Mask Heroes HGSU-UAW provides masks for custodial workers By MICHAEL KIELSTRA “I’ve heard that, for a while, you weren’t receiving adequate personal protective equipment from Harvard for your job,” I said. “Is that correct?” “Yes.” Doris Reina-Lamdaverde, Harvard University custodian, is a woman who wastes no words. I was introduced to her by Mark Wright, […]
HeadspUCe The UC partners with Headspace to offer undergraduates a flexible mental health resource By JEN EASON We’ve all been receiving a lot of bad news lately. The best thing I’ve read this week was a meme about Toyota commercials. So, Noah Harris ’22, the Treasurer of the Harvard Undergraduate Council (UC), decided to bring […]
Solidarity Forever HGSU-UAW’s December strike leads to lasting relationships By MICHAEL KIELSTRA In December 2019, Harvard’s graduate students went on strike, demanding better pay, robust health benefits, and a more reliable harassment grievance process. The Independent spoke several times to Matt Volpe, a member of the HGSU-UAW union and fourth-year graduate student in the Chemistry […]
De-densifying of Harvard’s Campus: the International Student’s Perspective Following the College’s response to the COVID-19 epidemic, international students faced unprecedented challenges in making it home in what was, for some, their last week at college. BY MIMI TARRANT On Tuesday March 10, the Harvard College campus was shaken by President Bacow’s and Dean Khuranas’s […]
Feed a Cold and Starve a Fever HUDS’s internal communication breaks down as dining halls adjust to an emptier campus By MICHAEL KIELSTRA Every day, Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS) serves three meals to the vast majority of students on campus, as well as plenty of professors and staff and, sometimes, Dean Khurana. They estimate […]
HUECU-Dot-Org HUECU, and its members, go mobile By MICHAEL KIELSTRA The Harvard University Employees’ Credit Union operates in a sort of limbo between Harvard and not-Harvard. It is a separate organization, and the Harvard Management Corporation cannot order it to do anything, but all its employees have @harvard.edu email addresses. Technically, as Tom Montilli, executive […]
Transfer Troubles What happens when the first House isn’t “the one”? By JEN EASON “I’ve only gotten into one thing at Harvard,” says a current quadling, referring to the rejection letter the College sent them on February 18, 2020 for their interhouse transfer application. It’s a pretty opaque process. The Independent reached out to Harvard […]
Zoom’s Doubt An email interview with Professor Matt Saunders Interview by MICHAEL KIELSTRA As Harvard goes online, there is an assumption that most if not all courses can easily be delivered over a video-link. After all, you can watch a professor online and take notes just as easily. Some classes, however, don’t translate as well […]
Brain Break Goes Remote How the spirit of off-brand cereal can maybe prevail, thanks to Harvard ZoomHop By MARISSA GARCIA The transition to virtualizing Harvard College appears deceivingly simple: download Zoom, click the link, and mute yourself so your cat meowing doesn’t reverberate across your PS11 lecture. Some courses had already begun to transition to […]
The Big Fish Finds His Pond The forming of Harvard College graduate Pete Buttigieg ‘04 as a centrist presidential candidate focused on political participation By ARSH DHILLON Growing up in South Bend, Indiana, Pete Buttigieg was a typical “big fish in a little pond” before arriving at Harvard in the fall of […]