Coffeeshop Mapping: Temptations Cafe

Name: Temptations Cafe

Details:

313 Huntington Ave,
Boston, MA, 02115
http://places.singleplatform.com/temptations-cafe-2/menu
Phone: 617-266-6080

Hours:
Monday-Friday: 8 a.m. – 8 p.m.
Saturday: 10 a.m. – 7 p.m.
Sunday: 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Inside:

Chocolate-chip walnut coffeecake.

Behind the bar, employees prepare an order.

Temptations features weekly “special” items.

A barista processes an order.

The pastries display, captured before salivating student crowd in front of the camera.

Temptations features bar seatings that looks out over Huntington Ave.

Menu boards, written in chalk, depict a slew of food and drink options.

A customer takes advantage of momentary quiet to work at a table.

Located conveniently along Huntington Avenue by the Northeastern University stop on the Green Line, and across from Northeastern’s East Village dormitory, Temptations Cafe has long been a go-to destination for Huskies in search of a caffeine fix.

With its standard-issue, 12-oz drip coffee priced affordably at $2.25, and a menu stuffed with breakfast wraps and lunch sandwiches, it’s not that surprising to learn, via barista Anna Yuschenkoff, that the shop (one of two – another location has opened in Brookline) stays busy.

“It’s busiest especially when Northeastern kids get out of classes for lunch,” says Yuschenkoff, as – right on cue – a pack of six students rush through the doorway in hopes of securing lattes. At street level, the shop is both handicapped-accessible and extremely fortuitously placed for students on their way to the Marino gym and health center just a block up Huntington.

Yuschenkoff believes the atmosphere of the place plays a role in its popularity. “It’s relaxed and casual, but still good quality, which isn’t that common,” she says.

Temptations is compactly sized, with granite-tile flooring and polished wooden furniture. There are few outlets, which aligns with the barista’s perception of the coffeeshop as a via point for students, rather than a traditionally sit-down estbalishment. “Our customers are great,” Yuschenkoff says, juxtaposing them against the “grumpier” coffee aficionados who crowd nearby Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts locations throughout the day.

Caffeine fixes aside, customers can also feast on a variety of food items. Decadent “Sweet Temptations” options include peanut-butter-and-jam and nutella-and-banana sandwiches; those with less of a sweet tooth can go for salads, soups, cold sandwiches, cold wraps, or hot-off-the-press paninis that include options such as pesto chicken and fresh mozzarella. None of the options clock in at more than $10, a boast rival coffeeshop Pavement cannot claim to echo. Yuschenkoff’s personal favorite? “That’d be the hummus,” she says, laughing. “On everything. Or by itself. Just the hummus.”

Is UHCS’ short-term therapy approach failing students in the throes of mental health crisis?

Northeastern University’s approach to addressing students’ mental health concerns has become a major point of contention in the on-going race for SGA Student Body President and Vice President, with one pair of candidates (Suchira Sharma and Paulina Ruiz) calling for a reformation on on-campus resources to better assist students with pressing and recurring mental health concerns and their opponents (Josh Bender and Alex Grondin) instead advocating for an expansion of the referral system that instead pushes students to take advantage of off-campus resources. It’s clear that there’s significant disagreement on how to broach this campus-wide issue.

The vast majority of universities attempt to address students’ mental health concerns through on-campus counseling resources and referral services.Northeastern, in accordance with most inner-city colleges of comparable size, employs a “short-term therapy” model, which limits students to seeing a therapist for six to ten visits, or up to a semester, then refers them off-campus. It’s far from the only university to do so, but with surging demand for services forcing appointments to be spaced out to a month apart, though, semesters often run out before ten sessions can even take place.

And yet, referring students to off-campus professionals is not an all-encompassing solution either. Putting the burden of seeking help on students, many of who enter college with no experience setting up appointments of any kinds, creates a new set of challenges for those students. Whereas on-campus counselors almost never charge students for services, seeing professionals off-campus often comes at a steep financial cost, particularly if a student’s insurance isn’t accepted. For those on a shoestring budget, the idea of paying a therapist – per session and out-of-pocket – is too absurd to entertain.

A project that examines the crux of this issue – namely, what the responsibility of a college should be in treating the mental health concerns of its students – would be especially timely given the SGA race. In gathering information for the piece, I would attempt to contact Robert Klein (executive director of UHCS) and those in similar positions of authority at Boston University  (Judy Platt, director of BHS; and Carrie Landa, head of behavioral medicine) and Tufts (Julie S. Ross, director of CMHS) to get a sense of where all these universities stand on the issue of college mental health counseling, and potentially hold video interviews with them.

Behind the SMILE, an on-campus group dedicated to erasing stigma around mental illness on Northeastern’s campus, would also be a useful resource to turn to for information.

 

Examining Angus Johnston’s “Student Activism” blog

As far as blogs on student activism go, Angus Johnston’s StudentActivism.net ranks in the upper echelons of those I’ve sampled. It’s a strikingly articulate and neatly organized blog, one that feels every bit like the professional endeavor as which Johnon has treated it.

Comprehensive and well-researched, it explores every subject from trigger warnings in college campuses to benefit those with traumatic triggers that could intersect with classroom curricula to theoretical ponderings of potential shake-ups in electoral politics that could impact students at the local level.

As a WordPress blog, its format is somewhat constraining. There’s no immediately easy way to access the vast majority of Johnston’s writing and, given his history – the author is a historian who specializes in documenting student activism while also advocating for contemporary manifestations of student organizing across the United States – it would be useful to have a better-ordered version of this same site that would prioritize presenting more of his blogging.

That said, Johnston finds some interesting ways to engage with what seems to be a solidly sized audience. Offering 11,000 stickers that read “fight fascism” to readers in one post, and interacting with them on Facebook-linked comments the next, he’s an active presence in the consumption of his site’s material. With about 25,000 visits to his site last month (as per SimilarWeb), Johnston is likely fully aware that he has a small but interactive readership, and crafts his posts as such. Given the absence of blog posts, this appears to be a blog that also functions as a statement-of-purpose-style too – writing he’s done as a freelancer for an array of sites is showcased in a separate section of the site. With that understood, it makes sense that Johnston’s last comment, on a post titled “Fight Fascism.,” was on Feb. 17 – this is not a moneymaker so much as a labor of love, and as such he can post on it selectively.

 

At Tufts, contention over handling of Title IX policies

Over the weekend, the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate near-unanimously shot down a resolution posed by Students Advocating for Students (SAS) that would have altered the university’s handling  of Title IX cases, marking the latest salvo in an on-going conflict between campus senate and student group.

The proposal, brought by SAS President Jake Goldberg and Treasurer Edmund Tamas Takata, outlined suggestions for reforming Title IX procedures around the school’s Office of Equal Opportunity’s investigations of sexual misconduct, according to the Tufts Daily.

The resolution, the paper reported, specifically pushes to reduce the amount of influence a principal investigator has over an case’s course and outcome, expedites the timeline for investigations, and – in one point widely criticized by senate members – aims to remove both survivors of sexual assault and perpetrators from investigations and adjudications. Goldberg’s reasoning: that potential bias on the part of those with firsthand exposure to sexual misconduct could taint investigations.

Senators took issue with Goldberg’s vague assertions that his group had fielded complaints from unspecified individuals saying investigations were taking too long, his failure to connect with pertinent student groups before penning the resolution, and his admission that no survivors on campus had consulted on the bill.

One suggestion raised in the bill, opining for the investigators’ authority to be reworked into a hearing process decided on by both parties, was alleged by some senators to “protect perpetrators,” according to the Daily.

Goldberg later communicated to the Daily saying that several campus organizations had declined to work with him on the resolution.

Following a discussion of the resolution and Q&A session, senators voted 25-0 against the resolution, with one abstention.

TCU Senate President Gauri Seth made no secret of his frustrations regarding the resolution, telling the Daily:

“It’s egregious to bring a resolution forward regarding Tufts’ sexual misconduct policy that claims to protect both parties, when the authors of the resolution stated multiple times that they had not spoken to survivors on this campus.”

This is not the first time Goldberg and SAS have clashed with the TCU Senate.

Last November, the Tufts Daily reported that the organization advanced a resolution alleging that the university’s Sexual Misconduct Policy violated students’ freedom of speech through excessive vagueness in defining “sexual discrimination” and “sexual harassment.” Goldberg made the organization’s case on the back of the First Amendment, claiming that the existent policies did not provide enough guidelines for students to avoid such behaviors.

At that time, numerous Tufts community members and senators opposed the resolution, saying it threatened to strip from victims of sexual harsassment and discrimination protections and disciplinary recourse.

 

BU students, workers rally against Trump’s “corporate agenda”

Video Credit: The Daily Free Press

Marsh Chapel became a protest ground on Wednesday, March 1, as students and workers representing Boston University gathered to protest multiple aspects of the Trump administration, from ties to the fossil fuel industry to a demonstrated desire to further, in the words of protesters, “corporatize higher education.”

According to the Daily Free Press, approximately 100 protesters attended the rally, which was co-hosted by Divest BU, Massachusetts Interfaith Worker Justice, Make Boston University a Sanctuary School, and Student Labor Action Project at BU, all organizations that have been galvanized to action by stances taken by Trump’s White House.

Their goals? To push BU toward accepting “sanctuary campus” designation, divesting its endowment from the fossil fuel industry, and negotiating with faculty unions to improve conditions for faculty members and campus workers, as well as taking a more rigid stance about cracking down on instances of Islamophobia on campus.

One issue inflaming protesters was BU President Robert Brown’s recent refusal to hold a meeting with leaders of Divest BU, who’ve sent two members each day since January 31 to Brown’s office in hopes of engaging him face-to-face.

The group hopes to persuade members of BU’s Board of Trustees to divest endowment funds from the fossil fuel industry,  an agenda item that has been prominently thrust forward by fears of backward slides in addressing the climate change crisis following Trump’s election.

BU has taken some steps to address environmental concerns over the years, such as creating the Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investing (ACSRI) as well as (on that committee’s recommendation) a more recent task force, titled the Climate Action Plan, tasked with addressing ways to reduce energy use and actively aid in remedying environmental issues. However, BU has been loathe to take a firm stance against investments in the fossil fuel industry, only stating that it would endorse avoiding such investments on a “best efforts” basis, the Daily Free Press reported last month.

Divest BU has been dissatisfied with Brown’s response to their demands, explaining that the university has yet to incorporate one of the ACSRI’s proposals: divesting from “companies that continue to explore for fossil fuel reserves of any kind.”

At the rally, The Daily Free Press interviewed Masha Vernik, a BU sophomore and member of Divest BU, who said:

“I am not a profit margin, President Brown. I am a community member whose voice must be heard if we want this university to make the right decisions to benefit us and the world around us.”

Protesters pushed for progress on other issues plaguing BU’s campus. A speaker addressing amending BU’s current practice of negotiating semester-to-semester deals with adjuncts that don’t address disparities in course prices, and asked the university to address widely alleged unfair treatment of faculty and staff across campus.

The issue of “sanctuary campuses” has spread across the United States since the inauguration. Though such designation is largely symbolic, activists in favor of schools naming themselves “sanctuary campuses” for undocumented students and workers say that support of the movement conveys a willingness to defend such individuals targeted by  the administration’s discriminatory policies. BU currently lacks any policy designed to protect undocumented students and workers – a point protesters repeatedly addressed.

As Trump rescinds protections, colleges and students reaffirm transgender rights

As the Trump administration continues its assault on civil liberties for marginalized populations, students across the Boston area are rallying in defense of rights for various at-risk groups of Americans, among them Muslims, immigrants, and – over the past two weeks – the transgender community.

Last Wednesday, Feb. 22, the administration, overcoming initial opposition from Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, rolled back federal protections for transgender students that had previously safeguarded their ability to use whichever bathroom corresponded with their gender identity. The guidelines, enacted by preceding President Barack Obama in May in accordance with Title IX protections had been met with praise from the transgender community – and their retraction sparked protests across the country.

Students from Boston colleges were among the attendees at a rally in Post Office Square that formed the next evening and marched through Downtown Crossing, according to WHDH. Boston Public Schools Superintendent Tommy Chang released a statement supporting the rescinded “bathroom bill,” stating:

“While the federal government has rescinded its guidance protecting transgender students in our nation’s schools, transgender and gender nonconforming students in the Boston Public Schools will remain protected from discrimination, bullying and harassment.”

On university campuses, protest spread.

“I wish we didn’t have to tell the world that trans rights matter,” said Harvard student Sheehan D. Scarborough, director of the school’s Office of BGLTQ Student Life, to a dozens-strong crowd that gathered in Harvard Yard this past Monday, Feb. 27. As reported by the Harvard Crimson, the Harvard protest was organized by the school’s Trans Task Force and was intended as a cathartic expression of anger and dismay more than a concrete rally to further a policy response.

The Harvard Islamic Society and the Black Students Association, both also student groups at Harvard, joined in solidarity.

At Suffolk University, Acting President Marisa Kelly opined that the university would continue to support the bathroom bill despite Trump’s decision.

In the email, quoted by The Suffolk Journal, she wrote:

“While I am disappointed with the decision to roll the directive back, please be assured that the federal change will have no direct effect on students here at Suffolk, nor should it affect students while in Massachusetts.”

More protests are expected to take place in coming days across Boston-area campuses.

CC: Ludovic Bertron, Creative Commons.

Exploring Mission Hill hotspot Green T Coffee

Every college student needs a caffeine fix. With Mission Hill serving as an ever-growing outgrowth of Boston city colleges like Northeastern, Wentworth, MassArt, Berklee College of Music, and MCPHS, it’s only natural that some savvy coffee connoisseurs have set up shop in the area. Green T Coffee, so named for its location alongside the MBTA Green Line stop Mission Park.

Searching for answers as to why so many students seek refuge inside the coffee shop, I took a camera into Green T and talked to some clients and a particularly creative barista about why it’s their go-to caffeination destination.

Header image: Monika Wahi, Creative Commons.