who’s already pissed off that kids are getting Italian ice and he has to scoop out Italian ice even though he sells Italian ice and it’s the middle of the summer, and there’s no such thing as kid-appropriate scratch tickets.

That’s the danger, the hellraising, the self-discovery that should mark the summer.

And, of course, they’d fully stop at intersections and be wearing their helmets. I’d probably be following somewhat close behind.

Makeup by Ashley Cooper / Hair by Azekah Simon / Photos by Karin Dailey

It’s a Friday night in late March, and Oompa, the Roxbury-born artist, rapper, and performer is working out some excess energy, pacing around the makeshift greenroom and chatting nonstop. She’s getting ready to headline a show at Northeastern University, a short 30-minute set, and her manager, Jon Bricker, a 30-year-old white guy from Sharon that she and her friends affectionately call “Jon Snow,” warns that, as with most college events, there’s no telling what the turnout will be. Still, Oompa approaches the show with the same level of professionalism and all-in enthusiasm she would any other performance, including an hourlong sound check in the second-floor ballroom of the school’s Curry Student Center, which has a stage backdrop that she had Bricker coordinate with the Northeastern A/V team to change colors with each song. Her DJ for the night, a 28-year-old fourth-grade teacher by day named Brandi Chanel, is along for the ride.

“Check, check,” Oompa says into the microphone, and then, to the rows of empty chairs in the audience: “I don’t know why rappers always say ‘check, check.’ They already checked this shit.” She’s dressed in ripped jeans, a black T-shirt from the Malden streetwear store Laa Tiendaa, Ray-Ban sunglasses, and a Gucci crossbody bag filled with a phone charger, lip gloss and liner, lotion, a bottle of Burberry perfume, and some lavender, which she smokes out of tobacco leaf (“I’m a soft gangster,” she jokes). She’s wearing an oversize, diamond-encrusted nameplate around her neck. Her hair is in braids, a few of them dyed green, and her Air Jordans are untied as she takes long strides back and forth across the stage, swinging her arms, warming up, and psyching herself up. Side stage, her friends TLoui and Marlyn dance along and take videos for her to use later on Instagram and TikTok as Oompa runs through her eight-song set list, a mix of punchy, beat-driven tracks and slicker, bass-heavy jams, all with clever lyrics at their core.

Like all artists and all humans, Oompa is a lot of things all at once. Oompa the person is zero pretense: a funny, warm plant-mom with ADD and perpetually fingerprinted eyeglasses who taught herself to read astrological charts during the pandemic. She spends much of the pre-show hours in the student-center greenroom recalling Instagram stories she probably shouldn’t have posted. She’s an Aquarius, and when asked her age, prefers to say she’s “rapper years old” because everybody seems to want female rappers to be 25, and she’s already older than that.

As a result, this has meant shedding and rebelling a little bit from the expectations (and the safety) of being the Oompa she’s been known as until now. After years of identifying as more masculine in both musical and personal style—her second album was named Cleo, after Queen Latifah’s masculine lesbian bank-robber character in the 1996 movie Set It Off—she’s started to embrace her femme side: makeup, jewelry, accessories, eyelashes. She’s also leaning back into her given name, Lakiyra. Her latest single, “Think Too Much,” veers away from rap and hip-hop into something closer to Afro-Caribbean, and she sings on it—even though she’s still not entirely secure in her singing voice. “I’m not one of those people who don’t want to acknowledge all the identities that impact who I am,” she says. “But what I do want to be known as is an amazing person, and a great entertainer, and a wonderful businesswoman. I want to be able to be known as the things I give my life to work my ass off to achieve.”

With Governor Maura Healey at Healey’s inauguration party.

While the city has embraced Oompa for certain parts of who she is—which is to say, the more underrepresented parts, the parts that have challenged her—it’s unclear to her if that acceptance extends to all of who she really is. And that has made her question whether she’ll ultimately stay in Boston or go someplace else where she is just known as an artist and where being Black, queer, and orphaned isn’t considered the most interesting thing about her.

She’d stay if she felt like she could advance her career here—after all, Oompa is Boston to the bone. At every performance, she gives a shout-out to Roxbury. Yet for all the pride she has in her roots and the support that the city of Boston has given her, the question of whether the city will—or even can—sustain the artists it supports grows louder in her head each day. Grants, while incredibly helpful, she says, create a dependency in the absence of a thriving music economy. Meanwhile, some artists who receive opportunities based on identities can come to resent them. “I know that I check off a lot of boxes that people want when they’re looking for some kind of quota to be filled on diversity, equity, and inclusion,” she says. “I got ‘Black,’ ‘woman,’ ‘fat,’ ‘queer,’ ‘from the ’hood.’” Sometimes, she wants to represent those things; representation is necessary and important. Other times, she can’t help but feel a little used. “When somebody’s hiring me or interviewing me, I’m like, Are you doing this because queerness is at the forefront? Or are you humanizing me? And do you like my music? Do you like the art I put out? Do you see me as a full person? And a lot of times, the answer is ‘no.’”

To this end, as Oompa contemplates the next phase of—and home for—her career, she’s started to wonder: Is she part of a system in Boston that truly wants to support artists in whatever they do and however they choose to identify? Or one that just wants a way to feel good about itself?

Photo by Samuel Bennett

Oompa may feel she is too often defined by her backstory, but her story is certainly compelling. Born Lakiyra Williams in Roxbury, Oompa was put into foster care at six weeks old with a 60-year-old widow everyone in the neighborhood knew as “Ma.” Not long after, Ma—who worked at the Gillette factory and as a school-bus monitor, and lived in the low-income housing development Academy Homes—learned that Lakiyra’s biological older sister, Nicky, was a foster child in Mission Hill and decided to foster her, too. NooNoo, their biological younger sister, came a little later, and Ma also fostered her. “And then in ’95, she was like, ‘These are my kids,’” Oompa recalls. “She adopted us, and we lived with her ever since.”

Oompa grew up in a house where music was always playing: Bob Marley, Motown, and gospel. But as a kid, she never wanted to be a musician. She wanted to be a dancer, a lawyer, or a gang leader. She didn’t have role models at home for any of those paths, but her mother taught her how to be a hard worker and how to survive. For a long time, Oompa didn’t realize how tight her family’s finances were. “We knew we weren’t the best-dressed kids, but we never went hungry. Christmases were full; birthdays were full. We’d have our parties at Chuck E. Cheese or McDonald’s like everyone else, arriving in a limo because my godfather owned the limo company,” she says, adding that no one, not even Oompa and her sisters, knew they were loaned the limo for free. “We just thought we were ’hood-rich.” It wasn’t until she was in middle school when she started taking over some of the household responsibilities, including balancing the family checkbook, that she realized that they’d all been living on $833 a month.

It was also around that same time, when she was 12, that she was given the name Oompa. She was playing pickup basketball on the courts at Washington Park when an older male player who also frequented the courts started calling her an “Oompa Loompa Baby,” because she was “short and thick and a monster,” she says. Eventually, it got shortened to just Oompa, and a thinly veiled insult became a badge of honor. “I’d thought that everyone got a nickname on the court, but I found out later that it’s not standard; I got lucky,” she says. By 14, Lakiyra had all but been replaced.

Becoming Oompa was a relief. “Lakiyra was very insecure and hurt,” she says. “As Oompa, I started building a me that was as tough as I wanted to be. It was really nice to be like, Yeah, I’m Oompa. I’m all the things you said I am. And I’m fire.” She came out as gay that year—“I was dragged out,” she says, by her sister Nicky, who was forbidden from having boys over while Oompa hung out with girls their mom thought were just friends. Ma didn’t talk to her for two weeks. “Eventually, she was like, ‘I just don’t want you to have to suffer the same way that I have seen suffering,’” Oompa says. “‘You know, you’re already Black and a woman, and you don’t need to advertise anything else that’ll make you a target.’”

Still, Oompa discovered that being loud and out protected all the softest parts of her, she says; it protected Lakiyra. While Oompa was getting into fights in the neighborhood, Lakiyra was writing poetry, taking AP classes, and holding down afterschool jobs at the YMCA and TJ Maxx to help take some financial burden off her mom. In ninth grade at East Boston High School, her guidance counselor—“a weird lady who loved penguins and believed in me from day one,” she recalls—had Oompa take the PSATs. Oompa scored in the 99th percentile in the district and higher than anyone else in the school. “She pulled me into the office and said, ‘Do you know what that means?’” Oompa recalls. “‘It means you got brains. You gotta stop acting crazy.’” The counselor told her she needed to think about college; it was the first Oompa had heard of the idea.

To help her achieve that goal, the counselor nominated Oompa for the Posse Foundation scholarship, awarded to otherwise overlooked students with academic and leadership potential, which she won—along with a full ride to Bucknell University, a mostly white liberal arts school in central Pennsylvania. “I knew nothing about college,” Oompa says. “Nothing about academics. Had zero preparation.” Among her fellow students, she was noticeably Black, poor, and masculine, identities that suddenly became very visible and practically all that she or anyone else could see. “I was wearing the same clothes all the time,” she says. “I had locs, but nobody could do my locs out there, so they looked tacky.” She didn’t speak like the other students. She didn’t even know how to take notes in class. “There were so many things that just made me stick out,” she says. She constantly thought about leaving.

Then she was forced to. Oompa was playing basketball one day during her freshman year when she received a call from Ma. Oompa didn’t answer. Later that night, she learned Ma had died. Since Oompa’s older sister, Nicky, had died of lupus three years earlier, that left Oompa in charge of the house. She traveled home to take care of funeral arrangements, even though there really wasn’t any money for that, and took a leave of absence from school to care for NooNoo, who was still a minor. Oompa went to parent-teacher conferences and made sure her sister did her homework. It was a really tough time, she says, “making sure we had a place to sleep, making sure we had food in our bellies, and not doing really well at that.” Dinner was often a Jamaican beef patty shared multiple ways. Oompa lost 55 pounds from stress and not enough food.

Bucknell allowed her some time off, after which she returned to finish school. Oompa dropped her math major for English and education, which were easier to complete, and found a few mentors among the poetry professors. Life got better socially: She had friends and was popular, but there was a piece of her that understood that while she was certainly outgoing, likable, and fun, she was seen not in spite of, but because of, her differences. Playing them up didn’t feel great, but it made it easier to survive. “I was a very queer, Black, loud ’hood girl,” she says. “And everybody took note. At some point, I was like, ‘Okay, well, you’re not gonna fit in. So why not just love standing out?’”

After years of leaning into a tougher more-masculine persona, Oompa has recently started to embrace her femme side. / Photo by Karin Dailey

It was a hot Sunday morning in May 2022 when Oompa rolled into the Harvard Athletic Complex and onto the biggest stage of her career so far: the Boston Calling Music Festival, where headliners included Nine Inch Nails, Metallica, and Avril Lavigne. Backstage, the screen played her music videos as she got ready for her opening number, which featured dancers flipping across the stage in aerial cartwheels and back handsprings as she launched into the upbeat song “Amen.” At one point during the show, the dancers stripped down to black lingerie, and then Oompa pulled on a green Celtics jersey with her name stitched on the back as she performed one of her better-known songs, “Lebron,” a beat-driven track about the pro basketball player and “feeling like a bad bitch,” as she described to one music outlet.

Oompa had come a long way since her first time on stage during an open-mike night at Uptown, Bucknell’s campus nightclub, where she read and essentially rapped her poems. “I had this air of confidence,” she says of that first performance. “But something in me was trembling and just terrified.” Still, she was hooked. She found writing rhymes not unlike math—formulaic, rational—not to mention therapeutic. She found performing, meanwhile, both thrilling and validating. She’d spend nights in the computer lab learning how to use the program GarageBand, writing verses and setting them to beats. She started performing at open-mike nights whenever she could, on campus and around town.

After graduating from college, Oompa returned to Boston and took a job teaching eighth-grade English in Cambridge. At night, she wrote poetry and gradually worked her way onto spoken-word stages around Greater Boston. She was good—moving with a clear, powerful voice and unwavering presence—and audiences loved her. She entered several local and national slam poetry competitions and won—yet she eventually grew disillusioned with the scene. “A lot of slam was competition over who has the most important oppression and how awful things are,” she says. “It was like the oppression Olympics. A lot of people were getting hurt and tired. The truth is suffering is part of the human condition. We all hurt. It’s not a competition.”

When fellow musician Cliff Notez, founder of the Boston-based artists’ and performance collective HipStory, encouraged Oompa to record a mixtape of songs, she turned her attention from poetry to music and got to work putting together a collection of songs that might work for an album. She decided to start with a letter she’d written her mom in the years after her death in which she confessed her wish to have turned down the college scholarship to spend more time with her. She locked herself in the bathroom for two hours, and turned it into a song that expressed everything she’d left unsaid: “You wouldn’t of had to call me, I could’ve seen you then / but I ignored you to make a team that couldn’t win / To see you alive one more time or never again / At least then I’d have some closure I could settle with.”

Cover art for November 3rd

That song, “Dear Mama,” became the centerpiece of November 3rd, an album named for the day her mother died that Oompa self-released in 2016. The album received several positive reviews—including a nod as one of Dig Boston’s 30 Best Local Albums of 2016—which encouraged Oompa to focus her side art entirely on making music. She performed whenever and wherever she could, including small stages that don’t exist anymore, such as Wonder Bar. She began applying for artists’ grants to help fund her writing and performing. She told herself she’d quit teaching as soon as she earned an equal amount of money from her music. That happened in 2017, she says, “and I was gone.”

Oompa’s big break came in 2018 when she played her first sold-out show at Great Scott, the now-shuttered Allston bar and live music venue. She couldn’t believe that 250 people would show up to hear her play. “It changed something in my mind and gave me the confidence to keep going,” she says. Not long after, she answered an open call for submissions to perform at the inaugural Boston Art & Music Soul Festival, an event meant to amplify Black and brown artists and creators. That first year, recalls founder Catherine Morris, now the director of arts and culture at the Boston Foundation, she and her team received more than 5,000 applications for just 21 spots. Morris went to see Oompa perform live as part of the decision-making process. “Her performance was electric,” Morris recalls. “She had kids involved, grandmothers, aunties, everyone—and that really aligned with the energy I wanted to have for the festival.”

Morris wasn’t the only one singing Oompa’s praises: Later in 2018, she received the Unsigned Artist of the Year award from the Boston Music Awards. She used the momentum to release her second album, Cleo, which drew even more from her experiences growing up in Roxbury, and celebrated with a sold-out show at the 525-seat Sinclair in Cambridge. In 2019, Oompa took home the Live Artist of the Year award at the Boston Music Awards, and in early 2020, NPR named her a Slingshot Artist to Watch, describing her “hypnotic melodies and socially charged lyrics [used] to cultivate inclusivity and change the face of a sound dominated by the hetero-male perspective.” That time period, Oompa says, was a blur of hard work and constant hustle that paid off. “It just kind of felt like a bunch of oh-shit moments,” she says. “Like a dream.”

Oompa’s success, she says, “has just kind of felt like a bunch of oh-shit moments. Like a dream.”

It was a dream that was quickly becoming a reality. In the fall of 2021, Oompa released a third album, Unbothered, and spent time developing her live show, hiring a band, a DJ, and dancers. It paid off: In 2022, she opened for rapper 2 Chainz at Salem State and then took the stage at Boston Calling.

More big opportunities came in quick succession, including the chance this past January to perform at Governor Maura Healey’s inaugural ball alongside headliner Brandi Carlile. “One of the goals was to really celebrate Governor Healey’s historic election with talent that represents demographics that often get overlooked and also artists that would hype up the crowd,” says Mass Cultural Council executive director Michael Bobbitt, who was enlisted to help suggest guest talent. “I reached out to my staff, and Oompa came highly recommended. When I saw her work, I was blown away and so thrilled that we have an artist of that caliber in Massachusetts.” At the event, which was held at TD Garden, Oompa performed a five-song set that Bobbitt says lit the crowd on fire. “I imagined seeing her fill stadiums all over the world,” he says.

A pivotal moment in Oompa’s career was performing at Governor Healey’s inauguration party. / Photo by Samuel Bennett

Later that same month, another call came in: Would Oompa be able to perform at halftime during a January Celtics game against the Golden State Warriors? The singer had come pretty far, but this was big—and it wasn’t just the size of the crowd or the significance of the stage. She’d recently connected with her birth father, who, it turned out, had been a popular R & B singer in the ’90s. She got to bring him to the game to watch her perform, where he sat courtside, second row, right behind Warriors point guard Steph Curry. “To be on the court at such an important rival game was one thing, but to be able to bring my people there,” she says. “I don’t always stay present to the moment. But when you’re with the people you love, and you see them taking it in, how they can’t believe that it’s happening, it makes you kind of come back home to that, like, ‘Oh my God, we’re here.’”

At Northeastern, the student crowd in the Curry Student Center ballroom was small, as Bricker had warned—fewer than 75 people. But those who did show up were into it—they knew all the words to Oompa’s songs and made little use of the rows of chairs, instead crowding right up to the stage. Oompa lit up the room with her music—stories rapped over electronic beats, danceable messages of empowerment—not at all deterred by the empty space or by the deafening silence after she called out, “We got any ’90s babies in the house?” and no one answered because these were all 2000s babies. She performed six songs before the mike went dead, creating panic for the A/V team. No matter: She freestyled a bit while Bricker tried to right the situation and made the most of what would have certainly been a disaster at a bigger show.

When he heard about the somewhat lackluster event, Dart Adams, a Boston music historian, author, and Boston contributing editor, was reminded of a conversation he’d had with Oompa five or six years ago. “I was telling her how when you’re disappointed by crowd turnout, you have to remember that there are instances in music history where there were acts that went on, and there were maybe 30 people in the crowd,” he says. “And after they performed, 95 percent of those people were their fans, and 75 percent went on to start their own bands or groups or careers. So you have to show up for every show because you’re making potential fans out of every person there, and you’re inspiring them at the same time.”

Still, being an inspiration is hard work, and it’s not always enough to pay the rent. Oompa’s not afraid of hustle, but some days she’s tired. She earns a decent living performing and fills in the gaps with artistic grants that ironically can, at least some days, seem to leave little time for making art, given the amount of time it takes to apply for them. While she’s grateful for these opportunities, she wants to know: “Where’s the money to pay your rent while you create beautiful things for the city and represent it well?”

Those are questions Oompa is asking herself as she ponders leaving the city she calls home, a city that may no longer have the runway for her to grow beyond the identities she has felt forced to lean into. Post-COVID, there are fewer live venue spaces for artists at her level. While many smaller venues didn’t survive the pandemic, the new venues that have opened in Boston—such as Roadrunner in Brighton and the MGM Music Hall at Fenway—seat thousands. “It’s like, once you sell out that 150-person venue, you better be ready for the 2,000-person venue,” Cliff Notez says. “That doesn’t make sense.” As a result, a good number of Oompa’s live performances these days have been confined to colleges and universities, and while Bricker says those can be very lucrative and help an artist grow a fan base, it’s not quite the same as performing at a traditional live venue, which is more prestigious.

The system, in other words, creates a dependency, making the city’s arts scene one that exists but doesn’t really grow or prosper. That’s an observation Notez and Oompa made a few years back while discussing the ins and outs of the local grant scene, which is often geared toward artists of color from underrepresented communities. There are rules, of course. “You have to create projects consistently, and you have to present yourself in a certain way,” Oompa says. “When you apply to these grants, sometimes they want a sob story. Sometimes it is tokenizing. Sometimes they want a narrative. Sometimes they want you to explore your identities and your troubles.”

Ironically, the grant application process can leave out a lot of the artists who could use the help the most. To be able to benefit from the system, Oompa says, “you have to have had access to institutions in the city and have a way to be able to communicate in a way that makes you seem worthwhile. So it leaves a lot of people out of the narrative—a lot of the ’hood kids, a lot of the non-readers, a lot of people who don’t care about college but who have a lot of great art to provide.” Kara Elliot-Ortega, chief of the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture, says that “artists should not have to share a sob story or trauma in order to get funding.” She also says that beyond grants, the city has strategies in place to support a creative ecosystem that includes, among other things, making new performance and cultural spaces and fueling nightlife and activities that draw people to the city.

Oompa is doing her part, with the city’s support, to help build that ecosystem. Last summer, she was one of 12 people and organizations awarded $500,000 in workforce development contracts as part of a program established by the city’s Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture. She’s using the funding to establish Outlaud Entertainment, an artists’ collective and incubator that will mentor five emerging artists over the course of fifteen months. At the same time, roughly half a dozen creatives—including a photographer, makeup artist, a stylist, and art directors—will be a part of the collective, and paid for their participation in supporting the artists in the incubator. The idea is to give the artists the chance to work together—not on their own as grantees tend to do—network with one another and the industry people they meet through Oompa, and get a sense for how the industry works. The end goal? To help a new generation of artists break the cycle of dependency, and to serve as a model for the city to establish its own incubators or other hands-on approach to funding the arts. “We need more people who are in conversation with the culture in a real way,” she says. “We need to do more than just throw some money at it.”

The project tracks with Oompa’s career goals as a child, when she told herself that she wanted to be either a gang leader, a lawyer, or a dancer. “The idea of a gang leader keeps coming back to me, but as in a person who leads a community and who helps people find home wherever they are,” she says. “So, in that case, tokenize me. Come do it. Because I have a whole community of people who can benefit from that.”

Even as she works to grow the next generation of artists in Boston, Oompa acknowledges she’s ready for the next stage in her career. “I’m at a point where I’ve maximized my opportunities here,” she says. Last year, she applied for and was accepted to the Recording Academy, the music industry’s members-only society and the overseer of the Grammy Awards. A perk of membership is being able to buy tickets to the show in L.A., and that’s where she found herself this past February. Her seats were terrible, but it didn’t matter. “I’m up on, like, the third balcony feeling like I’m about to drop to the center of the earth,” she says. “I just put my glasses on and leaned over.”

It was outside of the show, though, where she grew convinced that L.A. is where she needs to be. “I met so many cool people in random places,” she says, recalling how she chatted up a music writer on a bus and saw Beyonce at a pre-party. “You could just be out eating chicken. You’re gonna meet somebody who’s somebody.” It’s the place where Oompa feels she has a shot at transcending the identities Boston associates with her—and maybe even becoming somebody who is somebody, too.

Alyssa Giacobbe is a New England-based writer and editor. Her last story for Boston was “3 Million Fans Can’t Be Wrong…Can They?“

CAMBRIDGE, MA – APRIL 16: An aerial view of Harvard Hall in Harvard Yard in Cambridge, MA on April 16, 2020. (Photo by Blake Nissen for The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

Want your college experience to include license to shout from the Ivy draped rooftops We’re the best in the whole wide world! (or even We’re the second best?) Well, Boston is still the place to be.

At least, so says the U.S. News & World Report‘s 2022 Top Global Universities rankings, which once again put Harvard and MIT in the first and second-place slots, respectively.

This year’s list, which crunches the numbers on 1,750 colleges from across the globe, has results that don’t line up exactly with the publication’s ranking of American colleges, which it released earlier this fall. In that ranking, Harvard, MIT, and Columbia shared the second-place spot, behind Princeton.

The discrepancies between the two US news rankings are due to the fact that the global survey focuses “specifically on schools’ academic research and reputation overall and not on their separate undergraduate or graduate programs,” according to a press release explaining the global survey’s methodology.

Analyzing colleges in this way, and taking into account institutions around the world, means you have to read further down the list to find some of our prestigious local institutions. Boston University ranks 65th, down from 57th last year. UMass Amherst is slotted at 148th, Northeastern tied for 176th, Tufts earned 198th place, Brandeis is 320th, UMass Boston tied for 417th, and Boston College tied at 625th.

Williams College, which perennially tops the U.S. News list of American liberal arts colleges, didn’t make the cut at all. Nor did other local smaller schools like Amherst, Babson, Leslie, Simmons, Smith, Stonehill, and Suffolk.

Harvard and MIT also featured heavily in the U.S. News rankings that compared universities in specific subject areas. Harvard snagged the number one spot for clinical medicine; MIT ranked at the top of the list for physics; while UMass Amherst came in 5th for agricultural sciences.

After Harvard, the other Ivies placed high in the overall rankings as well: Columbia was 6th, Yale was 12th, Princeton was 16th, UPenn was 13th, Cornell was 22nd, Brown was 119th, and Dartmouth was 247th.

Of the 10 schools that placed highest in the rankings, just two were from outside the U.S—Oxford (5th) and Cambridge (8th)—and the U.S. had the largest share of top universities on the list, with 271. China, at 253, had the next most.

You can read the full results for yourself here.

Parents sit socially distanced during the Boston College 144th commencement exercises in Alumni Stadium in Chestnut Hill, Boston, MA on May 24, 2021. Photo by Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

Colleges are not yet fully back to normal—the delta variant has made sure of that. But college students are indeed headed back to the classroom in person this year, albeit with varying vaccine, masking, and distancing policies. While we don’t know exactly what college will look like next year, we do know that the next crop of college freshman is already diving deep into the research to figure out where they want to go to school.

One thing we can reliably say about what’s to come is that, once again, U.S. News and World Report  has once again measured, sliced, diced, and, of course, ranked the nation’s universities. And local institutions have once again come out on top.

The organization on Monday released its 2022 Best Colleges rankings. Top marks in the National Universities category went to Princeton, which has claimed the top spot for 11 straight years.

Little old Harvard, always the bridesmaid and never the bride, is still ranked second. It shares the spot with Columbia and MIT, which actually saw a boost from the 2021 rankings, when it placed fourth. Good for MIT.

Elsewhere in the Commonwealth, Tufts tied for 28th (up a smidge from its 30th ranking last year), Boston College ranked 36th (about on par with last year, when it placed 35th); Boston University and Brandeis were not far behind, tying at 42nd; Northeastern placed 49th; and UMass Amherst was 68th.

Massachusetts also dominated in the Liberal Arts Colleges category. Williams College, ever the favorite in this report, placed first, followed by Amherst. Wellesley was 5th. Smith was 17th.

According to U.S. News‘ Best Value Schools ranking—which weighs academic quality against the average cost of attending after scholarships and other discounts—Yale claims the top spot, with MIT 2nd and Harvard 3rd.

Those interested can also peruse the results for several analyses, among them the top schools for computer science, business, and engineering programs, the best colleges for veterans, and the schools that are most ethnically diverse.

New this year is a ranking of the nation’s best nursing programs, which assessed programs based on reviews from deans and faculty of other nursing schools. The top local school in that category was Boston College, which tied for 19th. UMass Boston ranked 43rd, and the MGH Institute of Health Professions ranked 58th. The best program, according to the report, can be found at UPenn.

Williams College photo via Getty/ Barry Winiker | Bentley photo via Getty/DenisTangneyJr | UMass Amherst photo via Getty/Boston Globe

Picking a college is tough in a good year, when going off to college at the very least means fully enjoying the undergrad experience in all its non-socially-distanced glory. But it’s even tougher this year, as students head back to class at a scary and confusing time. So for any families weighing their options while checking coronavirus case counts in the home states of the schools of their dreams and praying we no longer have to deal with all of this lunacy come fall of 2021, U.S. News & World Report has released the latest edition of its Best Colleges rankings.

And once again, Massachusetts has landed a bevy of its colleges near the top of the class.

Harvard has yet again come in second place on the list of top national universities, placing just shy of Princeton, which claimed the top spot. MIT came in fourth, a slight downgrade after tying with Yale last year in third (Yale now has the sole claim to the number-three spot). Tufts came in 30th, sharing the honor with New York University, the University of California – Santa Barbara, and the University of Florida, Boston College placed 35th, and Boston University tied with Brandeis at 42nd. Northeastern endured a notable drop in the list, falling from 40th to 49th.

Williams College, meanwhile, has held its top ranking on the list of national liberal arts colleges, followed once again by Amherst College at second.

In rankings of regional colleges, Bentley is now tied for first with Providence College, a bump up from last year, when it placed second.

To reach these conclusions, U.S. News compiles data on 18,000 colleges and universities and crunches the numbers on 17 metrics, among them faculty-to-student ratios, graduation rates, and other figures. This year, it now weights “outcomes” for students—as in, what happens to students at the end of their college careers. And for the first time, 5 percent of a college’s ranking is based on “student indebtedness.”

The numbers for each school do not take into account the giant mess that the pandemic has wrought on colleges in 2020, so do with that information what you will.

“The pandemic has affected students across the country, canceling commencement ceremonies and switching classes from in person to remote,” Kim Castro, editor and chief content officer of U.S. News, says in a statement. “Whether students have slightly altered their college plans or changed them entirely, it remains our mission to continue providing students and their families with the tools they need to help find the right school for them.”

Also new this year were rankings of undergraduate computer science programs, a list U.S. News compiled by sending surveys to college deans and computer science professors, and asking them to rate programs at 481 other colleges on a five-point scale. Naturally MIT ranked first, with the list’s only perfect 5.0 rating. Harvard (4.3) came 13th, UMass Amherst (3.9) tied for 31st, and Northeastern (3.7) tied for 41st.

A medical worker screens people arriving at a special COVID-19 testing site in Boston, Saturday, March 28, 2020. The drive-thru testing site is only open to qualified first responders who meet the state criteria for testing. The new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms for most people, but for some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness or death. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)

It’s abundantly clear now that, long before testing revealed it, hidden coronavirus outbreaks were spreading throughout the Boston area, unbeknownst to us. But estimates from a model of the disease’s spread made by researchers at Northeastern University are now offering insight into just how many cases may have flown under the radar over the past few months.

The model, conceived by Dr. Alessandro Vespignani and a research team at Northeastern’s Network Science Institute, was highlighted in a New York Times story this week. The model makes a jaw-dropping estimation: That on March 1, when there was only one confirmed case of COVID-19 in Boston, there actually could have been about 2,300 cases in the city. For comparison: Boston was officially reported to have reached 2,300 cases on April 8, over a month later.

The researchers, who looked at data for Boston, Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco and New York, estimates that there could have been a combined total of 28,000 infections in these areas by March 1. on that date, the five cities combined were reporting just 23 cases total.

On March 1, there were only about two dozen confirmed coronavirus cases across Boston, Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Seattle. Political leaders were questioning how severe and how disruptive the outbreak would become. https://t.co/udpNMBCUnA pic.twitter.com/AthKkvKWtY

— NYT Graphics (@nytgraphics) April 23, 2020

Researchers’ estimates indicate that even on March 1 there were about 28,0000 infections in five cities https://t.co/udpNMBCUnA pic.twitter.com/bcr8rOGus8

— NYT Graphics (@nytgraphics) April 23, 2020

The model maps the outbreak over time by using air transportation and other travel pattern data to track individuals. This allows researchers to simulate the trajectory of the epidemic from China and other countries to the United States, as well as the chains of transmission that would have occurred throughout several major metropolitan areas.

“Most of those chains of transmission were undetected,” Vespignani said on CNN Thursday night. Early in February, when Vespignani hypothesizes the first major transmission events in the country occurred, it was flu season, and many who contracted the disease may not have had serious symptoms—plus, the focus at that point was still largely on China.

Researcher Alessandro Vespignani says his team’s model shows coronavirus spread earlier than previously thought, with hotspots in the US likely having infections since February. https://t.co/34BCSmP6jp pic.twitter.com/UZz5yYjC1S

— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) April 23, 2020

Dr. Vespignani told the New York Times that he and his team posted some of their early projections in mid-February as a warning to leaders. However, they failed to convince their audience that the silent spread of COVID was indeed a real threat.  “We were talking to officials here, and it was the same reaction we got in Italy, in the U.K., in Spain,” Dr. Vespignani says. “They told me, ‘OK, that’s happening on your computer, not in reality.’ Look,” he added, “No one’s going to shut down a country based on a model.”

Photo of protesters at Logan Airport via ACLU/Twitter

When word got out that Mohammad Shahab Dehghani Hossein, a Northeastern student from Iran, had been ensnared by immigration authorities at Logan Airport and kept from starting his spring semester at the university, supporters quickly got to work. The ACLU launched a legal challenge, a few dozen protesters assembled, and an emergency hearing was set for Tuesday at 10 a.m.

But by morning, Dehghani was gone. The ACLU of Massachusetts confirmed that the 24-year-old had already been sent back to Iran, becoming the latest young person from abroad customs officials in Boston have sent packing. He’s the tenth Iranian student to be turned away after arriving at a U.S. airport, the ACLU says, and the seventh at Logan.

Lawyers advocating for Dehghani had hoped a federal court might be able to help, but Judge Richard Stearns dismissed the ACLU’s plea, saying the case was moot because the student has already left the country, according to WBUR’s Shannon Dooling, who was at Moakley Courthouse for the hearing.

Stearns doesn’t believe he has authority to order CBP to let Abadi return.

Determines the case moot and court is dismissed.

— Shannon Dooling (@sdooling) January 21, 2020

Dehghani landed Sunday with a student visa, according to an ACLU petition filed Monday. After he was admitted to the school, it took him nearly a year to get the travel document approved—a process that involved being interrogated at a U.S. consulate, as well as submitting to a background check—and federal officials determined he had no criminal record and did not pose a threat. Nevertheless, the ACLU writes in the document, Customs and Border Protection pulled him aside, denied him entry, revoked his visa, kept him from contacting legal counsel, and ordered him to take the next flight home. A federal judge granted a 48-hour stay on deportation Monday night. The ACLU has accused CBP of violating that order, while government attorneys said in court that by the time the order came down, Dehghani was already on a flight out of Boston.

So what exactly happened here? In a statement, CBP declined to explain the specifics of Dehghani’s case. A spokesperson explained instead that officials have to determine whether someone has met all the criteria for admission, and to revoke visas if they think someone hasn’t met those criteria.

“We are not at liberty to discuss an individual’s processing due to the Privacy Act,” a spokesperson said via email. “CBP officers are charged with enforcing not only immigration and customs laws, but they also enforce over 400 laws for 40 other agencies and have stopped thousands of violators of U.S. law. Applicants must demonstrate they are admissible into the U.S. by overcoming all grounds of inadmissibility including health-related grounds, criminality, security reasons, public charge, labor certification, illegal entrants and immigration violations, documentation requirements, and miscellaneous grounds.”

But the ACLU has another theory: It’s got nothing to do with keeping us safe, and everything to do with federal immigration authorities targeting Iranians.

“In America, nobody is above the law—including Customs and Border Protection officials,” Carol Rose, executive director of the ACLU of Massachusetts, said in a statement. “Given the Trump administration’s xenophobic policies and CBP’s troubling practice at Logan Airport of sending students with valid visas back to Iran, it is shameful that the government defied a federal court order and deported Shahab without due process. We are looking at all options to hold CBP accountable for wrongfully deporting Iranians and other students who hold valid visas.”

“Given the Trump administration’s xenophobic policies and Logan Airport’s troubling practice of sending students back to Iran, we are deeply concerned that Shahab was detained,” Carol Rose, executive director of the ACLU of Massachusetts, said in a statement, adding that her organization will work “to ensure due process and justice for students with valid visas to come study in Massachusetts.”

The group pointed to reports of additional scrutiny for Iranians at U.S. ports of entry amid rising tensions with the Middle Eastern nation.

If any of this sounds familiar, it should. Customs officials last year caused a stir when they kicked out an incoming Palestinian Harvard student after detaining him for hours and searching his phone. Following a high-profile campaign on his behalf, he was ultimately allowed back into the U.S. to start his studies.

For now, Northeastern says it’s aware of Dehghani’s plight and is in discussions with federal authorities.

“We are aware that a Northeastern University student who is an Iranian citizen has been denied entry to the United States. Northeastern welcomes thousands of international students and supports them with an array of resources,” the university says in a statement. “We have been in touch with federal officials to learn more about this case and to provide our student with the appropriate assistance to facilitate a successful return to Northeastern.”

In the meantime, Massachusetts officials have been offering words of support to the prospective student.

.@SenMarkey office released this statement. It’s from his office that attorneys found out Abadi has been deported. pic.twitter.com/wiPWNDM8yx

— Sarah Betancourt (@sweetadelinevt) January 21, 2020

Shahab Dehghani is an Iranian student with a valid F1 visa, returning to finish his education. CBP already held him overnight. His deportation must be halted, and we must fight the Trump administration's xenophobic policies. https://t.co/ZCKVo5fwvM

— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) January 21, 2020

Turning away those who make this nation a better place is no way to govern.

This president treats every immigrant as a terrorist—that’s not what this nation was founded upon. Let him stay. https://t.co/zCuZMa7P8H

— Joe Kennedy III (@joekennedy) January 21, 2020

Harvard’s not as hard to get into as you think. / Photo by Tim Sackton/Creative Commons via Flickr

Extracurriculars for All

You don’t need a student ID to take advantage of these campus amenities.
By Angela Athena Mats

Planetarium
Framingham State University

On the third Friday of every month, you can trade Netflix for a different kind of star-studded show inside this 30-foot domed digital theater, part of the Christa McAuliffe Center for Integrated Science Learning. November’s movie delves into the spectacle of supernovas.

cm-center.org.

Ice Rink
Boston University

Practice your axels and lutzes at BU’s Walter Brown Arena, which invites non-students onto the ice multiple times a week. Need help keeping your balance? The school offers skating lessons for wannabe Olympians young and old.

bu.edu/fitrec.

Botanical Gardens
Wellesley College

You’ll pass winterberry and holly, pine-scented conifers, and the late American artist Nancy Holt’s Wild Spot sculpture on a crisp late-fall nature walk through the Wellesley College Botanic Gardens. Come back in springtime when the gardens are lush and butterflies abound for a completely different perspective.

wellesley.edu/wcbg.

Gym Membership
Regis College

Looking for a fully loaded fitness club without the accompanying price tag? For less than the monthly fee at most big-box gyms, you can get ripped at Regis College’s Athletic Facility, which boasts an NCAA-regulation gymnasium, competition-length swimming pool, eight-lane outdoor track, and new weight room.

goregispride.com.

Art Museum
Harvard University

Head to the Harvard Art Museums for Crossing Lines, Constructing Home: Displacement and Belonging in Contemporary Art, an exhibition exploring migration through 40-plus works in various mediums, from sculpture to photography.

harvardartmuseums.org.

Historical Library
Boston Architectural College

Google can’t find everything. Niche interests are well served by the many school libraries open to the public: Boston Architectural College’s Memorial Library, for example, connects architecture and history geeks to 2,000 volumes—including sketchbooks and European publications—dating to 1883.

the-bac.edu.

Civil rights activist Tarana Burke visits Tufts this month. / Photo by Kris Connor/Getty Images

Academic Calendar

Have a free period? Fill it with one of this semester’s buzzy school-sponsored events.
By Scott Kearnan

BIG-NAME SPEAKERS

Tarana Burke at Tufts University

Before she releases her new book, Where the Light Enters, the civil rights activist and #MeToo movement founder will educate—and inspire—guests as part of the ongoing Tisch College Distinguished Speaker Series. Next month: chef-philanthropist José Andrés.

November 7, tischcollege.tufts.edu.

Yalitza Aparicio at Wellesley College

She’s barely older than most undergrads, yet Aparicio—named to the Time 100 list of most influential people—has already been nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for her role in last year’s Roma, the first indigenous woman to receive the honor. Check out campus screenings on November 7 and 10, then return for a live interview with the notable actor.

November 12, wellesley.edu/events.

Joanne Chang at Northeastern University

How does she make those famous sticky buns? This month, Flour Bakery’s Joanne Chang stops by Northeastern University’s Xhibition Kitchen to sign copies of her cookbook Pastry Love—and show off her James Beard Award–winning baking skills.

November 13, nudining.com.

BIGTIME PRODUCTIONS

“Bright Lights” Film Series at Emerson College

No tickets are required for these free events, which offer weekly screenings of genre-spanning, cinephile-pleasing flicks. Coming soon: Time for Ilhan, a Boston Women’s Film Festival pick about the first Somali-American Muslim in Congress.

November 5, web.emerson.edu/brightlights.

Noises Off at Boston College

The Theater District isn’t the only place to see a show in Boston—the city’s next generation of thespians is ready to entertain you with on-campus productions at cut-rate prices. BC’s crowd-pleasing play-within-a-play Noises Off, for instance, follows the backstage antics of a performance where everything goes wrong.

November 21–24, bc.edu.

Musical Theater Orchestra at Berklee College of Music

Listen up! The alma mater of musicians such as Quincy Jones keeps a super-active calendar of concerts by visiting performers and prodigious students—including this 25-piece orchestra, which will soon cover Evita, Miss Saigon, and more as part of its “Golden Age of Broadway” showcase.

December 12, berklee.edu/bpc.

Open skate is in session at BU’s Walter Brown Arena. / Photo by Janice Checchio for Boston University Photography

Back to School

No late-night cramming, no grades—and subjects you’re actually interested in? These local adult-ed classes make learning fun again.
By Angela Athena Mats

SO YOU WANT TO…

Launch your startup

Held this year November 1 to 3, Endicott College’s annual SparkU startup bootcamp teaches Shark Tank fans about marketing strategies, revenue models, and more before letting them pitch their next big idea to a panel of entrepreneurs.

endicott.edu.

Get in touch with your inner artist

If you’re looking to spark some creativity before the winter doldrums set in, there’s no shortage of workshops at MassArt this month. At the school’s Copper Bowls course on November 2, for example, you’ll explore ancient metalworking techniques—and create a sleek statement piece guaranteed to stand out on your Thanksgiving table.

pce.massart.edu.

Make the most of retirement

Every college student knows that seniors have the most fun. Fifty or over? Join Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UMass Boston for access to international trips (Morocco awaits), Harborwalk tours, and courses in every subject from business to technology to the arts.

umb.edu.

Be everyone’s favorite party host

You’ve come a long way since the days of keggers and beer pong. Show it! Impress thirsty guests with a perfectly curated bar, not to mention a variety of well-mixed classic and frozen libations, after mastering the bartending course at Bunker Hill Community College.

bhcc.edu.

Begin the new year on a high note

Always wanted to start your own band? All it takes is one night a week to learn a new instrument. Register now for Tufts University’s winter community music classes, which give students the opportunity to learn the piano and the rhythms of West African drumming.

as.tufts.edu.

I Tried It

The 6-Pound “Challenge Burger” at Eagle’s Deli
By Scott Kearnan

Photo by Mona Miri

Back in my undergrad days at Boston College, a greasy cheeseburger was my go-to hangover cure. But I cannot imagine the bender that would’ve necessitated the infamous “Challenge Burger” at nearby Eagle’s Deli: a 6-pound tower of 12 patties with 22 slices each of bacon and cheese, accompanied by 6 pounds of French fries. Made famous by an appearance on the Travel Channel’s Man v. Food, the gluttonous display has been conquered by only eight people—including Joey Chestnut, America’s top-ranked competitive eater. In the name of research, I returned to my old stomping grounds to see if I could become the ninth.

After signing a cautionary waiver, I began dissecting the meat mountain with fork and knife, periodically lubricating my gullet with fountain soda and ketchup. Alas, it was not to be: Two-plus pounds in, I waved the white flag. Perhaps I should have joined a beer-pong tournament the night before? Then I really would have been giving it the old college try.