Editor's Note

Dear reader, It’s hard to believe this is our last regular issue of the semester — hopefully, the last regular issue we publish in a virtual production cycle (knock on wood!). Through waxing and waning energy and Zoom fatigue, our staff’s content has not wavered. This week, we are excited to bring you: Three lovely conversations: AVM talks to Donna Leet about a non-Covid-19 vaccine that may be just as exciting — potentially, for cancer. GJP talks to Pfoho building manager Mario León about his decade-plus at Harvard and now famous Instagram. DCB profiles William Tsutsui ’85, a Harvard professor and among the world’s leading Godzilla scholars. SPM and a series of other writers compile 36 absurd questions asked of students in admissions interviews at elite colleges — guess which are real, and which are not! KNR explores how so many Americans (and Canadians) idealize Canada, and the historic and ongoing power dynamics and inequities that obfuscates. And CHG, in a caring, funny, and thought-provoking endpaper, tells about her own love of cuddling and talks about cuddling with some cuddling experts (we also did not know such a thing existed before, but now we can’t get enough). Two necessary investigative pieces, both of which the writers have been working on for months now, ground this issue: In our cover story, CJC, MX, and SSL profile four Harvard workers — a project that began as a way to profile and lend a human face to those affected by a 30% pandemic-time pay cut to idled workers at the University, but evolved into a recognition that such a starting premise was false. These four stories — involving not just Harvard but baking, painting, tattoos, entrepreneurship, family, faith — need telling regardless of the pay cut, regardless of the pandemic. This magazine profiles fifteen interesting seniors each December, but these stories matter just as much. Give them the love and care they deserve. And in another scrutiny, TMB and JDRL spend weeks diving into the pervasive homelessness in Cambridge and how the pandemic has affected the lives of the unhoused. They also speak with advocates, elected officials, and many more — painting a nuanced picture of a problem the pandemic has brought into sharp focus but which always existed, and the heated and complex debates that go into trying to work out solutions. Take care these last few weeks of the semester. With love, OGO + MNW