The Harvard Crimson - Volume CXLIX, No. 3

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The Harvard Crimson THE UNIVERSITY DAILY, EST. 1873

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VOLUME CXLIX NO. 3

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CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS

| WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 26, 2022

OP ED PAGE 4

SPORTS PAGE 6

NEWS PAGE 5

To achieve real diversity and inclusion, we must look past the racial checkbox.

Harvard women’s hockey beat Princeton and Quinnipiac.

Architects share updated plan for Allston development complex.

Security Workers Reject Contract Deval Patrick to Join HKS Faculty By SOPHIA C. SCOTT and CLAIRE YUAN CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Harvard security guards voted down a union contract offer from Securitas on Monday, sending the two sides back to the bargaining table after nearly four months of negotiations. Members of 32BJ SEIU voted 127-84 to reject an offer from Securitas that members of the union’s bargaining committee decried as unfair. More than 80 percent of the University’s security workers participated in the vote, which closed last Friday after four days. More than 80 percent of the workers who voted to reject Securitas’ most recent contract offer also indicated support for a strike authorization, according to an email sent to workers on Monday by the union’s executive vice president. John F. Carbone Jr., a member of the 32BJ’s bargaining committee, said Securitas’ offer was “insulting.” “We’re just trying to get a decent contract,” said Amel A. Ahmed, who also serves on the union’s bargaining committee. “We’re not asking for 1 million dollars,” Ahmed said.

By MILES J. HERSZENHORN

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CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Former Massachusetts Governor Deval L. Patrick ’78 will join the Harvard Kennedy School next week as a professor and co-director of the Center for Public Leadership, the school announced Tuesday. Patrick served as the first Black governor of Massachusetts between 2007 and 2015. After declining to run for a third term as governor, he took a position with Bain Capital. Patrick briefly returned to politics in 2019 when he launched a failed bid for president in the 2020 election. “I am thrilled that Governor Patrick will be joining Harvard Kennedy School,” Kennedy School Dean Douglas W. Elmendorf said in a press release. “With his deep and varied experience as a public leader and his important work as a civil rights advocate, Patrick will be a distinguished member of our practitioner faculty.” Patrick said it was an “honor” to be joining the Kennedy ­

A security booth is located beside Morgan Gate, one of the entrances to Harvard Yard along Massachusetts Avenue. TRUONG L. NGUYEN—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

“We’re not asking for raises above inflation. We’re not asking to be treated differently than anyone else. We’re just asking for fair treatment.” 32BJ SEIU Executive Vice President Roxana Rivera wrote in an emailed statement that the

union “is committed to reaching a strong contract agreement with Securitas, one that the membership fully supports.” 32BJ, representing nearly 300 security guards, is seeking to renew bargaining efforts on the contract, Rivera said.

“These essential workers have kept Harvard safe and secure throughout the pandemic, and they need and deserve sufficient wage increases, job protections, and other bene-

SEE VOTE PAGE 3

School. “With the scale and scope of the challenges facing humankind, the world needs conscientious, dedicated leaders at every level in every sector, people willing to spend their ‘political’ capital, not just accumulate it,” Patrick said in a press release. “I am looking forward to working alongside and encouraging leaders like that at the Kennedy School.” David R. Gergen, who is a founding director of the Center for Public Leadership, said in an interview that he was “ecstatic” to have Patrick join the center, and he called him a “first-class guy.” “I’m excited about him coming, but I think he’s also going to bring a more intense focus to leadership itself,” Gergen said. Gergen also said he anticipates Patrick and current director Hannah R. Bowles will complement each other very well as co-directors. “He will be more Mr. Outside versus her Ms. Inside,” he

SEE PATRICK PAGE 5

Graduate Students Discuss Q Guide By PAUL E. ALEXIS, ANNE M. BRANDES, and MICHAL GOLDSTEIN CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Like many Harvard students, Roberta C. Yun ‘23 turns to the Q Guide — the College’s platform through which students evaluate their courses and teaching staff — each semester for guidance on picking the best classes. “I use the Q Guide whenever I’m looking to sign up for classes,” she said. “Then I always scroll through and look at the estimated hours per week and also try and look at the comments if I can.” The Q Guide, which stores data on nearly 1,000 courses and more than 2,000 faculty and section leaders, traces its origins to 1925 with The Crimson’s “Confidential Guide to Courses.” In 1973, the College created its own formal evaluation system, which was renamed to the Q system in 2006. At the end of each term, students submit ratings and written feedback for their teaching staff and classes, which are then ­

made available across the University to aid in course selection. Recently, professors were given the choice whether or not to share qualitative comments to students. As much as students regard the Q guide as a vital component of their course selection process, it carries a much different weight to teaching staff — especially graduate students. Danielle C. Leavitt-Quist, a Ph.D. candidate in History, identified three main purposes of the Q Guide from the perspective of graduate students. “The first is just personal reflection and development,” she said. “Second would be in the development of a teaching portfolio when you go on the academic job market, and the third is internally within a department, serving as a distinguisher between other Ph.D. students in the department.” Indeed, the Q Guide is one of the principal ways instructors are evaluated and can, by extension, significantly impact an emerging academic career.

SEE GUIDE PAGE 3

MARGARET A. YIN—CRIMSON DESIGNER

IOP Launches New Two Affiliates Win Churchill Scholarships Events Program By ROHAN RAJEEV CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

By MILES J. HERSZENHORN CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Harvard’s Institute of Politics will pilot a Conferences Committee to centralize planning for some of its major programs. The Conferences Committee – the IOP’s first new program since 2018 – will be responsible for organizing IOP events and conferences under the umbrella of the committee, rather than under the Harvard Political Union as in previous years. Past events have included a biennial seminar for newly elected mayors and a conference of presidential campaign managers. The committee — led by cochairs Desiree A. Rickett ’24 and Aristotle M. Vainikos ’23 — will oversee planning for at least the remainder of 2022. Rickett said she is both “ner­

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

Harvard Today 2

vous” and “excited” about starting her role as co-chair of the new IOP program. “It feels like a very important position,” she said. “So I’m nervous and want to make sure that I do everything correctly and that I hopefully set the foundation for a lot of successful years in the Conferences Committee to come.” Rickett said she is prepared for the challenges she will face as co-chair of the pilot program. “There’s something great about kind of going into the unknown — not really knowing what the year’s agenda is going to look like, not knowing exactly how every single meeting is going to run — but instead getting to be that person who tries it out who sees who makes mistakes,” she said.

SEE IOP PAGE3

News 3

Editorial 4

T wo Harvard affiliates — Marissa Sumathipala ’22 and Harvard Medical School student James A. Diao — were tapped for the prestigious Churchill Scholarship and Kanders Churchill Scholarship, respectively, earlier this month. The Churchill Scholarship, first awarded in 1963, and the Kanders Churchill Scholarship, established in 2017, are awarded to 18 students annually in the fields of science, engineering, and mathematics. The awards fund a one-year master’s study program at the University of Cambridge. “Churchill is a life changing opportunity for my scientific trajectory,” Sumathipala wrote in an email. Sumathipala, a Neuroscience concentrator, said she became interested in her field of study at a young age. She be­

Sports 6

gan conducting at-home experiments in her home at 13, and by 16, she landed a research position at a lab in her home state of Virginia, where she studied how fruit flies make behavioral decisions. At Harvard, she continued doing research, working at Harvard Medical School’s McCarroll Lab to study how neurons communicate at synapses in the human brain. Sumathipala said she grew up dreaming of becoming a professional figure skater, but was forced to give up Olympic dreams after suffering a severe concussion during her sophomore year of high school. “I spent years in recovery, struggling with dizziness, memory loss, and fatigue,” she wrote. But her experience recovering from the head injury led her to science, she said.

SEE SCHOLARS PAGE 5

TODAY’S FORECAST

SUNNY High: 25 Low: 4

HMS student James A. Diao, left, and Marissa Sumathipala ‘22, right, won Churchill Scholarships. COURTESY OF MARISSA SUMATHIPALA AND JAMES A. DIAO

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