What It Means to Lead The Harvard Crimson
When I threw my hat into the race for The Harvard Crimson presidency in October 2022, I thought I had a clear-eyed vision of the position. The job description circulated to candidates is very detailed and includes a time estimate of 60-100 hours per week. It was clear: Should I be elected, 14 Plympton St. would define my 2023.
Our elections process further clarified what the presidency would entail, as I was asked questions about handling seemingly impossible scenarios — questions without a right answer but with real consequences, as many college newspapers have been forced to learn firsthand.
Still, I didn’t truly understand what it meant to lead The Harvard Crimson until true crisis struck.
It started somewhere near Plymouth, Massachusetts, on Oct. 7 as a van full of sleepy Crimson reporters made its way back to campus from a retreat. High on a laughter-filled weekend and a touch of sleep deprivation, I glanced down at my phone to see a New York Times alert reporting rocket fire, ground assaults, and war. My heart seized.
As tragedy after tragedy unfolded across the world in Israel and Gaza, no one could have imagined the extent to which the war would find its way to our campus.
If journalism is the first draft of history, The Crimson has written a whole chapter of Harvard’s over the past two months. You can look at our newspaper and see as much: We’ve run more than 56 articles and 21 opinion pieces on the war and its ripple effects.
But no one ever sees how everything makes it into print.
***
“Are you prepared to be deemed responsible for controversies you had nothing to do with and potentially face attacks on your character and leadership for the sake of what is best for The Crimson?”
Ever since the Israel-Hamas war broke out, I’ve felt jittery, almost constantly anxious about where the next crisis would come from — what The Crimson and I would be responsible for, directly or indirectly. Rightly or wrongly. For better or worse.
I love being a student — I came to Harvard to be a student — but I haven’t been able to sit down to fully do schoolwork since that news alert. Even as thesis deadlines crept up on me. Even as I desperately wanted to. For weeks, every time I tried, something else would pull me back into the presidency: Hours of meetings, planned and spontaneous, with my grieving, furious, and numb peers. A flurry of calls about doxxing concerns. Accusations of everything from apathy to genocide and Nazism. More breaking news than I believe any newsroom of teenagers and twenty-somethings should ever be expected to handle.
Even now, being away from my desk or even my Crimson inbox sends me into a preemptive state of panic. I do not bank on if’s. With the maelstrom engulfing Harvard, there seem to only be when’s. When is the next breaking news story, the next email filled with threats, the next phone call with someone crying on the other line?
I survived by the grace of my loved ones and professors who were kind enough to see me not only as an entry in the grade book but as a mentee. I don’t think I realized the degree to which I owe them thanks until I sat down to write this endpaper.
***
“Are you prepared to put The Crimson before everything else: Your academic life, your career, your social life, your relationships, etc.?”
Nearly 3 million online readers turned to our newspaper to understand the war’s ripple effects on campus. Several peers, professors, and alumni have reached out to me thanking The Crimson for its persistent coverage (another set of people whose kindness has helped me get through this semester).
But even as every publisher wants to hear that our readers think we are fulfilling our responsibilities, there’s something perverse about a newspaper becoming more important when its communities are suffering. From tragedy comes a toxic kind of triumph.
Even as I am immensely proud of The Crimson’s coverage of the war, there’s something else perverse in seeing the scars it has left on our newsroom.
The Crimson glorifies surrender to the newspaper; we actively promote people who are willing to put everything on the line for 14 Plympton St. The toll it takes comes in the form of forgotten meals, sleepless nights, missed internship opportunities, late submission grade penalties, even hate mail.
To every Crimson writer, designer, photographer, videographer, podcaster, and editor: I cannot thank you enough for the work that you do, the kindness you bring to this work. And even when you offer it willingly — so, so graciously — I am sorry I had to ask it of you at all.
***
“Are you prepared to do all this for 365 days?”
“Maybe we should introduce an oath of office,” a friend texted me recently, half-jokingly, as we chatted about the transition between The Crimson’s 150th guard to its 151st. (For all of our traditions, The Crimson doesn’t have an official oath.)
It is easy to laugh off the remark — what college extracurricular, no matter how time-consuming, merits an oath? For all its history and accolades, The Crimson is still a student publication. I have lost count of the number of people, some of whom I treasure deeply, who have told me the place this newspaper occupies in my life is fundamentally unhealthy.
They have a point: I’ve gone from averaging seven hours of sleep to five a night, from running every week to speedwalking to class, from annotating every reading to skimming as much as I humanly can right before lecture. I have to actively remind myself that The Crimson is not the center point of students’ or readers’ lives, even if it often consumes mine.
And yet, I have found love in the weirdest nooks and crannies of 14 Plympton St. I may never have the words for how proud I am of my fellow editors and how grateful I am for our newspaper. But it starts with cement glue and floor tiles, “Janurary” and page 7, buffalos and rubber ducks — all things that don’t belong in a newspaper but made me a home here.
In a way, you take an oath when you are elected to this presidency, even if you don’t realize the depths of its demands at the time: Will you put life on pause for this newspaper for an entire year, at genuine risk to your health and sanity, and love it anyways?
I do solemnly swear.
— Cara J. Chang ’24 is the President of The Crimson’s 150th Guard.