The University Daily, Est. 1873 | Volume CXLV, No. 35 | Cambridge, Massachusetts | THURSDAY, MArch 08, 2018
The Harvard Crimson Harvard should not give legacy applicants any preference during the admissions process. editorial PAGE 8
Men’s hockey will face Dartmouth in divisional quarterfinals match. sports PAGE 9
UC Debates HCFA Funding
CS50 Changes Cheating Reporting
By Caroline S. Engelmayer and Michael E. Xie
By Caroline S. Engelmayer and Michael E. Xie
Crimson Staff Writers
Crimson Staff Writers
The Undergraduate Council’s finance committee voted to recommend legislation that would bar religious group Harvard College Faith and Action from all Council funding at a weekly policy meeting Wednesday evening. The motion, titled “An Act in Solidarity With the LGBTQ Community,” requires HCFA leadership make “tangible” reforms before the group can—pending finance committee review—receive UC funding again. The act passed by a vote of 8-2, meaning it will be docketed by the UC’s executive team before appearing for a vote at the next UC general meeting after spring break.
See HCFA Page 5
The Undergraduate Council finance committee votes on a resolution barring Harvard College Faith and Action from receiving UC funding. The legislation ultimately passed 8-2 . Sung Kwang Oh—Crimson photographer
Turnout Numbers for UC Presidential Elections 5,000
*Approximate value
Number of Voters
4,000
3,642
3,792
3,600*
Crimson Staff Writer
3,000
3,348 2,898
2,730
3,042
2,074
2,000
1,000
2008 2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015 2016
2017
Year
elena M. ramos—Crimson Designer
Faust Signs Clinton to Letter Receive Criticizing Radcliffe New Tax Medal
See CS50 Page 6
UC Struggles to Engage Students By jonah s. berger
3,595
3,181
0
Staff for Harvard’s most popular Computer Science class have changed the way they report academic dishonesty cases to the Honor Council nearly a year after a wave of cheating in Computer Science 50 swept the class and stretched the Council to its limits last academic year. Course staff also for the first time “collaborated” with an “academic integrity fellow” on issues of “academic honesty” every single week of the past fall semester, course head David J. Malan ’99 announced in a blog post Tuesday. The Crimson reported in May 2017 that over 60 CS50: “Introduction to
Near the end of a meeting last month, then-Quincy House Representative Wyatt M. Robertson ’18 rose to address the Undergraduate Council, Harvard’s student governing body. In an at-times emotional speech, he announced he planned to step down from the UC. But he had some parting advice: look to Gus A. Mayopoulos ’15. Mayopoulos served as UC President in 2014; he won a surprise victory after running on a joke ticket that promised more tomato basil ravioli soup and thicker toilet paper. Nonetheless, though, Robertson said he thinks student engagement with and interest in the UC under Mayopoulos’s tenure was far greater than it is today. He particularly pointed to a student rally organized by Mayopoulos and then-Council Vice President Sietse K. Goffard ’15 in Feb. 2014 to demand a $250,000 increase in UC funding from
the University. The rally drew roughly 100 students to the Yard—and ultimately helped secure more money for the Council. “The student body was so involved with the UC because [the Council] shed all their formalities and they really got on a level with all the students,” Robertson said. Now, though, Robertson and other representatives say they think the student body is growing increasingly disengaged with the Council. He and other Council members reference low voter turnout in recent years, arguing it reflects a broader lack of student engagement and stems in part from a failure on the part of the UC to communicate with the student body in a streamlined way. The most recent Undergraduate Council presidential election—held Nov. 2017—saw the lowest-ever voter turnout since the Council first began
See council Page 5
SEE PAGE 3
By jamie d. halper and william l. wang
By Luke W. Vrotsos
Crimson Staff Writers
University President Drew G. Faust joined 48 other higher education leaders in penning a letter to congressional leaders Wednesday to express “deep objections” to the new federal tax on endowment returns and to ask Congress to “repeal or amend the tax.” The letter, which includes signatures from every Ivy League university president except for Columbia’s— which does not currently qualify for this tax—specifically addresses the schools’ concerns about the tax’s potential to limit financial aid resources. “[The tax] will constrain the resources available to the very institutions that lead the nation in reducing, if not eliminating, the costs for low- and middle-income students, and will impede the efforts of other institutions striving to grow their endowments for this very purpose,” the letter reads. The 1.4 percent tax on endowment returns, a provision of the Republican-endorsed Tax Cuts and Jobs
Crimson Staff Writer
Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton will receive the Radcliffe Medal on May 25, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study announced in a press release Thursday. According to the press release, the Institute will present Clinton with the award on Radcliffe Day, an annual celebration held during commencement week. Past medalists include U.S. Supreme Court justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day O’Connor, tennis player Billie Jean King, writer Toni Morrison, and University President Drew G. Faust. The annual event will begin with a panel called “Toward a New Global Architecture? America’s Role in a Changing World.” Kennedy School Professor Nicholas Burns will moderate the panel, which will also feature Michèle A. Flournoy, David R. Ignatius, Meghan L. O’Sullivan, and Anne-Marie Slaughter.
See tax Page 4 Inside this issue
Harvard Today 2
News 3
See clinton Page 4
Editorial 8
Atul Gawande discusses current problems and potential solutions in public health at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum on Wednesday Evening. Jacqueline S. Chea—Crimson photographer
Sports 9
Today’s Forecast
Snow showers High: 40 Low: 28
Visit thecrimson.com. Follow @TheCrimson on Twitter.
ANE shift from hell
HARVARD TODAY
thursday | March 8, 2018
FOR Lunch
FOR DINNER
American Style Beef Stroganoff
Chicken Dumplings
Teriyaki Chicken with Scallions and Garlic Grilled 3 Cheese Sandwich
Molasses, Soy Glazed Pork Loin with Sesame Seeds Cajun Blackened Tofu
around the ivies
Atul Gawande Atul Gawande discusses current problems and potential solutions in public health at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum on Wednesday evening.
Princeton President Signs Letter Criticizing Endowment Tax
Jacqueline S. Chea—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
Princeton president Christopher L. Eisgruber joined 48 other university presidents in sending a letter to Congress on Wednesday, criticizing the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, according to The Daily Princetonian. Their letter urges Congress to repeal or amend the Act, which they say levies an “unprecedented and damaging” tax against the endowments of certain universities. The letter includes signatures from presidents from a variety of higher education institutions, including every Ivy League school except for Columbia. Princeton’s endowment earnings make up more than half of its annual operating budget.
In Anticipation of Snowstorm, Yale Cancels Wednesday Afternoon Classes Yale administrators cancelled classes on Wednesday afternoon due to a fast-approaching snowstorm, the Yale Daily News reported. Weather reports forecasted up to 12 inches of snow in New Haven, the second major storm in the past week, causing administrators to advise students to stay indoors. Last Friday, strong winds caused the collapse of a Yale storage facility. The cancellation caused some exams slated for Thursday and Friday to be rescheduled or switched from in-class to take home tests. Yale has not had any official snow days since 1978.
HAPPY thursday! Freshmen, remember that no matter where you get housed, the next three years are what you make of them. Upperclassmen... get wild. In the Atmosphere… Today’s winter storm warning continues all the way until 1 p.m., but the sky should clear briefly in the morning. Temps will be in the high
30s/early 40s. EVENTS Gallery Talk: Art in the Age of the Internet Head to the Harvard Art Museums for a talk by associate research curator Chris Molinski on art in today’s Internet culture. The lecture is limited to just 15 people, so be early!
Dudley Olympic Movie Night Skip the housing hype and join Dudley House in the GNU Science Library for an Olympic-themed movie night to kick off Dudley’s spring 2018 movie series. Both Cool Runnings and Blades of Glory will be screened. Kyle E. O’Hara & Stuti R. Telidevara STAFF WRITERS
Brown Faculty Establish Standing Committee to Hear Gender Discrimination Cases The Brown Daily Herald reported that Brown’s faculty voted to establish a standing committee to hear allegations of gender-based discrimination. The committee will be comprised of faculty specially trained to expedite claims of discrimination and harassment. Rene Davis, Brown’s Title IX officer, welcomed the change, saying that having more specially-trained faculty will help the University better handle the influx of discrimination-related cases. Faculty also proposed that a large number of professors will sit on the committee to reduce the burden on individual members.
in the real world Heavy Metal Despite the protestations of many Republican lawmakers, President Trump is set to have a signing ceremony this afternoon for new tariffs on metal. This comes after economic advisor Gary Cohn resigned over disagreements with the plan.. No Need to Buy Mixers? Apparently, alcopop is a word. And Coca-Cola is about to start selling it in Japan. In an attempt to diversify offerings in response to concerns about the health impacts of soda, they’re adding booze! Sounds like a balanced diet to us. Alexa, Laugh Concerns regarding the relationship between humans and artificial intelligence may be assuaged by “human-centered AI” that engages with sociology and psychology. Reframing our connection to technology may also address concerns of job displacement as AI develops further.
WAIting at the dot
Snowy evening Snow falls over Adams House on Housing Day Eve. SUNG KWANG OH—CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
The Harvard Crimson The University Daily, Est. 1873 Derek G. Xiao, President Hannah Natanson, Managing Editor Nathan Y. Lee, Business Manager Copyright 2018, The Harvard Crimson (USPS 236-560). No articles, editorials, cartoons or any part thereof appearing in The Crimson may be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the President. The Associated Press holds the right to reprint any materials published in The Crimson. The Crimson is a non-profit, independent corporation, founded in 1873 and incorporated in 1967. Second-class postage paid in Boston, Massachusetts. Published Monday through Friday except holidays and during vacations, three times weekly during reading and exam periods by The Harvard Crimson Inc., 14 Plympton St., Cambridge, Mass. 02138 Weather icons made by Freepik, Yannick, Situ Herrera, OCHA, SimpleIcon, Catalin Fertu from flaticon.com is licensed by CC BY 3.0.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
Staff for This Issue
“If we are not engaged with students, and not engaged with administrators, we are not doing our jobs.”
Night Editor Sarah Wu ’19
Catherine L. Zhang ’19 Undergraduate Council President
CORRECTIONS The Harvard Crimson is committed to accuracy in its reporting. Factual errors are corrected promptly on this page. Readers with information about errors are asked to e-mail the managing editor at managingeditor@thecrimson.com.
Story Editors Graham W. Bishai ’19 Mia C. Karr ’19 Assistant Night Editors Hannah Natanson ’19 Shera S. Avi-Yonah ’21 Kenton K. Shimozaki ’19 Angela N. Fu ’20 Brian P. Yu ’19 Alison W. Steinbach ’19 Junina Furigay ’19 Design Editors Elena M. Ramos ’20
Editorial Editor Cristian D. Pleters ’19 Photo Editors Brenda Lu ‘20 Iulianna C. Taritsa ‘20 Sports Editor Cade D. Palmer ’20
The Harvard Crimson | MARCH 8, 2018 | page 3
Gawande Talks Addiction at IOP By cecil o. williams ii and leon k. yang Contributing writers
Atul A. Gawande, an award-winning author and a professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School, spoke candidly about the opioid epidemic—admitting he unknowingly played a part in the crisis—at an event held at the Institute of Politics Wednesday evening. With torrential rain pouring outside, hundreds of raincoat-clad attendees flooded the event, titled “The State of Public Health.” Event moderator Cristine Russell, a fellow at the Belfer Center, asked Gawande about a series of topics ranging from gun violence to the opioid epidemic to unaffordable health care coverage. Gawande said he has had direct experience prescribing opioids. “I had no idea. And I was handing it out with prescriptions which were giving people 50 pills when they would use three,” Gawande said, adding he thinks unused pills made their way to the black market. Gawande said he thinks many doctors, himself included, were unaware
of how addictive opioid prescription drugs could be. “I can’t tell you how many people—I’ve been in practice since 2003— have said, ‘I don’t want to take the narcotics because I might get addicted. I knew someone who got addicted.’ And I would say, ‘You don’t have to worry. There’s no chance of addiction,’” Gawande said. “And the answer was was that if you took an opioid for one week, eight percent of people would be on that opioid one year later.” Former Ohio governor Theodore “Ted” Strickland, who attended the event, said he thinks Gawande speaks about “difficult medical issues in a way that is easily understood.” “He talks about [these issues] as a problem solver, and we need to listen to him, as a country and as a society. I think he has a voice that can lead us to making better decisions if we listen to his sage advice,” Strickland said. Kathleen D. Malloch ‘18, who also attended the event, said she appreciated Gawande’s familiarity with the topics he discussed. “I love that he had a ton of facts memorized that he could use at any
Prison Panel at Harvard
moment,” she said. “And he used them quite effectively to create arguments that were compelling.” Another attendee, Lee Ann Song ‘15, said she found Gawande’s overall message very powerful. Kennedy School professor David Ellwood said he most admired what he called Gawande’s ability to admit candidly to his past oversights. Ellwood listed what he called Gawande’s accomplishments: his skill at surgery, the many awards he has earned over the course of his career, and the four bestselling books he has written. But Ellwood said he was most struck by three aspects of Gawande’s personality. “One is his heart. Second is his humility. And third is his humanity,” Ellwood said. “Those things are in very short supply right now throughout the world.” Gawande concluded the conversation by giving advice to the younger people in the audience. “Before the age of 40, say yes to everything, and after you’re 40, say no to everything,” he said.
At Forum, HLS Mulls Worker Co-ops By iris M. Lewis Contributing writer
Worker cooperatives are a viable alternative to corporate capitalism, yet they are rarely brought up in political discourse, two speakers at a Harvard Law Forum event argued Wednesday. Nathan Schneider, an assistant professor of media studies at University of Colorado Boulder, and Jason Wiener, a worker cooperative lawyer, came to the Law School to argue the case for democratic cooperatives—speaking on how they work, why they’re important, and why so few people have heard of them. Both Schneider and Wiener said they have made it their professional goal to advance worker cooperatives as an alternative to traditional capitalism. “We need to convince people that the model that exists [of co-ops] is readily adoptable,” Wiener said. Harvard Law Forum President Peter D. Davis ’12 said the talk aimed to
explore one way to approach a larger dilemma. “If you don’t like state communism, and you don’t like corporate capitalism, what do you like?” Schneider and Wiener both proposed their favored solution: democratic worker cooperatives. In a co-op, a company’s workers run their business democratically instead of placing investors in charge. “I call it the iPhone of business models—it should be as intuitive and self-explanatory as possible. But we have to deprogram so much conventional wisdom and conventional learning,” Wiener said. Schneider’s talk looked specifically at local control, fair bureaucracies, and protecting the rights of creators. Wiener focused more on logistics, including cooperatives’ taxes and the history of co-op law. Naushard Cader, a Harvard graduate student who attended Wednesday’s event, said he thinks the co-op discussion is an important one. “I think it is fantastic, and some-
thing that is actually taking place across the country and the world,” he said. “It’s very timely to talk about this particular topic.” Both Wiener and Schneider highlighted how underrepresented co-ops are in current political discussions. “I don’t think I heard the word ‘cooperative’ while I was in law school,” Wiener said, garnering a few laughs from the law student-heavy audience. Davis said he hopes Wednesday’s event changed that—and helped get the word out. “We had a full house. I’m always happy when the public is here, and there were a lot of people who were from out of Harvard Law School,” Davis said. “I hope that people walk away today thinking that there are more possibilities than they thought before.” Another audience member, Tracy Bindel, said she did. “I was really excited that this event was here at Harvard today,” Bindel said.
EPS Department Adds Junior Faculty By amy l. jia and sanjana l. narayanan Crimson Staff Writers
Several new junior faculty members have recently joined the Earth and Planetary Sciences Department, according to Department Chair John H. Shaw. Roger R. Fu ’09 and Rebecca A. Fischer began working as assistant professors of Earth and Planetary Sciences this past year, while Marine Denolle, another junior faculty member, began in Jan. 2016. “This is my first faculty position,” Fischer said. “It’s a lot of new experiences kind of all at once: teaching for the first time, having grad students for the first time, setting up a lab. But it’s been really fun.” This past fall, Fischer taught Earth and Planetary Sciences 142: “Mineralogy.” This spring, she is focusing on conducting research about processes in the earth’s interior during the planet’s formation. Fischer said she enjoys the intellectual curiosity of EPS faculty. “One of the things I really like about our department is the casual interactions that we have, both seriously or by the coffee machine on the fourth floor,” Fischer said.
“People actually sit down and chat about science.” Denolle has been in the EPS Department for two years, but she expressed equal enthusiasm about Earth and Planetary Sciences 55: “Earthquakes and Tectonics.” She teaches during the fall and spring semesters. “We’ve done fun lab experiments with shaking buildings, or creating earthquakes on a block on a board with springs to model the plate tectonics, and we build mountains with sandboxes,” Denolle said. “We also run some image processing using MATLAB scripting. So we’re bringing quantitative and qualitative skills to those labs.” Shaw praised Denolle’s groundbreaking work in earthquake prediction.“[Denolle] has pioneered the use of what we call seismic noise, which is all the stuff that we used to throw away on a seismogram that records earthquakes,” Shaw said. “It turns out to be a tremendously valuable resource. We can actually use it to simulate the ground shaking that’s going to occur in an earthquake before that earthquake even occurs.” Fu said he uses the magnetic properties of rocks to understand magnetic fields in the deep past.
“If we look at ancient Earth rocks, we can do things like trace the motion of continents and plates because you can figure out the latitude that a rock formed at by using paleomagnetism,” he said. “You can also use it to understand the Earth’s magnetic field through time—if it varied more than now, whether it was weaker, or simply didn’t exist.” A former EPS concentrator himself, who has taken many of the same classes as his students, Fu said he has a “better sense of what students know and don’t know.” He said this background has helped him better structure Earth and Planetary Sciences 120: “Introduction to Planetary Sciences,” the course he currently teaches, so it best fits his students’ needs. “I took the earlier version of this class before, so I kind of cherry-picked the things I liked about it,” Fu said. “I also added some things, like the lab and the field trip [to look at rock formations in western Massachusetts and Connecticut].” Above all, Fu said he is “really happy to be back” in the EPS Department. “It’s a great department, and I’m happy to be promoting the next generation of geologists that come out of Harvard,” he said.
By grace a. greason and ruth a. hailu Crimson Staff Writers
Activists, students, and faculty gathered this week at a three-day event to discuss prison education reform at Harvard, demanding the University implement a degree-granting program for incarcerated people and lower barriers to the admission of individuals with criminal records. A Tuesday panel at the Beyond The Gates conference featured speakers including University professor Danielle S. Allen and Michelle Jones, a graduate student at New York University who garnered national headlines last fall when her application to a Harvard Ph.D. program was rejected. The New York Times reported in Sept. 2017 that administrators rejected Jones in part because of her criminal history, though several faculty members had advocated for her admission. Some organizers and attendees of the three-day event had three demands for the University: that Harvard implement a degree-granting education program in prisons, offer support for formerly incarcerated students after they are released, and establish a “ban the box” non-discrimination initiative preventing the University from inquiring about applicants’ criminal histories during the hiring and admissions process. More than two dozen student groups, including the Harvard Organization for Prison Education and Reform, the Undergraduate Council, and the Harvard Black Students Association, co-sponsored the list of demands. Before Tuesday’s panel, students organized a rally in Harvard Yard in support of the conference’s goals for prison education reform. During the panel, Jones said she thinks the University is losing a valuable perspective when discluding incarcerated individuals. “Leaving us out with exclusionary practices based on race, sex, class, and criminality, you are lost,” Jones said. “You’re missing the beautiful critique. You’re missing that extra examination that comes from my experience having been incarcerated.” “You cannot teach what you do not know. You cannot lead where you do not go,” Jones said repeatedly. Asked about the three demands and about Jones’s criticism, University spokesperson Anna Cowenhoven pointed to a statement Harvard released at the time news of Jones’ rejection broke. “The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) is committed to recruiting and enrolling students from groups underrepresented in graduate study and strives to create an inclusive and supportive environment where all students can thrive and grow academically and personally,” the statement said. Jones emphasized Tuesday that incarcerated individuals are capable of attending academic institutions like Harvard, but have historically been denied access. “There are thousands of incarcerated people who’ve been lucky enough to have access to a higher education that allowed them to display what they already had within them,” Jones said. “I think we need to remember that because we are people who happened to be incarcerated as opposed to some monster that has been transformed by the magic of education.” Evan C. MacKay ’19, student director of Harvard Organization for Prison Education and Reform, said he thinks Harvard should implement a “mixed classroom model” that would take students from campus to prison to learn alongside incarcerated students. Harvard used to have such a program. From 2008 to 2013, the Prisons Studies Project sent Harvard students to take classes at Norfolk Prison in Norfolk, Mass. in conjunction with incarcerated individuals. The program later ceased due to a lack of funding. Two members of Liberation Litera-
cy, a group in Portland, Ore. dedicated to educating incarcerated individuals, also attended the panel. One member, Paul Henry Grice III, said the program transformed his life trajectory. “I had a chance to expand my mind and get challenged. “And that’s the biggest accomplishment that you can do while being incarcerated, is challenge somebody to be better than what they are,” Grice said. “I don’t know if you understand that you are a number inside. My name was not Paul Henry Grice III, and I say it all the time, let me say my full name, because for four and a half years I was
That’s the biggest accomplishment that you can do while being incarcerated, is challenge someone to better than what they are. Paul Henry Grice III Prison Reform Activist
15980751.” The Undergraduate Council endorsed the conference’s demands in a vote Sunday. Salma Abdelrahman ’20, a UC representative for Leverett House, said she believes the “ban the box” initiative would lead to a more diverse student body. “That is a step forward in making sure that Harvard doesn’t further incarcerate formerly incarcerated people by barring them from entering institutions that they’re qualified to enter simply because of a criminal history or criminal record,” Abdelrahman said. Harvard asks applicants to its undergraduate program to disclose any criminal or discipline history on the Common Application, which most students use to apply to the College. The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences application, however, does not inquire about applicants’ criminal histories. The GSAS admissions office describes how it takes into account applicants backgrounds—presumably including their criminal histories—in a statement on the FAQ section of its website. “Program admissions committees review all applicants in a comprehensive way, considering their past educational attainments and the contributions they can make to the academic community and to their field of study. “Applicants will not be denied admission based on their disclosure of conviction and should not be discouraged from applying,” the statement reads. Nicholas T. Wyville ’20, a UC representative for Eliot House, pointed out that many of Harvard’s peer institutions—including Columbia, Yale, and NYU—offer degree-granting programs to prisoners. Last August, Louisiana became the first state to bar public colleges and universities from inquiring about applicants’ criminal histories. “Harvard is not trying to do something radical, but instead we’re just trying to get on the same page as everyone else,” Wyville said. Staff writer Ruth A. Hailu can be reached at ruth. hailu@thecrimson.com. Follow her on twitter @ ruth_hailu_ Staff writer Grace A. Greason can be reached at grace.greason@thecrimson.com.
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HMC Corporation To Fill Money Vacancy Left by Bacow Manager to Leave By Kristine e. Guillaume Crimson Staff Writer
The Harvard Corporation—the University’s highest governing body—will have an open seat on their 13-member board when Lawrence S. Bacow ascends to the Harvard presidency this summer. The board comprises 12 members and the sitting University president. Bacow will take current Harvard President Drew G. Faust’s place on the Corporation when Faust steps down in
By eli w. burnes Crimson Staff Writer
Melinda Barber, a managing director at Harvard Management Company— the University’s investment arm—will leave the University, Bloomberg reported Tuesday. Barber, who has worked at HMC since 2012, will move on to a position at Pilot House Associates, the family office of billionaire and former cable TV magnate Amos B. Hostetter Jr. Barber specializes in private equity and was promoted this year to her position of managing director at HMC, according to Bloomberg. Her departure comes at a time when HMC’s CEO N. P. “Narv” Narvekar is reducing staff and shifting assets to external managers. Last month, the real estate team spun off to Bain Capital, and Harvard has invested in the hedge funds of former HMC money managers. Last January, Narvekar announced he planned to cut HMC’s 230-person staff by more than half. Bloomberg reported Tuesday that Narvekar has cut around 100 jobs since he joined HMC in late 2016. Since taking over in Dec. 2016, Narvekar has also implemented a shift towards generalist management. Narvekar announced in his September letter to Harvard affiliates that managers formerly responsible for individual portfolios will be responsible for the entire portfolio. Narvekar also wrote managers will be compensated based on returns. HMC spokesperson Patrick Mckiernan declined to comment on Barber’s departure or the reductions in staff. Staff writer Eli W. Burnes can be reached at eli. burnes@thecrimson.com.
Both bodies have to vote, and, therefore, it’s in principle to include two or three members of the Board of Overseers. Nannerl O. Keohane
Former Corporation Member June. Bacow has served on the Corporation since 2011. Along with his fellow Corporation members, he was initially a member of the search committee seeking Faust’s successor. Without public notification, Bacow stepped down from the committee in December and entered the search as a candidate for the 29th University president. Senior Fellow William F. Lee ’72 referred in an emailed statement to the Corporation’s 2011 governance reforms as direction for the Corporation’s process of selecting a new member to replace Bacow.
“Since adoption of the governance reforms in 2011 and the creation of a new Corporation committee on governance, that committee has had an ongoing process to identify possible nominees for future Corporation appointments,” Lee wrote. Lee said Corporation has employed the same process to search for replacements on the body “over the past several years.” In an April 2017 interview, former Corporation member Nannerl O. Keohane said the governance committee works with the Board of Overseers— the University’s second-highest governing body—in this nominating process. A nominee must be voted in by both the Corporation and Board of Overseers to be installed to the Corporation. “Both bodies have to vote, and, therefore, it’s in principle to include two or three members of the Board of Overseers, so they are part of the nominating process and can suggest names, and can react to possibilities, and ask their colleagues for some names,” Keohane said. In addition to taking suggestions from the Board of Overseers, the Corporation’s nominating committee also solicits names from faculty and staff to “build a pool” of possible nominees, according to Keohane. The Corporation employed their committee process in the nominations of billionaire philanthropist David M. Rubenstein and former Princeton University president Shirley M. Tilghman, according to Keohane. Rubenstein and Tilghman were installed as members of the Corporation in July 2017 and Jan. 2016, respectively. Keohane said having a nominating committee helps the Corporation to “think about the strengths that we need to maintain.” In the search for Bacow’s replacement, Lee called on Harvard affiliates to nominate individuals or provide advice to the Corporation via emails sent to corporationsearch@harvard.edu.
Energy Sec. Urges More Study of West Station By truelian lee and jacqueline p. patel Crimson Staff Writers
Mass. Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Matthew A. Beaton questioned the Department of Transportation’s recent evaluation of Allston’s West Station, urging the agency to review the hub’s planned transit use and to consider an earlier construction timeline. Beaton’s calls echo suggestions previously put forth by Harvard administrators. In a Jan. 2018 letter to MassDOT Secretary Stephanie Pollack, Harvard Executive Vice President Katie N. Lapp proposed MassDOT “reconsider” delaying the construction of West Station to 2040. The construction of West Station forms part of a larger project to realign the Mass. Turnpike in Allston. In Jan. 2018, Harvard pledged $50 million to fund West Station, a commuter rail stop on the Framingham-Worcester line, and up to $8 million to help construct another, interim station in Allston. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority in Oct. 2014 announced plans to develop Harvard-owned land near Beacon Park Yard into West Station, a transit stop meant to connect Allston to downtown Boston and the greater Boston area. In late 2017, the agency wrote a Draft Environmental Impact Report and announced that it would delay construction of West Station from 2025 to 2040 due to financial concerns. In recent months, Allstonians have rallied to protest vehicular traffic and promote public transit. On Feb. 16, Secretary Beaton from the Mass. Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs authorized the environmental report. Beaton rec-
ommended MassDOT build an interim station earlier in the project. Beaton wrote to summarize trends from his review of the more than 500 comment letters he received. “The majority of commenters, including elected officials representing Boston, Brookline, and Cambridge, urge MassDOT to construct West Station in Phase 1 of the project based on its ability to support the project’s multi-modal transportation goals and local and regional transportation needs,” Beaton wrote. Beaton also questioned MassDOT’s low ridership estimate for West Station, noting the popularity of the nearby station Boston Landing and asking the department to re-analyze ridership estimates for 2025 and 2040. MassDOT spokesperson Patrick Marvin wrote in an emailed statement Wednesday that, while working alongside the City of Boston and MBTA, MassDOT will perform additional analyses and complete two studies on possible transit services and ridership demand. “The first of these will be a rapid, tactical examination of the existing impediments to reliable bus transportation through the Allston area, and the second will be a longer-term review of different potential land use scenarios and accompanying transit investments,” Marvin wrote. Harvard spokesperson Kevin Casey wrote in an emailed statement Wednesday that the University is happy with Secretary Beaton’s response. “We’re pleased that Secretary Beaton has asked MassDOT to investigate implementing an interim West Station,” he wrote. “It is our hope that the review requested by the Secretary, along with Harvard’s financial contributions, will result in added public transit service to the area.”
Cambridge City Council Short-term Renting Fills Continuum Discusses Marijuana By truelian lee and jacqueline p. patel Crimson Staff Writers
Short-term renting may be the reason why a luxury residential complex in Allston has reached full capacity, according to a local real estate agent. Continuum, a 325-unit residential and retail complex located on Harvard-owned land by Barry’s Corner, offers one, two and three-bedroom apartments. After it began leasing units in Aug. 2015, Continuum initially struggled to fill its residential spaces. In Oct. 2015, 23 percent of the housing units had been leased to residents, and in Feb. 2016, that number rose to 40 percent. Kevin Cleary, a real estate agent for Re/Max in Boston, said he thinks Continuum has been leasing residential units to third-party investors. He said this maneuver would allow third parties to list the apartments as shortterm rentals, which permit individuals to lease a unit for fewer than 30 consecutive days. Molly Kalan, a marketing activations and PR manager for Samuels & Associates— a firm Harvard chose as the developer of the property in 2012— wrote in an emailed statement that the “vast majority” of tenants at Continu-
um are long-term renters. But Continuum does rent out units to third-party operators, according to Kalan. Cleary said he thinks short-term rentals—which he called a new phenomenon in Allston—may allow Continuum to boast “artificially” low vacancy rates. Calling the strategy “convenient,” Cleary said he believes leasing apartments to third-party operators allows Continuum to continue to ask for high rents for its apartments. As of 2015, the average rent for an apartment in Boston was $2,100, around $200 less than the price of a studio apartment in Continuum. “Most landlords don’t want to have short-term renters in their building— it’s just not good turnover, you have the wear and tear and all that,” Cleary said. “But in buildings like Continuum, if you can rent large blocks of apartments to a third-party operator, then that’s their responsibility.” Kalan, though, wrote in her email that short-term rentals form a logistical necessity. “Because of the close proximity of the building to the colleges, healthcare organizations, and large businesses of Cambridge and Boston, as well as public transit options, there is interest
from a wide array of individuals... for shorter periods in conjunction with business needs or executive education programs,” Kalan wrote in her email. “We do provide leases to operators to support that need.” The topic of short-term rentals is not only impacting Allston, but is also sparking conversations in the surrounding area about the housing market. In Jan. 2018, Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh submitted an ordinance to the City Council meant to establish guidelines for short-term rentals in the area. “We know that the unchecked commercialization of short-term rental uses in residential properties has potential to increase pressure on our already strained housing market,” he wrote in the ordinance. “This ordinance outlines reasonable restrictions on short-term rental uses designed to mitigate the loss of long-term housing units to a short-term market.” Staff writer Truelian Lee can be reached at truelian.lee@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @truelian_lee. Staff writer Jacqueline P. Patel can be reached at jacqueline.patel@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @jppatel99.
Faust Signs Letter to Repeal New Tax tax From Page 1 Act passed in December, applies to institutions of higher education whose endowment values amount to at least $500,000 per student. Harvard would have paid $43 million if the endowment tax were in effect for fiscal year 2017, according to an estimate offered by University Provost Alan M. Garber in November.
The letter concluded by urging congressional leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, to revisit what the document’s authors called a “misguided” tax policy. In the past, Faust has repeatedly denounced the tax and its expected impact on Harvard. “What [the endowment tax] will do
is put constraints on our ability to fund the variety of undertakings that are central to our mission—financial aid and research, public programs, the variety of endeavors across the University,” Faust said in an interview in January. “Its ultimate impact will be on limiting the growth in the endowment, and the growth in the endowment is what funds the programs.”
By patricia j. liu Crimson Staff Writer
The Cambridge City Council voted unanimously to begin working on new laws and regulations regarding recreational cannabis at a meeting Monday. The policy order, authored by Councillor Quinton Zondervan and Councillor Sumbul Siddiqui, addresses the need to enact policies regulating retail cannabis given statewide sales of recreational marijuana are set to be legalized on July 1. Recreational marijuana stores must apply for a license from the state Cannabis Control Commission by April 1. Recreational marijuana was legalized across Massachusetts via a state ballot question, approved Nov. 2016 and effective Dec. 2016. Two years later, cities are finally starting to grapple with the new law, Councillor Craig Kelley said.“It is something completely new for us to try and figure out,” Kelley said at the Monday meeting. “Where does it go? How do we fit these new uses, these new regulations, these new parts of an economy?” The policy order adopted by the City Council begins to answer some questions surrounding implementation. Cambridge should enact “zoning and licensing” laws regulating marijuana stores while correcting previous “racial and economic injustices,” the order states. One such issue stems from the use of the word “marijuana,” according to the order. The municipal legislation outlines what it dubbed the term’s “racist” origins in the early 20th century after former Federal Bureau of Narcotics
Hillary Clinton to Receive Radcliffe Medal clinton From Page 1 Former U.S. Secretary of State and Radcliffe Medal recipient Madeleine K. Albright will deliver a tribute to Clinton, followed by a conversation with Mass. Attorney General Maura T. Healey ’92. Radcliffe Institute Dean Lizabeth Cohen praised Clinton’s accomplishments in an emailed statement. “We selected Secretary Clinton in recognition of her accomplishments in the public sphere as a champion for human rights, as a skilled legislator, and as an advocate for global American leadership,” she wrote. Asked how the 2016 election influenced the Institute’s decision, Cohen pointed to the importance of persevering through setbacks and losses. “We recognize in her a model of what it takes to transform society: a lifetime of relentless effort combined with the vision and dedication to overcome one’s inevitable defeats,” she
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Commissioner Harry J. Anslinger began using the word to falsely associate cannabis with Latino immigrants. In response to this historical context, the council ordered that the City of Cambridge use the word “cannabis” when referring to the drug in official documentation. The order also referenced a 20012010 ACLU study citing over 8 million arrests associated with marijuana. The report found a black person was almost four times more likely to be arrested than a white person, despite similar rates of cannabis usage. Kelley asked the council to consider how Cambridge could adapt to the recent legalization, reminding the councillors of the drug’s disparate racial impacts on incarceration.“It’s something that for years and years and years has been outlawed. It’s been criminalized. It’s put a defined segment of the population in very marginalized situations,” Kelley said. Consequently, the order called for the city to draft regulations of cannabis “as quickly as possible” to prevent a delay in implementation that councillors said might perpetuate the disproportionate impacts of marijuana criminalization.The Public Safety Committee is expected to discuss the recent legalization of recreational cannabis, according to the order. Vice Mayor Jan Devereux, a member of the Public Safety Committee, raised potential concerns over marijuana smoke in public. “It is different and it is uncharted, so I think that is something we can certainly talk about, that balancing act at the Public Safety Committee,” Devereux said at the meeting Monday.
wrote. According to Cohen, senior Institute staff partner with internal and external advisers to choose each year’s medalist. The Institute’s website states that the medal is awarded to a person “who has had a transformative impact on society.” It is usually—but not always—given to a woman, though former University President Derek C. Bok received the medal in 1991. Clinton’s acceptance of the medal will not be her first time visiting Harvard since the election. Last March, she came to campus to speak about her time as Secretary of State and to attend a luncheon at Kirkland House. Staff writer Luke W. Vrotsos can be reached at luke.vrotsos@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter at luke_vrotsos.
The Harvard Crimson | March 8, 2018 | page 5
Within and Without, UC Struggles for Student Engagement Council From Page 1 in 1996. Just 2,074 undergraduates voted in the election, a 32 percent decrease from the previous year. Some on the Council also say they fear UC members themselves are becoming less engaged with the body and its work. These worries are not new: the Council has grappled with a lack of engagement for years. At a meeting in late 2014, for example, UC representatives discussed whether structural problems within the body could be helping foster general apathy towards its work. “I definitely see that there’s an issue where the student body kind of does have this blasé towards the Undergraduate Council,” UC Secretary Jackson C. Walker ’21 said. “And I think that’s in part due to our failure to communicate what we do on a regular basis.” Amidst these concerns, UC President Catherine L. Zhang ’19 and Vice President Nicholas D. Boucher ’19 say they are taking steps to improve the Council’s communication with undergraduates. “When we started our term, something that was really important to us is that we are interfacing with students, most importantly, and constituents,” Zhang said. “If we are not engaged with students, and not engaged with administrators, we are not doing our jobs.” MISSING ‘THE BALL’ Mayapoulos’s Feb. 2014 rally failed to win explicit approval from administrators for the funding increase. But money nonetheless began to trickle in—funding that eventually helped free up some of the UC’s budget for other priorities. Later that same year, the College provided $21,000 to support a UC initiative that promoted collaborative events between student groups and considered footing the bill for the funding of two student groups—Drug & Alcohol Peer Advisors and the Phillips Brooks House Association—to which the UC had previously provided over $35,000 annually. These tangible results may have drawn in part from visible student buyin at the rally. Robertson says he thinks the level of student excitement seen during Mayopoulos’s term has largely disappeared—a change he lamented at the February UC meeting. Mayopoulos declined a request for an interview Monday, saying he did not want to “interfere” with the Council’s current operations. In recent years, many undergraduates have shown interest in specific UC initiatives, like the push for a multicultural center and a new UC-run program that facilitates faculty-to-student interactions over catered dinners. A January town hall about the pro-
posed multicultural center, led by two Council members, drew over 70 attendees. Nonetheless, some representatives point to last fall’s electoral turnout figures—as well as the larger downward trend in engagement—as proof the Council is now facing serious issues of student disengagement. Asked about possible reasons for the low voter turnout, at least two Council members said the apparent lack of enthusiasm from students could result from a deeper disconnect between representatives and their constituents. “Too many students don’t necessarily know everything that the Council is working on, or just don’t know the scope of issues that we cover,” Education Committee Chair Sruthi Palaniappan ’20 said. “So I think that kind of creates this disconnect where people maybe don’t feel as invested in what the UC is working on.” Lowell House Representative Michael E. Scherr ‘20 said he thinks the UC’s lack of focus on the day-to-day lives of undergraduates is eroding its influence among undergraduates. “Over the past couple of years, the Undergraduate Council has been failing to act on things,” Scherr said. “They’ve been issuing a series of statements and endorsements that are important, but ultimately don’t really do a whole lot to impact the lives of students.” “On the big issues here at Harvard, the Undergraduate Council consistently misses the ball,” he added. In interviews this week, both Zhang and Boucher conceded the Council’s communication with the student body has been poor in the past. The duo said they are seeking to improve the situation; in one example, they are working to debut a new Council website meant to better facilitate the dissemination of information and College resources. Zhang also argued the lower turnout can at least partly be attributed to issues with the voting system. “I can’t even tell you how many students came up to me and said that they were so frustrated with the voting system and that they just stopped even trying to vote,” Zhang said. “So that was honestly really frustrating during the election, just hearing how many people just got disengaged because of technology troubles.” Even putting aside last year’s especially low figure, though, turnout for UC presidential elections has been trending downward for years. In six of the seven elections between 2004 and 2010, over 3,500 students cast ballots. Only once since then—in 2012—has turnout again surpassed that figure. The Council has been forced to respond to this continually low turnout. Prior to last year, UC-sponsored refer-
enda could only be considered binding if a majority of undergraduates voted in November elections. But the Council scrapped that requirement last year following two consecutive years in which a majority of the student body did not cast ballots. ‘CAN WE PLEASE BE RESPONSIBLE?’ In addition to external student disengagement, the UC may also be facing lowered internal enthusiasm. A perceived lack of engagement on the part of some Council members has caused tension on the UC during general—meaning body-wide—meetings this year. Zhang announced in January that general meetings—which begin at 7 p.m. most Sundays—would conclude at 9 p.m., barring successful motions to extend them. On multiple occasions this semester, the Council has voted down motions that sought to extend meetings to permit members to finish voting on scheduled legislation. Tensions boiled over at last Sunday’s meeting—the body’s last before the College’s scheduled spring break— after the Council voted down two such motions. As a result, two pieces of legislation were tabled, including one that would have subsidized bicycles for low-income students in the Quad. The second vote to extend the meeting ended in a tie. Amid some confusion about whether the Council would consider a further motion brought by Winthrop House Representative Evan M. Bonsall ’19, Zhang broke the tie and ended the meeting. The exchange prompted Bonsall to sharply criticize the UC’s leadership, arguing that not extending the meeting represented a failure of the Council to serve the student body. “What are we doing as UC reps, if we, not only the leadership of this organization, but also the collective membership, vote to not do our jobs?” he asked the Council. “Can we please be responsible?” In an email sent to Council members after the meeting, Pforzheimer House Representative Rainbow Yeung ’19, an inactive Crimson blog editor, repeated Bonsall’s concerns. “I am incredibly disappointed by the lack of commitment and the general laziness of the Council, not only from members at large, but also (especially) from our leadership,” wrote Yeung, who co-sponsored the bicycle legislation. Zhang said in an interview Tuesday that she decided to end the meeting in order to make sure representatives wouldn’t miss their scheduled office hours and to “honor” the vote earlier in the evening in which the Council had struck down a similar motion.
UC Debates HCFA Funding HCFA From Page 1 The College placed HCFA on a yearlong “administrative probation” last month. The Crimson reported Feb. 22 that the punishment was most likely due to the religious group’s Sept. 2017 decision to ask a woman in a same-sex relationship to resign from her leadership position. After administrators announced HCFA’s probation, the finance committee voted down a previous draft of legislation intended to bar the group from UC funding. During that vote, members operated under the assumption that “administrative probation” meant HCFA was automatically prohibited from UC funding. But at the Wednesday meeting, UC Vice President Nicholas D. Boucher ’19 said Associate Dean of Student Engagement Alexander R. Miller told him the Office of Student Life has not deemed HCFA ineligible for UC funding. “What I know is that they have said they’ve created a plan of what needs to change over the coming year,” Boucher said. “I have not seen a plan… but when we asked if that plan included being limited in funding from the UC they said no, that’s not the case.” The decision to allow HCFA to continue to receive UC funding seems to fit with the OSL’s larger approach to enforcing the group’s probation to date. Christian Union, HCFA’s parent ministry, wrote on its website on March 1 that the Office of Student Life has chosen not to deny HCFA the ability to reserve rooms or recruit students on campus—both key privileges afforded to recognized student organizations on campus. Miller previously declined to answer a question asking whether HCFA is still allowed to book College rooms while on probation. Last week, the group hosted its weekly worship session in Yenching Auditorium, a Harvard-owned space. The OSL website only describes punishment for recognized student groups who fail to complete the annual mandatory renewal of their recognition. For these groups, administrators revoke privileges including the ability to reserve campus spaces and receive funding from the UC and College offices for one semester, according to its website. Henry S. Atkins ’20, finance com-
mittee chair, said Wednesday he attempted to reach out to Miller via email, but had not received a response as of that evening. Many committee members at the meeting said that they did not believe the Council should be funding HCFA in light of the group’s behavior in Sept. 2017. “I think that what happened was particularly egregious, I think that it merits this response,” Atkins said. “I don’t want gay and bisexual people’s money to go to an institution where they are not eligible to be leaders because we need to remember we are giving out students’ term bill mon-
My hesitation with this is we don’t have the same factual documentation that what was alleged in fact happened. Gevin B. Reynolds ‘19 Dunster House Representative
ey and we’re giving out the money from people that identify with these communities,” Ivy Yard representative Seth Billau ’21 added. Other representatives—like Dunster House representative Gevin B. Reynolds ’19—said they want to gather more viewpoints and information before moving forward with the funding ban. “My hesitation with this is we don’t have the same factual documentation that what was alleged in fact happened,” Reynolds said. “If someone from the OSL sat down with us, someone from HCFA sat down with us and said here’s what we did… then I could say, ‘Yes this response is certainly warranted.’” Much of the debate at Wednesday’s
meeting centered on what members called the need to separate the decisions and opinions of HCFA’s leadership from the sentiments of the rest of the membership. HCFA’s leadership comprises four individuals: two presidents and two vice presidents. Group co-presidents Scott Ely ’18 and Molly L. Richmond ’18 have repeatedly said student leaders make all policy decisions for the organization. “If what happened actually happened, it wasn’t because of Christian values, it was because of what one or two people may have done, right, so trying to lump everybody into what had happened I think is really unfortunate and can really hurt a lot of people,” Elm Yard representative Jordan M. Silva ’21 said at the meeting. Silva also said he was a member of HCFA. The discussion led members to add a clarification to the proposed legislation specifically noting that the actions of HCFA’s leadership—rather than HCFA as a whole—violated “values held sacred” by the Council. The first draft of the legislation specified HCFA would again be able to receive UC funding once the College chose to remove the group from probation and after HCFA demonstrated “contrition.” After debate, though, the finance committee deleted that provision. Instead, committee members added the clause requiring that the committee must approve of HCFA’s “tangible action to reform” before the group can again receive funding. Before the committee’s final vote Wednesday, Boucher urged members to seek more information about HCFA, its recent actions, and the College’s decision to punish the group. “As an individual, I feel like I’ve heard a lot on this,” Boucher said. “I don’t feel like I know everything because to be explicit I have not talked to HCFA in this setting and engaged with them and the conversations that I’ve had with the OSL have been in private advising meetings.” Staff writer Caroline S. Engelmayer can be reached at caroline.engelmayer@thecrimson. com. Follow her on Twitter at @cengelmayer13. Staff writer Michael E. Xie can be reached at michael.xie@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter at @MichaelEXie1
“When it ended up being a tie, I said, ‘Let me honor what was originally voted by members in this Council,’” Zhang said. In addition, attendance at certain general and committee meetings has been somewhat spotty so far this semester. At multiple committee meetings this semester—including two Rules Committee meetings—legislation could not be considered because quorums were not met, according to Rules Committee Chair Wilfried J. K. Zibell ’21. Attendance at general meetings is in line with those of the past two semesters, according to records provided by former UC Secretary Ruiqi He ’19. Four representatives have missed three or more meetings within the first six of this term so far, compared to three last fall and two last spring. NOT ONLY ‘VISIBLE’ BUT ‘ACCESSIBLE’ Zhang and Boucher say they are working to improve the Council’s communication with undergraduates and to more stringently enforce attendance requirements for UC members. The pair particularly referenced their planned overhaul of the Council’s website—one of the duo’s key campaign promises, which they said they will debut in the coming weeks. The redesign will provide students with a platform to better connect with not only the Council but also the vast resources of the College, according to Zhang and Boucher. Last year, the UC’s leadership renewed efforts to enforce the Council’s requirement, outlined in its bylaws, that representatives hold weekly office hours. This semester, at least one representative from each house and freshman yard will sit in a central location— usually a dining hall—after general meetings to meet with constituents. At a recent meeting, the Council passed funding slated to allow for food and raffles at office hours. Though some representatives say they have had trouble attracting students to their office hours, even a small amount of engagement with constituents is important, Boucher argued. “One thing that we hear more than anything else is, ‘I like having the exposure to the UC,’ or ‘I like hearing what the UC is doing,’” Boucher said. “We want to make sure that the UC is not only accessible but is visible.” Zhang also highlighted the Council’s new centralized email system, which she said will “streamline” the Council’s communication with students. The new system will feature a weekly email from the UC to all undergraduates containing updates about key UC initiatives.
Still, the duo said there are areas for improvement. Boucher says he thinks the Council could do a better job of “branding.” Students often are unaware that events they attend are funded in part by the UC’s Finance Committee, he said. “One of the stipulations on getting those grants, is that you’re supposed to put the little UC logo, on, say, the program to your event, or on the poster or the flyer,” said Boucher. “And things like that where the UC is having a tangible influence is not always visibly tied to the UC.” At its Wednesday meeting, the Finance Committee considered a change to the policy guide requiring flyers for UC-funded events to include the Council’s logo, but failed to implement any changes. “We all agree that some change will be made, but we don’t know exactly what it would be,” committee chair Henry Atkins ’20 said after the meeting. In addition, Boucher said that, though past UC executive committees had only “loosely enforced” the official UC attendance policy, he plans to change that going forward. The policy mandates that committee members who miss more than three meetings in one semester be placed “under review.” If the UC representative under review is not “exonerated,” the Council’s leadership must expel that individual from the Council and enforce that expulsion until fall elections of the following school year, according to the UC’s constitution and bylaws. “We are actively choosing to enforce it this year,” Boucher said. “The reality is that Harvard students find themselves pulled in a lot of different directions but that is never an excuse for the UC.” Despite what some call the Council’s communication troubles and the declining voting figures, Boucher insisted that the ability of the UC to improve the lives of students should not be underestimated. He recounted a Finance Committee meeting last year that he called the “most meaningful” he has experienced in his time on the UC. “A student comes up to me...with tears in his eyes and he gives me a hug,” Boucher said. “And he says, ‘I just want to thank you, because your advocacy for giving us this funding meant that a group of people that would normally have no resources...was able to come together because of this.’” “It was mind-blowing to me because the grant in question was some grant that was one of our smallest grants,” Boucher continued. “But yet something that small had the ability to move a person very dramatically.”
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CS50 Makes Major Changes to Course Cheating Reporting System CS50 From Page 1 Computer Science I” students—roughly 10 percent of the course’s total fall 2016 enrollees—appeared before the Honor Council to face charges of academic misbehavior. In the wake of the cheating scandal, CS50 drew criticism from students and Honor Council members for staffers’ method of reporting all allegations of cheating in one batch at the end of the semester. Under this system, Malan did not check for cheating until near the end of the fall semester, when he ran an algorithm that flagged potential plagiarism, according to five current and former staffers. Undergraduates and at least one member of the Honor Council said this method of checking for cheating caused CS50 Honor Council cases to take longer than other cases. Current and former course staff also said they believed this method disadvantaged enrollees, meaning students remained in the dark about possible violations of course policy for months. Now, Malan has updated the way he and course staff report allegations of cheating to the Honor Council, according to his post. He wrote Tuesday that the majority of fall 2017 CS50 Honor Council cases
were “referred within days of the submissions in question,” rather than together at the end of the term. Malan detailed the responsibilities of the new academic integrity fellow—Erin Carvalho, a preceptor in Harvard’s Division of Continuing Education—and explained she is also working with other Computer Science courses across the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, in addition to CS50. Carvalho serves as the “primary point person for preemptive conversations” and “students’ confidant” in CS50, according to Malan. Malan wrote he thinks some of the changes to the course last semester— particularly Carvalho’s involvement— helped reduce the number of CS50 students referred to the Honor Council for academic dishonesty between fall 2016 and fall 2017. Last semester, just 29 students appeared before the Council, representing roughly four percent of total course enrollees. In a blog subsection titled “From Reactive to Proactive,” Malan called the reduction in cheating allegations “leaps forward.” CS50 is also updating its penalties for late assignments, according to Malan’s blog post. Under a new policy slated to debut in fall of 2018, course staff will “minimize or waive” penalties given to students who request extensions specifically to avoid the temp-
tation to cheat, Malan wrote. The new lateness policy is inspired in part by a “near occasion of sin” policy previously instituted in a Princeton Computer Science course, according to Malan’s Tuesday post. The rule— established by Princeton professor Christopher Moretti—allows students to receive extensions with little or no penalty if they email the professor and explain they need more time because they will otherwise feel tempted to cheat. “Christopher shared that he offers students faced with panic and temptation an even more proactive solution, this one for students themselves,” Malan wrote, referring to the “near occasion of sin” policy. “So will CS50 have something similar in Fall 2018.” CS50’s current course syllabus already contains a “regret clause”— first introduced in fall 2014—that allows students who admit to cheating to avoid referral to the Honor Council if they self-report their dishonesty within 72 hours. Undergraduates who report themselves are subject only to “local sanctions,” including a possible failing grade on the assignment in question. The update to lateness penalties follows several other changes to CS50 course policy Malan made in Sept. 2017. Malan recommended that enrollees attend class—rather than watching
lecture videos—and announced that CS50 would be graded on a “Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory” basis by default, though students could elect to take the course for a letter grade if they wished. Malan also required as part of these changes that students attend a session in part dedicated to discussion of “how to navigate issues of academic honesty” before the start of the fall 2017 semester. In his blog post Tuesday, Malan also published data detailing the exact number of CS50 students referred to the Honor Council—or the Administrative Board, which adjudicated academic dishonesty cases until 2015—for every year since 2007. The number consistently ranged from around 10 to 30 individuals, but in fall 2016 it surpassed 70, confirming The Crimson’s May 2017 report. Malan’s blog post also included data on the number of students who invoked the “regret clause.” Only seven students did so in 2016, the year of the cheating scandal, compared to 26 in 2015—the most per year since the creation of the clause. In the post, hosted on Medium, Malan wrote that CS50 “unfortunately” refers more students than any other Harvard course to the Honor Council. Malan wrote he has “higher confidence” that the course would catch
instances of cheating given recent changes he made to the course’s policies of checking assignments for improper collaboration. Though he used to be the only staff member who reviewed potential cheating cases, in recent years, a “pipeline of multiple staff” has begun to look them over, too, he wrote. Malan further detailed CS50’s process of checking for cheating in his post. “For each problem set, the software ranks those pairs of submissions, with the most similar pairs up top,” he wrote. “With human eyes do we then review those ‘matches’ and decide if the similarities are indeed worrisome, unlikely to be the result of just chance.” CS50 software and staff conducted 1,766,888 pairwise comparisons in fall 2016, according to his post. The course’s 2016 cheating scandal also drew attention from University administrators. At CS50’s newly required orientation session this past fall, Dean of Undergraduate Education Jay M. Harris—whom Malan described as a “surprise” visitor—implored students not to cheat. “No one should leave this room not understanding 100 percent what it is that you may and may not do in this course,” Harris said, adding he thinks cheating is “boneheaded.”
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EDITORIAL
Come to Dinner
The Crimson Editorial board
An Unjust Legacy
By Jack W. Deschler
Harvard should be clear about how it treats legacy applicants and should not give them any preference
H
arvard’s practice of admitting arvard’s practice of admitting a disproportionate number of applicants who are related to alumni has routinely made headlines through the years. Most recently, some students and alumni of the College signed a letter to university administrators across the country asking for transparency on how legacy applicants are treated in the admissions process, arguing that preference for legacy admissions is “hampering economic mobility.” We stand by our precedent that abolishing preferential treatment for legacy applicants would be a positive step towards socioeconomic justice. We remain steadfast in our belief that legacy status should not be a consideration in the admissions process. While we acknowledge there are likely a variety of reasons for why children of alumni are accepted into the College at a higher rate than non-legacy students, we call on Harvard to be more transparent on exactly how legacy status factors into the admissions process. The College’s FAQ site vaguely states that legacy students “may receive an additional look.” We urge the College to be more forthcoming about what this means in practice. To that end, Harvard ought to release its relevant policies and data to illustrate how legacy impacts its decision calculus. We are also perplexed by admin-
istrators’ claim that legacy admits are “better candidates on average” to enter Harvard. If this is true, then removing legacy status from consideration would not substantially diminish family connections to the University nor the donations that comes from them. It would simply render the admissions process more meritocratic. If legacy admits are truly “better candidates,” their advantages likely result from an intersection between socioeconomic status and educational opportunity. While the median household income in the U.S. is about $59,000, a Crimson report found that 88 percent of surveyed legacy students matriculating last year come from households with incomes over $125,000. The college admissions process is already skewed in favor of these students, as tutoring, SAT prep, and the freedom to forgo a job during the school year are all benefits that many of these students have that many of their peers do not. Though it may be through no fault of their own, students from privileged backgrounds are already granted a huge advantage on their competition. At the very least, their parents’ personal ties to Harvard should not grant them an additional advantage. By giving legacy applicants a leg up in the application and admissions process, Harvard displays a lack of commitment to its professed dedication
to diversity for incoming classes. The College admissions website states students at the College share “an infinite range of experiences and aspirations.” This range of experiences and aspirations is dramatically compressed by the prioritization of familial connections. If Harvard’s wishes to achieve its professed objective of achieving a diverse learning environment, it should endeavor to find the most capable and accomplished students from all sectors of society. Legacy preference undermines that goal. Harvard prides itself on cultivating the future leaders, artists, scholars, and scientists of the world. For it to maintain this reputation, it must seek out applicants who indicate great promise in their chosen field—and one’s parents should not be that indicator. We acknowledge that the socioeconomic disparities that hinder some applicants from marketing themselves to Harvard will not be eradicated overnight. Yet removing preferential treatment for legacies will be a welcome and overdue step forward. This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.
BE A CRIMSON CARTOONIST Submit a sample cartoon or any questions to Associate Editorial Editor Wonik Son ‘19 (wonik.son@thecrimson.com).
The Thesis Fog Derek K. Choi What’s Next?
Y
esterday, with two hours to go until the 5 p.m. deadline, I found myself watching the man at the copy store hand me inch-thick reams of off-white paper on which was printed my senior thesis. It’s an odd sort of feeling—having pondered, labored over, drafted, edited, and re-written something for the past year—to finally hold the thick stack of paper that is its final, physical manifestation. I don’t know what exactly I expected. But to slide the printout into its binder, to head out into the rain towards the Government Department offices at the Center for Government and International Studies, and to finally hand over the two black binders was remarkably anticlimactic. The senior thesis lives as a sort of larger-than-life being in my imagination. It feels, despite what the department tells you, like the conclusion of my academic career. When discussing theses, words like “milestone,” “capstone,” and “culmination” get thrown around. I recall thinking freshman year that it seemed fantastically impossible that any one person could conceive of an argument that required such a daunting number of pages—a hundred, no less—to outline. I must confess that even this year it was often difficult to see precisely where the end lay. I had accumulated enough books in my dorm room to strike out on my own and found a new library, and yet I did not feel any closer to crafting a living and breathing argument. (I’ve heard not a few jokes from fellow thesis writers about its similarity to another roughly ninemonths-long process, but fortunately for both me and my thesis, this will not
consume the better part of my disposable income for the next 18 years.) I spent much of my time at Harvard writing, either for class or The Crimson, and yet still a senior thesis remained shrouded in a sense of mystery and improbability. Looking back on it now, it almost feels like an act of magic, turning all those endless piles of books from Widener into something I could run off a copy machine. I was undoubtedly fortunate to have friends who felt similarly. (Thesis writing also became a bit of gallows humor. I had a pact with one friend that we would not mention our theses in each other’s presence.) I have been touched by those around me, how they reminded me that to wander only sometimes means to be lost. Yet, candidly, it was sometimes hard to convince myself of the feasibility of writing a thesis. An original contribution to the existing literature, mounds of research, and over 100 pages of text seemed far beyond the horizon of a 21-year-old undergraduate. Even though I felt at home with my topic, I did not fully know, until relatively recently, what the full nature of my argument would be. In those moments of doubt, I convinced myself of my thesis’s inevitability. As I meandered through different potential areas of research, considered divergent approaches, and found unexpected results, it sometimes felt like I was blindly stumbling towards a destination that I still told myself I could see. And yet, with every step, sometimes forward but also to the side or rear, I could look back and see that I was just a bit closer to the end. It was not in the places or ways I had necessarily imagined, and an outside observer who asked me to describe my topic once a month for the past year would no doubt think me a flip-flopper extraordinaire. Slowly, however, the notion that I had convinced myself of—that by March 7 there would be a thesis—began to take shape. The page
The Harvard Crimson | March 8, 2018 | page 8
count began to tick upwards, out of my research emerged results, and not a few times after some late-night thesis work, my brain, willed to sleep, instead forced me to get up again to jot down a few extra ideas. Ultimately, that I could not see the end from the beginning did not matter. In fits and starts, the fog slowly began to clear. As I continued to hope and believe that the process of thesis writing would end in a product halfway decent, the thing that had seemed like both a rite of passage and an improbability began to seem like neither. It felt like just another paper, albeit (quite) a bit longer. It was the conclusion of a year-long writing process, sure, but still only one portion of my time at Harvard. One hundred pages, but each one could be—and was—written. I have felt a renewed confidence reminding me that to walk through a bit of a fog does not mean that the destination is not there, waiting. These thoughts may all seem rather cliched. Of course, writing a senior thesis is a privilege, not a condemnation. All the same, it is the most significant academic project I have ever undertaken. And yet from my post-thesis perch I rather feel that the climax of this story took place in little bits over the course of the past several months, rather than all at once yesterday. The moments when the fog began to clear, bit by bit— not when the finished product was produced—those were the truly special moments of it all. In some sense, writing a thesis has a quasi-spiritual aspect to it. It’s the performance of an act of faith that, even as you’re picking through the murky early months and even as the length and scale prevent you from grasping the whole thing until near the end, the destination is worth the trek. Derek K. Choi ’18, a former president of The Crimson, is a Government concentrator in Leverett House. His column appears on alternate Thursdays.
I
t’s 3 a.m. on Housing Day 2017, and there’s nothing left to do. The shirts are sorted and stacked in the closet. The welcome letters are printed, and the video has been released to the world. Everyone with any semblance of responsibility for the coming day knows where they need to be and when they need to be there. I text a previous Cabot House Committee co-chair, Rebecca J. Ramos ’17, who is also still awake because Becca is always awake, and ask what else I should do. Go to bed, she tells me, there’s nothing left you can do. How many people, The reality of organizing Housing from the first day of Day as a Quad HoCo co-chair is that it is school, tell freshmen inherently self-dethat there is no fate feating. No matter what we do, the worse than getting lengths to which we “quadded”? go, or the expenses we don’t spare, we know that we will still walk into a room with many crestfallen faces. Every year, there are tears. We talk about our “n+1” housing, the scope of our House community, and how much we love our House, but many freshmen still wish that we weren’t the ones to storm their room. I can’t really blame them for falling victim to Housing Day’s greatest narrative. How many people, from the first day of school, tell freshmen that there is no fate worse than getting “quadded”? Whether they “River Ran” or burned miniature boats on the Charles, plenty of freshmen make a greater effort to avoid the Radcliffe Quadrangle than they do to get an A in Expos. As much as we boast about our excellent housing, vibrant house life, regular (and popular) parties, and the regularity of the Quad shuttle, it is difficult to reverse a perspective fed to freshmen from as early as Opening Days, their First-Year Outdoor Program trip, or even Visitas. Unsurprisingly, many freshmen who have been cautioned against being Quadded never get over it when they do. So, some leave. For me, the fifth Monday of the spring semester is not just the day that add-drop officially ends. It’s the day that inter-House transfer decisions come out: It’s the day that some of my friends announce that they are leaving. As a HoCo co-chair, every outgoing transfer feels a bit like a personal indictment of the job I’ve been doing. Though I feel It is important to like I’ve failed the people who leave, remember that for the reality is most every Quadling who of those who leave us never gave us a leaves us, there are chance. They didn’t many others who try to engage in the that choose to stay. By and community we work so hard to large, those Cabotians build. People who transfer out look at who were openwhat they don’t have minded enough to around them, care about where they give us a chance stay are not. They never until senior year, and look at what we do and they don’t many actively work to have, care about what the improve House life. House actually is. It is important to remember that for every Quadling who leaves us, there are many others who choose to stay. By and large, those Cabotians who were open-minded enough to give us a chance stay until senior year, and many actively work to improve House life. A former roommate of a group that transferred to Quincy chose to stay in Cabot last spring and has since joined the House Committee. Some find their place at Cabot Café, in the Third Space Art Studio, in the House’s theater program, or amongst our intramural teams. Though many enter the Quad with trepidation, I know that the vast majority of those who give the Quad a chance will stay and graduate satisfied with their House—contrary to what a freshman might be told to believe. Every year on Housing Day, Stephanie Khurana, one of the Cabot Faculty Deans, addresses the assembled students in our packed dining hall. She tells them that all we in Cabot ask is that they give us a chance. Though she does not state it explicitly, Khurana (not Dean of the College Rakesh Khurana, who by this time has already delivered the mission of the College) knows what anyone who storms dorms on Housing Day wearing a Quad t-shirt knows: many of the freshmen in the room wish they were in a different dining hall, one about a mile farther south and with a view of Boston. Some of those new Cabotians hear her message, but some will have elected not even to make the short trip to the Quad for dinner to hear her say it in the first place. Less than half a day after being housed, some freshmen will have already written off the Quad. For the roughly 25 percent of the Class of 2021 that will be lucky enough to be visited by polar bears, trees, or codfish on Housing Day this year, I can only ask of you one thing: come to dinner. Give us a chance, and I can promise you that you’ll want to stay. For the rest, come visit. We’re just 0.7 miles away. Jack W. Deschler ’19, a Cabot House Committee Co-Chair, is a Computer Science and Government concentrator in Cabot House.
The Harvard Crimson President Derek G. Xiao ’19 Managing Editor Hannah Natanson ’19 Business Manager Nathan Y. Lee ’19
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Associate Managing Editors Mia C. Karr ’19 Claire E. Parker ’19 Associate Business Managers Dahlia S. Huh ’19 Max W. Sosland ’19 Editorial Chairs Emmanuel R. R. D’Agostino ’19 Cristian D. Pleters ’19 Arts Chairs Mila Gauvini II ’19 Grace Z. Li ’19 Blog Chairs Lydia L. Cawley ’20 Stuti Telidevara ’20 Design Chairs Morgan J. Spaulding ’19 Simon S. Sun ’19
Digital Strategists Caroline S. Engelmayer ’20 Jamie D. Halper ’20 Dianne Lee ’20 FM Chairs Marella A. Gayla ’19 Leah S. Yared ’19 Multimedia Chairs Amy Y. Li ’20 Ellis J. Yeo ’20 Sports Chairs Cade S. Palmer ’20 Jack R. Stockless ’19 Technology Chairs Nenya A. Edjah ’20 Theodore T. Liu ’20
Sports
The Harvard Crimson | March 8, 2018 | page 9
Harvard to Battle Dartmouth in ECAC Quarterfinals
MERRICKULOUS PLAY In two starts versus Dartmouth this season, tri-captain goaltender Merrick Madsen has sent away all but one shot on goal (.976 SV%). While it is likely the senior will get the starting nod, it is no guarentee. Timothy r. o’meara—Crimson photographer Men’s ICE HOCKEy By Spencer r. morris Crimson Staff Writer
fter a week of waiting patiently, the A Harvard men’s hockey team finally knows which foe will come to Cambridge this weekend hoping to spoil its chances of reaching Lake Placid for the fourth straight year. With a 2-1 victory over St. Lawrence in Sunday’s matinee, Dartmouth (1515-2, 11-10-1 ECAC) advanced to the quarterfinals of the ECAC Championship where it will clash with the Crimson (13-12-4, 11-8-3) in a best-of-three series. The winner earns a spot in the semifinals hosted at Herb Brooks Arena, the site of the 1980 “Miracle On Ice” game between team USA and the Soviet Union. “[Reaching Lake Placid again] is really hard to do,” Harvard coach Ted Donato ’91 said. “We’ve been fortunate to be there the last three years, but I don’t think we take it for granted. It’s such a great venue, and it’s a carrot for us right now. We want to have a chance to defend our ECAC championship, and it starts on Friday against a real good Dartmouth team.” The Crimson, the four-seed in the conference tournament, returns to action after enjoying a bye this past weekend. Harvard had already clinched a position in the ECAC’s top four—and thus a week off—before it battled Brown and Yale in late February. Nevertheless, a disappointing pair of results against the Ivy League rivals, who were both eliminated from playoff competition in the first round, has made Harvard eager to return to competitive action. “Every game, you take away the negatives and positives,” said Crimson junior forward Lewis Zerter-Gossage. “That weekend didn’t go quite as we wanted, but having [the bye] week definitely gives us more time to mentally
get back into it. Any playoff series, it’s a whole different beast…. People should be fresh and rebooted for this weekend.” Zerter-Gossage, who sat out against Yale for precautionary measures, has availed himself of the extra time the bye week has provided and will return to the lineup this weekend. For the winger and others, the off-week is a welcome break. “Towards the end of the season, you play more games and guys get a little bit worn down,” Harvard tri-captain Eddie Ellis said. “It’s great to use the extra week to get guys healthy, and at the same time…any extra week that we have to get better ourselves and not worry about preparing for an opponent is huge.” The Big Green enters the series, spanning Friday through Sunday if needed, on a relative high note. Following a loss to the Crimson on Feb. 2, the squad picked up late-season victories against Yale and then-No. 7 Clarkson and has seen a surge in its scoring, averaging roughly half a goal per game in excess of its pre-February average. Two sophomore forwards, in particular, have led the way for Dartmouth offensively. Will Graber and Shane Sellar, imposing their size at 6’5” and 6’3”, respectively, pace their team in scoring thanks to elevated play since Harvard completed the regular season sweep last month. Graber (32 GP, 9–16—25) has logged 13 points in nine games since that turning point, and Sellar (31 GP, 11–11—22) has registered 12. “Graber, Sellar, and [freshman Quin] Foreman are three big guys who have been filling the net a little bit for them,” said coach Donato, providing his pre-scout of the weekend’s opposition. “We know those guys pretty well, but we haven’t seen all three of them together. They’ve got good size, they’re hard to contain down low…. It provides a good challenge.” In spite of the Big Green’s recent
offensive uptick, the Crimson has allowed just one goal to Dartmouth this season. Both victories over the Hanover-dwellers (5-0, 4-1) were decisive. In this way, the quarterfinal matchup favors Harvard, who has nabbed the teams’ last three tilts and lost just one out of the last nine (7-1-1), dating back to 2014. On the flipside, for a team that entered the ECAC Championship with a lackluster 13-14-2 record, the Big Green boasts a more impressive slate of wins than the Crimson. Most notably, Dartmouth took down then-No. 2 Denver in mid-December and returned from the holiday hiatus with a victory over thenNo. 16 New Hampshire. The squad followed up these performances by tying then-No. 17 Minnesota-Duluth. In its conference schedule, the Big Green swept Clarkson—ranked No. 2 and No. 7 at the time of the bouts— as well as Yale, a team that stole both games from the Crimson in the regular season for the first time since 20142015. The green and white also skated past Colgate, a squad that Harvard failed to beat this year. The Crimson, on the other hand, owns a 2-4-2 record against ranked teams and can hang its hat only on victories over then-No. 7 Clarkson and then-No. 19 Boston College in the Beanpot consolation game. “Last year, we played [Dartmouth] maybe thinking that it would be an easier game than it was,” said Zerter-Gossage, alluding to last January’s 8-4 loss to the Big Green. “Maybe teams like Denver, Duluth, and Clarkson had that same mindset…. They could definitely take wins out of everyone no matter how well their season is going.” As is often the case in playoff hockey, special teams may be the deciding factor in the series. For Harvard, the ups and downs of its power play have closely tracked its wins and losses. The team has suffered two rough patches this season—one at the outset of its
nine-game road stretch in November, and the other from late January through the Beanpot. Incidentally, both stretches of subpar outings have begun with Cornell and Colgate, and both have included dry spells on the man advantage. In the earlier skid that bounced the Crimson from the USCHO top-20 rankings, coach Donato’s group went just 1-for15 (.067) on the power play. In the more recent slide, the team failed to score on 16 attempts. Of late, Harvard has rebounded from the man-up drought. Since snapping the scoreless streak in mid-February, the Crimson owns the NCAA’s third-best power play conversion rate (.400). This smoldering man-advantage unit will battle a 23rd-ranked Dartmouth penalty kill (.822 on the year) that has mostly held Harvard’s power play in check this season (.833 against the Crimson). “The first thing that jumps off the page is that they don’t take a lot of penalties, which usually helps you have a better killing percentage because you can be a little bit more intense and aggressive if you’re taking two as opposed to six,” coach Donato noted. “Those numbers are important, but what’s really important is in one game. You can be 0-for-4, but if you need a goal in the third period and your power play delivers, that’s the game.” The clash between Harvard’s extra-man group and the Big Green’s penalty kill unit is more or less a tossup. This is only one aspect of the special teams duel, though. The Crimson will also be tasked with shutting down the Dartmouth power play. Luckily for the home team, denying the Big Green’s man advantage will be easier than solving its kill. Dartmouth has cashed in on just 12.6 percent of its power play opportunities, good for fourth-worst in the nation. Meanwhile, Harvard has weathered 80.6 percent of the opposition’s extra-man chances and killed off all seven of the Big Green’s power plays during the regular season. It is worth noting, however, that the Crimson has posted a dreadful .741 penalty kill percentage in the last month, good for bottom 10 in college hockey. “It’s a fresh new slate for everybody,” said coach Donato, suggesting that the playoffs provide a chance for both teams to reinvent their special teams. “You got to do the fundamentals that allow you to have a successful penalty kill: make sure you have good clears, come up with a big save make it tough to enter, win 1-on-1 battles.” A key component of any team’s penalty kill is the player between the pipes. Looking toward the blue paint, the goaltender showdown will be another defining facet of this weekend’s quarterfinal matchup. Dartmouth’s masked man, senior Devin Buffalo (14-9-1, 2.69 GAA, .910 SV%), has had an up-and-down season much like the team in front of him. The Alberta native, though, has been crucial for his squad of late—sometimes, it’s Buffalo who steals the show; other
times, the net-minder receives enough run support to hang onto victory. Whatever the reason, Buffalo is responsible for all but one of the Big Green’s wins this year, and he is entering the Harvard series fresh off a sturdy weekend against the Saints (2-1-0, 1.69 GAA, .932 SV%). For the Crimson, the story in net this season has been a bit more complicated. Tri-captain Merrick Madsen (88-3, 2.18 GAA, 9.23 SV%) lost the label of definitive starter after posting a 2-51 record through the first two months of the campaign. In the spirit of meritocracy, coach Donato awarded backup Michael Lackey (4-4-1, 2.72 GAA, .899 SV%) three starts in December—the first time Madsen watched games from the bench since his sophomore season. While both tenders finished the regular season at .500, Madsen’s numbers speak for themselves. The senior ranks 17th nationwide in goals against average and 12th in save percentage. It may sound puzzling that a sub.900 goaltender would be stealing starts from Madsen, given his impressive statistics. But consistency has been a major issue not only for Madsen but for the team in general, and coach Donato has used a few goalie changes to rally his group. The assumption is that the seasoned veteran and captain will get the nod in the playoffs. There truly is no way of guaranteeing a Madsen start, however, especially since it has been a month (3-3-0) since Harvard started the same net-minder in consecutive contests. “That decision becomes magnified this time of year, but I don’t think the dynamics really change,” coach Donato said. “We want a chance to win every night…. The leash is pretty short. We have a series to start, but after that, you don’t get a game two.” The bench boss was reluctant to favor one backstop over the other as of early this week. A postseason start in game one on Friday will be either Lackey’s first or Madsen’s 13th. Regardless, the Crimson will enjoy a collective first when Dartmouth comes to Cambridge. Harvard has faced the Big Green six times in the ECAC Championship tournament—in four single-elimination games and, more recently, two series. The Crimson icemen, owners of a 6-4 record in these games, will host Dartmouth at the Bright-Landry Hockey Center for the first time in ECAC post-season history. Which squad will emerge victorious from the quarterfinal showdown? Harvard will look to continue this year’s success against the Big Green and make some noise in the conference tournament. Dartmouth seeks a spot in Lake Placid and a chance to play spoiler for the conference’s elite teams—a skill the group has already displayed throughout the season. The series will ultimately come down to which versions of the Big Green and the Crimson show up this weekend. Staff writer Spencer R. Morris can be reached at spencer.morris@thecrimson.com.
Harvard Confronts Hosts in Ivy Tournament Semifinal women’s basketball By Amir Mamdani Crimson Staff Writer
Harvard women’s basketball will head to Philadelphia this weekend, with hopes of winning the second annual Ivy League Tournament, and punching its ticket to March Madness. The Crimson (18-9, 10-4 Ivy) face the unenviable task of taking on hosts Pennsylvania on Saturday night, needing a win to advance to Sunday’s final. Despite Harvard’s overall youth, the team has experience at the Ancient Eight tournament, losing to Princeton in the first round of last year’s inaugural event. “Knowing what to expect, knowing what the atmosphere is going to be like, is definitely going to be helpful,” sophomore guard Katie Benzan said. “Having that experience, and that first year under our belt is going to definitely make us more comfortable.” Although the Crimson has not advanced to the NCAA tournament since 2007, this season marks the 20-year anniversary of No. 16 Harvard’s shocker of top-seeded Stanford, the only time an upset of that level has been accomplished in the men’s or women’s national tournament. For the Crimson to win the divisional tournament and represent the Ivy League on the national stage, it must win two consecutive games away from the friendly confines of Cambridge. “I’m glad we were there last year, and we know what it’s about,” said coach Kathy Delaney-Smith of the tournament. The Quakers (20-7, 11-3) enter the weekend as the second seed, and will prove to be a stiff test for the third-seeded Crimson. Worse for the visitors is
the fact that game will be played at the Palestra, a home court at which Penn tallied a 9-2 record on this season, including a 69-49 win over Harvard in early February. “Last time we were at the Palestra, we just weren’t ourselves,” Benzan said. “This coming weekend we have a chance for redemption, and a chance to show that this tournament might be at their home court, but we can win this game.” The Crimson split the two contests against the defending conference champions this season, with Harvard’s 55-52 win over Penn two weeks ago representing its first win over its Philadelphia-residing foes in five seasons. “We haven’t played well against them for a number of years, given their height, given their system,” Delaney-Smith said. “It does feel like we’ve figured it out, it does feel as if the monkey is off of our back.” Harvard, which entered last weekend with just one road win in Ancient Eight play, was able to complete a road sweep of Cornell and Columbia, despite a snow storm that delayed both games by a day. “This past weekend was so weird and unusual because of the snow, and playing on Sunday,” Benzan said. “We just had to focus on what we were doing in the moment.” The Crimson is eyeing the wins this weekend by an impressive combined 53 points as indicative of a change in seasons and results on the road. “I was impressed by our maturity that’s really started to come out,” Delaney-Smith said. “The New York road trip to Cornell and Columbia is never easy.” Crucial to Harvard’s chances will be limiting the play of senior center Michelle Nwokedi, the reigning Ivy
League Player of the Year. Nwokedi scored a season-high 30 points in Penn’s home romp over the Crimson, but was held to a mere six points on 3-13 shooting in the matchup at Lavietes Pavilion. For Harvard to shut down Nwokedi, the interior presence of sophomore forward Jeannie Boehm and freshman forward Jadyn Bush will be essential. In last season’s Ivy League tournament loss to the Tigers, Boehm struggled from the field, shooting 3-11 and finishing with just seven points. More importantly, Boehm and Bush will have to step up defensively to stop Nwokedi and center Eleah Parker. Boehm starred in the Crimson’s win over Penn in February, tallying nine rebounds and a season-high five blocks. The Winnetka, Ill., native’s defensive ferocity must once again be present if Harvard hopes to pull of the road upset. Bush’s recent performances have offered reason to suspect that the rookie could break out in Philadelphia. In the Sunday’s road win over Columbia, she registered a career-high 21 points on an impressive 80 percent shooting from the field. “My team is young still,” Delaney-Smith said. “There’s a maturity that has started to come, learning about ourselves, understanding that our challenges don’t have to let us lose.” Another key element for Delaney-Smith’s team will be the performance of Benzan, whose steady play has been paramount to the team’s success. The Wellesley Mass., native struggled as a freshman at the tournament last season, scoring just eight points on 3-11 shooting. “It’s a big stage, and I was so pumped up, my adrenaline was so high, I was playing too fast,” Benzan said. “We just
THE IRON KATIE Sophomore guard Katie Benzan has been stellar from beyond the arc, shooting at 50 percent throughout the season. timothy r. o’meara—Crimson photographer
have to remember that it’s a 40-minute game.” Benzan has performed exceptionally well in conference play this season, shooting at exactly 50 percent from three-point territory, while recording over 14 points per game and knocking down 88 percent of her free throw opportunities. The perimeter play of Benzan and junior guard and co-captain Madeline Raster will be crucial, especially considering the strong play of Quakers’ guard Anna Ross, who doggedly defended Benzan in both meetings this season. Ross helped hold Benzan to one of nine in shooting and one of seven from beyond the arc in the Crimson’s 55-52 home win. Ultimately, Harvard’s chances will
come down to whether or not the team can replicate its aggressive play from the past two weeks against the defending Ancient Eight champions on their home court. With tough interior defense and sturdy outside shooting, Benzan and the rest of the team will have a chance to pull of the upset and advance to Sunday’s final, looking to book a ticket to its first Big Dance in 11 seasons. “I don’t really care how many points or assists, or three-pointers I have,” Benzan said. “As long as the Harvard score is more than the Penn score, I’ll be happy. I just want to do everything in my power to make that happen.” Staff writer Amir Mamdani can be reached at amir.mamdani@thecrimson.com.
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