Word: belt
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Until last Sunday, M.I.T. maintained strict silence about the possibility that the proposed Inner Belt Highway might intrude upon the fringe of the Institute's campus. But there was plenty of speculation. "Oh, I'd guess they're disturbed," said the cautious. "Let's face it," said the more blunt, "they'll pull every string they can, including LBJ, to keep the Inner Belt...
Last Sunday, M.I.T. showed how safe such speculation was. In a brilliant demonstration of precision public relations, James R. Killian Jr., chairman of the M.I.T. Corporation, and Julius A. Stratton, the Institute's president, put on a two-hour press conference in which they described an Inner Belt route near M.I.T. in in terms of ranging from "Catastrophe" to institute's "most serious crisis" in the last half-century...
...press predictably gobbled it up. Both of the major morning Boston metropolitans, the Globe and Herald, ran front-page stories and supplemented them with more than a full page of additional details AEL> After all, there was not much they could do. The Inner Belt has been good copy for years; M.I.T.'s apparent fright constituted an undeniably significant story...
...space devoted to M.I.T.'s position reflected more the preparation of its public relations staff than anything else. Every reporter was given the traditional press kit: there were nearly 30 pictures of M.I.T. buildings that might be damaged if the Inner Belt veered close to the Institute, in addition to long, detailed statements by Killian and an M.I.T. lawyer. The reporters had to do almost nothing--it was all there. and in many respects that was a shame, because M.I.T.'s case contained enough unanswered questions and apparent contradictions to keep a room full of reporters busy for hours...
...impressive was this argument: (there is, one would think, an active Communist lobby to push an Inner Belt route through M.I.T.) that it would seem M.I.T. would merely have to have a number of scientific and defense agencies put the pressure on the Federal Bureau of Public Roads to stop any Inner Belt route inimicable to the Institute. (The federal government pays 90 per cent of the cost of the highway...