Editor's Note

Dear reader, The leaves are finally turning to autumn colors, the Cambridge cold is setting in, and hopefully midterms are wrapping up — perfect because, as the weather necessitates spending more time cozying up indoors and there’s some increased leisure on our hands, we bring you an issue full of stellar content to fill those hours. We have a trove of well-reported, hard-hitting Scoops and Around Towns. AZW and JSM talk to students protesting ableism and inaccessibility across campus, probing questions about space and the power different people wield in it. KJG and BSH talk to freshmen about the experience of viewing their admissions files. CJK and KEH tell us about a municipally-funded partnership between the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter and Square restaurants to help feed people experiencing homelessness and give local businesses much-needed revenue during the pandemic. KT and KLS talk to Rus Gant about the Virtual Harvard Project, an initiative to create hyper-detailed 3D models of the 200-plus buildings around the University. They just keep coming: SEW and SWF attend a performance of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in which one of the actors is totally drunk, i.e. “shit-faced Shakespeare.” IYG and SD profile a new social media app based on facial recognition technology whose creator aims to be “better than Zuck” and look into all the associated privacy concerns. EAG and KEH go to the “Soulfully Textured” event and ruminate on the racist standards of respectability politics that constrain hair and beauty standards for Black women. MGB profiles Maya Jasanoff, a Harvard professor who was recently chosen to judge the prestigious Booker Prize. NLO and SEW talk to the team behind the Out of Eden Walk, a virtual pilgrimage tracing the path humans took to populate the world. We also have two great retrospections. The first is comedic, in which DRZ and MMFW explore a poem written about the Harvard bedmaker and sweeper from the early eighteenth century. The second more serious, in which SWF and SD tell the story of Mildred Fay Jefferson, the first Black woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School and a vigorous anti-abortion advocate. Finally, two relatable levities: In-person classes have brought back the experience of “section kid,” and YK interviews one of the most notorious section kids of all. And WSH and JKW follow up about the car that crashed into the semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization that used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine. You may notice there is no scrutiny or endpaper this week, but this slate of content more than makes up for it. Until next time, when there will be a slightly more normal composition. Love, MNW and OGO