The Harvard Crimson - Volume CXLV, No. 33

THE UNIVERSITY DAILY, EST. 1873 | VOLUME CXLV NO. 33 | CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS | TUESDAY, MARCH 6, 2018

The Harvard Crimson The University failed to protect affiliates from Government Professor Jorge I. Dominguez. EDITORIAL PAGE 10

Ryan wins individual College Squash Association national title as darkhorse. SPORTS PAGE 11

Dominguez Fallout Continues Gov Profs., Grad Students Reach out to Students after Allegations

Dominguez to Be Paid while on Leave Following Allegations

By JAMIE D. HALPER

By ANGELA N. FU and LUCY WANG

CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

rounding sexual harassment, I’d encourage you to reach out. This isn’t something that anyone should have to deal with alone,” Green added.

Harvard is launching an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment by Government Professor Jorge I. Dominguez—an inquiry that may take shape as a Title IX investigation per Faculty of Arts and Sciences sexual harassment procedures.

A few days after The Chronicle of Higher Education published new accusations against Dominguez, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences placed him on “administrative leave.” FAS Dean Michael D. Smith wrote in an email Sunday that FAS will conduct an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment from 10 women that together span three decades.

“I write to announce that the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) has placed Jorge Dominguez on administrative leave, pending a full and fair review of the facts and circumstances regarding allegations that have come to light,” Smith wrote.

Harvard administrators have asked students and faculty who have experienced harassment to come forward and share their experiences.

“We encourage any member of our community who has experienced inappropriate behavior to come forward,” FAS spokesperson Anna Cowenhoven wrote in a statement to The Crimson.

Asked who will be carrying out the review of Dominguez, Cowenhoven directed The Crimson to the FAS Sexual and Gender-Based Harassment Policy and Procedures.

SEE RESPONSE PAGE 7

SEE INVESTIGATION PAGE 7

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By CECILIA R. D’ARMS CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Several professors, teaching fellows, and advisers in the Government Department reached out to students with messages of support and calls to join discussions about departmental climate in the wake of sexual harassment allegations against Government Professor Jorge I. Dominguez.

The Chronicle of Higher Education published a Feb. 26 article reporting that least 10 women are accusing Dominguez of various acts of sexual harassment perpetrated over the past 30 years. In a second Chronicle article published Sunday, eight more women stepped forward to accuse Dominguez of sexual misconduct. That same day, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Michael D. Smith announced the FAS had placed Dominguez on “administrative leave.”

On Friday, the Government department held a meeting for concentrators with departmental and Title IX administrators to debrief about the allegations. Professors and graduate students, though, have also taken it upon themselves to discuss the situation in recent days.

Naima N. M. Green, a graduate student in the Government department and tutor in Adams House, sent an email Sunday about the issue to students she teaches and advises.

“As a grad student in the depart-

Dominguez Likely Faces Title IX Investigation Into Misconduct

Professor Jorge I. Dominguez, who faces a University investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct, poses for a photo in 2016. LAUREN A. SIERRA—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

ment, I’ve found this issue—and aspects of the response to it—upsetting and difficult to deal with,” Green wrote.

“If any of you are struggling with this, or with other such issues sur-

HCFA Probations to Have Negligible Effect

By CAROLINE S. ENGELMAYER and MICHAEL E. XIE CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Harvard College Faith and Action will not lose the ability to book rooms, recruit students, or receive Undergraduate Council funding as part of its yearlong probation imposed by the College, according to the group’s parent ministry and messages obtained by The Crimson.

In late February, the College announced it had put HCFA on probation for 12 months after the group asked a woman in a same-sex relationship to step down from a leadership position in Sept. 2017. Administrators have repeatedly refused to say whether probation means HCFA has lost privileges accorded to recognized student groups, including the ability to reserve College spaces, poster on campus, and ­

participate in activity fairs.

Now, though, Harvard officials seem to have decided HCFA’s probation will have little immediate practical effect.

“It has been confirmed that the probation status of HCFA means no loss of privileges from Harvard College itself in the form of room booking and student outreach,” Christian Union— HCFA’s parent group—wrote on a website page titled “Harvard Recognition Blog.”

HCFA held its weekly worship event, Doxa, last Friday in Yenching Auditorium, a Harvard space.

The Office of Student Life also told UC leadership that HCFA was not banned from Council funding per the Office’s policies, according to UC group messages obtained by The Crimson.

SEE HCFA PAGE 9

CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

The University will continue to pay Government professor Jorge I. Dominguez while he is on “administrative leave” for allegedly sexual harassing women in the Government department, according to Anna Cowenhoven, a spokesperson for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Michael D. Smith announced in an email Sunday that FAS placed Dominguez on leave “pending a full and fair review of the facts and circumstances.” In his email, Smith cited allegations against Dominguez first reported by the Chronicle of Higher Education in a Feb. 27 article. In that article, at least 10 women accused Dominguez of sexually harassing them at various points across the last 30 years.

Though Dominguez will retain his tenure, he will not be able to teach or perform other administrative duties while on leave, Cowenhoven wrote in an emailed statement Monday.

Dominguez is currently on sabbatical this semester, though he also serves as chair of the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. He is also a senior adviser to the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, where he worked as director from 1995 to 2006.

Other Ivy League schools have seen professors accused of sexual misconduct in recent months—prompting universities to respond in different ways. ­

SEE LEAVE PAGE 9

Square Vacancies Stir Debate

By HENRY W. BURNES and FRANKLIN R. CIVANTOS CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Storefronts remain empty in Harvard Square after a number of business closed their doors in the last couple of years. AMY Y. LI—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Since Crimson Corner left its location at the intersection of Massachusetts Ave, JFK St., and Brattle St. over a year ago, national pizza chain &pizza has sought to secure the necessary approval to open.

In the meantime, the space has sat alongside a number of empty storefronts and new chain locations throughout the Square—and it has drawn attention to changing business dynamics in the area.

High turnover in the Square in recent years has left some storefronts without operating businesses.

Prominently featured storefronts—

SEE VACANCIES PAGE 7

Univ. Plans New Allston Childcare Facility

50 Follen St. Apartment Building Catches Fire

By LUKE W. XU

By CAROLINE S. ENGELMAYER and MICHAEL E. XIE

CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

The University plans to build a new childcare facility in Allston, the first expansion in decades, according to Judith D. Singer, vice provost for faculty development and diversity.

Singer said in a February interview the decision was prompted by the concerns of professors in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

“A lot of the credit for pushing that forward, in addition to the people in the central administration wanting it, was the Engineering school,” Singer said.

“And the faculty, both women and men in the engineering school, who very much wanted to have on-campus childcare which is good for both women and

CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

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SEE CHILDCARE PAGE 9 INSIDE THIS ISSUE

Harvard Today 2

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Cambridge Fire Department trucks were stationed outside 50 Follen Street, an apartment building occupied in part by Harvard graduate students. AMY Y. LI—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

News 7

Editorial 10

Sports 11

TODAY’S FORECAST

MOSTLY CLOUDY High: 40 Low: 31

A three-alarm fire broke out Monday evening at 50 Follen St., an apartment building occupied in part by Harvard graduate students, and raged for roughly half an hour before firefighters were able to stop the blaze.

Acting chief of the Cambridge Fire Department Gerry Mahoney said the fire started around 8:30 p.m. Monday evening and that fire department personnel arrived on the scene almost immediately.

“I’d say the fire was pretty well knocked out about 20 to 30 minutes into it,” Mahoney said at a press briefing at roughly 10:30 p.m. Monday.

VISIT THECRIMSON.COM. FOLLOW @THECRIMSON ON TWITTER.

SEE FIRE PAGE 9

Carpentry

HARVARD TODAY

TUESDAY| MARCH 6, 2018

FOR LUNCH

FOR DINNER

Chicken Tikka Masala

Herb Roasted Chicken

Crispy Flounder with Daikon Sauce

Harvest Seitan Stew

Hummus Florentine Sandwuch

Roasted Potato Wedges

Penne with Cauliflower

CAMBRIDGE COMMON

AROUND THE IVIES

A woman walks along a path in Cambridge Common Monday mid-afternoon.

Yale Storage Facility Collapses

SUNG KWANG OH—CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

A Yale storage facility collapsed Friday night as a result of the extreme winds recently experienced throughout the Northeast, according to the Yale Daily News. The building, located near the School of Management and the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, served as a storage facility for maintenance equipment. No one was injured in the collapse, and the Chief of the New Haven Fire Department said the only other building that could be affected by the collapse is a onestory garage adjacent to the storage facility.

Yale students expressed concern that similar accidents could happen to Yale’s aging buildings, potentially injuring students.

Dartmouth Names Members to Sexual Misconduct Committee According to the Dartmouth, the Presidential Steering Committee on Sexual Misconduct, will be chaired by Leslie Henderson, dean for faculty affairs at the Geisel School of Medicine, and includes professors as well as administrators from across a wide range of offices and divisions.

Committee member and Title IX coordinator, Alison O’Connell, said that the committee is tasked with “finding areas of improvement” in the current policy, and not with creating a new policy. The committee will review the sexual misconduct policies and education programs currently in place.

Cornell Student could be Deported if Convicted of a Hate Crime

HAPPY TUESDAY! Hold your horses, it’s still T-2 days until Housing Day! Get your midterms and psets done today so you can be free to ~celebrate~ Wednesday and Thursday.

In the Atmosphere…

Hope you got enough sun yesterday because today will be very gloomy.

Temperatures won’t break 40. :(

EVENTS The Past & Future of Prison Education at Harvard Head to Sanders Theater at 6 for this free event, a panel discussion about prison education and Harvard’s relation to it. The talk will feature speakers including Michelle Jones and Government Professor Danielle Allen.

HRDC Acting Workshop with David Levine Join HRDC on the Loeb Mainstage at 5 p.m. for an acting workshop with TDM professor David Levine. No experience is necessary, so go break a leg!

Rocket Claman STAFF WRITER

A Canadian Cornell student charged with a hate crime last semester could be permanently deported from the United States if convicted.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has already shown interest in the case, according to the Cornell Daily Sun. The student allegedly assaulted a black student because of his race, punching him in the face and leaving him bloody and dizzy. Under federal immigration law, a conviction of a race-motivated crime would leave the accused student unable to return to the U.S. in the near future. The student charged in the assault is currently on leave from Cornell and his disciplinary case at the school remains on hold until the criminal case reaches a conclusion.

IN THE REAL WORLD Ex-Trump Aide Refuses to Appear Before Grand Jury In the latest development of the ongoing special counsel investigation, former Trump aide Sam Nunberg announced in a set of interviews that he would not appear before a grand jury, despite having been subpoenaed.

Now we wait for Robert Mueller’s response...

Trump Tariffs Spark GOP Rift Did you think there was only one item of political drama today? Nope. President Trump’s attempts to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports have the GOP in a frenzy, with House Speaker Paul Ryan warning that the heightened negotiations could cause a “trade war.”

Pizza War in NYC There’s a battle going on, and no, it’s not the aforementioned trade war.

Famous Joe’s Pizza and Famous Joe’s Pizza of the Village in court over alleged intellectual property theft, among other things. Can’t we just all agree that the more pizza places, the better?

WAITING AT THE DOT

A DAY OF HOPE AND RESISTANCE The College hosted a day of programs for DACA recipients and their supporters, culminating in a concert at Memorial Church Monday evening.

SUNG KWANG OH—CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

The Harvard Crimson THE UNIVERSITY DAILY, EST. 1873 Derek G. Xiao, President Hannah Natanson, Managing Editor Nathan Y. Lee, Business Manager Copyright 2018, The Harvard Crimson (USPS 236-560). No articles, editorials, cartoons or any part thereof appearing in The Crimson may be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the President. The Associated Press holds the right to reprint any materials published in The Crimson. The Crimson is a non-profit, independent corporation, founded in 1873 and incorporated in 1967. Second-class postage paid in Boston, Massachusetts. Published Monday through Friday except holidays and during vacations, three times weekly during reading and exam periods by The Harvard Crimson Inc., 14 Plympton St., Cambridge, Mass. 02138 Weather icons made by Freepik, Yannick, Situ Herrera, OCHA, SimpleIcon, Catalin Fertu from flaticon.com is licensed by CC BY 3.0.

QUOTE OF THE DAY “What we should be doing is we should be trying to make sure [HCFA is] not being funded until they leave administrative probation.”

Henry S. Atkins ’20, UC Finance Committee Chair

CORRECTIONS The Harvard Crimson is committed to accuracy in its reporting. Factual errors are corrected promptly on this page.

Readers with information about errors are asked to e-mail the managing editor at managingeditor@thecrimson.com.

STAFF FOR THIS ISSUE Night Editor Brittany N. Ellis ’19

Alison W. Steinbach ’19 Brian P. Yu ’19 Phelan Yu ‘19

Assistant Night Editors Henry W. Burnes ’21 Design Editors Lucas Ward ’20 Simon S. Sun ’19 Diana C. Perez ’19 Story Editors Joshua J. Florence ’19 Editorial Editor Mia C. Karr ’19 Wonik Son ’19 Hannah Natanson ’19 Claire E. Parker ’19 Photo Editors Kenton K. Shimozaki ’19 Amy Y. Li ’20

Sports Editor William Quan ’20

ARTS

THE HARVARD CRIMSON | MARCH 6, 2018 | PAGE 3

ARTS Junot Díaz on the Monster of “Islandborn” GRACE Z. LI CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Junot Díaz wants you to know what children’s books can do. His first venture into the genre, “Islandborn,” follows a young girl named Lola as she tries to remember the Island, the country she left as a baby. She tracks details through memories from family and friends, all of which are vividly illustrated by Leo Espinosa in brightly colored pages—that is, until a dark, shadowy “Monster” interrupts Lola’s cheerful narrative.

“I was hoping this book wouldn’t just be a comment on little Lola and her lovely family and this larger island community from which she comes,” Díaz says. “I was hoping it would also be something of a dialogue about what children’s literature is capable of.”

Children’s books are no strangers to monsters or antagonists, the building blocks to many self-sustaining plots.

Under Díaz’s pen, the Monster of “Islandborn” comes to represent larger political implications.

“For me, the Monster represents the savage, traumatic histories from which many of us immigrants emerge—a history that is often erased or silenced within our communities and inside of the community in which we find ourselves,” Díaz says. “It’s a common injury that many immigrant communities wrestle with.”

The Monster of “Islandborn” is a large, bat-like creature. In its first appearance, it flies above a wave that threatens to encapsulate the Island.

For those familiar with Díaz’s work, the parallels between the Island and the Dominican Republic are overt: between the Monster’s 30 years of havoc and Rafael Trujillo’s 31 years of dictatorship, and between the wave and Hurricane San Zenon, the natural disaster that prompted Trujillo to place the nation under martial law and rebuild Santo Domingo under a new name—Ciudad Trujillo (Trujillo City).

But Díaz makes no explicit references to what the Monster could represent: The monster is simply called “the Monster,” just as the island is called “the Island.”

This ambiguity is intentional. “One wants to offer up opportunities for

readers. I think that you want readers to participate in the text, and therefore the monster can be read multiplicitously,” Díaz says. “I would argue it’s part of being fair to your reader, but also that even within one specific community the political monstrosities I’m talking about don’t land on us equally.

COURTESY OF NINA SUBIN

I think that for me it’s far easier to have a symbolic representation than an explicit one.”

At one point in “Islandborn,” Lola’s grandmother sees Lola’s drawing of the Monster, and turns still. “Abuela, did you know about the Monster?”

Lola asks her. “Of course, hija. Why do you think so many of us are here in the North?” It’s a moment that could be a manifestation of cultural trauma, but Díaz says he wants readers to make their own evaluations about the book.

“I would hate to over-authorize any particular reading. I would simply say that if you finish this book, by the time you get to the end, you have to read a lot of incidents and characters completely differently,” Díaz says. “I would make the claim that you can’t read the in-

nocuous interactions in the first three quarters of the book quite the same way once you understand what’s lurking behind them.”

Despite these potentially dark undertones, most of “Islandborn” is filled with vibrant illustrations describing Lola’s own journey in finding the Island. The Monster only makes visual appearances on three spreads out of 48 pages. In its second, it sinks into the sea, eclipsed by a chain of people holding hands in an act of defiance: “Heroes rose up. Strong smart young women just like you, Lola, and a few strong smart young men, too.”

“One of the trends we see in children’s writing, in children, is that they’re more emotionally robust, more narratively resilient than adults imagine them to be. And again, I always think the politics of innocence don’t serve our communities well,” Díaz says. “If you’re a person of color, if you’re a person of African-descent, if you’re an immigrant—all these things I am—these politics of innocence that structure children’s literature in some ways do us more harm than they do us good. They erase or they discourage realities and reckonings without which those of us who are members of these communities cannot come to a real understanding of who we are.”

Díaz argues that some amount of realism—despite its somber nature—is necessary and, perhaps, liberating. “Is Lola more integrated, more empowered, and more full of joy before her realization that the Island is haunted by the Monster,” Díaz asks. “Or after?”

The monster makes its third and final appearance on the last page of “Islandborn.” Lola opens her book of drawings, “and out burst[s] the Island” in a flurry of sunshine, music, and smiling faces and animals. And warriors— young women like Lola—who battle the Monster into the corner of the page, away from their home and into the ocean.

Staff writer Grace Z. Li can be reached at grace.li@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @gracezhali.

the week in arts

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TUESDAY

7

wednesday

8

Thursday

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BARDIC DIVAS: A CELEBRATION OF WOMEN’S MUSIC MAKING IN CENTRAL ASIA The performers of QYRQ-QYZ (Forty Girls) will discuss the tale of female heroes that brought them together as well as their own art. This event is presented by the Harvard University Music Department and Aga Khan Music Initiative.

Paine Hall. 8 p.m. Free.

RESISTANCE MIC! In the wake of the 2016 election, the A.R.T. started a series of performance nights featuring a diverse group of artist-activists telling powerful stories and performing politically engaged works. Hosted by Harvard professor Timothy Patrick McCarthy and Sarah Sweeney, the night is co-sponsored by the A.R.T., the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, and Pangyrus LitMag. OBERON. 8 p.m. $5.

IXANCUL This short film is the fifth installment in Feminism and the Fairy Tale: A 2017-18 Film Series, put on by the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Ixancul is the first film made in Kaqchikel and depicts the dreams of a young girl working as a coffee harvester on the slopes of an active volcano through the lens of docu-fabulism.

Radcliffe College Room, Schlesinger Library. 6 p.m.

Free.

friday HAVE A NICE DAY This film tells the story of Xiao Zhang, a driver from a small town in Southern China who steals $1 million from his boss in a desperate attempt to find money to save his fiancée’s failed plastic surgery. Directed by Liu Jian, the innovative film breaks new ground on the front of Chinese animation.

Brattle Theater. 9:30 p.m. $11.

10

saturday

11

sunday

12

monday

COURTESY OF DIAL BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

PROCESS: HAND AND MACHINE MADE This tour at the Institute of Contemporary Art explores different media and the way that they combine and interact in work by different artists. Discover the surprising ways contemporary artists fashion works by hand or via a range of 21st century and traditional tools, and sometimes together in the same work.

Institute of Contemporary Art. 1 p.m. $15.

TALK NERDY TO ME! ROGUE BURLESQUE Worlds collide at the A.R.T’s “nerdlesque” show, hosted by local comedians Jessie Baade and Dale Stones. This fourth annual show combines nerd culture with sex appeal promises to be a one of a kind show, making a home for the more risque of those who indulge in fandom worlds.

OBERON. 8 p.m. $20.

95 AND 6 TO GO “95 AND 6 TO GO” intertwines a widower’s memories with the fictional screenplay his granddaughter is writing. Shot over 6 years in Honolulu, this film reveals the fine line between rumination and imagination. After the screening, the director, Kim Takesue, will lead an in-person discussion.

Brattle Theater. 7 p.m. $12.

6 March 2018 | VOL CXLv, ISSUE v Arts Chairs Mila Gauvin II ’19 Grace Z. Li ’19

EDITOR Associates Kaylee S. Kim ’20 Caroline A. Tsai ’20 Aline G. Damas ’20 Noah F. Houghton ’20 Edward M. Litwin ’19 Petra Laura Oreskovic ’20 Ethan B. Reichsman ’19 Yael M. Saiger ’19

Caroline E. Tew ’20 Jonathan P. Trang ’19 Lucy Wang ’20

Executive Designer Hanna Kim ‘21

Design Associates Mireya C. Arango ‘20 Emily H. Hong ‘21 Julianna C. Kardish ‘20 Jessica N. Morandi ‘21

Executive PhotographerS Kathryn S. Kuhar ‘20 Zennie L. Wey ’20

ARTS

THE HARVARD CRIMSON | MARCH 6, 2018 | PAGE 4

books music

Joan Tower Celebrates an 80-Year Journey with Concert at Jordan Hall FAITH A. PAK CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Joan Tower is a big name in America’s classical music world—a Grammy award-winner and one of the most successful woman composers of all time, she celebrated the end of her residency at New England Conservatory with a concert at Jordan Hall, playing standout works from her prolific career. The Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and featuring soloists Carol Wincenc and Adrian Morejon and conducted

by Gil Rose, performed Tower’s music stunningly and with an evocative sense of the landscapes the music represented.

The concert opened with the world premiere of “Under the Dome” by Tianyi Wang, a student composer and the winner of the annual BMOP/NEC Composition Competition. The piece was inspired by the environmental hazard of smog in his native country, China. The piece is dark and dissonant, with instruments imitating the heavy breathing of the victims of smog. It was a deeply affecting, though unsettling, start to the concert.

“Rising,” a piece for flute and orchestra and featuring soloist Carol Wincenc, was the first piece of Joan Tower’s music performed. The aptly named piece began with Wincenc playing long notes rising slowly and steadily in pitch. Wincenc played with a lovely, burnished tone, and with the lush sound of the strings, featuring beautiful solos by the principal players who carried the solemn, searching mood of the piece. It was an excellent choice to begin Joan Tower’s works with this piece.

The second piece was “Chamber Dance,” originally commissioned by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. It generated a similar sense of unease, with suppressed, pulsing energy that seemed like the grumblings of the unconscious. The orchestra executed the busy, fluttering notes that seemed to fly by with impressive poise and delicacy. It felt like a companion piece to “Rising” in its similarity.

After a brief intermission, Adrian Morejon, a world-renowned bassoonist, took the stage to per-

form “Red Maple.” Named for the wood commonly used to make bassoons, the piece highlighted Morejon’s beautiful tone and virtuosic command of complex, swirling passages. Tower’s father was a mineralogist, and his influence on her work is evident in the way her music often draws inspiration from nature. The piece tried to follow a musical pattern but is too convoluted to be fully understood without closer inspection, like the endlessly complex biology of a living organism. Though it was immaculately played, it felt emotionally closed off—colder and more inscrutable than the other pieces.

Wincenc returned to the stage to play Tower’s “Concerto for Flute,” which had the typical Tower mark of restlessness and a natural feel. It conjures up an image of a lonely, wandering journey through hills and woods. Wincenc’s soulful musicality shone through here, perhaps more than in “Rising” because she has had a longer relationship with this piece, as it was originally commissioned for her in 1989.

The concert concluded with a performance of “Made in America,” Tower’s most famous piece, commissioned for 65 orchestras across America by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ford Motor Company. The recording of the piece, by Leonard Slatkin, the conductor of the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, won three Grammy awards. The piece is centered around the theme of “America the Beautiful.” The Boston Modern Orchestra Project played it brilliantly, with a tight rhythm and rich sound.

Concertmistress Gabriela Diaz espe-

cially played with exceptional lucidity and poise.

The piece takes the fearless journey that Tower’s music usually does, beginning optimistically but descending into industrial-sounding, distraught passages, with “America the Beautiful” glowing faintly through every once in a while. This evocative, powerful feeling is exactly why Joan Tower deserves to be honored.

Staff writer Faith A. Pak can be reached at faith. pak@thecrimson.com.

GRAPHIC BY JESSICA N. MORANDI / CRIMSON DESIGNER

books

Zadie Smith on Language and Life at Coolidge Corner Theatre JONATHAN TRANG CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

GRACE Z. LI / CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

In the foreword to her recent collection of essays, “Feel Free,” Zadie Smith—perhaps the most celebrated novelist of her generation, responsible for such classics as “White Teeth” and “NW”—places the art of writing “at the intersection of three precarious, uncertain elements: language, the world, the self.” “The first is never wholly mine,” Smith writes. “The second I can only ever know in a partial sense.

The third is a malleable and improvised response to the previous two.” In conversation with “Radio Boston” host Meghna Chakrabarti at Coolidge Corner Theatre, Smith investigated these three elements, speaking on everything from the topical to the abstract Indeed, Smith’s virtuosity with language, both on the page and off, may have been the main draw for the audience members of this sold-out event. This seems obvious—wielding words well is part of Smith’s profession—yet there is something about Smith’s voice that fans remember. “I just love her style of writing. It’s just beautiful. Even if it’s a novel...or these essays, it doesn’t matter what she writes, I just love the way she writes,” Boston resident Alice E. Gray said “[Her voice] is extremely unique, and it’s consistent,” Tasha A. Sandoval, another Boston resident, said. “Without fail, [it] comes through so powerfully and strongly.”

At the talk, Smith said she was shocked that certain sentences and even words could have a stranglehold on American policy, pointing to the logic of “Guns don’t kill people, people do” as a particularly egregious example. She went on to deconstruct the phrase “exploiting a tragedy” and the way opponents of gun control treat this phenomenon as “a horrible curse” in order to obstruct productivity in the wake of a shooting.

“I loved what she said about the word ‘exploitation,’ because... I am an alum-

na of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland,” Sandoval said. “I’m involved in some of the local activism around that. [Smith’s comment] gives me a really nice framework around which to think about the way ‘exploitation’ is happening around this issue in a positive rather than a negative way.”

Speaking of the world at large, Smith maintained this level of clear-eyed, righteous passion. Chakrabarti quoted Smith’s recent Guardian interview: “I... can’t stand dogma, lazy ideas, catchphrases, group-think, illogic, pathos disguised as logos, shoutiness, ad hominem attacks, bombast, liberal piety, conservative pomposity, ideologues, essentialists, technocrats, preachers, fanatics, cheerleaders or bullies.” At the theater, Smith added, “It’s quite a hard time to be alive if you feel that way.” Despite this in-depth discussion of world issues, she professed little interest in remaining in the loop beyond the bare minimum. “I just listen to the radio when I’m cleaning, so I get the main part...I get enough, let’s put it that way,” Smith said when asked about keeping up with the news. She said she instead focuses on what she found personally fulfilling, setting in opposition “The Kingdom” by Emmanuel Carrère (her preferred read) and five different newspapers (her husband’s).

“To me, reading this 1000-page book about Christ was incredibly important to me, personally, “ Smith said. “And [Paul] Manafort and [Rick] Gates can wait. Or be summed up by my husband over dinner.”

Indeed, over the course of the event, Smith emerged as a champion of the self, keeping political demands at a distance. While she agreed that boundaries and allegiances are important, especially in these fraught times, she also reminded us that “there is another part of you that is intimate, that can’t stand on a podium.” It is this self, the self “whose boundaries are uncertain, whose language is never pure, whose world is in no way ‘self-evident,’” that Smith takes as her cause. “People are deeply various in themselves,” she said.

Smith made her thoughts most explicit when addressing the question of authenticity, which she believes is fundamentally misguided: “If you set the bar of a certain authentic experience, someone is always going to fall short of it... To me, I don’t want to block myself off from anything.” When asked about novelists who write about experiences they do not (and cannot) know, Smith argued their success lies in the aesthetic as much as in the ethical. As long as their depiction is “convincing,” the novelists have free rein, made freer by Smith’s refusal to essentialize logic. “‘Anna Karenina,’ to my view, is convincing,” she said. “The problem with all these arguments is the idea that there is an essential female experience. What does it look like?...What does it mean to feel like a woman? I don’t know now! I’m 42, and I am in this gender, and I couldn’t tell you specifically what feeling like a woman is.” She rejected authenticity as restrictive, confining people to certain set behaviors because of their backgrounds, sapping them of their individuality, their ability to surprise, their freedom: “Say I’m reading a book about a mixed-race girl from London, and suddenly it doesn’t seem to me what I would feel. Okay! That’s okay.

It’s not my experience, [but] I could never say that, ‘A mixed-race girl from London would never say that.’ I just can’t believe in a universe where it’s not possible that one of them might say that out loud. I can’t have that complete thought.”

Yet identity remains key to Smith, and its foregrounding—both literary and embodied—resonates deeply with her readers. “She’s a black woman, and so I feel a oneness with her,” Gray said. “The fact that on the stage, there are going to be two women of color, is really significant to me. Because I’m going to be 71 on Friday, and when I was a kid, when there was a black person on TV, everybody was in front of the TV, because you didn’t see yourself. But this is perfect, this is wonderful.”

Staff writer Jonathan Trang can be reached at jonathan.trang@thecrimson. com.

ARTS

THE HARVARD CRIMSON | MARCH 6, 2018 | PAGE 5

columns

My Sister Will Be Hungry: Part III ANGELA F. HUI CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

My mother learned English from her grandfather. He gave her a very tattered Oxford English Dictionary, a relic of his time spent studying biology in Britain, and designed an ambitious plan of study: Every morning, she had to copy a page of definitions letter by letter, and every evening, he would check her transcriptions by reading them aloud. The day he killed himself, she didn’t finish her writing practice, and she dreaded his return from work until she found out it was never coming. A few weeks later, his dictionary was confiscated and burned by Red Guards.

She would repeat this story to us every time we were disobedient. You’re going to kill me, she’d say. Just do the dishes. Come out of your room. Finish your food.

Finish your food. Finish your food.

Now she is telling this story again, but for a different reason. “Can’t you see what a good project this is?” Her voice crackles in my earbuds. “A young girl teaching herself English. A small act of insurgency against insurgency. It’s just like what I tried to do as a girl. And imagine how it’ll look on her résumé!”

“But think of how much school she’ll miss.”

My mother scoffs. “One good role can launch a career.”

“I just don’t think it’s right,” I say, and I hang up so abruptly that she’ll believe me later, when I tell her it was inclement weather that interrupted our connection. **** Once I get back, the first thing Audrey and I do is walk to the grocery store. Though it’s hardly the most exciting activity to kick off the winter breaks of our respective freshman years, we’ll take any opportunity to get out of the house.

I’m craving macaroni today, and Audrey suggests that we make some together. “I need your help,” she tells me, holding up two boxes of pasta. “Which is healthier?”

“Whole wheat, I guess.”

She moves down the aisle, scrutinizing the rows

of tomato sauce. “This one has more sodium but not as many calories.” She analyzes the nutrition labels with such intense concentration that she nearly collides with a shopper in a Barry’s Bootcamp t-shirt. I tell myself I shouldn’t be surprised. There is something about this age that seems to infect everyone with these preoccupations, albeit to varying degrees.

But I want to tell her what it felt like.

“Since when do you care about this stuff, Audrey?”

I want to tell her about the hunger beyond hunger, when it is no longer the stomach begging but the entire body. I want to tell her about the wanting, and the punishment for wanting, and the endlessness of each day.

“I have to. For the part.” She lowers her voice. “For the movie.”

“Oh. Right.”

Audrey places a can of fat-free low-sodium tomato sauce in our shopping cart.

“Are you sure you want to do it? If you don’t eat enough you’ll be short for the rest of your life.” It’s too hard to tell her about the other reasons, the other consequences.

“I’m not gonna do anything crazy. Just eat better and run longer distances, that’s all.” She takes a jar of peanut butter from its shelf, then puts it back down. I think of the night before my fourteenth birthday: me and my dorm-mate in the common room swishing peanut butter in our mouths and spitting the brown globs into a plastic bag.

GRAPHIC BY EMILY H. HONG / CRIMSON DESIGNER

We can’t tell anyone about this, I’d said. People are gonna think we’re pre-bulimic or some shit.

“Can you at least think about taking a different role instead?” I ask.

“I’ve already thought about it. I don’t want a minor part. I don’t want to be an extra.” She walks to the next aisle and I watch her sprinter’s legs flex in ways mine can’t. I imagine her leggings growing loose; I imagine her rifling through the sick clothes I should have donated; I imagine her trying on the jeans I wore when the infirmary nurses asked me why my heart rate was so low.

“Whatever then. If you’re so sure.”

I know that there is no way to stop this, that my mother would laugh if I told her my fears, laugh and do worse than laugh. No pain my sister and I have faced or will face could ever compare to her’s. Losing twenty-five pounds to play a starving communist child is one thing; growing up a starving communist child is another.

Staff writer Angela F. Hui’s column, “My Sister Will Be Hungry,” is a serialized work of fiction centered around a college student’s relationships with her mother and sister. The story explores the effects of collective cultural trauma on the second generation of an American family.

film

‘Thoroughbreds’ Wonderfully Disquieting Directed by Cory Finley CLAIRE PARK CONTRIBUTING WRITER

COURTESY OF FOCUS FEATURES

In the imperfectly perfect world of Connecticut royalty, even lawn mowers bleat eerily. Amanda (Olivia Cooke) arrives at her old classmate Lily’s (Anya Taylor-Joy) immaculate mansion for an SAT tutoring session, which sounds innocuous enough. If Amanda’s insouciant slouch and beady gaze don’t hint enough at her interiority, she explains herself outright: “I don’t have any feelings, ever.” Oh, and she is awaiting trial for animal cruelty after brutally slaughtering her prized racehorse. A prim and proper Lily silently acquiesces to a life that her detached mother (Francie Swift) and her hyper-functional, super-controlling stepfather Mark (Paul Sparks) dictate for her. Lily’s conveniently rekindled friendship—if one could call it that—with Amanda becomes a prelude to their criminal partnership in murdering Mark. For the most part, director Cory Finley manages a tantalizing and artistic balance in dwelling on tidy surfaces and revealing the stifled motivations beneath them. Though sometimes he withholds too much for the sake of the film’s air of heady mystery, skimping on depicting Lily’s crucial emotional backstory.

Finley admirably and perceptively enhances the viewer experience by drawing on many cinematic devices of alienation. The cinematographer, Lyle Vincent, works with appropriately eerie transitions, using slow and dizzying pans to blackness, accom-

panied by gurgling noises from Mark’s erg machine upstairs. In one scene, Lily, in search of her mother, walks through a hallway that Vincent casts in a luridly, strikingly blue tint that hints at the underlying uneasiness her perfect updo doesn’t. Lily and Amanda watch several 1940s films in Lily’s cavernous parlor, and the campy musical numbers enacted on the fuzzy gray screen are disquietingly removed from the girls’ sterile, modern reality. Finley also employs a wonderfully strange and cacophonous soundtrack of knocking and strumming percussive noises, of whinnying and whimpering, to contrast with the silence Lily and Amanda wade through in the opulent spaces of Lily’s home.

Finley orients his audience in Amanda’s world and inscrutable mind with effectively interspersed, and not excessive, signposts. The first shot of the film shows Amanda gazing steadfastly into her horse’s eyes, presumably before she kills him. The camera later briefly pans around her bedroom, to horse portraits and competition trophies and ribbons strewn all about her walls. In an SAT pamphlet, the camera adopts Amanda’s laser-focus fixation on the word “horse.” Even if Finley doesn’t explain what horses have to do with anything, he makes it clear she’s obsessed with them, which makes for a satisfyingly mysterious bit at the end that suggests the psychological nature of her affinity. And thanks to Cooke’s perfect deadpan, Amanda’s self-proclamations are simple but effectively bemusing: “I have to work a little harder than everyone else to be good.” She possesses a different sentience in her emotionless state, somehow seeing more clearly with her penetrating gaze: She announces to Lily, after Mark leaves the room, “Wow… you hate him. You despise him.”

But Finley never sufficiently reveals the fury brimming beneath Lily’s surface: She never erupts, even privately, and emphatically enlists Amanda’s help in committing the murder only after her stepfather expresses his wish to send her to a school for girls with serious behavioral issues. She does, however, slowly take on the steely mannerisms of Amanda—eating her peas and staring into the distance, unblinking. Finley doesn’t get to the heart of Lily’s interpersonal problems, or her personality, except for when Mark characterizes her explicitly: “In your brain, all these people are little offshoots of your consciousness. We’re all your maids.” His tidy appraisal of a character whom Finley hardly explicates beyond her conditioned self-denial, conveniently precedes Amanda’s sober observation: “Empathy isn’t your strong suit.” The bitter encounters between Lily and Mark are indeed strung with tension, but do not have the pointed hostility or build-up to make her violent reaction triumphantly vindictive, especially because her emotional past is only hinted at in a passing mention of her recently deceased father.

Amanda’s nonchalant posturing does come to a head: “The only thing worse than being incompetent or being evil is being indecisive.” All this time, she’s been training Lily in the art of decisiveness, and Lily must choose to act. The crime scene is rendered with Finley’s restraint and innovative aesthetic indulgence with plenty of disquieting aural stimulation, and Taylor-Joy’s unnerving acting shines. Finley does the challenging work of sustaining Amanda’s mystique and of forcing his audience to puzzle over how to morally assess Lily. The film’s quietly disturbing aesthetic and fascinating character arcs make for a thoroughly bewildering, addicting watch.

ARTS

THE HARVARD CRIMSON | MARCH 6, 2018 | PAGE 6

campus

COURTESY OFKATHRYN S. KUHAR

Jose Mateo Ballet LUCY WANG CRIMSON STAFF WRITER As the weather turned from heavy rain to light flurries of snowflakes on March 2, the Jose Mateo Ballet Theatre dancers bourrée-d through a program that started with heavy “Affairs” before progressing into lighthearted “Released.” These two dances, along with “Time Beyond Time,” formed the triad of “Stolen Hearts,” the company’s spring program. A display of solid technique and evocative choreography, interwoven with beautiful and probing music, created an intimate and jaunting night at the Sanctuary Theatre on Harvard Street.

With no clear distinction between the dance floor and the audience seating, the theatre is an open and vulnerable space for dancers, drawing attention to imperfections but also highlighting breathtaking feats. The miniature slips and jump landings sounded louder than in a traditional theatre, yet the dancers’ bodies and athleticism, as well as their facial expressions, are clearly accentuated in the space.

The first number, “Affairs,” opened with Magdalena Gyftopoulos in a simple grey chiffon slip dress, shimmering under the light as she passéd nimbly on her toes and stepped across the stage with a lost look on her face. The music, “Affairs of the Heart (Concerto for Violin and Strings),” composed by Marjan Mozetich, flowed like water in the beginning with the a rhythmic chord in the background, accompanied by blue lighting and a backdrop reminiscent of waves. Spencer Doru Keith shined as the heartthrob of the “Affairs,” exuding charm in his technique, entangled with multiple lovers. Through different pairings of dancers accompanied by a small ensemble of corps dancers, clad in beautiful colors, an abstract story of infidelity and betrayal unfolded. The choreography in the pas de deux sections sparks a chemistry between the partners, along with tension and doubt.

“Time Beyond Time” proved to be the most moving piece of the evening. Oliver Messiaen’s “Quartet for the End of Time” rung eerily, but Ma-

teo’s choreography suggested a more “Alice in Wonderland” narrative than a haunting story. The dancers struck poses synchronized with the piano’s jaunting sounds, seemingly setting up the ballet to be sharp and precise. In the second movement, however, Madeleine Bonn performed in a dream-like trance with slow partnering and strong lifts by Stephen James, suspended for impressively long seconds. As the corps fell into sleeping positions and awakened disjointedly, Bonn embraced individual dancers.

The ending felt abrupt and confused, reflective of the tone of the piece, as James carried Bonn to a sleeping position with the closing chords.

Despite the emotional dancing timed to the enrapturing music, the wardrobe of “Time Beyond Time” missed the mark. The lavender leotards on the female dancers were splotched with a gradient v-neck in delicate hues, but the resulting effect looked more like sweat stains than watercolor.

Vibrant blue leotard-dresses complemented the performance much more in the last piece, “Released.” Set to Ferruccio Busoni and Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Concerto for Keyboard & Strings in D Minor,” the closing piece was the most standard Neoclassical ballet amongst the three. It started out with traditional steps, and the dancers posed both gracefully and authoritatively. The energetic beginning turned into a more relaxed second movement, as the hands became more interpretive in partnered promenades and penchés. Angie DeWolf and Haruka Tamura cleanly executed the steps, and true to the title of the piece, released the rigid form and port de bras to give way to non-traditional positions. The ending was a bit disappointing and lacking in character, except for a few out-of-place Russian mazurka steps, as the authoritative tone returned and any signs of release disappeared again. “Stolen Hearts,” the second to last show for the company under its founding director Jose Mateo, churned dark feelings but ultimately fell short of stealing hearts.

theater

THE FAULT LINES THAT DIVIDE US and “THE WHITE CARD”

COURTESY OF GRETJEN HELENE PHOTOGRAPHY

YASH KUMBHAT CONTRIBUTING EDITOR The audience is split through the middle into two sections of white chairs facing one another.The stage lies in between. The walls are white. The entire set is white. Bright, harsh lights fill the room. When the show begins, the lights barely dim, continuing to make the whiteness all too clear. Playwright and poet Claudia Rankine’s play, “The White Card,” directed by Diana Paulus, is showing at the Emerson Paramount Theater from Feb. 24 to April 1. It blurs the line between performance and reality, digging through the past to unearth contemporary truths about race and oppression. Set in upper-class New York, the play captures a dinner hosted at the home of Charles (Daniel Gerroll) and Virginia (Patricia Kalember), a wealthy white couple who curate and collect artwork.

They invite erudite art dealer Eric (Jim Poulos), their activist and undergraduate son Alex (Colton Ryan), and renowned black artist Charlotte (Karen Pittman). The couple, in a bid to buy Charlotte’s art, organize a dinner party of sorts, but the conversation quickly devolves into a nuanced, powerful discussion on the intersection of art, race, and responsibility.

“The White Card” demands as much from its audience as its actors, drawing spectators to see the world recreated on stage as simply that: a recreation of what Rankine calls the “fault line between black

and white lives.” As the play progresses, Charles’s passion for collecting art unfolds to reveal darker roots.

This performance takes the shape of a conversation between the characters, and also between the audience members, who look across at each other and the stage as the play unfolds. Rankine approaches structural racism through the lens of white philanthropy, challenging the idea of the white savior and turning a critical eye to the implications of white benevolence.

“Black people have never been human,” Charlotte says. She speaks during a heated encounter with Charles, pointing out that the art he collects—memorabilia of black suffering—not only reduces these painful experiences to mere artwork, but also desensitizes people to the brutality of racial discrimination.

In the second act of the play, Charlotte shows Charles her most recent artworks: a series of photographs of Charles and Virginia socializing at New York’s top art galleries and museums. She asks Charles whether—for all his patronage of black art— he has ever stopped to consider how he unknowingly facilitates racial discrimination in different aspects of his life. Charles challenges his own legacy, unravelling as he grapples with his good intentions and his philanthropy, realizing that they amount to little more than “shopping for black death,” as Charlotte puts it.

His art patronage is not the solution to understanding or coming to terms with years of racism. Rather, it is antithetical to the solution, rendering black lives synonymous with suffering.

The dialogue is pointed and poetic. The witty repartee flows between the characters like two sides of the same coin, arguing fundamentally different views of race: one from a white perspective, and the other from a black perspective. Paulus’s cast, composed of accomplished Broadway and off-Broadway actors, delivers a moving performance, rich with raw emotion and a hunger for the truth. Charles and Charlotte are particularly fantastic, bringing complex ideas about race to the forefront. Engaging and incisive, the plot does not devolve into a lecture on race, but instead portrays a genuine human struggle to understand the roles we must assume to subvert oppressive institutions and biases.

At its heart, “The White Card” aims to spark nuanced conversations, which are years overdue. Yet, the performance does not end with the final act. Rather, it urges its audience to stay behind and break into groups to discuss race with candor and compassion. “The White Card” is the play that never ends, finding life in the fight against the systematic oppression of the black community.

THE HARVARD CRIMSON | MARCH 6, 2018 | PAGE 7

I-Lab Will Expand Square Vacancies Prompt Debate Management Team VACANCIES FROM PAGE 1

By TRUELIAN LEE and JACQUELINE P. PATEL CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Almost seven years after it first opened, Harvard’s Innovation Lab is looking to expand its management team to address growing interest in entrepreneurship on campus.

The I-Lab is a center for innovation and entrepreneurship which opened in Nov. 2011 next to the Business School in Allston. The I-Lab is open to all fulltime University students. In 2012, the I-Lab hosted over 55 resident teams, which have access to the lab’s space and resources.

As part of the expansion of its management team, the I-Lab has created multiple openings this year for new director-level jobs, including a director of marketing and a director of operations.

The center also promoted its former associate director of technology to director of programming as a part of this restructuring.

Jodi Goldstein, executive director of the I-Lab, said increasing interest in entrepreneurship and innovation on campus spurred the creation of these new positions.

Goldstein said the organization is looking for people with “deep” experience in operations and management for both the marketing and operations positions.

“We’re being very selective in our hiring process,” she said. “The culture we’ve created at the I-Lab is very important to us, and something where we want to make sure continues as we scale the organization.”

Goldstein compared the culture of the I-Lab to that of a “well-resourced” start-up organization, adding she believes the I-Lab will be able to stay “nimble” even after the expansion of its management team.

Unique to the I-Lab, according to Goldstein, is its “safe and transparent” culture that allows for “experimenta-

tion and failure.”

“We believe that in order to solve these complex problems, you do need a diversity of viewpoints. So a lot of what we work on in the I-Lab is what we like to call, ‘structured serendipity,’ where we bring students who otherwise may not have met, and then help them take their ideas as far as they can go,” she said.

For Goldstein, the path to addressing growing demand for innovation

We’re being very selective in the hiring process.

Jodi Goldstein Executive Director

and entrepreneurship at the I-Lab is twofold: increasing access and impact.

“Access includes serving and reaching more students, faculty, and alumni around the university, and impact is what we do when they come to us, and how we can help them reach their milestones no matter which stage of the journey they are on,” she said. “And in doing both, in scaling access and impact, it’s going to take a lot more leadership.”

Elaborating on this model, Goldstein remarked on the “unrealized value” the I-Lab can provide to undergraduate students ignorant of the glass-facade center across the river.

“I’d like 100 percent of Harvard students to feel welcome and included in the I-Lab ecosystem,” Goldstein said.

Staff writer Truelian Lee can be reached at truelian. lee@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @truelian_ lee.

Staff writer Jacqueline P. Patel can be reached at jacqueline.patel@thecrimson.com.

Follow

her

on

Twitter @jppatel99.

like those that once housed UNO Pizzeria on JFK St., the closed CVS on Mass. Ave., and the Harvard Square Theater on Brattle St.—remain empty.

HBS lecturer John D. Macomber believes the Square is currently undergoing growing pains. Because large shopping malls attract buyers looking for high-priced items—and high-volume, low-priced products have become increasingly available online— Harvard Square’s businesses are stuck somewhere in the middle, according to Macomber.

“If you think about who makes up the Harvard Square foot traffic—largely students and tourists who are not spending a lot of money—it’s easy to see why coffee shops, ice cream places, ATMs and ‘fast casual’ food and coffee shops dominate,” Macomber said.

These changes and vacancies have not always sat well with residents, though. When the &pizza; announced plans to open in 2017, many Cambridge residents feared the store would negatively impact the nature of the Square.

At the time, Denise A. Jillson, exec-

CONTRIBUTING WRITER ­A rtists, poets, and musicians joined a group of Harvard students, faculty, and staff as well as affiliates from other universities at Memorial Church Monday to support Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients affected by recent federal decisions on immigration.

The event, titled “A Day of Hope and Resistance,” was part of Harvard’s DACA Seminar, which began in February and will run through April. The day-long event consisted of workshops, performances, and a candlelight vigil.

Monday marked the deadline set by the Trump administration for Congress to pass protections for undocumented people and the last day for DACA recipients to apply to renew their status. That deadline, though, is essentially moot after two court decisions halted the administration’s termination of the program. Still, DACA recipients at Harvard and the country are concerned about potential lapses in their legal status.

Graduate School of Education professor Roberto G. Gonzales, who

helped organized the event, encouraged DACA recipients to speak up.

“The [Trump] administration has said that undocumented immigrants in this country should be afraid,” Gonzales said. “With the political discourse from the campaign trail, through the election, through all of the executive orders, from the travel ban through the ending of DACA and TPS, is the creation of fear by design.”

“Communities are very aware that a walk in the park, playing basketball on a local playground, that sitting on a stoop could land someone today in detention or deportation procedures,” Gonzales added.

The event was intended to give people affected by Trump’s repeal of DACA an opportunity for personal expression.

“Because we know that this day has been such a source of anxiety and uncertainty for the millions of families that it affects, we here on campus wanted to create a space of community and strength and creativity,” said Kirsten A. Weld, an associate professor of History, who helped organize the event.

“What’s going to be needed in order

RESPONSE FROM PAGE 1 Government Department teaching fellow and Mather House tutor David Ifkovits also sent an email to students in Mather.

“From personal conversations, I know that many of you have been concerned about the way the Department has been handling these allegations,” Ifkovits wrote on Friday. “Please reach out to me at any time if you want to discuss your own experience related to this issue.”

Ifkovits said in an interview that at a meeting of “aboutw 50 to 60” Government Department graduate students in an informal “diversity working group,”

to fight the criminalization of immigrants in our communities is creativity and coalition building.”

Savannah J. Miles ’18, emphasized the importance of the event being held at a location central to Harvard’s identity.

“I think there’s something especially moving about the fact that it’s in Memorial Church, which is this iconic Harvard structure that seems to represent the mores of Harvard,” Miles said.

“To have this day of resistance in this location is pretty inspiring. It shows that there is hope for the changes that people are trying to make here and that Harvard will stand behind this.”

RodStarz—a member of the hip hop group Rebel Diaz—ran a workshop early in the day about hip hop and immigration and praised Harvard’s decision to organize such an event.

“From an outsider’s perspective, Harvard is world-renowned as being a top educational institution,” he said.

“For a school this prestigious to have not just a day, but a whole seminar dedicated to DACA is very timely and important.”

McGovern Starts Immigration Fund

By PATRICIA J. LIU CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Cambridge Mayor Marc C. McGovern and the Cambridge Community Foundation announced the creation of the Cambridge Legal Defense Fund for Immigrants in a press conference Monday afternoon.

The initiative grants money to nonprofits that provide legal services to immigrants. The fund focuses on helping immigrants that are especially vulnerable like DACA recipients, asylum seekers, victims of sexual violence, and families with minors, President of the Cambridge Community Foundation Geeta Pradhan said Monday.

After the Trump administration’s decision to end programs that protect immigrants like Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and Temporary Protected Status, thousands of undocumented individuals are currently at risk of deportation. David Mijares, the director of the Somerville Boys and Girls Club, is himself a DACA recipient.

At the press conference, he urged people to act in the face of anti-immigrant policies.

“The time for talk is over. Let’s do something about it,” Mijares said. “I’m tired of people’s fear being used as a catalyst for hate. I’m tired of the ignorance being spread by short-sighted views.

I’m tired of the limbo my life is in.”

Pradhan similarly stressed the pressure placed on immigrants and their families because of the Trump admin-

istration’s repeals.

“We don’t have time to lose. The urgency of this issue—it is immediate.

People are losing their families. They’re getting torn apart,” Pradhan said. “We need to do something, we need to act, and we really need to act now.”

Leslie T. DiTrani, an immigration attorney at DiTrani Law in Boston, agreed that deportation is an issue now central to many immigrants’ lives.

“Our immigrant communities have not been this vulnerable since World War II. I have not seen this level of fear across everyone in our communities since a very long time,” DiTrani said at the press conference.

According to the Cambridge Community Foundation’s website, only 14 percent of all detained immigrants have access to a lawyer. Yet detained immigrants are four times more likely to be released if they have access to legal counsel, DiTrani said.

DiTrani is also a member of the Cambridge Commission on Immigrant Rights and Citizenship, which the city established in 2016 to work with other city bodies to provide free monthly legal consultations for immigrants.

Executive Director of CIRC Nancy B. Schlacter wrote in an emailed statement that the new legal defense fund is another way the city will work to help immigrants.

The city of Cambridge has a history of supporting immigrants in opposition to recent changes to federal immigration policies. Last March, the City

more, and they are part of the community.”

Jillson pointed to a slew of restaurants and stores slated to open in the Square in the near future as proof that many of the apparent vacancies in the Square are temporary.

“We really aren’t seeing many more vacancies,” Jillson said. “The number [of vacancies] doesn’t change a lot. It ranges between 94 or 97 percent occupied. Under any circumstances that’s a terrific number and one that we’re really proud of.”

As for chains in the Square, Jillson explained that the Harvard Square Business Association does monitor the number of chains at any given time, with locally-owned businesses usually numbering around 70 to 72 percent.

She emphasized that recent vacancies were not caused by the departure of local businesses but rather by chains.

“In the past couple or three years the vast number of businesses that have left Harvard Square have been international or nationals,” Jillson said.

“It may be indicative that the consumer in Harvard Square might have a preference for locally owned businesses.”

Gov. Dept. Profs, TFs Reach Out

Harvard Organizes DACA Day

By CECIL O. WILLIAMS II

utive director of the Harvard Square Business Association, commended &pizza; for working with community leaders and government officials to gain approval.

She noted that the chair of the Board of Zoning Appeals, who rarely supports the opening of fast food chains in the Square, voted in support of the proposal.

Jillson continues to support &pizza;’s plans and believes the chain will open “before too long.”

“They went in front of the license commission last Wednesday and they were applying for their CB and their application for their outside patio,” Jillson said.

African and African American Studies and History of Art and Architecture professor Suzanne P. Blier, a member of the Harvard Square Neighborhood Association, said she fears the opening of chains like &pizza; is part of a negative trend.

“One of the key things is that national chains can afford to pay much higher rent and one by one they’re pricing out local businesses,” Blier said. “Local businesses tend to pay their employees

Council voted in favor of withdrawing from federal immigration enforcement training. Cambridge also maintained its sanctuary city status in Mar. 2017 despite threats of grant cuts from the Department of Justice. This status, which allows undocumented Cantabrigians to live without fear of deportation, should also come with tangible steps to protect immigrants, McGovern said.

“Although the symbolism of being a sanctuary city is important because it makes it clear that Cambridge is a city that respects all who live here and is a place where all immigrants—undocumented or documented—can be safe, symbolism itself is not enough,” McGovern said at the press conference.

McGovern emphasized the role of local governments in standing against what he referred to as the federal government’s “xenophobic” policies.

“The White House and Congress may be failing to act, failing to protect our fellow residents who are American in every way except on paper, but Cambridge cannot fail to act,” McGovern said. “Cambridge and other municipalities across the state must take steps to ensure that all our residents are protected from the harsh policies coming out of Washington.”

Boston instituted a similar measure last year. Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh established an immigration defense fund to provide monetary support for immigrants in Sept. 2017, the Boston Globe reported.

As a grad student in the department, I’ve found this issue— and aspects of the response to it— upsetting.

Naima N.M. Green

the group designated Ifkovits and teaching fellow and Quincy House tutor Meredith Dost as “liaisons” to Government concentrators on issues of sexual harassment.

Faculty in the Government Department already have a “Climate Working Group” to examine gender issues in the department, according to Ifkovits.

Ifkovits said the graduate students in the working group are currently circulating a letter about the department’s gender climate that they plan to publish soon, with signatures from professors.

Staff writer Cecilia R. D’Arms can be reached at cecilia.d’arms@thecrimson.com

University May Pursue Title IX Investigation INVESTIGATION FROM PAGE 1 The full policy contains a nearly seven-page section devoted to outlining response procedures to formal complaints against faculty members alleged to be in violation of the University’s Title IX policies, which prohibit sex or gender discrimination including sexual harassment.

The policy specifically prohibits the behavior the women quoted in the Chronicle’s story alleged Dominguez exhibited toward them, including inappropriate touching and unwanted advances. The women who spoke to the Chronicle comprised both former students and a junior faculty member under Dominguez’s mentorship.

“In the academic context, sexual harassment often involves the inappropriate personal attention by an instructor or other officer who is in a position to exercise professional power over another individual,” the policy reads.

The document also notes that sexual harassment can occur between “persons of the same University status.”

“An example would be persistent personal attention from one colleague to another in the face of repeated rejection of such attention,” the policy says.

“Both types of harassment are unacceptable. They seriously undermine the atmosphere of trust essential to the academic enterprise.”

The document outlines two avenues for resolving sexual harassment cases: informal resolutions and formal complaints. In the informal resolution process, FAS Title IX coordinators or University Title IX administrators work with both parties to settle on a “mutually acceptable resolution.”

Formal complaints are filed through the University’s Office for Dispute Resolution, which initiates official investigations. FAS refers complaints it receives through its Title IX coordinators to ODR. There is no time limit for submitting a formal complaint and initiating an investigation into a violation, though FAS encourages complainants to file grievances “as soon as reasonably possible” after experiencing an alleged policy violation. All of the specific allegations in the Chronicle of Higher Education story took place beyond the state of Massachusetts’s 300-day window between the time of the incident and the time claims must be filed to guarantee consideration. Harvard’s policy, however, still allows even the oldest claims to be investigated.

The FAS policies and procedures also deal with the issue of complainants who do not wish to participate in formal investigations, or who wish to do so anonymously. Several sources in the Chronicle of Higher Education story were unwilling to reveal their names publicly.

If the women who allege they were harassed by Dominguez decline to par-

ticipate in a formal Title IX investigation, it is more difficult for the University to confirm these accusations.

If complainants refuse to take part in the investigation, the University must determine whether the allegations indicate sufficiently reprehensible behavior or create a hostile environment for others in order to proceed with an investigation anyway. Despite the University’s ability to investigate allegations without the complainant’s participation, Colby Bruno, a lawyer with the Victim’s Rights Law Center, said such cases often end up “dying out.”

“When a school is not faced with the pressure of a victim—and a victim wanting to do something—then the school feels no pressure and wants it to go away,” Bruno said. “If someone ever comes to them and says, ‘Why didn’t you investigate it,’ they can say the victim didn’t want to; people would say, ‘Okay, fine.’”

Difficulties also arise during investigations when complainants wish to remain anonymous. FAS’s policies and procedures indicate that requests for anonymity can sometimes result in Harvard deciding to close the case without completing the inquiry. There are also circumstances in which Title IX officers may deem it necessary to disclose the complainant’s identity for certain parts of the investigative process. Bruno said that, though anonymous complaints are difficult to investigate, they still allow for continued pressure on the University.

“If you have a victim who wants to continue with [anonymity], that is where the school remains obligated to remedy the hostile environment because the student can continue to talk to the school, continue to be involved in it,” Bruno said. “That’s the kind of stuff that I think that doesn’t happen when the victim just says, ‘I don’t want to do this.’”

Administrators have repeatedly pointed to the Title IX policy and procedures and encouraged students and faculty with complaints of sexual harassment to disclose their stories to Title IX administrators. Title IX Coordinator Emily Miller specifically presented about Harvard’s Title IX policies at a meeting for Government concentrators about the Dominguez allegations Friday.

The University has not revealed whether administrators are currently building a Title IX case against Dominguez. University spokesperson Tania deLuzuriaga wrote in an email that she cannot comment on the existence of a complaint or investigation within the ODR. “In accordance with the privacy and confidentiality required by the University’s Sexual and Gender-Based Harassment Policy and Procedures, we cannot confirm or deny the existence of an ODR complaint regarding any matter,” deLuzuriaga wrote.

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HCFA Retains Org. Priveleges HCFA FROM PAGE 1 Apparently HCFA is not actually banned from UC Funding per the OSL,” Henry S. Atkins ’20, UC finance committee chair, wrote in a message to the committee last week. “Next week, I will ask for a vote on whether or not that should be the case.”

The Council previously thought probation meant HCFA was automatically barred from receiving funds from the UC’s finance committee. Operating under this belief, members voted down a measure that would have prevented the religious group from receiving any Council funding last week.

Atkins said in an interview Monday night he plans to bring forward legislation barring HCFA from receiving all UC funding at a finance committee policy meeting slated to be held Wednesday evening.

“Why the OSL is deciding not to follow [the probationary UC funding ban] in this case I don’t know, I think they certainly should be,” Atkins said. “I think absent their action on this, what we should be doing is we should be trying to make sure [HCFA is] not being funded until they leave administrative probation.”

In an emailed statement Monday, Associate Dean of Student Engagement Alexander R. Miller declined to comment on the specifics of HCFA’s probation.

“We are working closely with the leadership of HCFA to ensure that they are in compliance with with all

of Harvard’s policies with respect to recognized student organizations,” he wrote. “While we will not discuss specific details regarding discipline of students or organizations, we look forward to continuing our work and dialogue with HCFA.”

We look forward to continuing our work and dialogue with HCFA. Alexander R. Miller

Dean of Student Engagement Miller did not answer a question asking whether Christian Union is correct in asserting HCFA has not lost room booking or student outreach privileges as a result of its probation.

Christian Union representatives did not respond to a request for comment.

The Office of Student Life website defines the consequences of probation only for recognized student organizations who have failed to complete the mandatory annual renewal of their College recognition.

The office places those groups on semester-long probation and revokes privileges including the ability to reserve campus spaces and receive funding from the UC and College offices, ac-

cording to the website.

Harvard’s decision to put HCFA on probation came after the Office found that HCFA had behaved in a manner “grossly inconsistent” with College guidelines for recognized groups, Harvard spokesperson Aaron M. Goldman wrote in an email last month. College spokesperson Rachael Dane previously said HCFA will need to sever ties with Christian Union in order to regain recognized status.

The Office of Student Life “was alerted to a situation in December” regarding HCFA and has been “reviewing” the organization ever since, Goldman wrote in the Feb. 2018 statement.

HCFA’s co-presidents Scott Ely ’18 and Molly L. Richmond ’18 did not respond to a request for comment.

In earlier statements, Ely and Richmond maintained HCFA never fell out of compliance with Harvard’s non-discrimination guidelines.

“We reject any notion that we discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation in our fellowship,” the co-presidents wrote in an email in February. “Broadly speaking, the student in this case was removed because of an irreconcilable theological disagreement pertaining to our character standards.”

On its website, Christian Union called the probation “an unfortunate action” taken against “one of the most popular student organizations on campus.” With roughly 200 members, HCFA is the largest Christian fellowship at Harvard.

Harvard Childcare to Expand into Allston CHILDCARE FROM PAGE 1 men.” The decision to build a new childcare center arrives as SEAS, Harvard’s youngest and fastest growing school, prepares its long-awaited move to Allston in the fall of 2020.

Singer said that family-centered initiatives like the childcare center began as efforts to help women affiliated with the University achieve a better work-life balance.

Work-life balance has proved a source of tension between the University and faculty, graduate students, and staff with families for years. Some have argued childcare services are unaffordable and cater more to professors with higher salaries than graduate students and staff.

Demand for centers like the planned one in Allston remains high. In 2015, the six existing childcare centers offered about 400 daycare slots for the entire University. An individual center, though, sometimes receives requests for 500 slots.

Costs exacerbate the problem, even for those who do get the spots: some centers can charge around $20,000 to 25,000 a year for one child, according to Harvard Human Resources’ website. Singer said policies in the last 10 or 15 years, many of which resulted from task forces on women, have ameliorated the issue.

“We now have a whole variety of policies, medical leave for women who give birth, parental leave, tenure clock extensions—those are gender neutral— and childcare subsidies, which make it possible to not worry about being able to afford childcare,” she said.

Physics professor Matthew D. Schwartz wrote in an email he thinks the new center will greatly mitigate demand for childcare, despite high costs.

“If a Harvard employee wants to pay $3000/month for childcare, they should at least have the opportunity to do so,” he wrote.

“So by all means, opening more centers to saturate the demand should be a high priority and I am strongly in favor of the center in Allston.” According to Singer, the University spends about a million dollars a year for childcare.

Singer added that she thought these policies all gained traction as a part of the University’s increasing emphasis on women, which she said would not have been possible without the increased presence of female faculty.

“The University now does things there were unthinkable 20 years ago,” she said.

“Unthinkable—we wouldn’t have thought that to be an important component because if you don’t have a lot of female faculty, you’re not going to make that kind of commitment. So it’s a big shift.”

Dominguez Will Receive Pay on Leave Allstonians Review Impact of Harvard Fund LEAVE FROM PAGE 1

By TRUELIAN LEE and JACQUELINE P. PATEL CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Allston residents and planning officials discussed the impact of community projects financed by a Harvard-sponsored fund over the last two years during a meeting Monday.

The $5.35 million “flexible fund” is part of a larger 10-year community benefits package Harvard bequeathed to Allston in 2013, when the University sought city approval to develop its Allston property. The total package is worth $43 million.To date, the Boston Planning and Development Agency— which manages the flexible fund—has allocated more than two million dollars of the $5.35 million for community improvement projects in Allston. The goal of Monday’s meeting was to review the progress of projects supported by the fund.

Cathy Baker-Eclipse, a member of the Boston Parks and Recreation Department, presented on a project intended to improve Smith Playground by incorporating a new amphitheater and water spray. Baker-Eclipse said the flexible fund helped cover around two million dollars of the five million dollar project. Gerald Autler, a senior project manager at the Boston Planning and Development Agency, called the Smith Playground improvement project “high-impact.”

“I don’t think we’ll give another grant of this magnitude,” Autler said.

Autler attributed the success of this project to “the ability to start to improve this largely significant neighborhood improvement sooner.”

Shawn Burns, a Boston police sergeant, also presented on an initiative to buy four message boards for the Allston-Brighton police departments at the meeting. “From the police standpoint and from input from the community, these boards have been extremely effective,” Burns said.

The Boston police department first submitted the $96,000 proposal for the boards in 2016, which were eventually purchased for $62,000. The grant from the flexible fund allowed the department to incorporate these boards into its operations, according to Burns.

The message boards can display customized messages and track and analyze traffic and speed data. A software package purchased separately allows the police department to program the boards remotely.

Burns said Boston Calling, a music festival occuring this May, would be an opportunity to utilize these boards for traffic and crowd control.

Lastly, local resident Karen Chang discussed a project to restore Herter Park, which used a $50,000 grant from the flexible fund. The Friends of Herter Park, the organization that spearheaded the restoration, received the flex-fund grant in spring 2016.

Autler said the restoration project is an example of how small amounts from the flexible fund can lead to substantial improvements in the community.

“In the context of the $5.3 million fund, this was not a massive investment, but one that has brought this resource back to life,” he said. “[It is] a great example of what we can do with 50,000—the kind of thing I’d like to see a lot more of.”

After multiple students alleged that three tenured professors at Dartmouth created a “hostile academic environment in which sexual harassment is normalized” in Nov. 2017, the University placed the professors on paid leave,

according to The Dartmouth. The professors have restricted access to campus while investigators continue their work, the Dartmouth reported.

Princeton also responded to sexual harassment allegations after a Title IX investigation found that electrical engineering professor Sergio Verdú

had violated the University’s policy on sex discrimination and sexual misconduct last June. According to the Daily Princetonian, Verdú will be allowed to keep his job after attending an eighthour training session.

The last time Harvard publicly placed a professor on leave was in 2011.

Cambridge Apt. Building Catches Fire FIRE FROM PAGE 1 “This is something these guys and girls train on. They drill constantly.”

Mahoney said the fire caused no injuries and that every resident of the building was “accounted for” as of late Monday evening. He said the blaze remained confined to the top floor and called resultant damage to the penthouse area “quite significant.”

As a result of the fire, roughly 10 units—out of a total 96 units housing over 200 occupants—are uninhabitable at least for Monday night, according to Mahoney.

He said the cause of the fire is still under investigation, though the department’s understanding as of Monday night is that the blaze probably started in the penthouse area.

Mahoney added the fire department is currently working with Cambridge’s emergency management office as well as the Red Cross and utility companies to ensure those ten units come “back in operation” as soon as possible.

The fire chief said he expects the displaced owners of the 10 damaged units will be able to find housing for the night at local hotels via arrangements

made through the Red Cross. Mahoney added he was unable to estimate the likely cost to repair damage caused by the fire.

As of roughly 9:45 p.m., no fire was visible from the street, but many firefighters remained, some of them work-

This jacket is actually not mine, someone called Deborah gave me this jacket.

Artan Sheshmani Building Resident

ing atop the roof of the building. At least ten fire trucks had arrived at Follen St. around that same time.

Three alarms had been ordered for the fire as of roughly 9:15 p.m., according to the Twitter feed of the Cambridge Fire Department.

“Progress report on 3rd alarm on

3-63, command reports fire knocked down, extensive overhauling,” the department tweeted at approximately 9:20 p.m.

Bystanders at the scene said they were surprised to see the fire break out.

“My first reaction was that it’s one of the other false alarms so I just ran out, kind of reluctantly,” said Artan Sheshmani, who said he lives on the third floor of the apartment building that caught fire.

“It’s a rare incident but it was a good opportunity for us to see how friendly people in the neighborhood are.”

Sheshmani said that, as soon as residents began to exit the apartment building to huddle together on the street in the “freezing” cold, nearby neighbors came to help.

“This jacket is actually not mine, someone called Deborah gave me this jacket,” he said.

Staff writer Caroline S. Engelmayer can be reached at caroline.engelmayer@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @cengelmayer13.

Staff writer Michael E. Xie can be reached at michael. xie@thecrimson.com.

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EDITORIAL

THE HARVARD CRIMSON | MARCH 6, 2018 | PAGE 10

In Defense of the Quad

THE CRIMSON EDITORIAL BOARD

Overlooking Sexual Misconduct The University failed to protect affiliates from Professor Jorge I. Dominguez

L

ast week, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported that 10 women are now accusing Government professor Jorge I. Dominguez of sexual misconduct. In 1983, Harvard had relieved Dominguez of administrative duties for sexually harassing a junior colleague.

In response to these new allegations, which now total 18 and span decades, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences placed Dominguez on immediate administrative leave. In an email to Harvard affiliates, University Provost Alan M. Garber encouraged members of the Harvard community to come forward with stories of “inappropriate behavior,” with the promise that these allegations would be taken seriously.

We are disappointed but not surprised that the University did not respond more definitively to Dominguez’s severe misconduct in the early ‘80s. Yet we are taken aback that, in spite of being disciplined for sexual harassment, Dominguez continued to rise through Harvard’s ranks for over 30 years. By letting Dominguez remain in contact with students, and allowing him to remain in his position of power, the University put its students and wider community at risk, turning a blind eye to his history of gender-based harassment. Out of respect to the accusers, and out of a clear need to demonstrate its commitment to a safe, assault-free community, the University must publicly and openly acknowledge its past failures.

But that step—while critical—is only symbolic. The University cannot turn back time and prevent past stu-

dents from being victimized. Going forward, it must take definitive and practical steps to prevent future students from going through what Terry Karl reported enduring. Harvard must do more to actively protect its community members from abuses of power that allow sexual misconduct.

Although Dominguez was previously disciplined for sexual harassment in the 1980s, we acknowledge that the most recent allegations against him have not yet been verified. We thus believe that Harvard has taken an appropriate step by placing Dominguez on administrative leave while it looks into these claims. Yet the University should not use his status on leave as an opportunity to dawdle in its pursuit of truth and justice. An investigation must begin immediately and progress swiftly, and we urge the University to be expeditious in its fact-checking of these accusations.

And if Harvard finds that these systemic, deplorable accounts are substantiated, we see only one valid response: Immediate dismissal. In that case, justice would have been delayed for far too long. Placing a faculty member on administrative leave still allows them to remain a member of the Harvard community. This should not be construed as a punishment for sexual misconduct.

Going forward, the University must be proactive rather than reactive in combating gender based misconduct and abuses of power. We appreciate FAS Dean Michael D. Smith’s call for victims and witnesses to come forward with their stories. However, messages like these cannot come only

By ROBERT MIRANDA

“T

in response to headlines and missed opportunities. For victims to be willing to come forward, they must be able to trust that Harvard will take their accusations seriously from the very beginning.

The University must continually remind the community of its commitment to preventing and responding to sex and gender-based misconduct, as well as the ways in which individuals can pursue protection, support, and justice.

The bottom line is clear: Dominguez’s history of sexual misconduct and harassment on this campus is unconscionable. As he rose to various positions of power at Harvard, his accusers felt compelled to sacrifice their own educations, careers, and community—some even left. All the while, he was allowed to stay.

Though Harvard has failed to protect affiliates from Dominguez, the Chronicle’s report has offered the University an opportunity to respond to its mistakes and actively reconsider its values and policies. Justice for the accusers should be served swiftly and conclusively. Harvard must promote a different culture—one where it is not the victims of sexual misconduct but the perpetrators who feel that they have no place on this campus.

he life of man,” declared Thomas Hobbes, was once “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short,” with “continual fear and danger of violent death,” and so it remains with the life of students who live in the River Houses.

Freshmen, I know you must be excited, eagerly awaiting your House assignments. But I know: You’re afraid to be Quadded. You envision your Housing Day living in mortal fear: knees weak, palms sweaty, as you imagine the Pforzheimer polar bear, the Cabot codfish or the Currier tree a-knocking at your door, sealing your fate for the next three years. Oh, the horror!

As a Quadling who was in the same boat last year, I can assure you your fears are overblown. Allow me to justify the ways of Quad to freshmen—for the River is much worse.

For starters: the Quad is architecturally pleasing and has incredibly spacious housing. Compare this, if you will, to the River, where you could be placed inside that giant concrete cinder block masquerading as Mather House, or (God forbid!) be sentenced to purgatory in that labyrinth of walkthrough doubles that somehow became Kirkland House.

“But wait!” I hear you cry. “The Quad is so far away!” I appreciate the disAllow me to justify tance to the dangerous River, where the ways of Quad to one can get assaultfreshmen—for the ed, stabbed and mugged, or invaded River is much worse. by sketchy suspects (sorry, Leverett House). Contrariwise, the Quad remains pristine, devoid of tourists, criminals, and other reminders of a strife-plagued world. This is what makes it a home: the issues of the weary wider world simply do not haunt us here in our hinterland.

Besides, the 13-minute jaunt is a great source of exercise for those, like me, averse to any other form of physical activity. For the more athletically inclined, the Quadrangle Recreational Athletic Center is like the Malkin Athletic Center (and now with Lowell’s climbing wall!).

Yes, I admit there are drawbacks. Porter Square is closer than Harvard Square, and I always feel a twinge of regret when, coming outbound on the T from Boston, I skip Harvard and get off at Porter. But the Porter Square station is a lot nicer. And yes, there is civilization outside Harvard Square! Walking up Massachusetts Ave. (or penny-boarding, as a good friend of mine does) is a great pleasure. The shops and buildings, unique amenities, and vastly superior Chinese fare all add to Cambridge’s unique atmosphere.

Ours is a city that is more than overpriced hamburger shops, empty clothing stores, and illegally-operating markets.

Plus, Porter Square has a Target coming soon, to add to the 24-hour CVS, bookstore, great Thai food restaurant, and more already there. What does the Square have? The Dickson Bros. Hardware Store and a Warby Parker. A Warby Parker! I know Harvard students love to act the hipster, but honestly—we’ve gone too far!

As I have stated before, I can’t overstate how much better the living is in Quad Houses—it’s a great advantage. Pforzheimer House was Housing Day is one apparently at full capacity this year, and of celebration, not still I am told only despair. It’s a day eight of my fellow sopfhomores were in which the entire unlucky enough to Harvard community have hallway doubles during the fall. comes together and My linkmates in celebrates a unique Currier House live in a suite with a fultradition found ly-furnished kitchnowhere else. en and an excessively large common room—and they were by no means first in their House lottery. With the exception of monstrous Mather, why would one want the possibility of getting housing as bad or worse than that of your freshman dorm? Do you relish getting “sexiled” by your two roommates in your walkthrough triple?

Additionally, River Houses can also consume one whole.

Take Adams House. Living in that Gothic mansion of decayed wealth is like waiting for the fall of the House of Usher—it’s only a matter of time until it caves in on itself. They desperately need their upcoming renovation!

Finally, the Quad’s party spaces are incredibly lively. As someone who lives three stories above the world-famous Pfoho Igloo, my inability to sleep on Friday and Saturday nights is a testament to how “lit” the Quad is. Compare this once again to Adams, which notoriously instituted a ban on alcohol in their social spaces. I personally don’t even drink alcohol, and I’m offended by that policy. You will find diversity and inclusion in the Quad, my friends—no unceremonious banishing and bashing from us!

If you do get sorted into a River House, I do offer my condolences. Such are the odds, after all—like our poor brethren at that safety school in New Haven, we can’t all win at life. March is the cruelest month, as T.S. Eliot, Class of 1909, might have said (a reference to the House of the same name, I’m sure.)

Okay, I’ll be honest. Despite my facetiousness, you will be happy in whatever House you get sorted into. Housing Day is one of celebration, not despair. It’s a day in which the entire Harvard community comes together and celebrates a unique tradition found nowhere else. Whether polar bears or penguins storm your dorm this Thursday, enjoy the suspense, the excitement, the thrill, the amazing feeling that comes with being part of a new community that will accept you. It’s not just a House you’re joining, but a home.

This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.

BE A CRIMSON CARTOONIST Submit a sample cartoon or any questions to Associate Editorial Editor Wonik Son ‘19 (wonik.son@thecrimson.com).

Secularism and Its Discontents

When dealing with HCFA and ‘theological disagreement,’ we cannot ignore the Spirit in our midst Henry N. BROOKS SOCIALLY LIBERAL, FISCALLY LIBERAL

I

n the past month, student group Harvard College Faith in Action endured two serious public relations debacles, both regarding the group’s relation to the BGLTQ community. The first incident arose when HCFA invited renowned ex-lesbian Jackie Hill-Perry, who became famous for claiming that her rebirth into faith saved her from a “lifestyle of homosexual sin,” to speak at its weekly Doxa meeting. Then, in the wake of a public outcry and several opinion pieces, news broke that HCFA had dismissed one of its Bible study group leaders after she dated someone of the same gender—though group leaders cited reasons of “theological disagreement.”

After the latter incident, the College put the group on “probation,” reportedly marking the first instance of such disciplinary action in the history of the College.

Much of the response among community members and the wider public has echoed a familiar array of sentiments. One student interviewed by The Crimson chastised the non-denominational Christian group for exemplifying “institutional backlash against queer people.” An op-ed judged HCFA “complicit in promoting dangerous homophobic rhetoric” and threatening “the emotional and physical safety of LGBT people here on campus.”

One commenter following the story on a BGLTQ news site staked out a more extreme position: “Virginal births, talking snakes, boats with two of every species on board… Enough judging people through the prism of fairy tales.”

It seems to this author that these reactions, some more respectfully than others, leave unexamined the purchase that faith still holds in people’s lives—and the lives of BGLTQ people no less. To identify “dangerous homophobic rhetoric” as the object of our frustration means leaving the underlying problem—the way faith is often framed as contending with our secular sensibilities—unaddressed. Attributing homophobia to a belief in “virginal births [and] talking snakes” only exacerbates that problem, affirming catego-

ries like “religious-and-straight” and “secular-and-queer” that constrain nonconforming expressions of identity.

Certain student commentators seem to have picked up on this friction. Abraham E. Rebollo ’20 worried that putting HCFA on probation might “feed into the modern Christian persecution complex.” Nicholas P. Whittaker ’19 reminded that a “more thorough… thoughtful drag [of HCFA] would seek to understand the complexities of the Black Faithful experience.” Sarah K. Grammar ’18 put it plainly: “side note: faith is important to a good number of queer people.”

Understanding the Hill-Perry incident and the later “theological disagreement” thus requires highlighting the way faith bisects the BGLTQ community. This means, among other things, taking seriously the claim, formulated by one self-identified gay, Christian student, that “I am two.” Accommodating this sentiment means rethinking the way we often banish religion from everyday discussion or consign it to the purgatory of “outdated” ideas. We must work instead to cultivate a space in which gods, spirits, the secular, and the queer can cohabitate.

This can seem a daunting undertaking, particularly in an age when it has become the unhappy business of secularism to provincialize the divine.

For good or ill, the old American insight that it is impolite to discuss faith in public prevails in many areas of the country. Yet learning to speak about religion—and irreligion—as more profound than simple superstition, cynicism, or ideology is a timely lesson, and at Harvard, a strong first step toward community healing.

Concerns about resurrecting religious discussion should not be dismissed. As one cultural commentator recently reminded, “People actually begin wars and kill one another over conflicting religious views.” Nor are these wars foreign to our experience. Of America’s contentious political disputes, several are rooted in competing modes of belief: opposition to abortion for instance is highly variegated along lines of sect, concentrated among evangelical Christians. This conflict has produced its fair share of bloodshed since the 1980s. Whether it is value differences themselves, or our inability to adjudicate them diplomatically that results in body counts, is as yet undetermined.

It is also not obvious whether the posited categories “religious-and-straight” and “secu-

lar-and-queer” are anything more than persistent imaginings. That we have accepted religiosity as a stand-in for sexual preference only confirms that we see religion as bound up with our pasts and secularism as consubstantial with sexual liberation. This view ignores what Divinity School professor Diana L. Eck calls the “deep meaning” of religion in the present day, whose significance often extends to BGLTQ people. It also airbrushes the way secular forces have often been mobilized against the BGLTQ rights dialogue.

Importantly, the contrary position—that religion is a source of suffering for many members of the BGLTQ community—is not dissolved by adopting a more expansive view of the sexual/religious intersection. We actually revive the potential for religious criticism by acknowledging that queerness does always materialize within secularism. It is precisely our ability to talk about the benefits of BGLTQ faith that also enables us to resume a critical dialogue on religious shortcomings.

In the present moment, foregrounding these discussions becomes essential. With regard to HCFA, we ought to read the College’s sanctions less as a blanket measure against “hate” and more as a call to thoroughly articulate our values. In the rush to mobilize standard activist vocabulary—terms like “hate” and “tolerance,” “bigotry” and “discrimination”—against Hill-Perry and HCFA, we might double-check to ensure we haven’t misnamed the problem or alienated the BGLTQ faithful from their own dialogue.

This is the first step toward our communal repentance.

Henry N. Brooks ’19 is a Social Studies concentrator in Currier House. His column appears on alternate Tuesdays.

Robert Miranda ’20, a Crimson Associate Editorial Editor, is an English concentrator living in Pforzheimer House (the best House).

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

SPORTS

THE HARVARD CRIMSON | MARCH 6, 2018 | PAGE 11

Ryan Wins Individual National Title as Darkhorse

David Ryan swings away. This weekend the co-captain headlined six Harvard semifinalists as select members of the Harvard men’s and women’s squash teams competed at George Washington University at the individual national championships. COURTESY OF GIL TALBOT SQUASH

By WILLIAM QUAN CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

David Ryan was never supposed to win the 2018 College Squash Association (CSA) national individual championship. Nor was he supposed to be in the finals, semifinals, quarterfinals, or even the opening round.

Coming into the weekend, he was ranked 18th in the country and only secured his spot by virtue of other players dropping from the season’s last competition. But on a weekend where six Harvard athletes made it to the national semifinals, the Dublin native saved two championship points to cap­

ture the 36th men’s title in program history with a 12-10 fifth-game victory.

If the title wasn’t enough, the journey to his championship made the run all the sweeter. Seeded 14th in the bracket, Harvard’s co-captain began his run by dispatching Penn’s No. 1 Andrew Douglas in four games before barreling through Dartmouth top-seed Alvin Heumann in straight games.

This set up a matchup against teammate, but now opponent, Timmy Brownell in the semifinal. After trading the first four games in a tight contest, Ryan was able to escape to final game, 11-7, to grab a spot in the final against top overall seed and former occupant of the pro circuit, Trinity’s

Kush Kumar.

“It was great having the four Harvard boys down there,” Ryan said.

“Three of us got to the semifinals, which is a great achievement, in general, for all of us as a team, especially after the disappointment of last weekend when we got picked to the post by Trinity in the team championship final.”

The whole weekend was new territory for Ryan. Besides Brownell, he had never played any of the other three.

“I was inexperienced going in against these guys, but the thing was that they also hadn’t played me, so they didn’t really know what to expect,” Ryan said. “Maybe I got them a little bit nervous, when it came down to it.”

On Sunday, at the George Washing-

ton University courts in the nation’s capital, Ryan triggered the upset alarm by winning the first, and then the second game of the national final, by relatively easy margins. If Kumar—the overwhelming favorite—was rattled, it was hard to see as he took the third and fourth games in decisive fashion. Ryan’s season and career, along with one last shot at glory, came down to one final game to 11.

The two kept each other in check early in the game, but Kumar began to pull away and arrived at the precipice of a national championship leading 108. The Bantam needed just one more point to win it all, but that never came.

“I was a couple of match balls down and I was just in that sort of mindset that I really didn’t want to lose, no matter what,” Ryan said. “I was going to leave it all out there. It’s my last ever college squash match, probably squash match in general.”

Ryan won four straight points, including two title-saving strokes, to flip the script.

The pro-turned-freshman Kumar still has three more chances at an individual title, along with the team national championship already in his pocket after Trinity’s home victory against Harvard. Meanwhile, Ryan can graduate with a personal accolade that he hardly knew was possible to win.

This is the second year in a row that Harvard has come away with an individual national championship from a player that did not play primarily on the top rung of the ladder. Last season, then-freshman Gina Kennedy came away with a national title after beating top-seeded Reeham Sedky.

Kennedy could hardly claim the role of an underdog this year in the singles championship, despite being ranked second behind the Penn junior, as she looked to defend her title. Nor could the rest of the Harvard women’s team stay away from the spotlight, who after sweeping the team national championship 9-0 against Trinity, traveled eight of its top players to the tournament and served as a model of performance and consistency.

“We’re such a small team so it was so important to stay injury-free and I think the team did that so well,” said co-captain Sue Ann Yong.

After the end of Friday’s action, it was easy to be impressed by Harvard’s results across the two competition divisions. Both the men and women were able to place three players in the cham-

pionship semifinals, and therefore each have one representative in the final.

But while it was surprising to see three Cambridge men in the semifinal, the chances of a national championship had to look better for the three fourtime defending national championship Harvard women, fresh off an undefeated season. The match-ups were compelling and the history real. Longtime star junior Sabrina Sobhy had a Saturday date against Sedky, with a possible championship rematch looming a day later with Kennedy and “The Hammer,” or a glorified challenged match to decide the national title.

“It was nice because I think most people had different matches than they did during the regular season, so they were playing different people and we could still support each other,” Yong said.

Sedky ended up easily dispatching Sobhy in straight games, while Kennedy warded off teammate, classmate, and fellow British national Amelia Henley in five games. Similarities abounded during the weekend—Henley was trying to channel some of her own No. 4 slot magic to match Ryan.

But Kennedy, who, like Ryan, won the first two games in the national final last year as a heavy underdog, ended back up in the championship game.

So the rematch began, Penn’s topranked against Harvard’s top-ranked.

The two ended up in a draw after two games, but Sedky pulled away in the next two games. The final score (3-1) and the disappointment flipped. But a new feeling creep in for the Penn junior—relief. For three years, Sedky had made the individual national finals.

The first two times she lost, but on Sunday she finally won.

If there’s a natural equilibrium in the world, the past three weeks of squash has presented strong evidence in favor of such an idea. The Harvard women won the team title, but then lost out on a season two-peat, although Yong did win her B division final. The Harvard men fell against to Trinity, but then had co-captain Ryan come out on top against Trinity’s top player. There’s been disappointment, but for Coach Mike Way, he has coached national champions on two teams this season. And for David Ryan, a title for a lifetime.

Staff writer William Quan can be reached at william.quan@thecrimson.com.

Notebook: Men’s Basketball Add New Banner to Legacy MEN’S BASKETBALL

By HENRY ZHU CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

By the final two minutes of Saturday night’s regular season finale against Columbia, Harvard men’s basketball looked up at the scoreboard to see a 19-point lead. It had clinched its first Ivy League title since 2015 and would be the number one seed in the conference tournament.

The Crimson (17-12, 12-2 Ivy) had held a comfortable margin against the Lions (8-19, 5-9) for the majority of the contest, leading by as much as 25 in the second half. After sophomore forward Henry Welsh extended the lead to 88-69 with an acrobatic wraparound layup, coach Tommy Amaker turned toward his bench and re-inserted his three seniors back into the court, oneby-one.

Senior captain Chris Egi was the first to check in, followed by guard Andre Chatfield. Two possessions later, forward Zach Yoshor stepped onto the court.

The three seniors were freshmen the last time Harvard put up a conference banner in Lavietes Pavilion and the only group who had experienced the thrills of the NCAA Tournament.

Although the group saw little game action in conference play, Egi and his classmates played an important mentorship role to this young Crimson team and were three critical pieces of the team’s “19 Strong.”

In fitting fashion, the last points in Harvard’s 93-74 blowout win came from one of the seniors—in the form of a triple. From the top of the circle, Chatfield drilled his second game attempt from three and increased the Crimson’s count of triples to 17, a remarkable tally that tied a program record.

Before the clock hit zero, sophomore point guard Christian Juzang waved Egi over, handing his captain the ball to ensure this historic moment concluded in the hands of the senior.

The story of the sixth-ever Ivy League championship for Harvard men’s basketball had been written.

“Having the opportunity to have a chance to win a championship and being able to win it, you definitely don’t take that for granted,” Egi said. “You’ll be a champion forever so good way to go out. I love these guys. These guys mean everything to me, seeing all the ­

young guys doing their thing on the court and I’m just trying to do my best to help in anyway possible. Being able to win with my brothers, my family, that means everything to me.”

MAGIC FROM DEEP From the opening four minutes, there was a noticeable feeling in the crowd that this would be a special night from deep range. Sophomore forward Seth Towns had knocked down back-toback triples in the initial two-and-ahalf minutes, followed by a three from sophomore Christian Juzang a minute later. Overall, the Crimson went sixof-eight from deep in the opening ten minutes.

The accurate three-point shooting didn’t end there, though. Junior wing Corey Johnson, who already converted two threes in those first ten minutes, added another at the 4:25 mark.

Sophomore forward Justin Bassey and freshman guard Rio Haskett tallied two more.

In particular, Haskett’s two game triples capstoned a noticeable turnaround in the freshman’s offensive game this season. The freshman guard had been shooting 27 percent from the field prior to conference play, and had converted on just five triples out of 30 attempts in that span. Haskett has shown much more confidence in his offensive game in recent weeks, showcased by a four-of-seven night last week against Princeton. Tonight was another positive sign.

“We have a phrase we use, let the shot find you,” Amaker said. “I thought [Rio] did that. He wasn’t hunting his own shot. He was moving it, fitting in.

The ball is being reversed, kicking to him and he is wide open. It is a rhythm shot, it feels right. Those are the shots you want to take and you will live with the result.”

All in all, Harvard’s 60.7 percent night from three is an indication not simply of accurate shooting, but improved court awareness and targeting of open teammates on the perimeter.

On Friday night, the Crimson logged 20 assists—the second highest of the season.

The season’s highest? Saturday night, when Harvard totaled 24 assists. Juzang and Bassey led the team with seven dishes each alongside their combined six game triples.

“I thought the start and our ability to really be in attack mode, with 24 assists and share the ball and make

The Harvard Men’s Basketball team jumps in joy at the buzzer after its victory against Columbia. The Crimson earns its sixth-ever Ivy League Championship and a chance to play for a NCAA tourney bid next week at the Palestra. TIMOTHY R. O’MEARA—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

the shots that we made,” Amaker said.

“Just a tremendous effort from our kids to share the ball and be unselfish.”

BUILDING ON THE CRIMSON LEGACY Before Saturday night’s game, Amaker gathered his team in the locker room and showed his young team video clips of past Ivy champions. Given Amaker had won five straight Ivy championships from 2010-2015, the 11-year coach certainly had a breadth of content to draw from.

Harvard basketball royalty was also in the stands to watch the Crimson hold up the Princeton Alumni Trophy for the sixth time in program history. Last year’s co-captain Zena Edosomwan enthusiastically supported his former teammates from courtside, while 2010-2012 captain Oliver McNally also watched from the stands.

Johnson in particular noted the past accomplishments of the program built by these alumni, and emphasized that the task at hand was to continue this legacy by earning another NCAA tournament berth.

“Personally, it really just motivates us and gives us that fire, that edge, to really see how close we were and see the past teams and players,” Johnson said.

“When I was getting recruited here, the players that I first met like Siyani [Chambers] and Jonah [Travis] and Steve [Moundou-Missi], all those players, Laurent [Rivard], just huge names in this program. Just seeing what they’ve done and how much they’ve achieved at Harvard and just to be in that mention now is surreal for us.

We’ve still got a lot of work to do like I said, but we do feel really good about where we are right now.”

As Johnson concluded, Harvard will need to continue its hot shooting streak of late into the postseason if it hopes to see a return to the Big Dance.

Having just made the trip to the Palestra the prior week, the Crimson faces No. 4 seed Cornell in the semifinals of the Ivy League Tournament this Saturday at noon.

Although it has checked off one box, there are still many boxes left remaining in March.

“We are very proud of this team,” Amaker said. “It is a very young team and it has been a few years since we have been able to say that about Harvard Basketball, being Ivy champions.

I’m sure at some point we will look at this and find it to be incredibly rewarding.”

Staff writer Henry Zhu can be reached at henry. zhu@thecrimson.com.

PAGE 12 | MARCH 6, 2018 | THE HARVARD CRIMSON