Basically yes. The very scungeiness and corruption of East Cambridge leant it charm. It wasn’t like Yale or Columbia, wealthy walled fortresses in poor neighborhoods. Nerds and blue collar folk lived tooth by jowl. And Kendall square was a wasteland of decaying industrial buildings and weed-filled concrete lots.

I went to high school in Boston (the city on other side of the river) which was much more dangerous. At MIT I never felt my life was in danger.