The Harvard Crimson - Volume CXLIX, No. 79

THE HARVARD CRIMSON

House Committee to Subpoena Trump

Cheney Says

Harvard Football Benefits From Timely Play and Star Power

Students Stage ‘Die In’ in Harvard Yard

PROTEST. Roughly 40 Harvard protested in solidarity with Iranian and Kurdish women by lying down in front of the John Harvard statue on Thurs day. Protesters chanted and called for a University statement of support.

College Essays and the Trauma Sweetspot

EDITORIAL. We must strive for an admissions culture in which students feel truly free to express their identity — to tell a story that they want to share, not one their admissions officers want them to.

The Path to Public Service at SEAS

Noting the difficulty of discovering and pursuing nonprofit career opportunities, some undergraduates hope for additional support in forging the way to public service work and boosting engagement among the broader student body.

BY JAMES R. JOLIN AND FELICIA HE CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

When Grace R. Kim ’23 met with a recruiter from Elon Musk’s for-profit company SpaceX during her junior spring, they offered her a job “on the spot.”

“I think the biggest challenge for poten tial nonprofit work at the beginning is be coming aware of those opportunities, both within the States and globally,” said Layla J. Seaver ’24, co-president of Harvard’s chap ter of Engineers Without Borders.

‘A More Linear Path’

rect them into summer and post-graduate employment.

The Harvard College Engineering So ciety, which describes itself on its website as “the umbrella student organization for Harvard engineers,” published a 49-page guide to engineering concentrations in 2020, offering step-by-step guidance for wooing corporate recruiters.

“Engineers make good money. Engi neers have an easier time finding jobs. Engi neering is a respected profession,” the guide states as reasons to pursue a career in the field.

Breyer Says SCOTUS Term Limits Would ‘Be Fine’ at IOP Forum

BY EMILY L. DING, AZUSA M. LIPPIT, AND THOMAS J. METE CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Retired Justice Stephen G. Breyer said “it would be fine” if Supreme Court justices were term-limited at a Harvard Insti tute of Politics forum on Wednes day.

Breyer, who retired from the Supreme Court in June before returning to Harvard Law School as a professor, avoided questions about other judicial reforms, but said he does not “see there’d be a real problem” with a limit on the amount of time justices can serve on the bench.

“It would have to be a very long term,” Breyer said, suggest ing a 20-year cap. “You don’t want someone in that job to be think ing about ‘What is my next job?’ But if you had a long, definite term — like most countries have some kind of definite term — it would be fine.”

“It would’ve saved me a lot of angst,” Breyer quipped.

Breyer’s appearance at the IOP on Wednesday came after the event was postponed last month. During the forum, he was pep pered with questions about abor tion, the legitimacy of the court, and judicial reforms.

Students, Artists Laud Ceramics Program

SEIZE THE CLAY. Amid the many prominent attractions on Harvard’s Allston campus, including the $1 billion Science and Engineering Complex, a small creative haven took root decades ago: the Har vard Ceramics Program.

Annenberg Roof Repair Nears End

METRO MEMORIAL HALL.

Harvard freshmen usually look forward to eating and socializing in the College’s grand Annenberg Hall, which features a decorative vaulted ceiling supported by detailed wooden trusses.

Kim was meeting with the company rep resentative to discuss a potential collabo ration between the spacecraft engineering firm and the student group Harvard Stu dents for the Engineering and Development of Space. But she left the discussion with a summer job in hand.

For undergraduate students at Har vard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, there exists a well-worn pipeline to opportunities in the corporate world.

Engineers, especially those like Kim with a Harvard degree, are widely in de mand for an array of high-paying industry jobs, including at tech companies, biotech corporations, and financial firms. In 2022, more than 56 percent of SEAS graduates reported that they planned to go to the for-profit world.

But for those hoping to go into engineer ing jobs in public service — making up only 3 percent of SEAS undergraduates in the class of 2022 — the path is far less clear cut.

The appeal of industry jobs is evident: they often come with lucrative starting salaries, attractive exit opportunities, and, often, the prestige of a big-name firm.

“You certainly can have a job that pays the bills in your discipline and working in nonprofits, but we shouldn’t kid ourselves to say you’re going to make the same sala ry that you might if you were with Google or Facebook,” said Chris Lombardo, the as sociate director of undergraduate studies in electrical engineering and mechanical engineering at SEAS. “That’s an unrealistic expectation.”

Pathways to corporate work are easy to find at Harvard, said Giovan N. McKnight ’24, who serves as HSBSE vice president.

“I feel like that’s always being thrown at me, even over email lists,” he said. “I’m con stantly getting emails about it.”

A range of undergraduate student groups based at SEAS offer opportunities for students to build professional portfolios in engineering and technology, helping di

HARVARD KENNEDY SCHOOL

Other student groups, like Women in Computer Science and the Harvard Soci ety for Black Scientists and Engineers, aim to boost SEAS students from historically underrepresented backgrounds by hosting panels and recruiting events with indus try partners, such as Vatic Investments, Bloomberg, and Brex Inc.

SEAS student Connor J. Schoen ’20, who co-founded the nonprofit Breaktime in his first year at the College, said he believes “go ing into industry has a more linear and clear path to it” than philanthropic or entrepre neurial work.

“You’ve got to go through this interview process, this is how you prepare, these are the employers,” he said. “It’s sort of some thing that there’s already more of an estab lished guide to how to do it.”

‘Build things that change lives’

For undergraduates not drawn by the ap peal of corporate posts and salaries, public

HKS Remains Largely White, Male

BY MILES J. HERSZENHORN CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

The proportion of American Harvard Ken nedy School students identifying as Black or African American fell by two percentage points in 2022 as the school’s student body and faculty remain overwhelmingly white, according to an annual diversity report re leased by the school Thursday afternoon.

The Kennedy School, which only collects data on the racial diversity of its students who are U.S. citizens, saw the proportion of its students who identify as Black or Afri can American drop to nine percent in 2022, compared to 11 percent in 2021.

The percentage of students who identify as Hispanic or Latinx declined for the sec ond consecutive year to 12 percent, down one percentage point from 2021, while the proportion of students who identify as white declined for the fourth year in a row to 51 percent.

Lindsey Batteast, a second-year master

of public policy student at HKS and mem ber of the school’s Equity Coalition, said she was disappointed and concerned by the di versity report.

“It makes students question how much faith they can put in the HKS administra tion to not only promote diversity, equity and inclusion, but also ensure that it’s a pil lar of our community, in the sense that we actually see it in adequate representation,” Batteast said.

The proportion of Asian students at HKS increased by five percentage points from 2021 numbers, reaching 23 percent. The school reported no students of Native American, Alaskan Native, Native Hawai ian, or Native Pacific Islander backgrounds.

The Kennedy School does not present data about the race and ethnicity of its inter national students because “race and ethnic ity are interpreted differently in different settings around the world,” according to the school’s diversity report. This year, a major ity of the Kennedy School’s student body is from outside the U.S., with 52 percent of stu

dents hailing from non-U.S. countries and territories.

While HKS slightly improved gender diversity within its faculty, tenured profes sors at the Kennedy School continue to be disproportionately white and male. The proportion of tenured professors who iden tify as white rose to 78 percent — up one per centage point from 2021 — while 72 percent identify as male, compared to 74 percent in 2021.

The Kennedy School does not have a sin gle tenured professor of Native American, Alaskan Native, Native Hawaiian, or Native Pacific Islander backgrounds, and only two tenured professors identify as Black.

Khalil G. Muhammad, who is one of two Black tenured professors at HKS, said the school’s progress on improving its diversity is “not sufficient.”

“The pace of change at this point appears to be glacial,” Muhammad said.

Muhammad said that this year’s report

SFFA Lawyer, Battling Brain Cancer, Steps Back

BY RAHEM D. HAMID CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

William S. Consovoy, the promi nent conservative attorney who has led the crusade against Har vard’s race conscious admissions policies on behalf of Students for Fair Admissions, will not argue before the Supreme Court on Oct. 31.

Consovoy was diagnosed with brain cancer two years ago and will step back from the SFFA case this month to receive treatment, according to CNN.

Consovoy, who has represent ed the anti-affirmative action group since it first sued Harvard in 2014, will be replaced at the Supreme Court by attorney Cam eron T. Norris, a partner at Conso voy’s legal firm, Consovoy McCar thy, according to CNN.

In a statement, SFFA President Edward J. Blum said the group “is saddened that Mr. Consovoy will not be able to represent our stu dents at the oral arguments at the Supreme Court.”

“He has been a source of en ergy, wisdom and knowledge for this litigation and we wish him a speedy recovery,” Blum wrote.

Students for Fair Admissions first sued Harvard in 2014, alleg ing the university discriminates against Asian American appli cants through its race-conscious admissions processes.

Following two court rulings in favor of the University, the group appealed to the Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case in January.

JOEY HUANG — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

HUA Discusses Safety, Accessibility

Fellow Explains WWII-Era Politics

Sandel Talks Globalization, Democracy

news

AROUND THE IVIES

Last week, the climate advocacy group Sunrise Movement relaunched on Brown University’s campus. Since their resurgence last week, the group has asked candidates for Provost to com mit to Brown’s environmental pledge. The group was also present in disrupting an ExxonMobil recruitment event held on Brown’s campus last week.

The Week in Pictures

The program Substance Use Prevention Educa tion and Recovery, S.U.P.E.R, has begun its first semester on Penn’s campus. Penn Public Health and Wellbeing will be overseeing the program, which is targeted at students in recovery, ab staining from substance use, or interested in learning more about harm reduction. The pro gram has employed a team of specialists to work with students.

Misrach Ewuntine, a member of Princeton’s Class of 2024, as found dead on campus near ly a week after her disappearance. Ewuntine was last seen in the early morning of Oct. 14 at Princeton’s Scully Hall dormitory, and was re ported missing Sunday evening. Police presence increased on Princeton’s campus Wednesday, and the search was expanded to include the use of helicopters, drones, and boats. The Mercer County prosecutor said her death does not ap pear to have been criminal in nature.

Jamie Petrone-Codrington, convicted in March of stealing over $40 million in computer equip ment from Yale University and failing to pay more than $6 million in taxes, was sentenced to nine years in prison last Thursday. A former top administrator at the Yale School of Medicine, Petrone-Codrington illegally resold MacBooks, iPads, and other electronic hardware she or dered in her professional capacity at Yale using departmental funds.

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

THE DAILY PENNSYLVANIAN

THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

THE YALE DAILY NEWS

BROWN

PENN

PRINCETON

YALE

UNIVERSITYHKSCOLLEGE

POLITICS PANEL. Government Professor Michael J. Sandel discussed the impact of finance-driven globalization on the United States and the world at a panel Tuesday evening.The event, organized by the Center for American Political Studies, focused on Sandel’s updated edition of his 1996 book titled “Democracy’s Discontent,” which analyzes how bipartisan sup port for a financialized economy has contributed to today’s political climate.

BY LEAH J. LOURENCO, JONAH C. KARAFIOL, AND LINDA ZHANG — CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

WAR DEPARTMENT. Belfer Center Fellow Grant H. Golub discussed the World War II-era expansion of the now-defunct U.S. Department of War during a virtual seminar on Thurs day. Golub, a Ph.D. candidate in International History at the London School of Economics, serves as an Ernest May Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs while he completes his dissertation on the War Department’s transformation into a key political player.

BY EMILY L. DING, JULIA A. MACIEJAK, AND MAKANAKA NYANDORO — CONTRIB UTING WRITERS

LAUNDRY PROJECT. The Harvard Undergraduate Associa tion discussed ongoing initiatives and reviewed funding for a campus-wide laundry accessibility project at its general meeting Sunday. The initiatives included HUA’s Blue Bikes sub sidy program and an upcoming Declaration Day event. HUA Co-President Travis Allen Johnson ’24 also presented campus safety concerns raised in town hall meetings held last week.

BY MERT GEYIKTEPE AND J. SELLERS HILL — CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

PLAY WITH CLAY. Harvard students join Allston residents in classes offered by the Har vard Ceramics Program. The program, located at Barry’s Corner, was founded in the 1970s and continues to offer beginner-level to advanced courses in scullture and pot tery making.

BY ADDISON Y. LIU

CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

HEAD TO HEAD. Harvard’s field hockey team

Delaware this past Sunday on

Field.

League Champion

team

victories against

Ivy League

DYLAN

GOODMAN

PHOTOGRAPHER

HARVARD CERAMICS PROGRAM BACK IN FULL SWING

What’s Next

U.K. GOVERNMENT IN DIS ARRAY AS PRIME MINISTER RESIGNS

Following the exit of key ministry officials, United Kingdom Prime Min ister Liz Truss resigned on Thursday amidst severe economic turmoil. After last month’s passage of a “mini-budget” that included sharp tax cuts crashed the British Pound, Truss’s government en tered a tailspin, leading the prime min ister to fire top treasury official Kwasi Kwarteng and forcing Home Secretary Suella Braverman to resign, The Guard ian reported on Wednesday. Truss’ ten ure lasted only six weeks — the shortest of any prime minister in UK history.

PUTIN IMPOSES MARTIAL LAW IN ILLEGALLY ANNEXED UKRAINIAN TERRITORY

Russian President Vladimir V. Putin declared martial law in the Ukrainian regions of Luhansk, Kherson, Zapor izhia, and Donetsk, which Russia illegally annexed in sham referenda last month. Putin’s declaration, issued Wednesday, gives Russian authorities the ability to seize property, enforce curfews, and detain residents in the occupied territories, per The New York Times. With tenuous control of the regions, however, it remains unclear whether Putin’s government will be able to enforce the new restrictions

TRUMP KNOWINGLY PUSHED FALSE VOTER FRAUD CLAIMS, DISTRICT COURT JUDGE SAYS

Former president Donald J. Trump knowingly provided false voter fraud numbers in federal court filings, wrote U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter. The court ruled that Trumpaligned attorney John Eastman must provide more than 30 documents to the House’s Jan. 6 Select Committee per taining to Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, the Washington Post reported Wednesday. Carter wrote that Trump signed a document under oath affirm ing the accuracy of alleged voter fraud numbers in Georgia that he knew were false.

Friday 10/21

PREMIER OF MIRA, MIRA: A COM ING-OF-AGE FAIRYTALE MUSICAL Agassiz Theater, 8 p.m.

An original sapphic coming-of-age musical, Mira, Mira, follows the story of a young girl in her ef forts to leave the place she’s always called home. Mira, Mira covers themes of love, resistance, and change. Entrance is free with HUID. Additional shows Sat., Oct. 22 at 2pm and 8pm.

Saturday 10/22

HEAD OF THE CHARLES

Charles River Rowing teams from across the country will con verge in Cambridge for the Head of the Charles Regatta. The Harvard Women’s and Men’s heavy weight rowing teams will both be competing to start off their fall seasons.

Sunday 10/23

IN SEARCH OF THOREAU’S FLOW ERS: AN EXPLORATION OF CHANGE AND LOSS

Harvard Museum of Natural History

Experience

Monday 10/24

A CONVERSATION WITH DAVID IG NATIUS AND DEVAL PATRICK

Harvard Institute of Politics, 6 p.m. - 7 p.m.

Hear from Washington Post foreign affairs columnist David R. Ignatius ’72 and former Mas sachusetts Governor Deval L. Patrick ’78 as they discuss the future of democracy in the United States and across the globe.

Tuesday 10/25

TIME MANAGEMENT FOR READ ING-HEAVY COURSES

Academic Resource Center, 12 p.m. - 1 p.m. Struggling with a heavy reading load? This work shop provides the tools needed to effectively manage a demanding class schedule through the use of time management strategies like pri oritization and intentional scheduling.

Wednesday 10/26

JOS CHARLES AND JANA PRIKRYL READING

Barker Center, 6 p.m. Attend a reading of the works of Greek poet Stra tis Haviaris by poets Jos Charles and Jana Prikryl. The event is open to all Harvard students, and at tendees will have the opportunity to learn about Haviaras’s work.

Thursday 10/27

HARVARD ART MUSEUMS AT NIGHT Harvard Art Museums, 5 p.m. - 9 p.m.

Explore Harvard’s art museums after dark and enjoy an evening of food and culture. Harvard is currently showcasing the special exhibitions of Fu nerary Portraits from Roman Egypt and Prints, and that of Drawings in the Age of Enlightenment. The Harvard Art Museums open for night visits on the last Thursday of each month.

Friday 10/28

PARK DAE SUNG, ARTIST TALK AND SYMPOSIUM

CGIS Tsai Auditorium, 1 p.m - 6 p.m

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artist Park Dae Sung as a

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CORY K. GORCZYCKI — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Students Stage ‘Die-In’ in Harvard Yard

tivists News Agency estimates that more than 230 people have been killed during demonstra tions.

Chanting “women, life, free dom” and lying in front of the John Harvard Statue, Harvard students staged a “diein” in solidarity with Iranian and Kurdish protesters on Thursday.

Around 40 protesters gath ered for chants and speeches out side University Hall, with some expressing disappointment at the lack of an official statement in support of Iranian and Kurd ish protests from University Pres ident Lawrence S. Bacow.

Protests erupted in Iran fol lowing the Sept. 16 death of 22-year-old Zhina Mahsa Ami ni in police custody after she al legedly broke the country’s rules on headscarves. Since protests began, Iran’s Human Rights Ac

“We have gathered today to stand in solidarity with the peo ple of Iran whose voices are being suppressed and lives are being put in danger while advocating for women, life and freedom,” said Ciara S. Moezidis, a Harvard Divinity School student who or ganized the protest. “It is import ant for all of us at Harvard to use our privilege to amplify the voices that are being silenced.”

Dalal Hassane ’26 also spoke at the protest to call for justice for Amini and other Kurdish people, a minority group in Iran that fac es deep-rooted discrimination, per Amnesty International.

“We are tired of being told that this is not a Kurdish struggle, that this is only about women’s rights,” Hassane said in her speech. “This resistance movement cannot be successful without the fight for Kurdish liberation.”

Saba Mehrzad ’25, who helped publicize the event to College stu

dents, said she hoped the demon stration would push the Universi ty to issue a response to the deaths and prwotests in Iran.

“Our main goal is to get Presi dent Bacow to release a statement in support and solidarity with the Iranian protesters,” Mehrzad said in an interview before the demon stration. “It’s a little disappointing that after weeks of protests, we haven’t had a statement.”

of the known victims.

“Showing physically that these people are being murdered and are losing their lives in defense of freedom is a powerful image,” said Miriam S. Israel, a Divinity School student who attended the protest.

This is Harvard’s second demonstration this fall in sup port of Iranian women and Kurd ish people. Undergraduates held a September protest on the steps of Widener Library which attract ed around 50 Harvard affiliates.

Elom Tettey-Tamaklo, a student at the Divinity School and a fresh man proctor, attended the protest hoping to call the University out on its lack of response.

Harvard spokesperson Jason A.Newton declined to comment on student criticisms of the Uni versity’s response.

During the die-in, organizers read off names and ages of some

“For me, it’s the silence of in stitutions like Harvard, who are supposed to be at the forefront of progressive thoughts and seek ing truth,” Tettey-Tamaklo said. “When issues like this come up in our world — great human rights abuses — the University is silent.”

Group Hosts Anti-Abortion Speaker Liz Cheney Speaks at

BY VIVI E. LU AND LEAH J. TEICHHOLTZ CRIMSON STAFF

Harvard Right to Life, a campus organization against abortion, hosted a speaker event with Stu dents for Life of America Presi dent Kristan Hawkins Thursday.

Around 50 people attend ed the event and a Q&A session, which were hosted in Harvard Hall as part of Hawkins’ 2022 campus speaking tour “Make Abortion Illegal Again.” The twomonth tour spans eight campus es, including Ohio State Universi ty, Clemson University, and Yale.

Protesters in support of abortion rights did not attend the event. Hawkins said she in creased her security due to social media posts suggesting student protest. She said she was “dis appointed” by the lack of atten dance from those opposed.

“That’s where you actually get a lot of change at that point, when you start having folks who have different opinions, learn what each other actually believes, and stop talking over each other or shouting,” Hawkins said.

Ava K. Pallotta ’25 — who or ganized a rally in support of abor tion rights in May following the leaked Roe opinion — said she did not know about the Right to Life event and would have planned a protest otherwise.

“I would have wanted to count er protest to try to make sure that people who are pro-choice on this campus felt seen and sup ported,” Pallotta said. “There is

a group on campus that does not support Kristan Hawkins and Harvard Right to Life and their beliefs.”

During the event, Hawkins discussed her anti-abortion be liefs and described the procedure as the “direct and intentional kill ing of a pre-born child.”

“When I say ‘make abortion il legal again,’ I’m speaking out of a place of true concern. Concern for the pre-born child who was vi olently killed in a direct abortion, as well as for her mother or his mother, who is paternalistically told that her empowerment and future success relies upon her willingness to subjugate another human being,” Hawkins said.

Hawkins’ tour comes in the wake of the Supreme Court’s land mark decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in June, which eliminated the federal constitutional right to abortion. Less than four months after the decision, 13 states have banned most abortions.

Even so, Hawkins said strik

ing down Roe “wasn’t a total vic tory” for the movement against abortion because the Supreme Court only returned the issue to the states.

“We would like to see the Su preme Court uphold laws that outlaw abortion. We can’t wait to get to a point where we have a fed eral protection measure in place, a ‘Life at Conception Act’, then moving on to a federal amend ment to our Constitution,” Haw kins said. “That’s been our mis sion from the beginning.”

Meanwhile, Pallotta said she hopes pro-abortion rights activ ism goes beyond merely reacting to the anti-abortion movement.

“For me, it feels much more about, ‘What can I do to help make people feel seen and help protect abortion access?’ and less about, ‘What are pro-lifers doing and how can I counter that?’” she said.

BY MILES J. HERSZENHORN CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

United States Representative Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said the House’s January 6 Select Committee will issue a subpoena to former Pres ident Donald J. Trump “shortly,” during remarks at a Harvard In stitute of Politics forum Tuesday. The Jan. 6 committee voted unan imously to subpoena Trump for documents and testimony under oath during its final public hear ing on Thursday.

“There was no disagreement on the committee,” Cheney said during the forum. “We all felt that our obligation is to seek his testi mony, that the American people deserve to hear directly from him, that it has to be under oath, that he has to be held accountable.”

Cheney said she is operating under the assumption that Trump will “fulfill his legal obligation and honor the subpoena.”

“If that doesn’t happen, then we will take the steps we need to take after that,” she added. “But I don’t want to go too far down that path at this point.”

The event, which was moder ated by former Wyoming Gover nor Matthew H. Mead and Han nah A. Bottarel ’24, also covered the future of the Republican Par ty and the United States’ respon sibility to continue supporting Ukraine in its defense against Russia’s invasion. Cheney said the current internal conflicts among members of the Republican Par ty are “not about policy disagree ments,” but about values.

“The reason that I’m a Repub lican is because of what the party stands for,” Cheney said. “I happen to believe the most conservative of conservative principles is fidelity to the Constitution.”

“We have to get back to recog nizing we all have an obligation to defend the foundations, the Re public,” she added. “That’s what provides the basis for the dis agreements about policy.”

With the 2024 presidential election just over two years away, Cheney warned against voters electing Trump to a second term.

“I think it’s very important for the survival of the country that Donald Trump not be anywhere close to power again,” she said.

“That’s something we need to keep in the forefront as we go forward.” Cheney drew on examples from the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol to argue that individual citizens can play a crucial role in protecting democracy.

“One of the things that I hope the committee has been able to do is make clear that our institutions

Forum

don’t defend themselves,” she said. “January 6 could have been far worse if people in positions of authority hadn’t stood up.” Cheney advocated for the gov ernment to continue providing support for Ukraine as it fights against the full-scale invasion Russia launched in February. She also criticized House Minority Leader Kevin O. McCarthy for tell ing Punchbowl News that Ameri can aid for Ukraine might not be approved in a Republican-con trolled House of Representatives.

“I don’t know that I can say I was surprised, but I think it’s real ly disgraceful that today, Minority Leader McCarthy suggested that if the Republicans get the majori ty back that we will not continue to provide support for the Ukrai nians,” Cheney said.

“Ukraine is the frontline in the battle for freedom, and the world — not just America, but the world — has an obligation to make sure that Ukraine prevails,” she added.

vivi.lu@thecrimson.com

miles.herszenhorn@thecrimson.com

Liz Cheney speaks

J.

PHOTOGRAPHER

Protestors

Harvard

Thursday in solidarity with Iranian and Kurdish protesters.

QU — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Students

ella.jones@thecrimson.com

Ciara S. Moezidis Divinity School Student

silenced.

service careers offer an alterna tive way to make use of a SEAS ed ucation.

SEAS offers several public service engineering opportuni ties, including a required course that asks students to work on a team-based project to address re al-world problems for clients. In the class, Engineering Sciences 96: “Engineering Problem Solv ing and Design Project,” many students conduct humanitarian work.

As with corporate job hunts, student organizations often serve as a starting point for landing public service employment, ac cording to some students.

Engineers Without Borders, one of Harvard’s most popu lar socially oriented engineer ing student organizations, has helped direct many engineering students to humanitarian work around the globe.

Yasmine Omri ’24, the orga nization’s co-president, said she was drawn to nonprofit engineer ing work by the opportunity to “build things that change lives.”

EWB’s work with internation al stakeholders emphasizes sus tainability and partnership, Omri said.

“We don’t do work for the com munities — we really try to listen to their needs,” she said. “And an other big emphasis is to make sure that all the materials are sourced locally and that the skills are also developed locally.”

“You also get to learn a lot about other cultures,” she added. “You really widen your perspec tive.”

Omri said EWB receives “a lot” of funding and advising support from SEAS, and Seaver, the oth er co-president, also said it ben efits from being “so well funded” by the school and “well respect ed” among faculty with a strong support system.

Students are also able to con nect with public service initia tives outside of SEAS, such as the Phillips Brooks House Associa tion, the Mindich Service Fellow ship, and the Harvard Kennedy School Social Innovation Fellow ship.

Schoen, the Breaktime found er, said the HKS Fellowship ad vanced his nonprofit startup.

“What I was doing was a bit atypical because, even for other folks who are starting up compa nies, many of them are for-profit, many of them are focused in the sciences and engineering — they weren’t focused in human ser vices,” he said.

“A lot of what I was doing re quired a lot of support from oth er parts of the university — for example, the Cheng Social In novation Fellowship at Harvard Kennedy School, which was ab solutely life-changing for me,” he added.

SEAS itself is “receptive and open” to non-industry engineer ing, according to Alexander G. Dyer ’24, who co-led an EWB project in Kenya with fellow SEAS classmate McKnight.=

Suvai Gunasekaran ’13, who was involved with EWB for her entire time as an undergradu ate, credits her exposure to pub lic service work through the or

The

ganization with giving her the “hands-on” nonprofit engineer ing experience to launch her ca reer.

She later became vice presi dent of engineering for a fellow EWB member’s water nonprofit, SPOUTS of Water, where she de signed ceramic water filters for a factory in Uganda.

‘Harder to come by’ But even with these curricular and extracurricular offerings, students interested in public ser vice are often left to “pioneer their own paths,” said Lombardo, the associate DUS.

to

before,” Seaver said.

Dyer, an EWB participant, pointed out the difference be tween providing exposure to non profit employment and actively encouraging students to pursue that path, saying the school could do more to champion opportuni ties for public service work.

“I think commitment implies a level of forwarding, a kind of pushing,” he said. “I don’t really know how much there is.”

Other students and alumni ex pressed similar desires for addi tional school and faculty support.

Robert D. Newman ’23, co-president of the Harvard Undergraduate Clean Energy Group, said humanitarian proj ects are often less structured and therefore require more “startup effort” by students.

“I’d say, one of the biggest problems is that usually these projects are driven by a few really passionate individuals, and when they leave, these projects kind of die off,” he said. “For new ones to be brought forth, it requires a lot of startup effort by students.”

of

Outside of public service clubs, “individual opportunities are harder to come by,” according to Seaver.

Omri described the low num ber of students in nonprofit engi neering as a “cycle” perpetuated by a lack of early awareness.

“We don’t have that many op portunities for public service, so people don’t hear about them ear ly on, and then after that, they’re really focused on this industry side,” she said.

Seaver suggested that the school could better advertise public sector opportunities, add ing that such a move could help entice students who have nev er before considered nonprofit work.

“Advertising those opportu nities more would be super ben eficial, not only to students who know they’re interested in that, but perhaps students who are not even aware of those opportuni ties and haven’t ever considered it

Similarly, Gunasekaran said that, at Harvard, the EWB chap ter “had enough to survive and do well, but it definitely wasn’t a big focus of people in the engineer ing field.”

“There was never any push back, but there was also never any encouragement for it,” Gu nasekaran said. “I was just doing my own thing without any faculty involvement.”

In an emailed statement, SEAS spokesperson Paul Karoff wrote that the school seeks to provide an array of public service oppor tunities to students.

“Through curricular and co-curricular offerings, SEAS is committed to providing stu dents with opportunities to ex plore internship and career op tions across the many sectors in which the skills of engineers and applied scientists are in high de mand — industry, academia, non profits/NGOs, and government,” he wrote.

Lombardo suggested Harvard could potentially allocate addi tional resources to nonprofit en deavors that would benefit engi neering students who want to do public service work.

“That could be a strong bene fit for those students who have in terests in combining STEM with a social justice or nonprofit pur pose,” he said.

Further support for nonprofit opportunities could be achieved by encouraging collaboration among administrators and facul ty across the University, he add ed.

“I think any sufficiently im portant, tangible, hard problem is never going to be solved by a single discipline or group,” Lom bardo said.

“We’ve got the top research ers, we have access to the top practitioners on this campus and in our networks. Why can’t we bring that together to make a sig nificant impact?”

Major Memorial Hall Renovation Nears Finish

scaffolding has surrounded the hall’s exterior. Until earlier this month, students had to navigate through a wood panel tunnel to exit the dining hall.

BY MICHELLE N. AMPONSAH AND ERIKA K. CHUNG CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Harvard freshmen usual ly look forward to eat ing and socializing in the College’s grand Annenberg Hall, which features a decorative vaulted ceiling supported by de tailed wooden trusses.

But the members of the class of 2026 have yet to see Annen berg’s famed interior in its full glory.

Memorial Hall, the complex that includes Annenberg Hall and Sanders Theatre, has been under renovation since 2020.

Now in the last phase of the proj ect, Harvard is replacing the

148-year-old slate and copper roof above Annenberg, marking the first major renovation to the hall since 1995.

The first phase of renovations involved the replacement of the roof and rain leaders over Sand ers Theatre. In the second phase, the University replaced the roof

over Memorial Transept, the hall connecting Sanders to An nenberg. The transept’s mason ry and window trimmings were also refurbished.

Since the final phase began this summer, white tarp has ob scured Annenberg’s vaulted ceiling, and a skeleton of metal

Memorial Hall Complex Di rector Raymond Traietti wrote in an email that the construction should wrap up before the end of the fall semester, though fresh men will not be able to see the hall’s ceiling until the spring.

“The roof project is wrapping up over the next 4 weeks,” Trai etti wrote. “Then, the final step will be to remove the dust netting that is up inside the hall, which will be done in late December.”

The project’s planning team was assembled by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and includes members from the FAS Depart ment of Physical Resources and Planning.

Cambridge architectural firm Perry and Radford was hired to complete the project with over sight by LeMessurier Consul tants.

According to Traietti, origi

nal materials will be used during the renovation whenever pos sible to closely follow the roof’s original design.

Asked if the renovations had made it more difficult to social ize over meals in Annenberg, freshmen reported that they felt the construction had a minimal impact.

“It makes it a little less aes thetically pleasing, but other than that, it doesn’t really make a big difference,” Jordan S. Walli can-Okyere ’26 said.

Staff and students said the construction, while noisy, has not been a nuisance.

“I picked up a couple morn ing shifts a couple weeks ago, and I could hear workmen ham mering on the roof, but it was not for too long, and it was not too loud,” said Patrick A. King, a Har vard University Dining Services worker.

Blake J. Bernhardt ’26, who lives in Canaday Hall across Ox ford Street, said that about once a week, he would “get woken up

at 8 a.m. by the workers on the roof.”

Staff expressed confusion about the timeline of the project, saying they understood renova tions would be completed by the fall semester.

“I thought it was just going to be a summer job, but it stretched into the school year,” Vera said.

Traietti wrote in an email that the project was originally sched uled to span throughout the summer and fall.

“Construction is currently ahead of schedule, as the orig inal plan was to work through mid-November with the interior debris netting to be removed at the conclusion of the fall term,” he wrote.

As the project approaches its close, HUDS staff remain opti mistic that the hall’s ceiling will be revealed soon, King said.

“Whenever we get a chance, people will try to look on the roof and say ‘it’s beautiful,’” he said.

“And they’re hoping that it will be completed soon.”

MEMORIAL HALL

A white tarp lines the ceiling of Annenberg Hall while the roof undergoes renovation. IAN C. HUA — CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

JULIAN J. GIORDANO — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

JULIAN J. GIORDANO — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

JULIAN J.

CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

felicia.he@thecrimson.com

Yasmine

don’t have that many opportunities for public service.

John Green Talks Climate Change at Memorial Church

the invitation to join the lecture series was “too great of an oppor tunity to pass up.”

BY ROHAN RAJEEV CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Students lined up across Tercentenary Theatre on Friday evening to hear best-selling author John Green talk about the end of the world.

Friday’s event kicked off Me morial Church’s 2022-2023 Wil liam Belden Noble Lecture se ries, which will center on the climate crisis.

The lecture series was fo un ded in 1898 by Nannie Yulee No ble in honor of her husband, who graduated from Harvard College in 1885.

Matthew Potts hosted the event, marking his first time leading the annual lecture series since he was appointed Pusey Minister of Memorial Church in the spring of 2021.

Green is the author of “The Fault in our Stars” and other young adult best-selling novels. He also founded widely popular YouTube channels, including ed ucational series “Crash Course,” with his brother.

In his latest work “The An thropocene Reviewed,” Green published a collection of his es says discussing the influence of human activity on the planet.

In an interview, Green said

“It’s a huge privilege to be able to come to Harvard and talk with and learn from an extraordinary student body,” he said.

Green opened the speech by addressing what makes the cur rent climate crisis and the threat it poses to humans unique.

“We’re not the first species to become so powerful on Earth that we muck up the climate and threaten the planet’s biodiversi ty by altering its atmosphere,” he said. “But we’re the first species to know what we’re doing while we do it.”

Green added that a slow re sponse to the climate could re sult in “a generations-long de cline in the planet’s habitability by humans” — a scenario he de scribed as “worse than a mere apocalypse.”

He said such a potential drop in habitability would be “a de cline that harms first and dis proportionately the most mar ginalized people, the most impoverished and vulnerable, who are of course also the people least responsible for global car bon emissions.”

Green explained that religion offers him a way to weather a fu ture ripe with uncertainty and potential despair.

“What I need to know is what to do with this surreal miracle of consciousness, how to live and grieve and hope in a world where everything we’re certain of will

end, and for me the life of Jesus and the disciples offers a path,” he said.

Chinyere S. Obasi ’24, who at tended the talk, asked Green how artists, writers, and creators could respond to the words of Je sus in a Q&A session following the lecture.

“I am deeply and pleasantly surprised both by how theologi cal he was willing to be and how hopeful he is — how hopeful he is on our behalf and for himself. It’s a truly magical thing to watch,” Obasi said.

Elizabeth Propst, a ministry intern at Memorial Church, said the church is focusing on the im portant, yet often ignored, as

pects of dealing with the climate crisis.

“The church is trying to lead people in thinking — spiritually and just like in terms of mental health and emotional resilience — how are we as a species going to get through this?” she said. Green ended the lecture on a hopeful note, assuring attendees that despite the harm human ac tivity has caused, humans merit preservation in the face of the cli mate crisis.

“I want you to believe that we’re worth it,” Green conclud ed, adding that “the human ca pacity for love is astonishing.”

rohan.rajeev@thecrimson.com

HundredsFlockto HackHarvardEvent

BY LAASYA N. CHIDURUPPA, MATTIE A. HUNG, AND JO B. LEMANN CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Hundreds of college students from around the world gath ered at the Student Organiza tion Center at Hilles this weekend to participate in HackHarvard, Harvard’s largest international hackathon.

This year was HackHarvard’s first in person hackathon in three years. Under the theme “Ctrl, Alt, Create,” the event invited partic ipants to submit coding projects that aim to solve problems across a range of categories, such as edu cation, entertainment, and block chain.

Nathan J. Li ’25, one of the stu dent organizers who planned the event, said the theme was cho sen as a spin on the common key board shortcut “Control-Alt-De lete”.

“We liked the idea of learning from the past,” Li said. “And add ing new life to old ideas — like us ing the hackathon as an oppor tunity to revive projects that you maybe didn’t have time for in the previous years.”

For many, the competition provided an opportunity for col laboration after two years of iso lation. Thomas Kwiatowski, an experienced programmer who served as an open resource for teams during the event, said he felt this hackathon differed from past years by allowing attendees to connect in person.

“I’ve met people I’ve never thought I would meet and their willingness to go the extra mile to teach me their ways of thinking is probably the most considerable thing that I’ve ever experienced,” he said.

The HackHarvard organizers also acknowledged a difference between this year and the last in-person iteration of the event in 2019, noting that underclassmen played a much more significant role than before.

“Our team is basically entirely made up of freshmen and sopho mores,” Li said. “So it’s a very ex

citing time, where we have a lot of freedom to decide how to run HackHarvard, and we’re discov ering a lot of things along the way.”

Michael Dacanay, a compet itor from North Carolina State University, said the in-person nature of this year’s hackathon made the event more accessible to participants. He said virtual programming often features de lays and confusion.

“You can get to know each oth er, collaborate,” Decanay said of the in-person competition. “Also, the mentors are easier to ask for help.”

Yuhong, a student from New York whose team was competing for prizes in the “Most Funny” and “Most Useless” categories, said he enjoyed the in-person hackathon because it allowed him to see ev eryone else’s projects. Yuhong’s team created a weather appli cation that would display slang words instead of traditional tem perature readings.

“I’m really excited to see what everyone has created,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of cool ideas — someone is doing VR, someone’s doing image processing, tracking your hand as you move — so it all seems really cool.”

At the end of the program on Sunday, the HackHarvard judg es awarded prizes to the top proj ects. This year’s overall winning project was Empath.ly, a vid eo conference app analyzing the emotions of users. The second place project, We Are Sus Drones, uses drones to measure carbon offset and water quality. Sense Sight, which came in third place, describes landscapes to visually impaired users.

Ultimately, as it came time to pack away sleeping bags and say goodbyes, many, like partici pant Justin Ventura, left with new friends and new skills.

“It was memorable, mostly because when I first came here, I kind of just assumed it was going to be super focused on the proj ect, but it ended up being more like an experience of getting to know a bunch of other people,” said Ventura.

Harvard and MIT Students Protest ExxonMobil Recruitment Event

BY CARRIE HSU AND CHRISTIE K. CHOI CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Roughly 30 Harvard and MIT stu dents interrupted an ExxonMo bil recruiting event at MIT last Wednesday in protest against big oil companies’ contributions to climate change.

The event — held at MIT’s Earth and Planetary Department — aimed to introduce students to internship and employment op portunities at the company.

Following a similar disruption at Brown earlier this month, cli mate activists from Harvard and MIT held up posters, chanted, and gave speeches, decrying what they see as ExxonMobil’s corrup tion.

Andrew K. Chu ’26, a mem ber of Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard,

said he and about 30 other pro testers physically blocked the re cruitment presentation to halt the event.

ExxonMobil did not respond to a request for comment.

Saman de Silva ’26, who sang at the event, said the goal of the disruption was to send big oil companies a message that they “do not have a place on campus.”

MIT student Lyne-Nicole A. Odhiambo said educational insti tutions, like MIT, contradict their missions by inviting companies like ExxonMobil onto their cam puses.

“Universities should not be lending our legitimacy to these kinds of companies, let alone in viting them to prey on our stu dents’ talents,” Odhiambo said.

Welcoming companies like ExxonMobil on campus is syn onymous with “condoning” the

work of these companies, Chu said.

Harvard spokesperson Jason A.Newton declined to comment on the protest. MIT spokespeople did not respond to a request for comment.

Lyne-Nicole A. Odhiambo

Sanaa M. Kahloon ’25, who gave a speech at the event, said big oil companies like Exxon have contributed to current disasters, such as the flooding in Pakistan.

“The connection there was that Exxon and similar compa

HKS Saw Drop in Black, Latinx U.S. Students

demonstrates the Kennedy School must change its strategy when it comes to recruiting a di verse group of students and fac ulty.

“The same approaches in the past are not going to work in the future, if we are to take serious ly the fact that our faculty does not come close to reflecting the demographics of the coun try we live in and the expertise, both lived and professional, that comes with those demograph ics,” he said.

In a statement to The Crim son, HKS Dean Douglas W. El mendorf wrote that the Kennedy School is “continuing to pursue strategies to increase the diversi ty of the HKS community, as has occurred over the past few years.”

“Fostering a diverse and wel coming community is essential

to our mission because recruiting and empowering the best people makes us better at what we do, because we learn more from peo ple with different perspectives, and because we work in diverse groups and serve diverse societ ies,” Elmendorf wrote in an email to HKS affiliates Thursday.

Muhammad said the Kennedy School’s lack of a single tenured faculty member of Native back ground is “a glaring problem” given the increasing amount of work done in the field of Native American and Indigenous Stud ies.

“There isn’t, best I can tell, a sense of urgency about this,” he said of efforts to increase diversi ty in the HKS faculty. “And that’s going to have to change.”

nies actively harm Harvard and MIT students and their commu nities,” she said. “And that it’s un acceptable for Exxon to be re cruiting the same students that it’s harming.”

“Recruitment is just a symp tom of a broader problem that our universities have and a cul pability that universities have in continuing the climate crisis,” Kahloon added.

Following the disruption, the ExxonMobil recruiters stopped their presentation and left.

Alexia G. Leclercq, a student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education who attended the pro test, described the disruption as “successful” and said she was glad the recruiters were able to hear the beginning of the speeches.

“It’s one of the strategies as part of our ongoing goal again for Harvard to cut all ties with the fos

sil fuel industry,” she said. de Silva said she believes Exx onMobil uses recruitment events to rebrand its image in a dishon est way.

big oil lies.”

Chu said he believes oil com panies like ExxonMobil are trying to “profit from the destruction of our future.”

“They believe they can contin ue to exploit the environment and contribute to environmental de struction, get away with it, and al low that sort of narrative to prop agate on campus,” Chu said.

Michael R. Waxman ’25 said he participated in the protest be cause he hopes to see universities give a “pedestal” to companies that will contribute to a more sus tainable future.

“When Exxon comes on cam pus and says they’re recruiting students so that they can change their brand, they’ve had countless opportunities to do so. And yet they still lobbied for protections against renewable energy transi tions,” he said. “We have to own up to the fact that Exxon lies and

“There’s so many young, tal ented people who can contribute to a more sustainable world, and that is not going to happen at Exx on,” Waxman said.

carrie.hsu@thecrimson.com christie.choi@thecrimson.com

Breyer Speaks at Harvard IOP Forum

Breyer was asked about the dis senting opinion he authored in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson that ended constitutional protec tions for abortion over the sum mer.

Breyer said the dissent was “more emotional than most,” but declined to elaborate about what took place behind the scenes among justices.

“It goes in great lengths into why it is a mistake, under the law, to depart from 50 years of precedent,” he said of the dis sent, which was co-signed by Justices Sonia M. Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

Breyer avoided questions about some hot-button issues and his views about justices who are still on the bench, often speaking in hypothetical terms to characterize legal thinkers who disagree with him.

“To ask me about the ap

pointments and the confirma tion process is like asking for the recipe for chicken à la king from the point of view of the chicken,” he said.

Asked by moderator Nan cy R. Gibbs if Chief Justice John G.Roberts ’76 has failed at pre serving the legitimacy of the court, Breyer said: “No, because we don’t know what will hap pen.”

“We’ve gone through a lot of difficult periods, and despite the difficulties, the country has emerged,” he said.

“So naturally, I think it will emerge,” he added.

“What I’ve seen for the last 30 years — and more than that, really, because it’s true with the First Circuit, too — this docu ment does help to hold people together,” he said, waving a copy of the U.S. Constitution.

Breyer was asked by an audi

ence member about the person al dynamics between justices on the bench.

“Personally, people get on,” he said.

He reflected fondly on his time serving with now-retired Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and David Souter.

“I’m not saying I didn’t like it afterwards, but we sort of meshed,” he said.

“But everybody got on with everybody.”

Gibbs, the director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center, asked Brey er about legal challenges fac ing former President Donald J. Trump.

“If you want me to talk about the Mar-a-Lago case, I’ll tell you, no, I am not going to talk about the Mar-a-Lago case,” he said.

“A girl can dream,” she re plied.

John Green speaks at Harvard’s Memorial Church on Friday evening. BEN Y. CAMMARATA — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

LAST FRIDAY, author John Green discussed the threat of the current climate change.

Universities should not be lending our legitimacy to these kinds of companies

“

‘HKS’ FROM

Sanaa M. Kahloon

It’s unacceptable for Exxon to be recruiting the same students it’s harming.

“

The News Isn’t Objective

BY MANUEL A. YEPPES

Afew weeks back, The Crimson held its first News-Ed itorial social in recent memory. I bring this up not to reminisce on the bacchanalia that may or may not have ensued, but rather to point out the sig nificance of the event, the announce ment of which brought with it joking cries to “tear down this wall.” The rea son for this reaction was not a belated response to the death of Mikhail Gor bachev, but rather a wisecrack meant to poke fun at the institutional norm that defines the daily activities of The Crimson: the News-Editorial wall.

This (non-physical) wall separates the personnel and work of the News Board — which is devoted to objective, unbiased journalism — and the Edi torial Board, which opines on topics. This strict separation is one of many structures put in place to ensure that The Crimson remains an objective source of news for the general public.

But, if not torn down outright, the wall and the goal of objective journal ism it exists to attain needs to be recon sidered.Firstly, objective journalism is impossible to begin with.

The Crimson, when deciding what news to cover, inherently makes a deci sion about what information is news worthy. For example, this newspaper’s extensive coverage of the sexual ha rassment allegations and subsequent investigation against Professor John L. Comaroff reflects its judgment that abuses of power are so important to expose that every twist and turn of the situation merits coverage. This is un controversial in this case, but it is still an implicit value judgment.The reason news organizations can never be tru ly objective is because their purpose is not just to give information to the pub lic, but to construct a narrative that shows why it matters. Former Crim son editor and “father of modern jour nalism” Walter Lippmann ’10 wrote

that “The function of news is to signal ize an event, the function of truth is to bring to light the hidden facts, to set them into relation with each other, and make a picture of reality on which men can act.” In constructing these narra tives, news organizations are inher ently making judgments about what sort of narrative is useful to the public.

That truly objective journalism is an unattainable ideal is not a unique claim, though. Many believe that even if newspapers will never be unbiased, objectivity remains an ideal worth seeking. Yet objectivity is still a flawed goal.In pursuit of objectivity, journal ists follow a set of industry norms built up over time that defines what is news worthy. As Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at NYU, put it, newsworthi ness becomes like “a machine that no body remembers how it was built.” In so refusing to make a conscious, agen tial decision about what constitutes newsworthiness, newspapers attempt to absolve themselves of responsibility and give readers the false impression that they are merely showing them re ality.But newspapers aren’t ethere al mirrors that offer, to quote Rosen, a “view from nowhere.” Like it or not, they play an active role in society, and failure to recognize that leads them to have problematic effects on the very news they report.

Take the Trump presidency. When ever mainstream organizations re ported on an outrageous, bombastic action by Trump, they were relying on the implicit judgment that a bombas tic president was newsworthy. In do ing so, they incentivized Trump to con tinue acting this way to dominate the news cycle. But did it have to be that way? As Ezra Klein has wondered on his podcast, what if the bar for cover ing Trump was that he had to “produce policy plans and say something worth covering as opposed to acting like an insult comic dog”?In 1976, economist Robert Lucas published a paper that later became known as the Lucas cri tique. The idea was as follows: If eco nomic models rely on the optimal

actions of agents and the policy rec ommendations that they make inevi tably change the economic structure and therefore agents’ optimal actions, then the recommendation itself be comes invalid. From then on, actors like the Fed needed to anticipate how the public would react to their actions in order to properly administer policy.

News organizations should do the same. In some sense, to pursue ob jectivity at all, they must be self-con scious of their non-objective role in so ciety.Where do these critiques leave journalism? At first, it seems like the only alternative to objectivity is sub jectivity. But journalism can retain its mission of creating informed, active members of society without attempt ing to be objective in the strictly-de fined present sense. After Paris was liberated during WWII, Albert Camus advanced a new view on the ideal role of news organiza tions with his newly-founded newspa per, Combat. Camus argued that news papers should embrace the fact that they need to make critical judgments to construct effective narratives. This “critical journalism” would then en able citizens to participate in society by making informed judgments. Most importantly, newspapers should be completely transparent about their critical mission.

Newspapers today should heed Camus and Lucas. It’s impossible for them to avoid making value judg ments about the stories they publish. Instead, they should make concrete what their priorities are (Democra cy? Civil Rights?), publicly acknowl edge these priorities, and be honest with themselves about the role they play in the narrative. This is the only way that news organizations can fulfill their true purpose, to provide citizens with the information necessary to be come active and productive members of society.

COLUMN

Harvard’s Next President Must Address the Free Speech Problem

BY JACON M. MILLER

As University President Lawrence S. Bacow (colloquially known as Larry) announced his intent to step down from his position this summer, I could not stop think ing about another Larry who re signed from Harvard’s presiden cy not too long ago.

Former University Presi dent Lawrence H. Summers, a provocative economist known to not sugar-coat his beliefs, ended his tumultuous term in 2006, his already-tense rela tionships with some faculty strained after delivering con troversial remarks at an eco nomics conference a year prior.

Summers’ departure, which occurred before the term “can cel culture” entered our collec tive vocabulary, foreshadowed a dark trend for academic free dom.

prise, given Harvard’s high-pro file treatment of Summers, which made national headlines and might as well have proclaimed to the world that Harvard would no longer tolerate diverse academic speech.

While hate speech should be policed, Harvard must allow conservative speech on campus without the hostility conserva tive professors report facing.

A speech like Summers’, laud ed by many economists — in cluding Lee Professor of Eco nomics Claudia Goldin, who studies women’s academic and professional progress at Harvard — found valuable, is not worthy of censoring.

Promoting ideological di versity and an open exchange

“ STAFF EDITORIAL

Get in Loser, We’re Going to (Tele)therapy!

In a timely development for the upcoming Bostonian winter, which will likely feature not only the city’s characteristic strong winds but also a high potential for seasonal affec tive disorder, Harvard’s Coun seling and Mental Health Services department has launched a new slate of mental health resources. Among them is a telehealth therapy service called TimelyCare, which aims to pro vide students with “short-term, solu tion-focused therapy.” This expansion of campus therapy services, combined with a new mental health awareness campaign titled “We Are All Human,” is a welcome change as we grapple with midterms and prepare for the challenges of the upcoming season. We had hoped Harvard would take action to address the mental health crisis on campus sooner, given the stark findings of a 2020 report of the Task Force on Managing Student Men tal Health as well as years of advoca cy by students, including this Editori al Board. In the absence of adequate administrative support — this past March, for example, appointments with CAMHS came with up to six weeks of wait time — many peer-led organizations on campus have been working tirelessly to provide mental health resources. We applaud these organizations for leading the conver sations surrounding mental health on campus, and we hope that Harvard’s new resources, although coming lat er than we would prefer, can help ease the burden on our fellow students.

The privilege of having access to such resources during a global men tal health crisis, as well as a national shortage of mental health service pro viders, is not lost on us. Mental health issues are not exclusive to Harvard; nor are they exclusively caused by Har vard. We recognize the privilege that comes with being able to claim greater access to therapy services in the midst of a widespread drought.

However, we hold some reserva tions about the new campus initia tives. The prescription of an online module as a means to improve the mental health of already-overworked students, who must juggle academic and external responsibilities in addi tion to maintaining their well-being, seems overly optimistic. More gener

ally, Harvard should ensure that its mental health resource offerings are accessible and inclusive. The more barriers that can be removed with re gard to mental health care, including long wait times and limited cultural sensitivity, the more useful these new resources will be for the student body.

Grappling with the scope of the mental health crisis on campus also requires us to look beyond current pol icies in place and toward more quotidi an aspects of campus life. For instance, extending mealtime hours in dining halls may prove beneficial to students, as it will help students struggling with eating disorders to establish a com fortable mealtime routine and also promote greater nutritional intake among students more generally. How ever, heeding this suggestion will also require Harvard to consider the addi tional burdens it may place on HUDS workers and to compensate them ac cordingly.

Still, changing the culture sur rounding mental health at Harvard requires us to look beyond dining dy namics and House life. Academic dis course at Harvard does not happen in a vacuum; the quality of the discus sions we are able to have depends on our well-being, and in turn, the peda gogical and academic practices we en gage in also impact our mental health. Therefore, Harvard’s faculty train ing should not only emphasize fac ulty competency in teaching but also faculty competency in treating stu dents with compassion, especially stu dents that may be experiencing men tal health crises.

Above all, we know that the wors ening of mental health writ large is not a Harvard-specific issue. No one poli cy — not telehealth, but also not magi cally getting everyone to do high-qual ity therapy — would immediately fix a mental health crisis of this severity and scope. Harvard’s recent initiatives are a welcome start; but at some point, barring a sudden reversal in rising de pression rates, we must also have soci etal conversations about what exactly has triggered this broad, internation al malaise.

Summers became the object of faculty ire after hypothesizing about the lack of women in highend STEM positions.

In unofficial remarks before the National Bureau of Econom ic Research, he posited three po tential reasons women are un derrepresented in top scientific positions, including “different availability of aptitude at the high end,” a theory that was informed by a scientific study and statisti cal calculation.

Summers was greatly criti cized by faculty and internation al media for these remarks, cul minating in a lost no-confidence Faculty vote; upon a motion to face a second no-confidence vote around a year later, Summers would resign. Although some of Summers’s critics offered a sub stantive rebuke of his remarks, others railed against his speech without articulating an intellec tual counterargument, walking out of the room to avoid hearing his reasoning.

Since the departure of Sum mers, other professors have expe rienced similar attempts to reign in their voices.

Dr. Carol Hooven, who stud ies sex differences, publicly suf fered her colleague’s wrath when she discussed the difference be tween biological sexes and crit icized the use of the term “preg nant people.”

While hate speech should be policed, Harvard must allow conservative speech on campus without the hostility conservative

of ideas is a prerequisite for the pursuit of truth that Harvard so seeks. Progress is inhibited when norm-questioning perspectives are silenced. Shutting thinkers down over their academic work is dangerous.

Events like the pressure cam paign that ousted Summers from office have a chilling effect on ac ademics. University faculty saw Summers turned into a pariah at the hands of people who crit icized his remarks, not on their merits, but because they were judged misogynistic.

They saw the mob prevail against Summers’ defenders, who invoked John Stuart Mill’s “On Liberty” during the debate preceding the faculty vote. Facul ty learned not to question prevail ing orthodoxies. Veritas went out the window.

As one Larry prepares to leave Massachusetts Hall, the memory of a different Larry must be top of mind for the presidential search committee. The only way to rec tify the chilling effect wrought by Summers’ exit is to select a pres ident who prizes academic free expression, and is willing to sig nal that Summers’ ousting was wrong for a prestigious institu tion like Harvard.

House life, similarly, occupies a siz able place in the daily experiences of the average Harvard student; Houses function as both places of residence as well as sources of immediate com munity. Indeed, the existence of tu tors with identity or experience-based roles — including BGLTQ, interna tional, and religion/spirituality tutors — in the majority of Houses confirms the function of Houses as communi ties with people to whom students can turn for support. As Harvard ex pands its mental health offerings, it is worth considering the addition of res ident therapists or mental health pro fessionals within each House. Res ident-centric programming, such as group therapy sessions and oth er collaborative mental health activi ties, could improve students’ access to mental health services on campus and further strengthen House communi ties.

We hope that we can soon ap proach mental wellness as a normal and necessary aspect of living, much like annual physical health check-ups, and expand access to mental health services even for individuals who are not in immediate crisis or experienc ing long-term disorders. As updates to CAMHS merge with years of stu dent advocacy, we are also newly en couraged in our ability to approach this broad issue: Let’s use the resourc es at our disposal, and continue to talk about mental health with one another, doing what we can to change the cul ture surrounding mental health on campus so that our cumulative efforts make a real difference in the lives of all those who we hold dear.

—This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Ed itorial Board. It is the product of dis cussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the im partiality 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.

Harvard psychology profes sor Steven Pinker also encoun tered mob fury for years-old tweets that linked to New York Times and Washington Post arti cles about racism and police bru tality.

More recently, Professor Jon athan Haidt, a prominent social psychologist who researches the psychology underpinning peo ple’s moral beliefs, resigned from his post at NYU after being told he was only allowed to publish re search that advances “equity, in clusion, and anti-racism goals.”

Alone, these events are tragic incidents in which an academic fell into trouble for his or her re search on controversial social is sues. Together, they represent a disturbing pattern of social cen sorship.

According to Harvard’s con servative faculty, productive po litical discourse on campus is only becoming more difficult. This should not come as a sur

Harvard’s academic free-ex pression problem is much larg er than the resignation of a sin gle president, and its cure will require much more than a new president. However, a loud cham pion of free speech — one who will actively work to recruit di verse perspectives and welcome academic arguments of any polit ical persuasion — would help ad dress the dialogue deficit on Har vard’s campus.

As the search for the Univer sity’s next president progress es, Harvard has the opportunity to rectify a historical wrong and atone for a blight on its record, while addressing a larger disturb ing trend about academic free ex pression.

The time has come to lead col leges in academic speech, to re turn “semper” to “semper ver itas.” Harvard’s atmosphere is ripe for a change of weather. Any thing less would be disloyal to our motto.

—Jacob M. Miller ’25 is a Crim son Editorial editor in Lowell House. His column “Diary from an Echo Chamber” appears on alternate Thursdays.

DIARY FROM AN ECHO CHAMBER

Since the departure of Summers, other professors have experienced similar attempts to reign in their voices.

—Manuel A. Yepes ’24, an Associate Editorial Editor, is a Social Studies concentrator in Cabot House.

Above all, we know that the worsening of mental health writ large is not a Harvard-specific issue.

STAFF EDITORIAL

College Essay Trauma

Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. Discuss a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others. If all else fails, explore a back ground, identity, interest, or talent so profound that not doing so would leave our idea of you fundamentally incom plete.

Exactly the sort of small talk you want to make with strangers.

American college essays — frequent ly structured around prompts like the above — ask us to interrogate who we are, who we want to be, and what the most formative experiences of our then-short lives are. To tell a story, to re veal ourselves and our identity in its en tirety to the curious gaze of admissions officers — all in a succinct 650 words.

Last Thursday, The Crimson pub lished “Rewriting Our Admissions Es says,” an intimate reflection by six Crim son editors on the personal statements that got them into Harvard. Our take away from this exercise is that our cur rent essay-generating ethos — the top ics we choose or are made to choose, the style and emphasis we apply — is imper fect at best, when not actively harmful.

The American admissions process rightly grants students broad latitude to write about whatever they choose, with prompts that emphasize person al experience, adversity, discovery, and identity — features often distort stu dent narratives and pressure students to present themselves in light of their most difficult experiences.

When it comes to writing, freedom is good — great even! The personal state ment can be a powerful vehicle to con vey an aspect of one’s identity, and stu dents who feel inclined to do so should take advantage of the opportunity to write deeply and candidly about their lives; the variety of prompts, including the possibility to craft your own, facil itate that. We have no doubt that some of our peers had already pondered, or even lived in the shadow of, the difficult questions posed by the most recurrent essay prompts; and we know the essay to be a fundamental part of the holis tic, inclusive admissions system we so fervently cherish. Writing one’s college essay, while stressful, can ultimately prove cathartic to some and revealing to others, a helpful exercise in intro spection amid a much too busy reality.

Yet we would be blind not to notice the deep, dark nooks where the system that demands such introspection tends to lead us. Both the college essay format — short but riveting, revealing but up lifting, insightful but not so self-cen tered that it will upset any potential ad missions counselor — and the prompts that guide it push students towards an ethic of maximum emotional impact. With falling acceptance rates and a des

OP-ED

perate need to stand out from tens of thousands of applicants, students fre quently feel the need to supply the sort of attention-grabbing drama that might just push them through.

But joyful, restful days don’t make for great stories; there are few, if any, plot points in a stable, warm relationship with a living, healthy relative. Trauma, on the other hand — homophobic or racist encounters that leave one shak en, alcoholic parents, death, loss and scarring pain — makes for a good story. A Harvard-worthy story, even.

For students who have experienced genuine adversity, this pressure to pack age adversity into a palatable narrative can be toxic. The essay risks commod ifying hardship, rendering genuinely soul-molding experiences like suffer ing recurrent homelessness or having orphaned grandparents into shiny nar rative baubles to melt down into a Har vard degree. It can make applicants, ac cepted or not, feel like their admissions outcomes are tied to their most vulner able experiences. The worst thing that ever happened to you was simply not enough, or alternatively, it was more than enough, and now you get to strug gle with traumatized-imposter syn drome.

Moreover, students often feel com pelled to end their essays about deep trauma with a statement of victory — a proclamation that they have overcome their problems and are “fit for admis sion.” Very few have figured life out by age 18. Trauma often sticks with peo ple far longer, and this implicit obliga tion may make students feel like they “failed” if the pain of their trauma resur faces during college. Not every bruise heals and not all damage can be undone — but no one wants to read a sob story without a redemption arc.

A similar dynamic is at play in terms of the intensity of the chosen experi ence: Students feeling for ridges of scars to tear up into prose must be careful to avoid cuts too deep or too shallow. Their trauma mustn’t appear too severe: No college, certainly not Harvard, wants to admit people who could trigger le gal liabilities after a bad mental health episode. That is the essay’s twisted pain paradox — students’ trauma must be compelling but not too serious, shock ing but not off-putting. Colleges seek the chic not-like-other-students sort of hurt; they want the fun, quirky pain that leaves the main character with a new refreshing perspective at the end of a lackluster indie film. Genuine wounds — the sort that don’t heal overnight or ever, the kind that don’t lead to an up lifting conclusion that ties in beautiful ly with your interest in Anthropology — are but lawsuits in the waiting.

For students who have not experi enced such trauma, the personal essay can trap accuracy in a tug of war with appealing falsities. The desire to appear as a heroic problem-solver can incen

The Right to Choose

BY LABIBA UDDIN

I’m balancing my phone on a stack of assorted items so I can get my key in the lock when my mom, watching the ordeal over Face Time, comments on the large Pal estinian flag donning my door. She hes itantly says it looks beautiful. She then proceeds to tell me stories of minority students murdered on their own col lege campuses for their views.

I know she wants me to take down the flag and keep my mouth shut. I’ve been cautious thus far to not flash it in the camera frame when I call her.

I think sometimes she forgets that I choose to wear a hijab every day. I have been wearing the hijab, a head covering worn by Muslim women and a symbol of modesty and religious commitment, for more than 10 years now. It is one of the most important parts of my identity.

It is also impossible to miss.

It’s hard to think of a more glaring vi sual indicator of being Muslim. If there is ever any Islamophobia around, I am its obvious walking target. There is no more blatant evidence of my beliefs than my hijab — and I could not be more proud of my continual choice, morning after morning, to put it on.

I am used to the questions tied to my choice. I grew up in the South, where I was no stranger to the well-meaning “Aren’t you hot in that?” and “If your parents are making you wear it, you can take it off while they’re not here.”

I’m lucky that these comments have never fazed me, and I know exactly why: My hijab has always been my choice. It is hard to convey the gravity of privi

lege that allows me to say that. I live in a country that has never, at least legal ly, asked me to take it off — see: France’s anti-separatism bill banning students from wearing hijab. Conversely, the U.S. has also never asked me to put it on — see: Iran’s hijab laws and morality po lice, under which, most recently, Mahsa Amini was detained and died in custo dy.

Amini’s death has sparked glob al outrage over the past month, from women burning their headscarves during feverish protests in Iran, to women an ocean away in Boston, cut ting their hair on the Harvard Bridge in a show of solidarity. Western govern ment officials have released statements and sanctions.

Amini’s death and the re sulting outrage have flooded all kinds of media outlets, from our personal social media feeds to global newspapers.

I find it incredibly inspiring to see the outpouring of support against this clear transgression of rights. I was per sonally touched by the number of peers that I saw being so vocal on the issue on social media and beyond.

That is, until I came across some of them sharing the hashtag #freedom fromhijab. Statements like these are counterintuitive. What are we truly fighting against — the hijab, or restric tions on one’s right to choose?

Amini’s death was not due to the hi jab, but the lack of autonomy over her own body under the hijab law that led to her detainment — a theme we are all too familiar with.

Amini’s death is a symptom of the same problem that plagues India, where women in some states are barred from their choice to actively wear that

tivize students to exaggerate or misrep resent details to compete with the com pelling stories of others.

We emphatically reject these unspo ken premises. Students from marginal ized communities don’t owe college ad missions offices an inspirational story of nicely packaged drama. They should not bear a disproportionate burden in proving their worthiness.

Why, then, do these pressures ex ist? How can we account for the multi tude of challenging experiences people have without reductionist commodifi cation? How do you value the sharing of deeply personal struggles without in centivizing every acceptance-hungry applicant to offer an adjective-ridden, six-paragraph attempt at psychoana lyzing their terrible childhood?

We don’t have a quick fix, but we must seek a system that preserves open ness and mitigates perverse pressures.

Other admissions systems around the world, such as the United Kingdom’s UCAS personal statement, tend to em phasize intellectual interest in tandem with personal experience. The Rhodes Scholarship, citing an excessive focus on the “heroic self” in the essays it re ceives, recently overhauled its prompts to focus more broadly on the themes “self/others/world.” We should pay at tention to the nature of the essays that these prompts inspire and see, in time, if their models are worth replicating.

In the meantime, students should understand that neither their hurt nor their college essay defines them — and there are many ways to stand out to ad missions officers. If it feels right to write about deeply difficult experiences, do so with the knowledge that they have far more to contribute to a college campus than adversity and hardship.

The issue is not what people can or should write about in their personal statements. Rather, it’s how what ad missions officers expect of their appli cants distorts the essays they receive, and how the structure of American college admissions can push toward garment-rending oversharing. We must strive for an admissions culture in which students feel truly free to ex press their identity — to tell a story they want to share, not one their admissions officers want them to. A system where students can feel comfortable that any specific essay topic — devastating or cheerful — will not place them slightly ahead or behind in the mad, mad race toward that cherished acceptance let ter.

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

COLUMN

HARVARD IN NUMBERS

Want to Make the Most of Harvard? Be Yourself and Make Rich Friends

BY ADEN BARTON

ELITE SCHOOLS DO HELP STUDENTS BY PLUGGING THEM INTO A WELL-CONNECTED, POWERFUL NETWORK.

In fact, Harvard’s great est benefit may be its match-making service – not its teaching – which exposes you to classmates that can help you out down the line.

My roommate once com pared attending Har vard to getting lunch with Obama.

Imagine you have 30 minutes with the former president. Thirty minutes to learn something new or to impress him. Now, imag ine everyone else around you is also eating lunch with Obama — you’re constantly worried about using your 30 minutes as well as they do. This is how I feel about Har vard. We have four years to make the most of this incredible place. Eight short semesters to take full advantage of every opportuni ty and resource. And, to make it even more stressful, everyone around you is (or at least appears to be) doing it much, much better than you are.

So, how should you make the most of college?

We all receive unsolicited ad vice from friends and family about “taking advantage of Har vard,” but these words of sup posed wisdom always sound ed vague to me and more related to that person’s life than mine. I wanted to find out what the em pirical research says about col lege success, and, I’ve read the studies so that you don’t have to. Drumroll, please…

To make the most out of Har vard, all you have to do is be your self and make rich friends.

First, it turns out your parents were right when they told you to be yourself. A famous study by economists Stacy Dale and Alan Krueger found that, once you control for a student’s ability, go ing to a selective school like Har vard actually doesn’t increase your career earnings.

should just continue being the type of person that got you the in vitation in the first place!

Speaking of being invited to meals, let’s talk about making rich friends.

I may have fudged the truth a bit earlier when I said that studies found zero difference between selective schools and non-selec tive schools. The reality is that scholars have repeatedly identi fied that minority and first-gen eration students — but not their white and high-income counter parts — earn more after attending elite colleges.

No one really knows why these differential outcomes exist. One leading theory is that college is about the people you meet, which matters more to some students than others. If you’re a privileged white student, you’ll have fami ly connections no matter if you go to Harvard or your local state school. If you lack those contacts, however, going to Harvard may help you build a professional net work you otherwise would not have had.

One’s network on this campus is especially powerful. For exam ple, a 2021 paper found that mem bership in a male final club helps your career earnings much more than academic success does. (Granted, the researchers’ data set consisted of Harvard students from the 1920s and 1930s, argu ably eons ago in terms of our Uni versity culture.)

But the general importance of one’s network has been con firmed by more recent research done by Harvard economist Raj Chetty. In his empirical analysis of the relationship between earn ings and cross-class friendships, Chetty found that having wealthy friends is among the most im portant factors in upward mo bility. Befriending that one problem-set partner who keeps talking about summering at Mar tha’s might just help drag you up the socioeconomic ladder.

same hijab, or America, where vital abortion rights are being relentlessly curtailed.

I laud my peers at the Harvard pro test in support of Iranian women who emphasized the true meaning of their protest. Signs that read “The problem is not the hijab, the problem is controlling women,” and statements like “I real ly want people to see that this is not an issue of Islam — this is not the religion that they portray it to be — and I think that is such a common misconception that people in the West are still battling today” — these should be the real focus of the movement.

Protests can look very different in different parts of the world. For many Iranian women, protest has involved their choice to take off the hijab. In the West, it can be the exact opposite.

I believe myself to be in a constant state of protest. The minute I step out of my room wearing my hijab, I am shout ing my beliefs out to the world. Despite the skeptical glances and occasion al temptations, my desire to feel spir itually connected through my hijab is enough to spur me on against its poten tial dangers.

Whatever form of protest we take up, there will always be some risk. It is when our desire to preserve our beliefs and rights is strong enough that we will ingly take on that risk, that it becomes a testament to our commitment to who we are. I will keep my flag on my door as long as I believe in the cause, just as I keep my scarf wrapped around my head and heart.

—Labiba Uddin ’25, a Crimson Edito rial editor, lives in Pforzheimer House.

They examined thousands of tax returns and found that grad uates of elite schools do earn more than students from nonelite schools. But, once you ac count for student characteristics, the earnings gap completely goes away, suggesting that college choice matters far less than the student’s ability. In other words, a student who was accepted to an elite school like Harvard — but didn’t enroll — averaged the same career earnings as students who did enroll.

Does that mean your Harvard education is entirely pointless? Yes — and no.

Be yourself, but don’t be afraid to network.

It means that our individu al characteristics, most of which were decided by the time we set foot on campus, matter much more than what college we’re at (hint: That’s why I told you to be yourself).

It also means that Harvard is really good at discerning who’s going to be successful, and you were accepted because of that. Now that you’re here, artificially contorting yourself to make the most of Harvard is exactly the op posite of what you should do.

Put differently, Obama (read: Harvard) invited you to lunch be cause he thought you were smart and personable. Instead of tens ing up and stressing about ev ery conversation topic — which would ruin the meal — you

Chetty’s data is granular enough to let us look at individu al colleges, like Harvard. It turns out that our school has a surplus of wealthy students (no surprise if you’ve been reading this column). But Harvard also has many more cross-class friendships than the national average simply because most students, no matter their income, come into contact with wealthy classmates. And Chetty’s research suggests, these connec tions can be important in one’s success.

So, what are the implications for you? Should you stand outside the Porcellian trying to network? Should you sit next to the section kid who’s very clearly wearing a Rolex?

I’m mostly being sarcastic. Elite schools do help students by plugging them into a well-con nected, powerful network. In fact, Harvard’s greatest benefit may be its match-making service – not its teaching – which expos es you to classmates that can help you out down the line. But, almost everyone you befriend here will go on to do incredible things. So, the “friend” part probably mat ters more than the “rich” part be cause nearly all of our classmates will have career success.

And that points to a broad er lesson that there are still a lot of unanswered questions sur rounding how selective schools benefit students, so we should have a lot of humility and uncer tainty in extracting advice from this research. If I had to give a ten tative distillation of the empir ical data into a bumper sticker: Be yourself, but don’t be afraid to network.

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

Students, Artists Laud Ceramics Program

Lab and SEAS and all that good stuff, but we’ve been here from the beginning watching it occur and watching it grow.”

BY DANISH BAJWA AND MICHAL GOLDSTEIN CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Amid the many prominent attractions on Harvard’s Allston campus, includ ing the $1 billion Science and En gineering Complex and the Har vard Business School, a small creative haven took root at Bar ry’s Corner decades ago: the Har vard Ceramics Program.

The Ceramics Program, un der the purview of the College’s Office of the Arts, was founded by undergraduates in 1970 and offi cially joined the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in 1999. Today, 85 percent of the studio’s income de rives from registration fees for ce ramics classes, according to pro gram director Kathy King.

“Barry’s Corner is kind of like this meeting point of both Har vard and this general communi ty, and I’ve been sitting here since 2013 watching it change,” King said. “Of course you have the Art

Allston residents, as well as Harvard students, are welcome to sign up for courses at the stu dio, which range from beginners’ pottery to advanced sculpture classes.

The Ceramics Program offers scholarships to expand its reach beyond Harvard, including the Peter Berry Scholarship, which provides financial assistance to adults enrollees, and the Ce ramics Community Scholarship for Allston-Brighton Residents, which, in partnership with the Harvard Ed Portal, provides aid to adults living in Allston-Brigh ton.

The studio also hosts work shops and lectures with visiting artists and organizes free exhib its in Gallery 224, its exhibition space. King said these events have resumed following the height of the pandemic.

“We’ve had the door closed for so long because of Covid, so just having an exhibition open ing a couple weeks ago — to have the food out, have the drinks, see people who we know live in the neighborhood come in — that was a wonderful feeling to get to

see that again,” King said.

Thom Lussier, a resident art ist at the studio, described the Ce ramics Program as a welcoming atmosphere.

“The very first time I came to the studio, I pulled up to the back door with 47 glazed pots,” Lussi er said. “I met Sarah, who’s a staff member here, and we imme diately connected, and she and Deighton helped me unload my car, and it went straight from my car into a kiln. I had never seen that happen before.”

“I just felt really welcomed. I felt like my work was really cared for — I felt really seen,” he added.

Megumi A. Kirby ’23 first vis ited the studio for a history class she took in fall 2021.

Since then, she has enrolled in a basics class over the summer and a soda firing class this semes ter.

“I was just finding that while I was at school, because I con centrate in a STEM field, I didn’t have time built into my sched ule for creative endeavors,” Kir by said. “After taking the class over the summer, I realized that it was important to me to maintain a schedule with my art.”

Diane Lulek, an instructor at the ceramics studio, said the classes are a great opportunity

Cambridge City Council, Manager Gather Privately for Rare Training

BY ELIAS J. SCHISGALL CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

In a rare private gathering on Harvard’s campus, members of the Cambridge City Council and the new Cambridge City Manager

Yi-An Huang ’05 attended a fullday training earlier this month to begin fostering a stronger work ing relationship.

During the event — which was held Oct. 6 at the Harvard Fac ulty Club — Huang, the Council, and several top city officials met to identify obstacles to effective communication and ways to im prove the relationship between each side of city leadership.

The city considered the event exempt from Massachusetts’ Open Meeting Law, which re quires nearly all meetings be tween members of a “public body” to be advertised at least two days in advance and open to all members of the public. Huang and several councilors said the Oct. 6 gathering did not fall under the law because it was considered a “training” that did not include any discussion of specific policy goals or agendas.

The Open Meeting Law in cludes carve-outs for a “confer ence, training program, or event,” provided the participants do not deliberate on “any matter within the body’s jurisdiction.”

Under its charter, Cambridge’s government is run by a city man ager who oversees day-to-day city operations, including the city budget, and implements pol icy goals set by a democratical ly elected City Council. The rela tionship between the Council and the city manager has been tense

in years past, with some coun cilors expressing dissatisfaction over the level of transparency and communication between the two branches.

Huang, who officially began as city manager in early September, said in an interview he and May or Sumbul Siddiqui arranged the training to “create greater trust, greater collaboration, greater communication.”

“I am coming into the role new and with sort of fresh eyes,” Huang said. “This was a real ly great opportunity to look at what’s working, where there are pain points from the Council side, where there are pain points from city leaders, and to talk about some of the deeper values and norms that we want in the rela tionship.”

in,” McGovern said. “Nothing like that.”

Huang said councilors ex pressed concerns during the training about a lack of respon siveness from city staff, while staffers said they felt “stretched” thin between day-to-day opera tional work and requests from the Council.

“I think councilors feel like they aren’t heard, and that they’re passing policy orders, and that they really want to say, ‘the city should consider doing X, Y, Z,’ and it feels like the city can be a black box,” Huang said.

“On the flip side,” he added, city staff receive “all these new re quests coming through from the Council that need to be respond ed to, and I think sometimes they feel like it’s not possible to get it all done, and they don’t feel appreci ated for the good work that actu ally has been accomplished.”

Huang said city staff and the Council are working to establish a written “concrete set of commu nication protocols or practices.”

for students to pursue non-aca demic interests.

“I think because this is not for academic credit, this is a chance for people to come relax, have fun, and play, and experiment, try something completely new,” Lu lek said.

Alexandra C. Kim ’22-’23, a Newton resident, started taking

classes at the Ceramics Studio in high school and has stayed in volved with the program in col lege.

Kim, who is pursuing a sec ondary in Art, Film, and Visual Studies, has had her ceramic art featured at numerous local exhi bitions and plans to showcase her work in the studio’s gallery this

winter.

“Clay, at least in my opinion, is such a fun, workable medium,” she said. “I just wish that more students here knew about [the studio] and were able to enjoy it and have access to it.”

danish.bajwa@thecrimson.com michal.goldstein@thecrimson.com

City of Boston to Study Potential Community Center in Allston

BY YUSUF S. MIAN CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Officials from the city of Boston presented initial plans to conduct a study into a potential new com munity center in Allston at a pub lic meeting on Thursday.

The event — hosted by the Bos ton Centers for Youth and Fami lies, the Public Facilities Depart ment, and the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Services — is the first of four scheduled communi ty meetings before a final report is set to come out in spring 2023 detailing plans to replace the ex isting Jackson/Mann communi ty center.

State Representative Kev in G. Honan, a Democrat of All ston-Brighton, said the current Jackson/Mann facility is deterio rating, with leaks and other struc tural building issues.

Marta Rivera Commissioner of BCYF

Marta Rivera, commissioner of the Boston Centers for Youth and Families, said the city plans to study the prospects of expand ing from the current facility.

“The goal of this study is to ad dress the ‘what,’ ‘where,’ and the ‘what’s possible,’” she said at the meeting. Rivera added that the city hopes to expand programming, operating hours, and accessibili ty with the new construction.

“We’re limited by hours of op eration, we’re limited by space,” she said.

election administration. The cur rent facility houses polling loca tions for multiple precincts.

“I hope that that process is al ready underway — that once the community center closes next summer, there is a plan in place to efficiently relocate the five pre cinct locations as well so that there is plenty of equity involved and people can easily, in those precincts, get to their polling lo cations,” he said at the meeting.

Brett Bentson, a principal at the design firm Utile, which is working with the city on the proj ect, said the study will seek to in corporate feedback from resi dents.

“Understanding what the community wants these pro grams and uses to be gets really to the heart of this study,” he said.

Yi-An Huang ‘05 Cambridge City Manager

Councilor Marc C. McGov ern said City Solicitor Nancy E. Glowa, who attended the train ing, intervened if any attendee said something that might “veer in the wrong direction” and po tentially violate the Open Meet ing Law.

“There was no deliberation about policy, there was no talk about goals, it wasn’t about what direction we want to take the city

He added that a new chief of staff position in the City Manag er’s office will “create more en gagement” between the Council and city staff.

“This definitely all feeds into the need for there to be a bit more staffing to manage what is a really important relationship,” he said.

In an interview, Siddiqui said she is working with Huang to ar range a public roundtable to dis cuss policy priorities. She also said she hopes to plan a separate retreat for councilors to discuss communication among them selves.

elias.schisgall@thecrimson.com

“I realize the building is in ter rible shape,” he said, adding that “the Jackson/Mann community center has been vitally important to the Allston-Brighton commu nity for 47 years.”

Anthony P. “Tony” D’Isidoro, president of the Allston Civic As sociation, praised the city for tak ing on the project, but expressed concern about the new commu nity center’s potential impact on

Bentson announced plans to launch an online survey to collect data on the existing uses of the community center and to study how it can be improved through the development of the new facil ity.

yusuf.mian@thecrimson.com

City Council Calls on HLS to Improve Reproductive Rights Education

BY ELIAS J. SCHISGALL CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

The Cambridge City Council called on Harvard Law School to bolster its reproductive rights education following student pro tests, and voted to raise fees paid by commercial real estate devel opers toward a public fund for af fordable housing.

During a Monday meeting, the Council unanimously voted for a resolution voicing support for the hundreds of HLS students who staged a full-day sit-in at the Law School earlier this month. The resolution endorses the stu dents’ three main demands: that HLS hire a full-time reproductive justice professor, create a clinic for reproductive rights, and in stitute a reproductive justice cur riculum.

Speaking during a public comment period in the meeting, Samantha J. Nagler, a third-year student at the Law School, called the lack of reproductive rights education at HLS an “injustice to its students.”

“I hope that the City of Cam bridge will support our advocacy to hold Harvard accountable and push it to be a leader once again,” she said.

Vice Mayor Alanna M. Mal lon, a co-sponsor of the resolu

tion, said the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade this summer added urgency to the need for legal education about abortion rights.

“We know it’s going to take ev ery one of us to fight against the oppressive nature of some of the laws that are coming forward now after Roe v. Wade was over turned,” Mallon said during the meeting.

“Reproductive justice is an important field of law,” she add ed. “And Harvard should be step ping up in this moment to sup port these students.”

The resolution calls on the city to send a copy to the Law School. Jeff Neal, a HLS spokes person, declined to comment on the Council’s support for the stu dents.

The move reflects an in creased focus on abortion from the Council following the Su preme Court’s decision. Last month, councilors expressed their intention to ban controver sial limited-services pregnancy centers that do not provide abor tions, but the city’s Law Depart ment raised concerns about con stitutionality.

During Monday’s meeting, the Council also amended the city’s zoning code to raise “link age” fees, fees paid by commer cial real estate developers to

ward Cambridge’s Affordable Housing Trust, from about $20 per square foot to more than $33 per square foot — a 66 percent in crease. Cambridge’s linkage fee now more than doubles Boston’s fee of around $15 per square foot.

The amendment exempts some projects from the linkage fee, including the first 30,000 square feet of smaller develop ments and those that involve de molishing and rebuilding exist ing spaces for the same use.

In an interview last month, James G. Stockard Jr., a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and a trustee for the Af fordable Housing Trust, praised the “aggressive” fee increase and said it is unlikely to significantly slow down development. He add ed that a moderate slowdown in development “wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.”

“Development is going to keep on happening in this communi ty almost regardless of the ways in which the city regulates it and places limits on it,” Stockard said.

“It makes sense to keep this number going up, and at some point, probably, it will start to slow down some of the larger developments,” he added. “If we don’t like that as a city, we could back off a little bit.”

elias.schisgall@thecrimson.com

Students work on pottery wheels at the Harvard Ceramics studio, located in Allston.

SÍLVIA CASACUBERTA PUIG — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

THE HARVARD Ceram ics Program, founded in 1970, provides pottery and sculpture classes and hosts artist workshops.

“This was a really great way to look at what’s working, where there are pain points

This study is to address the ‘what,’ ‘where,’ and the ‘what’s possible’

“

HGSE

U.S. Education Sec. Speaks at HGSE

LAST FRIDAY, the U.S. Education Secratary ad dressed concerns includ ing how to move educa tion forward post-Covid-19

BY PATON D. ROBERTS CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

placency with the same fervor we fought Covid?”

In response to a question about how to produce large-scale change in America’s education system, Cardona advised invest ment in educational institutions rather than individuals.

READ IT IN FIVE MINUTES

DEAF AWARENESS GROUP RECRUITS

U

.S. Secretary of Education Miguel A. Cardona spoke about pandemic recov ery and federal investment in education at a Harvard Graduate School of Education conference Friday.

Throughout the event, Cardo na discussed post-Covid-19 edu cational recovery, teacher short ages, and suggestions for the use of pandemic-era government funding.

HGSE Dean Bridget T. Long introduced Cardona as “a lo cal leader with a global vision.” Long praised Cardona’s tenure as commissioner of the Connecti cut State Department of Educa tion, during which he oversaw the state’s transition to remote learning and subsequent efforts to safely reopen schools.

In opening his remarks, Car dona said one of his “greatest fears” in his role as Education secretary is the American edu cation system returning to its pre-pandemic state.

“That didn’t work for too many students,” he said. “We’ve normalized disparities in oppor tunities and outcomes as a coun try. Returning to the same system would be failing our students.”

During his discussion, Car dona attributed recent teacher shortages to a lack of respect for

the teaching profession.

“We talk a lot about teacher shortages. Teacher shortages are a symptom of a teacher respect issue,” Cardona said.

He added that the “ABCs of ed ucation”— agency, better work ing conditions, and competitive

HKS Unveils Graham Allison Dedication

BY MILES J. HERSZENHORN CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Current and former Harvard Ken nedy School leaders gathered Tuesday afternoon to dedicate a plaza on the school’s campus in honor of former HKS Dean Gra ham T. Allison ’62.

University President Law rence S. Bacow, HKS Dean Doug las W. Elmendorf, and Chief Exec utive Officer of Taubman Centers Robert S. Taubman toasted Alli son during a private event before participating in a ribbon cutting ceremony to officially unveil the plaza.

Elmendorf, who confessed he grew up a fan of the New York Yan kees, compared Allison’s legacy at the Kennedy School to that of baseball slugger Babe Ruth at the old Yankee Stadium.

“The Yankee Stadium of that day was sometimes described as the ‘House that Babe Ruth Built’ because it was Babe Ruth’s incom parable talent that was the foun dation on which the Yankees of the 1920s and 30s and subsequent de cades was built,” Elmendorf said. “Similarly, I always think of the Kennedy School as the ‘House that Graham Built.’”

When Allison began his tenure as founding dean of the modern Kennedy School in 1977, he did not have the easiest task ahead of him, according to Elmendorf.

“The hard work of turning ideas into reality did not get done by itself,” he said. “All this depend ed on Graham’s vision and ener gy, his ability to draw together people — including some who are here with us today — to build this

school and to push its mission for ward.”

“We are, around the coun try and around the world, mak ing a profoundly positive differ ence in many people’s lives — and that would not be the case without you,” Elmendorf said to Allison.

Bacow, who graduated from the Kennedy School with a mas ter’s in public policy in 1976, said that one of the required courses he took as a graduate student at Harvard was taught by two facul ty members: “one of whom was a legend, Dick Neustadt, and then there was this other young faculty member — who I think was still a junior faculty member at the time — and that, of course, was Gra ham, a legend in the making.”

Bacow reflected on advice he gives to students, saying he tells both undergraduate and graduate students that they will have a great experience at school if they can build a lifelong relationship with at least one faculty member.

“I consider myself exception ally fortunate that Graham falls into that group of faculty mem bers who I’ve been blessed to stay in touch with now — hard to be lieve, Graham — for a half a centu ry,” Bacow said.

Before concluding his re marks, Bacow said he owed Alli son an apology.

“I know that there’s at least one thing that I disappointed you in, so I offer my humble apology,” Ba cow said, turning to Allison. “Here it is, 50 years and counting, and I’ve still not learned to fish.”

Bacow raised his glass of champagne: “To the best fisher man in the Kennedy School.”

miles.herszenhorn@thecrimson.com

salaries — can help make the pro fession more desirable.

Cardona said school districts should prioritize using recent government funding to improve access to mental health services, connect with higher education and workforce partners, and de

OBITUARY

BELOVED longtime Har vard Square camera shop owner, Anthony Ferranti ‘46 passed away in July. He ran the store with his brother for 51 years before closing in 2006.

BY BRANDON L. KINGDOLLAR CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Former employees of the Ferran ti-Dege camera shop, co-found ed by Anthony C. Ferranti ’46 in 1955, would affectionately refer to themselves as alumni of “Fer ranti-Dege University.”

For many, the experience of working and shopping at the store often transcended the cur riculum at the university across the street.

For 51 years, Ferranti watched Harvard students and Cam bridge residents learn the craft of photography at his shop, which he ran with his brother until 2006, leaving an impression on many who passed through.

Ferranti died in July at his home in Scottsdale, Arizona, where he retired with his wife, Nancy Ferranti. He was 97.

Ferranti founded the shop with Al Dege and ran it for years alongside his brother, Charles F. Ferranti, who died in 2011. The camera store grew out of the now-defunct Harvard Barber Shop, co-owned by the Ferran tis’ father, Charles Ferranti, who immigrated to the United States from Italy.

The shop — which once re sided in the space now occupied by Zinnia Jewelry — closed its doors in 2006, leaving longtime patrons to mourn its exit and cel ebrate the fond memories it cre ated in the previous five decades.

“He made very good friends at Harvard that he kept throughout his life,” said Nancy Ferranti, his wife of 36 years. “He was part of Harvard Square, as a student and as a businessman.”

A former employee, Thomas N. Bethell ’62, wrote in a note to Ferranti that his work at the shop was the most meaningful aspect of his time at Harvard.

“I can’t count the number of times when someone has asked me where I went to college, and I say Ferranti-Dege,” Bethell wrote in the letter, provided by Nancy Ferranti.

“Getting to know you and Charlie and hanging out at F&D was far more important to me,

velop a strong instructional core.

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona spoke at the Harvard Graduate School of Ed ucation on Friday. By Grace R. Bida he asked.

“Are we willing to embrace the disruption and combat com

“I always say, let’s invest in sys tems, not superheroes — because superheroes leave. And if the su perheroes leave, they take their great ideas with them — what’s happening to the system?” he said.

The Phillip Brooks House Association’s Deaf Aware ness Coalition, a student group dedicated to raising awareness about Deaf culture, accessibility, and American Sign Language, has started recruiting mem bers for its fall class of vol unteers. Previously known as the Deaf Awareness Club, the organization was rebranded last fall as the Deaf Awareness Coalition under PBHA, with the goal of strengthening its advocacy and service efforts.

Cardona used “Flor Páli da,” a song by Marc Anthony about wilted flowers, as a meta phor during his remarks. He de scribed schools and students as roses that are either wilting or flourishing, depending on their conditions, and added that teach ers are the key to help struggling students blossom.

“The resources provided by the federal government allowed for fresh new soil and better gar dening tools,” Cardona said. “But we together — we are the master gardeners that must provide the nutrients, the care, and the atten tion that our wilted roses need.”

RESEARCHERS DE BUNK SLEEP MYTHS

A Harvard-led team of re searchers debunked popular myths parents and caregiv ers believe about adolescent sleep habits in a study pub lished last month. The study, published in “Sleep Health,” was led by Rebecca Robbins, a Harvard Medical School in structor and sleep scientist at Brigham and Women’s Hospi tal, and included Judith A. Ow ens, professor of neurology at the Harvard Medical School.

and is much more fun to remem ber, than just about any of the classes I took — visited would be a better word — at Harvard,” he wrote.

The camera shop grew out of Ferranti’s experience as an un dergraduate at Harvard.

James J. Casey, the store’s longtime manager, recalled that Ferranti would print slides from Harvard football games and project them in the store’s win dow all through Saturday night and Sunday morning.

“He hired a lot of college stu dents, especially from Har vard, who needed the money to work because they were there on scholarship,” Casey said. “Tony and Charlie were brought up that you share what you have.”

Ferranti grew up working at the Harvard Barber Shop, his family’s business. He left Har vard after his freshman year to join the U.S. Air Force, stationed as a navigator in Washington state during World War II. After completing his service, Ferranti returned to complete his under

graduate degree, graduating in 1946.

Ferranti began his post-grad uate life in politics, working for Adlai E. Stevenson II, the Dem ocratic governor of Illinois who ran for president in 1952 and 1956.

In 1955, Ferranti and his brother opened Ferranti-Dege. While building his Harvard Square business, Ferranti con tinued his political advocacy, participating in civil rights and anti-Vietnam War protests, in cluding the March on Washing ton in 1963.

Casey recalled one instance in which world-famous musicians John Lennon and Yoko Ono vis ited Ferranti-Dege, seeking a re placement part for one of Len non’s video cameras.

While customers and pass ers-by were captivated by the celebrities, Ferranti focused on making the sale.

“Tony really couldn’t care less about it. They’re just musicians,” Casey said. “It was a Saturday. It was a busy day, so let’s let every

body else just jump into things like that.”

After withstanding more than 50 years of change in Har vard Square, Ferranti was forced to close the store in 2006 due in part to waning interest in film photography.

“I will miss it,” Ferranti told The Crimson at the time.

Daniel Ferranti, Anthony Fer ranti’s son, said his father was touched when a contingent of Cambridge residents came into the shop to give it a proper sendoff on the day it closed.

“Right around closing time, they showed up with champagne and a chorus, and they sang to my dad,” Daniel Ferranti said.

“He was simultaneously super touched and super taken aback, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen him both that happy and that vulnerable.”

Anthony Ferranti is survived by his wife, four sons, three step-children, and 12 grandchil dren.

Anthony C. Ferranti co-founded the Ferranti-Dege camera shop in Harvard Square.

COURTESY OF DANIEL FERRANTI

From left to right: President Lawrence S. Bacow, Graham T. Allison, Rob ert S. Taubman, and Dean Douglas W. Elmendorf BY MILES J. HERSZENHORN.

brandon.kingdollar@thecrimson.com

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona spoke at the Harvard Graduate School of Education on Friday.

GRACE R. BIDA — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Miguel Cardona U.S. Secretary of Education

Are we willing to embrace the disruption and combat complacency with the same fervor we fought Covid?

“

paton.roberts@thecrimson.com

BY STELLA A. GILBERT CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Shirley L. Chen ’22 is telling a creative story grounded in complex history.

On Oct. 21 and 22, Chen’s senior thesis “Chinatown, My Chinatown” will come to life in two parts: first, a 25-minute “living museum” installation, fol lowed by a 60-minute one-wom an one-act show.

Pursuing a joint concentra tion in History and Literature and Theater, Dance, and Media, Chen’s play follows four charac ters as they compete in the 1966 Miss Chinatown USA pageant.

Chen worked for nine months to develop these characters by doing both primary and second ary research, including archival work and collecting oral histories from real pageant contestants from the sixties.

With such a wealth of possi bilities available, why tell a story about pageants?

“I was thinking a lot about competition within marginal ized communities,” Chen said. “If you’re put in a room full of girls who fill the same boxed catego ries, how does that completely shatter your perception of your self? And then how do you build that back up? And how do you love yourself and learn who you are within those categories and outside of them?”

Chen chose this creative for mat for her thesis to most effec tively convey the messages of her project.

“There’s a link between his tory and theater making,” said Chen. “I think the most effective art is when you put yourself into an environment, and then build a world around it. That’s why it’s this one-woman show format.”

Chen’s piece truly fell into place when she realized that her friend’s grandmother, Connie Young Yu, had an intimate con nection with the topic. Connie’s father was the chairman of the Miss Chinatown pageant in the late 1960s, and she had saved a vast collection of newspaper ar ticles, photos, and pageant pro grams from the time period that she was willing to share with Chen.

Through Connie’s connec tions, Chen was also able to ap proach members of the 1960s San Francisco Chinatown communi ty with three simple questions: “What is the Miss Chinatown pageant? What was your involve ment in it? And what were the sixties like for you as a Chinese American person?” These ques tions guided Chen, allowing her to eventually form the four dis tinct characters that she enacts in her one-woman show. Chen’s characters do not reflect any spe

Shirley Chen on History, Identity, and ‘Chinatown, My Chinatown’

cific, real-life individuals — in stead, she created fictional amal gamations of various aspects of her own personality. In doing so, she asks, “If I put four versions of myself in a room in a competi tion, all of whom with different elements of my worst traits and my best traits, would they learn how to love each other?”

This play was not easy for Chen to perfect. She recalls grap pling with never-ending ques tions: “How do I respect these real people? How do I hon or them? How do I give voice to them without making them cari catures? Will they think that this is an accurate portrayal? Am I do ing Chinatown justice? Will they like this?” Then, Chen asked, qui eter, “Will they hate this?”

Part of the reason that the suc cess of this project is so import ant to her is its various connec tions to and divergences from her own identity.

“My parents emigrated from mainland China, and I grew up speaking Mandarin,” Chen said. “And even though this Miss Chi natown story is a part of Asian American history, it’s not a part of the history that my family is a part of, or the lineage that our family belongs to.”

Despite this, Chen still feels profoundly connected to the sto ry and its characters, saying, “I’ve always found it really hard to ask my parents or my grandparents about this time in their lives. So it’s been really special to get to connect to people who are also grandparents but to learn about them as friends and see these par allels in our lives.”

In “Chinatown, My China town,” Chen unpacks how con testants negotiated their own Chinese identity and femininity as they competed in pageants.

“I asked this to some of the for mer contestants and a lot of times they didn’t have a clear answer: What does it mean to be Miss Chi natown? What makes you think that you could be Miss China town? To me, this pageant was re ally a way of showing ‘we’re soft, and we’re feminine, and we’re el egant’ while facing a wave of neg ative assumptions of Chinatown as a place for gang violence and gambling.”

Chen takes a nuanced ap proach to these complex issues of identity in her show. “Compe tition and jealousy within a uni form community is often not talked about, just because people want to, rightfully so, project an image of happiness and together ness and love and support.” Chen paused. “But sometimes that’s not the internal reality.”

After working on it for so long, Chen is excited to present her creative thesis. “It’s a slice of my brain and a slice of my biggest fears and dreams. I think that’s reason enough to see it.”

‘Smile’ Gives a Shallow Treatment of Mental Illness in the World of the Supernatural

BY DEBBY DAS CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Human fascination with the macabre and the un canny forms the psychological raison d’etre for “Smile,” written and directed by Parker Finn. Sharp ly crafted with the intellect and intuition of a studied horror buff, Finn’s feature-length directorial debut uses the image of a distorted smile as a springboard for a successfully blood-curdling, if not wholly reve latory, film.

Doubly traumatized by her mother’s suicide and by a shocking event involving one of her patients, psychiatrist Dr. Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) begins to be tormented by a leering, ill-intentioned entity that takes the form of people she knows. The storyline is certainly not the most original and follows the expe ditious structure of an investigation — undertaken by the haunted protagonist — of previous victims in an effort to learn about and break free from a curse (the acclaimed “It Follows” (2014) employs this same structure). Still, the movie’s premise smartly capital izes on the all-too-human glee and fear induced by the image of the uncanny smile, which is already a common motif in the horror genre but used with full force in Finn’s feature debut.

Indeed, the sudden image of a menacing grin powers several well-executed jump-scares through out the movie, although they do become more and more predictable as the rhythm of the film becomes familiar to the audience. And yet there’s no doubt that at least some viewers will be screaming bloody murder in their seats, due in large part to the godly work done by Cristobal Tapia de Veer on the film’s soundtrack. Through music, the supernatural voice in “Smile” erupts so explosively, violently, and ter rifyingly at key moments, that audiences can’t help but feel physically swallowed up by the monster’s

Dir. Parker Finn

chorus. Even in less eventful scenes, Tapia de Veer shapes a leitmotif that foregoes the subtle and in stead underscores the intense and heavy omnipres ence of the supernatural.

So “Smile” succeeds in being scary — which, for some audiences, is all a horror movie needs to do. But for a film that presents itself as a medita tion on mental illness, “Smile” doesn’t really come at the topic with any fresh ideas: cinematographyor narrative-wise. Wide overhead tracking shots and Dutch-angle stills indicative of a detached and decidedly supernatural perspective have become such standard tools for the craft of modern hor ror movies that their unironic use nowadays — as is the case with “Smile” — comes off as uninspired. Still, Finn finds such a compelling symbol of horror in the abject smile that the banality of the cinema tography can be written off as an eager, first-time director’s homage to the historical stylistic meth ods of the genre. Besides, cinematographer Char lie Sarroff’s work, although transparent and ques tionably executed, at least reads as thematically apt. Blurred-background commercial close-ups none theless demand a closer scrutiny on the part of the viewer towards characters’ facial expressions and the emotions and intentions hidden beneath them.

Less forgivable is the superficial way the script treats the inescapability of mental illness and the stigma that frequently comes with it. As a psychia trist, Rose Cotter is laughable, since her particular brand of therapy for her patients lies in rote assur ances and in a surprisingly unempathetic approach to dialogue. A combination of cliché scriptwriting and hollow delivery keeps the audience doubtful, at the beginning, of Sosie Bacon’s ability to inhabit her character. Once Bacon loses this detached facade, however, and embodies the anguished and terri fied woman Rose later becomes, she erases all initial doubts with a commanding and often heart-rending

performance. Due in part to Bacon’s acting, “Smile” forms an effective meditation on the sheer anguish produced by the anxiety of a haunting and a con frontation of one’s own (inevitable and in this case, ritualized) mortality.

“Smile” especially struggles with its un-nuanced depiction of the social consequences of mental ill ness via the deteriorating relationships of the “in sane” — Rose, her suicidal mother, her patients, and the other victims of the evil, leering entity — and the “sane,” represented by Rose’s fianceé, her millen nial caricature of a sister, and her sympathetic cop ex-boyfriend. It’s hard to take the film’s stance on mental illness seriously when the “sane” hurl such juvenile insults such as “nutcase,” “headcase,” and the inevitable “crazy” at Rose. The supporting char acters’ dogged and even comical refusal of empathy

feels dissonant with the fastidious commitment to realism deployed in Rose’s emotional journey, and displays a sort of tepid half-heartedness towards — even an appropriation of — the subject of mental health for the sake of appearing cerebral.

Although “Smile” fails to evince any artful por trayal of mental illness, it at least succeeds in a more fundamental, instinctual task of the horror genre — to scare, and to scare thoroughly. Ticket-holders, be ware: Watch at your own peril.

THE ARTIST. Chen is an already accomplished actor. She performed in Los Angeles’ Geffen Theater’s production of “Man of God” last spring and has acted in award-winning films. Now, her sold-out thesis keeps her at center stage.

COURTESY OF HANNAH KIM

debby.das@thecrimson.com

COURTESY OF PARAMOUNT PICTURES

EDITOR’S PICK: FLANNEL JAM

INSIDE A FOLIAGE-FILLED, FOOT-STOMPING FESTIVAL

Grolier Poetry Book Shop Celebrates 95th Anniversary

BY KAREN Z. SONG CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

The Grolier Poetry Book Shop celebrated its 95th anniversary on Sunday, Oct. 9. Just down the street from The Harvard Crimson, the Groli er has stood between the Harvard Book Store and Hampden Hall for all 95 years of its existence. On Sunday, over 20 poets and friends of the Grolier convened on Brat tle Street for live poetry readings and music.

Porsha R. J. Olayiwola, a Bos ton-area poet and educator, per formed several original poems that covered themes ranging from water to the Black dias pora. Several poets, including herself, presented new, unpub lished poems from manuscripts in progress. One of Olayiwola’s performed poems was an “eaves drop-cento,” a collection of quo tations inspired by her time in Provincetown, MA this past sum mer.

“As a person who writes spe cifically poetry, I think it’s imper ative to have poetry-specific plac es,” Olayiwola said. “Poetry needs to become institutionalized as an art form, as a literary form, be cause it’s embedded in our every day lived experiences, and how we perceive the world.”

For Anna V. Q. Ross, a poet and poetry editor who also per formed at Sunday’s street festi val, the Grolier community has been pivotal in her life and her work since she moved to Boston over 20 years ago. She read piec es from her newest collection, which comes out next month — poems that grapple with mother hood and school shootings.

“Early on in my teaching ca reer, I had a student, midway through the semester, raise his hand and ask, ‘Do people still write poetry?’” Ross said. “I real ized that in order for us to have poetry be a living art, we need to make sure our students know that it’s in the world right now. That’s what the Grolier does.”

James G. Fraser, who has been manager of the Grolier since Feb. 2022, said he first came to the shop after being invited to help manage the shop’s poetry festi val. He stayed, however, for the poems. “I love books, so natural ly this was a good place to be,” he said.

The Grolier was founded in 1927 by Adrian Gambet and Gordon Cairnie, whose por traits adorn the walls at 6 Plymp ton St. along with photos of other patrons. According to Fra ser, Cairnie ran the Grolier as a first-editions and rare books and poetry bookstore. He established it as a place where the local litera

ti would hang out.

“Gordon was friends with the likes of Ezra Pound and James Laughlin, and many other Har vard students, ” said Fraser. “For example, Frank O’Hara used to come in here back in the day.”

But Fraser noted that Cairnie’s shop wasn’t always inclusive: “During the Gordon era, it was known as a boys club. There was a couch where the register is cur rently and people would just come in here and hang out; Gor don wasn’t really concerned with selling books, he’d just give them away.”

It was in the 1970s, when Lou isa Solano became owner of the shop after Cairnie’s death, that the Grolier became the poetry empo rium that it is today and took on a more inclusive atmosphere.

In 2006, the Grolier was sold to Ifeanyi Menkiti, poet and pro fessor of philosophy at Welles ley College, who ran the store un til his passing in 2019. The shop is still owned and operated by his family, whose mission is to con tinue to advance its poetry focus.

Andrea L. Fry and John M. Fry, two attendees of the 95th an niversary celebration, said they come all the time to the Grolier. The late Ifeanyi Menkiti was An drea’s uncle.

“Ifeanyi not only kept [the Grolier] alive but kept it growing, and it continues to grow under

the leadership of his family, of his wife, Carol, and their daughter, Ndidi. We’ve grown with it, and it’s become very important to us,” said Andrea, who is a nurse prac titioner and published poet.

Independent poetry shops mean the world to people like John and Andrea. “These are the people who organize other peo ple’s thoughts; they manage other people’s expectations in terms of poetry,” John said. “That’s true in New York as well as Boston with the Grolier.”

A HARVARD SQUARE STAPLE AFTER ALMOST 100 YEARS

CARRYING ON. Grolier Poetry has long been a linchpin of an ever-vibrant Harvard Square literary and commercial scene. Their near-weekly book talks with up-and-coming and estab lished writers and poets alike, the community that orbits the Grolier’s poetic center of gravi ty is as strong as ever. Just this past month, undergraduate poet Darius Atefat-Peckham joined other Harvard alumni for a poetry reading, proving the Grolier still has its eye trained on the best and latest.

karen.song@thecrimson.com

Contributing writers Asher J. Montgomery and J.J. Moore drove down to Marshfield, Massachusetts, for the 2022 iteration of Levitate Surf Shop’s Flannel Jam Festival. The music and arts festival is one of Levitate’s yearly events. The other, Levitate Music and Arts Festival, began as a party for the 10 year anniversary of the surf shop. It has since grown to an annual weekend event that attracts over 17,000 people per day.

Flannel Jam is comparatively much smaller, but it brings with it a resounding sense of community absent from many bigger festi vals. Flannel Jam is, at its core, a family endeavor.

Expected turnout this year was 3,000 people per venue of the touring festival. In some ways, this locality is what draws people to the festival. Jacqueline Magliozzi and Catherine MacDonald, candle vendors with a tent set up at the event, said they really enjoyed the laid-back atmosphere. This sort of closeness and low-keyness is what the producers of Flannel Jam were aiming for, according to associate producer Brittany Ryan: “We wanted to do something that celebrates the beauty of New England.”

Read more about Flannel Jam at thecrimson.com.

Denzel Curry Brings his ‘Ultimate’ Performance to Boston BY ALISA S. REGASSA CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Since the release of his first mix tape in 2011, “King Remembered Underground Tape 1991–1995,” Florida-native and rapper Denzel Curry has been constantly rein venting himself and his musical direction — a side effect of deliv ering project after project over the years. With the release of his second studio album “Melt My Eyez, See Your Future” in 2022, Curry told the Miami New Times that he is out with the old and in with the new: “Y’all are not going to hear the same type of Denzel anymore.”

Perhaps the end of an en tire era in his career, the rapper wrapped up his 2022 tour with a legendary — one could even call it an “Ultimate” — show at Boston’s Roadrunner.

The intense energy cours ing through the venue was pal pable before Curry even took the stage. Opener PlayThat BoiZay made sure of that by de livering a performance so hype that multiple mosh pits erupted throughout his set. The undying screams from the moshers were loud enough to elicit a wild ap pearance by none other than Cur ry himself. He skirted across the stage with a knowing smirk that foreshadowed a great show was

bound to come. PlayThatBoiZay was followed up by two other openers, AG Club and redveil, who brought their own finesse to their performances but matched Curry’s energy to a T.

Curry didn’t let his opening acts outshine him. On the con trary, they enhanced his per formance by getting the crowd loose and rowdy so that his per formance could feed and thrive off that wild energy. He kicked off the show with “Melt Session #1” and “Walkin,” which echo each other in the vulnerable and emo tional narrative behind the lyrics “I keep walkin’” that are featured on both tracks.

When followed up with the political “Worst Comes to Worst” and “The Last”’s commentary on institutional racism released during the Black Lives Matter movement, the beginning of the setlist was a constant ebb and flow between lyrical and sonic contrasts.

The driving force behind the narratives in Curry’s verses was the thematic display on the screen behind him. Just like Cur ry’s performance, there was nev er an underwhelming moment. Whether it was the trippy flash of hallucinogenic colors, the strik ing red ink of Japanese imperi

Curry thrives in the at-times chaotic but undeniably epic atmosphere that he creates for himself while performing.

Although the two are themat ically coherent, the sonics could not be more different. While “Melt Session #1” features Rob ert Glasper’s introspective pia no in the background, the trap beats on “Walkin” are catalysts for head-banging — especially when Boston fans heard the lyr ics “make the team green like the Celtics.”

al-era courts, the sweltering yel lows of a desert, grainy footage of sumo wrestlers going at it, or the shocking white faces of creepy clowns, the stage was always dy namic. Both the thrum of the bass and the buzz of electric colors charged the room and worked to energize the crowd.

Quite the multitasker, Cur ry was also a master at engag ing the audience in his show. He

painstakingly taught the Bos ton crowd how to make a wall-ofdeath in preparation of the beat drop in “Ain’t No Way.” He didn’t stop there. As if getting the en tire standing area to part down the middle wasn’t impressive enough, Curry got the entire ven ue to get low before the opening beats of “Ultimate.”

He also went above and be yond to get the moshers-going during “Dog Food” but made sure to help people up-front out with shouts of warning telling every one to “step the fuck back!” When the crowd got too rowdy he didn’t panic: “Let me see that shoe,” he said after a shoe was thrown at him from an over enthusiastic fan. “Fuck that shoe!” he yelled and chucked it back into the laughing crowd.

Curry also conversed with the audience on more serious top ics, like how any day could be the last in the post-pandemic reality before he performed “The Last.”

As a result of his commitment to making the night one to re member for the fans, the recently opened Roadrunner came to life and genuinely felt like the largest indoor general admission venue in New England.

After more than a decade in the industry, Denzel Curry’s growth is evident. Not only in the evolution of his musical style, but in the impressive stage pres

ence and larger than life person ality on stage. He thrives in the at-times chaotic but undeniably epic atmosphere that he creates for himself while performing,

and seeing the rapper in his ele ment makes it an unforgettable experience for every concertgoer.

Denzel Curry performs at Roadrunner Boston. COURTESY OF TEAL MIGLIACCIO

ASHER J. MONTGOMERY — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

alisa.regassa@thecrimson.com

The Grolier Poetry Book shop celebrates its 95th Anniversary. MARINA QU — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

ASHER J. MONTGOMERY — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

ASHER J. MONTGOMERY — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

FIFTEEN QUESTIONS

Q&A:

ANNE HARRINGTON ’82 ON HIST OF SCI, MENTAL HEALTH, AND ICE CREAM

BY IO Y. GILMAN CRIMSON MAGAZINE ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Anne Harrington ’82 re ceived an undergrad uate degree in History and Science from Har vard and then received a modern history doctorate from Oxford.

She is the Franklin L. Ford Pro fessor of the History of Science and also serves as the Faculty Dean of Pforzheimer House. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Fifteen Minutes: Could you tell me about your favorite class that you’ve taught?

Anne Harrington: The hard est class, but also the class that in some sense, has meant the most to me, was my Gen Ed class on Madness and Medicine. That course probably shaped me, sur prisingly, as much as it shaped the students I taught. In the end, it inspired me to write a book that was published in 2019, called “Mind Fixers,” that I dedicated to the students in that Gen Ed class.

I became convinced that I was unable to do justice to one of the most important developments in the recent history of psychiatry, and I was inspired by the ques tions asked by those students to figure out the answers. Why is it that so suddenly, and without much warning, the whole field of American psychiatry pivoted away from previous psychother apeutic and psychosocial under standings of what mental suffer ing is? How come, sometime in the 1980s, everyone’s decided, ap parently, all together, that it’s all about drugs, it’s all about chem istry, and it’s not about context or biography? There had been no new science and no new treat ments to justify it. So there need ed to be a different explanation for why we ended up in the world that we did.

FM: Why did that shift happen?

AH: The field of psychiatry had been dominated by the psycho analysts and the psychosocial ly oriented thinkers that em braced a very expansive vision of what they were doing that hard ly seemed like it had anything to do with medicine at all. That came back as a starting point for a whole wave of radical critiques of the mental health professions, which argued that they seemed more in the business of disciplin ing people than of curing them, and that there doesn’t seem to be any medical agenda here, so why are they claiming to be doctors?

There was a very major proj ect that they had undertaken that had to do with emptying the men tal hospitals and moving peo ple into the so-called communi ty that was inspired by this broad way of thinking. And it was the families of many of the patients that had been moved out of the hospitals and into the so-called community that pushed back and said, “It’s time to re-medical ize.” They provided a space for the biologically oriented psychi atrists who had been out of pow er to step up and say, well, the field has pushed itself to a point where it’s at risk of making a laughingstock of itself. Of course, there’s such a thing as mental ill ness; of course there’s a biology to mental illness; we need to get back to brass tacks.

What the general public tend ed to believe was that there must have been a biological, scientific reason for the shift in power, but it was really more of a rhetorical move. It was one in which they said, put us in power and we will figure out the biological basis of schizophrenia and depression. Give us money, have a “decade of the brain,” give us MRI machines,

out, getting on buses to go to DC. It’s now much more about offer ing alternative possible ways of making less visible people visible to the people in power.

FM: In a 2018 survey, some 46 percent of Harvard students reported mental health con cerns. What do you think needs to be done to support them?

AH: This is a question that uni versities and colleges across the country are asking. Harvard stu dents are both unique, and also very typical in the sense that it’s been exacerbated, as we all know, by the isolation and the strains and anxieties brought on by the pandemic. I don’t want to give a glib answer like, “here’s what we should do.” What I would say, though, is that not all forms of mental suffering or mental dis tress are necessarily disease. Suffering from anxiety may or may not always be best served by embedding the understand ing of what’s wrong and how to fix it in a medical model. If we al lowed that there could be a spec trum of things that could help, some might involve medication, some might involve therapy, some might involve speaking to a chaplain. I think we constrain our ability to help people by pre maturely medicalizing all forms of distress.

FM: What is your favorite thing about being Pfoho House Dean?

AH: It gives me an excuse to play. I have to take people snow tub ing, it’s my job, what can I do? I have long kind of felt it’s been a not-so-secret excuse to have fun in ways that I probably wouldn’t allow myself otherwise. Not ev erything always has to be deep. The house system and the things that we do can bring some light ness to everyone’s life, including the faculty deans’.

FM: What’s your favorite Pfo ho house tradition?

AH: We have a program called Pfoho Pforays, and they are ex cursions that follow the arc of the seasons. In that, the thing that has been the most amazing foray we’ve done has been a four-day dog-sledding and winter camp ing excursion. We take about 20 students to western Maine, right near the Maine-New Hampshire border, and they learn how to mush teams of sled dogs and spend two nights sleeping out in canvas tents by a frozen lake.

FM: Do you have a favorite place on campus that you like going to?

and we will figure this out, but they really never did.

Right now, the field is in a place where there is a tremendous am bivalence about psychiatry’s abil ity to really say what it knows or doesn’t know about mental illness. And, I hope, maybe an appetite to pull back from hegemonic ways of thinking about what causes men tal illness and bring back voices that got marginalized in the ’80s.

FM: History of science combines two different fields into one. What distinguishes it from his tory?

AH: There are a lot of universities where history of science is simply embedded in history departments, so it’s a very fair question. We are a university where it’s been decided that there is value in having a sep arate department. And the bene fit of maintaining the separate de partment is that it allows us to expand the purview of things that can be studied. We offer students this opportunity to combine his torical studies with in-depth scien tific coursework, to produce social and scientifically literate social sci entists.

FM: How did you get into history of science?

AH: I came as a first-year thinking I had figured everything out and I was going to be an English concen trator. I thought science was just te dious things you had to learn in text books, and I didn’t see the beauty.

Then everything fell apart in a

really constructive way. Basically, I felt the world was too dangerous to simply become an English person. I continued to love English literature and wrote poetry and did all these other things, but I was very, very worried about nuclear war. I took a Gen Ed class called “The Astro nomical Perspective.” The instruc tor invited scientists who had been involved in the Manhattan Project to come to class. I remember go ing into Science Center B, and I was very worried about the world blow ing up, and these are the people that had done it. So who were these gi ants who had brought these god like powers into the world? I came in, and they were these little wrin kly gray guys who basically said that they hadn’t quite appreciated all of the implications of what they had done, and got all caught up in the technical interest of the project, and then they basically said they saw no solution. It was going to be up to us to figure out what to do about all the awesome and horrible powers they brought into the world. I left Science Center B furious with the grownups. And then it became, well, how do I live with my anger and my fear? And history of science became a kind of responsible avenue for working through my quarrel with science, for trying to understand the disconnect between the scientif ic developments and moral respon sibility. So I kind of went to the his tory of science initially to try and save the world. But it was a kind of a dark space in the history of sci ence that I moved into, and it actu ally wasn’t where the love was. The love for me was really about where

human beings fit into the universe, and I was fascinated by conscious ness. It seemed to me to be the most mysterious thing because every thing else was big, empty, silent space and then one infinitesimally tiny bit of the universe woke up and looked around, and I couldn’t wrap my mind around this, and I didn’t think the scientific story made any sense of this.

In the end, I ended up following the love rather than the fear. I got in volved with the history of the brain sciences and all the sciences that are interested in the human mind, but then found other ways to connect that interest to the kind of activist impulses that originally brought me into the field, but now focused more on social justice and equity and cen tering human suffering and looking at ways that the scientists do or don’t do justice to it and alleviate it.

FM: Is there anything that you are trying to do now in that activist mindset, bringing that forward?

AH: I think of my book “Mind Fix ers” as an intervention and not just a piece of history. I’m in the pro cess of developing a project that will look at the brain disorder, actually, and what would happen if we told stories about say, neurology or the brain sciences in ways that didn’t as sume that the only interesting ac tors were the scientists and the doc tors, but centered the neurological patient and their families. There’s this profound ethical and political power in that simple act of re-cen tering. So, my activism is not as much as it used to be about going

AH: I think the Quad is great, I re ally do. How can we move peo ple’s minds and hearts a little bit on this issue? You go on to the Quad lawn on a sunny day with Adirondack chairs, and maybe there’s a mom with a baby tod dling around, and kids are there doing their homework, and the sky is blue, and it’s so peaceful. It’s just like a home.

FM: What do you tell freshmen who are sad about being Quad ded on Housing Day?

AH: I say come up and see us. As a place to live, and as a community in its own right, I think once peo ple get up there and see the ame nities and meet the people, they wipe away their tears and they settle in.

FM: On the Pfoho website it says that you think ice cream should be its own food group. Of all the ice cream shops in and around Harvard Square, what’s your go-to?

AH: Partly because I like ice cream so much, I don’t go too much. Honeycomb Creamery is the fancy place. I actually quite like J.P. Licks, that’s my go-to if I’m with friends or family. Tos canini is a little bit out of the way, but when I go kayaking with stu dents, we go to Toscanini. How can you choose? It really depends on the mood, the moment, where you are. Ice cream is always good.

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

IO Y. GILMAN — CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE PROFESSOR and faculty dean of Pforzheimer House sat down with Fif teen Minutes to discuss the history of mental health and some pfun Pfoho traditions. “I think the Quad is great, I really do,” she says. “How can we move people’s minds and hearts a little bit on this issue?”

Coach Spotlight: Billy Boyce

MEN’S LIGHTWEIGHT CREW BY ALEXANDRA N. WILSON CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

F or competitors, coaches, and spectators alike, the Head of the Charles Regatta is a spectacle. For one weekend each October, it is hard not to feel en ergy on the Charles River as crew teams from around the world flood its waters with hopes of vic tory.

Some crew diehards, like Harvard men’s lightweight head coach Billy Boyce, have the op portunity to see this scene from multiple perspectives. After tak ing part in the HOCR as both a rower and a coach, Boyce expe rienced the regatta from multi ple points of view while estab lishing himself as a key figure in collegiate crew, both in and out of the boat.

Boyce’s illustrious crew ca reer began when he walked on to the team at Cornell University in 2004 with limited rowing ex perience under his belt. He was placed in a First Freshman Eight at a time when Cornell had not won a championship in over a de cade.

The upperclassmen were de termined to lead Cornell’s come back in the Ivy League and set the tone by encouraging discipline and organizing training sessions outside of scheduled practice.

Boyce embraced this intense cul ture as a walk-on.

“We had a chip on our shoul der, and we were determined to out-work a league that didn’t ex pect much from us,” Boyce wrote in an email. “We developed a fiercely competitive dynamic be tween our top two eights that pushed both boats to Sprints wins [at the IRA National Cham pionship Regatta] in 2006, de spite coming in poorly ranked. After that, Cornell went on a run that hasn’t been matched since.”

After this surge of momen tum, Cornell went on to win two more national championships, amounting to three IRA cham pionships in total during Boyce’s time as an undergrad. Howev

er, despite its success in nation al competitions, Cornell nev er medaled at the Head of the Charles while Boyce was a row er; instead, the team used the race as motivation for winter training.

“I raced Head of the Charles a couple of times and remem ber it as exhilarating, if not a bit chaotic,” Boyce recalled. “I only remember a few controversial moments from races – for exam ple, a crew in front of us failed to yield and started swearing at us, and pushed us to the outside of a turn. As athletes, we used it as fuel through the winter and kept it in mind when we raced them in the spring.”

Nowadays, as a coach, Boyce has a similar attitude towards the Head of the Charles. Without di minishing the significance of the regatta, Boyce is very aware of the fact that the HOCR is merely the first race of the season and should not be used as a bellwether for the spring season several months down the road.

“Teams must be careful not to let a good result breed com placency; nor can they let a bad result discourage them,” Boyce wrote. “The important thing is to keep grinding, keep developing and to be ready for the real season in the spring.”

But the unpredictability of rowing is exactly what Boyce loves about it. He compared crew to the MLB, where a team’s suc cess can dramatically change from year to year. Luck can change quickly in collegiate row ing, depending on the dynamic of the boat and the work ethic of the team that year. As a result, each person in a boat provides a cru cial component to the team’s suc cess, and no one star can carry a team to victory.

“Lightweight rowing is a beautiful sport because the mar gins are tight and the unexpected can and often does occur,” Boyce wrote. “This all amounts to what I find so compelling about the sport – a crew can be greater than the sum of its parts and do some thing nobody expects.”

Once Boyce graduated from college, his enduring love for the sport prompted him to intern at his alma mater. From there, he

served as an assistant coach at Yale before coming to Harvard as an assistant coach for the heavy weight squad for five seasons and eventually ascending to his cur rent position.

Under Boyce’s leadership, the lightweight team won the points title at the IRAs and finished with a 9-1 dual record before a threeyear hiatus due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Upon their return, the squad’s varsity four boats fin ished second in the grand final at the IRAs.

One highlight of Boyce’s time at Harvard is the crew he coached to an IRA gold, the heavyweights’ 2nd Varsity squad. Boyce credit ed the rowers’ collective strength, rather than any of their individ ual times, for outpacing their opponents in the final leg of the Sprints.

“It was a crew that gave me heart attacks but was also fun to be around because they were so confident, knew their abilities and knew how to execute,” he wrote. “They always found a way to win.”

This year, Boyce and the light

weight squad have high hopes for the season and look forward to using the HOCR as a springboard for the spring season.

“We’re excited to race this weekend, but I tell our guys it’s a

small step on a much longer jour ney,” Boyce wrote. “Whatever the result, we’ll get back to work next week, grinding, keeping our process going and shaping our competitive mindset to be able

to execute with confidence come Spring. We get it right and we’ll be able to race with anyone in the league.”

Crimson Makes Ivy Tournament Push With Road Wins Over Columbia And Cornell

VOLLEYBALL BY MANDY BRENNER CRIMSON CONTRIBUTING WRITER

T his past week end, Harvard women’s vol leyball re turned from a successful New York road trip with two more wins under its belt against Cornell and Colum

bia, starting off the final three weeks of its 2022 season strong. While the Crimson had a slow start to this year’s season, with this weekend marking its first back-to-back wins, senior cap tain Bella Almanza is hopeful for the team’s future in the upcoming conference matches.

Saturday’s match against Co lumbia (4-12, 1-6 Ivy League) started off shaky, leaving the Crimson (4-11, 3-4) playing a stra

tegic game of catch up to over come Columbia’s six point lead. Almanza set the tone for the rest of the game within the first ral ly, earning the first point for the Crimson with an ace (one of two for the rising senior).

Harvard soon clawed its way to a comeback, tying the score at 22 before ultimately crossing the 25-point finish line first with Columbia hot on their heels, just two points behind. Almanza’s

ace was the first of many for the Crimson.

“Coming into these Cornell and Columbia games, we em phasized having a really strong week of practice, working on be ing a consistent team, making sure we’re doing our jobs, hold ing each other accountable, and keeping our energy level consis tent rather than being up and down, and I think that helped us during these games to keep our composure,” Almanza said.

Almanza’s teammates soon followed her lead, with junior hitter Olivia Cooper and sopho more libero Lindsay Zhang scor ing an ace each while rising soph omore libero Teia Piette scored a career-high of four aces in the first set, simultaneously break ing her previous personal best of two and scoring half of Har vard’s aces throughout the entire match.

“Going into Cornell and Co lumbia, we knew these were must win matches for us to keep us in contention for the tournament”, said Cooper, another standout from both games this weekend who scored 11 kills against the Li ons. “We came in with a new in tensity and worked really hard all week to come out as our best. We’ve had a bunch of injuries, so our lineup was shifting around even coming into Friday, and I’m really proud of the grit and deter mination we showed this week end to pull out these two wins against formidable teams.”

The Crimson and Lions were

neck-and-neck throughout the second set, which featured six lead changes before Harvard pulled ahead and finalized a 2522 scoreline.

“Brown, Yale, and Princeton — we all faced early on in the season, and those are three big teams in the Ivy League, so we knew those were going to be tough matches,” said Almanza when asked what the team did differently between the last three games and the vic tories over the Big Red and the Li ons. “After them, going into the Cornell-Columbia weekend, we had a fire lit under us and knew we had to hunker down and fo cus in to get business done and to make the tournament. So I’m re ally proud of us for having a good week of practice and getting the job done this past weekend.”

Columbia, in an attempt to defend its home turf, managed a seven point lead to wrap up the third set, 25-18, before Harvard ultimately emerged victorious, taking both the fourth set, 29-27, and the match. Harvard’s kill streak was spread across mul tiple players, with four women scoring ten or more kills.

First-year hitter Brynne Faltinsky, who was named Ivy League Rookie of the Week on Monday, matched her record from Friday’s game against Cor nell with thirteen, followed by Almanza and Cooper, who each scored 11, and junior hitter Katie Vorhies scoring ten.

“I think we’ve also been very motivated by the saying, play for

each other,” said Cooper follow ing the win. “Even when we were tired, we made it a goal to push through and play for each other, which I really think lends to our team culture.”

Both Almanza and Cooper mentioned the importance of team chemistry in the success of this past weekend.

“We all genuinely love each other, I think other people see it, the coaches have seen it, the chemistry on this particular team, both last year and this year is really strong,” Almanza said.

“We really care about each oth er as friends and family. We have a really good connection on and off the court. You can see it on the court because we have a lot of trust and faith in each other as teammates and as friends.”

Harvard will get a second chance against every Ivy over the next three weeks, starting with the Big Green this Friday.

“I love this team so much, and our chemistry is so special,” Coo per said. “There’s nothing quite like getting to play everyday with your very best friends. I’m really proud of how we’ve adapted and overcome the obstacles we’ve faced this season, and am super excited to face Dartmouth again this weekend.”

With just seven games left in the season to qualify for the Ivy League Championship Tourna ment, Harvard will be taking its chemistry to New Hampshire to kick off the second half of the reg ular season.

Harvard men’s lightweight crew coach Billy Boyce competed in the HOCR multiple times while attending Cornell. JOSIE W. CHEN — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

alexandra.wilson@thecrimson.com

A Harvard four-man crew strokes down the Charles during the 2021 Head of the Charles Regatta. JOSIE W. CHEN — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Competitors pass beneath the Anderson Memorial Bridge during the 2021 Head of the Charles Regatta. ANGELA DELA CRUZ — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Crimson Begins Season Hot

BY JACK SILVERS CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

was Wimberly, who has emerged as a safety valve for Dean and one of the top receiving threats in the Ivy League. A figure who had al ready carved his name into the Crimson football canon with his game-winning touchdown catch in The Game against Yale last sea son, Wimberly has demonstrated a similar streak of clutchness so far this season.

Coming

into this year, senior run ning back Aidan Borguet and senior wide receiver Kym Wimberly were both expected to be major contributors to the Harvard (4-1, 2-0) offense and help make up for the handful of dynamic play makers who graduated after last season. The two flashed potential throughout the Crimson’s 8-2 cam paign last season, with Borguet tot ing the rock 115 times and Wimber ly leading the team with more than 450 yards receiving.

Pair that high-flying duo with a healthy Charlie Dean, the team’s senior signal-caller who missed the last four games of last season due to injury, and Harvard seemed to have a wealth of experi ence and talent at the major offen sive skill positions. Five weeks in, the triumvirate has blown these expectations out of the water.

Start with Dean, the man un der center – rather, in the mod ern offensive style that Harvard plays, in the shotgun.

After struggling in the team’s season opener at home against Merrimack in what was his first start in almost a calendar year, the Odessa, Fla. native has gone on to throw for 984 yards and nine touchdowns in the four games since, completing almost 60% of his throws.

More importantly, after going undefeated in his starts in 2021, the quarterback has continued his winning ways. Dean especial ly shined in the team’s Ivy League opener against Brown, in which he torched the Bears defense for 282 yards through the air and four scores.

On the receiving end of two of those touchdowns in Providence

In the Merrimack game, which featured a frantic Harvard fourth-quarter comeback, the senior hauled in a 27-yard catch and a 36-yard catch in the penul timate and ultimate drives of reg ulation, respectively, paving the way for Borguet to score on both drives. In the squad’s lone loss so far, a 30-21 defeat to Holy Cross on Oct. 1, Wimberly’s 19-yard scor ing catch in the third quarter kept the Crimson within striking dis tance.

The team likely wouldn’t even have been close against the Cru saders without Borguet, who rushed for two touchdowns in that contest, his second multiscore game of the season in addi tion to the win at Brown.

Borguet has seamlessly ad justed to the role of lead back af ter playing behind Aaron Shamp klin last season, as he leads the Ivy League in rushing yards (620) and is third in the FCS in yards per game (124).

The senior brings a rare com bination of evasiveness and strength to head coach Tim Mur phy’s and offensive coordinator Mickey Fein’s offense, allowing the Crimson to gain solid yardage often on early downs.

At the same time, he is a con stant threat to break off a ma jor run, as evidenced by his 67yard touchdown run against the Bears.

On that play, Borguet ran di rectly into his own offensive line man behind the line of scrim mage, then bounced left, broke a tackle, and exploded into the open field and away from any Brown defender in sight.

“I’m just proud of the charac ter that has been shown through a lot of the games so far,” Borguet said.

MEN’S LIGHTWEIGHT CREW

Proving his words, the team has received contributions throughout the year from young difference-makers such as soph omores Ledger Hatch, a deep threat at wide receiver who can take the top off of a defense, and defensive lineman Dominic Young-Smith, who snagged an interception last week against Howard.

While Borguet and Wimberly have garnered headlines and ac colades, it is impossible to break down the success of this Harvard team so far without pointing to its experienced, bend-but-notbreak defense.

Senior defensive lineman and team captain Truman Jones has anchored a unit that has come up with big stops when needed and has benefitted from timely play at

all levels of the defense.

In the Merrimack game, for instance, senior defensive line man Nate Leskovec came up with a massive sack of Warriors quar terback Gavin McCuster late in the fourth quarter, ensuring that the game would go to overtime.

Against Brown, Bears quar terback Jake Willcox was able to march up and down the field for much of the fourth quarter, but senior defensive back Khalil Dawsey knocked down a desper ation third-down heave with un der thirty seconds to go to protect the Harvard lead.

As the Crimson looks ahead to its final five games, all against Ivy League opponents, it will need to continue to come up with big plays on the defensive side while using Borguet’s talents to win

the time-of-possession battle.

The next two contests, at home against Princeton (5-0, 2-0) and away against Dartmouth (1-4, 0-2) will offer the chance for some comeuppance, as the Tigers and Big Green are the only two teams who beat the 2021 Harvard team.

Against these rivals, the Crim son will also hope that its spe cial teams squad, led by assistant coach Jon Poppe, can continue to raise eyebrows: against Cornell, senior linebacker Kobe Joseph got his hand on a punt that end ed in a 17-yard return touchdown for junior defensive back Jelani Machen, a feat that was almost matched by senior defensive back James Herring when he blocked a punt last weekend against How ard.

Whatever the result on the

scoreboard against undefeated Princeton on Saturday, the Crim son will undoubtedly play with the tenacity that Murphy has preached in each of his 28 sea sons at the helm, the never-giveup philosophy that has led him to become the winningest coach in Ivy League history.

“Our coaching staff gives us motivation and really just lets us know that we have to be ourselves and we have to continue to exe cute the way we want to,” Borguet said.

Borguet, Wimberly, Jones, and the other seniors on the ros ter hope that their inspired play will bring Murphy his tenth Ivy League title in the season’s clos ing contests.

From Syria to Boston: Bannan Stars on River

the boat and set the stroke rate and rhythm for the crew to follow. The stroker plays a critical role during the race, as this rate can deter mine whether a boat wins or los es a race.

BY DEREK HU CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Beyond Harvard senior Abdullah Bannan’s light weight crew ca reer exists an awe-inspiring story: one that demonstrates his resilience and strong desire to help others.

Growing up in Aleppo, Syria, Bannan’s childhood was altered by his country’s Civil War. Alep po, the largest city in Syria, was the center of a major military con flict between the government and numerous Sunni opposition rebel groups.

The conflict began when Ban nan was entering seventh grade, and he recalled hearing about “people protesting and children being kidnapped by the govern ment.” Citizens were drafted by President Bashar al-Assad’s re gime to join the Syrian Armed Forces and its numerous al lies, but many soon defected and joined the Free Syrian Army, a breakaway branch of the army that was formed in 2011 with the intention of overthrowing Assad

The seventh grader’s world changed when fighting broke out in Aleppo on July 19, 2012. Ban nan’s father, in hopes of preventing the government from completely taking over, was determined to re main in the city. But, the bombings destroyed Bannan’s home, and he was forced to evacuate.

“I think it’s ridiculous for me to talk about it in the past like it’s over,” Bannan wrote in an email. “I don’t know if it’s the age by which I experienced it, or the duration of that experience, but it remains a huge part of who I am and it is something that comes up in my mind at least 5 times a day.”

Despite the difficulties he and his family faced, Bannan found in spiration in a Class Day address delivered by Sarah Abushaar ’14, titled “The Harvard Spring.”

“I knew nothing at that point, but I just knew that I wanted to do my absolute best to change what ever was in my power to change,” Bannan wrote. “However, as the years passed, it was obvious that anything I would want to do would be limited under the political cli mate, so I wanted an education that would allow me the chance to make real change.”

Bannan pursued biology, which he first became interested in while attending the Al-Bassel

High School for Outstanding Stu dents, a government-run institu tion for gifted students, founded by the Syrian Ministry of Educa tion in 1998.

“I first got into biology and chemistry when I participated in the National Biology Olympi ad in high school and got to expe rience concepts on a deeper level through classes at the local uni versity,” he wrote. “[I] then ended up competing and winning in the International Biology Olympiad which really showed me how pas sion can go a long way even under difficult circumstances.”

Following in Abushaar’s foot steps, Bannan went on to study Chemical and Physical Biology at Harvard. However, the journey to get to Cambridge was difficult.

“We couldn’t pay for the stan dardized tests ourselves from within Syria due to economic sanctions,” he explained. “There were basically no resources, and we all do high school in Arabic.”

During his application pro cess, Bannan heard about the Syr ian Youth Empowerment Initia tive through one of his friends. Founded in 2015 by George Batah and Majed Abdulsamad, SYE is a program that pays for standard ized test fees, provides resources for preparation, and pairs Syrian high school students with men tors that guide them through the college application process. To day, Bannan serves as an active mentor for the organization.

It wasn’t until he arrived at Harvard that Bannan pursued his lifelong interest in rowing, which he had never tried in Syria.

“I grew up watching the Olym pics with my family, and we would always watch gymnastics, swim ming, and rowing,” Bannan wrote. “I was always fascinated by the sport being the right combination of strength and cardio.”

Halfway through his sopho more year, Bannan reached out to Harvard’s rowing coaches to ask if

he could walk onto the team. How ever, owing to his relative inexpe rience in the sport, he had multi ple intensive one-on-one sessions with the lightweight coaches to keep him up to speed with the rest of the squad.

“Abdullah’s story is unlike any other,” said his teammate, sopho more Brahm Erdmann. “He’s cer tainly taken the path less trav eled to become a Harvard rower — which, ironically, makes him a typical member of our team: he took an opportunity and ran.

That’s what Harvard varsity light weight crew is all about.”

Despite his late start, Bannan has had many impressive accom plishments in his rowing career, one of which came during a race against Navy in the Haines Cup, which took place on the Severn River in Annapolis, Md. on Apr. 23, 2021.

In this race, Bannan was “stroking” the boat, which meant he had to sit closest to the stern of

Bannan recalled that, during the race, he was nervous.

“I was in a very disparate state as we stopped seeing the other two Navy boat[s],” he wrote. “But then one of my teammates called out my name from the back, which kind of snapped me back to reality and reminded me of the seven oth er rowers behind me, all having my back, all putting in their best work to move the boat.”

The team ended up finishing second by 11.3 seconds, tying with Navy’s fifth varsity squad in 6:41.3.

“It was the support of being surrounded by 30 other team mates cheering for you, while ev eryone was pushing themselves to the absolute limits of their heart rates and lung capacity,” Bannan noted of the race.

Another challenge Bannan overcame in his rowing career was his 2K test.

Similar to the mile running test, the 2K rowing test assesses rowers’ endurance, output, and resilience. However, a week be fore his scheduled 2K, Bannan contracted Covid-19, so he could not train with the rest of the team.

“This really stressed me out, because we had been building up fitness over the weeks leading to the test and the coaches had put together very precise plans for each of us to perform well on this test,” he wrote.

However, determined to stay on track, he cycled in the base ment of Dunster House with his mask on, managing to achieve a personal record.

After walking on to the team during sophomore year, Bannan found a home away from home in the Charles River

JOSIE W. CHEN — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Alongside senior Truman Jones, junior Thor Griffith has been vital in anchoring the strong Harvard defense so far this season. JOSIE W. CHEN — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

SIZZLING START Har vard has gotten off to a 4-1 start on the backs of its senior stars: Bourget, Wimbery, and Jones

SETTING SAIL Bannan’s journey from Syria to Cam bridge has been anything but ordinary.

jack.silvers@thecrimson.com

derek.hu@thecrimson.com

Crimson Crew Set for HOCR

the Head of the Charles marks the opening of both Harvard men’s and women’s crew fall sea sons and a chance to pick up from where they left off in the spring.

BY MAIREAD BAKER CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

In just a few days, the banks of the Charles Riv er will be filled with row ers, coaches, and specta tors alike for the world’s largest three-day rowing event: the Head of the Charles Regatta.

Since its inception in 1965, this regatta has hosted teams from universities, as well as pro fessional and club squads from across the United States and around the world. It attracts hundreds of thousands of spec tators, marking one of the busi est days of the year on Harvard’s campus and in Cambridge. Re cruiting thousands of volunteers and sponsored by companies such as Vineyard Vines, Moder na, BNY Mellon Investment Man agement, and Omni Boston Ho tel, many people are attracted to the event not only to watch row ers make history but also to take part in activities such as the Eliot Bridge Enclosure and purchase regatta merchandise and food at the Weld Boathouse. There is also a Reunion Village, where alumni can gather to support their favorite teams.

With early ties to Harvard, the regatta was initially created by members of the Cambridge Boat Club on advice from Har vard sculling instructor Ernest Arlett. Arlett suggested a “Head of the River” contest be held on the Charles River, with “head” referring to races that are gen erally three miles in length. The course starts at the Boston Uni versity Boathouse and runs three

CROSS COUNTRY

miles upstream, ending past Harvard’s campus. Though this three-mile stream of the river is generally packed with sightse ers, the hub of spectators tends to crowd around the Harvard bend of the Charles. Since its inaugu ration, the event has grown to 55 different events, featuring over 11,000 rowers from all around the world. Winners of each race re ceive the honorary title, “Head of the Charles.”

Last year, Harvard crew was well-represented in the regatta. One boat from the men’s light weight team competed in the

Men’s Club Fours race, taking fifth place overall. In the same event, a men’s heavyweight team of four claimed first place among 44 boats. Two Radcliffe lightweight teams earned topfive placements in the Women’s Lightweight Eights.

One women’s heavyweight boat took home a fifth-place fin ish in the Club Eights race with a time of 17:02.361. Finally, in the Sunday championship, one team—led by current sopho more Bridget Galloway—took sixth place overall in the Wom en’s Championship Fours. The

team placed behind the victors, Stanford, and a Canadian Olym pic boat, as well as Ivy competi tors Brown, Yale, and Princeton.

More recently, current and former members from Harvard’s men’s and women’s heavyweight teams competed in the 2022 World Rowing Championships. Four alumni and one current stu dent-athlete, sophomore Jack Dorney, raced in the event, repre senting four different countries.

Molly Moore ’17 was part of the women’s Para-Rowing Mixed Coxed Four for Team USA, which placed fifth. The U.S. Men’s Eight

rostered Pieter Quinton ’20 and Liam Corrigan ’19 and placed fourth in the A Final. Sam Har dy ’18 rowed for Australia, whose boat took home the bronze med al. Dorney occupied the bow seat for Ireland’s men’s fours boat, placing second in the B final.

Alumnus David Ambler ’20 won big for England, racing from the three seat for Great Brit ain’s coxless four. The boat won both the heat and repechage, ad vancing to the A final, where it claimed the 2022 World Champi onship.

For current Harvard rowers,

The women’s heavyweights are coming off a strong season, placing fifth at the Ivy Champion ships last year.

They also notched a pair of third-place finishes, at the Sara toga Invitational and the EAW RC sprints—the annual rowing championship for all of the Ivy League schools—in addition to MIT, Boston University, and Wis consin, among others.

The women’s lightweights also took third at the EAWRC sprints last season to go along with a fifth-place finish at the IRA Championship in May, a national championship regatta originally founded by Ivy rival Cornell.

The men’s lightweights took home a silver medal at the IRA National Championships this past spring, as the boat of four posted a time of 6:25, just two sec onds behind Navy, who won the race in the ML4 Grand Final.

The men’s heavyweights de feated many Ivy schools last year, boasting wins against Cornell, Brown, and Princeton, and tak ing first place in a race against Penn and Navy.

The team also was victorious against Boston neighbor North eastern University, despite tak ing sixth place at the IRA Nation al Championships.

Though this famous regatta is not necessarily a testament to the strength of the Harvard crew teams, given the type of compe tition they are to face during the remainder of their races this fall, it surely is a part of the tradition that graces the Crimson-stained waters of the Charles. It is a step along a much longer journey, one that will once again commence right here at home.

Harvard Strides Through Pair of Key Races

once again as a vital point scorer.

BY JACK CANAVAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

The Harvard men’s and women’s cross country teams raced across the country this past Friday. Just south of Madison, Wis., juniors Acer Iverson and Maia Ramsden led Crimson squads into battle against some of the nation’s best at the Nuttycombe Invitational.

On the east coast, at the famed Van Cortlandt Park course in Manhattan, N.Y., sophomores Ella Gilson and Reed Pryor head ed another pair of Harvard teams at the ECAC Championships, fac ing Ivy League rivals Princeton, Cornell, and Yale along the way. The men’s teams finished 21st in Wisconsin and 8th in New York, while the women’s teams placed 5th at Nuttycombe and 29th at Van Cortlandt.

“Nuttycombe is probably the most competitive meet of the pre season before championship sea son starts.” Iverson said. “We’re facing all the teams that will be at nationals and all the individ uals who are going to be there, so it’s a really good metric to see where we are standing right now and a great opportunity to figure out what we need to work on five weeks from now when we come to the NCAA National Champion ship.”

The emergence of the Crim son’s top runners to the front pack of the entire NCAA provides a beacon of hope for the Harvard teams that had lost key pieces of last year’s teams to eligibili ty. Iverson and junior Graham Banks headline the top men’s re turners, while Ramsden returns

Iverson and Banks went headto-head with a talented top pack in the 8K at Nuttycombe, which included U20 5000 meter Amer ican Record Holder Nico Young of Northern Arizona University and U23 European Cross Coun try Champion Charles Hicks of Stanford. Iverson placed 8th in a time of 23:22.1, just 10 seconds behind the top finisher Ky Robin son of Stanford and Young in sec ond, while Banks finished closely behind in 26th in 23:31.5. On the women’s side, Ramsden placed 7th in the 6K in 20:04.5 against a pack led by NCAA 1500 and 5000 meter champion Katelyn Tuohy.

The move to racing in the front pack of the NCAA is a new but ex citing experience for these top returners, especially in terms of racing strategy.

“I think in a lot of ways for cross country, racing at the front simplifies your life,” Ramsden said. “I dont think it’s easier, per se, but from a tactical standpoint. It’s a lot less mentally taxing to have the goal be stuck with the girls that are leading because once you get [outside the front 30 runners] it gets tricky; you feel a little bit like you’re swimming in people until the race strings out, whereas at the start of a big race if you know you can hang with that top pack you can figure out your game plan.”

Nevertheless, it seems easy to be overwhelmed by all of the accolades constituting this top group.

Relating to that point, Iverson described how having a mindset focusing on the race itself is es sential for successful racing exe cution.

“When you’re in the moment you can’t think about… about who those individuals [in front of you] are” said Iverson. “If you trust in your training, you know that you’re comfortable there and you

can be there, and that’s the most important part in staying collect ed and executing.”

Rounding out the Crimson’s scoring positions on the men’s side were senior David Melville in 140th, and first-years Shane Brosnan and Vivien Henz in 179th and 191st, respectively. With criti cal point scorer Matthew Pereira having graduated in the class of 2022, having a combination of upperclassmen experience, tal ent, and youth provides Harvard hope for great improvement not only years down the road, but also in the immediate future.

“With a senior or even a junior, you know more or less where they should be in a pack and how fast they can really run,” Iverson said. “These freshmen have been on Harvard’s campus for two months. They have a long way to go in terms of metabolizing the training, learning how to race against a huge number of really talented competitors, so with the promising results we saw at Nut tycombe, I think we can go even further with. The room for poten tial is a lot higher.”

Although the Crimson team’s did not place extremely high at the meet, Harvard’s results in the postseason typically surpass those at Nuttycombe, namely at the NCAA Championship meet.

“I would say our approach as a team has always been just to treat it as another chance to prac tice good racing habits, but we’re not necessarily going to taper or change our training for it, so sometimes our race results don’t necessarily reflect where we were at as a team,” Ramsden said. “So that’s definitely what happened last year. We did reasonably well at Nuttycombe, but we ended up beating a lot of those teams that beat us there later on in the sea son because we peaked for some of those later races. I think our [head coach] does a very good job

at that.”

Following Ramsden on the women’s side, Maya Rayle (105th) scored second for the Crimson in a time of 20:56.0, while Isa belle Goldstein (165th), Penelope Salmon (191st) and Kristin Oter vik (200th) filled out positions three through five.

In New York, strength in youth and numbers was also reflected. At the ECAC Championship, Ella Gilson led the women’s team by taking 7th place in a time of 21:28.3 in the 6K.Gilson makes up part of the Harvard women’s squad that boasts strength in numbers, which is a crucial ele ment of any team hoping to make a deep postseason run.

“This is an extremely exciting

year for us, and I know our coach is super excited about how we have been doing,” Gilson said. “I’m pretty sure this is the deep est team that Harvard’s women’s cross country has ever had, and hopefully it will be the best team that we’ve had so far.”

Past just depth, a majority of Harvard women’s team have mul tiple years of eligibility after this season, keeping their core intact as they progress in the future.

Other Harvard scorers at Van Cortlandt on the women’s side included Marianne Mihas (13th), Shakes Leibovitz (57th), Zoe Coo per (90th) and Cristina Demeo (138th). The Crimson beat Ivy League rivals Yale, Princeton and Columbia while falling just two

points behind Cornell.

On the men’s side, sophomore Reed Pryor (36th) was Harvard’s top scorer with a time of 25:02.7 in the 8K.

Finishing close behind were Noah Ward (49th), Sameer Das (52nd), Pierce Cousins (70th) and Ben Shryock (101th). Princeton won the meet.

The Crimson now shifts its fo cus towards the Ivy League Hep tagonal Championships, return ing to Van Cortlandt Park in New York City, N.Y.,on October 28th, and towards the rest of the post season, which may stretch all the way to the NCAA Championship meet for both squads on Novem ber 19th at Oklahoma State Uni versity.

Crimson runners look to lead the pack at the 2021 Ivy League Heptagonal Championships.

Juniors Acer Iverson and Maia Ramsden have emerged to lead the 2022 men’s and women’s teams.

COURTESTY OF HARVARD ATHLETICS

Spectators line Anderson Memorial Bridge to watch the 2021 Head of the Charles Regatta last October. Harvard’s crew teams look to build upon last year’s perfomance, which included a heavyweight foursome finishing in first place in the Club Fours. ANGELA DELA CRUZ — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

HEAD OF THE CHARLES

RETURN OF

will

fans

Square.

A-CROSS THE COUNTRY New leaders emerge for the Crimson as it faces post-season competition.

mairead.baker@thecrimson.com