On Friday, the team made the eight-hour drive down to Annapolis, Md., where the US Naval Academy hosted 36 teams from around the country. The New England Intercollegiate Sailing Association, Harvard’s conference, was split into the competition’s two divisions: Eastern and Western.  The Crimson competed in the Western semis alongside conference foes Yale, Boston College, and Tufts.

In order to advance to the national championship, the team had to finish within the top nine spots in its respective semi-finals. This year’s ISCA Team Racing Nationals will be held in Austin, Texas on June 6.

The competition began on Saturday, with senior Brendan Kopp and sophomore Sarah Pierson representing Harvard in the A division. The pair recorded five top-10 finishes in their eight races, tallying 63 points, which put them in 10th place in the A flight.

While Kopp and Pierson were busy, senior Emily Lambert and freshman Brian Drumm competed in the B Division. In seven races, the Crimson duo had five top-10 finishes of their own.  Lambert and Drumm finished the day with 48 points, good enough for fourth place in their respective division.

After the first day of competition, the team overall sat in eighth place.  It appeared that the Crimson would barely qualify for the national regatta.

“It wasn’t a terrible day, but it wasn’t great either,” Kopp said. “Emily and Brian were sailing great and keeping us in it.”

But Sunday proved to be a different story. The A-division racers—which on Sunday included Drumm in addition to Kopp and Pierson—totaled 21 points on the second day of competition, finishing no worse than sixth place in any of the races and winning one of them.

“Our starts were a bit better on Sunday,” Kopp said. “We were sailing a different type of boat, and it was a little windier on Sunday than it was on Saturday. Things just fell into place; Saturday we were fast, but we missed small opportunities. Sunday, we were capitalizing on more of those.”

The Harvard sailors in the B division on the competition's second day—Lambert, Drumm, Pierson, and freshman Richard Bergsund—were equally as formidable.  In seven races, the Crimson did not finish worse than 10th place.  They scored slightly above the previous day’s totals with 54 total points.

By the end of Sunday’s races, the Crimson had scored 84 points in the A Division and 102 points in the B division.  The team’s total of 186 put the Crimson in a tie for third place with SUNY Maritime College, who scored 83 in the A Division and 103 in the B Division.

With the advantage in the head-to-head tiebreaker, Harvard managed to claim third in the regatta. Its 186 points were just behind Yale, who scored 175 points.

The University of Miami won the competition with a point total of 160.

“I think it was higher than people would have guessed that we would finish,” Kopp said. “Conditions [at Navy] are very different [from the Charles River], so it requires a slightly different skill set. Our goal was, ‘Let’s try and get top nine,’ but I’m not surprised we could do well in those conditions.”

Freshman Gram Slattery credited the team’s literal overnight success to a number of tactical changes.

“We minimized the mistakes, and we also made a lot of crew changes,” Slattery said. “The crews didn’t have a lot of experience together, but we were able to transition very effectively.”

Kopp also pointed to the team’s spring break trip, which included practices at Navy, as crucial for the team to get accustomed to the relatively unfamiliar waters.

“Spring break training was extremely beneficial,” Kopp said. “We sailed there for a week and a half, and that’s not what we practice in all the time.”

The co-ed team is not the only Harvard team that will compete in the national regattas, as the women’s sailing team has already punched its ticket. The women qualified weeks ago on April 22, when the Crimson placed seventh in the New England Women’s Championship.

Although the women’s national championship will also be held in Austin, that event will begin on May 30. With a couple weeks of preparation free of the demands of school and finals, Kopp believes the teams are well positioned to make a splash at nationals.

“We know we have the tools to do well,” Kopp said. “It’s just whether or not we sail to our potential.”

—Staff writer Andrew R. Mooney can be reached at mooney@college.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Blake Sundel can be reached at bsundel@college.harvard.edu.

Initially trailing the top-seeded Princeton boat, the Black and White 1V raced past the Tigers to capture the Ivy title, its first since 2003. The rest of the heavyweights did not fare quite as well, though, and Princeton topped Radcliffe by three points to take the overall team title.

The lightweights, competing at Eastern Sprints on Sunday, earned a win from its second varsity eight, marking the lightweights’ first Sprints victory in five years. But the lightweight 1V couldn’t match its heavyweight counterpart, finishing third behind Wisconsin and Bucknell.

HEAVYWEIGHTS

Despite racing in all six grand finals in Sunday’s Ivy League Championship, held on the Cooper River in Camden, N.J., the Black and White had only two boats came away with the victory: the 1V and the varsity four A.

The Radcliffe second varsity eight, the varsity four B, and the third varsity eight all placed fourth, while the Black and White varsity four A took third.

But in the biggest race of the day, Radcliffe pulled through.

The first varsity eight, seeded fifth entering Sunday’s championship, qualified for grand finals by winning its heat and finishing a full four seconds ahead of its Princeton counterpart.

It appeared the Tigers would avenge that heat loss early on in the grand final, as Princeton increased its lead over second-place Radcliffe from .49 seconds at the end of the first 500 meters to .77 seconds halfway through the race.

But that’s when the tide started to turn.

The Black and White pulled away from Princeton over the next 500,turning a .77-second deficit into nearly a two-second advantage. Radcliffe pulled away to finish in 6:17.74 in what became nearly a three-second win, with Cornell taking second over third-place Dartmouth.

“I think we were right in it from the get-go,” says Jenna Gregorie, a member of the first varsity eight. “We followed our race plan, and it was just really exciting to be able to have that amazing performance all come together when it mattered at the end of the season.”

The 1V will continue its season, competing in the NCAA Rowing Championships, held May 25-27.

“Right now we’re back at it training hard, trying to maintain our fitness level and working on some technical issues,” Gregorie says. “Every day we’re learning something new, trying to work together more cohesively, building that power and that speed.”

In the varsity four A grand final, which took place earlier on Sunday, it was the same pattern: Princeton took an early lead only to fall behind the eventual winner, Radcliffe. The Black and White completed the 2000-meter course in 7:07.08, more than two seconds faster than the Tigers.

In the day’s other grand finals, Radcliffe never finished within five seconds of the winning boat.

LIGHTWEIGHTS

The lightweight varsity eight couldn’t replicate the success of the heavyweight 1V, finishing third in Sunday’s Eastern Sprints on the Cooper River in Camden, N.J., for the third straight season.

While the novice eight also took third, it was the Radcliffe 2V that gave the Black and White its top finish of the day, crossing the line nearly five seconds ahead of Wisconsin, which finished in second, in the grand final.

In the varsity eight grand final, Radcliffe couldn’t keep up with Wisconsin or Bucknell, which crossed the line 5.4 seconds and 1.4 seconds, respectively, ahead of the Black and White.

The 1V managed to finish comfortably within the top three, eventually opening a 5.6-second gap over fourth-place Georgetown.

In the novice eight grand final, Radcliffe again took third, with Wisconsin once more leading the way. In that race, Princeton finished second.

—Staff writer Robert S. Samuels can be reached at robertsamuels@college.harvard.edu.

HEAVYWEIGHTS

The Harvard heavyweights secured their 32nd Rowe Cup for overall team performance due to their success on the water this weekend. The freshman eight placed first in both its heat and the grand final. In the final race, the Crimson took an early lead but Northeastern continued to push them to the finish. Harvard edged out the Huskies by 2.2 seconds, completing the course in 6:02.621.

“The races went great for the freshmen,” said captain Michael DiSanto, seven seat of the first varsity boat. “That was really good to see because they are a good group of guys and it is their first year here. The future of the program is in good hands with them.”

The first varsity race proved to be a heated contest between Brown and the Crimson in the final stretches. Harvard had the lead at the halfway point, but the Bears were able to pull ahead at the end of the race and finish less than a second in front of the Crimson.  This second place finish was the varsity’s first loss of the season.

“We felt that we had a good race,” DiSanto said. “There is nothing more that we could have done differently.  It is frustrating, but you can’t be too down about it. It is tough to lose, but if you are going to lose that is how it should be done.”

The second varsity eight also had a close second place finish behind Wisconsin.  The third varsity eight and second freshman eight both finished third in 6:14.856 and 6:47.721, respectively.  The fourth varsity boat edged out Brown by just over two seconds to win its race.

The heavyweights’ next challenge is the Harvard-Yale Regatta in two weeks before they compete at IRA National Championships.

“We are going to train hard,” DiSanto said. “We want to get faster. That is the mentality of everyone in the program.”

LIGHTWEIGHTS

With two straight first-place finishes, both in the heat and the grand final, the No. 1 lightweights' first varsity eight secured the EARC Sprints title. Harvard repeated its victory from last year to record its 26th Sprints championship.

In the morning heat, the Crimson faced tough competitors Princeton, Yale, Navy and Penn. Harvard edged out Princeton by 2.088 seconds, and then had to prepare itself for the final race.

“We knew we had to do two things today: win the heat and then the final,” said senior Angela Chang, coxswain of the first varsity eight. “Right after the heat we were just trying to recover as quickly as possible. The turnaround was pretty short so it was important that everyone stay focused to get ready for the big event of the day.”

Once again, the Crimson crew was slated to race Ivy League rivals Princeton and Yale.  The first varsity eight had defeated both schools at the Harvard-Yale-Princeton regatta, their final, and most heated, dual race of the season.

“I am really proud that we were able to stay composed going to the starting line, especially in a championship race," Chang said. "There is a lot of adrenaline rush and a lot of high emotion, but we were able to execute our race plan.”

Harvard took the lead early on in the race and held on to win in 6:22.510, defeating Dartmouth by a margin of 2.2 seconds.

“We had a headwind that picked up for our race, the last race of the day,” said senior Tim Moore, six seat of the first varsity eight. “All credit is due to Dartmouth and Princeton and the rest of the crews for pushing us all the way down the course. We never felt comfortable with our lead. Under tough conditions it was good to see us maintain our cool and come away with a win.”

The second freshman eight also had a successful outing, winning the grand final race in 6:33.407.  The second varsity placed fourth in its heat and then went on to edge out Georgetown by less than a second to take the petite final race.

In the first freshman eight race, the Crimson faced off against Yale and Princeton. The Harvard crew placed third, 1.3 seconds behind the Tigers. The third varsity boat finished in second behind Cornell in their grand final race.

“I was really pleased with how we rowed and coming away with a win always feels good, but we have more work to do yet,” Moore said. “We are eager for these next three weeks of more training. We still have a really important race ahead of us.”

“After careful consideration of these proposals, the athletics directors decided that our current method of determining the Ivy League Champion and our automatic bid recipient to the NCAA Championship is the best model moving forward," Ivy League Executive Director Robin Harris said in a statement last week.

In April, Ivy League coaches put forward a proposal for a four-team playoff, a plan that would end the league’s practice of crowning a champion based on which team has the best record at the end of the double round-robin regular season. This season, the Crimson men’s basketball team claimed the Ivy title while the women finished in second place to Princeton and played in the Women's National Invitation Tournament.

The Ivy League is the only current Division I conference that does not determine its men’s and women’s March Madness bids by postseason tournaments.

The implementation of a playoff system has been discussed among Ivy officials before. According to Harvard women’s basketball coach Kathy Delaney-Smith, the possibility has been brought up time and time again during the 30 years she has served as coach.

“Some of the coaches on the women’s side have been fighting for that ad nauseam,” Delaney-Smith said.“We have exhausted every argument.”

This time though, things seemed different.

For one, the creation of postseason contests in the past decade in other Ivy sports, including lacrosse and softball, has increased the strength of the basketball coaches’ arguments with league officials. In addition, more of the coaches of the men’s basketball teams have thrown their support behind a tournament.

In the past, the men’s programs at traditional Ivy standouts Penn and Princeton have opposed the plan, according to Delaney-Smith. In the past few years, the increased strength of the league—in part due to the Crimson’s emergence as a basketball powerhouse—has created a new culture in Ivy League basketball, encouraging the men’s coaches to come out full force in support of a tournament.

In April, Harvard men’s basketball coach Tommy Amaker told the Crimson he sees the advantages of a tournament for the league.

“I have been in favor of ways for us to increase our brand of Ivy League basketball for the future,” he said. ”I have been in favor of ways for us to increase our brand of Ivy League basketball for the future.”

Even with their backing, the coaches’ proposal was shot down once again at the annual athletic directors’ meeting in Red Bank, N.J.

In a statement released by his school at the time of the proposal, Penn Athletic Director Steve Bilsky foreshadowed the plan’s demise.

“Over the years there has been wide-ranging discussion on the merits of a men's basketball tournament,” Bilsky said. “There are many philosophical, as well as logistical, issues and challenges to consider. In my opinion, to date the reasons not to have a tournament have been much more compelling than the reasons to sponsor one.”

Response to the potential plan, along with its demise last week, has been relatively mixed.

In April, Brandyn Curry '13, a guard for the Harvard men’s basketball team, tweeted his agreement with Bilsky’s position.

“Honestly I think the way the ivy does it Is how every conference should,” Curry wrote.

But Delaney-Smith expressed her disappointment in the rejection of the plan.

“It’s unfortunate that we are one of the few leagues in the country that doesn’t have a tournament,” Kathy Delaney-Smith said. “I love tournaments. The tournament experience is wonderful for student-athletes, everyone loves it.”

—Staff writer Jacob D. H. Feldman can be reached at jacobfeldman@college.harvard.edu.

The letter thanks the College, Summer School, and summer program leaders for their input on the plan, and it continues to say that “implementation of this plan will not occur for at least one year.” Both the Stillman Infirmary, UHS’s ten-bed inpatient care center, and after-hours urgent care now operate 24 hours per day, 365 days per year, according to the UHS website. After-hours urgent care provides advice and treatment for physical and emotional health issues that require immediate attention.

The Infirmary is for students whose condition is not serious enough for hospitilazation, but who are too ill stay in their own residences. The Infirmary is also the primary on-campus treatment facility for students with acute alcohol-related illnesses. The plan was originally proposed because of limited need for the facilities during the summer, but is no longer being considered for this summer.

In April, UHS informed Harvard’s schools of the plan, which would have closed the infirmary and after-hours urgent care between 11 p.m. and 8 a.m. over the summer. After-hours calls to UHS would have been forwarded to a clinical triage service, which would have either given the patient advice and recommended a follow-up visit or told the patient to visit the nearest emergency room.

The proposed closures would have had “no impact” on workers at UHS who belonged to the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers, according to union director Bill Jaeger.

According to Rosenthal’s letter, UHS made the decision not to implement the plan “after a number of concerns were raised about communication and coordination with the various summer programs during the consultation process.”

The letter said that UHS will continue its discussion with the schools and summer programs this fall.

University spokespeople Nanci Martin and John D. Longbrake declined to comment further.

—Staff writer Samuel Y. Weinstock can be reached at sweinstock@college.harvard.edu.

Harvard was ranked 22nd out of the 24 teams. Even though the team exceeded expectations, only the top eight teams can advance to the NCAA Finals, and the Crimson’s season came to a close this past weekend.

“I feel like everyone thought that they left a couple shots out there today,” coach Kevin Rhoads said. “We let two teams pass us from where we stood, but we still exceeded our rankings by four positions.”

Southern California won the tournament with a score of 874 (+10).

“We were really excited to play at Regionals because it’s such a big tournament with a strong field of competitors,” freshman Tiffany Lim said. “We’ve never really been in a position like that before, so we were just going into the tournament hoping to play our best.”

It had been four years since Harvard had played on this same course. The Crimson had finished in 19th place in 2008.

“It’s a championship course because of its nature, which means all stages of the game are tested on a course like this.” Rhoads said.

Windy conditions and fast greens made the first two days of the tournament tough. Harvard found its problems to be in its putting and short game. The Crimson notched a Thursday score of 315 and Friday score of 317.

But Harvard was able to capitalize on the weather change and a new familiarity with the course on the last day. The Crimson shot Saturday score of 311, which was its best of the weekend.

“We were able to get used to the course more after playing it a couple times,” captain Christine Cho said. “Even though Ivies wasn’t a long time ago, I think in between that tournament and this tournament, some of us weren’t able to practice as much as we wanted to.”

Coming off her ninth place finish at the Ivy League Championships, Lim tied for 23rd place this weekend, notching Harvard’s lowest individual score of 227. Lim who had been named Ivy League Rookie of the Year this season, had her best day of the tournament on Thursday with a score of 73 (+1). Lim came back from a 79 (+7) on Friday to shoot a 75 (+3) in the third round. Lim was only five shots shy of individually qualifying for NCAA Finals.

“As a freshman to play the way that she did is fantastic,” Rhoads said. “She was seventh out of the individuals that weren’t on the top eight teams. She had an outstanding year, and she’s an outstanding player.”

Sophomore Bonnie Hu came in next individually for the Crimson, tying for 75th. With an overall score of 238, Hu, who is also a Crimson business editor, shot three birdies on the weekend. Hu had her best day on Saturday, shooting a 76.

Freshman Brenna Nelsen notched a score of 240, giving her the tie for 88th place. Coming in third for Harvard, Nelsen shot an 81 in the third round.

Senior Jane Lee tied for 96th place, tallying an overall score of 242. Helped out by two birdies in the third round, Lee pulled a score of 79, her lowest of the tournament.

Captain Christine Cho was ten places behind Lee with a score of 248. Cho mirrored her teammates with a low score of 79 (+7) in the second round of play.

“The people that set up the pins put them in really tricky places, so if you [shot] for the pin it could end up either really good or really bad,” Lim said. “As we played the course more and more, we realized that if we played it smart we get better scores.”

Crimson players said they found its lack of practice time to have been a problem leading up to Regionals. With the tournament falling during finals period, the team struggled to prepare as much as it could.

“They earned their way here, which is representative of their really good season overall,” Rhoads said. “It takes a lot of preparation, but we did not have as much as we needed to advance.”

FLORIDA 4, HARVARD 0

Perhaps for the first time since its Feb. 4 loss to Indiana, Harvard faced a competitor who was simply too strong to overcome. As a result, the Crimson lost, 4-0, to the 12-seeded Gators, ending Harvard’s NCAA tournament run and its season.

“It was great to be a part of that match,” co-captain Alistair Felton said. “We played such a good team at their place in front of their crowd. It was so much fun…. We came out so fast to start with. We were so energetic and loud, they were really, really, taken aback. We put up a great fight in the doubles match and in singles they were just a bit too strong for us in those conditions.”

Felton and sophomore Casey MacMaster, the doubles players on Court No. 1, were the only Crimson-clad players to squeak out a win on Sunday. The duo won, 8-5, despite trailing 2-1 early in the match.

“Personally, I was really happy that that is the match that I’ll go out on,” Felton said. “It was a great, great effort against a really good pair. It was really satisfying because everything we’d worked on in training over the course of this year played a force and a part in that win.”

Senior Jonathan Pearlman and sophomore Christo Schultz faced the reverse situation. After starting off against their No. 64 ranked doubles opponents in the lead before losing it and then pulling ahead, 7-6, the pair could not hold on any longer and fell, minutes later, 9-7. Junior Andy Nguyen and freshman Denis Nguyen also could not overcome Florida, losing 8-2. By losing two out of the three matches, Harvard lost the doubles point and faced an opening deficit of 1-0.

Singles play proved to be no better for the Crimson. Four out of six of the Gators’ singles players came into the tournament with national rankings—and played accordingly. After freshman Alex Steinroeder lost, 6-1, 6-4, Schultz was defeated, 6-2, 6-3, by Nassim Slilam, a senior ranked 53rd in the country. With those two losses, Harvard was down 3-0, one point away from being eliminated. And, with No. 66 Spencer Newman’s win over freshman Shaun Chaudhuri, 6-2, 6-3, Florida’s victory was complete, advancing them to the Sweet Sixteen and sending the Crimson home. The remaining two singles matches were considered negligible to the overall score, and were not finished.

“Their lineup was incredibly deep, but we certainly didn’t get outclassed,” Felton said. “I think, having seen this level, the guys on our team certainly think they can be at the level of Florida in the future.”

HARVARD 4, VIRGINIA TECH 2

The first match of the weekend proved to be the more positive for Harvard. It defeated the Virginia Tech, 4-2, and earned a spot in the NCAA tournament’s final 32.

“We kind of knew what to expect from them since we had played them earlier this year,” Felton said. “We knew it was going to be a really close match. It was our conditioning that really paid off in the end as Dennis’s opponent was cramping and unable to continue while Denis was still going strong. We were really pleased that our hard work in that respect was rewarded.”

Despite an initial win in doubles play from Felton and MacMaster, 8-5, the Crimson lost two straight contests to fall into an early 1-0 hole in the overall match. Pearlman and Schultz fell to their Virginia Tech counterparts, 8-6, while Nguyen and Nguyen were defeated, 8-5.

With singles play came the Crimson’s first drama of the tournament. The first individual match to be finished was Schultz’s, in which he fell, 6-0, 6-2. Next up was freshman Henry Steer who took down his competition, 6-4, 6-2, followed by classmates Steinroeder, who earned the 6-2, 6-2 victory, and Chaudhuri, who won in three sets, 6-3, 3-6, 6-3.

But the rest of the matches would not be fully played out. After freshman Nguyen won his opening set, 6-3, and lost the second, 6-7 (2), his opponent, Lucas Oliveira, began showing signs of injury. Five games later and down 4-1, Oliveira withdrew from the match due to full-body cramps. As a result, Harvard was given the point and a 4-2 lead, clinching the win and rendering Pearlman’s matchup against No. 47 ranked singles player Luka Somen meaningless. Before the whistle was blown, that contest was tied at one set apiece, with Somen leading the third.

Felton emphasized his belief that, after having had a small sample of the play at the national level, the team wants to come back stronger than ever.

“The team loved being in the NCAA [tournament],” Felton said. “Having tasted it, it definitely motivated [us] to come back for more next year.”

“We had that on our radar screen,” Harvard coach Jenny Allard said. “That’s something she brought to our attention at end of her junior year. She had played seven out of the nine positions, and the two positions left were second base and catcher. We put her in at second base against Yale, and at Holy Cross we put her in at catcher.”

During the final stages of the quest, the team was becoming as excited as Zumbro about completing the challenge.

“We want to help them achieve their goals,” Allard said. “The team was supportive. We’ve never had anyone ever do that.”

Moving around the diamond isn’t new for Zumbro, as she’s basically been preparing for her role as a super utilitywoman her whole life.

“When I was younger, I played different sports so I really like getting to change things up,” Zumbro said. “I never played one sport year round. So I like to find ways to make softball more interesting.”

By the time Zumbro was halfway through high school, she had already spent significant time at shortstop, catcher and pitcher.

At Harvard, Zumbro showed flexibility beyond the diamond as she filled in as an emergency goalie for the women’s soccer team after two of their goalies were injured.

“I had played not super competitive and I know the rules, and the next thing I know I’m driving with them to Yale,” Zumbro said. “It was awesome.”

“She just loves to play,” Allard said. “Whether it be soccer, softball, she just loves to get out there and play the game.”

Among the softball positions, Zumbro said that outfield was among her favorites.

“In center they actually hit a fly ball to me, which was unlikely but really exciting,” Zumbro said. “I really like the idea of outfield because you can make some of the most amazing plays in terms of web gems.”

Yet, she also said she enjoyed pitching because she was involved in every play.

“They are all really fun,” she decided.

Walking past a kindergarten classroom at Fletcher-Maynard Academy, a public primary school in Cambridge’s Area Four district, Superintendent of Schools Jeffrey M. Young and Principal Robin Harris noticed a four-year-old boy sitting on the floor and reading a book upside down.

“It wasn’t atypical in a junior kindergarten class,” Harris says.

Inspired by moments like this, Young and Harris began casually brainstorming ways to improve children’s development before they enter formal schooling. The two toyed with the idea of a project modeled on the Harlem Children’s Zone, a nonprofit organization that has garnered national attention for providing educational resources and other forms of support to low-income families living in Harlem, New York.

Young, Harris, and others on the Cambridge Schools Committee devised “Full Circle,” a proposed initiative to better connect the residents of Area Four—a low-income area where 80 percent of elementacary school students receive free lunches, according to Harris—to the public benefits provided by the city government and local nonprofits.

Full Circle—if it comes to fruiton—will be a culmination of several youth-oriented projects that Cambridge has undertaken in past years. But financing and potential partnerships are still up in the air.

The project, inspired by the work of HCZ founder Geoffrey Canada, a Harvard Graduate School of Education alumnus, marks the next chapter in efforts to improve Cambridge’s public education—a movement that Harvard and its alumni frequently influence.

CIRCLE GAME

Full Circle is envisioned not as a single nonprofit organization like HCZ but as a collaboration between many different entities in Cambridge. Based at Fletcher-Maynard, Full Circle would focus its efforts on the children living in the one-mile radius surrounding the school known as Area Four.

In Area Four, located between Central Square and Kendall Square, the median family income is $55,857, one of the lowest in the city, according to a report issued this year by the Cambridge Community Development Department.

The initiative plans to capitalize on already-existing Cambridge programming. One of those programs, Baby University, was founded after several Cambridge officials visited the Harlem Children’s Zone a few years ago. The program is loosely based on HCZ’s Baby College, which offers nine-week parenting classes.

Baby University, a 16-week publicly-funded program under the Cambridge Department of Human Services Programs, draws support from collaborations with many Cambridge nonprofits, including the the Phillips Brooks House Association at Harvard.

As the Cambridge Department of Education begins initial preparations for Full Circle, Baby University will be held at Fletcher-Maynard this year for the first time since the program began in 2010. Full Circle will also include Toddler University, an all-day course for parents of children ages three to eight that will kick off in 2013.

Harris has had discussions with other potential collaborators, including the Cambridge Health Alliance, neighborhood clergy and churches, financial institutes, and the Cambridge Police Department.

She hopes that Full Circle, like other Cambridge educational programs, will be able to draw upon Harvard University resources as well.

After talks about the Full Circle initiative became more serious, Young approached Ed School Dean Kathleen McCartney, who expressed enthusiasm about the program, Harris says.

Harris also asked Canada for advice on the project when he visited the Ed School last month. Harris says Canada was supportive of the project and urged her to get the partnering agencies in place immediately.

Harris said she hopes to agree with the Ed School on a memorandum of understanding between Harvard and Full Circle at the beginning of the academic year. Citing the preliminary nature of the discussion, Ed School officials declined to comment on Harvard’s involvement.

Though partnerships have yet to be officially tied down, many civic leaders have said they are excited about the Full Circle initiative.

“It’s all supposed to be very intentional work, and it’s a great opportunity to take all these resources that are happening in Cambridge,” says Nancy Tauber, a former School Committee member.

IN THE ZONE

Though Full Circle has generated much enthusiasm in Cambridge, financing for the project has yet to be secured.

According to Lori Likis, chief planning officer for Cambridge public schools, financing for Full Circle will include funds from the Department of Human Services Programs, resources allocated to Cambridge public schools, and other funding put toward the Cambridge Innovation Agenda in the 2013 budget.

Likis says that the initiative has also looked to other sources for financial support.

Full Circle is known among educators and policymakers as a wraparound zone, a city-led initiative that seeks to make social services and support more accessible and foster the creation of educational resources.

Wraparound zones elsewhere have received funding and support from Massachusett’s federally-funded Race to the Top program. However, Cambridge’s Full Circle was not eligible for funding due to restrictions stipulated by the state. Likis and other Full Circle proponents pushed to receive an exception, but it was not granted.

Jesse Dixon, who heads the Massachusetts Department of Education’s Office of District and School Turnaround, says that while the state would consider funding initiatives such as Full Circle, the guidelines regulating Race to the Top funding might confine the project’s development.

Under the initiative, cities must commit $100,000 of their Race to the Top money to the zone and must follow a prescriptive approach for the modeling and implementation of the wraparound zone.

Cambridge’s vision for Full Circle does not fall under these guidelines, according to Dixon.

“[Cambridge has] found their own way of doing this work, which isn’t 100 percent aligned with our vision,” Dixon says.

Nevertheless, those involved in the planning of Full Circle say they will continue to work toward establishing this project.

“We’re eager to get Full Circle up and running, develop the partnerships, assess the effectiveness of that, and then decide whether or not to expand,” Likis says.

—Staff writer Kerry M. Flynn can be reached at kflynn@college.harvard.edu.

The undergraduate and graduate students of Engineering Sciences 227 displayed their designs—some intended to solve problems that have previously confounded researchers worldwide—to surgeons and engineers at a fair on Monday.

The course, now in its second year, offered engineering students the opportunity to develop a project with the potential to affect surgical procedures, according to mechanical and biomedical engineering professor Conor J. Walsh, who teaches it.

Students and professors at the fair in Pierce Hall were eager to hear about the new breakthroughs and feats of engineering produced by the class. However, every project was tagged with a confidentiality notice cautioning that specifics of the projects cannot be broadcast.

For some students, the chance to physically manufacture a device after designing it was most rewarding.

"Actually building the device—that was a special experience," said Oliver Schoppe, a visiting student who took the class.

It was a work-intensive experience as well. Qian Wan, a graduate student who was one of Schoppe’s project partners, said, "There was definitely a lot to absorb very quickly."

Graduate student Carlos Pardo added, "This was a crash course in design—in six weeks we needed to have a prototype. However, our professor guided us and cut it into small pieces."

The students worked with physicians who guided their projects and provided frequent access to hospitals and special equipment.

"Students and physicians develop a very close relationship. All of the physicians spend many hours providing the medical background to the students, meeting with them, Skyping with them, and bringing them into the hospital environment," Walsh said.

"All the physicians came with medical needs," said graduate student Kimberly M. Murdaugh ’11.

Murdaugh’s group successfully completed a project that others had failed at before.

According to group member Alexander Isakov ’11, a graduate student, researchers both at MIT and in India had unsucessfully tried their task before they began it.

When asked why their attempt succeeded, William C. Burke ’12 noted that they did not try to build on previous designs or prototypes. "We started from nothing," he said.

Like other engineering classes in the 200s, ES 227 is open to both undergraduate and graduate students.

Such classes traditionally attract more graduate students than undergraduates. ES 227, however, was nearly evenly split.

"This year the class had 16 students with seven undergraduates, which is great to see," Walsh said.

The University is currently in the midst of a two-year process of reviewing its sexual assault policies to ensure that it is compliant with federal anti-discrimination law.

In April 2011, the Office for Civil Rights released a “Dear Colleague” letter outlining stricter guidelines for colleges and universities for dealing with sexual assault complaints in the wake of a stream of Title IX complaints filed against institutions of higher education, including Harvard Law School.

Last month, both the University of Pennsylvania and Cornell announced that they would modify their sexual assault policies, joining Yale and Stanford in altering their standards in response to the letter. Both the University of Pennsylvania and Cornell adopted the lower standard of “preponderance of the evidence” mandated by the “Dear Colleague” letter, which allows an accused student to be found guilty if the institution is at least 51 percent certain of his or her responsibility for an alleged incident. Previously, some institutions, including Harvard Law School and Princeton, had used a higher “burden of proof” standard, which required “clear and convincing” evidence of the accused student’s guilt.

Peter F. Lake ‘81, a professor at Stetson University College of Law who specializes in higher education law, said he thinks that Harvard could be influenced by the University of Pennsylvania and Cornell to conform to the “Dear Colleague” letter.

“As schools choose to come into compliance, it does build momentum for similar schools to take similar action,” Lake said.

New England School of Law Professor Wendy Murphy, who filed a 2002 Title IX complaint against the College and the 2010 complaint against the Law School, said she thought that the growing trend among institutions to adopt the “preponderance of evidence” standard have made it increasingly “embarrassing” for any school, including Harvard, to hold out.

Currently, Harvard’s investigation system for sexual assault varies across the University.

While the Faculty of Arts and Sciences requires that the Administrative Board be “sufficiently persuaded” of the accused student’s guilt to issue a guilty verdict, the Law School uses the “burden of proof” standard.

Lake said that although he thinks the “Dear Colleague” letter prescribes “a monotheistic universe,” mandating a single set of values for all institutions of higher education, he does see room in the federal guidelines for Harvard to maintain different policies across its schools as long as the University can prove that a central source is coordinating the different processes.

But Murphy said she thinks Harvard must uniformly adopt a “preponderance of the evidence” standard in order to come into compliance with the federal guidelines.

“Under the tougher standard, schools have their cake and get to eat it too,” said Murphy, who said she thought it was “very heartening” to see the University of Pennsylvania and Cornell change their sexual assault policies.

But Murphy said she thought the Law School’s “burden of proof” standard sends a message to students making an accusation of sexual assault that “‘we do believe you­—we just don’t believe you that much.’”

Two years ago, Harvard began collecting information to assess how well its sexual assault investigation processes and other University policies adhered to federal Title IX regulations, which require colleges and universities to take “immediate and appropriate steps” in response to a sexual misconduct grievance. Last fall, Chief Diversity Officer Lisa M. Coleman told The Crimson that the University was approaching its review process with an eye toward collecting data and developing programs, rather than revising its sexual assault investigation policies. Although the University had at one point planned to involve a student committee in the review process, the creation of that committee was indefinitely postponed last October.

Lake said that the release of the “Dear Colleague” letter sparked a flurry of changes among many institutions, who swiftly revised their policies in accordance with the new Title IX regulations.

“Certainly schools felt a tremendous pressure to scramble as quickly as they could to figure out how to come into compliance,” Lake said.

Lake said he anticipates a legal battle about the constitutionality of the “preponderance of the evidence” standard, which he thinks may violate accused students’ constitutional right of due process.

Lake added that he thinks the “Dear Colleague” letter puts institutions like Harvard in a difficult position.

Colleges and universities must face the question: “’Do I hold out and violate a federal mandate and face sanctions, or do I potentially violate the due process rights of students?’” Lake said. “That’s a heck of a choice.”

­—Staff writer Rebecca D. Robbins can be reached at rrobbins@college.harvard.edu.

In January, Harvard University Library Executive Director Helen Shenton said that the University would seek to reduce the size of its library staff as part of its ongoing library reorganization.

The University has yet to specify its goal for staff reductions.

VERIP offered library employees who are 55 years and older with 10 years of service under their belts a chance to receive benefits and avoid possible layoffs.

Approximately 23 percent of the 280 eligible employees accepted the offer. There are currently 930 full-time employees in the University library system.

Those who accepted the offer will receive six months’ pay, plus two additional weeks’ pay for every year of employment beyond 10 years. An employee cannot receive more than one year’s worth of salary under the package.

A University spokesperson declined Thursday to specify whether or not the Harvard University Library will layoff employees in its attempt to cut down its staff size.

Senior Associate Provost for the Harvard Library Mary Lee Kennedy and Shenton praised the departing library staff members in a statement sent to library employees on Tuesday.

“The 65 staff members who will be leaving us are dedicated members of a workforce that supports Harvard’s mission every day. We wish them well as they begin a new phase of life, whether that means starting a new job or planning for retirement,” Shenton and Kennedy wrote.

Administrators have drawn criticism during the transition process for a lack of transparency and a failure of communication. Kennedy and Shenton sought to address these concerns in their statement to staff.

“It is not easy to adapt to working without valued colleagues and familiar faces by our sides,” they wrote. “Please know that as we work through the library transition, we will make every effort to support and keep open the lines of communication with our staff, whose dedication and hard work make Harvard great.”

Shenton and Kennedy did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

—Staff writer Justin C. Worland can be reached at jworland@college.harvard.edu.

But Sidgwick also wrote brilliantly and rigorously about moral philosophy, and in particular about one specific problem that has come to mind often as I consider, two weeks before graduation, what Harvard has come to mean to me. Sidgwick once jokingly noted that he had written a book where the first word was “ethics” and the last word was “failure.” What he was referring to was his conclusion to The Methods of Ethics: that there was no way to prove that one should act a utilitarian (that is, on behalf of the well-being of all) rather than as an egoist (on the behalf of only one’s own well-being). They both appeared to be rational positions, and Sidgwick could not for the life of him prove that one has more reason to be a utilitarian than an egoist.

For most people living in England at Sidgwick’s time, this did not present much of a problem at all. If one believes traditional Christian tenets, then those who act virtuously, or on behalf of the good of all, are rewarded for their efforts with eternal bliss in heaven. Those who fail in these duties are punished with eternal torment in hell. Thus, it is clearly in each person’s self-interest to behave virtuously, for the good of an eternity in heaven (and avoiding an eternity in hell) will always outweigh whatever benefit acting selfishly and against the common good provides in this life. The utilitarian and the egoist thus must act identically.

But as he was writing the Methods, Sidgwick lost his faith in God, even going so far as to resign a fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge because its terms required assent to the teachings of the Church of England. And with his faith, Sidgwick lost the best way to reconcile egoism and utilitarianism, to show that one must always act for the sake of the common welfare. The possibility that the two might conflict was what Sidgwick called the “profoundest problem in ethics”.

I am more optimistic than Sidgwick was about the prospects for demonstrating the superiority of benevolence to egoism. But what he got absolutely right was the fact that we yearn for a theory, like Christian theism, that says they are one and the same. What worries me is that I think Harvard students have convinced ourselves that we have such a theory, one that exculpates us from sacrifice while leaving us convinced that we are doing the right thing. We call it “meritocracy.”

It allows us to say that Harvard should lay off workers at will because the purpose of a place like this is to educate people like us, not to help people like “them.” Or maybe we should pay them well, but only so we get better food in the dining halls. It allows us to say that there’s nothing wrong with taking banking jobs after graduation, that we’re doing it because the financial industry helps people, not because we like money. It lets us justify the fact that we go to a school with more resources than any other and yet educates a small student body whose natural endowments mean they need those resources less than practically anybody. It lets us say that the rule of the smart and well-credentialed helps everyone, that it’s not just another caste system.

I love Harvard. I have loved my education here, I loved the clubs I joined, and I love the friends I made. But the system that makes this place so great for people like me—people like us—does so on the backs of many, many others. The money that makes Harvard so incredible could be educating countless more people if sent elsewhere. The administration’s remarkable avoidance of substantial cutbacks to student life since the financial crisis was enabled by mass layoffs. The endowment is as big as it is in large part due to alumni who go to jobs contributing to financial crises at banks and hedge funds. None of that is acceptable.

Of course, everyone believes convenient things, as psychologists who study confirmation bias will tell you, and Harvard students’ commitment to meritocracy’s all too self-serving tenets is hardly unusual. But my main wish as I leave here is for a greater recognition of what a problem this is and a greater degree of Sidgwickian doubt about whether our interests and the world’s can be reconciled. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they can be. But we need to be asking the question.

Dylan R. Matthews ’12, a Crimson editorial writer, is a social studies concentrator in Kirkland House. Follow him on Twitter at @dylanmatt.

It seemed clear enough that President Obama was obfuscating his position in order to hold together a fragile political coalition that included important groups who have never shared young voters’ support for gay rights. It was realpolitik, and it was a bitter pill to swallow—but we swallowed it.

This week, however, everything changed. On Sunday, Vice President Joe Biden—either getting “over his skis”, or deliberately testing the water for the administration—broke with official policy and endorsed gay marriage. The next day, Secretary of Education Arne S. Duncan ’86came out in favor of marriage equality. Then, on Tuesday, North Carolina passed a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages as well as civil unions. Suddenly, President Obama’s dissimulation on marriage equality seemed both absurd and harmful. No doubt knowing he could delay the issue no longer, President Obama arranged an interview on ABC in which he affirmed his support for same-sex marriage.

Although it is terribly unfortunate that the president ever chose to feign opposition to marriage equality, it is nevertheless extremely heartening that, as of Wednesday, the president of the United States of America, for the first time in history, supports true equality for gay Americans. This also provides voters with a starker choice in November’s election, considering that Mitt Romney has reaffirmed his opposition to same-sex marriage and allegedly bullieda classmate, whom he suspected of being gay, in high school.

Despite occasional setbacks like what occurred in North Carolina on Tuesday, it is clear that the direction of cultural shift is toward marriage equality in America. The most recent Gallup poll on the subject shows that seventy percent of 18-34 year-olds think gay marriage should be legal, while fifty-three percent of 35-54 year olds support marriage equality as well. These numbers are growing and ought to give hope and comfort to all those who care about equality for all. Now that we have a president who supports marriage equality, it is just a matter of time before the winds of change overcome the inertia of baseless stigma and irrational hatred.

David Maraniss is a very good biographer, so it should come as no surprise that he has dug up some fascinating material about President Obama for his upcoming book Barack Obama: The Story, excerpted in the June edition of Vanity Fair. The article, entitled “Becoming Obama,” treats what has been a hitherto overlooked interval in the lifeof the forty-second President, his time in New York after graduating from Columbia in 1983.Maraniss’s descriptions are both intimate, giving us an Obama who would “lounge around, drinking coffee and solving the New York Timescrossword puzzle, bare-chested, wearing a blue and white sarong,” and relatively profound, as when Obama explains in an interview “The only way my life makes sense is if, regardless of culture, race, religion, tribe, there is this commonality…So that is at the core of who I am.” In some ways, Obama’s attempt to turn his life into a story, best exemplified in his superb autobiography Dreams from My Father, is part of the job of all aspirants to high office.Every politician strives to create a narrative that explains their rise to prominence and fills out their character in such a way that the office they seek to occupy seems like an inevitable next step, something that follows consequently from the trajectory that brought them before the electorate.

But the Obama we meet in Maraniss’s account is someone much different, and much more interesting; the protagonist of a real bildungsromanwho struggles to define himself, both in isolation and in relation to his white girlfriends, Pakistani friends, and multi-textured familial background. Obama describes his predicament as one where he felt “caught without a class, a structure or tradition to support me.” These lacunae where we might expect to find the primary markers of identity spurred not alienation, but an intense search for integration, “The only way to assuage my feelings of isolation are to absorb all the traditions (and) classes; make them mine, me theirs.” Before he could organize communities, Obama had to organize the confusing fragments of identity that were his inheritance, but also his opportunity. The young man we see in these pages doesn’t have any definitive answers, but his awareness of the centrality of this task of self-fashioning is boldly apparent.

His letters to one of his girlfriends Alex McNair, and the journals of a second, Genevieve Cook, portray a man who, even when he “sat on the edge of the bed—dressed— blue jeans and luscious ladies on his chest, the end of the front section of the Sunday Times in his hand,” is readily recognizable. Cook laments how Obama “bides his time” and draws “others’ cards out of their hands for careful inspection—without giving too much of your own away.” This might be a young man who kept a cool distance that his girlfriend found frustrating, but it also might be the President Obama who passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act with the slimmest of votes or who continues to teach us about a kind of progressivism that happens slowly—but meaningfully and irrevocably.

Maraniss describes a young man searching for purpose, pontificating on Modernist poetics and falling in and out of love with a couple of thoughtful, beautiful young women. His analysis of T.S. Eliot is both insightful and revealing; “Remember how I said there’s a certain type of conservatism which I respect more than bourgeois liberalism—Eliot is of this type.” What is striking about these snippets of the young Obama is how prosaic they are on the one hand and how utterly revealing on the other. Obama continues to model a kind of liberalism that is temperamentally conservative, that sees change as most effective when it is processed through a mind that can capaciously not only understand the other side, but alsoinhabit opposing view points.

In an editorial in The New York Times, the poet and literary critic Adam Kirsch ‘97 lauds “Mr. Obama’s ability to recognize the poetic truth of Eliot’s conservatism, while still embracing the practical truth of liberalism.” Both recognition and embrace happened in and through writing, and much of it in the crucible of passionate romantic relationships that refracted both selves through a kind of dual lens. Obama teaches us to recognize everything about ourselves and other people, and through that recognition we will learn which causes and people deserve our embrace. As we recognize the extraordinary man who is our President, we should never forget when he was our age, in his girlfriend’s apartment, smoking a cigarette in pajamas, musing on Eliot. This, more than anything else, is the portrait of the President as a young man.

Ari R. Hoffman ’10 is a Ph.D. candidate in English.

At the time, I was a sixth-grader in the Deep South whose family had recently moved across the county into a new school district.  It felt like we had moved across the country.  At the smaller elementary school I had left, Umbro and Nike shorts were popular, but in this new junior high school, khaki shorts, Birkenstocks, and polo shirts were prerequisites for coolness.  The boy I noticed fit this fashion to a T.

I believed without reservation the crush I was developing was wrong.  I loved church, and I had an understanding that, if you were a boy, liking other boys was a very bad thing to do.  I had no doubt that I was in the wrong, and I prayed every night—literally—that the feelings would go away.  And, eventually, they did.  I breathed a deep sigh of relief.  I felt as if I’d dodged a bullet, with God’s help.  From that point, I went on having crushes on girls as I had until that point, and I’ve gone on having crushes on girls since.

But many other kids weren’t so lucky. Their “illicit” crushes kept on coming. Several kids in my school endured years of bullying and teasing because they were gay or appeared to be gay, and many times I stood idly by, doing nothing to stop it. Even today, their faces, usually with angry expressions, come to my mind. Back then, I believed homosexuality was a sin, but I also knew it was wrong for kids to be bullied like they were. I remember thinking that the bullying, as terrible as it was, was an unfortunate result of sinful behavior, equating it with the Fall of Man since the Garden of Eden. And, after all, I thought, if I’d prayed and gotten over my crush, why couldn’t they?

Several years later, when I visited Harvard for the first time, my views on the matter were “evolving.”  It was a sunny spring day in 2004, and I was dragging around my mother and grandmother, along with all our heavy suitcases and Southern accents. The first thing I saw when I came up out of the Red Line at Johnston Gate was a huge, white banner across the street, hanging from the edifice of First Parish Cambridge. It read, in all capitals, “WE SUPPORT GAY MARRIAGE.” The banner blew in the breeze, and the sunlight brightened it so one needed to squint to see it.

I was stunned to see this banner, and, somewhat to my surprise, I was also overjoyed. It had been one thing in the past to observe gay pride parades in all of their dramatic and colorful energy; it was quite another to see this declarative, bold statement draped from a church building, in the public square, in plain view.

I was a high schooler, and this very issue had been weighing on my mind for some time. I was reading a book by the late Reverend Peter J. Gomes, who was Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Minister of the Memorial Church until his passing last spring. The book, called “The Good Book,” recounts in part Rev. Gomes’ experience revealing himself in 1991 to be what many have called a contradiction: a gay, African American, Baptist minister. He had become minister in 1974, and his book was in my backpack that day thirty years later. The banner at the First Parish Church filled me with sheer joy that something good was happening, something I could not have imagined just a few years back when the thought I might be gay was terrifying to me.

Politically, the particulars of my views on the issue have continued to “evolve” since then: Ideally, I think only civil unions should be granted by the government while churches take care of the “marriages”; I think the “defense of marriage” advocates are right when they say marriage is traditionally a religious institution between one man and one woman; I think churches should handle explicitly religious institutions, while the state grants contracts that guarantee hospital visits, joint taxes, etc.

But it was not until Wednesday, when President Barack Obama became the first sitting President of the United States to express full support for same-sex marriage, that I felt again that same stunned joy I’d felt back in 2004. Obama’s unprecedented announcement is an unequivocal victory for civil rights and equality, and I believe fewer kids will be bullied and teased because of it.

I don’t know whether Obama and Gomes crossed paths when they were at Harvard in the early 1990s. ButI wish Gomes were still here with us today to offer his thoughts on Obama’s newfound support for gay marriage. When I first heard the news, I could hear Rev. Gomes’ voice begin to echo in my head. In his old Religion 42 course, Rev. Gomes once said, “There are no bad questions. There are some very bad answers.” Of Obama’s reply to the ABC News interviewer’s question on Wednesday, I believe Gomes would have raised his eyebrows in restrained surprised, nodded his head, and called it, in his beautiful manner of speaking, a very good answer.

Seth A. Riddley ’12 is a History and Science concentrator in Mather House.

A sandwich stand on Harvard Medical School property that has long been beloved by the Longwood Medical Area community has been threatened with closure if it does not make improvements to meet city codes.

During a routine check in March, Boston inspectors flagged Sami’s Wrap and Roll, a sandwich shop that has done business on Medical School property for 33 years. The City of Boston determined that since the stand is not on wheels, it does not qualify as a portable establishment like a food truck and is instead subject to the codes for permanent structures—meaning it would need plumbing to legally stay open.

“When you have a permanent structure, you must comply with different regulations,” said Lisa M. Timberlake, a spokesperson for Boston Inspectional Services.

Sami’s currently pays rent to Harvard, and Harvard pays the stand’s electricity costs. The University will not install plumbing at Sami’s, according to Richard M. Shea, the associate dean for physical planning and facilities for the Medical School.

The small business was initially given until Friday to stay open unless it made changes but was granted a 30-day extension on Thursday after G. Sami Saba, who owns the stand with his wife Amy, went to City Hall to seek a reprieve.

Sami’s is a popular lunch stop for Medical School students and for employees of the many Harvard-affiliated medical institutions in the area.

Stacey M. Brown, a project manager at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, gets her daily coffee from Amy Saba at Sami’s.

“Amy knew my name and exactly what I was going to order,” Brown said. “Wherever I go to get my coffee, it’s not going to be the same.”

Sami G. Saba, the owners’ son, said that he expects the stand will be forced to close if the city does not grant it a permit even without plumbing.

“This location is my parents’ only source of income,” the younger Sami said. “If they lose this, pretty much they’re going to lose the house.”

The Saba family started a petition online to muster support for the business. As of Thursday night, 221 people had signed.

Calling the potential closure of Sami’s “a terrible shame” and asking the city and Harvard not to “rob future generations of HMS students of the tradition of delicious, convenient Sami’s,” dozens of commenters spoke of the importance of the Sabas and their food to the Longwood Medical Area community.

One signer wrote, “This place is an icon. We, as residents, have to save this institution. It has kept many folks visiting loved ones in the hospitals well fed for years. Food being comfort, this place has been a rock for some.”

Another contributed, “We need Sami’s! Sami’s staff is the nicest, the food is wonderful, the cart looks nice where it is and it makes so many people happy. It is a major part of the Longwood community. Don’t ruin tradition.”

The Saba family wrote in the petition that they hope to buy a food truck and obtain a license to park on any public property. The petition includes a link to donate via PayPal to help the family purchase a truck.

The younger Sami said he was disappointed that Harvard has not made an effort to help the stand survive.

Shea, the Medical School administrator, said that he would consider approving an appropriately sized truck if the Sabas obtain one.

Speaking of the truck’s long residency at the Medical School, Shea said he would like to see it remain. “It works for us and has worked for us for a long time,” he said.

—Staff writer Maya S. Jonas-Silver can be reached at mayajonas-silver@college.harvard.edu.

At its founding eight years ago, the Harvard Stem Cell Institute had fewer than ten principal faculty members, according to Benjamin D. Humphreys, co-director of the HSCI Kidney Program. Today, that number has ballooned to more than 80.

In the past decade, Harvard has increasingly poured resources into groundbreaking research in one of the largest collections of stem cell research labs in the country.

According to HSCI co-director Douglas A. Melton, a professor in the stem cell and regenerative biology department, there are more than 800 Harvard affiliates in stem cell science scattered throughout roughly 80 laboratories. The largest concentration of stem cell researchers are located in Harvard’s Sherman Fairchild Building, which reopened in August of 2011 after it underwent a two-year demolition and reconstruction project to accommodate the stem cell and regenerative biology department.

In the past decade, Harvard has focused on centralizing this research with the creation of HSCI and the stem cell and regenerative biology department.

HSCI consists of scientists and practitioners interested in stem cell research from all over the Harvard community, including the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the medical school, and 11 teaching hospitals and research institutions including the Children’s Hospital Boston and the Massachusetts General Hospital.

So far, HSCI has given out more than $100 million to its researchers, according to Humphreys.

"[Harvard has] definitely made a tangible commitment to stem cell research," Humphreys said. "The results are that we are leaders in certain areas—certainly I can speak of the kidney—not even just in the U.S., but worldwide in terms of stem cell research in the kidney."

With important potential applications such as the generation of cells and tissues that could be used for cell-based therapies, stem cells are at the forefront of scientific research. Stem cells, which can differentiate into specific cell types, offer the possibility of a renewable source of replacement cells and tissues to treat some of the most serious diseases.

"What we’re doing at the HSCI Kidney Group is working collaboratively to identify new therapeutic strategies that will help slow disease progression," said Humphreys.

Still, Humphreys added that much more research is necessary before scientists can use stem cells to their fullest potential.

"Of course, making an artificial kidney would be one application," said Humphreys. "But truthfully, the kidney is so complicated that it’s second in complexity only to the brain in a number of cell types.... Making a truly artificial kidney in vitro is probably a long way off."

Regarding Harvard’s role in stem cell research, Humphreys said that he thinks Harvard should focus on developing and training the next generation of stem cell and regenerative medicine researchers who will make the big discoveries that will lead to transformative changes in the way doctors treat patients.

The human developmental and regenerative biology concentration, founded in 2009, will graduate its first class of more than 40 seniors this spring, according to Harvard College Facebook.

"[Harvard’s role is] to stimulate a dialogue through basic science and through public outreach by bringing people together, bringing our message out to other places to stimulate the discussion worldwide, and leading by example in order to fulfill the promises of this field," Humphreys said.

—Staff writer Cynthia W. Shih can be reached at cshih@college.harvard.edu.

Brown has joined the group of Republican senators blocking a Democratic effort to pass legislation which would prevent interest rates on student loans from rising.

This move has sparked criticism from Warren, who strongly supports the bill. In a statement issued by her campaign, Warren called for students to rally against Scott’s vote on this legislation.

"Young people here in Massachusetts and across the country who are working hard and building a future—and our nation’s future—by investing in their education, should not suddenly face higher interest rates on their student loans," Warren said in a statement.

If Congress does not take action, 7.4 million college students nationwide may see interest rates on their federally subsidized Stafford loans double.

The interest rate for these loans currently sits at 3.4 percent, regulated by a provision passed by Congress in 2007. This rate, however, will spike to 6.8 percent on July 1, if Congress does not take measures to extend the current lower rate.

Stafford loans, typically taken out by middle class students, allow students to pay no interest while in colleges and then below market rates afterwards.

Institute of Politics Director C. M. "Trey" Grayson ’94 said that this debate over student loans has become important in the Massachusetts Senate race as well as in the presidential election because of its potential influence on college-age voters.

Grayson said that by joining this effort to filibuster the student loan legislation, Brown is attempting to maintain his image as a fiscally responsible legislator.

However, Grayson said that it is difficult for Brown to tout being on the defensive by blocking the bill.

"It puts him in a tough spot," Grayson said.

On Monday, Brown introduced his own legislation that would also keep interest rates on student loans low.

"It’s time to stop playing politics and get to work on a real bipartisan compromise to preserve current student loan rates. The job market is dismal and the cost of getting a college education is out of control," said Brown in a statement.

Though this issue may blow over quickly, the debate shows that Democrats, mindful of keeping their control of the Senate and retaking the House in this fall’s elections, are trying to force Republicans to vote against popular legislation in hopes of winning voters’ favor, Grayson said.

"They’re going to probably try to force [Brown] and some of the other vulnerable Republicans to do party line votes," Grayson said.

The Warren campaign’s statement pointed to a new study released on Monday by ProgressMass which shatters the "Brown bipartisanship myth" by showing that Brown votes "overwhelmingly" with Republicans.

Grayson said this debate over student loans might help Warren divert attention from Republicans’ claims [LINK] that her claims to Native American heritage are unsubstantiated and that she therefore may have committed academic fraud when applying for a position at Harvard Law School by deceiving the University into believing that she is Native American.

—Staff Writer Elizabeth S. Auritt can be reached at eauritt@college.harvard.edu.