The Harvard Crimson - Volume CXLIX, No. 84

Five Theses on the Humanities Crisis

Friends, family, and teachers remember Luke Balstad ’25 as a uniquely thoughtful, kind, and bril liant person who bright ened the lives of those around him. Balstad died on Nov. 14 at age 19.

Affiliates Protest China’s ‘Zero Covid’ Policy

BY MILES J. HERSZENHORN CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Chanting “Free China” and “No more lockdowns,” more than a hundred people rallied in Har vard Yard on Tuesday afternoon in solidarity with demonstrators in China protesting the country’s strict Covid-19 restrictions.

Protests erupted across China against the country’s “zero-Covid” policy over the weekend after a deadly fire in an apartment building killed 10 people on Thursday. The blaze occurred in Urumqi, the capi tal of China’s Xinjiang region, where stringent lockdowns have kept many residents confined to their homes for several months.

Many who took to the streets in China suspected the lockdown rules may have contributed to the deaths in the fire.

Protestors gathered in front of the John Harvard statue holding blank white sheets of paper — a symbol of defiance against the government’s crackdown on free speech — over their faces. Others laid flowers at the foot of the John Harvard statue in honor of the Urumqi fire victims.

Attendees sang “Do You Hear the People Sing?” from the musi cal “Les Misérables” and the Chi nese national anthem in between chants of “We don’t want dicta torship, but elections” and “Hey hey, ho ho! ‘Zero Covid’ must go.”

SFFA V. HARVARD

AHarvard Law School professor is asking the federal judge who pre sided over the high-profile 2018 Harvard admissions trial to release cur rently-sealed transcripts of courtroom discussions from the proceedings.

In a court filing last month, professor Jeannie Suk Gersen, a constitutional law scholar, asked Massachusetts District Court Judge Allison D. Burroughs to un seal transcripts of sidebar discussions — private conversations between lawyers and the judge — from the trial.

COLLEGE

Harvard

Chang, a History concentrator from New York, currently covers Harvard’s

administration as a reporter for The Crimson’s News Board

serves as

She also co-runs the

social media accounts, oversees its newsletters team, and serves on its Au dience Engagement Team.

As a reporter, Chang has covered Uni versity President Lawrence S. Bacow and

Burroughs ruled in favor of Harvard following the three-week trial, rejecting arguments brought by the anti-affirma tive action group Students for Fair Admis sions that the College’s race-conscious ad missions program violates federal law by discriminating against Asian American applicants.

A federal appeals court upheld Bur roughs’s decision in 2020 before SFFA appealed the case to the Supreme Court. Justices heard oral arguments in October, and a decision is expected in the spring or summer of 2023.

Gersen wrote in a Nov. 11 letter that she wants the documents unsealed “for pur poses of knowledge, transparency, and reporting about a case of great public im

portance.”

“There was no jury, it was a bench tri al, so the existence of so many sidebars that the public couldn’t have any access to — it’s definitely something that raises an eyebrow,” Gersen said in an interview Wednesday.

“I wondered why that had occurred, and it wasn’t really clear from looking at the record as to why every single sidebar had been sealed,” she added.

Gersen said releasing the sidebars from the trial is unlikely to have an impact on any court ruling on the case, given that it has been four years since the trial took place.

Harvard’s lawyer in the case, Seth P. Waxman ’73 wrote in a Nov. 15 letter to

Burroughs

In a letter, SFFA rejected Harvard’s ar gument that the sidebars should stay un der full seal, but said information about specific applicants should remain redact ed.

“The examples Harvard relies upon do not contain ‘confidential’ information. One example involves information that

the search for his successor. In April, she broke a story revealing that Harvard holds in its museum collections the hu man remains of at least 19 individuals who were likely enslaved and almost 7,000 Na tive Americans after she obtained a draft of a University report that has since been publicly released by the school.

A resident of Leverett House, Chang will begin her term on Jan. 1, 2023.

“The 150th Guard represents the best of what The Crimson is,” Crimson Presi dent Raquel Coronell Uribe ’22-’23 said in a statement. “They are incredibly quali fied and well positioned to tackle the chal lenges The Crimson will face this coming year which will mark its 150th anniversa

ry. The decisions these leaders will make will be crucial to keeping the old sheet flying, as we like to say around here, and upholding The Crimson for the next 150 years.”

Reporter Brandon L. Kingdollar ’24 will lead The Crimson’s coverage as its next managing editor, directing its daily news coverage and overseeing its maga zine, arts, and sports sections, as well as its blog. He will lead the production of its newly-redesigned weekly print paper in its first full year.

Kingdollar, a Government concentra tor from Lake Village, Indiana,

that the University opposes Gersen’s motion since the sidebar discus sions “contain confidential information, including information designated by both Harvard and SFFA under the Protective Order entered in this case,” as well as “oth er personal and confidential information that should remain sealed.”

Cara J. Chang ’24 will lead The Harvard Crimson into its sesquicentennial as the president of the newspaper’s 150th Guard, the organization announced last week.

central

and

a staff photographer.

paper’s

UNIVERSITY HKS

IOPPanelistsLooktoNextGeneration

Radcliffe Fellow Dicusses Gun Industry

ALUMNI

Sarah Karmon Tapped to Lead HAA

The Week in Pictures

Amid a surge of law schools withdrawing from the U.S. News rankings, Cornell Law School Dean Jens Ohlin announced that Cornell will continue to participate in the rankings. “Withdrawing from the rankings process will not have the de sired impact that many will assume it will have,” Ohlin wrote in a statement .

Student workers from Yale’s graduate and pro fessional schools are set to vote to initiate a fed eral unionization process this week. Contingent on the results of the election, the universit y will begin negotiations with the currently unrecog nized graduate union, Local 33.

Demonstrators gathered on the steps of Co lumbia’s Low Library on Tuesday holding blank sheets of paper, a nod to the protests in China against the government’s stringent COVID-19 policies. Among the demonstrators were Chi nese students, alumni, and members of the public.

Clarifying a previous statement from the univer sity’s administration, Penn President Liz Magill and Board of Trustees Chair Scott Bok wrote in a statement on Tuesday that the university does not maintain direct investments in the 200 companies responsible for the majority of carbon emissions. Fossil Free Penn, a student or ganization on campus, criticized the university’s remaining indirect investments in the fossil fuel industr y.

AROUND THE IVIES

CORNELL DAILY SUN

YALE DAILY NEWS

COLUMBIA SPECTATOR

DAILY PENNSYLVANIAN

CORNELL

YALE

COLUMBIA

UPENN

LOVEJOY TO LEAVE. After a seven-month search that enlisted the help of an advisory committee, an outside executive search firm, and nominations from alumni, the Harvard Alumni Association has landed on a new executive director: its deputy executive director. Sarah C. Karmon, who has served as deputy executive director of the HAA since 2018, will take over as the organization’s permanent leader in January, the University announced Thursday. BY CARA J. CHANG — CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

EXIT WOUNDS. Ieva Jusionyte, a Maury Green Fellow at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, discussed the impact of the United States gun industry on violence in Mexico at a virtual event hosted by Radcliffe on Wednesday. The presentation, titled “Exit Wounds: American Guns, Mexican Lives and the Vicious Circle of Violence,” focused on research Jusionyte gathered for an upcoming book on the United States’ role in the present-day conditions of Mexico. BY ASHER J. MONTGOMERY AND CHRISTINA A. STRACHN — CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

YOUNG LEADERSHIP. The Harvard Institute of Politics hosted a panel of political, business, and military experts on Tuesday to discuss the need for a new generation of young leaders in America.Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick ’78 moderated the panel, which featured Harvard Business School Senior Fellow William W. “Bill” George, Harvard Kennedy School professor of public service David R. Gergen, and U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Shoshana Chatfield. BY TRISTAN T. DARSHAN AND JACKSON C. SENNOTT — CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

CHINA COVID-19 PROTESTS. Protestors gathered in front of the John Harvard statue holding blank white sheets of paper, a symbol of defiance against the Chinese government’s censorship.

BY JOEY HUANG — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

IN MEMORY. Harvard affiliates laid flowers at the foot of the John Harvard statue in Harvard Yard to honor the victims of a recent fire in Urumqi, China. BY JOEY HUANG —

‘A

FORCE OF

ership. BY IAN

the next generation of American lead-

The Senate passed a bill binding rail road companies and employees to a settlement reached by companies and union leadership, preventing a nationwide rail strike. Passed by a vote of 80 to 15, the bill now goes to President Joe Biden’s desk. The Senate also defeated a proposal to extend the Dec. 9 negotia tion deadline. A measure that the House passed to add a week of paid sick leave for workers to the agreement also failed in the Senate. The agreement, which eight of 12 rail unions reached with rail compa nies in September, contains 24 percent raises, $5,000 bonuses retroactive to 2020, and one extra paid leave day. Four of the 12 rail unions rejected the agreement because it failed to include more sick days.

CHINESE

A deadly fire in Urumqi last week sparked outrage over China’s pro longed Covid-19 lockdown restric tions, leading to rare widespread protest. Under the country’s zero Covid strategy, Urumqi, the capital of the Xin jiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, has been under lockdown for more than 100 days — marking one of the country’s longest lockdowns. Xinhua, China’s gov ernment-run news agency, claimed that a fire in a high-rise building in Urumqi killed 10 and injured 9 residents last Thursday. Netizens surmised that people could not escape because the building was partially locked down. Protesters across China have been demanded an end to three years of severe pandemic restrictions in China.

Founder of cryptocurrency exchange

FTX Sam Bankman-Fried spoke to the public for the first time since the collapse of the exchange. In a live interview with the New York Times, Bankman-Fried attributed the event to shortcomings in management but denied having knowingly committed fraud. Trad ers and companies with stakes in FTX lost billions of dollars, and the fallout left FTX with $8 billion in debt, forcing it to file for bankruptcy. The company, at its peak val ued at $32 billion, is being investigated for lending customer funds to a trading firm also owned by Bankman-Fried — Almeda Research — though Bankman-Fried de nies having commigled funds.

A first-half goal by Christian Pulisic led the U.S. to a victory against Iran on Tuesday. This victory means the U.S. will face the Netherlands at 10 a.m. EST on Saturday in its first appearance in the Round of 16 since 2014. The U.S. team re deemed itself after it failed to qualify for the World Cup in 2018. The build-up to the game against Iran had been particularly tense after the U.S. Soccer Federation posted on social media an Iranian flag without the Islamic Republic emblem to show support for protesters in Iran.

What’s Next

Start every week with a preview of what’s on the agenda around Harvard University

Tuesday 12/6

HARVARD COLLEGE MIDYEAR GRADUATES CELEBRATION

Science Center Hall B, 3 p.m. - 5 p.m.

This long-standing tradition celebrates No vember 2022 and March 2023 graduates. The celebration does not serve as a replacement for Commencement, however. Classmates, friends, and family are welcome to attend.

ON DISPLAY HARVARD 2022

Memorial Hall Transept, 11 a.m. - 12 p.m.

Drop by Memorial Hall to view a public interactive installation and performance honoring the In ternational Day of Persons with Disabilities. The event will be also be livestreamed.

Monday 12/5

ASSERTION AND ASSIMILATION: THE EXPERIENCE OF POPULATION EXCHANGE IN GREECE AND TURKEY

Virtual, 3 p.m. – 4 p.m.

Bruce Clark, the international security editor of The Economist, will be giving a virtual talk as part of the Mahindra Humanities Center’s Modern Greek Stud ies Seminar Series.

SOUNDSCAPES OF SOCIAL JUSTICE

Virtual, 10 a.m. - 2 p.m.

The Harvard University Music Department and the SONCITIES ERC Research Group at the University of Oxford are co-hosting a free 2-day online sym posium bringing together musicians and music theorists to explore soundscapes and social justice

MESSIAH SING

Memorial Church, 8 p.m.

Dunster House is sponsoring an annual perfor mance of Messiah Sing, an oratorio composed in 1741 by Handel. Attend to watch Harvard student soloists and the Harvard Bach Society Orchestra perform.

JAPAN, GERMANY, AND EURASIA’S SECURITY CRISES K354, CGIS Knafel Building, 12 p.m. - 1:15 p.m. Join Masahi Marano, a Japan Chair fellow at the Hudson Institute, and Boston University Profes sor of International Relations Thomas U. Berger for a conversation on security crises around the world.

CONGRESS PASSES BILL AVERTING RAIL STRIKE

JULIAN J. GIORDANO — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

During his freshman year, Luke T. Balstad ’25 loved staring out his dorm room window in “contemplative si lence,” his friend Annabelle H. Krause ’25 recalled.

As he looked out from his room in the Harvard Inn, he would often greet his peers who passed by below.

“Luke was always waving to people out the window and invit ing them upstairs to hang out or having screaming conversations out the window,” Krause wrote in an email.

Balstad’s habit reached the point where he had to affix notes to his window to remind him self to stay focused on his school work.

I actually do not know how to put into words all that Luke was. He was probably the kindest person I will ever know.

“He had to put up these postits to keep himself on track be cause he was such a happy and social person that there was no doubt that he would end up with a slew of people in his room if he stared out the window too long,” Krause wrote.

Balstad, a Quincy House soph omore, was born in Tucson, Ari zona, and grew up in Michigan. He graduated from Hudson ville High School in Hudsonville, Michigan, in 2021, before enroll ing at Harvard.

Balstad died by suicide while at home in Michigan on Nov. 14. He was 19.

In lieu of flowers, Balstad’s family is collecting donations for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the Na tional Alliance on Mental Illness.

Balstad’s friends, family, and teachers remember him as a uniquely thoughtful, kind, and brilliant person who brightened the lives of those around him. He was passionate about self-care and helping others, hoped to be come a doctor, and loved the out doors.

“Luke was so incredibly spe cial,” Krause wrote. “I actually do not know how to put into words all that Luke was. He was proba bly the kindest person I will ever know.”

‘So

Much Kindness, So Much Light’

Ava K. Pallotta ’25 recalls meeting Balstad for the first time fresh man year and being impressed by how put-together he was: By the time they sat down for breakfast in Annenberg Hall at 8 a.m., Bals tad had gone on a full run and got ten ready for the day.

Pallotta, one of Balstad’s close friends and blockmates, said one of Balstad’s “defining character istics” was the way he supported his friends.

“I never took a test at Harvard that he didn’t wish me good luck for, there was never a play that I was in that he didn’t show up with flowers for,” Pallotta said. “He would surprise me with coffees all the time, just sweet texts en couraging me.”

Landon J. Cooley-Themm, who met Balstad in high school, said he brought a “very calming presence” to those around him.

“Luke was the type of per son that when he walked in the room, and if you weren’t looking at the door, or you didn’t see him come in, you knew he was there,” Cooley-Themm said. “He just presented so much kindness, so much light to everybody who was around and who he talked to.”

Isabella M. Tillotson, who be friended Balstad when he moved to Michigan in third grade, said he was a “formative part” of her life.

Each day after high school, the two would drive around in Bals tad’s car, which was “worth $500 and broke down every five min utes,” Tillotson recalled.

“It was a lot of driving, and drinking iced coffee. And that was enough for us. We just talked, and we talked about things that didn’t matter. We talked about things that matter so much,” Til lotson said. “And we made our

plans for what our lives were go ing to look like together.”

Sydney A. Balstad, his older sister, said she and her brother were “twin flames.”

Once, when they were little — to avoid being apart, even for just a few minutes — the siblings taped themselves together.

“We were sick of having to go get water and separate from each other,” Balstad said. “So we got tape, and we taped water bottles

to ourselves, and then taped our selves to each other so that we would never have to be apart even to get water.”

Balstad had many friends and was close with his family, his mother, Kimberly Van Antwerp, said.

“He loved, loved his friends so much — talked about each one of them,” Van Antwerp said. “His family meant the world to him.”

‘Everybody Loved This Kid’ Christopher A. Bolhuis, Bals tad’s cross country coach and sci ence teacher at Hudsonville High School, described Balstad as “one of the nicest, most kind, intelli gent, deep,” students he taught in his nearly three-decade-long ca reer.

“He wanted to know how things worked, and he was just that rare combination that was

able to combine this just unbe lievable intellect with a curiosity to match it,” Bolhuis said.

According to Bolhuis, Balstad was a “natural leader” and “one of the most involved students” to ever attend the high school.

“Luke was just genuinely kind to everybody,” Bolhuis said. “Ev erybody loved this kid.”

Lauren D. Wedge — who taught Balstad German at Hud sonville High School for four

years — said Balstad was deep ly dedicated to his extracurricu lar activities, including marching band, an environmental volun teer group, a student leadership organization, and student coun cil.

“He was the most well-round ed student that I had ever met,” Wedge said. “He never failed to follow through with a task — he did all of these things but did not ever drop the ball.”

Van Antwerp, Balstad’s moth er, said his acceptance to Harvard — his “lifelong dream” — was un precedented and “incredible.” She recalled Balstad receiving news of his acceptance to Har vard and their family’s subse quent celebration with a bottle of champagne.

“When he popped the cork, it shot up and broke a light fixture,” she said. “We left it like that prob ably for a year or two afterwards because we couldn’t bear to think about that memory being lost.”

Bolhuis, who said Balstad was just the second student from Hudsonville High School to be ac cepted to Harvard, was neverthe less “not surprised” by Balstad’s admission.

“I’ve been teaching for 26 years, and this is the one student that I’ve had that I thought, ‘He’s going to change the world,’” Bol huis said. “I wrote him a letter of recommendation to get into Har vard, and I said that this is the best student, best person — the best everything — that I’ve ever, ever taught.”

‘Passionate About People’

Balstad was deeply passionate about making the world a better place, his friends and family re membered.

Tillotson recalled Balstad’s advocacy for environmentalism, LGBTQ+ rights, the Black Lives Matter movement, and other so cial justice causes. In addition, Balstad fed unhoused people in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and vol unteered for the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter as a college stu dent.

“He was passionate about making sure that everybody felt included. And he really valued individuality and was very inter ested in making sure that every body felt valued, no matter their unique characteristics,” Tillot son said. “He was the type of per son who would never let some body sit alone.”

“He was passionate about peo ple, and making sure that they had what they needed to succeed and thrive and feel comfortable and valued,” she added.

Van Antwerp said Balstad as pired to be a surgeon and even owned an IV kit and suture kit in middle school. In recent years, however, Balstad became in creasingly outspoken about men tal health awareness.

“That was where his heart was,” Van Antwerp said. “He recently shared, too, that he thought maybe not being a sur geon — maybe he wanted to go be a psychiatrist or do something with mental health awareness.”

Wedge recalled Balstad’s men tal health advocacy work during his time as student council presi dent in high school.

He was passionate about making sure that everybody felt included. And he really valued individuality and was very interested in making sure that everybody felt valued, no matter their unique characteristics.

“He confided in me that year that he was struggling with his mental health, and he just cared very deeply about people inside and outside of the classroom,” Wedge said.

Pallotta said while people are sometimes “described different ly in life and death,” this is not the case for Balstad.

“He was just a really beloved figure. And the world’s a bet ter place because he was here,” Pallotta said. “Harvard’s a bet ter place because he was here, but his presence and the light he brought to campus is just abso lutely going to be missed.”

Luke T. Balstad ’25 loved the outdoors, friends and family said. He went on a three-week backpacking and camping trip with his high school during the summer before his senior year, pictured above. COURTESY OF KIM VAN ANTWERP

Attending Harvard was a “lifelong dream” for Luke T. Balstad ’25, according to his mother. COURTESY OF KIM VAN ANTWERP

Luke T. Balstad ’25 and his sister, Sydney. COURTESY OF KIM VAN ANTWERP

Luke T. Balstad ‘25 and his mother, Kimberly. COURTESY OF KIM VAN ANTWERP

Annabelle H. Krause ‘25 Friend of Luke T. Balstad

Isabella M. Tillotson Friend of Luke T Balstad ‘25

Luke T. Balstad ’25 with his grandfather in Hawaii. COURTESY OF KIM VAN ANTWERP

Inside the HUA’s First Semester

on legislation.

BY MERT GEYIKTEPE AND J. SELLERS HILL CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

On Sunday afternoons, a handful of students gath er around a table in Har vard’s Smith Campus Center, re sembling a casual club meeting or study group.

To an outside observer, it would not be obvious that this group is actually Harvard’s stu dent government, that these stu dents are managing a budget of more than half a million dollars, or that the young organization sits atop the rubble of a 40-yearold institution demolished just last year.

The Harvard Undergraduate Association’s style stands in stark contrast to its predecessor, the Harvard Undergraduate Council, where weekly meetings featured rigid procedure, contentious ar guments, premature exits, and accusations of discrimination in its final year.

Last March, Harvard under graduates voted overwhelming ly to dissolve the UC and replace it with the HUA.

Before the historic referen dum, HUA proponents branded the proposed structure as high ly collaborative, efficient, and transparent.

They promised a revamp of club grant funding and promised the government, with few elect ed positions, would see increased student involvement from pas sionate volunteers.

It would be everything the UC wasn’t, they said.

With the HUA’s inaugural se mester drawing to a close, stu dents are split on whether the new government is more of the same, or the start of a new chap ter in Harvard’s historically acri monious student government.

‘Cooperative and Not Cut throat’

If the HUA had a single priority in its inaugural semester, it was to shift the culture of student gov ernment, which for years has been associated with Harvard’s most politically ambitious.

Sasjha I. Mayfield ’25, who helped draft the HUA’s constitu tion, said this goal was front of mind from the Association’s very inception.

I think what we were envisioning when we were creating the constitution was less of a student government focused on politicking and more of a student government focused on advocacy work and tangible solutions to student problems.

“I think what we were envi sioning when we were creating the constitution was less of a stu dent government focused on pol iticking and more of a student government focused on advoca cy work and tangible solutions to

HUA was found ed last May after more than 75 percent of undergraduates voted to dissolve its predecessor, the Undergradu ate Council.

student problems,” Mayfield said.

Mayfield, who now serves as the HUA’s representative on Har vard’s Committee for Undergrad uate Education, theorized that some of the UC’s conflict came from a desire for credit, and the HUA’s structure works “as long as people don’t get caught up in wanting titles and recognition.”

“Any work that I do on the HUA is going to be attributed to the Ac ademic Team, and I’m totally fine with that,” Mayfield said.

“I haven’t even really noticed the difference between the UC or the HUA. It’s just a different name for the same student body government.

One immediate change the HUA brought was the introduc tion of a co-presidency.

HUA leaders deemed the post “misinformation” but said they would evaluate the need for a dedicated DEI team, which would require a campus-wide referen dum to alter the HUA’s constitu tion.

It wouldn’t matter, however. Just days later, the HUA’s first ref erendum was voided following a procedural misunderstanding with the Dean of Students Office. Estabine and Johnson labeled the incident as an example of “grow ing pains” within the organiza tion.

In an interview this week, Es tabine and Johnson reaffirmed their commitment to DEI issues, saying they would include a ques tion regarding the creation of a DEI team on their spring referen dum.

The episode drew student crit icism, as did a subsequent scruti ny of Estabine’s affiliation with a campus Christian organization, Harvard College Faith and Ac tion.

Estabine said the criticism has at times negatively affected her mental health.

too was just level out the playing field, in terms of hopefully try ing to make it a bit more equitable across the board for all students [organizations],” Zurovec said.

Even with a larger total club funding budget, some students have reported surprise at scant allocations when compared to past years.

Christopher J. Kwon ’22, co-president of the Harvard Tae kwondo Club, said his club has received less funding under the HUA, creating a financial burden for students.

“[Our funding] is a fifth of what we had before, and the ex penses have stayed generally the same,” Kwon said.

Zurovec said the HUA has had to divide its budget among more clubs than the UC did, attributing the uptick in grant requests to the ease of applying.

The HUA has also funded a va riety of new and returning initia tives, including campaigns and grant packages intended to boost campus accessibility and inclu sion.

By the HUA’s reasoning, this system allows for students who are not interested in a long-term position to help with temporary projects.

In practice, meeting atten dance remains sparse. Weekly general meetings rarely see sig nificantly more than a dozen vot ing members turn out.

Harris says he fears that with out the same raw numbers as the UC, more responsibility has fall en upon HUA executives.

“I think, overall, the structure does make it more difficult on the leadership — it makes it a hard er job to do,” Harris said. “It just means that the leadership will have to work harder.”

Ivor K. Zimmerman ’23, who is a former UC representative, agreed.

“I think they’ve done a decent job — a pretty good job,” said Zim merman, who opposed the HUA’s formation. “But I think I get the sense that they’re doing a lot of the lifting.”

8The HUA currently has eight teams: Executive Team, Finance Team, Social Life Team, Extracurriculars Team, Aca demics Team, Residential Life Team, Well-be ing Team, and Sports Team. The executive team is repre sented by two co-presidents.

10%

The Dean of Students Asso ciation granted $550,000 to the HUA, marking a 10 percent increase from its predecessor’s an nual budget. The HUA, however, had requested $682,000 on the grounds of rising inflation and an increase in club funding requests.

Inaugural HUA Co-Presidents LyLena D. Estabine ’24 and Tra vis Allen Johnson ’24 even origi nally vowed to change the name of their executive positions to re flect their rejection of title-chas ing — a move endorsed by Mi chael Y. Cheng ’22, the former UC president who led the effort to dissolve the body.

But they never did. This week Estabine and Johnson said they decided not to pursue the name change in order to clearly des ignate their position to outside groups.

“It helps for people to know who they’re talking to,” Estabine said. “If you say ‘the Co-Coordina tor of Harvard,’ they’re going to be like, ‘I don’t really understand what that is.’”

Still, Estabine and Johnson maintain they have made strides toward improving the culture of Harvard student government.

“I think LyLena and I have worked really hard to ensure that the climate and culture of the HUA is one that’s collabora tive and cooperative and not cut throat,” Johnson said. “A lot of times on the UC, we saw a lot of arguments break out during the middle of meetings.”

With multiple HUA executives having previously served on the UC, some students remain skepti cal that the HUA presents a dras tic departure from the Council’s antics.

“I haven’t even really noticed the difference between the UC or the HUA,” Claire Yoo ’23 said. “It’s just a different name for the same student body government.”

Indeed, the HUA’s first semes ter has not been completely free from controversy.

In September, the HUA drew criticism from Harvard Primus — a campus group for first-gen eration, low-income students — which alleged that HUA leaders rejected its efforts to establish a diversity, equity, and inclusion team.

A Primus Instagram post claimed the Association “voted against a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Team” over the sum mer “after a Primus representa tive reached out to HUA Co-Presi dents and Officers.”

“It just seems that no matter what you do, people seem to legit imately hate you as a person,” Es tabine said. “Not even what you’re doing — they hate you.”

As the HUA nears a transition of power — no officer may hold the same position twice — it is too early to tell if the body has imple mented lasting cultural change.

In the UC’s early years, the now-defunct student govern ment operated in a similar man ner to the HUA, addressing tan gible student concerns without much fanfare.

Cheng, now a Rhodes Schol ar at Oxford, believes avoiding fu ture conflict within the body will require electing reasonable lead ers who aren’t “stirring up contro versies and drama.”

“I think when you have estab lishment, wannabe politicians running student government at Harvard, because it’s at Harvard, they’re going to take it way too se riously,” he said.

Money Talks

Before the dissolution of the UC, proponents of the HUA marketed it to students as an opportunity to revitalize a slow and convoluted club funding process, a point of frequent criticism toward the UC.

This semester, the HUA successfully advocated for a $550,000 annual budget — a 10 percent increase from the UC’s al location the previous year.

The HUA has also sought to implement a series of recommen dations yielded by an indepen dent audit of its predecessor’s fi nances, which was launched last January amid accusations of mis management and tax fraud.

Some student club leaders have lauded the HUA for its effi ciency in disbursing club grants, which are provided on a monthly and semesterly basis.

Rebecca J. Kay ’23 said the HUA’s revamped funding guide lines allowed her campus organi zation to use its funds “a little bit more flexibly.”

HUA Finance Officer Alexan der J. Zurovec ’25 said equity was a major priority when designing the Association’s fiscal policy.

“One thing I really tried to do

Estabine said while the UC used to rely on public statements, she and Johnson have sought to take direct action on campus is sues.

“It used to be that if [the UC] saw something they didn’t like, maybe you write a statement and you just kind of email it into the void,” Estabine said. “Now, we ask, ‘What can we actually do?’” Noah A. Harris ’22, a former

“

It really makes me so disappointed when I talk to first-year students and they say, ‘I didn’t know I could participate in the HUA.

Allen Johnson ’24 HUA Co-President

UC president who opposed the ef fort to dissolve the body, said that although he does not “intimate ly keep up” with the HUA’s activ ities, he has admired the organi zation’s accomplishments in its first year.

“I’ve seen how the projects that they’ve done have been very substantial and very helpful to the student body so far,” he said.

Student Apathy

The HUA’s vow to revive a his torically unmoved student body got off to a rocky start when only 1,849 students voted in its first of ficer election — just months af ter nearly 4,000 undergraduates turned out in droves to dissolve the UC.

The HUA’s leadership struc ture hinges on passionate stu dent volunteers, a rare commod ity among a generally apathetic constituency.

While the UC featured 54 elected dorm and house repre sentatives, the HUA currently only elects nine officers via a Col lege-wide popular vote, a change that opponents argued would concentrate power among fewer individual students.

The rest of its members are student volunteers. Any College student who attends a weekly general meeting is eligible to vote

Estabine and Johnson agreed their roles are, indeed, very hands-on but dismissed con cerns that the Association’s suc cess relies too heavily on the la bor of its leaders.

“What reduces my worry is the fact that we’re not the only officers,” Johnson said. “There are seven other — and hopeful ly, in the future, more — officers who are duly elected and can lead projects if necessary,” Johnson said.

Still, Johnson underscored the need to better involve the student body, particularly freshmen.

“It really makes me so disap pointed when I talk to first-year students and they say, ‘I didn’t know I could participate in the HUA,’” Johnson said.

Of the HUA’s nine current of ficers, four were elected as social freshmen.

Estabine lauded the new elec toral system as more accessible for freshmen who want to run for office.

“What we saw in the past few years was the people who were able to run successful campaigns were the ones with large Insta gram followings,” Estabine said.

“When you run at the beginning of your freshman year, you don’t really know these people.”

Under the current system, general elections take place during the third week of the spring semester.

According to Zimmerman, the Association’s lower profile has shielded it from student scru tiny.

“I think people’s perception of [the HUA] is probably slight ly more favorable,” Zimmerman said. “I think people just think of it less in general, and I think a big part of that is just that there’s few er people in it.”

Zurovec largely agreed with Zimmerman’s characterization, saying the new government tried to avoid forcing its campus pres ence “down people’s throats.”

“What I’ve heard from oth er people is people saying that they don’t really care about [the HUA],” Zurovec said. “In terms of the people who do care about it, it’s about club funding.”

mert.geyiktepe@thecrimson.com

The HUA general elections are held on the third week of the Spring term. Candidates can not run for more than one posi tion and can not run for a position they have previ ously held.

Some of HUA’s major new initia tives this semes ter included two pilot programs to establish a turkey as Harvard’s new mascot and host a Concentration Declaration Day.

Travis

Sasjha I. Mayfield ’25 Student Representative

Claire Yoo ’23 Harvard senior

J. SELLERS HIL — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Cara Chang ’24 to Lead The Crimson’s 150th Guard

currently covers the Harvard University Police Department, reporting on its efforts to re form under a new chief, Victor A.Clay. In December 2021, King dollar served on a team of report ers covering the trial of professor

Charles M. Lieber, who was con victed by a federal jury of lying to government authorities about his ties to China.

A Winthrop House resident, Kingdollar also co-runs The Crimson’s social media accounts

alongside Chang and serves on its Audience Engagement Team.

During his stint as a junior re porter, he covered the News Board’s government relations beat, chronicling state politics and the rise of Boston Mayor Mi

chelle Wu ’07.

Leverett House resident Cyn thia V. Lu ’24 will serve as The Crimson’s next business manag er, overseeing the newspaper’s fi nances and business affairs.

An Applied Mathematics con centrator hailing from Belmont, Massachusetts, Lu previous ly served as the Business Board’s marketing manager, overseeing its sponsored content and pilot ing the use of new analytics plat forms.

Previously, Lu co-led an ef fort to launch a “Four Years in Review” product that was sold to families of graduating Har vard College seniors. She has also served on a team tasked with an alyzing and improving The Crim son’s print distribution strategy.

“The new guard’s spirit for in novation, holding power to ac count, and maintaining the inde pendence of our institution — the core principles which under lie everything we do — will serve them well as they make the build ing their own,” Coronell Uribe said. “I cannot wait to see where the next President, Managing Ed itor, and Business Manager take the organization in 2023.”

FROM PAGE 1

Students Fundraise for Disaster Relief After Earthquake

BY DEKYI T. TSOTSONG CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

The Harvard Indonesian Students Association launched a fundraiser last week to provide disaster relief fol lowing the recent earthquake in Cianjur, Indonesia, which killed hundreds.

Leonardo Kamilius, a Har vard Kennedy School student and member of HISA, said the fund raising initiative aims to aid those affected by the earthquake.

“The most important is those who help on the ground with pro viding the basic needs for the dis placed people,” Kamilius said.

“We feel that responsibility, as Indonesians, to also become a bridge for people who care and want to support here — so they can really support people on the ground,” he added.

A 5.6 magnitude earthquake struck western Indonesia on Nov. 22, displacing more than 58,000 people.

Shabari Nair, an HKS student who donated to the fundraiser, said he was motivated in part by his own identity.

“I certainly come with a very strong identity of being from the Global South,” he said. “I felt it

was important that we need to certainly stand together if some body is affected from a region that we consider to be in the neighbor hood.”

account. HISA members have been promoting the fundraiser via WhatsApp group chats and word of mouth.

The presidents of HISA, Tiara Amalia Puteri and I Ketut Adi Pu tra Kusnadi, said they partnered with local organizations to help “fellow Indonesians.”

“We are working with trust ed humanitarian organizations on the ground that would chan nel the funds to provide shelters, foods, and medications for those affected,” they wrote in a text message.

“It was only right that we come together for a situation which we could also be affected by at some point,” Nair added.

While HISA has no specific fundraising target, Kamilius said, the organization has reached $3,200 in donations and will con tinue to solicit donations until the fundraising window closes on Dec. 9. “One dollar that we can do nate translates to about 15,000 ru piah, and that could translate into two hot meals for the victims,” Ku miliah said.

American donors can con tribute to the fundraiser through Venmo, and donors from Indone sia can send funds to a local bank

The presidents said HISA will use a crowdfunding platform to identify and select local NGOs to which they will donate their funds.

Gabrielle Kembuan, the HISA communications director, said the donation window might be extended based on reported need.

“We actually have people at the refugee camps who are as sessing whether they still need basic goods and stuff there,” she said. “So depending on the needs, and whether the government there actually has enough re sponse to provide everything, we might open the donations for lon ger.”

dekyi.tsotsong@thecrimson.com

Harvard CFO Discusses Rising Costs, Inflation Pressures

BY ERIC YAN CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

In fiscal year 2022, Harvard’s spending was temporarily stifled by staffing shortages and difficul ties acquiring goods due to global supply chain challenges, contrib uting to the school’s $406 million budget surplus — the highest in at least two decades.

Harvard is deep with talent, and a natural turnover of leaders is to be expected.

Thomas J. Hollister Harvard Vice President for Finance

But as the United States econ omy continues to experience re cord-high inflation, Harvard Chief Financial Officer Thomas J.Hollister said in an interview Wednesday that the University now faces rising costs “across the board” as the school’s expenses are “bouncing back.”

Despite financial headwinds, Hollister said Harvard hopes to

avoid passing on the cost of high inflation with tuition hikes.

“Harvard’s worked very hard on student affordability and ac cess and is deeply committed to affordability and need-blind ad mission at the undergraduate lev el,” Hollister said. “So that’s not a path anyone would like to pur sue.”

Hollister, who is set to step down at the end of the academic year, also said Harvard faces the “very serious concern” of a po tential recession in the near fu ture, which would deliver a direct blow to many of the University’s largest revenue streams, includ ing current-use gifts and endow ment distributions.

He said managing Harvard’s finances through both a reces sion and high inflation could be a “double whammy.”

“Either one of them is hard enough,” Hollister said.

Last month, Harvard an nounced that Hollister will retire at the end of the academic year af ter eight years as the school’s top financial officer. His departure will come amid a major reshuf fling of Harvard’s top brass — in cluding the retirement of Univer sity President Lawrence S. Bacow,

who is set to depart in June.

Hollister is credited with pre paring Harvard well for the fi nancial challenges brought by the pandemic. In 2019, he led re cession planning with financial teams across the University to en sure the school was ready in the event of an economic downturn.

This summer, Harvard Exec utive Vice President Meredith L. Weenick ’90 took over for Kather ine N. Lapp, who oversaw the Uni versity’s campus services, financ es, and administration for over a decade. Harvard Alumni Associ ation Executive Director Philip W. Lovejoy is also set to step down at the end of the calendar year. Two academic deans are also set to depart in the coming months.

Despite the many departures, Hollister said he is not concerned with the turnover in Harvard’s central administration.

“Harvard is deep with talent, and a natural turnover of lead ers is to be expected,” he said. “As challenging and difficult as the pandemic was, I think it’s un leashed new energies and new possibilities for the future in lots of respects.”

eric.yan@thecrimson.com

Founded in 1873, The Crimson is the student newspaper of Har vard University.

The Crimson selects its lead ers through an election pro cess called the Turkey Shoot, in which all outgoing members of the masthead are invited to par ticipate. A candidate for a senior leadership position must receive at least 75 percent of the vote to be elected.

Joining Chang, Kingdollar, and Lu on the masthead are:

News

Leah J. Teichholtz ’24, Associate Managing Editor Meimei Xu ’24, Associate Managing Editor

Business Derek S. Chang ’24, Associate Business Manager

Editorial Eleanor V. Wikstrom ’24, Editorial Chair Christina M. Xiao ’24, Editorial Chair

Diversity & Inclusivity

Gordon J. Ebanks ’24, D&I Chair Hailey E. Krasnikov ’25, D&I Chair

Affiliates Rally in Support of Chinese Protesters

George Yean, a Harvard grad uate student studying govern ment, said he attended the ral ly to support those protesting back home, saying “this is prob ably the only thing we can do” as students living outside of China.

“My basic reason is to show my solidarity with China’s free dom-seekers even though they probably don’t represent the majority of Chinese people,” Yean said. “But everything is starting from a tiny portion of the population, so that’s why I feel I am morally obligated to join them even though I’m stay ing overseas right now.”

China’s strict approach for containing Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic has kept the death rate in China relative ly low.

Over 30,000 people have died of Covid-19 in China since the start of the pandemic, ac cording to data from the World Health Organization. By con trast, the United States’ Covid-19 death toll surpassed one million earlier this year.

But some protesters cast doubt on China’s reported Covid-19 death toll.

Tammy C.-T. Lan, a graduate student from Taiwan, said she attended the protest to support the relaxation of Covid-19 re strictions and to “stop the cen sorship of how many people are actually dying.”

“They won’t tell us what they’re actually doing,” Lan said. “They won’t tell us what

the actual conditions are with in the country.”

Cosette T.-H. Wu ’25 said she attended the protest to support Chinese citizens in their quest for freedom.

“I think it’s less like I have

“I feel I am morally obligated to join them even though I’m staying overseas right now.

George Yean Harvard Graduate Student

specific demands about the sit uation in China and more that I think that the Chinese people should be able to make the de mands that they want and see the change that they want to see,” Wu said.

Western coverage of the un rest in China demonstrates the significance of the ongoing pro tests because “usually censor ship is swift and censorship is ubiquitous” in China, accord ing to Lan.

“The fact that the people are really risking their lives to ex press their dissent within a to talitarian regime suggests how dire the circumstances there must be,” Lan said. “For us to be out here — it’s anything we can do to really stand in solidarity.”

Arts Anya L. Henry ’24, Arts Chair Alisa S. Regassa ’24, Arts Chair

Blog Tina Chen ’24, Blog Chair Hana Rehman ’25, Blog Chair

Design Sophia Salamanca ’24, Design Chair Sami E. Turner ’24, Design Chair

Magazine Io Y. Gilman ’25, Magazine Chair Amber H. Levis ’25, Magazine Chair

Multimedia Julian J. Giordano ’25, Multimedia Chair Joey Huang ’24, Multimedia Chair

Sports Mairead B. Baker ’24, Sports Chair Aaron B. Schuman ’25, Sports Chair

Technology Kevin Luo ’24, Technology Chair Justin Y. Ye ’24, Technology

GERSEN FROM PAGE 1

HLS Professor Asks Judge for SFFA v. Harvard Sidebars

Harvard itself asserted was so publicly available at the time that anyone casually in vestigating the subject would know,” Students for Fair Ad missions lawyer Patrick Strawbridge wrote.

“Because any sealing must be narrowly tailored, the handful of examples Harvard cites cannot justify sealing ev ery sidebar discussion,” he added.

The New York Times and The New Yorker magazine both filed letters in support of Gersen’s request to Burroughs to unseal the sidebars. (Gers en is a New Yorker contributor who has reported on the affir mative action case for the out let since 2017.)

Burroughs will hold a pri vate hearing on Dec. 9 to dis cuss the materials under seal and Gersen’s request.

Gersen said she expects the judge to rule in favor of her re quest based on a Nov. 21 court hearing on the issue.

“I think that was clear at the hearing — that there would be some unsealing, but that [Bur roughs] understood that the parties may disagree about some portions of the sidebar transcript,” Gersen said.

rahem.hamid@thecrimson.com nia.orakwue@thecrimson.com

Shabari Nair Harvard Graduate Student

It was only right that we come together for a situation which we could also be affected by at some point.

Brandon L. Kingdollar ’24, left, and Cynthia V. Lu ’24. JULIAN J. GIORDANO — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Three Named University Professors

BY ARIEL H. KIM AND MEIMEI XU CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Harvard scholars Cath erine Dulac, Robert J. Sampson, and Arlene H. Sharpe ’75 will become Universi ty Professors, Harvard’s highest faculty distinction, next year.

Some of Harvard’s most prom inent scholars serve as University Professors, a post that allows fac ulty members to pursue research and teach at any school across the University.

Dulac, Sampson, and Sharpe will join 22 other University Pro fessors in the post, effective Jan. 1, 2023.

Sharpe, a Comparative Pa thology professor and the chair of Harvard Medical School’s Immu nology Department, will become the Kolokotrones University Pro fessor, replacing medical anthro pologist Paul Farmer, who died last spring. She studies T cells, a type of white blood cell that helps the body fight infection and may help defeat cancer. She is working to translate her research into new therapies for cancer and autoim mune diseases.

Sharpe is the co-leader of the Massachusetts Consortium on Pathogen Readiness, which was established in March 2020 at Harvard Medical School to re

spond to the Covid-19 pandem ic and prepare for emerging out breaks.

“I’ve been at Harvard as an un dergrad, M.D.-Ph.D. student, and my whole career — just the inspi ration I got as an undergraduate as well as through my training and then my colleagues, are what have kept me here all of this time,” she said.

Sharpe said her new appoint ment is a recognition of her stu dents and advisees, as well as her.

“I feel like I have two families. I have my personal family and my lab family,” she said. “For me,

it’s all of their hard work and cre ativity that really I’ve benefited so much from.”

Sampson, a Social Sciences professor, studies crime, disor der, inequality, and urban areas. He is also an affiliated research professor at the American Bar Foundation and the founding di rector of the Boston Area Re search Initiative, a cross-univer sity center that uses data-driven research to advocate for social justice in Boston.

“I am extremely grateful to President Bacow for providing a unique opportunity to forge new

250 Sign Free Speech Petition

BY J. SELLERS HILL AND LEAH J. TEICHHOLTZ CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Nearly 250 Harvard affiliates signed onto a petition this month calling on the University’s Pres idential Search Committee to nominate a candidate who “ac tively affirms the importance of free speech” on campus.

Signatories of the petition, which was addressed to the search committee and Penny S. Pritzker ’81 — the committee’s leader and the senior fellow of the Harvard Corporation — hid their names from the public, though organizers said names would be disclosed to the committee.

More than 200 students, 31 alums, and 11 faculty members signed the letter, per a copy of the petition viewed by The Crimson.

“Harvard’s mission to ‘educate citizens and citizen-leaders’ de pends on an environment of open inquiry and criticism,” the peti tion reads. “But unless the next President shows a firm commit ment to protecting free speech at Harvard, that environment will continue to contract.”

The petition alleges free speech protections provided by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ Free Speech Guidelines, adopt ed in 1990, have “often been cur tailed,” leading to a “climate of re pression.”

Victoria T. Li ’25, a co-organiz er of the petition, said she felt the letter was necessitated by a “lack of dialogue” on campus.

“It’s undeniable that we have a culture at Harvard that doesn’t encourage free exchange of ideas in classrooms,” Li said.

Harvard University spokes person Jason A. Newton declined to comment on the petition.

The petition cites examples of what the authors described as a “hostility to speech” at Harvard, including backlash against Hu man Evolutionary Biology lec

turer Carole K. Hooven in 2021.

During an appearance on a Fox News show, Hooven maintained that only two biological sexes ex ist and criticized rising pressure for medical school professors to use gender-neutral vocabulary.

According to the petition, Harvard’s intellectual climate has produced “negative and se vere” effects on its reputation.

“A Harvard degree is increas ingly associated with emotion al and intellectual fragility; some employers have even forsworn hiring Harvard graduates,” the petition reads, citing a Wall Street Journal op-ed written by the ed itor of a conservative religious journal. “Harvard cannot retain the world’s respect if it is seen as an intellectual environment in which dissent from orthodoxy is punished.”

The letter also alleges Har vard’s mandatory Title IX train ing stifles speech by stressing the role that factors such as gender, age, and size-based discrimina tion play in perpetuating sexual violence.

“These concerns are certain ly understandable,” the petition reads. “But since virtually every proposition about the human condition, whether from the hu manities, social sciences, or bio medical sciences, could be con strued as unflattering to one group or another, and hence a ‘-phobia’ or ‘system of harm,’ this stigmatization can only discour age honest inquiry.”

The Title IX training figure ref erenced by the petition, titled the “Power and Control Wheel,” in tends to draw attention to modes of discrimination that can pro duce adverse power dynamics, including ageism, xenophobia, classism, and transphobia.

Shira Z. Hoffer ’25, who signed the petition, said she agreed with the central message of the pe tition but wished it had further condemned offensive speech.

“It’s unfortunate that free

speech has become a buzzword, because I think it’s kind of con trasted with the idea of a safe space,” Hoffer said. “I think that both are possible and important.”

Co-organizer Jacob A. Cremers ’23-’24, who publicized the petition to Harvard under graduates, said he and Li hid sig natories’ names to protect those concerned about backlash.

“The potential negatives of signing it are huge. The nega tives of not signing it are noth ing,” Cremers said. “The positives of signing it are potentially zero — unless they really believe in the cause.”

Hoffer said she believes back lash is a “really legitimate con cern,” but said it is “somewhat ironic” that signatories are not taking “ownership of their be liefs.”

ties with colleagues outside my normal orbit,” Sampson wrote in a statement. “That includes new possibilities for teaching in oth er units at Harvard and exposing my FAS students to intellectual opportunities beyond a standard disciplinary course.”

Dulac, a professor of Molecu lar and Cellular Biology, has been appointed the Samuel W. Mor ris University Professor, replac ing economist Dale W. Jorgen son, who died this summer. She studies behavioral neuroscience, looking at mice to understand the molecular and neurological

mechanisms behind innate so cial behaviors.

“Being a faculty member at Harvard has allowed me to follow my passion for scientific research and teaching in collaboration with many inspiring colleagues,” she said in a press release. “I am intrigued and excited to contin ue to build on my existing work and creating new collaborations across the various Schools here at Harvard, which this appoint ment will further help foster.”

ariel.kim@thecrimson.com meimei.xu@thecrimson.com

Doyle Talks Race, Gender Gaps at SEAS

BY FELICIA HE AND JAMES R. JOLIN CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

A recent survey of Harvard’s School of Engineering and Ap plied Sciences revealed stark racial and gender gaps in re sponses to a wide array of ques tions, including about discrimi nation and harassment, feelings of inclusion and belonging, and work-life balance.

But, pointing to improve ment over the last four years, SEAS Dean Francis J. Doyle III said in an interview last week the overall results of the 2022 cli mate survey were “encouraging” — though “not a sign of victory.”

About 21 percent of respon dents to the survey reported that they have experienced harass ment and discrimination at the school.

The report measured eight di versity and belonging “themes” by grouping questions togeth er. It revealed at least some im provement across six categories, while two remained stagnant from 2018, the last time the sur vey was conducted.

for-profit opportunities are pro moted more aggressively to en gineering students by corporate recruiters.

“What [students] want to do in an internship is a very person alized decision,” Doyle said. “I think our role is to bring to their attention the opportunities and allow them to make decisions without us, in any way, imposing judgment or our own sense of priority or preference between things.”

“Having said that, it’s clear that larger for-profits will have more developed marketing arms that are more aggressive with their recruiting tactics, and so forth,” he added.

Doyle praised public ser vice-oriented student groups such as Engineers without Bor ders, Developers for Develop ment, and the Clean Energy Group as “organic and entrepre neurial” organizations.

Research Funding

READ IT IN FIVE MINUTES

STUDENTS REACT TO COMMUNITY NIGHT RESTRICTIONS

Students offered differing views of the College’s Com munity Nights. Community Nights, first established in 2014, aim to help upperclass men at the College better connect with fellow students in their House by not allowing interhouse guests for Thurs day dinners. Some students and tutors expressed appre ciation for the time and space to get to know members of their House community, while others expressed doubt in their ability to bolster House spirit and found qualms with the inconvenience of having to eat within their own House, especially for Quad residents.

Harvey C. Mansfield ’53, a Harvard professor of govern ment, said he signed the petition to target the “fundamental” need for free speech on campus.

“That’s something that liber als and conservatives can agree on,” Mansfield said. “The woke administration that we’ve seen, of politicization and aggressive intolerance — it is something that needs to be replaced.”

Cremers said the organizers plan to send the petition to the Presidential Search Committee by the end of the fall semester.

“The fact that we had, in six of the eight categories, improve ment — modest as it might be — to me was encouraging,” Doyle said. “It’s not a sign of victory, and we will never declare victo ry in this space.”

The school plans to hold group discussions about inclu sion and belonging issues in the coming months, in which Doyle said he plans to participate.

“I don’t want to read the notes,” he said. “I want to hear it from the voices of the individu als.”

Following the survey, Doyle also said his administration will prioritize ensuring that fresh man students interested in SEAS concentrations have “equal ac cess to an opportunity to suc ceed” in the school’s programs.

Doyle also discussed the fol lowing topics:

Public Service at SEAS

Doyle said the large propor tion of SEAS students who take post-graduation jobs in the for-profit sector instead of pub lic service is reflective of “larg er national trends,” adding that faculty and mentors at the school are not “pushing kids to wards for-profits.”

He acknowledged that

Doyle praised The Grid, a new initiative aimed at helping SEAS affiliates translate research into startups by providing funding, workspaces, and mentorship opportunities.

“He has taken things off like a rocket sled,” Doyle said of the ini tiative’s executive director Paul N. Hayre. “It’s just absolutely in credible, the speed with which we’ve gotten things rolling.”

Doyle said The Grid has brought a more formalized re view and mentorship process for prospective startups seeking funding.

“We had a record number of proposals submitted this cy cle, and so we’ve now got a much more formalized program for reviewing those, including men toring of individuals who may be had failed in the prior sub mission, but want to learn how to come back and improve their submission,” he said.

Harvard Presidential Search

Massachusetts Hall will be vacated by Lawrence S. Bacow in six months when he steps down as Harvard president — but Doyle says he isn’t interested in filling the University’s top job.

“I have my hands quite full, and I’m very, very satisfied with what I’m doing,” he said.

THANKSGIVING CELEBRATED ON CAMPUS

Students staying at the College over Thanksgiv ing break had the oppor tunity to partake in the festivities in many ways. Students cited flights costly in time and money, as well as an opportunity to stay with friends and catch up on work, as reasons to stay on campus. HUDS hosted an Annenberg Thanksgiving meal on Thurs day with traditional food for the occasion. Upperclassmen houses and student organi zations also hosted dinners and trips for students over the break. Harvard’s Thanksgiv ing recess did not begin until Wednesday, making many stu dents ultimately reconsider the decision to go home.

RADCLIFFE FELLOW DISCUSSES CONSE QUENCES OF U.S. GUN INDUSTRY ON MEXICO

Ieva Jusionyte, a Maury Green Fellow at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute, dis cussed the U.S. gun indus try’s effects on violence in Mexico at a virtual event hosted by Radcliffe on Wednesday. A professor of international security and anthropology at Brown Uni versity, Jusionyte presented on research she has gathered for a book she is currently working on, “Exit Wounds”, to be published in 2024. She discussed the history of col onization and guns in both Mexico and the U.S., as well as the complicity of the U.S. in making large-caliber weapons more attainable for Mexican smugglers.

During a Harvard Law School panel on Wednes day, human rights experts discussed the UN’s re sponses to violations of children’s rights in global armed conflicts. Panelists included Yanghee Lee, a for mer UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar; Allan Rock, who served as Canadian Ambassa dor to the United Nations; Jo Becker, advocacy director of the children’s rights division at Human Rights Watch; and Benyam Dawit Mezmur, an Eleanor Roosevelt Fellow at Harvard Law School.

From left to right, professors Catherine Dulac, Robert J. Sampson, and Arlene H. Sharpe ‘75. BY CHANNING JOHNSON AND COURTESY OF KRIS SNIBBE / HARVARD UNIVERSITY

HLS PANEL DIS CUSSES UN AGENDA TO KEEP CHILDREN SAFE DURING ARMED CONFLICT

PROFESSORS Catherine Dulac, Robert Sampson, and Arlene Sharpe will become University Professors.

Harvey C. Mansfield ‘53 Harvard professor of government

The woke adminsitration that we’ve seen, of politicization and aggressive intolerance — it is something that needs to be replaced.

“

ANGELA DELA CRUZ — CRIMSON PHO TOGRAPHER

TRUONG L. NGUYEN — CRIMSON PHO TOGRAPHER

The Youthful Glow of the Midterm Elections

ACROSS THE COUNTRY, young people showed that we care about the future of our country — and we will use our voices to shape it. With the second-highest youth voter turnout rate in almost 30 years, our generation gave hope for the future of democracy.

BY THE CRIMSON EDITORIAL BOARD

Earlier this month, Americans went to the polls for the midterm elections, render ing their first comprehensive electoral judgments since 2020. As concerned as we are about the state of our nation, the midterms were encouraging — young people showed up to vote in force, election deniers were kept out of battleground ballot rooms, and democ racy came out ahead.

With the second-highest youth voter turnout rate in almost 30 years, our generation gave hope for the future of democracy. Galvanized by the Su preme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson, young voters went to the polls with abortion rights top of mind. It paid off: All five states with abortion rights measures on the ballot voted either for enshrining pro-choice policies or against reducing access to abortion, marking a victorious election season for the reproductive rights movement from blue Cali fornia to deep red Kentucky.

Across the country, young people showed that we care about the future of our country — and we will use our voices to shape it.

Our generation also notched wins on the other side of the ballot box, with Maxwell Frost becom ing the first Gen Z member of Congress. Represen tation matters, and putting young people in Con gress will ensure that someone is fighting for our

STAFF EDITORIAL

interests and increase youth political engagement.

The continued presence and impact of young people at the ballot box is also something that falls upon us. As Harvard students, we are among the best-positioned within our generation to drive youth engagement in politics. The University has taken positive steps to facilitate our leadership in the political realm by funding initiatives like the

elected to statewide office in Massachusetts. Healy and Campbell’s wins empower youth from various backgrounds and identities, signaling to the na tion that new voices are here to be heard and rep resented. Moreover, three out of four progressive ballot propositions endorsed by this Board were passed by Massachusetts voters. This is a step in the right direction toward a more compassionate Massachusetts, and we can’t wait to see our state implement the changes we endorsed.

In future elections, we should respond to the call for political engagement most forcefully when we witness our democracy under threat. This elec tion cycle, we perceived such a threat within the election denial movement centered around for mer President Donald Trump — a movement which voters emphatically rebuffed. The lacklus ter performance of Trumpian extremists around the nation provided Trump with his strongest re buke since 2020. In key swing states like Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Nevada, Trump-endorsed can didates fell to Democrats, enabling some of the best midterm results for Democrats in decades.

thought that we hope to cultivate further through our own engagement with the democratic process. Whatever the runoff results, the midterms have al ready sent a powerful message: Parties that cannot govern themselves will eventually face the music. The American people largely declined to buy into the sensationalist election denialism that has poi soned our politics for the last two years, and Re publicans will have to clean up their party in order to win their votes back. Much has been made of the so-called impending death of democracy, but the arc of history is unpredictable. This election gives us a glimpse of hope and a path forward.

“Whatever the runoff results, the midterms have already sent a powerful message: Parties that cannot govern themselves will eventually face the music.

Harvard Votes Challenge, but as we have opined previously, they can and should go further by de claring election days as University holidays.

This year’s midterm elections also clearly demonstrated the importance of voter engage ment at the local level. Maura T. Healy ’92 shat tered another glass ceiling as the first woman and the first openly gay person to be elected gover nor of Massachusetts, while Andrea Campbell si multaneously became the first Black woman to be

What, Like it’s Hard?: HLS leaves U.S. News & World Report Rankings

BY THE CRIMSON EDITORIAL BOARD

It’s been a tumultuous year for U.S. News & World Report’s annual school rankings. Earli er this semester, the U.S. News rankings made news when a scandal at Columbia caused the Ivy League institution to drop from 2nd to 18th on the rankings.

Now along with other highly prestigious law schools — such as Stanford, Georgetown, Colum bia, Berkeley, and Yale — Harvard Law School has withdrawn from the U.S. News annual rank ings.

As an Editorial Board that has expressed con cern about higher education’s obsession with rankings in the past, we are glad to see that HLS shares similar concerns. We hope this news rings in a new era for higher education — one in which the pursuit of a high ranking does not su persede the imperative to provide a high-quality education to students.

Today, our culture’s emphasis on prestige has become so intense that the U.S. News rankings are a reliable predictor of the fates of graduat ing law students, from whether or not they will land a Supreme Court clerkship to their person al bargaining ability for salaries. Even the choice to attend a top-ranked law school now serves as a positive “signaling effect” on employers at large firms, regardless of the actual efficacy of the stu dent’s education.

Prior to enrollment, rankings also create per verse incentives that may lead to the selective representation of data. The ability of applicants to make informed decisions suffers when admin istrators’ drive to portray their school as more ac complished in certain metrics than it actually is overpowers more accurate presentations.

Columbia’s controversy serves as a fresh warning. Beyond falsified data, misrepresented data lies just around the corner to fool students. Data surrounding levels of debt found amongst graduating students are often only half the sto ry — countless university profiles often fail to ac count for debt relief programs, thus potentially skewing the applicant pool towards better-re sourced students.

Rather than encouraging school selection, from the undergraduate to the professional de gree level, based on what is best for individu al students, our society at large has succumbed to chasing the mythical white whale of “the best university.”

Such a myth is perhaps one of the fundamen tal flaws of rankings: They perpetuate the stereo type of conformity to universal averages, or the idea that a particular set of priorities will, on av erage, matter to all people.

As discussed by Harvard Education School professor Todd Rose, it’s a near impossibility for any one individual to conform to averages within all categories. In the context of law school choice, it is essential to find a place that makes you hap py — somewhere you will feel fulfilled and, ac cordingly, able to grow and learn. In our view, at tempting to construct averaged metrics of these subjective goals creates an abstract and mean ingless figure with limited probative value.

Still, we acknowledge that rankings can be beneficial when done well. Looking at central ized statistical information such as class sizes and student-to-faculty ratios, for instance, can encourage universities to develop smaller class sizes and lower student-to-faculty ratios that may translate into better educational experienc es.

Generally, centralized and standardized da tabases can help present students with critical information that unintelligible data and disor ganized, subjective university websites fail to provide. Still, universities should provide more user-friendly websites that present relevant in formation across categories (such as academics, student services, student happiness, socioeco nomic mobility, and so on).

Information accessibility ultimately ben efits the university as well: When individuals are presented with more information, they are more able to prioritize their personal preferenc es rather than the factors emphasized by rank ings. Applicants, for instance, may prefer small er class sizes but not an urban campus; these are subtle comparisons that are more likely to occur when students can turn to university websites di rectly for targeted information as opposed to re lying on unstandardized rankings that present themselves as universal.

In a future where ranking sites and universi ty websites coexist to provide students with es sential information, both should be well-orga nized, easily accessible, and standardized so as to not create confusing differentials. Following that same vein, both organizations like U.S. News and universities should work to identify the most useful data they can provide and edit their sites accordingly to maximize utility.

In the possible scenario that universities will not take initiative to reorganize their display of information, consumer regulatory agencies should mandate information transparency — higher education, after all, is a booming industry where the rights of consumers (students) should be protected, especially given the student debt crisis.

Even Republicans seem to be growing tired of Trump’s antics. We hope this election marks a turning point — the end of the Trump GOP. That said, the midterms aren’t over. In Georgia, vot ers will have to decide whether to give Democrats a 51st Senate seat in the form of Senator Rapha el G. Warnock. Warnock, a self-proclaimed “prochoice pastor,” is something of a unique creature in American politics. Religious morality is often associated in the United States exclusively with so cial conservatives, but Warnock has given a high profile to religiously-inflected progressivism. His candidacy is a reminder of the wide diversity within American politics — a mosaic of political

Tomato Soup and Trolley Problems

BY EMILY N. DIAL

One October afternoon, as has become habit, I found myself walking to a nearby coffee shop between classes. Amid all the busyness of life, I have gratefully welcomed these momentary, unscheduled strolls. They promise time for reflection, a chance to feel the autumn air as it gradually cools and yields to winter, and, of course, a warm, tasty beverage to stave off a caffeine-deprivation-induced headache.

On this particular autumn day, I especially welcomed the chance to let my mind wander — I had just read about yet another set of climate ac tivists throwing food at famous paintings, and as I began to process my initial shock and anger, I was beginning to find this form of unconvention al protest intriguing.

As someone in love with the visual arts, the sight of a van Gogh drenched in tomato soup or a Monet coated in mashed potatoes had my stom ach in knots. But equally troubling to me was the ultimatum one of the climate activists professed: Art or life? A moral quandary as profound as this one should neither be problematized nor an swered in so few words.

When the food was cleaned and the paintings restored, the difficult question of art or life lin gered. I had to deal with it.

I do not find this question pressing because the answer is obviously life; rather, I find it press ing precisely because I have a sneaking suspi cion that maybe it isn’t. Part of what makes life worth preserving is that life is valuable, and it’s hard not to feel that what makes human life valu able is our species’ profound legacy, artistic cre ation included.

The past four years have been among the most turbulent in modern American political history. These election results may show the beginnings of a return to sanity.

—This staff editorial solely represents the major ity 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.

the short-term existence of all we have grown to love about our absurd, vibrant species — more valuable than our paintings, sculptures, music, food, traditions, strolls to buy coffee? My intu ition tells me no.

But it seems some activists would answer life and mean it. Some would say that a world with out art would be justified if it meant humans would have a few more centuries on their be loved planet.

And as much as I cannot seem to share this sentiment, I can’t shake my empathy for it, either. The tomato soup throwers are but another part of the culture I admire so profoundly — a culture that is often political. Rarities, they remind me of Franz Kafka’s Gregor Samsa who, after metamor phosing into a bug, finds himself condemned and on the outskirts of a society once home to him. They are another idea in humanity’s bottomless reservoir of emotional and creative capital, com peting to survive, sustain itself, and make itself heard, just like the rest of the world. How could I condemn such a fundamental facet of humanity’s beautiful absurdity? I feel I cannot.

To be clear, I’m not advocating for or against these protests. I know that they do not, in actual ity, represent a dichotomous choice between art and life, and indeed, that they did not intend to destroy the targeted artworks. And I know that preserving the world also allows us to continue the production of art.

All I mean to say is: A certain beautiful irra tionality makes human life what it is, and to con demn irrationality in favor of our rational, prag matic stratagems for preserving life, effective as they may be, would be to miss something innate to humanity’s value.

Especially at a university where being apo litical feels like a crime, we carefully weigh our options to ensure we act according to the values most dear to us. For some, this may include en gaging in unconventional forms of protest. For others, it may mean remaining uninvolved.

Ultimately, the responsibility falls on univer sities to be more transparent and to provide clear, useful metrics in readily accessible ways. This would maximize the benefits — access to cen tralized information, ability to compare compet ing schools, and awareness of oft-overlooked in stitutions — while avoiding the pervasive harms, such as lost autonomy in the application process, ill-informed decisions from incomplete data, and falling into the trap of prestige over personal satisfaction and success.

In a world driven by numbers, we should strive to limit the influence of abstract rankings and begin to prioritize our own happiness. Fol lowing in the footsteps of HLS, we must break ranks.

—This staff editorial solely represents the ma jority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editori al Board meetings. In order to ensure the impar tiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on sim ilar topics.

Sure, these protests targeting art come at a time when the planet is quickly inching toward inhabitability, and one could argue that they shed light and urgency on the climate crisis. But putting the politics aside for a moment, I invite you to consider the complex debate over the val ues at play.

The age-old question of balancing moral judgments evokes a philosophical classic: the Trolley Problem. In the classical construction, a trolley is about to run over a few people tied to its tracks. You can save their lives only by pulling a lever, diverting the trolley onto another track where it will run over just one person instead. In the situation at hand, it’s as though a trolley is barreling toward a button that, if pushed, will re alize the suffering and eventual extinction of all of humanity, and the only way for us to divert its path is throwing humanity’s most valuable cre ations on the tracks.

To me, it’s not obvious how we should act. If we do choose to save human life, letting the trol ley destroy humanity’s finest work, we corner ourselves into a conclusion not unreasonably felt incorrect. Is a desert society that can last long into the future, devoid of all that makes human culture what it presently is, more valuable than

All I mean to say is: A certain beautiful irrationality makes human life what it is, and to condemn irrationality in favor of our rational, pragmatic stratagems for preserving life, effective as they may be, would be to miss something innate to humanity’s value.

Whatever side we end up endorsing, we must acknowledge that hypocrisy and irrationality are inevitable, as much a staple of our species as the creativity that has allowed us to paint Sun flowers and Grainstacks.

Maybe at the end of it all, there’s something to value in the disagreement — as much beauty, strangely, in the discord and quagmire as in what each of us views as progress.

When I take my stroll to grab a coffee, I don’t do it because it will help me in my future. I don’t do it because I won’t be able to get through lec ture without caffeine. I don’t do it because it’s productive.

I do it because I want to. And I am OK with the frivolity of such an act, because there’s just some thing about that time I wouldn’t want to live with out.

- Emily N. Dial ’25, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a Philosophy concentrator in Adams House.

“The ability of applicants to make informed decisions suffers when administrators’ drive to portray their school as more accomplished in certain metrics than it actually is overpowers more accurate presentations.

OP-ED

“

Galvanized by the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson, young voters went to the polls with abortion rights top of mind.

“

Five Theses on the Humanities Crisis

BY ADEN BARTON

Icame into Harvard thinking I’d concen trate in English. I’m now getting a degree in Economics and working at a hedge fund next summer. My trajectory seems to be somewhat common at Harvard, so I wanted to look at why the humanities have declined here and beyond. There are a million articles on the death of the humanities with a million different opinions as to why the decline is oc curring, leaving the scholarship surround ing the issue fairly disjointed and multi-lay ered. So, I decided to write five theses instead of one overarching argument, Martin Luther style.

1. The first crisis of the humanities happened in the 1970s.

Between 1966 and 2010, there was a 50 per cent decline of humanities degrees, but the bulk of that decline occurred between 1970 and the mid-1980s. The decline of the hu manities at Harvard over that same time pe riod was, thankfully, less pronounced. A 2013 Harvard Report note showed that human ities concentrations declined from 1970 to 1990, although at a much slower rate. Nota bly, the percentage of humanities degrees at Harvard actually grew slightly between 1970 and 1990 if you classify History as a social sci ence. In that case, the humanities peaked at around 30 percent in 1960, declining to a lit tle less than 20 percent today, meaning that, at Harvard, History – as compared to the hu manities overall – has faced an especially large enrollment drop over the last 40 years.

2. The second crisis of the humanities is happening now

The humanities were surprisingly stable between the mid-1980s and the Great Re cession. As a result, many commentators asserted around 2010 that the crisis of the hu manities was overhyped. Those takes turned out to be premature since the humanities continued to decline in the weak economic environment of the 2010s, which is why ana lysts are now declaring a second crisis of the humanities. Again, at Harvard, this decline

is much less pronounced but still present. In fact, over the past decade, social sci ence concentrations have faced a more pro nounced decline than the humanities at Harvard. This may be because the Histo ry concentration, which faced a nearly 50 percent drop from 2011 to 2020, is included in the social science category in the graph above. Conversely, Applied Math, Statistics, and Computer Science have seen the biggest growth over the last ten years, perhaps re flecting the shift of would-be Economics con centrators to more quantitative degrees.

3. It’s not all bad news

The decline of the humanities is worrisome, but there are two big silver linings.First, if people are choosing humanities out of a fear of not getting a good job, that’s not great. But, the vast majority of the pre-2010 decline in humanities enrollment was due to women moving out of the humanities, which may re flect more accepting workplace cultures, es pecially among STEM occupations.And, al though humanities majors are declining as a share of overall degrees, the absolute num ber of humanities degree in the country is up since the 1970s because more Americans are attending college. Another way of think ing about this is that humanities majors as a share of the overall population is relative ly stable.

4. A lot of this is economics

Former Harvard President Drew G. Faust said in 2014, “[The decline in humanities] re flects, I believe, fundamentally the pressure that students are feeling and being subject to about finding jobs and making sure their fi nancial investment in education is going to pay off.” The research to date seems to agree with Faust. Expected salaries are an import ant determinant of major choice, and busi ness and social science majors do, on av erage, earn more than their humanities counterparts. This is probably why there was such a sharp decline in humanities ma jors after the 2008 recession. There’s not

great data on why Harvard students choose some concentrations over others, but Har vard students who do concentrate in the hu manities are less likely than other students to cite ‘usefulness for a career’ or ‘parental pressure’ as a factor in their concentration choice. There’s one caveat, though. Students are often misinformed about how much each major makes (so you may want to check the numbers on yours).

5. But it’s not all economics

Sometimes people overstate how much salary considerations determine major choice. There are a ton of things that re searchers have found play an important part in students’ major choice besides expect ed earnings: course enjoyment, parents’ ap proval, and especially marriage prospects.

A study of Northwestern sophomores, for example, found that course enjoyment and parental approval were more import ant than salary outcomes in students’ major choice. Given that Harvard English gradu ates report making a median of $100,000 ten years after graduation, I’d expect that these non-wage factors are especially important at elite universities like Northwestern and Har vard. This high salary may also be one reason why the decline of the humanities is much less pronounced at our school.

6. What you should take away from all this

There is no singular crisis in the humanities. There are multiple: One in the 1970s and one now; one at elite schools and a more severe decline nationally. There are many overlap ping reasons for this decline, reflecting both economic conditions and changing prefer ences of undergraduates.It is only by holding all of these perspectives at once that we can understand why the humanities are declin ing and ever hope to reverse this trend.

—Aden Barton ’24, an Editorial editor, is an Economics concentrator in Eliot House. His column “Harvard in Numbers” appears on alternate Mondays.

Fire Them All; God Will Know His Own

BY BROOKS B. ANDERSON

At the beginning of the school year — what seems like eons ago — I took a trip to the eighth floor of the Smith Campus Center searching for in formation about parking permits and inadvertently walked into an administrative wasteland.

Doors upon doors of largely empty offices spanned the cor ridor, each emblazoned with a name cobbled together from ac ademic-professional buzzwords like “coordinator” and “vice pro vost.” A few doors vaguely re minded me of emails I had re ceived (and promptly ignored) from various Harvard officials or names thrown around in the search for University President Lawrence S. Bacow’s successor, but most I had never heard of.

As I made my way to the Park ing Office, I had to ask myself: Where did all these people come from? And do we really need them here?

Concern over administra tive bloat has become more sa lient in recent years as universi ties, especially elite institutions such as those in the Ivy League, have come under political scru tiny. Rising stars on the right wing have criticized universities as bastions of liberal indoctri nation, growing suspicious over the size of endowments like Har vard’s and how exactly such mon ey is spent.

After President Joe Biden an nounced his student loan forgive ness plan, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis railed against universi ties’ “bloated administrative bud gets” and tendency to use high tuition to “expand […] the DEI of fice.” In response to Harvard ad vocating against taxes on its en dowment, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley tweeted that “Univer sities have become woke hedge funds with students’ and parents’ money.”

It is no secret that Harvard and its peers have amassed fortunes that are largely kept safe from the clutches of the Internal Reve nue Service — apart from the 1.4 percent excise tax created under President Donald Trump, against which Harvard continues to lob by fiercely.

Amidst rhetoric among Har vard students calling for high er taxes on large corporations and the wealthiest Americans, it seems strange that Harvard’s $53.2 billion, Yale’s $42.3 billion, and Princeton’s $37.7 billion are left off the hit list. Ostensibly, uni versities have this mostly tax-free status because they are charitable institutions serving education al missions, an exemption which dates to one of the first American income tax laws passed in 1894. This status makes sense. Harvard is one of the world’s preeminent universities; surely it has used its billions of dollars of accumulat ed wealth to primarily invest in its educational program, build ing an unparalleled roster of top professors, expanding offerings to students, and reducing class sizes. Right?

free money intended for academ ic work on initiatives, projects, and committees that provide scant value to anyone’s educa tional experience.

For example, last December, all Faculty of Arts and Sciences affiliates received an email from Dean Claudine Gay announcing the final report of the FAS Task Force on Visual Culture and Sig nage, a task force itself created by recommendation of the Pres idential Task Force on Inclusion and Belonging. This task force was composed of 24 members: six students, nine faculty mem bers, and nine administrators.

The task force produced a 26page report divided into seven sections, based upon a survey, fo cus groups, and 15 separate meet ings with over 500 people total.

The report dedicated seven pages to its recommendations, which ranged from “Clarify institution al authority over FAS visual cul ture and signage” to “Create a dy namic program of public art in the FAS.”

In response to these rec ommendations, Dean Gay an nounced the creation of a new administrative post, the “FAS campus curator,” and a new com mittee, the “FAS Standing Com mittee on Visual Culture and Sig nage.”

“

Concern over administrative bloat has become more salient in recent years as universities, especially elite institutions such as those in the Ivy League, have come under political scrutiny.

Regardless of your stance on the goal of fostering a more inclu sive visual culture, the procedur al absurdity is clear. A presiden tial task force led to the creation of an FAS task force which, after expending significant time, ef fort, and resources, led to the cre ation of a single administrative job and a committee with almost the exact name as the second task force. I challenge anyone oth er than the task force members themselves to identify the value created for a single Harvard stu dent’s educational experience. Such a ridiculous process may seem relatively harmless, but the aggregation of these frivolous, bureaucratic time-and-moneywasters may have made college as outrageously expensive as it is. In 1986, Harvard’s tuition was $10,266 ($27,914 adjusted for in flation). Today, Harvard’s tuition is $52,659, representing an 89 percent increase in real cost.

ADEN BARTON — FLOURISH CHART

Wrong. Harvard has instead filled its halls with administra tors. Across the University, for ev ery academic employee there are approximately 1.45 administra tors. When only considering fac ulty, this ratio jumps to 3.09. Har vard employs 7,024 total full-time administrators, only slightly few er than the undergraduate popu lation. What do they all do?

Harvard employs 7,024 total full-time administrators, only slightly fewer than the undergraduate population.

Most administrators have a le gitimate function. I will happily concede that the University does need administration to operate effectively. No professors want to handle Title IX compliance or send institution-wide emails about Covid-19 protocols. Yet of the 7,000-strong horde, it seems that many members’ primary purpose is to squander away tax-

The Harvard education is cer tainly not 89 percent better than it was 36 short years ago, nor is it 89 percent more difficult to pro vide. Rather, the increased cost seems to lie within the adminis tration and its tendency to solve problems by hiring even more administrators. In a 25-year time span within the same window, American colleges added over 500,000 administrators at a hir ing rate double that for faculty.

I propose that we cut the bloat. Knock on every office door and fire anyone who does not provide significant utility to the institu tion. However — recognizing the impossibility of convincing the Leviathan to purge itself from its eighth-floor lair — we may need legislative solutions as well, such as tying tax-free status and grants to responsible spending or out right raising the endowment tax. I do not know what specific bill will actually slay the bureaucratic beast. Nevertheless, I am hopeful that growing scrutiny on Ameri can higher education will eventu ally deliver our universities from the administration’s clutches and into the worthy hands of those to whom the institutions rightful ly belong: students and teachers.

—Brooks B. Anderson ’25, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a Government concentrator in Pforzheimer House.

Students, Locals Welcome Taiyaki NYC

vard’s dining hall food.

“Maybe one day we should have Taiyaki for community din ner,” Nguy said.

“I don’t know if they do ca tering, but that would be pretty cool,” Trinh added.

BY MILES J. HERSZENHORN CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Days before soft serve ice cream store Taiyaki NYC celebrates the grand opening of its Harvard loca tion, the newest addition to the Square has already lured in stu dents and local residents.

Taiyaki NYC, which sells its soft serve ice cream — known as creemees in parts of New En gland — in instagrammable fishshaped waffle cones, found fame on social media for its unique desserts. The Harvard Square store is The Dough Club’s first location in the state, but the ice cream chain’s second store in Massachusetts.

The chain first welcomed customers in Harvard Square on Nov. 21 at its “unannounced opening,” according to store employee Winnie Tan. The ice cream store opened alongside The Dough Club, its sibling Jap anese mochi doughnut store, at

the former location of the cloth ing store Mint Julep on 6 Church St. The stores will host their grand opening on Friday.

Arleen K. Saini ’25 said Taiya ki NYC’s waffle cones are “really unique” and “very cute.”

“I could see a lot of people tak ing photos with it,” Saini said.

Cecilia Hermawan, a local resident who visited the new shop on Sunday with her niece, nephew, and seven-year-old daughter, said she had visited the

Five Harvard Affiliates to Join Healey’s Transition Team

BY YUSUF S. MIAN CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Massachusetts Governor-Elect Maura T. Healey ’92 has tapped five Harvard affiliates to serve on her gubernatorial transition team, which she rolled out Mon day.

The transition team, which will be led by Lieutenant Gov ernor-Elect Kimberly Driscoll, consists of six policy commit tees addressing issues including transportation, housing, climate, and the economy.

Three Harvard faculty mem bers serve on the committees, in cluding Healey’s former Demo cratic primary rival, University professor Danielle S. Allen.

Healey, the current state at torney general, handily defeat ed her Republican opponent ear lier this month, becoming the first woman elected to the state’s highest office and the first open ly lesbian governor in American history. Winning gubernatori al candidates typically stand up transition teams prior to their in auguration that are tasked with identifying political appointees and preparing a policy agenda.

Harvard Kennedy School lec turer Thomas P. Glynn III will serve as co-chair of the commit

tee tasked with working on pub lic transportation and infrastruc ture. Glynn previously served as CEO of the Massachusetts Port Authority and U.S. deputy secre tary of Labor. He also previous ly led the Harvard Allston Land Company. State Senator Eric P. Lesser ’07, who lost the Demo

“community health resources,” such as mental health and sub stance abuse services.

Allen, who leads Harvard’s Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics, will serve on the commit tee working on economic issues. She ran against Healey in the Democratic gubernatorial pri mary but dropped out of the race in February. Benjamin B. Down ing, who also ran against Healey in the primary, sits on the climate committee. Gina McCarthy, a for mer climate adviser to President Joe Biden who previously led a climate initiative at the Harvard School of Public Health, will cochair the climate committee.

Jerry Rubin, a visiting fellow at the Kennedy School, is also serving on the committee work ing on the economy.

chain’s Boston Seaport location several times and was excited to see it open in Harvard Square. Hermawan’s daughter, Natalia, jumped in to offer her praise of Taiyaki NYC’s ice cream.

“I like how they also decorate

it, and how it looks on the out side, and how it tastes on the in side,” she said.

Minh Trinh ’15, who visited Taiyaki NYC on Sunday with Nga H. Nguy ’15-’16, said the ice cream is “definitely better” than Har

Trinh said he does not be lieve the prices of Taiyaki NYC’s ice creams, which range from roughly $7 to $9, will deter Har vard students from frequenting the ice cream shop.

“I’m sure there are tons of more expensive stuff that peo ple here at Harvard have been spending money on,” he said.

Nguy agreed.

“This is probably the same price as a large bubble tea, and I’ve been seeing the bubble tea places pretty full of students,” she said. “So I think they will still come here.”

Saini, who braved the rain to treat herself to ice cream on Sun day, said she is a “dessert person every season.”

“As exam season approaches, it’s a really nice pick-me-up to get ice cream,” Saini said. “Regard less of snow or rain.”

“It’s also a great way to pro crastinate,” Saini added.

City Leaders Talk Homelessness, Rise in Crime in Central Square

cratic primary for lieutenant gov ernor, also sits on the transporta tion committee.

Harvard Medical School pro fessor Liza I. Iezzoni, a health pol icy expert who researches health disparities and disability, was tapped to serve on the affordable housing committee. HMS Pedi atrics professor Elsie Taveras will sit on a committee looking at

Democrats hold a superma jority in both chambers of the state legislature, giving Healey the opportunity to push forward an ambitious policy agenda.

Driscoll said in a statement Monday the committees will “play a critical role in the import ant work we are doing to ensure that our administration is ready to begin moving Massachusetts forward on day one.”

BY ELIAS J. SCHISGALL CRIMSON STAFF WRITER yusuf.mian@thecrimson.com

Cambridge officials on Tuesday discussed the city’s efforts to ad dress homelessness in Central Square, where overdoses and some types of crime have risen over the last four years.

Reports of overdoses, street robberies, and assaults in Cen tral Square have all risen since 2018, according to a presenta tion given by city staff during a Tuesday afternoon meeting of the City Council’s Human Ser vices and Veterans Committee.

During a public comment pe riod in the meeting, some Cen tral Square residents said they feared leaving their homes and described having to dispose of used needles and human waste left on their property.

Cambridge City Manager YiAn Huang ’05 said “troubling activity” in Central Square has increased, though he said he personally feels safe in the area.

“We are seeing validation of some of what folks are feeling and expressing,” Huang said. “There is a sense in both the data and the emotion that we’re feel ing that something is a little bit different.”

In the meeting, Police Com

missioner Christine A. Elow said the Cambridge Police Depart ment has increased its presence by dispatching a patrol car with flashing blue lights to provide “visibility to make people feel safe” and “identify quality-of-life issues” in the area. Though the department also deploys under cover officers in Central Square, Elow said CPD’s first priority is to connect people to services, adding that arrests are one of its “last resorts.”

Chief Public Health Officer Derrick L. Neal described the Cambridge Public Health De partment’s efforts to “intervene and prevent” fentanyl overdos es, which include overdose pre vention training, distribution of fentanyl test strips and nalox one, and a pilot program with Harvard students to set up nal oxone vending machines.

Assistant City Manager Ellen Semonoff highlighted the cur rent renovation of an affordable housing development at 116 Nor folk St., which will add 25 sin gle room occupancy units to the building for “existing residents and individuals transitioning out of homelessness,” according to the project’s website.

But this increase in hous ing may be offset by the upcom ing closure of two Cambridge

homeless shelters: the Salvation Army’s emergency shelter, clos ing by April, and a shelter at the Spaulding Hospital, closing by 2024. With the closures, Cam bridge’s total shelter capacity could drop from 323 beds to 230 beds by 2024.

City Councilor Dennis J. Car lone, who attended the meeting, said Cambridge should leverage its wealth to create affordable housing and human services centers of its own, rather than relying on third parties.

In an interview, City Coun cilor Marc C. McGovern, who chairs the Human Services and Veterans Committee, said many who engage in unsafe or illegal behavior are not themselves un housed.

On Tuesday morning in City Hall, McGovern unveiled the Unhoused Neighbors Project, a series of posters highlighting the stories and lives of unhoused Cambridge residents.

“Because they fell into a situ ation, whether it was by choice or by circumstance, where they don’t have a roof over their head, doesn’t mean we should get to treat them like shit,” McGovern said. “Being homeless is not a crime.”

THE ICE CREAM STORE sells soft-serve ice cream in instragrammable fishshaped waffle cones.

miles.herszenhorn@thecrimson.com

Taiyaki NYC opened its second Massachusetts location on Church St. in Harvard Square. CORY K. GORCZYCKI — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

elias.schisgall@thecrimson.com

[Policy committees] will play a critical role in the important work we are doing to ensure that our administration is ready to begin moving Masssachusetts forward on day one. Graze the latest headlines.

“

Kalos K. Chu

’22-’23, a for mer Crimson Arts Chair, found his ar tistic spark at a young age:

First as a musician, picking up the violin from an exploratory music program, and later delv ing into the world of conducting.

“I really enjoyed conducting as a method of musical collaboration. It was the perfect way to channel and be the hub of all of this mu sic,” said Chu, reflecting on the events that led to the manifold music director positions that he has since held at Harvard. His seasoned record includes shows as recent as ¡TEATRO!’s fall 2022

“In the Heights” production and stretches all the way back to the 2019 First-Year Musical, “Cruis ing Altitude,” which he music di rected, and which catapulted his entry into arts communities at Harvard and forged connections that would sustain his next four years of artmaking.

The 2019 First-Year Musical and seeing students his age grap ple with the abstract concept of creating an original musical — and realizing that these students were able to create something genuinely good — piqued his in terest, leading him down a path filled with much more theater than his high school self could have ever imagined.

The people who make good art are the people who do it because it’s the only thing that they know how to do.

Today, however, he sees writ ing as his primary art form. Car rying with him a love of writing and a deliberateness inspired by a high school English teacher, Chu fostered his artistic identity with creative writing classes starting in his first year at Harvard and beyond. Writing the 2022 Hasty Pudding show allowed him to begin to see his creative ideas come to fruition, a process that he would become experienced in over the coming years.

A turning point in his artistic career came during the Covid-19 pandemic. Before that, he en visioned himself writing longform creative nonfiction for The New Yorker, but the turmoil in his personal and interpersonal life during the Covid-19 pandem ic — along with the flexibility and down time offered by quarantine — gave him the freedom to pur

Kalos K. Chu on Creative Development and Building a Musical from the Ground Up

— which ultimately evolved into a queer story of protagonists strug gling to come out to their par ents — fascinated him, and start ed taking shape in his junior year of college. From there, it became an iterative process of fleshing out characters, storylines, and watching the concept grow into an ensemble cast, keeping what worked and scrapping what did not.

mer

sue previously vague notions of working in screenwriting and en tertainment. He pursued intern ships in creative development, working to develop ideas for movies and TV shows at Dream Works, Lucasfilm, and Nickel odeon, which allowed him to im

prove his understanding of story and nurture that “soft skill,” as he calls it, which would prove valu able in his own creative process.

“I think over time, I sort of grew to understand what that means in terms of what a story is and how to break it down into

its parts and isolate the parts that are working and are not work ing,” Chu said.

Currently, Chu is working on an original project, “OUT,” set to debut in the spring of 2023. The initial idea — the “kernel” of the story — came from the sum

‘Getting Lost’ Review: New Translation Again Demonstrates Annie Ernaux’s Literary Prowess

BY CARMINE J. PASSARELLA CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Writer Annie Ernaux was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory.” Nowhere does that ring more true than in “Se perdre,” Ernaux’s 2001 French-language novel translated into English this year by Alison L. Strayer.

“Getting Lost” is a collection of Er naux’s journal entries from September 1988 to April 1990, artifacts of her intense and one-sided love affair with a mar ried Soviet diplomat. The diplomat, re ferred to as S, loudly dons Saint Laurent and Guy Laroche yet relies on Ernaux for packs of Marlboros; he is younger and ac tively avoids reciprocating her romantic affections.

The man himself is nothing spe cial. He leans unflinchingly into the ste reotypes of Cold War-era envoy and disavowed lover. Alongside Ernaux, es pecially — a woman who was already de cades into an established literary career at the start of their entanglement — he appears even more unremarkable. S’s at titude lays the groundwork for Ernaux’s book, as she incisively recounts the met aphorical chokehold that an ordinary, in attentive lover can have on their partner.

A major feeling that pervades the nov el is that of being reduced. Reduced to do cility and servitude; to the role of a sup

“

never come.

In this way, “Getting Lost” is the closest one can get to observing an author’s thoughts as they develop in real time. Ernaux’s selfawareness and shrewd writing make her the ideal subject for such an exercise

S was not the first man to provoke such behavior in Ernaux. She recalls sim ilarly enchanting men from her earli er years with wistful nostalgia, as well as her ex-husband — though with much less affection. These flashbacks come with a sense of dreadful anxiety: Ernaux ques tions why she is like this, and if she will ever stop. What is it about her, or about these men, that forces her into a support ing role in the story of her own life, even if only for a while?

It’s a fascinating question to observe a human being grappling with, made even more fascinating by the journal entry

format. These entries — meticulous re flections of the day’s events or attempts to gather Ernaux’s lovelorn thoughts — were not intended to be read by anyone else. Aside from necessary revisions like obscuring identities, these entries re main timeless testaments to Ernaux’s re ality at a given moment.

In this way, “Getting Lost” is the clos est one can get to observing an author’s thoughts as they develop in real time. Er naux’s self-awareness and shrewd writ ing make her the ideal subject for such an exercise: The reader can be assured that the feelings she conveys are wholly au thentic, and their nuances are unforgot ten, represented as best as possible by the words on the page.

The book is suitable for anyone in trigued by such an exercise, but will be more biting for those who can relate to Er naux’s position of unrequited lover. A ma jor triumph of the novel is that it shows the reader what it looks like to make space for the shameful and worrisome parts of oneself; those who have been in her position may see some of these parts of themselves reflected in the text.

“Getting Lost” might also strike a par ticular chord with women. She calls back often to her identity as a woman, ques tioning the extent to which it’s shaped her personality and caused her to become an obsessive romantic partner.

Whether or not this English-language translation captured the precise essence of Ernaux’s every sentiment is yet to be seen. But Strayer, Ernaux’s latest transla

more

Writing is Chu’s favorite way to interact with the world. “I wrote ‘OUT’ because I felt like it was a story that I needed to tell, that I needed to get off my chest and that was baking inside of me for three years, and I think, real ly, the people who make good art are the people who do it because it’s the only thing that they know how to do and the only way that they know how to communicate with the world,” Chu said. But as he said, that’s not the only pull: Creative development is also a fun, collaborative, and interac tive experience, especially in an imation, where his sights are set post-graduation. Wherever the road takes him, creative work and creative development are certainly in his future.

For others looking to write and put on an original show, Chu’s advice is simple: “just do it.”

“One of the things about Har vard is that I think a lot of times when you do something here you feel like you have to be the best at it or it’s not worth doing, and I think that is the worst idea ever if you are thinking about pursuing art, because there is no sort of stan dardized metric for what is good art,” he said. He recommends opening the document and just starting to type, because the per fect opportunity will never come. As he says, all the reason to write is that you have a story that needs to be told. “The journey of becom ing an artist is silencing those de mons within yourself that tell you you can’t do it,” he said.

Chu is adamant that the hard est part of doing arts at Harvard is not getting involved, but staying there. It’s easy to forsake person al interests in favor of what you pragmatically think you should be doing, despite the safety net and employability of a Harvard degree. But the best thing to do as an artist is to fight that urge, per severe in your interests, and to keep making art.

portive, slender mistress in his presence and, in his absence, of a wide-eyed girl wasting the day away waiting for a phone call that may

tor, works very hard to disentangle emo tionally and linguistically complex con structions at every turn, in addition to providing footnotes that helpfully con textualize Ernaux’s shorthand as well as the historical background of the time.

At the end of the day, Ernaux’s soul-bearing source text and Strayer’s ex pertise combine to produce a resound ing, gripping work of art that proves to be

than worth its weight in salt. What could have been nothing more than a per sonal diary detailing a secretive and ul timately inconsequential mid-life love affair has, by virtue of excellent storytell ing, become a representation of what it means to be human, in all of its embar rassing and reductive glory.

COURTESY OF SEVEN STORIES

after his first year at Harvard during a study abroad in Beijing, where his professor told his class about a popular dating app in China where you can hire people to pretend to be your significant other to take home to your fami ly during the holidays. This idea

Kalos K. Chu ‘22-23

Kalos K. Chu ‘22-23

I wrote ‘OUT’ because I felt like it was a story that I needed to tell, that I needed to get off my chest and that was baking inside me.

COURTESY OF RAMONA PARK

Artist Profile: Ava Jinying’s Introspective and Monstrous Songwriting

BY HANNAH E. GADWAY CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Ava Salzman ’23’s gui tar case sits propped open against the wall of Eliot House dorm.

Sitting upright is a Rodrigo classical acoustic guitar, suited with a pickup and a black strap with rainbow and white geometry. When Salzman plays here, her legs dangle off the side of her bed and the guitar rever berates around the small room, decorated with handmade open mic signs. Her fingers, most of them hugged by metal rings, pick the strings, or move up and down the fretboard. The harmonics are like bells, her voice emotional and stately.

Salzman, who also goes by the name Ava Jinying in her work as an artist, says her first album, not yet named, will most likely be re leased in the spring. It deals with monstrosity, turning the abstract and intangible into something with a form. In her song “Snake skin,” a song about the struggles of transitioning into adulthood, she equates herself to a metal snake. She sings about the cycles of growth, and feeling trapped in side herself, trying to figure out how to change.

This song is not yet record ed. For now, she plays “Snake skin” and other originals around Harvard’s campus: At the Har vard Signet Society for open mics she hosts with friends, outside at markets, or at Eliot House’s Tiny Desk series. She currently has two songs released on Spotify. One of them, “Guai,” will be a part of this new album.

Taking something scary because it’s intangible and abstract and giving a form to it — by doing that, you somehow make it less scary.

Ava Salzman ‘23

Salzman is comfortable with the guitar. She started playing when she was six after watching a video of Johnny Cash playing “Long Black Veil.” She liked Cash’s charisma and his powerful pres ence, and decided she wanted to be just like him.

Her teacher was a blues guy, according to Salzman. He pre ferred to play by ear rather than just reading music. Lessons start ed with learning songs she want ed to play, like “I love Rock ‘n’ Roll” by Joan Jett, and of course, “Long Black Veil.” But that changed as she got older.

She describes a shift in her ability when she was around 12. Her uncle introduced her to gui tar players known for their com plicated and stirring guitar so los, legends like Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin.

“Oh my gosh, I have to learn how to play this thing,” she re members thinking.

In middle school, she played in a punk band, and started writing songs when she was 13, playing open mics at farmers markets.

“Then, it was just pure self ex pression and it was really fun,” she said. “I think I kind of took it for granted for a while in that I was just doing it constantly, but I didn’t realize how much of a life force it really was until it was one of the only things I had.”

Sometimes, she played the open mics with her dad, a cel list, and her younger sister on vo cals; they arranged covers togeth er. With her mom, Salzman went to concerts and smaller shows in her hometown of Los Angeles throughout high school.

“She didn’t play music her self,” Salzman said about her mom. “But she was so passionate about creating spaces for music.”

Salzman remembers having music nights at their house in Los Angeles, when 30 or 40 of their family friends would come over, each with their own instrument, and play music. They flowed be tween the food room with tables full of chicken and noodles, bok choy, dumplings, and mu shu pork from the Green Dragon — an L.A. favorite — and the music room where people sat in the liv ing room on sofas, or at the step of the fireplace. Performances ranged from a young boy practic ing his trumpet routine, to peo ple getting back into music af ter a long break, to professional singer-songwriters trying out new songs. Nearing the end of the night, they would all join in, sing ing or playing, for a few songs. Sometimes it was Ah-ha’s “Take On Me,” or “Let Down” by Radio head, or a campy version of the Beatles “Let it Be.”

During this time of her life, Salzman played music every day. After a long day at school, she did her homework, ate dinner, and used the rest of the evening to play the guitar, to decompress and process.

After getting to Harvard how ever, that daily dedication wasn’t as much of a priority in the fluster of being a first year. She thought she wanted to study evolution ary biology. She may not have re alized differently if the Covid-19 pandemic didn’t send her home nearing the end of her freshman year.

“Up until that point, I think I was a person who really thrived and felt comfortable when I was

in environments that I knew,” she said.

But all that went away.

“I was really faced with the concept that when everything else goes to waste, who really, who, who am I?” Salzman said.

Sometime near Thanksgiving, she was sitting at the keyboard in the too small apartment she lived in with six friends and a dog, all doing online school, feeling un stable, aimless, and helpless. The only thing she felt she could do to make sense of it all was write a song.

She picked up the guitar again.

In September of this year, Salzman performed some of her original songs for her fel low house residents in the Eliot library. She wore a white shirt, white jeans, black boots and a chunky necklace as past Harvard presidents looked out at her from their framed homes on the wall.

For two of her three songs, she performed on her own, with her acoustic guitar hanging from a strap around her shoulders. In these songs, she began with a

laboration. The wall of her dorm’s hallway features a collage of her detailed graphite drawings of rhi nos and giraffes, and her room mates’ creative creatures with spirally limbs. She enjoys her role as a proctor for the First-year Art program (or FAP) because she gets to witness the beginnings of musical collaborations.

“I did get to drift around and see what friendships people were making over music,” the sing er said. “It was such a beauti ful thing to see. I love being able to witness people bringing their talents together in different con texts and making something new for people to see.”

In the same way she sees col laboration with other artists ele vating a piece of songwriting, she takes special interest in merging her own visual arts with her song writing as well. For example, the songs she is working on for her al bum all relate to monstrosity in some way.

“Whenever I was faced with emotions, or situations that felt overwhelming to me and I

FILM

This is the general sentiment that prevails in the early scenes of Lila Neugebauer’s

“Causeway.” Amidst a sparse score and an unadorned bedroom setting, Lawrence’s character Lynsey does lots of staring and struggles to perform basic tasks without the help of an older caretaker. It eventually becomes clear that Lynsey is suffering from PTSD as a result of a vaguely described accident during military service in Afghanistan. While this is cer tainly a jarring start, what follows is an endearing vignette of hu man resilience and companionship. But while “Causeway”’s strong lead performances do much to make this story compelling, its heavy-handed dose of melodrama acts as a conspicuous obstacle to its emotional resonance.

In one of her most ambitious and dramatic roles to date, Jennifer Lawrence is predictably outstanding. As its title suggests, “Cause way” tells the story of a transitory period in one person’s life, a par ticularly turbulent crossing rife with reflection and reconnection. In its efforts to recount Lynsey’s return to normalcy, the film artfully captures the flurry of mixed emotions that may entail such an expe rience while occasionally administering too great a dose of dramat ic embellishment. But even when all else fails (which is rare), there is always Jennifer Lawrence to save the day.

MUSIC

classical intro, and used the me lodic notes to highlight her vo cals. She’s especially mastered the bridges of her songs, knowing how to build suspense and emo tion through change in both her lyrics and her guitar’s rhythm.

She wondered if people were going to get her lyrics, under stand the words she put so much time into. After the show, people told her about the journey her songs took them on, and that they felt those tumultuous feelings she sings about.

They got it.

Salzman played with a cellist on “Snakeskin.” Collaborating on her music is something that she has no problem with. She finds in her experience so far that al lowing other people’s musical tal ent into her process of creating a song elevates it beyond a point that she could get to by herself.

When she’s looking to collabo rate, she writes the music on her own and the arrangements for the other instruments, then asks the people she’s asked to work with her to use the arrangement to do whatever they’d like.

During one performance, she played her song “Feel,” accom panied by a friend on the drums. The beat of the song is funky and hard hitting, and shifts slight ly during the solo. The drummer made a bigger shift though, into a Bossa Nova beat.

“I would’ve never thought of that,” she said. “Now, I like it 10 times better than I previously did.”

She finds satisfaction in col

couldn’t confront them directly I think that my first impulse was al ways to draw monsters,” she said. “Monsters were on my way grow ing up, taking something scary because it’s intangible and ab stract and giving a form to it — by doing that, you somehow make it less scary.”

She sees this sort of coping mechanism as a way of taking care of her emotional state. She still creates monsters through art, and has started writing songs about them.

In “Guai,” Salzman samples an interview from a Vietnam ese Buddhist Monk talking about Hungry Ghosts, which represent the spirits of people who have no body left alive to remember them. She came across this throughout her childhood, celebrating Chi nese traditions where families leave out food for their ancestors.

“Once you have been forgot ten, then if you have nobody left to feed you, then you become hun gry and you become sort of mon strous,” she said. “And I think one thing that I’ve been think ing about a lot in my art is how to reconcile with painful pasts and things that we can’t undo and people that we have erased.”

She creates the art that serves as the covers for her published pieces, and plans on using anima tions to create videos to go along with them too.

“I’m realizing now, I think that [music] is going to take a much more important role than I had previously thought in my life,” she said. “I just, I love it. Yeah. I love it more than anything else.”

“It’s a form of art that’s all-encompassing,” she explained in a phone interview with staff writer Harper R. Oreck, describing how the shows’ reality-bending narratives “maybe don’t make a lot of ga lactical sense but hit the intuition chord, and that deep feeling – that sort of dreamlike place within that you can’t really make sense of.

In her own work, Jar is a sonic wanderer of that same “dream like place,” reconstructing its spectral edges in her immersive, genre-defying soundscapes. Since she released her debut EP “Digi tal Meadow” in 2021, Jar has garnered critical acclaim for the elec tric, emotive energy that underpins her work, sometimes reminis cent of Fiona Apple, Angel Olsen, or Remi Wolf but in a lane entirely her own.

As she continues her tour of the U.S., Jar looks forward to playing shows in new cities. And if Jar’s shows are anywhere near as vibrant and distinctive as her catalog (much less her favorite circus perfor mances), she’s sure to find many new fans who will eagerly await the next phase of her artistic evolution.

TELEVISION

Jenna Ortega’s Wednesday is a cello-playing,

sword-fighting, monster-hunting heroine who lives up to the fan-fa vorite character’s 84-year legacy. Joined by Catherine Zeta-Jones and Luis Guzmán as Morticia and Gomez Addams, Wednesday’s wacky yet sincere parents, Ortega delivers a convincing perfor mance chock-full of teenage angst and macabre spunk.

The series begins after Wednesday’s latest high school expul sion as she is shipped off to Nevermore Academy, the same magical boarding school for “outcasts” that her parents attended.

With hints of a second season lurking throughout the final scenes, Burton’s newest work will certainly thrill established fans. And for those who have yet to pay a call on the strange and deranged Addams Family, “Wednesday” is the perfect series to make their ac quaintance.

COURTESY OF AVA SALZMAN

COURTESY OF AVA JINYING

COURTESY OF AVA SALZMAN

All is not well with Jennifer Lawrence, writes Crimson Staff writ er Brady M. Connolly.

new Apple TV+ film

APPLE TV+ — COURTESY IMAGE

Lately, Dora Jar has had the circus on her mind. As she brought her propulsive, haunting indie-pop sound to audiences around the country on her first headlining tour this fall, Jar drew inspira tion from the surreal beauty of Cirque du Soleil shows, with their synthesis of wild visuals, music, athleticism, and dance.

Creepy, kooky, mysterious, and spooky, Tim Burton’s eight-epi sode Netflix series “Wednesday” revels in the beloved weirdness of the Addams family’s only daughter. Released on Wednesday, Nov. 23, each wild and unpredictable moment is steeped in Burton’s signature style. Yet, the series’ true success lies with the jaunty, off beat coming-of-age story that rises from the chaos, writes contribt ing writer Katy E. Nairn.

novel-writing,

VLAD CIOPLEA/NETFLIX — COURTESY IMAGE

ERICA SNYDER— COURTESY IMAGE

FIFTEEN QUESTIONS

Peter Der Manuelian ’81 is the Barabara Bell Pro fessor of Egyptology and teaches in both the Anthropology department and the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. He serves as the director of the Har vard Museum of the Ancient Near East.

This interview has been edit ed for length and clarity.

FM: How do you think studying the ancient past has value today?

PDM: So many of the trends that we see now, you can almost form a direct line into earlier cultures — as empires rise and fall, as peo ple are treated well or mistreat ed. I think there’s an awful lot to be learned. In fact, just in most re cent history, when I see some of the disturbing trends in our soci ety today, and I think even 30, 50, 100 years ago, the same problems were playing out. And it boggles my mind that people haven’t tak en a lesson from that. So extrap olate that all the way back to, say, the ancient Near East, and you see how empires have risen and fallen and different groups have dominated other groups in the past. Some states have come to gether and worked together and achieved great things, and others have disappeared through forces of climate change or invasion or economic disintegration or topheavy economic institutions.

FM: As an Egyptologist, how do you feel about representa tions of Egypt in popular Amer ican culture? I’m thinking “Indi ana Jones,” “Tomb Raider,” “The Mummy.”

PDM: It’s always important to distinguish between Egyptolo gy, which is the academic study of ancient Egyptian civilization, and Egyptomania, which is the popu lar reception of ancient Egypt. They’re often two very different things. I find them both fascinat ing, and there can be academic study of both or just enjoyment of both. I’m not such a stickler going into a movie like “Indiana Jones” or “The Mummy” where I’m pointing out every single flaw or chronological anomaly or something like that. But there are some issues that get sensitive, especially now, about how differ ent ethnic groups are portrayed. We could always do a better job in Hollywood of reimagining some of these ancient cultures.

FM: What do you think is the big gest misconception that people who don’t study Egypt have about such an ancient society?

PDM: I’d say one — which is kind of a nasty one, when you think about it — is that aliens must have built the pyramids. That really comes across as kind of a racist comment, because what you’re saying is people from that part of the world could not have been so advanced or skilled to ob tain such a monumental achieve ment. So that’s something worth debunking. There are lots of ru mors out there in popular cul ture that aren’t true, such as Na poleon’s men shot the nose off the Sphinx as target practice.

Hieroglyphs is really a lan guage. People will look at these pictures, and because they recog nize them as images, part of your brain has trouble thinking that these are letters and it’s a real grammar. But it is. There’s nouns and adjectives and participles all buried within those hieroglyph ic signs — masculine and fem inine and things like that. It’s a

Q&A:

PETER DER MANUELIAN ON ANCIENT EGYPT, 3D TECHNOLOGY, AND INDIANA JONES

BY TESS C. KELLEY CRIMSON MAGAZINE ASSOCIATE EDITOR

real grammar and so fascinating to study and to translate.

FM: One of your big interests is com bining archeology with 3D visual ization. How did you identify a need for that sort of combination?

PDM: Well, that goes back to the early ’80s, when I saw my first Mac computer, and I instantly thought, there’s going to be hieroglyphs on the screen one day. There was a little app called MacPaint that let you do bitmap pixel drawings, and things took off from there. I look at ancient Egypt as such an iconographic and visual culture that the application of computer graphics and visual inter faces and graphical approaches just made perfect sense to me — combin ing the old and the new. I think it can be a tremendous teaching tool now, and the digital humanities can en hance reconstructions of archaeo logical sites that can make teaching more informative, more education al, and hopefully more fun as well. So there’s almost no limit to the dif ferent types of technology you can

apply to even an ancient civilization.

FM: How much creative liberty do you feel like you can take without compromising archaeological ac curacy?

PDM: Great question. There are different forms of scholarly pub lication and educational informa tion. And a journal article is differ ent from, say, a reconstruction of a temple on a website. I think the most important thing is if you can flag it: what you know, what you don’t know. A good example of that is the three pyramids at Giza: for the Great Pyramid, the temple at the end of its causeway is buried and unknown underneath the modern town. So how do you reconstruct a temple that you can’t excavate, and you don’t know the foundations and all of that? Well, you look for contem porary temples from the Old King dom from the fourth dynasty or fifth dynasty and try to conjecture as best you can. So in our models, we’ve built that temple, but we have to ad mit that it’s pure speculation at this

point.

FM: Right now, a lot of your work fo cuses on the Giza necropolis. What are the research questions you’re currently interested in exploring?

PDM: Well, trying to understand Giza is always a fascination for me. And that’s not just how the pyra mids were built, for example, but really how the whole necropolis — the cemetery — developed, because you can find on the decorated tomb walls of these tombs of the elites ev ery frozen moment there is of an cient Egyptian civilization. If you want to know about gender, you can see males and females represent ed on the walls. If you want to know about ritual, if you want to study hi eroglyphic grammar, craftsman ship scenes, agriculture, economy, costume, it’s all there.

Another is the interplay of hi eroglyphs, the Egyptian language, with monuments and how things are laid out. This comes from an in terest I have in graphic design. For many years, I’ve designed and pro

duced academic publications as well and got tremendous plea sure out of the layout process and the sizing of the images and where to put things and the use of typography. So I’ve always wondered about the ancient art ists and how they make their de cisions. Where to end this line of hieroglyphs and begin the next line? Do I break the word or do I not? In Egyptian, you can spell the same word many different ways with a lot of extra signs, so when you’re stuck, and you don’t have enough space, you can ab breviate your spellings, and when you need more space, you can add a lot of filler material as well. So who makes those deci sions? We only see the finished product, where everything looks symmetrical and beautifully laid out and obvious and easy. But a lot of thought has to go into that production process. And I’m in terested in sort of climbing into the ancient minds, to the extent that one can, and thinking about the design principles too.

FM: What would you say to muse um visitors who don’t really want to see a reproduction of an an cient artifact because it’s “not the real thing”?

PDM: With a judicious blend of old and new, you can tell some pretty rich stories. I’ll give an ex ample of that: we just acquired something that will go on view in a couple of weeks. It’s a repro duction throne of Tutankhamun. The original was founded in 1922 among the five or six thousand objects in his tomb. It’s in the Cai ro Museum. But in 1929, an Amer ican traveler commissioned from a very talented furniture mak er in Cairo two reproductions of this throne, not in gold this time but in teak wood with mother of pearl and ivory inlays. And it is spectacular. It’s an example of Egyptology and Egyptomania at the same time. It’s historical ly very important because it has the name of Tutankhamun on the inscriptions on it, and in various forms, which has to do with a big religious revolution at the time. So this is the kind of thing that, al though a reproduction, can open the window wide to all kinds of issues about understanding an cient Egypt, reception of ancient Egypt, and even some ancient his tory as well. We’re pretty excited about that piece.

FM: How do you think the re sponsibilities or the role of muse ums have changed in the past 50 or 60 years?

PDM: Some people look at mu seums as storehouses of knowl edge. Others might look at them as entertainment palaces. And maybe there’s a happy medium in the middle there. Museums are under tremendous pressure, right? They’re competing for en tertainment time and dollars: should I go to the Red Sox game, or should I go to the Museum of Fine Arts? Should I come to the HMANE, or should I go some where else? So those are very log ical and understandable pres sures. I think the key is to try to bring the education and the de light in these objects, to make things clear, to reinterpret them.

Anthropological collections are facing scrutiny: what should be repatriated to original groups and what shouldn’t? I think it’s tough to say it’s a black or white issue, and everything should go back or everything should stay put. I think it needs sensitive in vestigation, care, and listening on both sides. At our museum, we’re not facing most of those controversies because of the na ture of our material, but muse ums are working very hard to do a better job of that, to reach dif ferent and better audiences, to explain and interpret their mate rial better. And also to blend dif ferent types of objects and col lections and exciting new ways as well. In the old days, it was all chronological, and this culture goes over there and that culture goes over here. There’s some syn ergies to be created by mixing and matching, and I think that’s pretty exciting.

Minutes is the magazine of The Harvard Crimson. To read the full interview and other longform pieces, visit THECRIMSON.COM/

THE EGYPTOLOGIST sat down with Fifteen Minutes to discuss using modern technology to study an cient societies. “With a judicious blend of old and new, you can tell some pretty rich stories,” he says.

Fifteen

COURTESY OF PETER DER MANUELIAN (PHOTO CREDIT: LAURIE THOMAS)

IN PHOTOS

The Prince and Princess of Wales visit Boston & Harvard

The Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood — a dedicated unit within the princess and prince’s philanthropic organization — promotes and commissions research to address challenges faced by children under the age of five. The Centre also leads campaigns to raise awareness about the important role early years play in shaping a child’s future.

GRACE ROSE BIDA — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

The Harvard Center on the Developing Child works in collaboration with The Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood, which the princess estab lished in 2021 to drive awareness and provide support to underserved children around the globe. GRACE ROSE BIDA — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

The Earthshot Prize, founded by Prince William and The Royal Foundation in 2020, was in spired by the 1961 Moonshot initiative, which worked to send an American to the Moon and back within a decade. Earthshot similarly aims to spark and incentivize urgent optimism, innovation, and action to help repair the planet within a decade. Through Earthshot, Prince William hopes to find, support, and scale the impact of a new generation of innovative envi ronmental entrepreneurs.

GRACE ROSE BIDA — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

HARVARD

This week’s trip to Boston marks the first time The prince and princess of Wales have traveled to the United States since their visit to New York City in 2014. The couple came to Boston for the prince’s second annual Earthshot Prize Ceremony.

GRACE ROSE BIDA — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

The princess has focused her work on ensuring positive physical, emotional and cognitive development of children around the globe. As part of the trip, the prince and princess will visit the Harvard University Center on the Developing Child, which aims to drive science-based innovation to aid children facing adversity. The Center works with policy, research, and philanthropy leaders to improve children’s learning capacity, health, and social mobility. GRACE ROSE BIDA — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

On Thursday, the prince and princess of Wales toured Piers Park in East Boston with Mayor Michelle Wu and Rev. Mariama White-Hammond, the city’s chief of environment, energy, and open space. GRACE ROSE BIDA — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

At Piers Park, the royals had a first-hand look at the climate challenges facing Boston Harbor. Massachusetts recently broke ground on Piers Park II, which will establish more greenspace along the East Boston waterfront with key resiliency features to help protect the area from flooding and rising sea leves. GRACE ROSE BIDA — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Harvard Tops New Hampshire in 1-0 Win

STREAK-BUSTERS.

After an early-season, three-game losing streak dropped it to just 2-72, Harvard picked up a much-needed win last weekend against UNH.

BY CHRISTOPHER D. WRIGHT CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

The

Har vard (3-7-2, 2-42 ECAC) and the University of New Hamp shire (5-13-0, 4-10-0 WHEA) fea tured two teams hoping to cor rect course after a subpar start to the season. Entering the game, both teams had lost their previ ous three contests. A second-pe riod short-handed goal was the difference as the Crimson scored a much-needed 1-0 win over the Wildcats.

“It was a gritty win,” Coach Stone said. “We needed to bounce back after a tough couple of games.”

As teddy bears lined the stands for the second annual teddy bear toss, the play on the ice was any thing but soft as both squads combined for five penalties in the first period. The first of these five came eight minutes into the game. Harvard went on the pow er play following a roughing call against UNH forward Shea Verri er. Despite generating some qual ity chances, the Crimson could not find an early score.

Two minutes later, Har vard got another chance to play with an advantage as UNH for ward Gabby Jones was called for cross-checking following a hit on first-year forward Gwyn Lapp. The Wildcats’ defense stood firm as goalie Nicky Harnett made sev eral saves to keep the Crimson off the scoreboard. Seconds lat er, it was UNH’s turn to go on the power play as sophomore for ward Paige Lester headed to the box for an interference penal ty. The Wildcats could not find a goal either, as Harvard killed off the power play with a mixture of blocked shots and saves.

The Crimson went 0-3 on power plays in the first period after it was unable to convert on the UNH slashing penalty around

the 17-minute mark. After be ing granted a power play follow ing an elbowing call on junior forward Shannon Hollands, the Wildcats generated their best chance in the first frame. With 30 seconds left, forward Brianna Brooks slid a perfect pass across the goalie to the back post. Unfor tunately for UNH, the puck was cleared before forward Emily Pinto could connect.

“We addressed that in the locker room,” said Stone about the amount of Harvard penalties. “We have to continue to find that balance of playing hard-nosed hockey.”

The repair of two holes in the net of the Wildcats’ goal de layed the start of the second pe riod. It only took 33 seconds for the strength of the net to be tested as Lester scorched a shot into the net to give the Crimson a 1-0 lead.

After receiving an outlet pass from sophomore defender Mia Biotti, Lester fired a shot from outside the right faceoff dot that slipped between the goalie’s legs for the score. The goal matched her season total from last season

and built upon her surging soph omore season.

“She’s a very talented player; it is no surprise that she is getting better,” Stone said.

Following the Lester goal, UNH began to dominate posses sion of the puck. The Wildcats’ offense generated several qual ity chances, including one shot around the 10-minute mark that hit the pipe. Shortly after, the of fense was given another boost as Harvard was assessed a minor penalty for body checking. De spite only registering two shots in the second half of the period, the Crimson was mainly able to sur vive the offensive onslaught due to the stellar play of sophomore Alex Pellicci. Pellicci kept the Wildcats scoreless by stopping 15 shots, including everything from shovel to slapshots.

Once again, Harvard was called for a penalty to end the pe riod. Pellicci was given a minor for pushing UNH forward Nicole Kelly to the ice after she collided with Biotti on a breakaway. Firstyear forward Indi Wagner served the two-minute roughing penal

ty.

Missed opportunities charac terized the Wildcats’ comeback efforts in the third period. UNH defender Charli Kettyle could not capitalize on two quality chanc es at the 11-minute mark of the third. After picking up the puck in neutral ice, she took advantage of a late Crimson defensive rota tion to send a backhand on goal.

Following the initial Pellicci save, Kettyle skated the puck around the back of the net and sent an other shot on goal.

Late in the third, the physical play of the first period returned. The sequence started with a shot on goal by Biotti. With UNH goal ie Harnett unable to secure the puck, both teams piled onto the ice in front of the keeper. But play was stopped as Harnett finally got her glove on the puck to make the save. After the whistle, Hol lands shoved a Wildcats skater to the ice, and Kettyle responded by punching Hollands. The refs as sessed Hollands a cross-check ing penalty and Kettyle a rough ing penalty. Again, UNH could not find an equalizer on the pow

erplay as several offensive pos sessions were called back for off sides.

Following the trend of the first two periods, the Crimson gave the Wildcats a chance to tie up the game late in the third period as it was assessed yet another penalty. Despite pulling the goalie, UNH could not find a late score as Har vard’s penalty kill went 6-6 on the night to seal the 1-0 victory.

The Crimson picked up its third win of the season with no table absences. Senior captains Anne Bloomer and Kyra Willoug by were absent from the Satur day game. Their availability for Friday’s game against ECAC foe Clarkson is still in the air.

“Hopefully, we’ll get a couple of kids back in the lineup,” Stone said. “Not sure about that yet.”

Harvard will look to build upon the win as it travels to Pots dam, NY, on Dec. 2 for a matchup with Golden Knights (14-5-1, 3-3-0 ECAC). The Crimson have not de feated Clarkson in Potsdam since 2013.

WEEKLY RECAP SCORES

WOMEN’S

ICE HOCKEY

AT MINNESOTA-DULUTH L, 0-9

RUGBY AT DARTMOUTH L, 10-15

BASKETBALL AT MERRIMACK W, 85-43

ICE HOCKEY AT BOSTON COLLEGE L, 1-5

BASKETBALL VS. PURDUE L, 63-85

BASKETBALL VS. OKLAHOMA ST. L, 62-71

BASKETBALL VS. FLORIDA ST. L, 57-88

ICE HOCKEY VS. NEW HAMPSHIRE W, 1-0

BASKETBALL VS. UMASS LOWELL W, 86-66

SQUASH AT NO. 10 DARTMOUTH W, 9-0

MEN’S

WATER POLO VS. ST. FRANCIS L, 8-13

WATER POLO AT BROWN W, 11-9

BASKETBALL VS. SIENA W, 69-59

BASKETBALL VS. LOYOLA-CHICAGO W, 61-55

ICE HOCKEY AT NO. 5 MICHIGAN T, 4-4

ICE HOCKEY AT NO. 5 MICHIGAN L, 1-4

BASKETBALL AT FORDHAM L, 60-68

BASKETBALL AT HOLY CROSS W, 72-38

SQUASH AT NO. 12 DARTMOUTH W, 9-0

READ IT IN FIVE MINUTES

CROSS COUNTRY FINISHES 17TH

On Saturday, Nov. 19, the Harvard men’s cross coun try team competed in Still water, Okla., its third con secutive appearance in the season-ending meet. Junior Maia Ramsden was the wom en’s sole representative, com peting in the 6k and claiming 11th place. Meanwhile, the men’s team took 17th, with sophomore Graham Blanks finishing sixth in the 10k. Ramsden’s and Blanks’ ac complishments earned them NCAA All-American honors.

WOMEN’S SOCCER

The Crimson’s NCAA Tournament run came to a close on Friday, Nov. 18 in Durham, N.C., as it fell 3-2 to a strong University of South Carolina squad after a late comeback surge fell short. Previously, it had dom inated tNew Hampshire in a 2-0 victory in the first round of the tournament at home on Jordan Field in front of a packed house of a thousand fans. In the loss, junior de fender Taylor Fasnacht forced the Gamecocks into an own goal and senior defender and co-captain Jordan DiVerniero added another.

late Novem ber matchup between

Hollands prepares for a faceoff in Harvard’s loss to Yale. Hollands has been the go-to option on faceoffs for head coach Katey Stone, winning roughly 44.7 percent of puck drops this season. LEANNE ALVARADO — CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Junior forward Shannon Hollands protects the puck from a Yale defender during a 2-1 loss to the Bulldogs on Oct. 28. In the Crimson’s most recent game, a gritty, hard-fought victory over UNH, the Uxbridge, Ont. native was whistled for elbowing, but the penalty-killing unit went a perfect six-for-six, keeping a clean sheet. LEANNE ALVARADO — CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

SUFFERS 3-2 DEFEAT

Harvard Falls to Michigan, 4-1

BY AARON B. SHUCHMAN CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

After starting the season 7-0-0 for the program’s best start in over 30 years, the No. 9 Harvard men’s ice hockey team knew its stiffest test of the campaign thus far awaited them in a Thanksgiving weekend se ries on the road against the No. 5 Michigan Wolverines. Loaded with top NHL prospects Luke Hughes, Mackie Samoskevich, and Adam Fantilli, Michigan is among the favorites to win the national title this season. In two highly competitive games at Yost Ice Arena in Ann Arbor, Mich., the Wolverines and the Crimson battled to a 4-4 draw on Friday night before Michigan pulled away late on Saturday night to hand Harvard a 4-1 defeat, their first of the year.

“It was a great test for us to come out to play an excellent team with a lot of talent and to play on the road in a real loud and exciting environment,” head coach Ted Donato said. “I think that it was an opportunity for our team to develop and grow and to stress our structure.”

The value of the opportunity to face such a talented out-of-con ference team was not lost on the Crimson, which has aspirations of making a deep NCAA tourna ment run this season.

7-0-0

“I think for us these are the games we want to be in,” said se nior defenseman and captain Henry Thrun. “There’s a real val ue in learning what it takes to be a championship team and how to beat opponents you’ll face in a one game set and out of league that might play a different style.”

Michigan 4, Harvard 1

Coming off of an overtime game the night before, the Crimson got off to a slow start in the first peri od on Friday, as Michigan jumped out to an early lead, scoring just over two minutes into the game.

After Wolverines defenseman Luca Fantilli made a strong play along the boards to send the puck behind the net, forward Nick Granowicz drove around the net and fired a backhand through the crease, where the puck de flected off a skate right to for ward Mark Estapa for the easy tap-in goal. Michigan continued to press throughout the period, with a sustained offensive zone shift drawing a tripping penal ty on first-year forward Joe Mill er, giving the Wolverines a pow er play. Harvard survived on the penalty kill despite a close call when Michigan forward Mack ie Samoskevich hit the iron, but the Wolverines put together sev eral dominant shifts in a row after the power play. With 30 seconds to play in the first period, Sa moskevich tallied his 12th goal of the campaign after one-timing a no-look pass from forward Adam Fantilli, who had been tied up be hind the net, past senior goalten der Mitchell Gibson, giving the Wolverines a 2-0 advantage after one period of play.

“That’s a good hockey team, credit to them,” Thrun said. “They have a lot of good players. They’re really dangerous.”

Play evened out in an event ful and, at times, chaotic second period, with Michigan outshoot ing the Crimson 19-14 in the sec ond frame. Only 15 seconds into the period, sophomore forward Matthew Coronato, fighting for the puck below the goal line, set up junior forward Sean Farrell

in the slot, but his one-timer hit the crossbar. Three minutes lat er, Adam Fantilli, a projected topfive pick in the 2023 NHL Entry Draft, made a series of dazzling moves to weave his way through the Harvard defense and set up a chance for defenseman Seamus Casey, but Gibson stuck with him and denied his backhand oppor tunity. Both Portillo and Gibson were outstanding throughout the period, with both goaltenders pushing back surges by each of fense, and Portillo shut down a late Harvard power play to keep Michigan ahead 2-0 going into the third period.

“We had some really good chances, we just didn’t cash in on them,” Donato said regarding Sat urday’s scoring struggles. “Their goaltender made some big saves. We generated a lot of opportuni ties, we had around 40 shots, we had plenty of out-numbered rush opportunities. A combination of not finding the back of the net, and a good goaltender, probably more than anything else.”

While the Wolverines had an opportunity to extend their lead to 3-0 with an early third period power play, the Crimson’s strong penalty kill notched their sixth shorthanded goal of the season to cut the Harvard deficit to 2-1.

With Michigan’s power play unit caught up in the offensive zone, Thrun powered his way down the wing and to the net; although Por tillo denied his initial backhand shot, Coronato hammered home the loose puck to give the Crim

son some life. However, despite close to six minutes of power play time in the third period, Harvard was unable to find the tying goal, and Wolverines forward Rutger McGroarty, a first-round pick of the NHL’s Winnipeg Jets in the 2022 NHL Draft, tallied a key in surance goal with a snipe from a sharp angle with just under seven minutes to play. Harvard heavily pressured Portillo late in the third with Gibson on the bench for an extra skater, but the Michigan de fense withstood the onslaught, and Casey notched an empty-net goal to give the Wolverines a 4-1 win and hand the Crimson its first loss of the season.

“Once we were able to find one we couldn’t click and finish on the goal that we needed,” Thrun said. “We put up 40 shots with a couple grade A’s and maybe a few posts here or there. We definitely had our chances offensively against a pretty good team.”

Harvard 4, Michigan 4 (OT)

In an evenly matched first period, both Harvard and Michigan trad ed chances in the early going. Ju nior forward Alex Laferriere and sophomore forward Zakary Kar pa each tested Wolverines goal tender Noah West less than 90 seconds into the game, while Ca sey and forward Gavin Brind ley both had good chances on a Michigan power play six min utes into the game, but Gibson and a blocked shot by Karpa kept the Wolverines off the board.

But halfway through the peri od, Michigan opened the scor ing by capitalizing on a Crimson turnover. After collecting a loose puck after a misplay behind the net, forward Dylan Duke found a wide open Adam Fantilli in the slot, who rifled a one-timer past Gibson for the 1-0 lead. How ever, Harvard evened the score less than four minutes later, as Thrun skated in from the point unabated and beat West with a wrist shot from the top of the cir cles. The Crimson began an of fensive surge after Thrun’s goal, with Coronato putting two shots on West and strong possession play all-around. Less than three minutes after Thrun’s goal, Har vard took the lead after a great play by sophomore defenseman Ian Moore to keep the puck in the offensive zone. Sophomore for ward Alex Gaffney retrieved the puck after the keep-in and found Laferriere close to the goal line, and Laferriere fired a one-tim er from the sharp angle through West to give the Crimson a 2-1 lead after one period of play. For us we’ve embodied the motto of a championship stan dard and really taking it one day and one game at a time,” Thrun said. “We take what happened this weekend, we learn from it and we move on.”

Harvard got off to a strong start in the second frame, put ting three shots on West with in the first 90 seconds, and the Crimson took the lead at the four minute mark. Senior defensem

an Jace Foskey, seeing his first ac tion of the season in place of in jured sophomore defenseman Jack Bar, fired a hard shot from the point, and a lively ricochet off of traffic in front of the net went right to Miller, who ripped the re bound into the net to extend the Harvard advantage to 3-1. How ever, the Wolverines controlled play for the next ten minutes, put ting together extended offensive zone shifts and odd-man rushes to pressure the Crimson defense, which blocked 27 shots over the course of the game. Michi gan eventually cut the Harvard lead to 3-2 with under three min utes to play in the second period, as defenseman Ethan Edwards warded off senior forward Austin Wong, maneuvered to the middle of the ice, and beat Gibson with a wrist shot, leaving the Crimson up 3-2 at the intermission.

on the rebound and beat West for his second goal of the game, put ting the Crimson up 4-2. Down two goals, the Wolverines quick ly turned up the heat on offense, putting 18 shots on Gibson in the third period. Less than two min utes after Thrun’s goal, Michi gan captain Nolan Moyle crashed the net after a shot from the point by defenseman Johnny Druski nis, and a deflection by forward Philippe Lapointe found Moyle for a tap-in goal, putting the Wol verines down by one goal. Mich igan kept its foot on the gas af ter pulling within one, as Adam Fantilli hit the iron on the pow er play, and a rush chance with just under seven minutes to play in regulation produced the ty ing goal for the Wolverines. Af ter entering the offensive zone with speed, McGroarty’s pass from the corner found Brindley behind the net, and Brindley was able to find Lapointe in the slot for a wrist shot that beat two Har vard defenders and Gibson to tie the game at 4-4. Michigan contin ued to dominate offensively after tying the game, but some time ly shot-blocking and great saves from Gibson preserved the 4-4 deadlock, sending the game to overtime.

“Blocking shots is paramount to our success and is something Coach Donato harps on a lot,” Thrun said. “Mitch played great so any help we can offer him is gonna make his job easier.”

The Crimson had a great op portunity to win the game ear ly in overtime after a Coronato breakaway drew a holding penal ty on Samoskevich, but Harvard was unable to find the game-win ner despite notching six shot at tempts while on the man advan tage. Gibson denied Michigan’s best chance of overtime when he shut down a Brindley breakaway, and after a scoreless five minutes of overtime, the game ended in an official 4-4 tie. The Crimson won the shootout 2-1, though it had no bearing on the standings or re sult.

Harvard will have their hands full on another difficult road trip next weekend when they travel to Ithaca, N.Y. next Friday night to take on the Cornell Big Red in the latest installment of the Har vard-Cornell rivalry, before fac ing the Colgate University Raid ers on Saturday night.

In a frenzied, back-and-forth third period, Harvard struck first on an early power play to grab a two-goal lead. Farrell, stationed in the right wing corner, found Laferriere for a one-timer at the faceoff circle, and while West made the save, Thrun pounced

“Anytime we go up there to Cornell, it’s gonna be a close, low-scoring game regardless of who’s ranked where,” Thrun said.

“Probably one of the most diffi cult games we’re gonna play this year…this is a game that is gonna need buy in from everyone.”

The Crimson rallies together around junior goalie Mitchell Gibson during the victory against Yale. In Friday’s 4-4 tie against Michigan, Gibson had 35 saves out of 39 shots on goal. JULIAN J. GIORDANO — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

WOLVERINE WOES

Harvard tied Michigan 4-4 in the first of two games, and lost 4-1 ithe second.

Senior defenseman Marshall Rifai aggresively battles for possession of the puck to give the Crimson the upper hand against Yale in a 2-0 win on Feb. 11. JULIAN J. GIORDANO — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Harvard started the season with a 7-0-0 record, which had pre vusly not been done since the 1988-1989, when the Crimson won its first 15 games en route to win ning a national championship.

Sophmore for ward Matthew Coronato, last season’s Ivy League Rookie of the Year, scored Harvard’s lone goal in the sec ond game of the series against the Wolverines.

Ted Donato ‘91 Head Coach

I think that it was an opportunity for our team to develop and grow and to stress our structure.

“

Henry Thrun Senior defenseman

They have a lot of good players. They’re really dangerous.