METRO
THE HARVARD CRIMSON
COMMENCEMENT 2023
41
HARVARD SQUARE
Cava Brings Mediterranean to the Square PASS THE PITA. Mediterranean-themed restaurant chain opens location in Harvard Square. BY PATON D. ROBERTS CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
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ava opened its newest location Friday morning on Brattle Street, bringing a Mediterranean-themed fast-casual option to Harvard Square. Prior to the grand opening, Cava held a fundraiser in partnership with Project Bread, a food assistance nonprofit based in Massachusetts. Their Thursday event — which sold out on Eventbrite — allowed attendees to receive a free meal of their choice, and encouraged donations for Project Bread. Cava matched donations up to $1,000. Cava’s “Community Day” is a companywide opening tradition that has raised more than $350,000 in the past four years. The donations often focus on ensuring food security in the surrounding communities.
Christian Starkes, Cava’s Northeast Regional Leader, wrote in a statement that the company “couldn’t be more excited” about the new Harvard Square location and stressed Cava’s ethos of generosity. “Our mission is to bring heart, health, and humanity to food, and everything we do at CAVA is grounded in that spirit of generosity, to our guests, our team members, and our community,” he wrote. Both Cambridge residents and tourists expressed excitement about the new location. Shubhanshi N. Gaudani said while she hasn’t tried the food at Cava yet, she appreciated the ambience of the restaurant and the variety of food available. “The building looks cool because of the glass windows,” she said. “So I was like, ‘Oh, that’s cute, a lot of sunlight,’ and it’s a nice color palette in terms of food, so, yeah, I like the options too.” Kendall B. Clark, who was visiting from Chicago along with Gaudani, echoed her sentiments about the building’s
decor, and added that she was happy with Cava’s vegetarian options. “Like Shubhansi said, it’s really cute in here, very aesthetically pleasing. And I like the food, generally — we’re both vegetarian so I was like, okay, yeah, this is a good place that’s gonna have options for us.” Cameron Seamans said Cava is a good option for after the gym, when he might want “something quick.” Cambridge resident Angelina Z. Wang said she used to visit a Cava location near Boston University when she was a student there and was happy to have a new location in the area. “I used to go when I was in school, but there aren’t any Cavas around here really except for this one, so it’s nice to have something.” According to a press release, the opening is one of more than 60 planned for 2023. The Harvard Square Cava joins nine other Massachusetts locations. Cava, a Mediterranean-themed chain restaurant, opened a location at 22 Brattle St. last week. paton.roberts@thecrimson.com
Kenzie Bok ’11 Talks Path from Teacher to City Councilor BY JACK R. TRAPANICK CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
In the spring of 2011, graduating senior Kenzie Bok ’11, a former president of the Institute of Politics, Marshall Scholar, and lifelong Bostonian, reflected on the purpose of a Harvard education in a Crimson op-ed titled “Veritas and Us.” “To respond to the freshman-year anxiety as to whether each of us ‘deserved’ to get into Harvard: I won’t know until I do something with it to serve others,” she wrote. “So what kind of life should we lead?” Bok continued. “As I consider my own future, I wonder if I should spend my time shuttling between intellectual inquiry, political activity, and direct service, or try to settle on an intermediate location somewhere on the plane defined by those three points.” Twelve years later, Bok is an outgoing Boston City Councilor, a recent lecturer on housing policy in Harvard’s Social Studies program, and an incoming head — or “Administrator” — of the Boston Housing Authority. In all these efforts, Bok seems to have kept the same spirit in her career of public service. In an interview with The Crimson, Bok described the formative influence of her time at Harvard — both as a student and lecturer — on her career, including both her policy and her political philosophy. After graduating from College, Bok went on to study intellectual history at the University of Cambridge. She began researching American political philosopher John Rawls while at Harvard, which would later give her the tools she said she now uses as a policymaker and administrator. “A very simplistic way of
talking about one of John Rawls’ core principles is the idea that when you’re doing policymaking, you should have an initial instinct of, ‘What’s the impact of this on the least well-off set of folks in the situation?’” Bok said. “There’s actually a ton of undergirding and thinking about why that should be your instinct.” “That’s also a very useful mental tool when thinking about actual policy problems,” she added. Following her time in England, Bok returned to Harvard for a program on housing at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, before then becoming a lecturer on housing policy and political theory in the undergraduate Social Studies program. In a class she taught about applying distributive justice — “who should get what and how, and what makes that fair and equal,” as Bok describes it — to housing, students analyzed existing housing policies for their final projects, which at one point were presented to members of the Boston Housing Authority itself. The BHA, which Bok will lead after Boston Mayor Michelle Wu ’07 appointed her to the role in April, manages the city’s public housing stock and its housing voucher program while promoting fair housing throughout the city. At the time she was a Harvard lecturer, Bok also worked as a senior adviser to the BHA. Bok often talked over policies she was implementing there to her class, particularly the values undergirding them. “If it’s just like, ‘This person needs that thing,’ you might give everybody vouchers and let them end up wherever they want in the private market,” she said in reference to housing. “Which then might exclude areas — and you might be like, ‘That’s fine, be-
cause the people needed housing and they have a roof now, right?’” “But if you’re actually like, ‘No, no, it’s actually very important to our democracy that people of different incomes be able to live among each other and participate in the same local political world,’ then you become more focused on ways that you’re going to actually anchor that housing subsidy in place so that people can stay in the community,” she continued. As a result, Bok has worked on policies like adjusting payment maximums for housing vouchers to keep consistent with the average rent of the zip code they are used in. Assessing the value of her time as a Harvard undergraduate, Bok said extracurricular involvement in the Harvard College Democrats, IOP — where as president she oversaw a student budget of $60,000 — and other clubs was “very good training” for life post-graduation. “A thing that’s really parallel about undergraduate extracurricular activities and the campaign world is that you’re sort of forming a group of people and standing up a project that almost always is less than a year from start to completion,” Bok said. Though she credits her time at Harvard for helping her to develop her professional skills, Bok cautioned students against overlooking their academic experience. “What I always tell Harvard students is, ‘You’ll have your whole life to work, and you only have these years — and maybe a few more as I did — to really study,’” she said. “Make sure that you make time for the life of the mind.” jack.trapanick@thecrimson.com
PATON D. ROBERTS—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
Madras Dosa Co. Brings a Dose of Dosa to Harvard Square BY CAROLINE K. HSU AND SIDNEY K. LEE CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
Madras Dosa Co., a chain specializing in customizable dosas, opened its doors last Friday with the goal of bringing South Indian food to Harvard Square. Located on 22 Eliot St., the new establishment’s menu centers around the dosa, a crepe-like dish made of lentils and rice that is usually stuffed with savory fillings. The Harvard Square location is the second for the chain, which opened its first storefront in Boston’s Seaport district in 2021. Koushik “Babu” Koganti, the owner and operator of Madras Dosa Co., said that plans to open the chain came about because Indian food, especially from southern regions, is “underserved” in America. “A lot of people think Indian food is chicken tikka masala and naan,” he said. “Dosa has its own character, so we want to make dosa as big as it can go. That’s why we want to focus on one single dish,” Koganti continued.
The menu includes options to fill the dosa with a wide variety of vegetables and meats, as well as fruits for those looking for a sweeter option. The restaurant also serves rice pilaf, chaat, and sandwiches. On expanding into Harvard Square, Koganti said that he believes dosa is “a great to-go for the students.” He added that he hopes the restaurant will attract “millennials who are health conscious, who love vegan food.” Inside the restaurant, customers sit alongside a wall adorned with green foliage, highlighted with a pink neon sign stating, “Dosa is the Answer.” “We want people to take pictures with this wall,” Koganti said. Shreeja Kikkisetti ’25, a student at the College from South India, said she decided to eat at Madras Dosa because dosas were a “staple” for her at home. “I feel like it resembles very closely to what I’m very used to,” she said. Rachna Gupta ’25 described the atmosphere in the restaurant as “very homely” and said she was excited by the opening, despite repeated delays to its opening.
“Me and my friends have been anticipating it opening, like I follow its Instagram page. I know there were some delays, which made us a little disappointed, but we’re happy it’s here,” Gupta said. Madras Dosa’s opening saw a series of delays as the restaurant brought the space up to code and obtained permits from the City of Cambridge. The establishment initially sought to open its doors to students in December 2022 or January 2023. Madras Dosa is open until 3 a.m. every day as Koganti hopes to add the dosa to the list of latenight options in Harvard Square. According to Koganti, the chain is seeking to expand to major cities around the world, with a location on Madison Avenue in New York City set to open in a few months, as well as another along the Las Vegas Strip. Negotiations are also under way for a potential location in Paris. “One billion people in India love it. From north to south, east to west, everybody loves dosa,” Koganti said. caroline.hsu@thecrimson.com sidney.lee@thecrimson.com
Madras Dosa Co. is located at 22 Eliot St. in Harvard Square. MARINA QU—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
Harvard Awards Over $200,000 in Grants to Allston Nonprofits BY JACK R. TRAPANICK CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
Harvard announced grants totaling $200,000 to 20 different organizations and programs in Allston as part of the Harvard-Allston Partnership Fund at a ceremony last Thursday. The grant total is double the $100,000 that had previously been distributed every year since 2008, when the fund was founded as part of a cooperation agreement between Harvard and the City of Boston. The agreement allowed Harvard to begin construction for its planned expansion into Allston, including what is now the Science and Engineering Complex. The permanent funding in-
crease is part of a proposal by Harvard to the Boston Planning and Development Agency as the University seeks approval for further development at 92 Seattle St. “Increasing Harvard’s contributions to this partnership fund during my last year in office was a wonderful way to demonstrate our commitment to the Allston-Brighton community,” University President Lawrence S. Bacow, who attended the ceremony, said in a press release. Among the recipients were multiple summer camps and food pantries, a YMCA, a school parent council, an art gallery, and the Charles River Watershed Association. Grant sizes ranged from $20,000 to support a learnto-skate program by Allston Brighton Youth Hockey, $15,000
to support instruction in string instruments at the Gardner Pilot Academy, and $5,000 to create a
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It was a nice way to get a cross-section of need and evaluate proposals that would come in. Karen Smith Member of the Harvard-Allston Partnership Fund
children’s “sensory space” at the Honan Allston library. Heloisa M. Galvão, the executive director of the Brazilian Women’s Group, said her group — which received a grant of $20,000 this
year — has received grants from the fund of increasing size for the past three years after finding out about it through the Allston-Brighton Adult Education Coalition. “The grant from Harvard is crucial, because the way we see it, Allston-Brighton has become the largest Brazilian community in Boston,” she said. Galvão cited the “extremely high” cost of living in the area, food insecurity, and a lack of job opportunities for immigrants without documentation or who do not speak English as issues her organization attempts to address and will devote the funding received toward. “They come because they need clothes, because they need something for the kids, because they need food, because they need us to help them to fill out some papers,
to read the letter that they got,” she said of individuals who seek help from the Brazilian Women’s Group. She added that without external support from organizations such as Harvard, the organization’s work would be “extremely difficult.” Karen Smith, a member of the fund’s advisory committee that reviews grant proposals, said the committee sought to award grants that reflect the diverse demographics in Allston. “It was a nice way to get a cross-section of need and evaluate proposals that would come in,” she said. Asked whether she believes the funding increase represents a positive step for Harvard’s historically fraught relationship with Allston, Smith said the fund is “completely standard — and
what’s expected of anyone looking to do development.” “It is very common when developers get permission from city governments to do any one of a number of things — like housing, commercial buildings, whatever — the package that is negotiated includes mitigation and community benefits,” she said. Nevertheless, Smith said the money Harvard has contributed towards the fund is “well spent” and benefits Allston. “There are going to be kids going to the West End summer camp that wouldn’t have gone before. There are kids getting music lessons in a school that doesn’t have a budget for music, and now they’re getting music lessons,” she said. jack.trapanick@thecrimson.com
