This thread was started by @kiddie due to an article that appeared in The Boston Globe a couple of weeks ago. The author of that article started out discussing the recent celebrity studded scandal in the college admissions process that primarily involved USC and to a lesser extent Yale and a few other colleges. For some odd legal reason the court appearances of these cheating parents was held in Boston. In the middle of the article the author chose to do a copy and paste job of the old 2004 Boston Magazine article about Northeastern “scamming” the college rankings process. That Boston Magazine article was actually a mostly positive article about Northeastern’s transformation if you read the article and not just the clickbait title. The Globe author only copied and pasted the alleged scamming portion of the article.
Northeastern took the unusual step of printing a rebuttal to the article on its website and in a letter to the editor of the Globe. The Boston Globe is a leading newspaper while Boston Magazine is essentially an entertainment and dining “lifestyle” publication. The rebuttal states “It is an extreme and rare occasion when a news outlet publishes an article with such disregard for facts and important context that it effectively sabotages basic journalistic practices.” and "The Globe article is riddled with breaches of journalistic norms.’ That is very strong wording.
And when did being a “former commuter school” become an eternal negative for a university that has transitioned to residential? E.g. Northeastern, BU, BC, NYU, USC, Case Western and even UCLA. Perhaps it is a Boston thing derived from our English colonial heritage that you will always be judged by your ancestry no matter what you do in your life. Not to imply that said heritage is anything to be ashamed of. The heritage just doesn’t fit the current mold of “respectable”.