This is the least punk sounding post

Stop with the street parking subsidy nonsense. You’ve drank too much from the DSA kool aid.

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It’s this. OP needs to calm down. Perfectly possible for OP to have felt violated AND for cop to have been doing them a favor. US-style policing is rarely cuddly, by most international standards. Just the way it is.

Park better next time - and move on.

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Middle East often hosts punk/metal shows

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They definitely ran my plates when I applied for a permit to check if I had outstanding tickets. They don’t usually call the police department because that isn’t usually handle by the police department but by the traffic department and the RMV.

And about the officer coming to bang on the door - that’s definitely happened to me - but because I missed the no parking sign that was put up the day before for moving vans and tree work. They’re usually pretty nice about it. They’re really doing you a solid because the towing is so expensive and Phil’s towing is just god awful.

These two incidences aren’t abnormal. They probably just occurred to close in time that you may have perceived it as such

Here's the real context. Parking officers don't work at midnight normally, which means someone called the cops on you after hours. The cop would be forced to tow you (at after-hours pricing) and went beyond their minimal obligations to contact you first.

As for whether this is considered harassment - it wouldn't even be considered harassment by a private citizen. Like it or not, this is the United States and the bar for harassment by a police officer is incredibly high. Most people try to be polite and deferential to police officers because they can legally make your life a living hell.

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That’s not harassment. He did you a solid because any sane person would rather move their car than wake up in the morning, figure out where their car got towed to, take an Uber, and pay $150 to get it back and $50 for the ticketed offense. Couldn’t there be a lot worse people banging on your windows for a lot worse reasons?

I know you’re a secret engineer too - I just would guess it wouldn’t be in the field of civil.

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Is this a troll post? It’s hilarious if it’s satire. If it’s not…. 🙄 You sound like a difficult person which is probably why you are having so many unpleasant interactions.

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YTA, the police officer was doing you a solid by letting you know instead of straight ticketing and towing at extortion-level pricing ($300+).

You don’t deserve special treatment for being an engineer or paying your taxes. It is somewhat alarming that that this is your first line of thought in terms of context.

The Cambridge parking pass at $25 per year is a massive subsidy to residents and it’s absolutely understandable that they would be strict to verify eligibility.

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They’re also luxury without being viewed that way which is great for stealth wealth.

Many organizations at Harvard have their own series of public talks. Examples are:

• Forums at the Institute of Politics (part of the Kennedy School of Government)
• Talks at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
• Norton Lectures featuring award-winning writers, musicians, filmmakers, etc.
• Distinguished Lecture series at Institute for Applied Computational Science (open to public, but intended for a technical audience)

There are probably many more events run by Harvard's other individual schools, departments, and institutes.

Public lectures are listed on this events page:

https://community.harvard.edu/browse/events/?f%5B0%5D=sm_og_vocabulary%3Ataxonomy_term%3A154551

I think the word you're looking for is auditing

https://registrar.gse.harvard.edu/auditing

For a lot of classes you would need to ask permission from the professor/lecturer, but I’m not sure how it works for individual lectures. I did audit a lot of classes but I was first a Harvard spouse and then working there myself, and you get an ID then, so it might be impossible if you dont have ID. I would start by looking at edx/harvardx online because a lot of really popular classes have an online variant for free there too. But that’s more common for, say, computer science than for deep sea biology. They also used to have in person lecture series for the general public, like Science and Cooking, where you just show up when the lectures are happening and if you’re early enough you get a seat, but I can’t find the overview of all the lectures like that online anymore. I guess you can find them at the events part of Harvard.edu. And you could always consider applying to Harvard Extension School!

Not for the general classes but there are a lot of groups that do public-facing events, both online and in person. The Joint Center for Housing Studies has had a number of good ones on climate and housing recently.

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Is there a specific topic you'd be interested in learning more about?

Very often there are lectures open to the public.