The University Daily, Est. 1873 | Volume cxlv, No. 51 | Cambridge, Massachusetts | friday, april 6, 2018
The Harvard Crimson The OSL was wrong to nix student travel grants.
It took a great deal of resilience, but the Harvard baseball team is back in the Beanpot final. sports PAGE 9
editorial PAGE 8
Woman Added to Math Faculty
2009
French number theorist Sophie Morel becomes the y Harvard Math Department’s first tenured female professor.
2012
x
Morel leaves Harvard for Princeton, inaugurating a six-year period in which the math department has no female faculty.
z
(n+1)2 = n2+2n+1 (n+1)2 -(2n+1)=n2 (n+1)2 -(2n+1)-n(2n+1)=n2-n(2n+1) (n+1)2 -(n+1)(2n+1)=n2-n(2n+1) (n+1)2 -(n+1)(2n+1)+(2n+1)2/4= n2-n(2n+1)
2016
A female math concentrator conducts a survey of math students at Harvard; 26 percent of female respondents report choosing not to take a math course at least once due to “gender imbalance” concerns.
By Amy L. Jia and Sanjana L. Narayanan Crimson Staff Writers
Harvard’s Math Department has hired a woman as a senior professor for the second time in its history, ending a sixyear streak in which the department boasted not a single woman of that rank. University of California at Berkeley math professors Lauren K. Williams ’00 and Denis Auroux will join Harvard’s math department as senior
Bacow to Oversee Allston Campus By Luke W. Vrotsos and Luke W. xu Crimson Staff Writers
E=mc2
When Lawrence S. Bacow takes office in July, he will be the third Harvard president to oversee the development of the Allston campus since former University President Lawrence H. Summers first outlined plans for a campus there in 2001. He will also have just over a year before the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences emerges from its Cambridge chrysalis and migrates across the river. In the search for Harvard’s 29th President, Harvard’s presence in Allston was a central issue. The committee met with Dean of SEAS Francis J. Doyle III multiple times in the early stage of the search. In a February interview, Shirley M. Tilghman, a Corporation and search committee member, called the campus “a once-in-a-century opportunity” with national potential. With its new campus, SEAS will be able to provide more opportunities than ever to its faculty and student bodies, both of which have grown at breakneck pace. And with it, Harvard’s ambitions to become an engineering powerhouse on the scale of rivals MIT and Stanford will be closer than ever to reality. But the University’s project in Allston entails more complications than just managing SEAS expansion. Harvard’s relations with neighboring Allston have been rocky at times, and many Allston residents have expressed skepticism towards the construction site and its eventual occupants. It will fall on Bacow to make sure this “unprecedented opportunity” does not become, as some faculty called it in 2013, an “Allston bomb.” Many of his colleagues at Harvard said they think he is up to the task.
2018
Math department hires UC Berkeley math professor Lauren K. Williams ’00 as its secondever female tenured professor. katherine e. wang—Crimson designer
See math Page 6
SEE PAGE 7
F Dreams of the Technical Theater Scene The oundations and
THE ‘LAUNCHING PHASE’ Top administrators at Harvard, such as Doyle and University President Drew G. Faust, said they have faith in Bacow’s ability to manage the Allston campus. Doyle said he thinks Bacow’s time at MIT and Tufts—where he served as president—will give him a “perspective that’s different when it comes to things like engineering and the connection to the private sector.” “I think he’ll resonate with me on some opportunities I perceive that Harvard is only now positioned to be able to do in things like working with industry partnerships for students, for recruiting, for internships, for faculty projects, for a whole host of things,” he said. “So I’m really excited to sort of tap the expertise that he’s built up at both his Tufts and his MIT experience.”
See Seas Page 4
Grads Have Support, Garber Says
Nassar Accuser Speaks at University
By Molly C. Mccafferty and shera S. Avi -Yonah
By Simone C. Chu Crimson Staff Writer
Crimson Staff Writers
With Harvard’s second unionization election fast approaching, University Provost Alan M. Garber ’76 sent an email to affiliates Thursday listing resources Harvard already provides absent a bargaining unit—sparking intense backlash from some union advocates. The election, slated to take place April 18 and 19, will determine whether eligible graduate and
R achael Denhollander, the first woman to publicly accuse former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar of sexual abuse, visited Harvard Thursday to speak about how she seeks to live with both justice and forgiveness in front of a hundreds-strong crowd in Sanders Theatre. Denhollander earned national attention after she spoke out against Nassar—and inspired scores of women to do the same. Since Denholland
See Garber Page 6 Inside this issue
Harvard Today 2
News 6
See Nassar Page 5
Editorial 8
At the Veritas Forum, Rachael Denhollander, a survivor of Larry Nassar’s sexual abuse, urges the pursuit of both justice and forgiveness through faith in a Moral Law Giver. hayoung hwang—Crimson photographer
Sports 9
Today’s Forecast
Rain and Snow High: 42 Low: 34
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SEAS the day
y=
HARVARD TODAY friday | April 6, 2018
FOR Lunch
FOR DINNER
Basil Pesto Roasted Chicken
Caribbean Jerk Chicken
English Style Battered Red’s Best Fresh Local Fish
Creole Shrimp
Hummus Florentine Sandwich
Roasted Jamaican Tofu
around the ivies
#STOPCVE
Mindy Kaling Chosen as Dartmouth Commencement Speaker
Scholars and activists discuss surveillance of Muslim and minority youth at a Harvard Graduate School of Education panel. Karina G. Gonzalez-Espinoza—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
Actress and Comedian Mindy Kaling will address the members of Dartmouth College’s 2018 graduating class at this year’s June 10th commencement exercises, The Dartmouth reported. Kailing graduated from Dartmouth in 2001 with a degree in playwriting and went on to serve as an actress and writer on several notable television shows, most notably NBC’s “The Office” and FOX’s “The Mindy Project”. She joins a long list of previous high-profile commencement speakers including talk show host Conan O’Brien, journalist Jake Tapper and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
Princeton Students Restricted from Admission Files
Undergraduates at Princeton University will no longer have access to their admissions files, as reported by the The Daily Princeton. Princeton was previously required to retain these files due to a 2015 Education Department investigation into the university’s race-based admissions policies. The investigation’s conclusion — which upheld Princeton’s current admissions policies — will result in a return to Princeton’s previous policy of disposing of all admission files at the conclusion of each academic year.
Yale Students Upset with Univeristy Mental Health Services
HAPPY Friday, Harvard! What do you do for fun on a Friday night? Today’s Events Mather House Presents: Mather Lather XVI 10-2 a.m. Mather Lather is finally here! If
you’re up for the hike, swing by Mather tonight for a great party. $7 for Matherites, $10 for everyone else. Bring your HUID.
studio. Makeup and wigs will be provided, so make sure to bring your creativity! The event is free and is only open to Harvard Students.
Drag Workshop ft. Miss Annie Thang Annie Thang ‘20 will be hosting a workshop on drag in the Cabot dance
Ben S. Rhee Crimson Staff Writer
in the real world
A recent survey of the roughly a quarter of Yale’s undergraduate population who sought out mental healthcare services from the university this academic year found that only a third of the students were satisfied with their experiences, with the remaining two thirds of students either neutral or dissatisfied, according to the Yale Daily News. Students cited long wait times as their primary complaint, with several students stating they resorted to off campus resources.
Kevin hassett
Trump Threatens to Slap China with $100 Billion in Additional Tariffs Claiming that China is stealing US intellectual property, earlier this week, the United States announced new tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese goods. China responded with its own $50 billion worth of tariffs on US goods. Not to be undone, Trump has declared that he is considering adding on another $100 billion of tariffs in retaliation. The Dow futures have sunk, creating more problems in this tense situation.
Kevin Hassett, the current Chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, speaks at the JFK Jr. Forum Thursday evening. Awnit Singh Marta—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
A Wound That Remains Raw In light of the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s fatal death, Andrew Young and Jesse Jackson return together to the spot where the civil rights leader was shot, the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. The two men are the only surviving members today of the entourage that was with King on that fateful night. Users would have to pay to opt out of all Facebook ads, Sheryl Sandberg says During an interview with “Today,” Facebook C.O.O. Sheryl Sandberg again acknowledged that the company mishandled the breach that allowed Cambridge Analytica, a data analysis firm involved with Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, to harvest millions of users’ information. While confirming that Facebook is now taking additional steps to let users opt-out of sharing some but not all their data, Sandberg stated that a full adopt-out wouldn’t be free.
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.
WAIting at the dot
QUOTE OF THE DAY
Staff for This Issue
“It’s not at all like you think. I’m surrounded by people I really like to work with. Everybody’s really nice to me. “
Night Editor Phelan Yu ’19
Design Editor Katherine E. Wang ‘19
Kevin A. Hassett
Assistant Night Editor Ben E. Frimodig ’20 Katherine E. Wang ’20
Editorial Editor Jessenia N. Class ’20
CORRECTIONS
Story Editors Brittany N. Ellis ‘19 Joshua J. Florence ’19 Hannah Natanson ’19 Claire E. Parker ’19 Sarah Wu ‘19
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.
Photo Editors Amy Y. Li ’20 Sports Editors George Hu ’19
The Harvard Crimson | APRIL 6, 2018 | page 3
Tufts Workers Join Local 26 B y molly c. mccafferty
Crimson Staff Writer
C iting the success of the Harvard University Dining Services workers’ 2016 strike, workers at Tufts University joined the regional union representing Harvard dining workers, UNITE HERE Local 26. Local 26 announced the dining workers’ decision to unionize Tuesday morning. Though workers have filed for a unionization election through the National Labor Relations Board, they are asking Tufts to immediately recognize the union. In the event that the university agrees to recognize the union, the election will not be necessary. “We would prefer to get down to a real conversation right away and without delay, and that’s why workers have been making that demand on the administration,” Michael Kramer, the organizing director of the food service division of Local
26, said. Though he could not provide exact numbers, Kramer said “an overwhelming majority” of dining workers supported the effort to unionize. “We think the right thing for them to do would be to recognize the union, listen to the voice of the workers, and begin focusing on negotiating a contract,” Kramer said. Both Kramer and Patricia O’Brien, a Tufts dining employee and union organizer, said that HUDS employees inspired Tufts workers’ efforts. “After the Harvard strike, and what we saw there, and how they won everything, and how they worked together as a group, it really inspired me,” O’Brien said. Kramer added that members of Local 26 on other campuses were inspired by Harvard’s solidarity with workers at Northeastern when they “were on the verge of the
strike.” “The local 26 members of Harvard were right there with them, because that experience resonated. They had been through it. And I think we’re going to see the same thing at Tufts,” Kramer said. In response to criticisms from dining workers, Tufts spokesperson Patrick Collins wrote in an emailed statement that the University values the “important work” of its dining employees. “We respect the rights of employees to seek an election to decide for themselves whether unionization is in their best interests,” Collins wrote. “We think it’s fair that all workers have the opportunity to cast a vote regardless of their position on the question, and we will respect the election’s outcome.”
Staff writer Molly C. McCafferty can be reached at molly.mccafferty@thecrimson.com.
Ed. School Hosts Surveillance Panel Contributing Staff Writer
The Harvard Graduate School of Education hosted a panel discussion Thursday on the effects of surveillance programs that target Muslim and minority youths in schools. The discussion focused on the Countering Violent Extremism program, an anti-terrorism initiative being piloted in three U.S. cities—Boston, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis. The CVE program began under President Obama in 2011 to counter various types of radical thinking. The Trump administration has since shifted the program’s focus to primarily target Islamic extremism, according to Reuters. Abeela Latif, an Equity and Inclusion Fellow at the School of Education focusing on International Education Policy, organized the event with the Muslim Justice League in conjunction with the Committee on Ethnicity, Migration and Rights. The MJL is based in Boston and works to advocate for communities “threatened under national security pretexts.” “Until a few months ago, I had never heard of CVE,” Latif said. “So I set my
self the task of educating myself about what CVE is. Once the picture started to take form, I realized that this is a critical issue, and it’s a critical time to have this conversation.” The panel featured three experts and was moderated by Aaliyah ElAmin, a lecturer on education at the GSE, and Daren Graves, an associate professor of education at Simmons College. Alim H. Islam, a senior caseworker at CAGE—an advocacy organization for communities impacted by the War on Terror—called in via video-chat from London to discuss the United Kingdom’s anti-terror Prevent programme. Islam related several case studies of young people persecuted by the Prevent programme, including a young man who wore a bracelet in support of Palestine to school one day and was subsequently tracked and interrogated by police officers. Fatemah Ahmed, the deputy director of the Muslim Justice League, discussed the role of the U.S. government in the implementation of CVE programs. Since 2010, the Department of Homeland Security has given out more than $10 million in grants to imple-
Like
ment CVE programs across the country, according to Ahmed. Programs often focus on specific communities. For example, one program in Boston focuses specifically on the Somali community—three of the five CVE grants that have been awarded to Boston target the Somali community, Ahmed said. “People will say that CVE is community-led,” Ahmed said. “But when the community sees how CVE is being carried out, their members are definitely not happy.” Aleena Durrani, of the Montgomery County Civil Rights Coalition, said that surveillance programs can be hidden from public knowledge by various program names. “In Maryland, it’s called BRAVE— Building Resilience Against Violent Extremism,” Durrani said. “It’s essentially CVE, but it is disguised by a newer, brighter acronym.” Latif says she hopes to follow this discussion with another event next semester. “We just wanted to get the conversation started,” she said. “We hope to take a deeper dive into this issue in the fall.”
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B y cecilia D’arms
Crimson Staff Writer
As relieved seniors turn in their Social Studies theses—a requirement for the concentration—juniors are just gearing up for their capstone project and some say they underestimated the commitment such a project would entail. Faculty and staff say that the Social Studies’ mandatory thesis is an intense project that likely requires summer research, leading some upperclassmen to worry about lost opportunities during their junior summer. Bonnie M. Talbert, assistant director of studies for freshmen and sophomores in Social Studies, wrote in an email that the thesis is the centerpiece of the Social Studies curriculum. “Our entire program is structured to guide and prepare students to write their thesis,” Talbert wrote. Social Studies Peer Concentration Advisor Christian T. Kardish ’18 agreed. “The whole concentration is basically developed around this project,” Kardish said. While most students conduct research over the summer, Social Studies has no formal requirement for such an undertaking. However, Talbert wrote she advises students to “plan” for it. “I generally tell students to plan to do some research over the summer before their senior year, so that when they begin their classes in the Fall they are prepared to start writing their thesis,” Talbert wrote. Anya B. Bassett, director of studies in Social Studies, concurred in an email.“We encourage students to apply for funding so that they can devote at least part of their summer to their theses,” Bassett wrote. Bassett said she encourages students to work over the summer because funding is more readily available, and because on average, students who research over the summer have more “time and energy” and thus “write better theses.” Talbert also said that many students’ topics demand “off-site” research. But while students acknowledge they were warned about this expectation, some said they hadn’t anticipated how it would limit opportunities for internships. “It’s different being told, ‘yeah, you’re probably gonna have to do some research over the summer,’ and realizing, [every internship] wants me to commit 10 weeks, and I don’t really have 10 weeks in addi-
tion to doing the four weeks that you have to commit for most research grants,” Dominique J. Erney ’19 said. “[Summer research] is emphasized, and students might feel pressured to give up other summer opportunities,” Kardish said. Devontae Freeland ’19 said that the expectation of summer research also “restricted” study abroad opportunities. “I think being restricted to do research for a topic and limiting the ability to do summer study abroad programs, and needing to be in residence mid-year during the writing process, is really something that’s making me rethink my plans for junior and senior year,” Freeland said. As a result, Freeland is “reconsidering” his choice of concentration. “Realizing that writing the thesis directly conflicts with the other things I want to do in terms of extracurricular commitments and my job has made me reconsider whether social studies is the right path for me,” Freeland said. While Erney will be able to research and intern simultaneously this summer, she said many students are in the same position as Freeland. “I know of people who are considering dropping Social Studies or are making plans to drop it because they decided that that was just not what they wanted to spend their time doing this summer,” Erney said. Summer research may not be necessary for all students though. Some, including Kardish and Nuha Saho ’18, avoided summer research altogether. Kardish and Saho said that students are on “different timetables”. “Looking back at it now, I was never actually behind. I assumed that I was, because I assumed that a lot of students were doing research over the summer,” Saho said. “But people were pretty much in the same place.” However, though Kardish said he “managed it in the end,” he called fall and winter break research in Social Studies “stressful” and said he “felt that I was behind”. Bassett acknowledged the “dilemma,” but said the thesis was worth the trouble. “We are aware that spending time doing thesis research may make it harder to take long internships, and we are sympathetic to the dilemmas faced by students who want to do both. But we also think that writing a thesis is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Bassett wrote.
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Social Studies Seniors Reflect on Theses
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Bacow Looks to Future of Engineering at Harvard SEAS From Page 1 The presidential transition marks a seismic shift at SEAS—from a “growing phase” to a “launching phase,” Doyle said. “We’ve gotten a wonderful gift like Paulson’s gift, we’ve got these new buildings opening up, we’ve got a critical mass of students and faculty now,” Doyle said, referring to a $400 million gift billionaire John A. Paulson gave the school in 2015. “So what we do with that, how we capitalize on the opportunity that Drew has helped us grow, is the challenge for Larry and I going together.” Both Doyle and Faust said they were impressed by Bacow’s extensive knowledge of Harvard’s Allston holdings—a knowledge built up over time while he served on the Harvard Corporation, the University’s highest governing body. Bacow joined the Corporation in 2011; he is still a member, though he will need to step down before he takes office as president. As a member of the Corporation, Bacow served on Harvard’s official presidential search committee—until Dec. 2017, that is, when he stepped down to assume the role of candidate Doyle said Bacow spent a lot of time working on issues related to Allston while on the Corporation. Doyle added he felt “buoyed” by “the fact that Larry comes in with momentum in thinking about the opportunity for Harvard, what we can do in Allston.” “He was already focused on Allston,” Doyle said. “It was one of his assignments within the Corporation, so we spent quite a bit of time talking about Allston.” In a March interview, Faust said Bacow spoke about Allston “with a degree of expertise, engagement, and granularity about real estate matters.” “He got to the end of his sentence and I said, ‘I’ll tell you, Larry, my reaction to this is wow, how lucky Harvard is to have a president that knows all this about real estate at a moment when we’re developing the enterprise research campus,’” she said.
Bacow’s time on the Corporation, though, was hardly the president-elect’s first foray into the world of engineering expansion.. The Chancellor At both universities where he held high-level administrative positions in the past, Tufts and MIT, Bacow was responsible for a large engineering contingency—even larger than Harvard’s. At MIT, where Bacow was chancellor from 1998 to 2001, engineering faculty currently make up 36 percent of the institute’s professors. At Harvard, that number is only 11 percent of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. While at MIT, Bacow’s position as chancellor placed him as a senior academic official, overseeing all of the institute’s departments, including its large engineering faculty. “He was good about thinking about things strategically. If you wanted to talk to him about direction, he was a good person to talk with,” said John Guttag, former head of MIT’s department of electrical engineering and computer science. “So I was a great admirer of his. I thought he was really good at what he did at MIT,” Guttag added. After MIT, Bacow became president at nearby Tufts, where in 2003 he and his new provost recruited a dean for the University’s engineering school, Linda M. Abriola, formerly of the University of Michigan. Bridge Over Barbed Wire While SEAS expansion brings challenges on the institutional front, there are also hurdles associated with expanding into a new neighborhood. As construction concludes, and as Harvard students, faculty, and affiliates begin crossing over to Allston regularly, Bacow will need to mediate historically strained town-gown relations. In recent decades, Harvard has come under heavy criticism for its handling of University affairs in Allston. In June 1997, Harvard announced that it had secretly spent $88 million and
acquired 52.6 acres of land in Allston between 1988 and 1994, a move many Allstonians saw as an unwelcome and deceptive intrusion. Bacow is not, however, without experience in these challenges. While he was at Tufts, Bacow dealt often with a town-gown relationship similar to that of Harvard-Allston: Tufts-Somerville. “Those of us who grew up [in Somerville] remember the days when there was barbed wire around the
He was good about thinking about things strategically. John Guttag
Former MIT Professor campus of Tufts,” said Joseph Curtatone, the city’s mayor since 2004 and a longtime Somerville resident. “There was always, from a Somerville perspective at least, this feeling that we just weren’t appreciated by the university,” he added. During his time as president of Tufts, Bacow made attempts to mend these historically rocky relations with the city. In 2004, he negotiated a ten-year deal with the cities of Medford and Somerville that gave each city an average of $125,000 per year, the first such agreement between Tufts and its home cities. The agreement promised “additional consideration” in the application process for local students, who would be eligible for special financial aid. Residents who wanted to audit Tufts classes were also eligible for reduced tuition. “He really started to build a bridge away from the old, gated approach toward our city to one of inclusiveness,” Curtatone said. “He earned the respect and credibility of everyone in
Self-Driving Cars to be Tested in City By patricia j. liu Crimson Staff Writer
The Cambridge City Council unanimously voted to begin autonomous vehicle testing on city streets at a meeting Monday. The adopted policy order, which defines autonomous vehicles as “self-driving cars,” states that Cambridge will join a regional AV testing program put forth by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council and the Metropolitan Mayors Coalition of Greater Boston, with the Massachusetts Department of Transportation and the Governor’s Office. According to City Councillor Quinton Zondervan, who sponsored the policy order with Vice Mayor Jan Devereux, autonomous vehicles have already been on city streets but are still being operated by human drivers. The newly adopted framework would allow a self-driving car to be turned on “autonomous mode” in Cambridge, given certain conditions. Among these requirements are a minimum of two test drivers per vehicle, an adherence to all city speed limits such as new 20 mph safety zones, and the submission of data and information gathered from the tests upon
the city’s request. Another precaution consists of a step-by-step system that ensures the companies advancing the AV testing are meeting safety thresholds. The companies have to follow a “clear progression of increasingly difficult situations” before self-driving cars can be completely autonomous, Zondervan said. This testing of self-driving cars continues after an AV operated by Uber killed a pedestrian in Arizona on Mar. 18. Following the fatal crash, Arizona Governor Doug A. Ducey suspended further AV testing in the state. After the accident, Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh also ordered a moratorium on AV testing in Boston. Zondervan said one of the problems in Arizona was the vehicle’s high speed, highlighting that testing self-driving cars in Cambridge would have to be done “very carefully and very slowly.” Devereux agreed that AV testing in Cambridge would be different. “Arizona has different policies than Massachusetts does for the testing that they’re doing. Uber is using different software, and it’s not one of the companies that is involved in the Massachusetts testing,” Devereux said. “Fortu-
Transformative coverage.
nately, there is a better way and a safer way to move the technology forward.” Just last week, Walsh reinstated Boston’s AV testing program, which partners with technology companies like nuTonomy, Optimus Ride, and Aptiv. According to Cambridge’s policy order, these companies have demonstrated a “stellar safety record” in AV testing across the world. “One of the companies, nuTonomy, has also tested vehicles in Singapore, which has a very different driving culture,” Devereux said. “They recognize there are regional differences in driving styles and rules and roads.” According to Devereux, companies would undertake AV testing within the context of Vision Zero, a strategy unanimously adopted by Cambridge in 2016. The strategy strives for zero fatal crashes, Devereux said, whether the vehicles are autonomous or not. “I found the conversation really reassuring that safety is driving what they’re doing, and that it’s not a rush to bring to market autonomous software that isn’t ready,” Devereux said. Staff writer Patricia J. Liu can be reached at patricia.liu@thecrimson.com
our community.” Martha Pierce, education adviser to former Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, wrote in an email that Bacow’s work was well received in the city, which is home to the university’s medical campus. “There is no question that Larry dramatically advanced the relationship between the City of Boston and Tufts,” she wrote. “Mayor Menino often referred to Tufts as a leader, and Larry as the model President.” But for some Somerville residents, Bacow’s efforts fell short in establishing a positive relationship between the city and the university. Edward Beuchert, a Somerville resident and member of the West Somerville Neighborhood Association, said that Bacow’s failure to construct on-campus housing inflated prices for local residents. “One of his lasting legacies here in the community is that he basically continued the Tufts policy of increasing student enrollment without building new dormitories on campus. While he was president, there was just one relatively small one that was built in 2006,” Beuchert said. Dorothy DiMarzo, another Somerville resident, agreed with Beuchert, saying the increase of students in the Somerville area increased demand for housing. “It drives the prices up,” she said. DiMarzo and Beuchert also pointed to the $125,000-per-year agreement as insufficient for funding city operations. “Really that turns out to be very little, when you analyze the overall situation and how much it costs Somerville to support Tufts,” Beuchert said. The issue of payment in lieu of taxes—PILOT—as these agreements are often called, will be a salient one for Bacow as he manages Harvard’s presence in Allston. Boston calculates a recommended payment for every nonprofit entity within its borders. In fiscal year 2017, the city requested $569,899 from Tufts for its Longwood campus, which Tufts paid in full.
The same year, Harvard did not match Boston’s recommended PILOT contribution of $6.1 million for its properties in the city. “Harvard has a long history of making regular and consistent voluntary PILOT payments to its host communities,” Harvard spokesperson Melodie L. Jackson wrote in an email. “The university seeks to strike an appropriate balance between taxes, voluntary payments in lieu of taxes, and funding direct mission-related programming in our neighborhoods,” she wrote. In a letter to Harvard affiliates in 2003, Summers was tentatively optimistic “for the future of Harvard’s expansion. “Planning for how best to take advantage of the Allston opportunity poses an uncommonly challenging
“He really started to build a bridge away from the old, gated approach toward our city to one of inclusiveness Josehp Curtatone Mayor of Somerville
task,” he wrote. Fifteen years later, Harvard’s soonto-be president is still talking about— and hoping for—a future in Allston. “Allston gives us a chance to forge new partnerships, both intellectually and others, between Harvard and our neighbors, between Harvard and our sister institutions, between Harvard and the rest of the world,” Bacow said in February. “It also gives us the opportunity across all of Harvard to envision the university of the future, and to bring that future to life.”
New Project to Digitize Part of Cuba Collection By katelyn x. li Contributing Staff Writer
The Cuba Studies Program of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies recently announced an effort to digitize part of its Cuba-related collection through the Harvard Library. The Library currently contains the largest collection of Cuban monographs in the United States, with materials published on a wide array of subjects, including literature, economics, botany, anthropology, music, fine arts, and history. According to a press release, the goal of the digitization is to provide free access to the material for the general public. The release further notes that these efforts correspond with the University’s goals to “expand academic cooperation” with Cuban scholars and institutions. In Dec. 2017, Vice Provost for International Affairs Mark C. Elliott signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Cuban Ministry of Higher Education to promote increased research partnerships and post-graduate training programs. The agreement came after increased U.S.-Cuba tensions prompted by the Trump Administration’s reversal of Obama-era policies intended to normalize relations with the country . Lynn Shirey, librarian for Latin America, Spain, and Portugal, said that she hoped the digitization would enhance future research collaborations between the U.S. and Cuba. “There’s a clear directive that we’re trying to be more open towards Cuba, to share researchers, and to share resources, as well,” Shirey said. “Given
that Harvard has historical collections that are strong in Cuba, the library feels that we should contribute to this effort.” According to Shirey, the Harvard Library is working with a group of other U.S. universities, led by the University of Florida, to share U.S. collections of Cuban materials with the José Martí National Library in Cuba. In turn, the José Martí National Library is making their bibliographic records available in WorldCat, a global catalogue of library collections, and embarking on complementary digitization projects. The Harvard Library is currently digitalizing the José Augusto Escoto Cuban History and Literature collection, which includes 63 archival boxes of material at Houghton library. The collection includes historical documents and letters from 19th century Cuba, a time period marked by slave revolts and independence movements from Spain. “There are a lot of important documents about schools, hospitals, roads, setting up government in early colonial Cuba, maps, lots of interesting material in that collection, and Cuba does not have access to that, because anyone who is in Cuba would have to travel here to use the collection,” Shirey said. “And it’s a big part of their history.” David Gonzalez ’20, treasurer of the Harvard Cuban-American Undergraduate Student Association said he appreciates the preservation and increased access to Cuban history. “I feel like it’s really important to have accessible records to Cuba, especially before the past fifty years, which have been so dramatically transformative for Cuba,” he said.
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The Harvard Crimson | april 6, 2018 | page 5
PBHA Hosts Housing Humanities Recruits Freshmen Awareness Week By aidan b. carey and annie c. doris Crimson Staff Writers
By simone c. chu and ruth zheng Crimson Staff Writers
Harvard students collaborated with community organizations, called their legislators, and discussed increasing rates of homelessness in Cambridge and Boston as part of the Phillip Brooks House Association’s second annual Housing Awareness Week. The week’s housing awareness events were hosted by PBHA in conjunction with Harvard Habitat for Humanity, Harvard Square Homeless Shelter, and Y2Y, a student run overnight homeless shelter for minors. “The main goal is to raise awareness of the situation of current housing and issues of homelessness,” said Cora Neudeck ’19, PBHA’s Advocacy, Health, and Housing Programming Group Officer, who helped organize the initiative. Jorge Ledesma ’19, a co-organizer of the week’s events, said he agreed. “I think when we are really focused on our school, which we should be, sometimes we forget that there are a lot of problems going on right in our backyard,” he said. Neudeck also said the organizers hoped the influence of Housing Awareness Week would extend beyond merely educating students on housing issues. “We wanted to incorporate elements of action as well, so that way people can get involved,” she said. Housing Awareness Week kicked off with a Poverty Teach-In on Saturday, during which students met with community groups to discuss poverty-related issues. On Wednesday, students gathered in the PBHA parlor room for a conversation with Julie B. Wilson, a lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, Phillip Martin, a Senior Investigative Reporter at radio station WGBH, and Allison E. Torsiglieri ’16, a case manager for HomeStart, an organization that works to combat homelessness in the Greater Boston area. The discussion focused on the current state of homelessness in Cam-
bridge and Boston. Drawing upon facts, data and personal experiences working with the homeless, the panelists spoke about the complexity of homelessness in the area and also the search for solutions. It will require “the cooperation of a lot of people from different backgrounds in order to resolve the issue,” said Sina Sadeghzadeh ’21, an advocacy director at Habitat for Humanity and panel attendee. The panelists also emphasized the importance of humanizing the homeless. “Even if you can’t find them a home, just listening to their story is important,” Wilson said. Martin said he felt hopeful that students could mobilize to combat homelessness the same way that student advocates have mobilized for gun control in recent weeks. “The very things that we think could only happen in the abstract could happen in reality with this level of commitment,” Martin said. “There are people and professionals out in the community who want to come out and talk to students,” Torsiglieri said. “That is a really great way for students to know even what other careers are available to them that involve working on these issues.” On Thursday, students congregated in Sever Hall to phone bank for legislative action on homelessness. Callers urged their representatives to support several bills in the Massachusetts Legislature supporting the homeless that include provisions like expanding access to ID services, increasing funding for housing and wraparound services for unaccompanied youth, and publicly recognizing unlawful discrimination of youth experiencing homelessness. “We have so much space here and at the same time, it’s incredibly, incredibly difficult for people to look for housing,” said Boris Davidov ’19, who participated in the phone bank. “That’s always ignited a flame in me, to wonder why we have these big urban centers, and there are still so many people who can’t find a single room to live in.”
Larry Nassar Victim Speaks at Harvard Nassar From Page 1 denunciations, over 250 women have publicly accused Nassar of sexual abuse. Nassar underwent a seven-day sentencing hearing in late Jan. 2017; across that week alone, more than 150 girls and women stepped up to the microphone in Nassar’s Michigan courtroom to share stories of sexual mistreatment at the hands of the former doctor. Nassar was ultimately sentenced to up to 175 years in prison for his proven and repeated abuse of young female gymnasts across decades. At the event Thursday, Denhollander said she operates “within a worldview that is distinctly Christian in nature.” She also outlined her definitions of justice and forgiveness according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. She began with the definition of “just,” which she asserted contains five components: “having a basis in or conforming to fact or reason, conforming to a standard of correctness, faithful to an original, acting or being in conformity with what is morally upright or good, and being what is merited or deserved.” “All of these require and appeal to a standard,” Denhollander said to the Sanders Theatre audience of more than 200. Denhollander called forgiveness, on the other hand, a “personal internal response.” “Justice is not dependent, one way or another, on how I respond. Because it is an outward standard,” she said. “Justice is not in opposition to forgiveness. Rather, justice is the foundation for forgiveness.” Because justice exists as an objective standard, Denhollander said she is not dependent on societal opinion or the ruling of a jury—regardless of Nassar’s final sentencing. In the end, Denhollander said, her path to healing stemmed from within. “Being able to speak the truth, and grieve the way you were damaged in ways that are non-destructive, is really the first
step to healing,” she added. The event Thursday was co-sponsored by several campus religious organizations, including Harvard College Faith and Action. The Undergraduate Council, Harvard College Women’s Center, and the Office of Sexual Assault Prevention and Response also co-sponsored the event. “The purpose of the Veritas Forum is to get people to think,” said Michelle N. Odonkor ’18, who emceed the event. “And so I hope Christians were challenged, and I hope non-Christians were also challenged. I hope that everybody can critically assess what they believe, why they believe it, and have these tough conversations.” Several attendees said they appreciated the clarity of Denhollander’s thought process, as well as her openness in speaking about her personal experiences. “Narrowing it down and finding the common thread in all of [the dictionary definitions of “just”] about measuring up to one standard, and how you can’t have justice without having that one standard, really rang true to me,” said Esther J. Um ’21, who attended the event. “It gave me a type of rhetoric to express what I was feeling before.” In an interview before the event, Denhollander said she is still waiting to see whether movements like #MeToo have had a lasting effect. “There’s always an ebb and flow to where the spotlight is,” she said. “Right now, there’s still a lot of outrage, but most of it is directed outside of people’s communities. Evangelicals are plenty happy to talk about MSU and Penn State, and the Catholic Church is great when they talk about MSU and Penn State, but they’re not so great when they talk about what happened in their church and Evangelicals are not very good at speaking out against their own community.” “That really is the test of how much someone cares and how much they’ve changed—what they do if it happens in their own community,” she added.
No Injuries After Car In Flames on Linden Street By caroline s. Engelmayer Crimson Staff Writer
A car engine burst into flames on Linden St. Thursday evening and burned for roughly ten minutes before firefighters stopped the blaze. The car’s driver, who declined to give her name, said that, as she was driving, a man walking down the street informed her her engine was smoking and urged her to get out of the car. “I watched while the car turned into a
fireball,” she said. No one was injured in the fire as of Thursday evening, though the blaze attracted at least one fire engine. “There was a car fire,” Cambridge Fire Department Deputy Robert L. Walsh said. The fire took place across the street from a property owned by the Delphic, one of Harvard’s final clubs. Staff writer Caroline S. Engelmayer can be reached at caroline.engelmayer@thecrimson.com.
A mid fears that Harvard students are losing interest in the humanities, administrators hosted events at a twoweek Advising Fortnight—meant to help freshmen plan their academic futures—that in part highlighted fields of study like English, Classics, and Romance Languages and Literatures. Thirty-one of the 67 events included in this year’s iteration of Advising Fortnight—an annual program—focused on concentrations that fall under the arts and humanities umbrella. Harvard boasts 50 concentrations in total. Some administrators who oversee humanities-related fields of study said they felt pressure this year to attract more students to their Advising Fortnight events—and to their concentrations—given falling levels of undergraduate interest. Traditional humanities fields of study like English and Comparative Literature have seen marked declines in the number of concentrators across the past decade. Naomi A. Weiss, director of undergraduate studies for the Classics concentration, left nothing up to chance. She said she did a lot of “outreach” to augment her concentration’s Advising Fortnight event this week. “I emailed every student whose name was on one of various lists of people who might possibly be interested in classics,” Weiss said. “We have to make quite an act about it, to bring people in.”
At the Classics Advising Fortnight event Tuesday, current concentrators gave public speeches touting what they called the concentration’s numerous practical benefits. Classics concentrator Richard F. Dunn ’19 said he feels he has an advantage in applying to law school with his Classics degree. Weiss agreed, adding that analytical skills developed in the concentration are often immensely useful outside of the field. Professor Stephen Mitchell, director of undergraduate studies for the Committee on Folklore and Mythology, seemed less stressed about the need to recruit students than did Weiss. He noted his concentration has an average of 14 to 18 students at any given time. “We know that we have the opportunity to really help people with their time at Harvard, and we’re kind of eager to build the most out of this very precious commodity of being at Harvard for four years,” Mitchell said. “We’re eager to recruit people in that sense. It’s kind of a missionary zeal, not a survivalist kind of concern about being cut.” Mitchell acknowledged Folk and Mythology can have trouble attracting undergraduates. He said people sometimes “scoff” at the concentration’s title, at one point prompting Folk and Mythology affiliates to develop a guide for “horrified” parents. And Mitchell—like Weiss—has developed strategies to cope. When seeking to convince students and parents ambivalent about the concentration, Mitchell said he highlights individual student success stories.
“It’s going to take a certain amount of initiative to be successful in [folk and myth],” Mitchell said, adding there is no rigid course plan for concentrators. “We think people who do it really come away with substantial critical tools.” But Mitchell has no immediate plans to touch the concentration’s attimes off-putting title. There’s a “certain kind of clientele that kind of likes the nerdiness of it,” he said. Concentrator Ailie F. Kerr ’18 said her parents were supportive of her decision to concentrate in Folk and Mythology. “People get really worried about the employability of their degree, and I think that people worry about that too much,” Kerr said. “[My parents] said exactly what I said, if you have a degree from Harvard, who cares what it’s in.” Kathy Richman, director of undergraduate studies for Romance Languages and Literatures, said she feels pressure to attract concentrators for a different reason. She said she is always looking for more students because she wants to share her love for the discipline. Nonetheless, she—like Weiss, like Dunn, like Mitchell—could not resist deflating the common myth that humanities majors learn nothing useful in a practical sense and cannot find jobs after graduation. “Employers are looking for people who can express themselves well, work well… with others,” Richman said. “And those are all things that you learn in the humanities.”
Hassett Optimistic About Trump By paul d. tamburro and Meena venkataramanan contributing Writers
Chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisors Kevin A. Hassett expressed optimism about President Donald Trump’s economic policy and spoke about his work on economically challenged communities at an Institute of Politics event Thursday. The event was this year’s Malcolm Wiener Lecture on International Political Economy. Douglas W. Elmendorf, Dean of the Harvard Kennedy School, introduced the evening’s speaker. Jason Furman ’92, a current Kennedy School professor and former chairman of the CEA under Barack Obama, moderated the discussion. Furman began by asking what he called “the question is everyone is most interested in” —what it is like to work in the Trump administration. “It’s not at all like you think. I’m surrounded by people I really like to work with. Everybody’s really nice to me. Nobody’s leaking bad stories about me to the press. We’re serving our country, and our spirits are high,” Hassett said. Hassett said the hardest part of working in Trump’s White House is the administration’s turnover rate. “I don’t think I’ve ever been in an organization where people are leaving
once a month. I really liked Gary Cohn. I hate to see him go,” he said. Many of the evening’s questions focused on Trump’s economic policy and the recent tax reform bill. Hassett was enthusiastic about the prospects for growth under Trump’s leadership. “Everyone’s outlook for growth has gone up a lot, like about a percent,” said Hassett. Hassett was similarly optimistic about the tax bill. “The data have been surprising us on the upside already,” he said. He explained, “If you go pore through the data, you see massive tax effects already in the fourth quarter. There appears to have been anticipatory capital spending.” Later, Hassett discussed his work on severely economically challenged, or “distressed,” communities. The term “distressed communities” comes from an annual index compiled by the Economic Innovation Group, which ranks the prosperity of communities throughout the country. Hassett was a founding adviser of the group. At Thursday’s event, Hassett explained how the tax bill provides wealthy companies with incentives to invest in these areas. “If they invest in those distressed communities and then keep investing in those distressed communities, then
they can take their investment returns and not pay taxes on them,” he said. Hassett said he hopes “it’s going to become a social norm that the wealthy in our country want to help the distressed communities.” “I even expect that places like Google or Microsoft will try to enforce the social norms,” he added. Several students in attendance, including Kennedy School student Chen Liu, said they enjoyed listening to the evening’s speakers. “They set up a very good example for us as students,” Liu, who is from China, said. “I feel very positive, not only [for] the future of America’s economy, but also [for] China, and the world,” she added. Furman concluded by asking Hassett about the big questions he is interested in answering in the future. Looking ahead, Hassett said he is interested in the information revolution. He explained how the widespread availability of information in the modern era forces people to determine for themselves what they think is true. “I think that we’re living in an information revolution right now, and deciding how it plays out is something that I’m just very obsessed with because it’s a very hard question, and I’m not really sure what the right answer is,” he said.
Wholesome Fresh Opens in Square By henry w. burnes and franklin r. civantos Crimson Staff Writers
W holesome Fresh, a casual restaurant-convenience store hybrid that started in Rhode Island, opened its doors to Harvard Square Thursday morning in the property formerly occupied by Market in the Square. This is Wholesome Fresh’s second location; it started in Newport, R.I. Britni M. Price, an employee at the new location, said she was optimistic about the new location, calling Harvard Square a “gold mine.” She noted that this store is bigger than the one
in Rhode Island. Price said that what makes Wholesome Fresh unique is its dedication to offering fresh food on a daily basis. The store is “geared towards fresh deli, everything’s made to order, and the menu changes everyday.” “Most of the things we have have no artificial ingredients,” she added. Denise Jillson, the executive director of the Harvard Square Business Association, said she was impressed by the store’s warm atmosphere. “I just toured it and it’s really very nice,” Jillson said. “Based on what I have seen they have exceeded my ex-
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pectations. The food looks beautiful.” Brandon Wang ’18 said he was excited to see that the new store offered similar goods as Market in the Square, the popular store it replaced. He said he believes the organic options—which he said are probably better in quality than Market’s offerings—differentiate it from Market, which he considered more geared towards college students. “The food is probably a little better. Definitely an upgrade on the food. It’s just a change in environment,” Wang said. “A lot of the same people working there which was nice to see.”
Page 6 | april 6, 2018 | The Harvard Crimson
Garber Highlights Resources for Grad. Students in Email garber From Page 1 undergraduate students can collectively bargain with Harvard. In the run-up to the vote, University administrators have walked a delicate line in communications to students: never openly declaring Harvard’s official position, but instead issuing repeated pleas that students read up on the issues and turn out to vote come April. Unionization advocates have shown no such restraint, instead openly advertising the benefits of a union. Members of pro-union advocacy group Harvard Graduate Students Union-United Automobile Workers have particularly argued unionization would grant students a collective voice, enabling them to fight for the rights of international graduate students—which they say are under threat in the era of Donald Trump— and to call for reforms to the University’s processes for handling sexual harassment and assault allegations. Garber’s email, like past missives, toed the line. But several resources he highlighted in the message appeared to target exactly these two pro-union arguments. For example, Garber pointed to the work of the University’s Title IX officers. The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences added an additional Title IX officer earlier this year.
“Please know that these resources are available to all students now,” he wrote. “They are not contingent on classification as an ‘employee.’” Garber also mentioned two University resources specifically designated for Harvard’s international students: the Harvard International Office and the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic. He added the University has worked “tirelessly, often behind the scenes” to advocate for graduate students on Capitol Hill, fighting measures like the proposed tax on tuition grants—later erased from the final Republican-backed tax bill. April’s election marks the second time eligible Harvard graduate and undergraduate teaching assistants will head to the polls. The University’s first unionization election, held in Nov. 2016, turned up more votes against unionization than in favor— but HGSU-UAW challenged that result, sparking a roughly year-long legal battle with the University. The back-and-forth—which saw the overturning of the results of the first election, three rulings by the regional and national iterations of the National Labor Relations Board, and two separate appeals—ultimately led to the NLRB’s Dec. 2017 ultimatum that Harvard must hold a second election. Garber’s Thursday email triggered
the latest skirmish in the long-simmering saga. Several pro-union graduate students took strong exception to Garber’s message. HGSU-UAW organizer Sam Klug wrote in an email that Garber’s message misrepresents and overestimates campus resources currently available to graduate students. “Provost Garber’s suggestion that Harvard’s administration is doing as well as it possibly can to address issues that matter to students just does not line up with students’ experience,” Klug wrote. “It’s time for all of us to have a seat at the table.” In the email, Garber wrote graduate students already weigh in on major administrative decisions sans a union via “elected student government” bodies. On campus, Harvard’s graduate students are represented by the Graduate Student Council, the Harvard Graduate Council, and their counterparts at each of the schools. “Harvard students, individually and through elected student government, have long worked together with faculty and administrators to extend and improve student services,” Garber wrote. “Their collaborative efforts began well before paid organizers from the United Auto Workers came to our campuses.” “We value these partnerships and
look forward to building upon the progress we have made,” he added. GSC Natural Sciences representative and HGSU-UAW organizer Jack M. Nicoludis wrote in an email that Garber’s missive overstated the Graduate Student Council’s ability to advocate for students. “As someone who served on the GSC for 6 years, it hasn’t been a very effective avenue for student input on issues like pay and healthcare,” Nicoludis wrote. “Neither the 1.5% pay raise of last year nor the 3% pay raise of this year were discussed with the GSC prior to the Dean’s announcement email to all of GSAS.” Some Harvard workers also took issue with Garber’s email. John Perich, a representative for the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers, criticized Garber’s assertion that, should the election go the union’s way, “each school’s dean and other leaders would be legally prohibited from working directly with individual students or with student government on these matters.” “[The] HUCTW agreement spells out areas where employees and managers have the ability to make arrangements based on department needs,” Perich wrote. “So Harvard already has experience with a union contract that grants significant de-
partment-level flexibility.” HUCTW is the largest union on campus, representing approximately 5,000 of the University’s 6,000 unionized employees. Of Harvard’s nine extant labor unions, only HUCTW includes this type of provision in their agreement with the University. In response to criticisms from HGSU-UAW and HUCTW, Faculty of Arts and Sciences spokesperson Anna Cowenhoven wrote in an emailed statement that Garber’s email “focused on incontrovertible facts” about unionization. “Unlike union organizers, the University is legally prohibited from making unsubstantiated promises about what life with or without a union would be like for students,” Cowenhoven wrote. “The Provost’s message therefore focused on incontrovertible facts about what it means to have a union, including the fact that all students in the unit would be covered by a single contract, the fact that students would pay dues or an equivalent fee, the fact that students cannot opt out of representation, and the fact that students would no longer have access to School-level channels for addressing certain matters.” Cowenhoven also reiterated a message common to Garber’s email—an entreaty that all eligible students show up to the polls on April 18 and 19.
Math Department Adds Second Tenured Female Professor Math From Page 1 Faculty at the start of the next academic year, Department Chair Curtis T. McMullen said in an interview last week. Auroux has served as a math professor at UC Berkeley since 2009 and has published articles on subjects ranging from “symplectic submanifolds” to “Lefschetz pencils.” Williams, a former math concentrator, won a tenured professorship at UC Berkeley in 2016 and has written extensively about cluster algebras and tropical geometry. “It’s a really fantastic place to be, so I’m really looking forward to it,” Auroux said in an interview Thursday. Williams fondly recalled her experiences at Harvard, both as a student and as an assistant professor. “I spent four amazing years as an undergraduate at Harvard 1996-2000 (I was in Pennypacker and Pforzheimer) and another three years at Harvard as a Benjamin Pierce Assistant professor following my PhD,” she wrote in an email. “The students and faculty at Harvard are exceptional, and I am really looking forward to rejoining the vibrant intellectual life there.
As senior math professors at Harvard, Williams and Auroux automatically earn tenure and will be expected to conduct research. The math department’s last female senior professor was Sophie Morel, who joined the University in 2009 but left for Princeton three years later. Math professor Peter B. Kronheimer, who served as department chair before McMullen, wrote in an emailed statement Thursday that he is “thrilled” about the department’s “successful” recruitment efforts. “Lauren and Denis are researchers at the very top of their respective fields, and will open up new areas for our department,” Kronheimer wrote. “Their presence at Harvard will be a real boost for the mathematical sciences.” McMullen wrote in an emailed statement that Kronheimer—who stepped down from the chairship in July 2017—played a key role in convincing Williams and Auroux to come to Harvard. Across the past few years, math department administrators have taken several steps to improve their recruitment of female candidates at the faculty and graduate student levels.
The department has offered tenured professorships to at least three women in roughly the past decade and, in the 2016-2017 academic year, debuted two new programs explicitly designed to recruit women. These efforts follow a long history of gender imbalance in the department. Current and former undergraduate and graduate students affiliated with the math department—including both women and men—have said the department’s lack of women in senior faculty positions made them feel uncomfortable and negatively affected their experiences and performance in the classroom. In the wake of the hiring of Williams and Auroux, though, some department faculty and students said they feel more optimistic for the future of Harvard math. Math professor Robin Gottlieb— who is not tenured and thus does not count as a senior professor—wrote in an emailed statement that she knew Williams as an undergraduate. Gottlieb wrote she remembers working with Williams to organize a Women in Math brunch for female students in the department. “I am truly delighted that Lauren
Williams will be joining the mathematics department,” Gottlieb wrote. “She’s a spectacular research mathematician, a wonderful teacher, an excellent speaker, and a great community member.” Amanda K. Glazer ’18 and Meena K. Boppana ’16, two of the founders of the student organization Gender Inclusivity in Mathematics, said they believe Williams’s hiring marks a significant breakthrough for the math department. “I’m obviously thrilled about it,” Glazer said. “It’s really great because I feel like it’s been a long time coming, and I know the department and the administration have been working super hard to try and get a female faculty member.” Glazer recently sent a survey to math students at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, and MIT to gauge student opinion on, in part, issues of gender parity. The survey results revealed that 26 percent of Harvard female math concentrators who chose to respond reported deciding not to take a math course due to concerns over “gender imbalance” at least once during their time at the College. More than 80
percent of women math concentrators answered the survey. Glazer said she is glad the math department hired a senior female professor before she graduates and leaves the college come May. “I’ve just been really happy to see, over my past few years, some change,” Glazer said. “I really hope that this is an indicator of even more change, that hopefully they’ll be able to acquire even more female faculty members and that that will have, I’m sure, positive effects on the percentage of concentrators that are women.” “It’s really awesome to see it finally come to fruition,” she added. Boppana said she thinks Williams’s appointment will have both short-term and long-term impacts on Harvard math. “I think that just the presence of having a female role model in a high place is going to have very strong effects on the entire culture of the math department,” she said. Math concentrator Jennifer Hu ’18 said she can’t wait to see what Williams accomplishes at Harvard. “I think it’s great news, and I’m really excited to see what research she brings to Harvard ” she said.
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THE HARVARD CRIMSON | APRIL 6, 2018 | PAGE 7
ARTS The Foundations and Dreams of the Technical Theater Scene ALLISON J. SCHARMANN CRIMSON STAFF WRITER “The show I worked on last semester, ‘/underground,’ I looked at my build hours spreadsheet and found out that I worked 100 hours over the course of three weeks,” Gabrielle S. Preston ’20 says. “Which is not great for also being a student and a person.” Preston is the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club technical liaison, and one of just a handful of student technical directors who execute the set design of the dozens of productions the HRDC and Theater, Dance, and Media department put on each year. “I’m a full-time student trying to take five classes, and also have a social life and not be doing things sometimes. [Tech directing] makes it incredibly difficult,” Preston adds. Compared to the myriad of student actors and directors on campus who seek to put on shows at Harvard, the number of students who do technical theater is much smaller, and every show may require them to design and execute the lights, costumes, sound, and set. “In general, the sort of core staff or technical staff of people who make theater on this campus—it’s a small circle,” Preston says. “We kind of all know each other.” Beyond general technicians, the pool of technical directors is even smaller. Emily E. Bergquist ’18, the former president of HRDC, estimates that, at any given time, there are typically only three or four active technical directors on campus. “I think in traditional settings or professional settings technical directors are people who coordinate all of the technical elements of the show,” Stephanie N. Ferrarie ’18, an active producer and technical director on campus, says. At Harvard, however, technical direction is a bit different. “The biggest role [of a technical director] is to build and construct the set, and manage the process of building and painting the set,” Ahan T. Malhotra ’21 says. He explains that the technical director is also responsible for organizing a show’s “load in,” in which the show moves into a space or stage, and “strike,” when a show moves out of a space. Malhotra is tech directing the freshman class’s First-Year Musical, “Hitched.” THE EXPERIENCE BARRIER Preston, along with Bergquist, American Repertory Theater Production Supervisor for Pedagogical Programs Kat T. Nakaji, TDM Production Manager Andrew J. Gitchel, and HRDC Campus Liaison Abigail G. Sage ’21 all point to a lack of experience as one of the most prominent barriers preventing students from getting involved in technical theater. For Preston, high school formed an intense introduction to set construction. “I got here and realized I was kind of technically experienced enough to jump into things,” Preston says. “It’s very difficult to come in with no experience in a technical role and just take a project on.” Preston acknowledged that, while there are people who learn technical direction and other technical roles on the spot, the process is by no means easy. Malhotra, who has never tech directed a show before “Hitched,” credits the HRDC’s biannual Backstage Week with teaching him the skills necessary to tech direct the First-Year Musical. Backstage Week, which is generally held the week after Common Casting (the process by which most students audition for HRDC shows), is an opportunity for students to learn and practice technical skills. “For backstage week essentially I just cleared out my evening and every night I was going to the different workshops they had and they were super well organized,” Malhotra says. Sage, a freshman stage manager, urges students to get involved regardless of their experience level. “I did come in as a freshman with experience, but a lot of really, really talented people come in as freshmen with no idea what they’re doing,” she says. “By the time they’re seniors, they’re light designing shows or they’re tech directing shows and doing things that they didn’t necessarily think they’d ever do as freshmen.” “I think one of the biggest barriers is that there’s fear and apprehension that if you’ve never done it before you’re not going to be able to do it,” Nakaji says. The experience barrier may also present another challenge to the pre-existing theater community: Members who want to work with new potential technical directors must also think about the time it takes for them to learn the necessary skills, as well as the opportunities available to teach them. Nakaji stresses the importance of matching student technicians with appropriate shows for their skill levels. “One thing I do see is that a lot of times people will be like, ‘We don’t have a lighting designer for the MainStage, we’ll just get someone new!’” they say. “And I’m like, ‘Oh no, not on the MainStage. This is not the moment to learn how to do lights.’” This learning curve is steep for the students who do seek out positions as technicians or technical directors without prior experience, Preston explains. “You’re learning your position as you’re doing the production, which is fine or would be fine. But it’s not necessarily supported with the very high caliber of theater we want to produce and [there’s] not a lot of tolerance for trying stuff
and failing.” ‘A LITTLE BIT OF A TRADEOFF’ While the time commitment varies for different productions and roles, it can force students to make hard choices about what activities to take on or give up. For some students, there’s even less of a choice: A work study requirement can make taking on this time commitment even more difficult. The technicians’ dilemma does not go unnoticed by the other students who work with them. “Designers do end up signing on to a lot of shows and it can be very overburdening for them,” Sage says. She is currently stage managing two productions. When I ask her to estimate her own personal time commitment, she laughs. “More than anyone ever should.” She estimates her workload to be around two to five hours every night, plus work outside of the rehearsal room. “It’s actually really hard to have a regular job,” Preston says, “I know a lot of people who work at Widener because you set your schedule every week and it’s just hourly shifts.” Bergquist, who was an upperclassman mentor to Preston, also works at the library, along with a number of other students who are technical directors or who have other time-intensive theatrical roles. Bergquist, who doesn’t qualify for work study, also works for the Office of the Arts and previously held several different internship positions at the ART. The artistic and theatrical nature of these positions made them more complimentary to Bergquist’s work with the HRDC. “You’re working in a theater setting so if you need to sit there and send an email to your lighting designer, they’re going to understand that,” she says. But the increased time commitment needed during tech week and the production week leading up to a show’s opening night requires Bergquist to rearrange her work schedule in order to make the same amount of money. “If I have a show a month out, I’ll really load up on work shifts and make as much money as I can in the two or three weeks leading up to it because I know I probably won’t be able to work as much the next week,” she says. A similar logic follows when it comes to academics. Malhotra sought more front-loaded courses for this semester, keeping in mind that the month of April would be consumed with technical preparation for his show. The ability to participate in other extracurricular activities is also a consideration. Malhotra, who is involved in the Harvard Financial Analysts Club and Global Platinum Securities, notified members of his other commitments that he would need to spend all his free time in the theater during tech week. “There is a little bit of a tradeoff,” Malhotra says. “I think it’s manageable and you have to plan for it.” Much of the strain on technicians comes from the large number of shows they need to mount each semester. “Creating art onstage requires a significant amount of people and it requires people who have a similar mindset and are moving in a similar direction,” Gitchel explains. “I think we’re stretching our resources thin in terms of people, and even more so ‘qualified’ people.” “What ends up happening is you have one student who does everything,” he says. “They get burnt out and they stop working in theater. And then they’re not passing on any of the knowledge that they’ve gathered.” “There’s an ongoing concern if I want theater to be a serious extracurricular and this is how much time I’m putting into it: Does that hurt me later when I’m trying to put a resume together to apply to jobs that aren’t theatrical necessarily?” says Preston, who is uncertain about technical theater as a career. When not working at Widener, with the HRDC board, or designing and building sets, Preston is also the Secretary of Harvard Undergraduate Voters Choose, an election reform project. “I’m picking between what I want to do artistically and what I want to do professionally.” PRODUCERS AND DIRECTORS The shortage of trained technical directors not only increases the workload of the students who end up doing the bulk of Harvard’s tech directing, but also the workload of the producers on campus. Bergquist’s introduction to technical theater at Harvard was, in a way, accidental. She began with the HRDC as a stage manager her freshman year, eventually graduating to producing, which she found to be a much better fit. According to Bergquist, producers at Harvard have three areas of responsibility: finances, publicity, and what she calls “the technical side.” “It’s similar to what production managers do in real life,” Bergquist explains. This undertaking entails making sure a show’s set, light, sound, and costume designers meet their deadlines, ensuring the visions of each designer are consistent with one another, fostering communication among the designers as well as between them and the director, and just about anything else that comes up during the production process. While productions often have more than one producer to divvy up the workload, the shortage of technical directors can change their roles drastically. The lack of a tech director on a show
Bergquist produced resulted in her spending eight to 12 hours every week for a month in the scene shop overseeing set construction herself. “The producer and director work very closely together to build the staff for a show,” Bergquist says. “So the producers are the ones who are responsible for filling those holes with either other people or with yourself.” The responsibility that comes with her role informs much of Ferrarie’s technical involvement as a producer. “Everything comes back to you and reflects on you. That means you have a lot of stake,” she says. “I got into being a TD [technical director] because I had to build from producing,” Ferrarie says. Ferrarie added that while the technical duties expected of her in addition to her other responsibilities as a producer can be overwhelming at times, she doesn’t like to complain. “I can build, I would never have been able to build. Two or three years ago I couldn’t build anything but I had to,” she says. “That’s why I’m doing it and why people ask me to TD and do carpentry for them.” Similar to Bergquist, Ferrarie often spends 10 to 15 hours per week in the scene shop during build weeks, of which there tend to be two or three per show depending on the set. “I think that producers should know that part of the job is taking on extra responsibility,” Ferrarie says. “It’s not about delineating like ‘I’m the producer and I am just somebody who’s handling paperwork’ because that’s not what makes it fun.” Having experience both tech directing and producing taught her the importance of collaboration between the people in these roles. Bergquist cautioned against relying on producers exclusively to make up for the lack of technical directors and designers. “I’m a well enough trained technician that I could fill that role but, for example, if a show needed a costume designer–I don’t know the first thing about costume design. I could not take on that role.” ‘DREAM OF DREAMS’ Some say the problem is simple: There aren’t enough technicians at Harvard. The solution? That’s more complicated. Students and faculty alike see a path forward that requires close cooperation between the Theater, Dance, and Media Department and the HRDC. “In terms of solving this problem they have to be linked, they have to work together,” Bergquist says. “Because the HRDC has resources that TDM doesn’t, and TDM has resources that the HRDC doesn’t, and they’re both affected by this problem. I think it’s in everybody’s best interest to work closely together.” To address the experience barrier, community members say there needs to be a more efficient system of training students as technicians. As of right now, this responsibility falls collectively on upperclassmen, TDM faculty, and the production managers of Harvard’s numerous theater spaces. Gitchel conducts much of the structured technical training of students on campus. He and his colleagues in the TDM department run a series of training modules during the academic year that are required for TDM concentrators and open to all students. The modules currently offered are Stage Management, Scenery, Lights, Costumes, Sound and Video, Theater Safety, Producing, and Professional Administration Structures and Unions. In addition to his many responsibilities, including but not limited to maintaining Farkas Hall, working with student groups to stage productions and develop designs, purchasing materials, and supporting all TDM thesis projects, Gitchel also teaches classes on tech theater. “I think a year ago Kat Nakaji and I offered our technical [class] which was less design and more actual execution,” Gitchel says. “We learned about design. But also some of our projects were ‘build a video design rig with a projector and a cue lab’—so a little bit more hands on. We had lab time with that class.” Bergquist, who took the introductory course, called it “an amazing class” but added there was more to learn than there was time to teach it. “There were so many days where they were like, ‘If we had 17 more classes I could explain to you how this works but you just have to trust me that it works,’” she says. This semester, TDM is offering a course titled “Design Foundations: Scenography Studio,” an exploration of set, light, and construction design taught by MIT’s Director of Design for Music and Theater Arts, Sarah Brown. Preston, who is currently enrolled in the class, referred to Brown as “amazing.” Bergquist pointed out, however, that the Scenography class is much more focused on design than the technical aspect. “We have to expand the classes that we’re offering,” she added. The TDM department is on the same page. “I think the goal is to continue having these sorts of introductory level classes,” Gitchel says. “I would hope that students who are interested in making theater but maybe not as a career path would still take these classes.” More informal training of technical directors and technicians is dependant on older students passing on their knowledge to younger students. “I think mentorship is extremely important. I keep documents and documents of tips and I just
share them with younger producers,” Ferrarie says. In addition to her responsibilities producing and technical directing, Ferrarie also trains the newer tech directors with whom she works. Ferrarie also emphasized the importance of building community between technicians and cast members. Her experience working as a carpenter with The Harvard-Radcliffe Gilbert and Sullivan Players was highlighted by the closeness of the cast, all of whom she got to know because they helped technicians build the set. “I think building community that would make a staff member come back, it’s an expectation that needs to be set,” she says. “I think mostly that there’s just a lack of awareness that these are real positions and real jobs to be had in the world,” Nakaji says. “It’s not an afterthought. It’s an integral part of building a design, of building a show, and how to bring those people into the creative process.” Addressing the effects of the time commitment associated with technical direction is a different problem. “Frankly, it’s a big time commitment and that’s never going to change,” Ferrarie says, “and I don’t think it should because then you’ll have shoddy work.” The OFA sometimes hires and compensates student shop assistants for work on specific shows or in specific theaters, but the program doesn’t apply to the work of student technical directors or technicians broadly. Preston believes that to make positions in tech theater more accessible, Harvard should consider compensating student technicians for the work they do to create Harvard theater. Doing so, according to Preston, would allow more people to participate in technical theater rather than having to choose between working and creating art. Bergquist believes such a program could incentivize people to learn technical skills, but doesn’t believe it would fix the “fundamental problem” of addressing how more students can and should be taught these skills. “This is something that came up when we were talking about TDM giving course credit for working on productions, because it can be very tricky of where is the line of what qualifies for work study and what doesn’t,” she says. Nakaji hopes for expanded resources for student technical directors and technicians. “My dream of dreams for technical theater on campus is to just have a dedicated technical scene shop where it’s just students, it’s just for undergraduates,” they say. This workshop would provide space for students to construct their own sets, as well as sewing machines and tables for costuming, and a light box, which is a small studio space with a light board that can be used to practice programming lights. “An experimental place where people could go and work out an idea, because right now we’ll have really great ideas but not necessarily a space to work out what that would look like.” Nakaji believes that this technology would not only be enjoyed by existing technicians and designers, but would also attract new students to technical theater at Harvard. They joked, “This is very like a ‘Field of Dreams.’ If you build it they will come.” REASONS TO STAY For every challenge the technical theater community faces, there are even more reasons to love the work. The students and faculty interviewed for this piece often identified and praised those in their tight knit community. “Kat Nakaji is one of my heroes in life,” Bergquist says. “Kat does the job of twelve hundred people by themselves.” “The students here are obviously very amazing individuals in their own right. Everyone puts forth tremendous effort,” Gitchel says. “So it’s exciting to work with students who have a high threshold for achieving things and working with something they may not have encountered before.” Berquist is particularly proud of the diversity of the technical theater community at Harvard. “I think it would be very easy for our community to say ‘we need people we need people we need people,’” she says. “But everybody that I know has been very supportive of not just people, but [have said] we need women and trans people and people of color.” “It’s cool to like make something with your hands when you’re in a space that isn’t typically run by women,” Ferrarie says. And even aside from the community, there’s a draw to the craft of set-building itself that keeps convincing Preston—one of the most involved tech directors on campus—to come back, despite all of Preston’s other commitments. “I love building things, I really do,” Preston says. “I miss it when I’m not doing it.” Note: Allison J. Scharmann was the Assistant Stage Manager and an actor for “Operation 1600,” a play put on by HRDC. Staff Writer Allison J. Scharmann can be reached at allison.scharmann@thecrimson. com.
EDITORIAL
THE HARVARD CRIMSON | APRIL 6, 2018 | PAGE 6
Past and Future ‘Merit’ in College
THE CRIMSON EDITORIAL BOARD
Supporting Student Transportation The OSL was wrong to nix student travel grants
Michelle I. GAO BETWEEN THE LINES
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ions do not make them dumb or evil. Those opinions do not have to mean that they are not woke. They are different, but they are not invalid. If you are shaking your head right now, I implore you to pause for a moment. Can you look at yourself and label one single opinion that comprehensively defines your entire identity? I certainly hope not. We should all acknowledge our complexities as individuals and refuse to be defined by a single term. Then we should extend this same courtesy to others. So, I don’t want to be woke. I don’t want to restrict my definition of activism and intelligence to only include those who agree with me politically. I want to be open-minded and engaged. I want to be informed and passionate. I want to be an advocate and a human being beyond political issues. Maybe we can broaden the definition of “woke” to include these characteristics from both sides of the political spectrum, but until then I remain contently un-woke.
rom the time I learned that a student could exercise the right to look at her admissions file, I have wanted to peek behind the curtain of Harvard admissions. So against the advice of this newspaper’s Editorial Board, I filed a viewing request, waited 36 days until my appointment, and sat for 30 minutes in a conference room with a notebook, a pen, and my mysterious file. Obviously I knew the admissions office’s final decision, but I wanted to see their steps along the way. What were their impressions of me? How were they evaluating me? I knew that their deliberation would not purely be one of merit. The myth of “meritocracy” in college admissions, particularly in Harvard’s admissions, has been debunked. There are the suspicious stories of famous, seemingly less-than-qualified candidates gaining acceptance over others. There are also the suspiciously similar admit rates for certain demographics each year. But even if college admissions are not a true meritocracy, it does not mean that the concept of merit has been completely abandoned. When reading my admissions file, I found myself considering who exactly merited my admission, though. Me? Or the person in my file, who was not quite the same? My file contained lines my interviewer quoted from me—lines I remembered preparing in advance. I apparently justified my aspiration to be a journalist with the reasoning, “Words But because merit is have power.” I imagine I would about potential, the have had to be success of judging by deeply terrified and desperate to utter merit—whether one such a trite phrase actually merited what with a straight face. Further on, my inone got—can only be terviewer noted assessed in hindsight. that I explained why I applied for a job at a museum by saying that I wanted to challenge myself to improve my public speaking skills. The statement was not exactly false, because my public speaking skills had been worse before, and the job had helped me improve. But I had thought it would be a good line, a smoothing-over of my personal narrative, and I delivered it right on cue during my interview. One of my application readers imagined a possible mathematical future for me at the College, as evidenced from my calculus teacher’s recommendation. Here, I am sorry to disappoint. I have not taken a math class in college yet—not so much as dropped by one during Shopping Week. Indeed, I increasingly hope never to have to do so. Instead, I merely let my TI-84 graphing calculator gather dust on my desk. As for other predictions of my future life at Harvard, I am gladly fulfilling the one that I would work on various publications, even at this moment. Interestingly enough, my interviewer also predicted that I would be an “avid participant” of the Phillips Brooks House Association. While I am a member of a PBHA program, I would not count myself an “avid” one. I especially pale in comparison to the many peers I know who dedicate much more time, effort, and genuine heart into their community service activities. So how do I reconcile these two people—the person that the officers and interviewer assessed and admitted, and the person now attending Harvard? This question of merit grows more complex with each action the second person makes. Admissions officers judge one’s merit by looking at one’s past accomplishments and circumstances. But merit is not just about one’s past—it is about one’s future potential. Prior success only matters in so far as it suggests that one can achieve even more success with access to the Harvard communiWe in the College are ty and the Harvard That’s why still in the short-term, name. the admissions file though—the verdict on contains numbers one’s viour “merit” is still out. predicting ability as a roommate, contribution to college life, intellectual originality, and more. They want to quantify potential, distill it into some easy-toread numbers, because this is the crucial measure. But because merit is about potential, the success of judging by merit—whether one actually merited what one got—can only be assessed in hindsight. It will not be the person in the admissions file, or even the person in the college classroom, who determines merit. It is the person that one becomes from going through college, from living in the “real” world, which is more ruled by meritocracy than elite universities, who will determine whether the admission was justified. Discussions of merit should therefore take the longterm view. We in the College are still in the short-term, though—the verdict on our “merit” is still out. So while I encourage those who want to look at their admissions file and satiate their curiosity to do so, I do not believe one should linger on it too long. For me, at least, regardless of what exactly got me here, I continuously work toward a future in which I can say I merited what I got.
Romy Dolgin ’21, a Crimson editorial editor, lives in Holworthy Hall.
Michelle I. Gao ’21, a Crimson editorial editor, lives in Weld Hall. Her column appears on alternate Fridays.
DANU A. MUDANNAYAKE—CRIMSON ILLUSTRATOR
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n the past, Dean of Students Katherine G. O’Dair, who leads the OSL, has stated that she and the Office are “committed to transparency.” By contrast, this cancellation came without warning or any indication that a cut to such funding would be occurring. This is not only unfair to the leadership of student groups who must now deal with an unexpected loss of funding, but also to students themselves, who may not be able to attend certain events without significant spending from their own budgets. Additionally, the OSL’s sudden decision calls into question whether the student body can trust the OSL (or any future office that will employ its staff ) to be transparent about other issues in the future. We accept that the OSL should maintain fiscal responsibility and ensure that the money it provides is put to good use. As it functioned in the past, the application for OSL funding was open to all student groups in good standing, as well as individuals traveling to academic conferences. We acknowledge that some students and student groups may well have misused the funding, which the OSL should strictly monitor and appropriately punish. We do not believe that voiding the entire grant for the upcoming year consti-
tutes the latter. The benefits to funding travel are sundry, as doing so is beneficial to enhancing students’ education, diversifying opinion, and equalizing the experience of students from differing socioeconomic classes. This type of funding is especially useful to students and organizations who cannot afford to travel without aid. Especially in light of its the recent report by the Task Force
The benefits to funding travel are sundry, as doing so is beneficial to enhancing students’ education, diversifying opinion, and equalizing the experience of students from differing socioeconomic classes.
needs to trim its budget, transportation grants should not be one of the first programs to go. Indeed, in contrast to the OSL’s current course of action, the funding for this particular grant was originally increased from $20,000 to $50,000 in 2014, as recommended by a College working group on student organization transportation. The working group was originally convened shortly after a student’s death in a car crash while driving back to Harvard from a mock trial tournament. This tragic history demonstrates the importance of funding safe transportation, and we urge the OSL to reinstate it as soon as possible. Ultimately, this course of action taken by the OSL is misguided on many levels. In order to continue to emphasize economic diversity, safety, and student extracurricular involvement, we urge the OSL to reconsider this choice.
on Inclusion and Belonging, the University is contradicting its own focus on inclusion by cutting transportation grants. We maintain that funding student travel is a good allocation of resources, and that other solutions exist to combat the risks of the grant being exploited. We also maintain that even if the OSL
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.
Why I’m Not Woke By ROMY DOLGIN
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et woke. Any woke person knows what that means. You don’t need to look up the Merriam-Webster or even Urban Dictionary definitions to know I am not using incorrect grammar to try and get you out of bed in the morning. I’m telling you to open your eyes and become socially engaged. I’m imploring you to educate yourself on current events and political issues. Being woke is being plugged in and being actively aware and involved with the world around you. However, the word holds a partisan undertone that we usually don’t even notice, and if we do, that we probably don’t disagree with. The word “woke” implies that to support the liberal viewpoint is to be socially aware. Woke people are heavily informed and actively involved with liberal social issues. If you’re leading a Black Lives Matter protest, you’re probably woke. If you’re calling your congressperson to advocate for Planned Parenthood, you’re probably woke. If you’re handing out pro-life leaflets, however, you probably will not receive the woke label. This biased nomenclature is rooted in a belief held by some on the left that people are only conservative because they are uneducated. If only people were smarter, more informed, more woke, then surely they would see the Democratic light and switch sides. Nevertheless, it is crucial to see the fault in this mindset. Some of the most woke—socially informed and engaged—people I know are woke from the right. I know conservatives who watch the news 24/7 and don’t let a single current event slip their notice. I know people who utilize grassroots efforts to engage with their community to raise awareness for an
issue that is of the utmost importance to them: anti-abortion legislation. Conservatism is not about being misinformed and being woke is not about liberalism. There are educated, impassioned individuals on all sides of an issue. I do acknowledge that the origins of the word “woke” stem from the black community and its fight for equality. I understand that, historically, racial equality has been primarily driven by liberals, and hence the historical connection between the word and partisanship is natural. However, woke is spreading. It is taking on new meaning and new reach. Woke is starting to become an umbrella term for all that is just, thus making justice synonymous with Democratic political platforms. Such a usage of language is merely one example of rampant political polarization in the United States. We would rather assume that people on the other side are misinformed or downright idiotic than acknowledge the viability of different opinions or priorities. Furthermore, we have reached a point where we often isolate ourselves from people with differing political opinions. This is harmful in the obvious sense: It diminishes open, enriching political discourse. However, even more harmful is the reduction of individuals with whom we disagree to nothing more than their political beliefs. We allow our own self-image to be defined by our political identification. We fail to realize that people are more than their votes for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. People have families, friends, hobbies, passions, thoughts, and priorities. A Trump voter is not necessarily a raving racist, and a Clinton voter is not necessarily trying to leech off your hard-earned money. They are simply people who have different opinions than you. Those opin-
The Harvard Crimson President Derek G. Xiao ’19 Managing Editor Hannah Natanson ’19 Business Manager Nathan Y. Lee ’19
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY, EST. 1873 Associate Managing Editors Mia C. Karr ’19 Claire E. Parker ’19
Blog Chairs Lydia L. Cawley ’20 Stuti Telidevara ’20
FM Chairs Marella A. Gayla ’19 Leah S. Yared ’19
Associate Business Managers Dahlia S. Huh ’19 Max W. Sosland ’19
Design Chairs Morgan J. Spaulding ’19 Simon S. Sun ’19
Multimedia Chairs Amy Y. Li ’20 Ellis J. Yeo ’20
Editorial Chairs Emmanuel R. R. D’Agostino ’19 Cristian D. Pleters ’19
Digital Strategists Caroline S. Engelmayer ’20 Jamie D. Halper ’20 Dianne Lee ’20
Sports Chairs Cade S. Palmer ’20 Jack R. Stockless ’19
Arts Chairs Mila Gauvini II ’19 Grace Z. Li ’19
Technology Chairs Nenya A. Edjah ’20 Theodore T. Liu ’20
Page 8 | APRIL 6, 2018 | The Harvard Crimson
Sports
The Harvard Crimson | april 6, 2018 | page 9
Harvard Overcomes B.C., Back in Beanpot Finals men’s baseball By BRYAN HU Crimson Staff Writer
It took extra innings, an extra day due to a weather delay, and a great deal of resilience, but the Harvard baseball team is back in the Beanpot finals. The “Bad Boys” Crimson squad rolled into Brighton Baseball Field on a freezing Wednesday night and took down Boston College, 7-4, on junior outfielder P.J. Robinson’s three-run homer in the eleventh. A year after losing to the Eagles (917, 4-8 ACC) in the annual four-team tournament finals, Harvard (10-13, 1-2 Ivy League) exacted revenge in this year’s semifinal match, getting out to an early lead and overcoming multiple BC comebacks. With the win, the Crimson will play another crosstown rival, Northeastern, which beat UMass on a grand slam, for the crown on Tuesday, April 17. Robinson, the Crimson’s Male Breakout Athlete of the Year last year, played hero for the visiting Harvard squad in extras against a strong Eagles team. With the game knotted at four in the top of the eleventh, junior first baseman Pat McColl and sophomore outfielder Jake Suddleson started the rally by getting on base with one out. Robinson then took advantage of junior BC righty Thomas Lane’s poor command and sent an 0-1 pitch sailing over the wall to give the Crimson a 7-4 lead. “I got a fastball away and just managed to get my bat to it,” Robinson said. “[The game] ended up going to extras and it was good to get the game over with.” The duo of Robinson and McColl was potent all night long. Each garnered four-hit days, combining for an 8-for-11 performance that has come to be expected since the two emerged as Harvard’s offensive leaders last season. “Pat [McColl] had a huge day, it’s always good when you can be that guy who can step up and come up big for your team,” said sophomore two-way player Hunter Bigge, who got the start on the mound against the Eagles and held BC scoreless through four innings of work. McColl went 4-for-5 with two runs scored and has a team-leading 23 RBIs to complement a .272 average on the year. Robinson hit 4-for-6 at the dish and drove in the winning runs. He appears to be heating up halfway through the season, a good sign for his comeback from a concussion. The Melbourne, Fla. native is now hitting .288. “We have [P.J. Robinson] back from a concussion, and it’s great to see him back in his form of just raking every single time he’s on the field,” Bigge said.
picking his spot Sophomore southpaw JT Bernard looks for a sign from his catcher as he prepares to uncork a heater against Boston College. Bernard, a Douglasville, Ga. native, is looking to build on a promising freshman campaign with the “Bad Boys” Crimson in which he made nine total appearances on the mound. Ryosuke takashima—Crimson photographer
McColl and Robinson’s heroics were needed on a night when BC staged multiple comebacks to prolong the game on a freezing night in Brighton. First down 3-0 after the first inning, the Eagles tied the game at three in the seventh, and after the Crimson tallied a run in the top of the eighth, plated a run in the bottom of the ninth to force extras. The blown leads, however, did nothing to dampen the atmosphere in the Harvard dugout. “We were laughing, just trying to stay positive throughout the whole thing,” Bigge said. “It was freezing outside, it was a close game against a really good team. It was a really disorganized situation coming into the game, and we were kind of just like, ‘alright, let’s not care about anything, have a positive attitude, have a smile on our face.’” Especially as the semifinal was originally scheduled for Tuesday night, the postponement derailed many stu-
dent-athlete schedules. In addition, as Robinson noted, the Crimson squad is very much in the Beanpot but is also focused on Ivy League play, which continues this weekend against Penn. The combination of light-hearted play and a collective team resilience contributed to the big team win against Boston College, ranked 104th on the RPI Div I Baseball rankings as of April 4. The Crimson, with its upset, jumped 37 spots to 153rd. Harvard’s next opponent, Northeastern, slots in at a cool 13th place. “Collectively, we had a lot of resilience, which is something we’re trying to do as a team, build an identity around,” said Robinson on his team’s play under the circumstances. “It was really good to see that everyone was in the game, everyone was cheering on their teammates. It was really a good collective team win.” Senior third baseman Jake Forte and freshman shortstop Buddy Mrow-
ka collected RBIs for the Crimson. Senior Matt Rothenberg also collected a hit and an RBI in his pinch-hit appearance in the eighth inning. A big part of Harvard’s success was its pitching, which did enough to keep the Crimson in the game and the Eagles off the board. The pitching staff collectively held BC to just six hits while the Harvard offense got 16 knocks. Bigge, a utility player capable of pitching and playing in the field, got the start on the mound and went four clean innings, striking out two, walking two, and only giving up two hits. “This was my first time pitching in about three weeks, and it was definitely good to get a good start this week,” Bigge said. “It’s been a fun season on the mound.” Junior outfielder John MacLean continued his newfound hotstreak on the mound, coming into a jam in the bottom of the sixth and getting a crucial strikeout in a bases-loaded situa-
tion to preserve a 3-1 lead. Freshman righty Jack Mahala pitched tossed 1.1 no-hit relief innings and sophomore righty Grant Stone mowed down the Eagles hitters in the bottom of the eleventh to get the save. The Crimson staked itself to a 3-0 lead on RBI singles by Forte and Mrowka, while junior center fielder Ben Skinner got it started with a leadoff single, coming around to score on a wild pitch. Before the semifinal match against Boston College, Skinner said the Harvard team hoped to bring the “Bad Boys” moniker into not just the Ivy League, but to the rest of Boston as well. The Bad Boys of Boston now look to bring their swagger into the Beanpot finals, which, originally set for next Tuesday, has been postponed to Tuesday, April 17. Staff writer Bryan Hu can be reached at bryan.hu@thecrimson.com.
Crimson, Radcliffe Crews Race During Weekend Men’s And women’s crew By Leon K. Yang Crimson Staff Writer
This weekend, all four of Harvard’s crews will take to the water in a full slate of competitive racing. In the case of the No. 13 ranked men’s lightweight crew, this weekend’s races will mark the beginning of the spring dual season. After strong performances at the National Championships last year, in which the second-ranked Crimson took the overall team’s points title and the varsity with no coxswain gold medal, the rowers of
Harvard will take on Cornell and Penn on Saturday in Ithaca, N.Y. They will then plunge their oars into the Charles on Sunday for a matchup against Columbia and Georgetown. Cornell, in particular, will come to the line as defending national champions. “I respect the teams and you never want to underestimate your opponents, especially in the lightweight league where everything is so tight,” Dupuis said. “The races themselves can be won over seats, so you always have to bring your A-game to every single race. The lightweight league is always competitive almost among all the boats, so we have to be performing at
the highest level.” Especially after an intensive winter and spring training campaign, the lightweight rowers will be raring to get off the line in a competitive atmosphere. “All the hard work from the fall and winter builds for the spring, so I think everyone on the team is exciting to get racing,” Dupuis said. “That’s why we do this whole thing, so I think all the boats are really excited to show off the work that they’ve put in over the many, many months.” Meanwhile, the No. 6 women’s lightweight crew team will look to rebound after last weekend’s losses, in
which the team was upended by both No. 8 Georgetown and Bates. Radcliffe fell in all three varsity races as the Hoyas captured the Class of 2004 Cup. This Saturday, the Black and White will take on Princeton at Lake Carnegie in New Jersey in which the Class of 1999 Cup will be on the line. The waters will splash with the oars from crews of seven of the Ivy League programs Last year on the Charles, Radcliffe’s first varsity boat edged the Tiger’s crew by a mere 1.7 seconds. At the same time, the men’s heavyweight program will be traveling to Providence, R.I., to battle Brown after easing past Cornell and George Wash-
laser focused The Radcliffe lightweight crew, pictured here against BU and MIT, will be looking to get back to winning ways this weekend. Kathryn S. Kuhar—Crimson photographer
ington last weekend, including a finish in the varsity eight that was 10 seconds faster than the rest of the field’s. The Bears enter the contest after conceding the Albert Cup to Yale last weekend. More class cups will be on the line for the No. 16 Radcliffe heavyweight crew. After being edged by Brown by three seconds in the varsity eight last weekend, the team will join its lightweight counterparts on Lake Carnegie and will vie for the Class of 1975 Cup in the morning against Princeton and Cornell and then return to the water in the afternoon to try to capture the Class of 1984 Plaque against Princeton, Dartmouth, and Penn. The Tigers enter the races as favorites after winning the Class of 1975 Cup the past four years and maintaining a perfect record in the Class of 1984 Plaque. Sophomore coxswain Katherine Paglione said that the team is focused on the technical workings of its stroke going into the races on Saturday. Paglione said that the team will focus on each race individually and will not think too much about the class cups. “We’re focusing purely on that first race against Princeton and Cornell and once we get that result, we move on to the next,” Paglione said. “So, one piece at a time, and then one thing leading up before the race is how we’re going about it.” The confluence of many Ivy League teams early in the season also provides a unique opportunity for the crew and will guarantee a week of intense rivalry across the conference. “There’s going to be a lot of things to watch, a lot of things to distract you from what you’re trying to do, so I think how our team goes about it, we don’t mention the race is this cup or that cup,” Paglione said. “We’re just trying to get the best margins we can and the best results we can against the teams. So for us, it feels like another race, but it will be a challenge to keep our heads in the boat and focus on what we need to do because it’s almost a mini championship midway through the season.” Staff writer Leon K. Yang can be reached at leon.yang@thecrimson.com.