The Harvard Crimson - Volume CXLV, No. 95

The Harvard Crimson THE UNIVERSITY DAILY, EST. 1873 | VOLUME CXLV, NO. 95 | CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS | WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2018

EDITORIAL PAGE 4

NEWS PAGE 3

SPORTS PAGE 6

Harvard should use its resources to answer graduate students’ requests.

Bacow urges students to go to the polls to vote, in an email titled “Democracy.”

Men’s soccer opens its 2018 Ivy League play with win against Yale.

SEAS Dean Urges Change

SEAS Survey Results

27%

said they had experienced harassment or discrimination

By LUKE W. XU CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

The School of Engineering and Applied Sciences released the results of its first ever comprehensive climate survey last week, reporting “a breakdown in confidence” in the school’s ability “to meaningfully address negative behaviors and actions in the workplace, lab, and classroom.”

In an email sent to SEAS affiliates, Dean of SEAS Francis J. Doyle III called the survey results “eye-opening.”

“A majority of us believe that, as individuals, we try hard to create a welcoming and respectful environment at SEAS,” he wrote. “Yet, as a community, the data clearly suggest that we do not consistently realize that goal.”

The survey, developed by a ­

29%

of those who experienced discrimination chose to report it

22%

of those who reported were “very satisfied” with administrators’ response

SEE SEAS PAGE 3

Admins Defend Admissions Policy Bacow Warns Suit Could Divide Community

By ANGELA N. FU and LUCY WANG

By CAROLINE S. ENGELMAYER and MICHAEL E. XIE

CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Speaking at his first meeting of the Faculty or Arts and Sciences as University President, Lawrence S. Bacow addressed a major hurdle that Harvard will face in the coming weeks: the lawsuit challenging the College’s admissions policy.

Bacow dedicated several minutes at the Tuesday meeting — during the time allotted at each meeting for the President to speak — to the importance of diversity and the lawsuit’s potential to divide the Harvard community.

The lawsuit, filed in 2014 by anti-affirmative action group

Dean of the College Rakesh Khurana maintained in an interview Thursday that “there is no evidence” that Harvard discriminates against Asian-American applicants.

His remarks came just weeks before a high-profile lawsuit alleging exactly that is slated to go to trial in a Boston courthouse.

The suit — brought by anti-affirmative action group Students for Fair Admissions in 2014 — generated national headlines this summer after court filings revealed previously unknown details of the College’s secretive admissions

SEE ADMISSIONS PAGE 5

SEE KHURANA PAGE 5

ELENA M. RAMOS—CRIMSON DESIGNER

Bacow Says Kavanaugh Chose Not to Teach

New FAS Schedule Causes Challenges

By ANGELA N. FU and LUCY WANG CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

The leaves in Cambridge are getting redder, students are rushing to snap up tickets to November’s Harvard-Yale game, and students and professors have one month of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ new schedule under their belts — a schedule that has disrupted campus patterns from sectioning to meal times.

The new schedule — which Faculty voted to approve in 2017— extends the length of a standard course from 60 to 75 minutes and eliminates “Harvard Time,” a College tradition that allowed students to arrive seven minutes late to classes.

Professors are not required to take up the full 75 minutes of the block, which means that students have at least 15 minutes of passing time now between their classes in lieu of accepted tardiness. The new system also requires departments

to spread out their course offerings more evenly across the day, resulting in more classes meeting both earlier and later in the day than in previous years.

Several professors and students said the new system poses challenges in scheduling discussion sections.

Philosophy professor Bernhard Nickel said he had to reschedule sections for his class Phil 3: “The True and the Good” three times. Though Nickel noted that it was not unusual for him to have to readjust section offerings in the past, he said this was the first year he could not find section times that worked for all of his students.

“For the first time, even after going back and forth and negotiating with students, I haven’t been able to find section times for my allotted number of sections that could accommodate all of the registered students of the class,” Nickel said. “I just had to tell the students who I

SEE SCHEDULE PAGE 5 Harvard and Yale’s Endowment Returns (FY2010-

By AIDAN F. RYAN CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY

Stars of new movie Bohemian Rhapsody Rami Malek, Gwilym Lee and Joseph Mazzello arrive at the Boston premiere of the movie on October 1st. KATHRYN S. KUHAR—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

By ELI W. BURNES and ANDREW J. ZUCKER CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

20%

10%

0% FY2012

FY2013

FY2014

FY2015

FY2016

FY2017

FY2018

ELENA M. RAMOS—CRIMSON DESIGNER

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

Harvard Today 2

News 3

Editorial 4

SEE BACOW PAGE 5

Experts: Wait to Judge Narv

30%

FY2011

Facing mounting pressure to leave his post as a visiting lecturer at Harvard Law School amid allegations of sexual assault, Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh decided on his own not to return to teach at the school this winter, University President Lawrence S. Bacow confirmed Tuesday.

Bacow spoke about Kavanaugh at the monthly meeting of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, less than 24 hours after the Law School announced that Kavanaugh will not teach his course slated for Jan. 2019.

“My understanding is that Kavanaugh decided not to teach this next January and that decision is year-to-year,” Bacow said. “I don’t know more of how that decision was made.” ­

Harvard Endowment Returns (FY 2010-FY 2018)

FY2010

Khurana Says 2013 Report ‘Was Not Correct’

Sports 6

Experts say it is still too early to take this year’s endowment returns as a bellwether for Harvard Management Company CEO N.P. “Narv” Narvekar’s strategy, instead recommending that observers judge his tenure over time.

HMC grew its investments by 10 percent this past year, swelling the total endowment to $39.2 billion. The results, however, still trail those of its Ivy League peers — including Yale’s returns, which grew by 12.3 percent.

Brad R. Balter, a managing partner of Balter Capital Management, said despite Narvekar’s portfolio returns lagging behind other large endowments, it is too early to judge the HMC chief’s performance.

“It trails, but if you’re looking to judge Narv now, it’s a lit-

TODAY’S FORECAST

tle early. It takes a long time to turn a battleship around. And Harvard is definitely a battleship,” he said.

Balter added that judging the endowment’s performance when the market isn’t growing will be a better indicator of the strength of HMC’s positions.

“When we hit a period when... everything isn’t going up, meaning real estate [and] private equity, which has happened every year for the past eight years, it’s going to be a lot more interesting to see how the endowment performs then, because maybe they are positioned for a less benign environment going forward,” he said.

“So, again, it’s early.”

Tim J. Keating ’85, the president of Keating Wealth Management, said the results indicated HMC under Narvekar is “a multi-year work in progress” due to the endowment’s transition away from illiquid assets like real estate and private equity.

CLOUDY High: 68 Low: 56

“I think the main takeaway is that the transition and simplification that Narv began a year ago is going to be a multi-year work in progress,” he said. “The reason for that is Harvard was very heavily invested in alternatives and lots of illiquid asset classes. And that’s simply going to take time to transition the portfolio.”

Keating said he finds HMC’s subpar performance over the last decade more concerning than this year’s returns.

“I think what’s most disturbing is the longer-term results and I’m speaking really of a decade or more,” he said.

“That’s really where Harvard has a black eye and there’s lots of reasons for that. But the concern about one year? None, zero.

Concern about the last decade?

Extremely high.”

Others say that observers will need more information to determine Narvekar’s

SEE RETURNS PAGE 3

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chicken

THE HARVARD CRIMSON |

OCTOBER 3, 2018

PAGE 2

HARVARD TODAY

For Lunch Red Spice Chicken Macaroni & Cheese Roasted Carrots and Lentils

For Dinner Reds Best Fish Local Fish w/ Lemon Butter Capers & Parsley Seitan Pepper Steak Creamy Polenta & Cheddar

TODAY’S EVENTS

IN THE REAL WORLD

Suppressing the Vote Institute of Politics, 6-7:15p.m.

Trump Engaged in Suspect Tax Schemes as He Reaped Riches From His Father

Go down to the IOP for a conversation on modern American democracy. Join several voting rights activists as they discuss the causes of voter suppression and what can be done to fix it. The event will begin in the courtyard.

During his campaign, President Trump often boasted that he was a self-made billionaire. A New York Times investigation has found that he greatly increased the money that he received from his parents by participating in dubious tax schemes.

Womanhood: Setting Your Own Standards Harvard College Women’s Center, 7-8 p.m.

Freshmen: Head to the Harvard College Women’s Center in the basement of Canaday and find out more about what it’s like to navigate Harvard as a woman. In addition to the engaging conversation, there will there will be Insomnia cookies.

Trump Mocks Kavanaugh Accuser Christine Blasey Ford

Fifteen year old drumming prodigy JD Beck works at the kit opening for Knower at the Sinclair on Friday night. GRIFFIN R. ANDRES—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

At a rally in Mississippi, President Trump attempted to impersonate Dr. Blasey Ford while the crowd laughed. He encouraged the audience to consider the apparent damage that the #MeToo movement has done to men’s lives.

DAILY BRIEFING Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences released the results of its first climate survey, which found that 27 percent of respondents had experienced harassment or discrimination at SEAS — and indicated a “breakdown of confidence” in the school’s ability to address “negative behaviors.” Dean of SEAS Francis J. Doyle III called the survey results “eyeopening.” In other news, University President Lawrence S. Bacow told faculty members Tuesday that Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh decided on his own not to return to the Law School to teach this winter. Bacow also warned faculty that an upcoming trial over Harvard’s admissions practices could divide Harvard affiliates.

A Llama, Bagel and Frisbee: Apple’s New iOS 12.1 Emoji Among the saddening news of the past few days is the announcement that Apple will reveal 70 new emoji at the end of the month. Apple users will be able to send raccoon, llama and bagel emoji, as well as make their characters bald or redheaded.

AROUND THE IVIES COLUMBIA Recent public safety reports show a drastic increase in drug- and alcohol-related discipline at Columbia over the past year, as well as a decrease in the number of reported sexual assaults. The Columbia Spectator reported that the University saw a 135 percent increase in alcohol-related disciplinary actions, in contrast with a decrease of over 50 percent in the number of reported sexual offenses.

BROWN AND YALE Yale University’s endowment grew to $29.4 billion, which represents a 12.3 percent return from last year, according to the Yale Daily News.

Brown University’s endowment reached $3.8 billion in 2018, which represents a 13.2 percent return according to the Brown Daily Herald.

Both endowments reached record highs and both outperformed Harvard’s 10 percent return rate.

DARTMOUTH In response to concerns from residents of Hanover, New Hampshire about the safety of Dartmouth’s Homecoming bonfire, Dartmouth College will prevent students from running more than one lap around the fire, according to The Dartmouth.

This new policy represents a major change to a longstanding campus tradition in which students run a number of laps around the bonfire, equivalent either to their class year or to 100 plus their class year.

THE UNIVERSITY DAILY, EST. 1873

The Harvard Crimson Derek G. Xiao President Hannah Natanson Managing Editor Nathan Y. Lee Business Manager

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STAFF FOR THIS ISSUE Arts Chairs Mila Gauvini II ’19 Grace Z. Li ’19

Design Chairs Morgan J. Spaulding ’19 Simon S. Sun ’19

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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.

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Story Editors Joshua J. Florence ‘19 Mia C. Karr ’19 Hannah Natanson ’19 Phelan Yu ’19 Alison W. Steinbach ‘19

Sports Editor Spencer R. Morris ’20

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.

PAGE 3

THE HARVARD CRIMSON | OCTOBER 3, 2018

Bacow ‘Assigns’ Voting CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

With midterm exams already underway, University President Lawrence S. Bacow issued an “additional assignment” to students Tuesday: register to vote ahead of the upcoming midterm elections.

In an email to students bearing the subject line “Democracy,” Bacow urged eligible students to register to vote, to read up on the candidates and the issues, and to cast a ballot this November.

“In five weeks, Americans will head to the polls for the midterm elections and fulfill the first responsibility of citizenship in a democracy,” Bacow wrote.

In his email, Bacow included a link to an Institute of Politics website that helps students register to vote and request absentee ballots from their home states.

The midterm elections mark a possible political inflection point in the Trump era, especially for the interests of Harvard and its peer institutions.

Several items on the Republican legislative agenda — such as the “unprecedented” tax on university endowment returns and threats to financial aid and federal research funding in the ­

Higher Education Act. — have reinforced a hostile political climate surrounding higher education.

In addition, some students have found their legal status in limbo following the Trump administration’s Sept. 2017 decision to terminate Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, an Obama-era program that allows undocumented youth to legally live and work in the United States.

Roughly 65 undocumented students attended the College during the 2017-2018 academic year.

Due to their tax exempt status as a non-profit, higher education institutions must remain non-partisan and therefore cannot endorse any candidates or parties, though Bacow has been an outspoken opponent of the endowment tax and the Trump administration’s decision to end DACA. In an interview last week, he called the endowment tax an example of “poor public policy” and said ending DACA was “profoundly unfair.”

Bacow also said last week that he has personally spoken to lawmakers in Congress about endowment tax, securing legal protections for undocumented students, and support for federal Pell Grants and research

funding.

He met with several legislators on both sides of the aisle during a trip to D.C. in July.

In his email, Bacow wrote, he has been inspired since taking office on July 1 by students’ desire to make a difference in the world. He has interacted with undergraduates over meals in Houses, runs along the Charles, and events during Opening Days.

“What has inspired me so far is your deep engagement with the work of making the world better,” he wrote. “I have every confidence that those of you who are able to vote will do so.”

This is not the first time that Bacow has called for civic engagement among Harvard students.

In his first Convocation address last month, Bacow directed freshmen gathered in Tercentenary Theatre to take out their phones and write down the address of the Institute of Politics website he referenced in Tuesday’s email so that students could register to vote.

“If you don’t think that the world that we live in is perfect, the only way it gets better is if good people like you work to repair it,” Bacow said at Convocation. kristine.guillaume@thecrimson.com

RETURNS FROM PAGE 1

SEAS FROM PAGE 1

Experts: Returns Reveal Little

SEAS Releases Results of Survey

performance.

“He’s certainly doing better than many of the recent predecessors, but you’d like to know more, in particular you want to look at the subcategories, the return on stocks, on bonds, on all the different asset classes.

That would give you a much better picture of how much the returns are due to decisions made

by Narv and his team,” said David L. Yermack ’85, chair of the Finance Department at New York University Stern and a former managing editor of The Crimson.

“We really would benefit with having more information,” Yermack said.

Charles A. Skorina, the head of a finance executive search firm, said one immediate assessment he can make based on this year’s returns regards Narvekar’s execution relative to his predecessors.

“The significant takeaway for me from this latest Harvard performance release is how much better they are doing relative to the Mendillo era. I think you have to give Narv a lot of credit,” Skorina said, referring to former HMC CEO Jane L. Mendillo.

Since taking over in 2016, Narvekar has tied compensation to overall portfolio performance, cut staff, and sold natural resource investments. Skorina credited this year’s returns to these changes.

“Narv is making hard choices that the prior people were not willing to make,” Skorina said, “He’s been willing to make hard management and investment decisions, and it’s shown in the performance.” eli.burnes@thecrimson.com andrew.zucker@thecrimson.com

From the Law School to Longwood,

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committee of students, staff, and faculty, launched last May. It polled SEAS affiliates on topics such as overall climate, career growth, and experience of bias and harassment. Of the over 2,100 members of SEAS, 436 members responded, representing a 21 percent completion rate.

Prominently featured in the report are statistics for incidents of harassment or discrimination. Twenty-seven percent of survey respondents indicated that they’ve experienced harassment or discrimination at SEAS. Of that group, 29 percent indicated that they reported their incident. And of those who reported their incidents, only 22 percent were satisfied with how the reports were handled.

“The bottom line is all of us have a lot of work to do to make SEAS the community that we aspire to be,” Doyle wrote. “Harassment and discrimination are real; they occur at SEAS and they have a profoundly negative impact on our community.”

According to the report, women, individuals with disabilities, members of the “LGBQA+” community, and underrepresented minority groups were all more likely to report incidents of harassment or discrimination.

The survey — which Doyle called “one of the most detailed surveys of its kind” in a letter introducing the data — followed the recommendations of the SEAS Committee on Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging, which the school convened last September.

In his letter, Doyle highlighted a number of other takeaways from the survey, such as reported challenges in maintaining work-life balance, a perceived lack of commitment to diversity and inclusivity on the part of SEAS, and reports of insufficient access to mental health services.

Alexis J. Stokes, SEAS’s Director of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging, said in an interview last week that SEAS is committed to responding to the

By CINDY H. ZHANG CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

The Harvard Extension School and MIT unveiled on Monday a joint initiative that establishes the MITx MicroMasters program as a new pathway for an Extension School graduate degree.

Huntington D. Lambert, dean of the Division of Continuing Education and Extension School, hailed the new program as a great addition to the School’s existing offerings.

“From an Extension School perspective, it’s really simple,” Lambert said.

“Here are amazing, pre-qualified students who can do really high-level academic work, who are the same profile as our students. I would love to give them a pathway into our programs.”

Students utilizing the MicroMasters pathway must have an accredited bachelor’s degree and take an additional course at the Extension School before being formally admitted into one of three graduate fields of study: management, sustainability, or development practice. The MIT Data Science MicroMasters program is “in the process” of being qualified as an addition­

al pathway to the Data Science graduate field of study at the Extension School, according to Lambert.

The first cohort of MicroMasters students will be able to take Extension School courses next spring, according to the press release.

Though Lambert is excited about the potential influx of “highly qualified, self-motivated” students, the Extension School will take a hit financially by adding these pathways and accepting them for credit, he said.

“We give up $10,800 of revenue because we waived four courses,” Lambert said. “But the key message I want to say is that we’re happy to trade revenue for great students because it’s students and academic quality first, second, and third.”

The program is comprised of a series of online graduate-level courses in a specific field, according to the MicroMasters website. The courses are hosted on edX, a massive open online course platform co-founded by MIT and Harvard.

“The MITx MicroMasters credential program opens up a semesters-worth of graduate-level courses from MIT to anyone willing to learn,” Krish-

na Rajagopal, dean for digital learning at MIT Open Learning, said in the press release.

Students who successfully complete all required MicroMasters courses — usually three to five — as well as a proctored exam are eligible for a MicroMasters credential from MIT, according to the MicroMasters website. Students are then eligible to apply for a Master’s program at MIT. Interest in the MicroMasters program has far exceeded what MIT has been able to accommodate.

Of the approximately 2,000 students who completed the MicroMasters program in supply chain management, MIT found around half “admissible” to the Master’s program but was only able to admit 40 students, Lambert said.

“By adding Harvard Extension School and expanding the overall number of pathway institutions, the MITx MicroMasters credential program gives learners from across the globe even more opportunities to apply their credential toward a blended Master’s program of their choice,” Rajagopal said in the press release. cindy.zhang@thecrimson.com

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By KRISTINE E. GUILLAUME

Extension School Launches ‘MicroMasters’ Program

concerns raised in the survey.

“We want to make it clear that, whether the response rate was 21 percent or 100 percent, there were concerns that were mentioned in the survey, and we want to respond to them,” she said.

In the report, Doyle committed to a number of “shortand medium- term” steps SEAS will take, including new reporting mechanisms for incidents of bias, harassment or discrimination, improved accessibility accommodations, and a new requirement for faculty applications to SEAS. “We will begin offering this year a SEAS-specific diversity, inclusion, and belonging training Program,” he wrote. “We will institute a new requirement for faculty candidates to submit a diversity, inclusion, and belonging statement (along with teaching and research statements) as part of their applications.”

Stokes said SEAS will host a number of discussions over the fall semester with staff, faculty, and students to discuss the survey results. The discussions will be moderated by Judy “JJ” Jackson, a diversity and inclusion administrator at MIT. “It’s an opportunity for our community to ask questions about the results of the survey, as well as the process of the survey,” Stokes said. “They can give feedback, as well as suggestions, of things that they would like to see SEAS do in response.”

Stokes said SEAS is committed to maintaining “transparency” in its diversity efforts.

“We want to make sure that, as we discuss the results and formulate a plan to move forward, that again all voices are a part of the process,” she said.

Improving diversity and inclusion has been an “extremely passionate” priority for Doyle.

Since his deanship began in 2015, SEAS has launched multiple diversity initiatives, including infrastructure for several student affinity groups.

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The John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences sign stands in front of Pierce Hall. KARINA G. GONZALEZ—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

THE HARVARD CRIMSON | October 3, 2018

Page 4

Editorial The Crimson Editorial board

Harvard Should Improve Graduate Students’ Quality of Life

H

avard’s capital campaign was a record-breaking success, giving the University a unique opportunity to make important investments — including, we hope, in its graduate students. Graduate students formally voted to unionize this past year, and they have made clear their needs for better quality of life. The Harvard Graduate Student Union-United Auto Workers, the graduate students’ union, has singled out cost of living adjustments to pay as one of its primary goals, in addition to other benefits including increased stipends, housing security, and waived tuition. We find these requests to be reasonable, especially given that the cost of living in the Cambridge area poses a steep obstacle for many graduate students. Most importantly, these adjustments are now, more than ever, within Harvard’s power to address.

Graduate students play an incredibly important role here on campus. Their research contributes vastly to the intellectual vitality of our University.

Additionally, without them serving as Teaching Fellows, teaching at the College would be infeasible.

Sustaining their academic pursuits is fundamen-

tal to Harvard’s core values and institutional ambitions.

Consequently, we feel strongly that graduate students should never have to endure unreasonable fi-

For better or worse, HGSU-UAW is here to stay. It is important that graduate students rally together behind the union to form a united front working towards common goals.

The Editorial Board of The Harvard Crimson

nancial hardship to pursue their academic interests; they should not be priced out of conducting important research at Harvard. Recent fundraising success aside, Harvard has the largest endowment of any University in the world. The University should use

Harvard Should Eliminate Race in Admissions

By Sasha Ramani

I

n 2014, Students for Fair Admissions filed suit against Harvard for alleged discrimination against Asian Americans stemming from the University’s affirmative action policies. The following year, a coalition of 64 Asian-American organizations filed a similar complaint that was soon dismissed. Both complaints reveal deep anxieties among Asian Americans about how universities perceive them and have important implications for how universities consider diversity.

Asian Americans are not a monolith. They are extremely diverse, both ethnically and socioeconomically, and came to the United States at different times, for different reasons, and under differing conditions. Their educational attainment is similarly diverse.

While 40 percent of Indian Americans have post-graduate education, only 9 percent of Filipino Americans do.

One might therefore expect Filipino Americans to be more supportive of affirmative action than Indian Americans. However, nearly all sub-groups of Asian Americans favor affirmative action that is designed to help black, female, and other minorities access higher education. Chinese Americans are distinct for being the only group who opposes such policies: Only 41 percent support such policies, compared with about 75 percent of other Asian Americans.

Views towards affirmative action may vary because the term is vague, and because reasonable people can hold conflicting views about it. President Lyndon B. Johnson used the phrase during the signing of a 1965 executive order requiring that the U.S. government hire without regard to race, religion and national origin. But he also said, “You do not take a man who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘You are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe you have been completely fair.”

Therein lies the core problem for affirmative action. Governments, recruiters, and universities recognize that disadvantaged populations merit consideration for injustices that their community has historically faced. This is a perfectly reasonable belief. But the common implementation of such well-intentioned policies is wanting. It can entrench the same discrimination that its proponents oppose, divide society, and create further problems for the beneficiaries of such policies.

Consider the 2013 suit brought against the University of Texas, where the school justified affirmative action because a diverse campus offers benefits to all students enrolled. Indeed, academia, government, law enforcement, and medical professionals (among others) could all benefit from greater diversity in their ranks. But the school’s solution was to use skin colour as proxy for diversity, thus suggesting that all black students think the same way and all Latinos share a similar worldview.

Schools should seek talented students from disadvantaged backgrounds. But using race as a proxy for disadvantage is spectacularly uncreative, inefficient, and problematic. Asian Americans on whole may be a successful group, but they include several subgroups that are disadvantaged but overlooked due to their classification as “Asian.” Even President Barack Obama, a supporter of affirma-

tive action, was uncomfortable that his daughters would receive “more favorable treatment than a poor white kid who has struggled more.”Furthermore, it is questionable whether these policies help the populations that they are intended to serve. The 2012 book “Mismatch” argues that affirmative action that pushes black students into law school leaves them ill-prepared to compete with their peers, thus causing many of them to drop out. The authors strikingly conclude that affirmative action results in fewer black students becoming lawyers.

Harvard argues that it admits Asian Americans at a lower rate because it adjusts for other metrics, including school quality. A good-faith effort to seek talent from “less good” schools while being blind to race is commendable and likely legally sound. But this is plainly not what Harvard is doing: It factors race into decision-making, thus exposing it to the aforementioned issues, including the ire of “privileged” racial groups.

What constitutes acceptable use of race may differ between the court of law and the court of public opinion. Consider Harvard’s preference for legacy applicants, who enjoy five times greater acceptance rates than non-legacy applicants. The plaintiff argues that nearly 40 percent of Harvard’s white students are either legacy admits or recruited athletes. This suggests preference for wealthy, white students – which raises profound moral questions, regardless of what courts decide.Axing legacy admissions would be a quick win for Harvard in the court of public opinion.

Plenty of other top schools do just fine without it. An MIT admissions officer once wrote, “I personally would not work for a college which had legacy admission because I am not interested in simply reproducing a multi generational lineage of educated elite.”

Harvard should eliminate the use of race in admissions — while doing more to specifically target underrepresented communities. While Harvard already considers school quality for its admission decisions, it could increase the weight attributed to this factor and do away with race entirely, since the two metrics correlate so strongly. This would be less problematic than the existing methodology because it would specifically target disadvantaged students rather than making assumptions about an entire racial group. It would also be a face-saving move for Harvard, which could maintain its diverse recruitment statistics while eliminating the need to consider race in admissions.

Finally, Harvard should be more transparent about how admissions decisions are made.Plaintiffs are at times motivated into seeking legal action when they see less qualified peers with darker skin get admitted into schools at which they were rejected.

With Harvard openly stating that it uses race in admissions decisions and using subjective and racially-loaded words like “character” and “personality” in its admissions literature (a measure in which Asian Americans consistently score worse), it is unsurprising why these students feel discriminated against. It is this lack of transparency and deliberately vague vocabulary that has exposed Harvard to lawsuits alleging discrimination.

Whether these allegations have merit will soon be decided by the courts.

—Sasha Ramani graduated from the Harvard Kennedy School in 2018 with a master’s in public policy.

its vast resources to implement much-needed cost of living adjustments and other benefits for its graduate students.

Although the recent HGSU-UAW election shed light on contentious divisions within the graduate student community, we hope that these conflicts will not affect the union’s upcoming negotiations.

For better or worse, HGSU-UAW is here to stay. It is important that graduate students rally together behind the union to form a united front working towards common goals. Likewise, we fully expect that Harvard administrators will pursue negotiations in good faith and keep the best interest of the University and its students at heart because, ultimately, our community should be working towards our common goals so we can all thrive in our pursuit of knowledge.

This staff editorial 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.

Becina J. Ganther—The Feminist closet

Supportive Queermunities

The importance of friendship and mentorship among BGLTQ students

S

o like, do you use dating apps?”

“What kind of queer parties are there?”

“How’d you come out to your roommates?”

“Okay, but do people actually use dating apps for dates or…?”

This is just a sampling of the questions I’ve been asked by first-years within the first few weeks of school.

Some were posed to me on panels, some through texts, and some during one-on-one meals with first-years who reached out specifically to chat about queer life.

I’ve been thrilled to answer each of these questions and many more because I know firsthand how important and reassuring it can be to have other queer people who can show you the ropes. I also know how nerve-wracking it can be to want to find queer friendships but not know where to look. Being a part of a supportive queer community can be vital to making queer students feel welcome and safe on campus.

When I first arrived at Harvard, I’d only knowingly spoken to three other queer people in my life and didn’t have any queer friends. I had done enough research online to understand the Wikipedia-version of queerness but

My hope is that we’re building a community that feels accessible to queer first-years, where older queer students have opportunities to connect with first-years, offer themselves as resources, answer questions, and hopefully create meaningful relationships if they would like.? had no examples of lived experiences to look up to. Adjusting to life at Harvard meant that I had the typical fears and concerns that most first-years have, compounded with the uncertainty of coming out and navigating queer spaces for the first time.

My primary concern in those first few weeks was looking for other queer students.

Queerness can be isolating in that it’s a mostly invisible identity. You can’t always tell that someone is queer just by looking at them, which can make it even more difficult for queer first-years looking to meet other queer students.

Most of the queer students I know I either met through other queer friends or recognize through wordof-mouth; I didn’t just randomly meet them in section or Annenberg. Moreover, we’re a pretty decentralized community — I can’t think of one particular spot or group where all the queer students hang out. Perhaps a better phrase to describe our community would be the plural “communities.”

Even after either finding or creating a community, it can take additional effort to build support systems within them. But these support systems can be instrumental in grappling with complex identity questions and navigating new spaces. A lot of students like me weren’t exposed to much of queer culture until college. I didn’t always know what Hotspot was, or how to flirt with girls (and some may argue that I still don’t know how to do that).

I eventually learned through a combination of experience and talking it over with older queer students who could share their own personal experiences.

I was very fortunate in that, before school even started, a queer older student took me under their wing and offered to be an informal mentor for me. We got a meal together every month or so and had candid conversations about queer culture at Harvard, homophobia in the classroom,

Being a part of a supportive queer community can be vital to making queer students feel welcome and safe on campus.

navigating outness at home, and, yes, dating apps. In the two years since, they’ve helped me draft texts to girls, they’ve brainstormed ideas for my column with me, they’ve taken me to gay clubs, and they’ve hugged and reaffirmed me after difficult encounters with homophobia; even now that they’ve graduated, they still text me every once in a while to check in on me. I consider them a good friend, an older sibling even, who can provide guidance and support.

One of the key reasons that I’ve become more comfortable being openly myself is because of other queer people around me making themselves visible, being unapologetically themselves, and inviting me along with them on their journeys. I’ve written before about the importance of media representation, but another incredibly important type of representation is that of the people around you, the ones you see everyday and can build community with. I love being able to look to my queer classmates, friends, and coworkers to see how they’re thriving in good times and handling less than ideal situations.

My hope is that we’re building a community that feels accessible to queer first-years, where older queer

One of the key reasons that I’ve become more comfortable being openly myself is because of other queer people around me making themselves visible, being unapologetically themselves, and inviting me along with them on their journeys. students have opportunities to connect with first-years, offer themselves as resources, answer questions, and hopefully create meaningful relationships if they would like. This is completely opt-in and no student should feel pressured to share personal information or talk to anyone if they don’t want to. But for those who are willing and able, I think that our queer community has the potential to help ease first-years’ transitions to a new school and make Harvard a more welcoming, inclusive space for them.

—Becina J. Ganther ’20 is a History and Science concentrator in Leverett House. Her column appears on alternate Wednesdays.

PAGE 5

THE HARVARD CRIMSON | OCTOBER 3, 2018

ADMISSIONS FROM PAGE 1

SCHEDULE FROM PAGE 1

Bacow Says Suit New Schedule Causes Challenges May Be Divisive Students for Fair Admissions, alleges that Harvard discriminates against Asian Americans seeking admittance to the College. U.S. District Court Judge Allison D. Burroughs recently ruled that the lawsuit will go to trial on Oct. 15.

Bacow said the trial will likely garner daily media attention for the next few weeks. He said he “appreciates” the faculty for recognizing the importance of diversity on Harvard’s campus.

“I think we embrace diversity because we learn from our differences,” Bacow said. “It is this richness of experience that contributes to the learning environment that benefits all of our students.”

The trial also has “the potential to divide our campus,” Bacow said.

“I want to recognize that we are all part of one community.

This is a community that existed before this case goes to trial and will continue to exist after the case has concluded,” Bacow said. “What kind of community will be decided by how people treat each other during the trial. It is my hope that people will treat such different points of view with dignity and respect.”

He pointed faculty members who were interested in learning deeper about the case to visit a website the University created that contains copies of documents from the lawsuit.

Following Bacow’s remarks, the meeting addressed several pieces of FAS business.

Professor Jay M. Harris, who served as the Dean of Undergraduate Education until this summer, presented a proposal to change the College’s current foreign language requirement. The proposal would remove the wording in the requirement’s description that a “written component” must be part of the language, effectively recognizing languages such as American Sign Language.

The new wording would also allow students to retake a language placement exam if they

failed to pass it on their first attempt.

Several professors indicated their support for the proposal, and some also emphasized the importance of the language requirement and suggested raising the bar for testing out of a language.

“If we’re talking about diversity and inclusion, knowing a language that is not your own is absolutely crucial to diversity and inclusion, not only to this community but as a world citizen,” said English Professor James Engell, who supported the proposal.

The Faculty will vote on the proposal at their next meeting.

The Faculty Council — FAS’s highest governing body — have already voted to approve the motion, but their vote is purely advisory.

Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Claudine Gay — also presiding over her first Faculty meeting — presented the Dean’s Annual Report, an update on FAS finances, faculty, and initiatives.

Gay credited much of the report to the work of former FAS Dean Michael D. Smith, who served in the position for 11 years before stepping down this summer.

Dean of Faculty Affairs Nina Zipser presented the faculty trends section of the report, highlighting the increase in women and minority faculty members on the tenure track during Smith’s term.

Dean for Administration and Finance Leslie A. Kirwan ’79 outlined the financial section of the report, noting that FAS reached a surplus in its budget for the first time in seven years. All three administrators praised Smith, who was absent from the meeting, as promised, for the first time in many years.

“What’s really represented in this year’s report is Dean Mike Smith’s legacy,” Gay said. angela.fu@thecrimson.com. lucy.wang@thecrimson.com

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couldn’t accommodate in section that I’d just discuss the material with them in office hours.”

Nickel, who also serves as the Director of Undergraduate Studies for the Philosophy department, said he knows of at least two other philosophy courses that have failed to find section times that can accommodate all of their enrolled students.

Though Nickel said he is happy and able to meet with students during office hours, he said he remains concerned about providing these students with the same educational experience.

“It’s less of a problem for me and more a matter of being able to offer the same kind of educational experience to all the students in my class because the chance to discuss the material with others and try to understand what’s going on and working with others is one of the ways students can learn,” Nickel said.

“And I’m just not able to provide that in quite the same way, just having a one-on-one meeting with students.”

USW 35: “Dilemmas of Equity and Excellence in American K-12 Education,” has also encountered problems with scheduling sections, according to the professor of the course, Katherine K. Merseth. The class had to reschedule sections after initially scheduling 90 minute sections, as it had done in past years.

“We were told that we weren’t allowed to do that, that we couldn’t have section times that didn’t adhere to the 75 minute times,” Merseth said.

“So we had to complete-

ly resection 150 students in the class, which was a major inconvenience.”

The new schedule, which only affects FAS, has posed issues for undergraduates who want to take classes at Harvard’s other schools.

Katherine E. Binney ’19 said she considered enrolling in classes at Harvard Kennedy School but was unable to schedule HKS and College classes back-to-back due to the 15-minute offset between the schedules for the two schools.

This variation in schedules across schools has also affected teaching fellows, who study in a variety of schools across Harvard’s campus.

“The second thing that has been very difficult is that I employ graduate students from a variety of schools — the Law School, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the Ed School — and all of the schools have different schedules,” Merseth said.

Several students pointed to other challenges of the new schedule, including inconsistencies in professors’ use of the extra 15 minutes of class and decreased flexibility in scheduling multiple classes in a short period of time.

Athletes, in particular, have noted that the new system has forced teams to reschedule practices.

“For those of us with morning practice, it’s hard to get a whole team together, so practices have been shifted earlier,” Michael A. Medaugh ’21, who is on the lightweight crew team, said.

At the monthly faculty meeting on Tuesday, registrar Mi-

BACOW FROM PAGE 1

chael Burke addressed the Faculty and presented a summary of how the new schedule has impacted classes.

He said that in response to high enrollments during lunch hours — the most popular meeting time for classes is between 12 p.m and 2:45 p.m. — Harvard University Dining Services has now opened dining halls 30 minutes earlier for lunch and Campus Services has added more Harvard shuttles and departure times.

Burkes said departments are not always following the schedule as intended. For example, some professors are using the 15-minute passing time as additional lecture time, and others

We had to completely resection 150 students in the class, which was a major inconvenience.

Katherine K. Merseth Senior Lecturer on Education

are signing up for two class slots in a row so that they can teach for 90 minutes.

Burke said one adjustment to the schedule he plans to propose before the Faculty Council is allowing seminars that take up the 12 p.m. to 2:45 p.m. slot to delay their start time to 12:45 p.m.

Such a change would give students more time to eat lunch and would help reduce the number of courses starting at 12 p.m.

Burke said he hopes the change will take effect before the spring semester.

Aside from the new course lengths and start times, several students lamented the loss of

Harvard time, which gave them an additional seven minutes to get to class.

“I am constantly late to things,” Isa C. Flores-Jones ’19 said. “I liked the additional seven minutes because it gave people some leeway before class.”

History of Science Professor Matthew H. Hersch, however, called the loss of Harvard time the “most beneficial result of the schedule change.”

“Instructors allowed students to dribble into class sevento-nine minutes late, disrupting lecture and forcing instructors to restart activities when each new group of students arrived,” Hersch wrote in an email.

Nickel said the extra seven minutes and the addition of 15 more minutes of class time has allowed him to make classes more interactive.

“We can include a lot more active learning activities where the students are given a task that they perform in the class to help them check their own understanding of the material, to discover some of the material by themselves, and to have a chance to look at the material with their peers,” Nickel said.

Burke said on Tuesday that the registrar’s office will continue to solicit feedback and propose a report to the FAS Dean by the end of the school year, and that any other changes to the schedule will be implemented after this year.

Meanwhile, he asked faculty members to send their thoughts to schedule@harvard.fas.edu, a designated email address. lucy.wang@thecrimson.com angela.fu@thecrimson.com

KHURANA FROM PAGE 1

Kavanaugh Chose Khurana Defends to Leave, Bacow Says Harvard Admissions The brief comments marked Bacow’s first public statement regarding Kavanaugh since President Donald Trump nominated the judge to fill the vacant seat left by former Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy in July — and since at least three women stepped forward to accuse Kavanaugh of sexual assault.

Bacow broached the subject in response to a question posed

by Department of Romance Languages and Literatures professor Virginie Greene.

Greene asked Bacow to explain how Kavanaugh came to terminate his teaching role at Harvard. She also inquired whether Bacow had discussed Kavanaugh with Law School Dean John F. Manning ’82 or other Law School higher-ups after students spent several days protesting the nominee — and after some alumni demanded the Law School “rescind” the judge’s lectureship.

Despite the demonstrations, the University appears to have taken no action to end Kavanaugh’s employment.

A Law School administrator sent an email to students late Monday night informing them that Kavanaugh had “indicated that he can no longer commit to teaching” his class on the Supreme Court in Jan. 2019 and that the course therefore “will not be offered.” The embattled nominee has taught at the Law School as a visiting lecturer since 2008.

In a speech that lasted for several minutes Tuesday, Greene criticized repeated refusals by Law School administrators — including and especially Manning — to comment on Kavanaugh’s employment status.

Manning wrote in an email to students last week that he was unable to talk about Kavanaugh because of a Law School policy forbidding discussion of “personnel matters.”

“Really, this enormous thing happening right now in the country around the issues of sexual assault and misconduct, [and] truth and justice has to be filed in the drawer ‘personnel matters’?” Greene said.

Bacow responded by noting that each of Harvard’s schools “takes responsibility” for faculty hiring and firing decisions.

“Just as that judgment would be made in FAS for who teaches and when, that decision is made within the Law School,” he said.

“There are times in which we

are limited in what we can say.”

“Those dealing with sensitive issues are limited in their response out of respect of due diligence,” he later added.

Kavanaugh — who was supposed to teach a Law School class titled “The Supreme Court Since 2005” — initially seemed certain to be confirmed to the Supreme Court. But that was before at least two women alleged he had sexually assaulted them decades ago, complicating his confirmation process.

Christine Blasey Ford, a Palo Alto psychology professor, was the first woman to come forward, telling the Washington Post that Kavanaugh tried to rape her at a party both attended while in high school. Ford said Kavanaugh pushed her onto a bed, tried to remove her clothes, and pressed his body into hers.

She repeated these allegations Thursday in a high-stakes and nationally televised hearing in front of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.

Following Ford’s interview with the Post, a second woman — Deborah Ramirez — went public with her own story, telling the New Yorker that Kavanaugh exposed himself and pushed his penis in her face at a party both attended at Yale College.

A third woman, Julie Swetnick, later issued a sworn statement asserting that she saw Kavanaugh engage in “inappropriate contact of a sexual nature with women during the early 1980s.”

Kavanaugh has repeatedly and strongly denied all of these allegations, saying in Thursday’s hearing that the accusations form part of a Democratic attempt to block his confirmation.

The F.B.I. is currently investigating the allegations against Kavanaugh and will issue a report this week — perhaps as early as Wednesday, the New York Times reported. Senators plan to vote on Trump’s controversial nominee after reviewing that report.

Though Kavanaugh is no longer affiliated with the Law School, Harvard Law students are still working to prevent him from reaching the nation’s highest court. Students will hold phone banks this week to urge voters in key states to call their Senators to ask them to vote “No” on the judge. aidan.ryan@thecrimson.com

process. Perhaps most explosively, the documents showed that the University’s internal research division penned a confidential report in 2013 that concluded Harvard’s admissions process produces “negative effects” for Asian-American Harvard hopefuls.

In the interview, Khurana — who reviewed the study when it first came out in 2013 — argued that report “was not correct.”

“It did not reflect the data, the process, that one would want in a social science report that looks at important issues like discrimination,” he said.

Khurana did not directly answer a question asking whether he thinks Harvard should have acted on the conclusions of the 2013 report in any way.

He also did not answer a question asking whether he believes Harvard should have published the report in 2013.

Instead, Khurana pointed to expert studies the University commissioned as part of its legal defense.

He particularly highlighted the findings of a Harvard-paid expert, Berkeley professor David E. Card, who concluded in court filings that Asian-American applicants are not disadvantaged in the College’s admissions process.

SFFA has also hired experts — who reached the opposite conclusion.

Peter S. Arcidiacono, a Duke professor employed by SFFA, concluded in his court filings that Asian-American Harvard applicants do suffer a disadvantage.

“No rational factfinder could conclude that Harvard’s admissions system complies with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act,” SFFA argued in a June briefing.

Title VI bars discrimination

based on race, among other criteria.

Still, Khurana isn’t buying it.

“When you look at the totality of the evidence, when you look at the expert witness reports done by one of the finest statisticians in the country — if not in the world — and you use all the data that is available and you model the process that reflects the holistic admissions process, there is no evidence that Harvard discriminates,” Khurana said.

The lawsuit, which could determine the fate of affirmative action in the United States, is scheduled to go to trial starting Oct. 15.

When you look at the totality of the evidence, when you look at the expert witness reports done by one of the finest statisticians in the country — if not in the world — and... you model the process that reflects the holistic admissions process, there is no evidence that Harvard discriminates.

Rakesh Khurana Dean of the College

Khurana is one of a handful of Harvard administrators — including former University President Drew G. Faust and Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ’67 — both Harvard and SFFA indicated they will call as witnesses in court filings submitted Monday. caroline.engelmayer@thecrimson.com michael.xie@thecrimson.com

Proud to cover Harvard for 143 years and counting.

The Crimson thecrimson.com

SPORTS

FOOTBALL

ABOUT THE TEAM

2018-19 Overall Record 2-1 ______________________________________

Passing Yards Per Game 210.0 ______________________________________

UPCOMING GAMES ______________________________________

Conference Record 1-0 ______________________________________

Rushing Yards Per Game 201.3 ______________________________________

Games 3 ______________________________________

Passing Yards Allowed Per Game 260.7 ______________________________________

Football vs. Cornell Sat. 10/6, 1:30pm at Cornell

Points Per Game 27.7 ______________________________________

Rushing Yards Allowed Per Game 50.0 ______________________________________

Points Allowed Per Game 18.0 ______________________________________

Special Teams Points 12 ______________________________________

Football vs. Holy Cross Fri. 10/12, 7:00pm, at Harvard

FOOTBALL

The SEC is the Best Conference in College Football Cade PALMER CADE IN AMERICA The Southeastern Conference (SEC) is, and has been, the best conference in college football.

Let’s take a step back in history. The beginning of the most recent era in SEC domination started in 2006. This era has not yet met its end. The 2005 title game — in which Texas defeated USC on the heels of Vince Young’s touchdown scramble as the final seconds drained from the clock — was the first national title game I, personally, can remember.

Conveniently, it was the last title game for the next seven seasons that saw a non-SEC team hoist the crystal ball in January.

In NCAA Division-I college football, there is a group of conferences known as the “Power Five.” This is not an NCAA-recognized coalition, rather a group of conferences in which ESPN has invested in significantly and thus has an incentive to funnel into major bowl games.

The title is mostly important because these conferences — the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), Big Ten Conference (B1G), Big 12 Conference, Pac-12 Conference, and the SEC — are colloquially known as the toughest to compete in.

In the most recent AP Poll, the University of Central Florida and Notre Dame were the only top-25 squads not included in the Power Five, so the reputation is justified.

This means that beginning in the 2006 season all the way through the 2012 campaign, the four other Power Five conferences did not field a single national championship team.

The SEC earned seven straight Division-I trophies. It was typ-

ically the case that the SEC representative in the title game would face a member another Power Five conference — a rare chance to see the best from two conferences clash. Only once did the SEC compete against itself in the title game. In the SEC versus non-SEC matchups over this period of seven years, the SEC team won by an average of 16.3 points.

That streak of conference dominance was disrupted in 2013 when the ACC’s Florida State downed the SEC’s Auburn Tigers.

The margin of victory?

Three points. Even then, Auburn was the weakest team the conference had put on the title stage since the streak of dominance began.

With two weeks left in the 2013 regular season, Auburn had one loss (to LSU) and was ranked No. 7 in the nation. The team was playing against No. 25 Georgia, down one point, lined up at fourth and 18 with 36 seconds remaining.

The Tigers’ quarterback, Nick Marshall, dropped back and tossed a miracle into the hands of the defense. It bounced straight into a receiver’s hands, and the lucky wide out virtually walked into the end zone. The announcers called it the “play of the year.”

And it would have been if the team didn’t play Alabama next.

Alabama was undefeated, ranked No. 1, and all but crowned national champion by the time the annual Iron Bowl rolled around.

The game was tied and the Crimson Tide had the ball. Instead of trying to waste away the clock and send the game to overtime, Alabama pushed for a field goal.

Then, in a play infamously dubbed the “kick-six,” an Auburn player fielded the short kick attempt in the endzone, and ran it all the way back for a touchdown, winning the game and sending Auburn to the Rose Bowl to lose the first title game for the SEC in eight years.

But I digress.

ANCIENT EIGHT Harvard competes in the Ivy League football conference. While the program is NCAA Division I, it is not an FBS squad like all the teams in the Power Five conferences. Among the Power Five, and all of Division I, the SEC reigns supreme. TIM OTHY R. O’MEARA—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Since 2013, the NCAA has moved to a playoff system to determine the national champion. Four teams make the playoffs and the winners of each semi-final match face off in the national title game.

In this new method of crowning a champion, the SEC has four playoff appearances and two national titles. The next closest conference is the ACC with two apparences and one title.

The Big Ten and Pac-12 both have one appearance but the former left with the championship trophy while the representative from the Pac-12 did not.

Evaluating the last 12 seasons, the SEC’s nine conference titles dwarf the rest of the nation’s combined three.

It’s not just title games that matter. The SEC has more

alumni playing at the professional level than any other conference. As of September 2017, the conference had claimed 358 National Football League roster spots. The next closest conference was the ACC and Big Ten which tied at 267.

However, the conferences have different amounts of teams. Still, when you account for the number of teams in the conference, the SEC still leads the pack with an average of 25 players in the NFL per team.

The next closest conference, the Pac-12, averages 20.8 players per team while the thirdand fourth- ranked conferences — the ACC and Big Ten — average 19.1. The SEC is the clear outlier here.

Aside from historical data and alumni in the pros, even the most recent AP Poll sup-

ports this claim.

Within the top-10 teams, four — No. 1 Alabama, No. 2 Georgia, No. 5 LSU and No. 8 Auburn — compete in the SEC. The next-best conference is the Big 12, with No. 7 Oklahoma and No. 9 West Virginia cracking the top 10.

There is even an argument to be made that SEC teams — as we progress into the season — will be underrated because of their strength of schedule.

Obviously, if you continuously play teams from the toughest conference, it’s going to be harder to win more games than someone in a cupcake conference.

Every year the preseason comes around and journalists start to feel antsy, wondering if the SEC is really as good as it’s made out to be.

My favorite is one from USA Today: “So why did LSU make the [the Coaches Poll Top 25]?

Helmets. Jerseys. Reputation, both of the program itself and, more importantly, its conference. LSU is here because of the benefit of the doubt extended to the SEC, which goes something like this: The fifth-best team in this conference must be one of the 25 best teams in all of college football.

Which is ridiculous.” LSU was ranked No. 24 at the time. The program is now 5-0 and ranked fifth in the nation.

I reiterate: the SEC is, and has been for some time, the best conference in college football.

Am I biased? Probably. But am I wrong? Probably not. cade.palmer@thecrimson.com

SOCCER

Men’s Soccer Opens Conference Slate with Win over Yale

By EAMON J. MCLOUGHLIN CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Harvard (3-5, 1-0 Ivy) extended its unbeaten streak against Yale (4-3-1, 0-1) to five years as the team opened its 2018 Ivy League play with a 1-0 win at Jordan Field on Saturday evening.

The Crimson came into the match boasting an impressive recent record against the Bull­

dogs, as well as a sizeable lead in the all-time matchup, which stands at 54-38-12 in Harvard’s favor. The Crimson has not lost to Yale since 2013 and is unbeaten in the matchup at home since 2005. Harvard looked from kickoff as if it was hungry to maintain that record.

“We always get to start Ivy League against Yale and that’s fantastic,” said defender and captain Nathan Goldberg. “This

is probably the game that gets the guys most fired up. It’s really a privilege to take part in the oldest rivalry in American sports history.”

Sophomore goalkeeper Matt Freese was given lots of work to do early, saving well from a freekick in the first minute before getting down to make an even better stop on the ensuing rebound. The action kept coming for the Crimson’s goalkeeper,

After a slow start out of the gate, a crucial win against an Ancient Eight opponent is just what the Crimson needed to pivot in the right direction and build momentum mid-season. HENRY ZHU—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

who came up big again for Harvard just seconds later in the second minute. The Bryn Mawr, Penn., native denied sophomore forward Aldo Quevedo at edge of box in a one-on-one situation after a nicely-weighted pass from just beyond midfield split the Crimson defense.

Yale’s in-form freshman forward Paolo Carroll almost bagged his fourth goal in as many games in the eighth minute, slotting through Freese’s legs after being played through on goal, but the play was called back for offside.

It was a hard-hitting game early, with both sets of players letting one other know that they were there. The teams and benches were vocal on nearly every call, and there were a lot of calls to make, as the teams nearly split the game’s whopping 35 fouls, with Harvard collecting 18.

Good interplay between freshman forward Alfred Perez and sophomore Paolo Belloni-Urso in the 27th minute led to Harvard’s best chance of the opening half hour, but the midfielder’s dipping effort was saved by the Bulldogs’ sophomore goalkeeper Tom Wallenstein before it could find the bottom corner. It took the Crimson just four touches to get from its own 18-yard box into Yale’s, one example of Harvard’s ability to play the long game effectively.

The Crimson came close again near the end of the half, when freshman forward Nico Garcia-Morillo found the ball in a pocket of space in the box in the 37th minute. Fellow freshman forward Alex

Debayo-Doherty started the move after he split two defenders down the line to find Belloni-Urso near the corner of the box. Belloni-Urso’s cross found Garcia-Morillo, who had more time than he may have thought, firing his first-time effort over the bar from close range.

Junior Miguel Yuste almost found the back of the net in the 49th minute for Yale after some skillful dribbling opened up a yard of space for the midfielder near the edge of the box. His shot looked to be heading for the top right corner, but it whizzed just inches wide of the frame of the goal.

Perez broke the deadlock for Harvard in the 59th minute, finishing cleverly for his second goal of the season following a defensive miscue from Yale. Senior defender Cameron Riach attempted to redirect a bouncing ball back to his goalkeeper, but his header lacked power, allowing Perez to swoop in and pick up the loose ball. His first-touch chip sailed over the onrushing keeper and into the back of the net to give the Crimson the lead with half an hour remaining.

“It’s a moment I’ve been waiting for.” said Perez of his first Ivy League goal. “We work hard all season, so to achieve success in our first Ivy League game means a lot. There’s a lot to work on, but this is a good start, and we can build off of this.”

It was a wide-open, back and forth game throughout, with the Bulldogs just edging Harvard in the share of the chances, and the majority of possession throughout most of the game.

The Crimson began to look more lively following the goal, as Yale had to commit more men forward in search of an equalizer.

Harvard again employed a number of young players, and were rewarded for its faith in its youth. Freshmen Debayo Doherty, Perez, midfielder Havard Hjermstad, and sophomores Freese, Belloni-Urso, and midfielder Sebastian Lindner-Liaw all came up big for the Crimson, with the younger players leading the charge offensively. Disciplined performances from veteran defenders kept Harvard in the game on the other side of the field.

Captain Sam Brown played a strong game on defense, his biggest contribution coming when he got down to make a vital block in the six-yard box in the 26th minute as senior midfielder Nicky Downs closed in on goal. Fellow seniors Jack Miler and Eduardo Cedeño helped to ensure the clean sheet for the Crimson by keeping the Bulldogs’ lively forwards in check.

Freese made another great save in the 88th minute to deny a rocket from Yuste from the edge of the box, which looked to be heading straight towards the top left corner. A strong touch from Freese knocked the shot over the bar to safety, for the keeper’s fifth and most important save of the game.

“Having Matt Freese in goal is great.” Goldberg said. “He’s so dependable, we can trust him to pull out those big saves at the start of the game, and at the end of the game as well.” eamon.mcloughlin@thecrimson.com