BOSTON (AP) — Harvard University has decided against removing from campus buildings the name of a family whose company makes the powerful painkiller OxyContin, despite protests from parents whose children fatally overdosed.
The decision last month by the Harvard Corporation to retain Arthur M. Sackler's name on a museum building and second building runs counter to the trend among several institutions around the world that have removed the Sackler name in recent years.
Among the first to do it was Tufts University, which in 2019 announced that it would remove the Sackler name from all programs and facilities on its Boston health sciences campus. The Louvre Museum in Paris and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York have also removed the Sackler name. Signage at London's Tate Modern and Tate Britain as well as New York’s Guggenheim Museum has also been removed.
The move by Harvard, which was confirmed Thursday, was greeted with anger from those who had pushed for the name change as well as groups like the anti-opioid group Prescription Addiction Intervention Now or P.A.I.N. It was started by photographer Nan Goldin, who was addicted to OxyContin from 2014 to 2017, and the group has held scores of museum protests over the Sackler name.
“Harvard’s continued embrace of the Sackler name is an insult to overdose victims and their families,” P.A.I.N. said in a statement Friday. “It’s time that Harvard stand by their students and live up to their mandate of being a repository of higher learning of history and an institution that embodies the best of human values.”
Mika Simoncelli, a Harvard graduate who organized a student protest over the name in 2023 with members of P.A.I.N, called the decision “shameful.”
“Even after a receiving a strong, thorough proposal for denaming, and facing multiple protests from students and community members about Sackler name, Harvard lacks the moral clarity to make a change that should have been made years ago," they said in an email interview Friday. “Do they really think they’re better than the Louvre?”
OxyContin first hit the market in 1996, and Purdue Pharma’s aggressive marketing of it is often cited as a catalyst of the nationwide opioid epidemic, with doctors persuaded to prescribe painkillers with less regard for addiction dangers.
The drug and the Stamford, Connecticut-based company became synonymous with the crisis, even though the majority of pills being prescribed and used were generic drugs. Opioid-related overdose deaths have continued to climb, hitting 80,000 in recent years. Most of those are from fentanyl and other synthetic drugs.
In making its decision, the Harvard report raised doubts about Arthur Sackler's connection to OxyContin, since he died nine years before the painkiller was introduced. It called his legacy “complex, ambiguous and debatable.”
The proposal was put forth in 2022 by a campus group, Harvard College Overdose Prevention and Education Students. The university said it would not comment beyond what was in the report.
“The committee was not persuaded by the argument that culpability for promotional abuses that fueled the opioid epidemic rests with anyone other than those who promoted opioids abusively,” the report said.
“There is no certainty that he would have marketed OxyContin — knowing it to be fatally addictive on a vast scale — with the same aggressive techniques that he employed to market other drugs,” it continued. “The committee was not prepared to accept the general principle that an innovator is necessarily culpable when their innovation, developed in a particular time and context, is later misused by others in ways that may not have been foreseen originally.”
A spokesperson for Arthur Sackler's family did not respond to a request for comment.
In June, the Supreme Court rejected a nationwide settlement with OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma that would have shielded members of the Sackler family from civil lawsuits over the toll of opioids but also would have provided billions of dollars to combat the opioid epidemic.
The Sacklers would have contributed up to $6 billion and given up ownership of the company but retained billions more. The agreement provided that the company would emerge from bankruptcy as a different entity, with its profits used for treatment and prevention. Mediation is underway to try to reach a new deal; if there isn't one struck, family members could face lawsuits.
FILE - Kathleen Scarpone, of Kingston, N.H., protests in front of the Arthur M. Sackler Museum at Harvard University, Friday, April 12, 2019, in Cambridge, Mass. (AP Photo/Josh Reynolds)
BERLIN, Vt. (AP) — This fall, hundreds of the most vulnerable people experiencing homelessness in Vermont must leave state-funded motel rooms where they’ve been living as the state winds down its pandemic-era motel voucher program. The move is prompting outcry from municipal leaders and advocates who say many don't have a place to go.
The biggest exodus — about 230 households — is expected on Thursday when they reach a new 80-day limit stay in the motel rooms that the Legislature imposed starting in July. Those affected include families, people with disabilities, older individuals, those who are pregnant, and people who have experienced domestic violence or a natural disaster such as a fire or a flood.
A new 1,110-room cap on the number of motel rooms the state can use to house those people in the warmer months from April through November also kicked in Sunday. Some households who still haven't used up their 80 days have been denied rooms because there's no space, advocates say.
In the central Vermont area of the cities of Montpelier and Barre, around 100 to 140 families will be leaving motels this fall. The state estimates that about 1,000 households will be out of motels statewide, said Jen Armbrister, outreach case manager for the Good Samaritan Haven in Barre.
Shelters in the area are consistently full and advocates are racing to find housing in a state with a housing crisis that had the second highest per capita rate of homelessness in the country in 2023, according to an assessment from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
“I can’t tell you how many families I’ve sat down with and said I really pray that I would never have to have this conversation with you but we don’t have any solutions,” Armbrister said. She's had to tell them that if they don’t have somewhere to go, the best she’s able to do is put them on a list to get a tent and sleeping bags. But there's nowhere nearby to camp.
The households will be eligible for motel housing again on Dec. 1 as winter sets in. But until then, some don’t know where they will live.
Nova and Bruce Jewett must leave the Hilltop Inn in Berlin on Oct. 1. Bruce Jewett, 63, is a disabled veteran who has cancer and can't camp because of a back injury.
The couple have been looking for housing but say there's none available. They're always put on hold, or told that someone else is looking at a place or that it's been rented, he said.
“It bothers me because I'm a veteran and I don't believe that veterans should be having to deal with this,” he said.
Heidi Wright, 50, must leave the Budget Inn in Barre on Sept. 28. She has seizures, as well as depression, anxiety and emphysema, and she said doctors have talked about putting in a pacemaker.
“My hands are tied ... and I don't know what I'm going to do,” she said.
People are getting desperate, said Armbrister, who met with Wright on Wednesday and told her she would do everything she can to keep her housed.
"There’s no solutions. We’re meeting as much as we possibly can with different organizations, and teams to try to figure this out but nothing’s come up yet for a solution," Armbrister said. “It’s really super sad. It’s traumatic.”
On Wednesday, leaders from more than a dozen Vermont cities and towns called on state government to do more to address the rising rate of homelessness and problems associated with it. They say local governments and service providers are left to deal with the impacts and that municipalities don't have the expertise or resources to handle them.
“Our first responders cannot keep up with the calls, our residents are reluctant to use public spaces, our limited staff are left cleaning up unsanitary messes, volunteers are exhausted, and our nonprofit partners are at a break point,” Montpelier City Manager William Fraser said in a statement.
The state has been attempting to wean itself off the hotel-motel program for a number of years now without much success, Republican Gov. Phil Scott said at his weekly news conference on Wednesday.
"It's just not sustainable on a long-term basis," he said. “It's a difficult situation. (I) understand the point of view of the municipalities as well, but we don't have the resources either and so we're in the position we're at," Scott said.
The long-term approach is trying to establish more shelters, he said, although he added that when the state set up emergency shelters last spring during another reduction to the motel program, few people used them.
While Vermont is working to create more housing, it can't come soon enough.
A shortage of apartments for rent in Vermont contributed to a tripling of the number of Vermonters experiencing homelessness between 2019 and 2023, according to a recent state housing report. City and town leaders say the number of people experiencing homelessness is more than 3,400, up from the 1,100 the state reported in 2020.
Vermont has a rental vacancy rate of just 3% statewide, and it's an estimated 1% in Chittenden County, which includes Vermont’s largest city of Burlington and is the state’s most populous county.
To meet demand, house people experiencing homelessness, normalize vacancy rates and replace homes lost through flooding and other causes, the state will need to create 24,000 to 36,000 homes between 2025 and 2029, according to the most recent Vermont Housing Needs Assessment.
Bruce and Nova Jewett, who are experiencing homelessness, sit at the Hilltop Inn in Berlin, Vt., on Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024, where they have been living and will have to leave by Oct. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Lisa Rathke)
Heidi Wright, right, who is experiencing homelessness and must leave her state-funded motel room by Sept. 28, 2024, talks to Jen Armbrister, an outreach case manager for the Good Samaritan Haven in Barre, Vt., on Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Lisa Rathke)
Bruce and Nova Jewett, who are experiencing homelessness, sit at the Hilltop Inn in Berlin, Vt., on Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024, where they have been living and will have to leave by Oct. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Lisa Rathke)
