Editor's Note

Dear Reader, It was hard to picture the future when we moved off campus in the middle of March. But the future came anyway: It’s warm in the Northeast now, and sunlight hours stretch on into the evening. Classes have finished this week, and April is coming to an end too. And somehow, we are already publishing our final regular issue of the semester. This issue has dispatches from various places, real and virtual: OEGP reported on a group of Pfoho students who recreated their House on Minecraft. MVE talked to Kelsey Chen ’22, whose clothing company “Bodhi Parts” is redefining luxury fashion and donating profits to COVID-19 relief. JFA wrote about @they.them.their.closet, an Instagram-based thrifting venture founded by two students in Mather. OGO brings us to dance parties in Brookline, a Minecraft server, and her bedroom. And AKEC delves into her and others’ subconscious minds in her investigation of “quarantine dreams.” We also have some articles about research and projects going on back at Harvard: SPM and RC wrote about the controversy surrounding an article recently published by a Harvard Law School professor calling for a presumptive ban on homeschooling. SJL and SSL covered the History Department’s “Coronavirus Diaries” project, an attempt to document students’ experiences of this time for future historians. And KL and EDP talked to Vivian Shaw, a fellow in the Sociology Department, about the AAPI COVID-19 project, which is researching how COVID-19 is affecting Asian, Asian American, and Pacific Islander individuals and communities. Finally, this week’s cover story by PNW and SFE is about the market for educated egg and sperm donors. They dug beneath the often sensationalized depictions of this phenomenon to find human interactions as emotionally complex as any other, and talked to student-donors and parent-buyers — as well as the agencies that act as intermediaries between them — to paint an empathetic and nuanced picture of what happens when family building interacts with the free market. Lots of our favorite parts of May won’t be possible this year: hastily finishing papers before getting ready for formals, lazing by the river pretending to do schoolwork, and saying proper goodbyes for the summer. But at least one end-of-year tradition remains: FM’s Year in Review. We’re excited to bring it to you in a few weeks. Until then, NHP + AWDA