Editor's Note

Dear Reader, It’s morning at The Crimson again. More good stories this week. NBF questions whether psychedelics can save America (answer: maybe?). SNT and MMFW speak with the scientists destabilizing the centrality of sex/gender in COVID-19 data. TMB and MX explore the effort to ban teargas in Cambridge. AVM profiles the GSD professor with a simple idea that could save the world. Her idea? Trees — which, ironically, are also the focus of MP and SWT’s piece on a creative new freshman seminar. RLL meets the students visualizing social justice, in Harvard spaces and across the country. AMC talks to popular statistics professor Joe Blitzstein. KL and GRO recount a friend’s bizarre experience trapped in an elevator. And EKJ closes the issue with a thoughtful reflection on how we discuss mental illness. In this week’s cover story, MNW and SSL investigate the chaotic process by which Harvard reopened for its fall semester. Meticulously reported over the course of several months, their scrutiny exposes the gap that emerged between rhetoric and reality and tells the stories of the workers who slipped through its cracks. This is a story you won’t want to miss. Four more years of FM. Yours, AWDA + NHP