NOVEMBER 2010

THE
STURBRIDGETIMES
THE CHRONICLE OF STURBRIDGE COUNTRY LIVING
MAGAZINE

LEGAL
BRIEF
ROBERT A. GEORGE, ESQ.
STURBRIDGE ATTORNEY
M ON T H LY L E GAL ADV ICE
FOR READERS OF
TH E S TUR B R I DGE TI M ES M AGAZ IN E
TENANT RIGHTS
Tenants who don’t pay the rent, don’t have to leave just
because the landlord says so. That’s one of the many pro-
tections that tenants enjoy under Massachusetts law.
Landlords can get rid of tenants who don’t pay rent, but
they have to go through the court system first, a process
than can take months and costs thousands of dollars in
legal fees. Landlords who ignore this process and try to kick
out a tenant on their own – something the courts refer to
as “self-help” – can be sued for hefty damages.
Anyone thinking about become a landlord should care-
fully review the housing laws. They will need to segregate
security deposits in separate interest bearing accounts, pro-
vide a statement outlining the condition of the apartment
and give the tenant a signed receipt for the last month’s
rent.
Those are some of the thing landlord must do. There’s
also a list of what they can’t. They can’t have a lease that
requires the tenant to pay for ordinary wear and tear. They
can’t require that the tenant not sue the landlord for viola-
tions of the sanitary code. They can’t charge a late fee
unless the rent is more than 30 days late.
But the tenant who seeks to take advantage of
these rules should beware. Landlords do have a right to col-
lect the rent and, as long as the landlords follow the rules,
the courts will eventually enforce that right.
Not only will the judge send the sheriff to the scofflaw’s
door to pack him up and force him out, the judge will allow
the sheriff seize to seize certain items of the scofflaw’s prop-
erty and even garnish his wages to pay off the rent he did-
n’t pay while under the landlord’s roof.
26 THE STURBRIDGE TIMES MAGAZINE
r MUSINGS FROM LONG HILL
EDUCATION AIN’T WHAT IT USED TO BE
BY RICHARD MURPHY
You could sell cyanide in this country as breakfast
cereal and people would happily gobble it up, as long as
you labeled it “education.” The only town meetings I
have gone to that were overflowing involved education.
The problem is, nobody knows what education is.
Think I’m kidding? Several years ago, a school com-
mittee candidate was campaigning for election. Truly,
she was the smartest person in the race, and was waxing
eloquent. At one point, she mentioned her college was
one of the elite Seven Sisters. Now, if someone was not
to the manor born and went to an ivy level school, you
will hear about it as soon as they can work it into the
conversation. I don’t remember exactly how it hap-
pened, but I asked her for a definition of education. It
was not a good moment. All that schooling, and what
was it all about? She had no idea.
Now, my dear friend, you’re saying: why does this
bozo think he’s so smart? Ah, the thing is, I don’t. It
is only by chance that I have an inkling of the answer to
the question. You see, other than reading a lot of histo-
ry, I was a lazy student. Punched a little above my
weight class on the SAT and miraculously got into col-
lege. The summer before freshman year, the school I
was going to attend played what I thought a dirty trick
and sent a reading list. The thought of spending time
away from my summer job actually exerting some intel-
lect struck me as grossly unfair.
Still, I plowed through the first tome, “The Idea of a
University.” It was in a style I would describe as aca-
demic. Worse, it was serious stuff. The author, John
Henry Cardinal Newman was trying to tell me what was
expected of a student in 1968 though he had died in
s
1890. I don’t remember too much of it, but when I got
to the passage below, I knew there was something terri-
bly wrong.
“This process of training, by which the intellect,
instead of being formed or sacrificed to some particular
or accidental purpose, some specific trade or profes-
sion, or study or science, is disciplined for its own sake,
for the perception of its proper object, and for its own
highest culture, is called Liberal Education.”
I had no intention of disciplining my mind for its
own sake. How could I explain this to my working class
parents? We were still close enough to the early post
war era that college was a golden piñata that would
guarantee a good middle class job or even a profession.
Nice though the though of a son with a well formed
intellect was, it was the ability to make a living better
than theirs that was the goal.
True to my reprobate self, I did not get that educa-
tion. George Orwell wrote “Such, Such Were The Joys”
about his grammar school days. He hated it thorough-
ly. When done and having won a scholarship to one of
England’s most prestigious schools he said, “I would
‘slack off’ and cram no longer. This resolve, by the way,
was so fully carried out that between the ages of thirteen
and twenty-two or three I hardly ever did a stroke of
avoidable work.”
I have always loved Orwell’s essays and maybe this is
why. I never made the same resolve, alas, the effect was
the same. If I could avoid it, I did. This is not to say,
there was no intellectual curiosity. I doubt mine was as
thoughtful as Orwell’s, but I spent many hours in the
Continued on page 27
THE CHRONICLE OF STURBRIDGE COUNTRY LIVING

Sturbridge Public Service Notice
Education
Continued from page 22
college library to great and unfocussed enjoyment. It was
a happy memory that I would not trade for anything, but
it was not an education.
Contrast that with an “educational” experience that
did pay dividends as having a history degree provided
only non monetary benefits. After the army, I had the GI
Bill behind me and determined to get a practical trade.
One of the first courses I took was an introduction to
accounting. I could not understand why many of my
classmates were complaining of difficulty. I thought it
easy, if dull.
I eventually attained a second bachelors, getting cred-
it for courses from my first. Again, I had not become edu-
cated. Why, because in the words of Al Smith, “No mat-
ter how you slice it, it’s still baloney.” A BS in account-
ing is no more than a certificate of completion for a
course of vocational training.
Now there is nothing ignoble about being a bean
counter, or any other honorable trade. Still, it should not
put on airs either. A look into the history of the institu-
tion that graduated me would be instructive.
Bentley School of Accounting and Finance started as
a for profit school in 1917. After two years, you got a cer-
tificate. Many successful CPAs were happy enough with
the training. It was not until 1961 that a four year degree
was offered and it became Bentley College. Then it start-
ed offering graduate degrees in Philosophy and
Anthropology. Actually, that would be ....subjects like
Taxation and Finance. The joint now calls itself Bentley
University. The brick buildings are not yet ivy covered,
but that stuff takes time to grow.
So what does it all mean? Of greater societal import,
I wonder. What I do know is that such institutional
aggrandizement means parental sticker shock. After all, a
degree from a “university” is going to cost more than a
certificate from a “school.”

30 THE STURBRIDGE TIMES MAGAZINE THE CHRONICLE OF STURBRIDGE COUNTRY LIVING