Columns
The Golden Cross and the Golden Eagle
The conflation of American identity and Christianity that is seen in Memorial Church, and Harvard, through its memorialization, reveals tensions and contradictions. The space is, in some lights, beautiful — it nods to an understanding of life that relinquishes agency. But alongside the beauty is a story, an association, that Harvard must take accountability for. In Memorial Church, the golden eagle is angry, and the cross hovers stately above. I stare back at them, aching to respond.
The People in the Tunnels
We forget that they’re not just “the tunnels” — they’re HUDS tunnels. We should also strive to better understand them and thoughtfully consider who and what goes unseen in the unseen. Every underground space at Harvard exists for a reason, and re-evaluating our relationships with those spaces is an important step to treating service workers with the respect they deserve.
Pandemic Dogma, Revisited
The more troubling story of the pandemic — and one that we must acknowledge — is the way that society steamrolled over this uncertainty and enforced adherence to a single, majority view. Particularly for us, as students of a university that has truth in its motto, this turn to dogmatism above critical thinking should be unacceptable.
Rising Tuition? It’s Not About Sticker Prices
Rather than worrying about listed tuition prices, we should instead focus on the net tuition paid by students in different income brackets post financial aid. Universities should engage in more aggressive price discrimination, shifting from merit-based to need-based aid and forcing the wealthy elite to foot the bill so that low- and middle-income students can attend college functionally for free.
Stop Pretending You’re Poor
Cause what these students fail to see and others just ignore, is that being upper-middle class does not mean you are poor. The average Harvard income is like, far above the norm and financial stability can help kids to perform.
The Interesting Thing About Interest
The very concept of interest is, at its core, largely synonymous with the nature and strength of the relationship between a lender and borrower. This explains why a rise in social complexity, at least initially, begets the emergence of the interest rate.
There Is No Mental Health Care Shortage at Harvard
The mental health crisis at Harvard is not a crisis of a lack of resources, but rather a crisis of culture: the inevitable collision between our drive for ceaseless achievement and the painful fact that we are mere mortals. Despite the difficulty of self-care here, however, we remain free to take better care of ourselves. Now, more than ever, we have the resources to do so — if only we reach out and take advantage of them.
The Uncompromisable Eight Hours
If you’re dozing off during a particularly long lecture, or can only get through the day when you’re amped up on caffeine, your body is telling you that you need rest and recuperation. So for all the habitual Lamonsters, ask for extensions, take later classes, and go to sleep!
Let’s Dance Together! Bridging Cultural Siloes on Campus
Communities have the right to forge their own spaces, so perhaps, proactive solidarity is just as important as inclusion: to have all our voices heard, the way we want them to be. Anyway, I’ll be performing at Cultural Rhythms this Saturday with Candela (I’m nervous!). If you’re there, I’d love to bond with you over our familiarities or unfamiliarities with the merengue, K-pop dance, or the famous guest they have yet to reveal.
The Skeletons of the Red Line
The six-minute subway ride between Harvard and Central Square isn’t the most entertaining journey. But if passengers were to squint out the window as the Red Line rounded the curve out of Harvard Station, they could see the abandoned shell of another station briefly appear.
SECs in the City
The layout of schools can affect childrens’ rate of learning by 25 percent — either positively or negatively — each year. This makes it even more important that Harvard, first and foremost an educational institution, keeps design elements central in mind when renovating and building spaces for students to learn and live in.
The Legal Battle Over Abortion Is Coming to Campus
It is imperative that Harvard and peer institutions get ahead of the game and prepare for a legal war. The crisis is not only out there; it’s on our campus as well. Students seeking abortions should not have to live in uncertainty. It’s time to shift campus conversations to reflect this urgency, even in pro-access states.
Housing Day. Yay.
Don’t cry if you get Quadded. And please don’t close the door. Cause all the Harvard houses have stuff to be happy for.
Tech Races: China’s Dual-Use Bet
There are two tailwinds that continue to support China’s climb. While the first tailwind — China's rapidly growing economy — is well-understood, the second tailwind is not. Technology is an equally powerful force reinforcing China’s growth, but not in the way you might expect.
HLS and the Commercialization of Success
This is where I see the link between HLS and Divercity, the Colombian theme park. When I put out a fake fire, there wasn’t any real value in what I was doing. Similarly, it seems to me that the academic intensity of HLS, both through classes and organizations like the Harvard Law Review, has minimal value in and of itself. Instead, its value comes partly from the fact that corporate law firms have implicitly endorsed the rules of the game.
Open Spaces
For those more burdened than others by the drudgery of daily life, this escapist itch is predictably stronger. Even so, there certainly lies in all of us to some degree, a tiny Mephistophelian voice that, rather than tempt with material pleasures, goads us to gleefully abandon the present. To put it another way: How many of you have ever had the desire, however fleeting, to drop everything and take a two-week sojourn to St. Lucia?
Why I Call Home(Sickness)
Communication is one of the most efficient cures for homesickness — and you can do it while walking from class, grabbing a quick bite to eat, or taking a study break. So, if you haven’t already, make it a point to call home today!
Work It Like Gen Z
There’s something incendiary about taking the path of lesser resistance. About sitting with the people we care about and protecting our moments of rest and play, as we tend to the gardens in strivings for a better tomorrow.
The Spaces We Hold
The spaces we hold — physical and non-physical — form, and potentially reform, each other. We must acknowledge the spaces that are already present, while also recognizing the absence of adequately representative space for some.
Black Snow, Dead Workers, and Harvard’s Lakshmi Mittal
Lakshmi Mittal’s story is too good to not be told – even if briefly and haphazardly by an under-slept undergraduate with few resources. His name deserves to be linked, repeatedly, and on the public record, not just to Harvard advisory councils (a common side gig for our kindest donors) but to the oft-devastating trail of his steel empire.
First Come Coffee Shops — Then, Gentrification
For digital nomads, four-dollar espresso shots become the cost of rent for a modular office space that can move anywhere a laptop fits. As digital nomadism attracts more and more converts, who proliferate through cities and raise their real estate prices, the unified design elements of the modern coffee shops they haunt serve as a strong bidirectional symbol of worldwide gentrification.
Recognizing Radcliffe’s Legacy
Beginning the story of Harvard’s tunnels with Radcliffe and the Quad paints a much more nuanced picture of our history. By recognizing the ways in which the Quad is still separate from the main campus, we learn the troubled aspects of our history and enable ourselves to reckon with the past more authentically and rigorously. Students should know why their heat comes from different sources, just as they should be aware of the history of discrimination surrounding the Quad.
On Creating Demons / Fresh Eyes
A chicken crows evening in a hideaway hen– house, songs of remembering and choosing. I left my vitality, once, in the arm of your apartment, a crooked yellow elbow. Do you remember?
“Brokeback Mountain” Review: If You Enjoy Films About Queer Misery, This Movie Is For You
Jake Gyllenhaal is Jack Twist and Heath Ledger is Ennis Del Mar, a couple of sheepherders whose work on Brokeback Mountain leads to a beautiful and heart-wrenching romance that develops between them — or so I was led to believe.
On Creating Demons / Fresh Eyes
A chicken crows evening in a hideaway hen– house, songs of remembering and choosing. I left my vitality, once, in the arm of your apartment, a crooked yellow elbow. Do you remember?