Boston City Council Hears Northeastern Students Demand Governance Transparency, Board Access

BOSTON -- March 23, 2026, Northeastern University students, faculty, and union organizers filled the Boston City Council chamber Monday to demand administrative transparency, student board representation, and a public ICE policy from one of the city's largest private universities. The Committee on Education hearing, Docket 0587, was sponsored by Councilor Julia Mejia and Councilor Minyard Culpepper and drew more than two dozen speakers who described DEI office changes made without community notice, discretionary budget cuts of 75 to 80 percent in the College of Social Sciences and Humanities, and three years of unanswered interview requests to President Joseph Aoun from the student newspaper. Zeke Glucksman of the student-led Educational Freedom Project told the council that Northeastern's Policy Oversight Committee has 20 administrators and zero student representatives, and that non-binding student referenda found 93.5 percent of 6,374 students in favor of the Board of Trustees publishing meeting minutes. SEIU Local 509 organizer Patrick Geiger reported Northeastern's average annual operating surplus since 2020 at $130 million and its endowment growth from $1.14 billion to $2.11 billion over the same period. Mejia, acknowledging the council holds no direct authority over private universities, committed to filing a resolution affirming student and faculty voice across Boston higher education institutions and to convening a working session to design a proposed citywide community oversight panel for higher ed.