Editor's Note

Dear Reader, Between midterms and endless meetings these mid-semester weeks are quite brutal. It’s easy to just want to skip ahead to the next break, but even hard weeks have their silver linings. Like this issue! These articles are sure to have you skipping happily to your next midterm. In this issue’s scrut CJK and STB write about how the African and African American Studies Department came to be. Weaving together student writing at the time, countless archival Crimson articles, and retrospective interviews with key players, they meticulously reconstruct the student-led protests and advocacy that eventually pressured the faculty into creating the department. They then explain how, slowly, and, at times, painfully, the department was built up to what it is today. As students today also try to effect change at Harvard, this story is incredibly relevant and important. HWD talks to Jennifer E. Hoffman, a physics professor who is using her sabbatical to run all the way across the country — she’s averaging 60 miles a day, and aiming to break the world record! CEK interviews Aryt Alasti, a security guard at Harvard, about his gardening work around campus and his relationship with Harvard. CES and CNS write about Lawrence B. Millman, a mycologist — a professional mushroom man, that is — and his love for spores galore. Fun fact: his nickname growing up was “dirty little Thoreau.” After the hubbub surrounding the fake freshman this fall, ASA and VWR look into other historical cases of people pretending to be students on campus. LG writes about H Bomb, a now-defunct sex magazine at Harvard in the mid-2000s. Before the Head of the Charles this weekend, AY and CB go to the banks of the Charles to see the maiden voyage of a Harvard’s student pumpkin boat. Yep, you heard that right, a Harvard student hollowed out a giant pumpkin and turned it into a boat. RCG visits the Warren House and writes about its history and, particularly, its bathroom (and the murder mystery that it’s featured in). SSL writes about the app Claim, which allows students to get discounted and free food, and how it works as an advertising platform for businesses around the Square. MMFW talks to Maria Dominguez Gray about her work at Phillips Brooks House Association. In the endpaper for this issue, SEW explains that every square inch of her room is decorated with ephemera, and why she wouldn’t have it any other way. Go read the issue! There are no skips!!! Thank you SS, SET, SCS, MHS, MQ, JH, and JJG for lending your visual talents to our magazine. Particular thanks to SET for such beautiful glossy spreads, helping us handle InDesign, exporting, and printing troubles. Thank you to BLK and MX for thoughtful proofing and comments, and to SEW for good vibes and scrut proofing. Special thanks to our fantastic compers for writing your first articles, and for contributing your wonderful ideas and writing to our magazine. And, of course, thank you AHL. As we’ve remarked multiple times this week, we spend so much time together that we’re basically just a merged being now. Thanks for making this job infinitely more manageable and fun! FM Love, IYG & AHL