Mila G. Barry ’25, Io Y. Gilman ’25, Ciana J. King ’25, Sage S. Lattman ’25
John Lin ’25, Graham R. Weber ’25, Sam E. Weil ’25
Jem K. Williams ’25, Sazi T. Bongwe ’26, Ellie S. Klibaner-Schiff ’26, Adelaide E. Parker ’26,
Dina R. Zeldin ’25
FM DESIGN EDITORS
Julia N. Do ’25
Olivia W. Zheng ’27
Xinyi C. Zhang ’27
FM MULTIMEDIA EDITORS
Briana Howard Pagán ’26
Lotem L. Loeb ’27
COVER DESIGN
Xinyi C. Zhang ’27
PRESIDENT J. Sellers Hill ’25
MANAGING EDITOR
Miles J. Herszenhorn ’25
ASSOCIATE MANAGING EDITORS
Claire Yuan ’25
Elias J. Schisgall ’25
Dear Reader,
Spring is right around the corner. Buds are sprouting on oncebare branches. Little green stalks are emerging from the earth. The air is warmer, lighter. It’s the season of new life — and new content. Leaping into this glossy is a cover story by first-time scrut writers MAH and AJM on Jewish students’ and communities’ experiences navigating the politicization of their identities. It is a deeply important and well-reported piece, full of interviews with students with a range of backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. It is interrogative yet respectful, compelling and sharp, targeting questions about defining antisemitism and the political tensions within and between groups that our existing coverage has long danced around.
The rest of this glossy blossoms with stories both serious and seriously fun. In a colorful profile, OGP and AEP talk to Oliver R. Smoot, the man behind the strange measurements of “Smoot” on the Harvard Bridge. MAT reflects on what fossil fuels and their precarious future mean to his community in Texas’s Permian Basin, which produces most of the country’s oil and gas. VWR takes a trek up to Cabot House and talks to the student managers of the recentlyreopened Quad Bikes about fixing tires and sustainable transit. CJK speaks to Lee S. Smith ’69, managing editor of his class’s Harvard Yearbook, about photojournalism and documenting the Black political activism of his time. Prolific JKW, carrier of FM, strikes again with a levity on a perfectly horrific Datamatch date between Pisa Schitt and Steve Vulguy. YAK, ever on her relationships/sex beat, speaks to the matchmakers advertising clients in the personals section of the Harvard Magazine. Tying our regular content to a close, SZS writes a beautiful homage to her hometown of Chico, CA, which she learned to love when she finally left it.
But wait! There’s more! Like a long-forgotten flower unfolding its petals again, this glossy — for the first time in years — brings back creative writing to our pages. This month, we have a poem by EMK about light and hibiscus flowers, about the spaces between worlds, about survival and the self. It is a breathtaking work of art and the perfect way to bring this glossy to a close. And with that, a new season of FM begins.
Sincerely Yours,
HD & KT
HACKING HARVARD BRIDGE — As a pledge, an MIT fraternity made Oliver R. Smoot lay down on the bridge over 300 times, painting ticks at each smoot. SEE PAGE 4
EVOLVING JEWISH COMMUNITY SPACES — Since Oct. 7, long-existing but underlying political tensions regarding Israel in Jewish community organizations have taken hold of discussions. While these tensions are pervasive to many, and dictate the actions of some, many Jewish students have remained united by the recognition of a common identity with some of those they disagree with, and an aspiration for mutual understanding. SEE PAGE 12
MATCHMAKERS — Placed by luxury matchmakers in Harvard Magazine, personal ads attempt to introduce highly-educated singles to romantic partners in their social milieu. SEE PAGE 26
DATAMATCH — You don’t understand just how much I live for the moment that sweet, sweet, incredibly niche 12-question Datamatch survey drops. I can feel it in my brittle bones: This is the year I find my soulmate. SEE PAGE 24
PERMIAN BASIN — To the locals, the basin, which produces of the nation’s oil and gas, represents much more than her products. She is the unknown mother of life’s necessities and pleasures. SEE PAGE 6
TO PAY ATTENTION — I never thought I loved Chico. if I really hated it, why did I spend so much time telling other people about it? SEE PAGE 28
QUAD BIKES — “Having someone walk in with a broken bike and walk out with a fixed bike — there are few things I’ve done at this university that have made people so instantly happy,” says Quad Bikes manager Julian K. Li ’25. SEE PAGE 8
LEE S. SMITH ’69 — “My camera was an extension of my hand: wherever I went, it went,” says Smith ’69, the managing editor of his class’s Harvard Yearbook. SEE PAGE 12
Hacking Harvard Bridge with Oliver R. Smoot
OLIVIA W. ZHENG — CRIMSON DESIGNER
BY ADELAIDE E. PARKER AND OLIVIA G. PASQUERELLA CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
The word on the street is Harvard students don’t play around, and not in a good way. Some have taken to The Crimson to express that our student body lacks a penchant for the plot, any desire for debauchery. As first-years, we observed last year that April 1 comes and goes like it’s nothing more than April 2 — or worse, April 3. In other words, the Harvard student body seems to have come down with a serious case of The Seriousness. Why does no one do silly little bits anymore?
But paddle down the Charles River, and things seemingly couldn’t be more different. MIT has a long history of “hacking,” where students carry out intricate, eye-catching practical jokes to demonstrate their cleverness and technical skills.
There’s one hack that rules them all — a prank carried out in October 1958, by then-freshman Oliver R. Smoot and his Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity brothers.
The men of Lambda Chi Alpha hatched a plan to measure the Harvard Bridge, which stretches across the Charles River between Cambridge and Boston, without mainstream units of measurement. The unit they decided on? Smoot himself.
As a pledge, the fraternity made Smoot lay down on the bridge over 300 times, painting ticks at each smoot. Almost 70 years later, the Smoot markings remain, allowing pedestrians to measure their journey in “smoots.” According to a sign on the bridge, Cambridge and Boston are exactly 364.4 smoots apart.
On a Zoom meeting, Smoot, 83, is wearing an Under Armour polo shirt, the color of which might best be described as “middle school boy Nike Pro orange.” Despite this, he does not exactly exude the jumping-to-slapthe-tops-of-door-frames energy of said pre-teens or of the stereotypical frat bro. Bespectacled, soft spoken, and slightly shy, he bears a comforting
resemblance to Toby Turtle of the 1973 “Robin Hood” film.
Smoot recounts to us a simple explanation as to why he was Lambda Chi Alpha’s choice of measurement. “I was the shortest,” he says. The fraternity decided that using him as a ruler would be the most work for the 14 pledges who had yet to prove themselves worthy of the (Lambda Chi) Alphas. Armed with paint, string, and brushes, the 5’7” Smoot and six other pledges snuck onto Harvard Bridge in the dead of night to measure it in smoots.
Halfway through, Smoot explains, a police car drove past, drawn by the sight of college students “doing something suspicious.” He and his frat brothers fled back to MIT and hid in the bushes near campus. Once the cops gave up, they returned to the bridge.
“They started carrying me,” he recalls. “It’s all a blur.”
“I lay down and, with some chalk, they marked my head, then I got up,” says Smoot. “We did 10, and then 20…” Eventually Smoot couldn’t get up anymore. “They started carrying me,” he recalls. “It’s all a blur.”
Smoot didn’t know it then, but his night on the Harvard Bridge was the beginning of a lifetime full of measurement. After graduating from MIT in 1962, he went on to head the National Institute of Standards and Technology, then the International Organization of Standardization — the groups that set standard lengths for use in manufacturing and research.
When he retired, Smoot began to work as an expert witness, testifying about standardization in trials and even before Congress. Smoot says working as an expert witness is
JULIAN
economically “very attractive,” but he was ultimately overwhelmed by the thousands of documents he was asked to read and the experience of opposition attorneys “taking you apart” in the courtroom.
“I decided that the money you made was not worth the trauma you experienced when you have to go through the deposition,” Smoot explains. He retired as a witness and moved to San Diego to be close to his grandchildren.
Almost 70 years after his hack, Smoot is still the same Smoot, assuring us he’s still 1 smoot tall.
Though his Wikipedia page lists Smoot as 0.9813139 smoot, his doctors say otherwise.
“They do the height and it’s still 5’7”. Now, I admit I stand up as tall as I can,” he says sheepishly. “Because I don’t want to start shrinking.”
Smoot’s prank continues to inspire students, who’ve kept the longstanding tradition of MIT hacks going. In 1982, MIT students hoisted a junked police car on top of the school’s famous Great Dome. Three decades later, hackers installed remote-controlled light strips inside the windows of MIT’s 295foot tall Green Building, which they lit up and used to play Tetris.
Some hacks are even aimed at Harvard. In 1982, MIT students planted an eight-foot black weather balloon stamped with “MIT” under the field before the Harvard-Yale football game, which they remotely set off halfway through the match. The balloon exploded into a cloud of smoky white powder, shocking the nearby players and referees.
Harvard has never hacked MIT back, but Smoot thinks it’s possible. To him, Harvard students could benefit from the hack culture.
“There’s a lot of tension going on,” he says. “Doing hacks in a way where their quirkiness is appreciated is what’s important, I think.”
His advice is this: “Get a group together who actually want to do something that’s odd and fun,” he says. “I think there are enough inventive people at Harvard to figure this out.”
J. GIORDANO — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
| 5
A Sustainable Future for My Oil Town
BY MATTHEW A. THOMPSON CRIMSON
Descending from the clouds on the flight back from Boston, I look out across the Permian Basin to watch the sun’s last act to outlive its dwindling light. It sets the clouds closest to the horizon on fire, but to no avail; the rest subside into cooler tones before dying out. Below, the scorched land of the basin is carved up into thousands of plots. Within each plot, there are machines of extraction and refinement: derricks, flares, and “mechanical dinosaurs” or pump jacks. More recently, scattered throughout the basin, a few turbines take advantage of West Texas winds. I try and fail to follow a silver truck lagging like a ghost in the dust of where it should be. Time in the basin takes a while to catch up with the present. I flew from Boston with others who also won the chance to see their home from a critical distance. When I touch down in Midland, Texas, I notice that the man sitting next to me wears a design of the American flag. It is rare to see this “up there.” The stars and stripes are associated with extremism or the blurred line between patriotism and nationalism. Leaving the gate, I encounter the familiar sight of mesh hats branded with the household names of Chevron, Exxon and Pioneer. Shirts affirm liberty and freedom. Worn boots are cemented with mud-filled cracks. I’m overwhelmed by a small survey of the city that raised me.
Most of the nation’s oil and gas comes from the Permian Basin. The basin holds a contentious reputation in U.S. politics.
Some glorify its oil for securing U.S. energy independence while others view it with disdain for building a “carbon bomb” with the same potential to threaten human existence as the atomic one. No matter your awareness or indifference to the basin’s oil, she finds a way into all of our lives. Mention a future without the basin’s resources to an oil worker, and he’ll have a prepared list of all her contributions from clothes to transport. To the locals, the basin represents much more than her products. She is the unknown mother of life’s necessities and pleasures.
Oil is one of the last industries that can be lucrative without a college education. The catch is that workers are under the whim of the market. When demand and costs are high, the basin is “booming.” You never know when the boom will expire. But when the market busts, prices crash. Out-of-use rigs gather in lots lined up in rows like tall tombstones. Mass lay-offs start with those who work the dirtiest jobs. Workers either leave town with their pockets full or remain until the doom clears out.
My family moved to Odessa, Texas, twenty minutes from Midland, on the coattails of a boom. We moved into a neighborhood built to accommodate all the families eager to gain from black gold. The neighborhood has since been under perpetual construction. Each time I return from school, I can count on seeing a new street of houses. Homes come off of the conveyor belt, identical like gingerbread houses, each sanctified with a gifted bible. I can tell which houses are the newest by whose yard still contains remnants of rubble and dust from the now-suburbanized desert.
I used to go without seeing Dad for two to three weeks while he worked as a crew member on the rig’s site. As a directional
driller, he’d steer the drill bit for extraction — first vertically then horizontally according to the geologist’s calculations. At home, Mom would be the one to take care of my brother and me while Dad worked in sweltering summers and frigid winters. There were times when I wished he was in the audience at a performance or sitting in his chair, the only one with armrests at the head of the dinner table. I imagine most of the rig’s workers also had families at home too. Growing up, it was difficult to reconcile the little time I saw him and how I ought to feel about him. For the week in between shifts, he would try his best to recover lost time, but the need to provide for the home called him back. I’ve come to realize that an oil-man’s love is shown through his sacrifice on the oilfield.
When the pandemic hit, demand and prices dropped; Dad was laid off. But like most workers, he returned to the oil industry. At home, I see him around 6 o’clock when work trucks arrive in their driveways, maybe in time for dinner on the table. He now works as a production operator. After the drilling rig and fracking crew have their turn on the well and leave for the next one, he monitors the wells’ production and ensures the separation of water, oil and gas. It is wellknown that in the oil industry the most secure jobs are closest to the wellhead. A well’s production can last a few months or a year, so even when there’s a bust and lay-offs, Dad will likely continue to closely monitor the wells.
Oil has always been a constant in Odessa. Even though I see more of Dad, he works an exhausting 10-hour shift and another unpaid two for the drive from the site
STAFF WRITER
and back. No matter how rough and tiring oil life can be, nothing else can rival its economic benefits. For families, the chance to move into a suburban home and set aside funds for college justifies the return to an unreliable and sometimes unforgiving industry. But at what cost? Will oil be just as faithful to locals in the future? Locals often don’t doubt their faith in the infinitude of oil. There will always be another boom. To doubt could mean a future in which families do not see themselves thriving. Oil supplies hope that there will
always be a future in the basin. How can locals be assured there is a future for them? Slogans or signs that call for the end of fossil fuel production only intensify the town’s faith in oil. The most balanced voice in the debate is to reduce the rate at which we produce fossil fuels while we implement carbon capture. Education is not only essential
to inform but also to create the next generation of workers for clean energy. The Permian Basin’s vast and flat land has the potential to usher in the expansion of wind and solar. My town needs certainty that there is a future for them in the new economy, and an incentive to transition to secure and less taxing jobs for families. For there to be a future, the basin must be brought into it.
GRAPHIC BY JINA H. CHO — CRIMSON DESIGNER | 7
| PAGE DESIGNED BY SAMI E. TURNER — CRIMSON DESIGNER
Pedal to the Metal: Cabot’s Quad Bikes
BY VIVIAN W. RONG CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
Bicycle wheels adorn the walls of Cabot House basement. Tools, screwdrivers, and rags lie on wooden tables and hang from pegboards. This is Quad Bikes, a student-run shop dedicated to fixing the bikes of students and faculty.
Since Quad Bikes manager Julian K. Li ’25 was a sophomore, he has been working to reopen the operation after it shuttered during the pandemic. Li’s previous experience working at bike stores in the Boston area made him passionate about building a shop that the Harvard community can rely on.
“Cambridge is one of the most bike-friendly places in this country,” Li says. “Quad students really rely on their bikes to make that Quad-River journey a little more palatable. If you just look around Cambridge, you can see that bikes are such an essential part of people’s livelihoods, navigating the world, and being connected to the neighborhood.”
Li first learned to tune up bicycles
in 2019 while working at Ace Wheelworks. There, he found his passion for tinkering and fixing things and enjoyed seeing his work help customers get from point A to B more
“Having someone walk in with a broken bike and walk out with a fixed bike — there are few things I’ve done at this university that have made people so instantly happy.”
— Julian K. Li ’25
easily. Later, Li picked up another job at Breakaway Courier Systems as a bike messenger in downtown Boston, delivering letters, legal documents, and packages.
“My quarantine was just bikes, bikes, all day,” Li says.
At Quad Bikes, Li and his roommate enjoy the same kind of hands-on projects. Students and faculty bring in their broken bikes, and Quad Bikes is able to get them up and running again after some oiling, fixing tires, replacing screws, and repainting.
Li boasts of their seemingly spotless record: of the hundreds of bikes that have rolled in, Li says, “we have yet to have a bike come in that we were not able to roll out in safe working condition.”
“Having someone walk in with a broken bike and walk out with a fixed bike — there are few things I’ve done at this university that have made people so instantly happy,” Li says.
In line with its mission of empowering Harvard’s bike community, Quad Bikes also holds educational workshops teaching people how to fix smaller issues on their own.
“We want it to be a hub for learning and empowering people to engage with and use their bicycles,” Li says. Workshop attendees get a souvenir Swiss-army-knife-style multi-tool
PHOTO BY ADDISION Y. LIU — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
| PAGE DESIGNED BY SAMI E. TURNER — CRIMSON DESIGNER
keychain emblazoned with the Quad Bikes logo to help them use what they learned.
Due to the 2023-2024 academic year club freeze by the Dean of Students Office, Quad Bikes is not yet a registered student organization. Without access to funding and organizational support, Li says that Quad Bikes looked to different funding sources. The reopening was supported by the Harvard Office of Sustainability, which
sustainability initiative — not only does it touch on issues of transportation and accessibility on campus — but it’s an initiative for students to be able to seek employment,” Miller says.
Miller also says Quad Bikes is helping the Harvard community travel around campus and the greater Boston area more sustainably.
For Cabot House tutor Richard Allen ’22, the rebirth of Quad
“Not only is it a fantastic sustainability initiative —not only does it touch on issues of transportation and accessibility on campus —but it’s an initiative for students to be able to seek employment.”
— Ian J. Miller, Cabot Faculty Dean
provided a grant for the club.
Li says the funding went toward stocking up common parts needed for repairs such as cables, brake pads, and tubes. Quad Bikes also received funding from Harvard Undergraduate Urban Sustainability Lab to provide free tools at workshops.
Li is grateful to Cabot House for opening its doors to Quad Bikes.
Faculty Dean of Cabot House Ian J. Miller says that Quad Bikes is exactly the kind of student initiative that needs to be supported.
“Our job as administrators is to remove impediments to student discovery and success. And Quad Bikes is — along with the Cabot Cafe — a sort of path-breaking operation,” Miller says.
Miller believes organizations like Quad Bikes provide their student managers an opportunity to develop skills that will help them in great ways later in life.
“Not only is it a fantastic
Bikes has particular sentimental value — he recalls his blockmates working at Quad Bikes before the Covid-19 pandemic when he was an undergraduate. Allen has been working closely with the Quad Bikes managers to continue the organization’s mission.
“I’ve been very inspired by this. I think I’ve come to see it as a little bit of a passion project of my own as well,” Allen says.
With only two mechanics at the shop currently, Li and the Quad Bikes team persevere to support the Harvard community and its bikes and transportation.
“Nothing is worse than having this super convenient form of transportation that gets you to the SEC from the Quad, and all of sudden your bike breaks down,” Li says. “To have an accessible resource that can ensure that what you take for granted is always available and functioning — people really do appreciate that.”
| PAGE DESIGNED BY XINYI C. ZHANG — CRIMSON DESIGNER
Up Close with Lee Smith
BY CIANA J. KING
My camera was an extension of my hand: wherever I went, it went,” says Lee S. Smith ’69, the managing editor of his class’s Harvard Yearbook.
Though he sidelined his photography after college as he pursued a career in law, Smith kept thousands of photo negatives and contact prints in two big metal boxes in his home — his collection a black and white impression of seemingly every social event, political activity, and academic function on campus throughout the ’60s.
Smith was ubiquitous, and so was his camera.
Last spring, Smith decided to let go of the photos and donate them to the Harvard University Archives. The scenes they captured, though, were etched into the archives of his memory.
“You’re sitting there, part of you wants to put your camera down and also join in making the speech,” Smith recalls of the 1967 Dow Chemical Corporation sit-in. “But the other part of you knows that you change what’s going on when you become a participant. If you’re there to observe and to document fairly, you really can’t play both roles.”
His role, he discovered, lay in the darkroom of the yearbook building.
Smith’s enduring attachment to his time is representative of his broader artistic philosophy, one of introspection and intimacy. Part of that philosophy emerged from an encounter with the groundbreaking photojournalist Gordon Parks during his visit to the yearbook staff.
“When you want to take a picture of
somebody, you don’t want to just put on a telephoto lens and hide behind the telephoto,” Smith shares of the artist’s advice. “He said you should always crop your pictures with your feet.”
Smith clarifies: “You have to be invisible, but you become invisible by engaging.”
Those words would take Smith into rooms with some of the most renowned Black political and artistic leaders of his time — from Whitney Young, Jr. and Bayard Rustin to Dionne Warwick and The Temptations. Smith and his camera captured the 1967 Harvard Press Workers Employee Union Protest;
“I just go and sit with them. Sometimes words get in the way. I think people know a lot just by looking in your eyes.”
photographer — an identity that granted him both acceptance and trust as one of the few dozen Black students on campus.
“You have to spend time with people. You have to get them to accept you in some role,” Smith says. “In my case, it’s as a photographer.”
Even though he has entered a “second life” as a digital photographer he has retained Parks’s advice to get up close. Smith recalls walking through the streets and marketplaces of Antigua, Guatemala in 2007.
“I just go and sit with them. I don’t speak Mayan, Kaqchikel, but there’s so much communication that happens nonverbally,” Smith says. “Sometimes words get in the way. I think people know a lot just by looking in your eyes.”
To Smith, his photography is an act of service.
He points to a shot of the “soulful face” of Gabriella, a young Mayan girl he met in Antigua, with her mother Ruth. Captivated by her eyes, Smith didn’t realize she had an ear deformity.
Instead, Smith focuses on the moment he returned to the same park he first saw Gabriella in to give her mother the photo: “I’m giving her her daughter in my art.”
marches in support of the creation of the new Afro-American Studies program; draft resistance protests; and the spring 1969 protest of the Graduate School of Design course on “Riot Control.”
In a time of political turbulence, Smith chose to divorce himself from his own feelings in an attempt to capture history authentically — “to make a difference” with his camera.
Though never the subject of his own photos, Smith captures the Black experience through his unique lens as a
As our conversation comes to a close, he describes a “Do a Good Turn Daily” Boy Scout coin he used to hide in his pocket, quietly alternating it from one pocket to the other every time he did a good deed. Smith shares that the lesson he took from the coin was to not look for recognition or rewards for acts of service, but rather to find “places where things have meaning.”
“People always want me to tell them what the picture is about,” Smith says. “I try to resist that because I want them to find their own story. To get into the picture and find their own joy. Because that’s my joy.”
CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
PHOTO BY SAMI E. TURNER — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER | 13
Evolving Jewish Community Spaces at Harvard
WHILE POLITICAL tensions are pervasive to many, and dictate the actions of some, many Jewish students have remained united by the recognition of a common identity with some of those they disagree with, and an aspiration for mutual understanding.
14 | GRAPHICS AND PAGE DESIGNED BY XINYI C. ZHANG — CRIMSON DESIGNER
MADELEINE A. HUNG AND ASHER J. MONTGOMERY
CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
Agroup of seniors was playing tug of war at Harvard Hillel when Jeremy Ornstein ’24, a freshman at the time, was invited to join.
“There’s these older seniors who are so sweet—they’re just so warm, and there’’s all this intelligence behind their eyes,” he recounts. “And they’ve said, ‘Come on Jeremy, play tug of war with us.’ And it was awesome.”
It was the week before the Covid-19 pandemic sent everyone off campus. It was a weird week, and he didn’t know where to go or who to hang out with, until he was invited to the game of tug of war.
The experience kept him coming back to Hillel upon his return to campus. He studied the Torah with a teacher there, and sang and danced with the Student Conservative Minyan.
“There’s just moments in these prayer services where you’re singing, it’s a Friday night, you’ve just done your homework, maybe went to a party. And you’re swaying, and you’re in this room and there’s these windows on the sides, and it’s just dark blue outside at night,” Ornstein recounts. “Suddenly the swaying becomes more vigorous, and you’ve got your arms around your buddy’s shoulder. Then the singing is coming from your gut, it’s so loud and you’re swaying, and you’re stomping and then we’re all dancing in a circle facing Shabbat, which is just this gift of peace and recognition of our peace and rest.”
But after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, Ornstein, among others, found himself unable to go back to Hillel for weeks.
He had participated in a protest calling for a ceasefire after the occupation of University Hall in November, and he says his friends at Hillel wouldn’t look at him. He says they were angry with him — that they
felt betrayed that he was saying “Jews for Palestine.” So he stayed away.
Ornstein’s experience, while unique, is not singular.
Long-existing but underlying political tensions regarding Israel in Jewish community organizations have taken hold of discussions, relationships and actions that take place in the spaces.
The intense national scrutiny on the ways in which antisemitism does or does not pervade a Jewish Harvard student’s life has only worsened strife between many separate experiences, seemingly only united by a campus. New groups have formed, warrelated posters appear on bulletin boards, and both pro-Palestinian protests and tabling “educational” events about Israeli deaths appear frequently in the Old Harvard Yard.
Yet while the tensions are pervasive to many, and dictate the actions of some, many Jewish students have remained united by the recognition of a common identity with some of those they disagree with, and an aspiration for mutual understanding.
‘THAT’S WHAT AFFECTS ME, THAT’S WHAT AFFECTS MY PEERS’
The last few months have seen the rise of a worldwide interest in what it means to be Jewish at Harvard.
In early January, following the resignation of Claudine Gay, Jacob M. Miller ’25, a Crimson Editorial Chair, spoke on CNN, describing the chants of “intifada” in protests and social media posts that insist Jews control the media.
“That’s what affects me, that’s what affects my peers,” he said. Miller argued in a separate interview with Fox that equating Jewish rule with white colonialism is an antisemitic double standard.
Interim president Alan M. Garber ’76, too, called antisemitism at Harvard “pernicious.” Members of libraries “promoting violence against Jews and harassing and assaulting them on campus.”
All of these events and statements create an image of rampant antisemitism on campus, a sentiment
“Harvard can be a place where we love our Jewishness, where we connect with Jewish people in Israel — and where we also gaze at the horrors of conflict, the pain of antisemitism, and the brutality of an occupation,”
‘WE WERE REALLY UNITED, AND THEN THE POLITICS CAME
he spaces made to provide support for Jewish students have faced challenges and changes as the politics of war and religion swelled on campus.
Harvard Hillel, the oldest and largest center for Jewish life on campus, is one of the organizations that has seen internal changes as students have grappled with these difficult questions
Directly following the Oct. 7 attack, students found refuge and support in Hillel. Charles M. Covit ’27, a Crimson Editorial editor, says he witnessed an increased involvement at Hillel
“Seeing how everyone was doing their part was definitely a powerful moment.”
— Charles M. Covit ’27
from students who may not have participated in the space before in the
“Seeing how everyone was really kind of doing their part, it was definitely a powerful moment to see,” he recounts. “People responded very differently — some people just needed to take the time to grieve and think about it — but a lot of people, really people that I had barely even seen at Hillel before then, came out of the woodwork and were super involved in responding to it and being part of the community in that moment.”
Yet Meredith W. B. Zielonka ’25, an associate business manager at The Crimson, says that this was not a longterm change. As the war continued, she
says, the level of involvement in Hillel shifted. People stopped showing up to the building as much when Israel began its counterattack a few weeks into October.
“We were really united, and then the politics came into it,” she says. “It’s really a pattern with our community — that politics divide us so much.”
Harvard Hillel, the oldest and largest center for Jewish life on campus, is one of the organizations that has seen internal changes as students have grappled with these difficult questions involving their identities.
Harvard Hillel, the oldest and largest center for Jewish life on campus, is one of the organizations that has seen internal changes as students have grappled with these difficult questions involving their identities.
Hillel itself has always had a fairly diverse membership, offering four prayer communities for Jewish students across different affiliations: Conservative, Reform, Orthodox, and Worship and Study (traditional egalitarian). Because of its variety of offerings, Hillel attracts students across different affiliations and different levels of involvement with Judaism — some visit Hillel for every meal, while others only come for holidays or weekly bagel brunches.
For example, Maya Shiloni ’26, who identifies as completely secular but culturally Jewish, participates in Friday night Shabbat dinners and Sunday morning bagel brunches. She has felt and continues to feel particularly protected by Hillel as a student from Israel and a former member of the Israeli Military Intelligence.
“Campus has not always been welcoming towards me,” Shiloni explains. “Hillel is the only organization that actually fights for me and does something about it.”
The Kosher diet is also an important factor in facilitating community within Hillel. For students who keep kosher, their dining options are limited, as house dining halls offer few kosher options. This creates a particularly tight bond for those students attending Hillel every day for dinner.
GRAPHICS
BY
XINYI C. ZHANG
— CRIMSON DESIGNER | 17
18 | PAGE DESIGNED BY XINYI C. ZHANG — CRIMSON DESIGNER
“It’s painful when we decide that some people’s lives aren’t political and other people’s lives are political.”
— Jeremy Ornstein ’24
Covit says that it is important to have Jewish spaces on campus so Jewish students can practice their cultural customs together. He says he enjoys the company of other Jewish students during meals and especially during Shabbat.
“Community is definitely a huge part of Judaism, too,” he says. “So a lot of it is really just about the people and a sense of a familial feeling.”
Although many students find this type of community in Hillel, some have felt that the ease with which they can do so partially depends on their religious affiliation or political views.
While Rabbi Getzel Davis, Hillel’s campus rabbi, will sometimes lead Reform services, the organization does not have a formal Reform rabbi.
Students who identify as Reform largely have to initiate services themselves, though Davis will help students like Maya A. Bodnick ’26, who delivered the sermon at Reform Rosh Hashanah services last fall, with preparing and organizing these events.
“There is no Reform minyan at Hillel anymore. There are people trying to start it up again, but it’s not really a regular body,” says Zielonka, an active participant in the Modern Orthodox community at Hillel. (A group of reform students have met weekly with Davis this spring for a pre-shabbat discussion and candle lighting.)
Students who have spent less time in Hillel since Oct. 7 cite Hillel International’s stated goal of inspiring students to create an “enduring connection” to Israel, which they see as a force against diverse discussions.
“Hillel provides every Jewish student with the opportunity to explore and
build a lasting relationship with Israel,” the Hillel International website reads.
One afternoon, Ornstein attended a gathering facilitated by Rabbi David J. Wolpe, a visiting professor at the Harvard Divinity School, who spoke with a woman whose sister was killed in Israel. She recounted how horrible and scary of an experience it was, Ornstein says. After her account, Wolpe told the crowd that they all should sing Hatikvah, the Israeli national anthem. Then he opened it up to questions from the audience, telling them to remember that it wasn’t political, that was about people’s lives. This contrast was upsetting for Ornstein.
“It’s painful when we decide that some people’s lives aren’t political and other people’s lives are political. It’s just painful. It’s so fucking painful,” he says. “Any country can be a dream for something more than its people and for its people, but it’s painful, when to be in a Jewish gathering, we expect each other to sing the song of a nation that has a specific policy that is killing thousands of people.”
“Everyone sings Hatikvah like it’s the most common sense, and everyone says that Jewish lives aren’t political, and then we don’t have the conversations of more than 20,000 Palestinians who have been killed,” he says.
Other students with more leftleaning political views have also found themselves struggling to find community at Hillel.
“While there are many lovely and welcoming people in the community, at Harvard Hillel and at Harvard more widely, some friends of mine, including folks who ended up founding Jews for Liberation, had some pretty negative
experiences,” says Harvard Divinity School student Francesca Rubinson. “Not necessarily with staff or anything, but when conversations would come up around Zionism, around Palestine solidarity, they would feel very singled out and very isolated if they expressed their views in terms of advocating for Palestine or Palestinian liberation.”
‘WHAT WE DISAGREE ON
IS HOW TO GET THERE’
Harvard Chabad takes a different space on campus. The Chabad house is tall and tan and fits in well with the other 19th-century-style homes on the street where it sits. If you pass by on a Tuesday night when the weather is good, you’ll see a crowd of people talking, eating and laughing. People flow in and out of the house with plates full of rice, veggies, chicken and tofu. The crowd is made up of both undergraduates and graduate students; there are also neighbors, recent graduates, and people looking for good conversation over the steaming kosher Chinese food that Chabad provides each Tuesday night. Other nights, a smaller group of students sits outside, conducting prayer over a more intimate meal. Either way, the lights in the Chabad house glow.
Chabad itself is a sect of Orthodox Hasidic Judaism, but it doesn’t narrow to that definition in Harvard’s Jewish community. Chabad is known worldwide for a desire to build connections with a broader Jewish world, and this is exceptionally true for the organization under the leadership
PHOTO BY SAMI E. TURNER — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER |
of Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi. Harvard Chabad, like Hillel, reaches even those who don’t identify as Jewish. For example, at the annual Shabbat 1000, nearly a thousand Harvard affiliates, regardless of their religious or ethnic identities, gather for Shabbat. The open-to-all Tuesday night Chinese dinners are also popular amongst Jewish and non-Jewish people.
We made our way to the Chabad house for a service one cold Saturday morning in January, hoping to better understand its wide reach and learn about its origins. It is practice in Orthodox prayer to separate women and men during the service, so when we entered, we sat down on the female side of the ornately decorated wooden panel. The service took place in a living room filled with chairs. The house was warm, and four or five little boys ran up and down the stairs during the service, which was mostly in Hebrew.
After the service, we moved upstairs for lunch. Zarchi, the founder and president of Harvard Chabad noticed our new appearance and motioned for us to sit and speak with him. Amidst the conversation, we asked about the founding of this group. He stood up a few minutes later and waved his hands over the crowd. People began shushing and went silent. Zarchi, loud and charismatic, then told the story of the founding of Harvard Chabad.
In the mid-’90s, a young Zarchi attended Chabad services in Brookline. After service, he frequented Harvard Square, setting up a table distributing Jewish literature to passers-by and offering Tefillin, an arm-wrap practice done by Jewish men during morning prayer. He met students this way, who expressed a desire for a Chabad space on campus.
Zarchi and his wife made it their mission to create one. They began in a small rented unit in mid-Cambridge in 1997. By 1999, Harvard Chabad bought the current building with alumni support, and in 2003, Zarchi became a recognized campus chaplain. Over the last few years, Chabad has accumulated several neighboring
properties with plans to build a much larger center. Zarchi says Chabad also plans to build a center in the Longwood Medical Area to accommodate Harvard Medical students.
According to Zarchi, while the proportion of Jewish students at Harvard has dropped since the ’90s, he has only seen growth at Chabad, a testament to its welcoming atmosphere to students.
Alex L. S. Bernat ’25, who went to a Jewish day school, says that finding a strong Jewish community was a large factor in his college choices. He wanted people to go to Shabbat dinner with and celebrate the high holidays. When he arrived at Harvard, he first went to Hillel, before attending a barbeque at Chabad. Chabad felt familial and communal. He liked the people and the rabbis.
“I immediately met people who it seemed like I would be very friendly with,” he says. “It felt in a good way like it was an extension of the parts of high school Jewish culture.”
Bernat has become more observant since starting college. While he was involved in Jewish activity and community at home, a lot of his religious growth happened while at Harvard because he enjoys the company of the people he practices with.
Chabad President Ben A. Landau ’24 was drawn to Chabad for similar reasons. His sister was an active Chabad member before he arrived at Harvard, and when he walked into the space for the first time, he also found it to be warm and welcoming. He met kind staff members and older students who were helpful to him throughout college.
“It’s just a time where people are trying to make sense of their place in the world,” Landau says about his first year of college. “You’re meeting all these new people, you’re figuring out what you might want to do. To have a space where I could practice my Judaism, learn about what it meant to me, and how I want it to be a part of my life going forward, I think was
obviously very important.”
Zarchi adds that he’s also seen students strengthen their connection to Judaism through Chabad. He says this is because Chabad welcomes challenging questions, and finds those who ask them as valuable, because they demonstrate a genuine interest in Judaism.
In the wake of Oct. 7, Bernat says he saw the Jewish community come closer. He especially noticed this at a vigil for the victims of the attacks.
“Something I noticed is that Jews and non-Jew allies showed out to this vigil and in numbers that I don’t think I have ever seen at Harvard,” Bernat says. “People who were wholly uninvolved and didn’t have a particular interest in becoming involved in the more religious aspects or any other kind of avenues of pursuing Judaism on campus came to this, and I think it goes to show that the Jewish community here is really unified.”
According to board members and Rabbis, Harvard Chabad is not a political place. But leaders of the organization hold a firm belief in the right for Israel to exist.
Zarchi said that Chabad works to educate those who are “ignorant” and “delusional” regarding Israel. Bernat says that he distinguishes between the chants “from water to water Palestine is Arab” and less controversial phrases like “Let Gaza Live,” but says that as it is the same groups behind both chants, “it is hard for me to separate the sentiments.”
The organization plays an active role in educating the public on Israel and combating antisemitism. Following Oct. 7, a new position was created on the student board of Chabad: Israel Chair. Bernat currently holds this position, and as a part of the role, he hosted a screening of footage from the Oct. 7 attack. The role was a natural fit for him, he says, as he’s always cared about Israel and taken an active role in Chabad’s previous efforts to end antisemitism.
As Israel Chair, Bernat set up Chabad tables in the yard, reached out to faculty
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speakers and established security for the attack screening. He also spoke with the Israeli ambassador to the UN about the tensions on campus.
While Chabad is not a political organization, the politics inevitably enter the discussions that take place in the rooms of the Chabad House. Although the group claims that anyone is welcome, some find the space intolerant of any criticism of Israel.
Landau says he’d rather focus on the similarities between members of the Jewish community.
“Something that I think gets lost a lot in times like this, where it feels like everybody’s shouting and nobody’s listening, is that at the end of the day, everybody wants peace,” Landau says. “What we disagree on is how to get there.”
‘JEWISHNESS AS A ‘WAY OF BEING’’
Looking to fill an ideological gap in Jewish spaces on campus, and to present an alternative to Harvard Hillel and Chabad, Shir Lovett-Graff and a few other students at the Harvard Divinity School founded Jews for Liberation in the late fall of
2021.
At its origin, Jews for Liberation was a small group, maybe 10 to 12 people, and the first meeting took place in one of the members’ houses, according to Miriam S. Israel, a student at the Divinity School. They went around giving introductions and talking about why they decided to attend. The idea was to create a space to connect Jewish values and Jewish ideas to liberation movements and other political issues.
For Israel, that first gathering was personally invigorating, and the concept to her was revolutionary.
“It did feel really exciting to just look around and see, ‘Okay, these are other people who hold the same values that I do and also have come from the same background,’” Israel says. “It was kind of one of the first places where it was safe or acceptable to talk about some of these contradictions.”
After joining Jews for Liberation, Israel says her relationship with Judaism has changed.
“It’s a little bit harder to feel comfortable in a lot of institutional Jewish spaces,” Israel says. “But I would actually say that Judaism is almost more important to me now than it ever has been, as an identity and as a way of being in the world and a way of relating to other people.”
Rubinson, who grew up in the Reform community, was also a founding member of the group. A few months into her first year at HDS, she attended a Hanukkah gathering hosted by Jews for Liberation.
“I felt very lucky to come in with a cohort that also included a bunch of Jewish folks like me, who were interested in creating our own spiritual life and rituals that we thought would be meaningful to us and that felt aligned with our political values as well,” she says.
Rubinson eventually joined leadership of the group, where she says she could “think and dream” about creating an accepting space for those
Since its founding, Jews for Liberation has hosted a variety of events, including holiday rituals for Yom Kippur, Passover Seder, Purim and Rosh Hashanah, as well as conversations with prison abolition groups and speaker events about transformative justice. They’ve also hosted a workshop called “Wrestling with Zionism,” intended for Jewish students to grapple with questions in a discussion setting.
PHOTO BY BRIANA HOWARD PAGÁN — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER |
21
The Chabad house is tall and tan and fits in well with the other 19th-century-style homes on the street where it sits. If you pass by on a Tuesday night when the weather is good, you’ll see a crowd of people talking, eating and laughing.
BRIANA HOWARD PAGÁN — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
“not accepted for their views or for their activism.”
“As we became leaders together, what we would talk about a lot was wanting to provide that space and care for exploration and hold people as they were able to wrestle with the really difficult questions,” Rubinson says. “We don’t necessarily think that everything we say or do is right 100 percent of the time, and we are committed to just being with each other as we figure out how to move forward and be better partners for solidarity and liberation.”
Following Oct. 7, the group’s purpose for gathering and the sentiments within the gatherings changed. Members found that because Harvard was put under such intense scrutiny, they felt the need to show that the Jewish community was not a monolith in what they believe about Israel, or about antisemitism. The organization also saw a growth in interest amongst
that grief and that loss, and also anger and frustration with world leaders, and honestly, I would say, to some extent with our elders and Jewish community for letting things get to this point.”
“I think people are having real moments of soul searching and deeper questioning of a lot of things they’ve been taught and working on learning and unlearning,” she says.
‘ANTI-ZIONISM DOES NOT EQUATE TO ANTISEMITISM’’
Harvard Jews for Palestine (J4P) was founded last fall after Oct. 7. Shortly after the attack, the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee and 33 other student organizations published a letter naming Israel “entirely responsible” for the attack. Members of the PSC and the other student groups received national backlash, and their personal information was posted online and on a truck that drove through Harvard Square and to their homes.
“I tried looking for anyone who was willing to maybe collaborate with PSC or open some sort of discussion on it. No one seemed willing.”
In early November, Barron found three other Jewish students who shared her political views. Barron and the other founding members of J4P received guidance from Jews for Liberation because before J4P, there was no leftist Jewish space for undergraduates.
“It was the first Jewish space at the school where I felt truly accepted, both for my racial background and my political leaning,” Barron says.
Barron says she had attended events at Hillel and Chabad over the past three semesters, looking for “traditions and things that I feel unite Jewish people across different branches or camps.” But instead of finding unity and welcoming spaces, Barron says she “never felt truly accepted.” Being Asian-American and politically left leaning, Barron was always a minority in predominantly Jewish spaces.
“I think as an Asian American, my Jewish identity is rarely assumed by others,” Barron explains.
Violet T. M. Barron ’26, a Crimson Editorial Editor and one of the founding members of J4P, identifies as a Reform and secular Jew. She recounts that watching her close friends being doxxed during the backlash to the PSC letter
“I wasn’t sure why there were no Jewish students speaking out against the fact that all of this was happening under the guise or the illusion that somehow this letter was antisemitic,”
“So I went to Hillel,” Barron adds.
“I think it was a combination of my racial background and my political views, because I think that up until we started Jews for Palestine, the predominant Jewish spaces on campus were quite Zionist — or at least very hesitant to critique Israel — despite what we all saw Israel was doing on the news,” Barron adds.
Despite feeling unwelcome in Hillel and Chabad, Barron says she has had productive and positive interactions with individual members from both organizations.
“I’ve worked with some of them on The Crimson,” she explains. “And I’ve actually had some really, really great one-on-one interactions with them.”
“I’ve edited people’s pieces for The Crimson — pieces which have been about Israel, Palestine, or antisemitism — and we don’t necessarily agree on those topics, but I’ve definitely learned from them,” she adds. “Other people have edited my pieces who don’t
agree with my views. I think they’ve learned from me. So I’ve had very good interactions with individuals in those organizations.”
While individuals in Hillel and Chabad might be open to discussing Israel, Barron says that Hillel and Chabad as organizations do not welcome such discussions.
“I think as institutions their voice is very Zionist and the statements that they put out have been — what feels like to me — blindly pro-Israel,” Barron explains.
Despite only having four members at its founding, Jews for Palestine is quite active. Their brightly colored pamphlets reading “anti-zionism does not equate to antisemitism” populated much poster space on campus for a number of months. On Nov. 16, nine of their members occupied University Hall overnight, demanding a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
‘UNAFRAID TO ASK QUESTIONS’
In the fall semester, a group arose out of a desire for an alternative to both the earlier protest groups and Zionist spaces — a desire for a space to converse.
Founding members of the ForwardThinking Jewish Union consist largely of junior and senior undergraduates, looking to fill a gap in the political representation of more liberal Jews by hosting discussions and speaker events.
Noah B. Kassis ’25, who participates in the Hillel Student Conservative Minyan, says he decided to help organize a progressive space because of his experiences with Hillel. When he would attend Hillel for Shabbat dinner, he found there to be constant “Israel-positive programming.” This was new to him, as Israel was not the center of the synagogue community in which he grew up.
“It felt like there was a political focus that didn’t align with mine,” he says. “So I felt like it was a space where kind of the default was to be a Zionist and
really have a particular set of ideas about Israel.”
Kassis plans to continue to participate in Hillel as it adapts, while he remains involved in giving life to the Forward Thinking Jewish Union.
“It will give us a chance to have a more realistic picture of what Jewish life on campus actually looks like and think about how we want to create spaces where we can all come together — whether that looks like Hillel shifting, whether that looks like having forums where people from different groups can come together,” Kassis says.
In a previous interview with the Crimson, Forward-Thinking Jewish Union founder Serena F. Jampel ’25, a Crimson magazine writer, said that the group has heavy overlap with Jews for Palestine, both consisting of a dozen or so active members.
The two organizations have different tactics however, both of which are necessary for their purpose, explains Ornstein, another founding member.
In one way, Jews for Palestine is challenging Harvard to have the conversations that FTJU facilitates. In another way, the two groups provide different perspectives, which can help further diversify the political conversation.
“Harvard is meant to be just rich, rich with diverse groups asking diverse questions and unafraid to ask questions, and not afraid to cry if the questions hurts, and unafraid to say I’ve got your back,” he says. “And unafraid to sing.”
protest after the occupation of University Hall, an action he found “imperfect.” He had an idea for something better, a gathering that might be more effective — one big discussion, where Jewish people with all sorts of political beliefs gather and say what is upsetting them.
“We enter into intimacy by listening, by asking for forgiveness and then by asking for the ones who forgive us to listen even more closely to what we were trying to say in the first place,” Ornstein says. “When you shout, it makes the other person want to cover their ears. But when you whisper and say, ‘Here’s my hand, I need you talking with me,’ people might get closer.”
GRAPHICS BY XINYI C. ZHANG — CRIMSON DESIGNER |
| PAGE DESIGNED BY JULIA N. DO — CRIMSON DESIGNER
The Datamatch Heard Around The World
BY JEM K. WILLIAMS CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
It’s the greatest mother-flipping time of year. I don’t think you understand just how much I live for the moment that sweet, sweet, incredibly niche 12-question Datamatch survey drops.
I can feel it in my brittle bones: This is the year I find my soulmate. This is the year I finally match with that perfect person who also selected that their Roman Empire was “Thinking about how all the turkeys in the yard are simulations implanted in our subconscious by the government to prevent us from finding out what they’re really doing behind Lamont Library (I heard it involves atomic weapons).”
I just know everyone wants to see my lovely name — Pisa Schitt — pop up as one of their high percentage love matches. I mean, who wouldn’t want someone that chose “Licking the bottom of the DS10380 Model K Water Dispenser” for the prompt “It’s Friday night. What are you doing?”
I’m an absolute catch. If I can’t find love this year, I don’t think anyone can. So, I fill out this survey, and after I’m done, I type up my bio: “Just a girl who’s sexually attracted to the dhall feta cheese.” That’s the kicker. That’ll get ‘em.
Now for the most important part. I select the “Don’t Match Me With” feature and input every single house except Mather. I want a look inside that cold, hard concrete jungle.
I’m flying through the “Outtakes”
section with the speed and finesse of a jaguar — “The first thing I’d save in a house fire is…” the lighter I used to set it, duh. I almost feel bad for the other girls looking for love on this platform. After my matches see me, no one else stands a chance.
The worst part is the waiting. I’m on the edge of my seat for days and days. As I walk through the Yard, I wonder which one of these lucky souls will be mine. I watch the analog clock I drilled into the ceiling of my dorm (they can charge me for the damage later) as the time ticks down to that cute capitalist trap of a holiday.
“I just know everyone wants to see my lovely name — Pisa Schitt — pop up as one of their high percentage love matches.”
Finally, there they are — there he is (sorry to all the girls that wanted a piece of this, but I am a heterosexual). I only got one match, but it’s a 110% match. I guess I would rather have quality over quantity. And his name, his beautiful name, is Steve Vulguy.
I press “Like” on him immediately, and the feeling is mutual. I quickly receive a message from him: “Do you want to form an alliance?” Okay, Steve, I’m intrigued. “What would this
alliance entail?” I reply.
“Oh, just Square domination,” he quips back.
“But I really like triangles. I’m not sure I would consider the square the dominant shape,” I say. I’m really not sure how we ended up on geometry.
“No, I mean the square of all squares. PORTER SQUARE,” he messages maniacally.
“*HARVARD SQUARE,” he corrects after a brief moment.
“And how do you propose we do that?” I ask.
“We collect all the coupons we can from this app and go on free dates until we run them all out of business.”
It’s the evilest idea I’ve ever heard. I’m in. “Why are we doing this?” I ask.
“Some students just want to watch the Square burn.” He says, following it up with a date request for tonight at Amorino. I accept and it feels like I’m floating for the rest of the day. I love him already. I’m picking out sponges at the CVS to cut into matching rings for our fingers — symbols of our mission to scrub the Square clean of all it’s got.
But finally meeting him is the best part. He’s dressed to the nines in horizontally green and yellow striped pants and a red suit jacket. I savor every bit of my vanilla gelato while we talk about going to a guest lecture on “How to Get Rich Quick” over at the Biz School. As we walk out of Amorino, I casually discard what’s left of my cone on the sidewalk (it’s biodegradable, right?) and we walk off into the sunset, crossing the intersection at anywhere but the crosswalk and plotting our next free treat stop.
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The Matchmakers of Harvard Magazine
BY YASMEEN A. KHAN CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
Are you a “long-legged, blue-eyed brunette” in search of an “intel lectual gentleman” be tween 50 and “a fit 70”? Perhaps you’re a “Renaissance male” looking for a “petite, slim, smart, fit, and feminine lady” who shares your love of the outdoors? Maybe you’re even a “ruggedly handsome, Bos ton-based Ph.D.” seeking an “attrac tive, slender, fit, and kind” partner in the New England area?
You might be well advised to head to the pages of Harvard Magazine’s clas sified section, where you’ll find these personal advertisements verbatim. Placed by luxury matchmakers, the ads attempt to introduce highly-edu cated singles to romantic partners in their social milieu.
Personal ads have been around for hundreds of years. Though their popularity has declined since the advent of dating apps, they still run in certain online and print publications. The personals section of the New York Review of Books has been called a “hookup spot for intellectu als” by the New York Post, Hot Singles NYC runs ads in their email newsletter, and, until 2018, Craigslist maintained a colorful personals section called “ca sual encounters” (“Does mold turn you on? - w4w” reads the top post on casual encounters’ “best-of” list.)
“I like the idea of personal ads, because that is exactly what they are — they’re personal,” says celebrity matchmaker Bonnie Winston, who
has placed ads in Harvard Magazine since the late 2000s. “It’s a very good
I’m not,” says Susan Dunhoff, another matchmaker who advertises in Har -
“I like the idea of personal ads, because that is exactly what they are — they’re personal. It’s a very good way for me to find quality
GRAPHIC BY NATALIE Y. ZHANG — CRIMSON DESIGNER
To Pay Attention
BY SUMMER Z. SUN
Ihave lived my whole life in one place: Chico, a town nestled in Northern California. It’s not the Bay Area. It’s not even Sacramento. Go up even farther north — almost midway between Oregon and San Francisco.
It’s a small town, the kind where you walk into Costco and see your fifth grade teacher, but it’s somehow still the largest city in California north of Sacramento. Although it’s in California, the apogee of all liberal safe havens, my congressional district has elected a Republican incumbent every election since I was in third grade. In Chico, it’s impossible to escape its tendrils: between its lack of anonymity, meager Chinese-American population, and conservative views, I felt it was suffocating at times.
This past December, I flew back to Chico for my first winter break of college. It was a rushing blur of sweet reunions with high school friends, wisdom teeth removal surgery, and much needed family time. Above it all though, one experience sticks out: I watched the 2017 film Lady Bird.
In one scene of the film, lasting barely 30 seconds, Christine, the main character, discusses her college essays with the principal of her high school,
a nun named Sister Joan. The entire movie is predicated upon the fact that Christine loathes Sacramento, her hometown, and dreams of escaping to the East coast for college. Yet, in the scene, Sister Joan tells Christine, “you clearly love Sacramento.” Christine is visibly surprised. Sister Joan says Christine writes about it “so affectionately, and with such care.” Christine shrugs. “Sure. I guess I pay attention,” she says. There’s a slight pause. Then Sister Joan says, “don’t you think maybe they are the same thing? Love and attention?”
Growing up, like Christine, I yearned for something greater, unfathomably larger. I craved a place “where culture is…where writers live in the woods,” as Christine pronounces to her mother. I dreamed of a place where culture and art teemed unruly between every skyscraper, and artists created beautiful things kindled by the city around them. But if I wanted that, the closest thing to inspiration I could turn to was the acres of monotonous farmland on the outskirts of Chico that blanketed my world like a vast quilt. When my brother, nine years older than me, attended college at UC Berkeley, my family and I would sometimes go to San Francisco when we visited him. The glass towers, salty air, and pastel condominiums that stretched past the horizon were a stark departure from everything I had ever
known. I couldn’t comprehend why anyone of their own volition would stay in Chico.
I trained my eyes onto college — the day I could finally begin my life. And in the dazzling, sticky summer before college, the fact that I was the only person from Chico at Harvard seemed thrilling: I could finally become untethered from its weight.
When I finally arrived at Harvard and met people who knew other students from their high school there — three, eight, even 10 — I was shocked. I was overwhelmed by the concentration of students from what felt like just a handful of well-known places: New York City, the Bay Area, big cities in Texas. The idea that a person could attend Harvard and know people from their high school and their hometown was utterly incomprehensible to me. I watched them glide with ease and familiarity guided by shared connections. When asked where they were from, people’s eyes would light up in recognition at their answer.
But when people would ask me, it was a different story. Northern California, I would say. Oh, so like the Bay? They would ask. No, farther north. A few might then ask, Sacramento? But I would shake my head again. Chico, I’d say. And my hometown — everything I had ever known — was met with a confused stare.
CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
So from 1 a.m. nights cross-legged on the linoleum floor of Weld to Annenberg at peak dinner hour, I couldn’t stop myself from explaining Chico to people I met. Yes, I needed them to know its odd conservativeness and sprawling almond orchards — but also to know the playground by my house where, enveloped in cold January sun, I had my first kiss; the barren airport parking lot where my dad taught me how to drive; the pizza place downtown I would walk to and grab a slice from after school nearly every day freshman year; or the Saturday farmers market trips my mom and I took to get the best carrots.
The features of Chico — soft, tender, yet incredibly intricate — lay
within me. While I had been waiting for college, some bombastic idea that vaguely involved strobe lights and a faceless friend group, I discredited the place that made me.
“And if I really hated it, why did I spend so much time telling other people about it?”
I never thought I loved Chico. But that December day as I sat curled up in
my childhood bed watching Christine and Sister Joan on my iPad, I realized that I had paid attention to it. And if I really hated it, why did I spend so much time telling other people about it?
The last scene of Lady Bird is a montage of Christine driving around Sacramento. Snippets of Sacramento tinted with golden light flit through the car windows while her hands rest on the wheel, her face relaxed and her eyes clear. The soundtrack title that accompanies it is called “Reconcile.”
I hold onto my memories of Chico, but not with resentment. Now, more often than not, they exist around me, cast in warm light — tableaus only I will ever truly understand — while I drive onward.
The features of Chico — soft, tender, yet incredibly intricate — lay within me. COURTESY OF SUMMER Z. SUN
Supermoon
ELANE M. KIM CRIMSON STAFF
Pluralities have no place in the world of the living. This is why I learn & unlearn my maiden name. I bury what can fit in ten square feet: the canned rain, the river. I commit to tragedy, the lesser of two evils. The shallows of the city are meant to be drowned in. Believe it. I ask the neighbors if they’ve seen a bursting moon, the North Star, all the pieces of
light we string together & hang on the mantle. At night, I dream of rust & rain & other quiet pleasures. I ask my body what it means to survive in a language punctuated by blank space & it laughs. The radio swallows the rest of the anthem. I sleep for a while, long enough for light to collect in white cones. Hidden beneath the dirt, hibiscus in small patches: red as a secret, as shame. Someone says collisions are the stuff of universes. I dodge. I mourn.
There is light in a way that stops feeling bright. O the things we cultivate in place of self: homes, warm fireplaces, cold prayers, great bronze statues of dead men, fool’s gold, the morning after the new year, the year after the new body, the first supper, the last meal, children wrapped in red scarves, red for prayer, red for disaster, red, red, relief, roofs thatched over with whatever will survive.
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OLIVIA W. ZHENG — CRIMSON DESIGNER
CARTOON CREATED BY OLIVIA W. ZHENG — CRIMSON DESIGNER
