The Harvard Crimson THE UNIVERSITY DAILY, EST. 1873 | VOLUME CXLVI, NO. 25 | CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS | THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2019
EDITORIAL PAGE 4
NEWS PAGE 3
SPORTS PAGE 6
Embedded EthiCS is an innovative interdisciplinary initiative.
Laverne Cox will speak at Harvard’s first gender equity summit.
The track and field teams had a slew of good performaces at weekend meet.
Harvard Shop Owed Employees $46,000 By SHERA S. AVI-YONAH and DELANO R. FRANKLIN CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
When Harvard Student Agencies managers hold their weekly meetings, they usually recite the organization’s mission statement, written at the time of its founding in 1957 — “to defray the expenses of [student employees’] education,” according to former HSA President Ali Dastjerdi ’19. “Our role as an institution is that we pride ourselves on how much we pay students,” Dastjerdi, who served as HSA president for most of 2018, said. “I mean our charter quite literally says to defray the expense of education. Our existence is there to pay students more.” But for the past three years, one of HSA’s branches — The Harvard Shop — did the opposite. Last year, the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office found that HSA violated Massachusetts labor laws and owed employees $46,276.38 in unpaid wages between June 26, 2015 and Dec. 3, 2017 after a former employee submitted a complaint in February 2018. The complaint also alleges Harvard Shop managers retaliated against employees who asked for the wages they were owed. The Harvard Shop, HSA General Manager James McKellar, and the Attorney Gener-
Near End of Probation, HCFA Says They’ve Been Fully Compliant By SHERA S. AVI-YONAH and DELANO R. FRANKLIN CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
The Attorney General’s Office found that the Harvard Student Agency neglected to fully pay more than 200 of its employees. DELANO R. FRANKLIN—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
al’s Office settled the complaint with the state in November. The Attorney General’s Office required the Harvard Shop to pay $5,600 in civil penalties — $4,600 for failing to comply with a state law requiring businesses to pay employees in a timely manner, and $1,000 for failing to have an earned sick time policy. The state agency required the Harvard Shop to verify near-
ly three years of payroll records and pay back 274 employees. Several of them received checks for over $1,000, many others for more than $100. McKellar — one of the organization’s “permanent” staff members — wrote in an emailed statement that the Harvard Shop and HSA “unknowingly” failed to pay employees the correct amount.
“In this case, we unknowingly did make a mistake in how we were paying our students for Sunday and holiday pay,” McKellar wrote. “When we learned of our mistake, we voluntarily corrected the issue immediately to the satisfaction of the Massachusetts Attorney General and worked with our legal counsel to enact new employee policies to ensure that we are in
compliance with the law.” HSA, which bills itself as the largest student-run company in the world, comprises 12 businesses, including The Harvard Shop. The Harvard Shop’s three Cambridge locations and its online store sell Harvard merchandise and class rings. Each year, an undergraduate serves
Students Call for Review of Dominguez By JONAH S. BERGER and MOLLY C. MCCAFFERTY CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
Exactly one year after 10 women publicly accused Government Professor Emeritus Jorge I. Dominguez of sexual misconduct, Government students reiterated their demand for an external review of the allegations in a protest and a letter to University President Lawrence S. Bacow. More than 70 students — clad in black clothes and holding signs reading “Time’s Up” and “External Review Now” — rallied in front of Massachusetts Hall Wednesday afternoon to criticize Harvard’s response to the allegations. The Chronicle of Higher Education first published the accusations in February 2018, and subsequent reporting by the Chronicle revealed that Dominguez faced allegations of sexual misconduct from 18 women, stretching back as early as 1979 and as recent as 2015. The University opened a Title IX investigation into Dominguez in April 2018, which is ongoing. Before the protest, a group of graduate students in the department emailed the letter to Bacow, demanding a “public” commitment to an external review and a “feasible timeline”
The original Chronicle of Higher Education article about Dominguez covers the CGIS lobby. AWNIT SINGH MARTA—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
Protestors call for an external review of the allegations against Dominguez. MOLLY C. MCCAFFERTY—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
The #MeToo Movement Makes Its Way Into Harvard Course Syllabi By SOPHIA S. ARMENAKAS and ISABEL L. ISSELBACHER CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
As women around the world have come forward with personal stories about sexual misconduct they’ve faced, Harvard courses have begun to integrate explorations of #MeToo movement themes and issues into their curriculum. The phrase #MeToo has appeared in course syllabi of myriad departments including English, Music, Romance Languages and Literatures, ExINSIDE THIS ISSUE
Harvard Today 2
HCFA Says It Abides By Policies
pository Writing, Human Evolutionary Biology, African and African American Studies, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Despite the range of courses, some say the classes are only reaching a predominantly female student audience. “There’s obviously a huge gender imbalance, and it’s really disappointing in some ways, because of course women are interested in these ideas that related to them, and you kind of hope that men would take a more concerted interest in these issues,” said Alexandra J. Gold,
News 3
Editorial 4
SEE DOMINGUEZ PAGE 5
Harvard Affiliates Condemn Saudi Ties By ALEXANDRA A. CHAIDEZ and AIDAN F. RYAN CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
Roughly 100 Cambridge residents — including several Harvard and MIT affiliates — gathered at the Cambridge Public Library Wednesday to call on local universities to be transparent about their partnerships with financial backers in a night filled with speeches and song. Several former and current students from Harvard, MIT, and Boston College organized the event — entitled “Whose University is This?” — following a 2018 visit from the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman to both MIT and Harvard. The schools’ invitation at the time provoked intense criticism from MIT students. Harvard’s history with the Saudi royal family includes large donations for professorships and programs across several of its schools. After the October 2018 death of Washington Post journalist Jamal
SEE SAUDI PAGE 3
SEE PAGE 3
a Writing Center preceptor who teaches Expository Writing 20: “Telling Her Story: Narrative, Media, and #MeToo.” “Gender roles don’t exclusively affect women, they also affect men, and men should be more aware of that,” she added. “I think that if we’re going to work towards intersectionality and equality, we need the participation of both men and women.” In addition to skewing largely female, conversations about
SEE METOO PAGE 3
Sports 6
for the initiation of such a review — without which they say students remain at risk of experiencing instances of misconduct like those Dominguez allegedly perpetrated. “A year after this egregious pattern of abuse was revealed, we continue to have little hope of understanding the institutional and cultural factors that made Domínguez’s actions possible, and therefore little prospect of identifying what must change for justice and accountability to prevail in the future,” they wrote. The graduate students partnered with Our Harvard Can Do Better, an undergraduate student group dedicated to anti-sexual assault advocacy, to organize Wednesday’s rally. The same day, students wore black to Government classes to draw attention to their effort and postered the walls of the Center for Government and International Studies Knafel with printed copies of the Chronicle article. Sarah S. Fellman ’18-’19, a Government concentrator and a member of Our Harvard Can Do Better, said at the rally that Harvard’s response to the allegations against Dominguez “makes it clear that internal procedures have failed us time and time again.”
SEE HSA PAGE 5
Danielle S. Allen ‘01 remarked on civic education Wednesday evening at the HGSE’s Askwith Forum. MARIAH E. D. DIMALALUAN—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
TODAY’S FORECAST
CLOUDY High: 27 Low: 19
Harvard College Faith and Action — the largest Christian group on campus — continues to receive resources from parent ministry Christian Union while fully complying with College policies for student organizations, co-presidents Eunice A. N. Mwabe ’19 and Cooper B. Bryan ’19 wrote in a Monday email. After the College placed HCFA on probation in February 2018, College spokesperson Rachael Dane said HCFA would need to disaffiliate from Christian Union to regain recognition from the College at the end of its probationary period, which is slated to end next month. Mwabe and Bryan’s claims appear to contradict Dane’s statement, as well as College policies which require student groups to maintain “local autonomy.” College administrators’ decision to place HCFA on probation last year was almost certainly tied to the group’s decision to remove an assistant bible course leader because she was in a same-sex relationship. At the time, former HCFA presidents Scott Ely ’18 and Molly L. Richmond ’18 said HCFA’s “standards for leaders” led to the College’s decision to put the group on probation. Mwabe and Cooper did not directly answer whether HCFA has changed those standards. “HCFA as an organization has maintained standards for leaders that best reflect the convictions of our organization,” Mwabe and Cooper wrote. Though Dane said in February 2018 that HCFA would have to disaffiliate from Christian Union — a national organization that supports Christian groups at all eight Ivy League schools, HCFA still receives resources and funding, according to Christian Union’s website. Mwabe and Cooper wrote in the Monday email that the “College has not required HCFA to sever ties with Christian Union.” Previously, the duo said in April 2018 they had never received communication from the College requiring them to sever those ties. Associate Dean for Student Engagement Alexander R. Miller did not directly respond to Mwabe and Bryan’s claims. Miller wrote in an emailed statement that the College required HCFA’s leadership to meet with him monthly. He added that their conversations have been “productive.” “Since last spring, Harvard College Faith and Action (HCFA) has been operating under a probationary period which is scheduled to conclude next month,” Miller wrote. “These meetings have taken place consistently and have resulted in many productive conversations. I look forward to continuing to work with them to help make Harvard College the most inclusive place it can be for all of our students.” Despite the College placing HCFA on administrative probation, Mwabe and Cooper also wrote that the group is a “recognized independent student organization.”
SEE HCFA PAGE 5
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