Miracle on Garden Street

The Volumes that Are Better Dusty, Not Digital

All the boxes had been sealed—my dorm room was now barren. It was March 15, 2020, the last day we were allowed to be on campus. As I left Eliot House for the final time, I walked past a sign with the words, “Safe Travels! See You On Zoom!” It was a peculiar send-off. The campus life as we knew it was immediately changing, and I did not know what would come next. 

But one thing was certain: there was no place I would rather spend my final moments in Cambridge than at the Harvard Indepedent’s new office. It was our pride and joy as a newspaper; after years of envisioning, campaigning, and fundraising, our newspaper operations were no longer nomadic. 

Only two months earlier, President Jilly Cronin and I rallied the forces of staff writers to help us move the Indy’s belongings from the cramped SOCH office to our new home on Garden Street. At the time, we were imagining how a space that was finally ours would look: pillows in Indy purple? But of course, when the pandemic hit, these questions were put on pause. We had just finished unpacking the Indy’s belongings, but now we were packing up ours. 

I twisted my key into the stubborn lock and headed into the large, empty room. When in the office, I was on a mission to do exactly what I would not be able to do for the several months to come: thumb through the physically bound volumes of Indy issues past. The Indy binds collections of former issues: a celebration of the newspaper’s physical print. I reveled in flipping through each issue, page-by-page, observing how the Indy has kept the same tongue-in-cheek spirit over the years. I took to these issues for inspiration, down to devising editorial direction for the modern-day Indy. 

Reading through these beloved volumes provided comfort, especially given the times. The physical reminder of the Indy’s proven history and resilience assuaged my uncertainties about how the organization would live on in the pandemic. Would people still show up to our storyboard meetings on Zoom? How would “bouncing off ideas” for news pitches work in a Zoom meeting? I wondered how we would report on such a specific corner of the world without proximity to it. 

But we had to determine what to do as a paper, and the volumes upon volumes of prior Indy issues represented our only choice: we had to persevere through the pandemic and find the stories anyway. And that we did.  

Still Keeping the Beat—But This Time, Without a Cello

On the flight to Boston my freshman fall, I had made the bold decision to not buy a seat on the plane for my cello. Leaving behind my past life as a musician, I was ready to spend all my free time writing instead. 

For a while, I had been comping the Crimson, but slowly but surely, I stopped showing up to the meetings. I found it difficult to find air time to speak in the crowded meetings; I didn’t think anyone knew my name. The workflow at the Crimson was a well-oiled machine, and I felt like there was little novelty I could contribute. 

Soon enough, my inbox chimed with an email from Caroline Cronin, the Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Independent, announcing the Indy’s comp meeting. When I showed up, I learned from President Daniel Um that the Indy had an up-and-coming podcast section, led by Kelsey O’Connor. My curiosity was piqued. I had never done a podcast before, but I was intrigued by audio storytelling. 

Timid, I approached Daniel after the meeting and nervously asked, “Is it possible to comp both the writing side AND the podcast at the same time?” I anticipated jumping through several institutionalized hoops: perhaps I could only do one comp at a time, and perhaps I was asking for too much.

The response I got was the proof I needed that I belonged at the Indy. Daniel looked at me like I was crazy for thinking it was even a question—of course I could do both writing and the podcast! The Indy would never want to stifle creative endeavors. The rest is history: I became a full-time Indyite. 

My first piece for the Indy was covering a Yo-Yo Ma concert at a venue that was closer to my dorm room than was my dining hall—ironic, given the cello I left behind. At the same time, I learned the ropes of producing the podcast Tell Me More, which was really just an excuse to chat with Harvard undergraduates about cool things: fashion lines, rowing teams, and fountain pens galore. 

Eventually, I found a beat—covering all things within the pentagon of climate change, environment, sustainability, food, and restaurants. Chidambaram Thillairajah, who would become the News Editor, and I did a joint reporting on a climate change exhibit in the Harvard Museum of Natural History. In May 2019, I dropped a long-form article called “To Eat Sustainability,” where I took a deep dive into analyzing whether Harvard was measuring up to its sustainable food promises. During the Harvard-Yale football game of November 2019, student protestors rushed onto the football field at half time, demanding fossil fuel divestment. The game was put on pause for forty minutes. I circled around the stadium, conducting impromptu interviews with strangers, capturing their live reactions to a protest that also caught the attention of The New York Times and the National Public Radio. I was exhilarated. This coverage eventually turned into an episode for my podcast, TIDE. 

On the bus ride back to Cambridge that night, I felt something change in me. I loved the thrill of on-the-ground reporting. That night, I understood what chasing a journalistic story meant, and I knew I wanted to do more of it. Just two months later, I shadowed Indy Alumnus David Hammer at WWL-TV, a CBS-affiliated television station in New Orleans, Louisiana. As he investigated the school buses in local private schools, I learned about how environmental reporting can play a role in protecting the citizens of Louisiana from poor air quality and storm damage alike. 

I returned to Cambridge from New Orleans as Editor-in-Chief of the Independent. I took time off from reporting to focus on leading the Indy’s editorial charge. Michael Kielstra, the Comp Director, and I would scour every corner of Harvard for any sort of tip. He eventually found his beat covering the union, but along the way, we still got excited about fun story ideas that never saw the light: from campus mail delivery mishaps to theatre rentals in Boston. 

When leaving campus during March 2020, I dealt with the pain of it all through reporting. At this moment, I wrote my favorite Indy article: “The Invisible Hand.” I reached out to owners of restaurants that no longer had patrons in the abandoned Harvard Square, and I told the tale of how, in spite of their struggle, they still managed to drop off food for health care workers at Massachusetts General Hospital. 

I joined the Indy as an aspiring magazine writer, and I left as an aspiring environmental journalist. Coupled with my dreams of becoming a professor, I hope to keep the beat as I can on socio-ecological issues. I learned what journalism truly was through the Indy, and I am grateful. As a first-generation college student without any journalism experience before college, I went on to serve as Editor-in-Chief. That’s proof of how you can be anybody you want to be at the Indy—the ultimate spirit of independence.

Silver Balloons, Golden Publication

After over a year, I finally returned to the Indy office to give it one last glance. In a passing of the baton, I had come to drop off the Indy’s podcast equipment. The pillows in Indy purple were still not there (one day, though!), but a different addition to the office caught my eye. Silver balloons spelt out “INDY” close to the bookshelf of volumes of former Indy issues. 

I also noticed the bulletin board where we would push-pin in our issues, week-by-week. The last one was pinned up from March 2020. It was an odd sight—to see a physical reminder signaling where it appears the paper paused. 

Thankfully, this couldn’t be further from the truth. In Jilly’s and my time, we prioritized modernizing the Indy’s website. Now, in an era where we are still not in print, our fearless Indy successors Arsh Dhillon and Mary Julia Koch have modernized the Indy’s print issue, with colors and illustrations that bring the reporting to life. Though now only circulated as a PDF, the Indy is more ready than ever for the printing press come the fall. 

The Indy will emerge from the pandemic as a stronger publication, and I could not be prouder of this bunch of Indyites, journalists dedicated to the (off-)balance of irreverent and incisive reporting. 

The bulletin board will live to see new issues pinned to it, and the Indy will not die: it’s golden, destined to be bound in more hardcover volumes to come. 

Marissa Garcia ’21 (marissagarcia@college.harvard.edu) cannot believe this is her last byline.