Editor's Note

Dear reader, It’s a rainy afternoon, and inside the Somerville Bureau of The Harvard Crimson, we’re all on our laptops staring longingly at photos of Crema Cafe. Perfect weather, if you ask us, to switch tabs and instead peruse your Favorite Magazine. In this week’s cover story, JFA writes of the newly-founded Generational African American Students Association, a first-of-its-kind affinity group within the Black community at Harvard and around the country for folks who trace their lineage to American slavery. Though GAASA has provided its members with an answer to the vexing question “where are you really from?” it nonetheless comes with a host of fraught questions — about representation within elite spaces, access to the resources they provide, and the efficacy of promoting marginalized groups within them. With care and thoughtfulness, JFA questions the supposed threat “specificity” poses to “solidarity.” But of course that’s not all: DCB and MX profile the music venue lobbying against Somerville’s ban on outdoor live music. AVM speaks with the restaurants prepping for a long winter. ANW explores why the Graduate School of Education pushed its Ph.D. admissions to the next cycle. TCK prepares for a virtual Harvard Model Congress tournament. TMB and SNT talk to the experts about Massachusetts’s drought. SWT traces the roots of the “radical biweekly” Old Mole magazine. And in the first installment of their column on sex and work, EDP and JFA profile the feminist audio pornography company Quinn. LRW closes the issue with a vivid account of a chicken slaughtering and a poignant reflection on the ways we justify our decisions. Still quarantining, we assume? Perfect — crack open our magazine and take your mind off the bad stuff. Yours, AWDA + NHP