Editor's Note

Dear FM, In keeping with the housing flexing from last week sans being public enemy #1, I am happy to announce that I will have a Fairfax studio for myself next year. (Next to our beloved MJH as well.) This means I will be doing a lot of cooking. But you know who has been doing the most cooking? That’s right, *the* iconic scrut duo KSG and GRW. Over the course of four months, for our last scrut this semester (!!!), they set out to uncover the whys and hows behind Harvard’s continuously inadequate responses to student mental health issues. Weaving together in-depth historic research, conversations with legal experts, and current events unfolding with the Luke Tang case, they highlight how stigma, the legal system, and questions about responsibility interact to impede efforts at reform. They cooked. They ate. And now you, too, will feast your eyes upon their masterpiece of a scrut. The rest of this issue also ate. We have the slayest of them all, JKW, back again with another killer piece, this time about the Law School library’s most recent exhibit, “Challenging Our Right to Read.” Part-inquiry and part-scoop, she visits the exhibit and speaks to the curators to explore questions about censorship and the politicization of literature. HWD visits the Divinity School’s Death Cafe, a space for open conversation about death and dying, and through the group, reflects on her own journey in navigating secular meaning-making. JL talks to Vera Mironova, a fellow at Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, who has embedded in various warzones to understand conflict and violence through the lens of the individual. In the spirit of ~questioning~, XSC and CL explore the conversations about CS 124, the notoriously difficult required course for CS concentrators, and the questions it raises about theory-based vs. application-based classes. RAD writes a retrospection on the circular desk in the Law School library, which belonged to Nathan Roscoe Pound, a former dean of the Law School who was criticized for his association with the Nazis during World War II. In her reporting and research, RAD lays out questions about what it means to still have this piece of furniture and to portray history accurately. On a lighter (pun intended) note, SSL and AJM do a deep dive into the blue light system to see how often they’re used, how much they cost, and how students actually feel about them. Red light or green light the blue lights? The jury’s still out. Finally, closing our issue, KJK writes an honest and heartfelt endpaper about the pressure she felt after coming to college to be the “perfect” older sister to her four younger siblings — only to realize that being open about her imperfect life is perhaps what makes her the best role model she can be. Kudos are in order! Thank you as always, XCZ, OWZ, JND, SET, and LJPE, for slaying with designs and helping with glossy distribution. You guys never let us down. Thank you LLL, BHP, JJG, and AYL for always answering my last-minute requests and questions and for always going out of your way to make sure we get our photos. Thank you MJH, CY, and EJS for speedy responses, speedy proofing, and speedy advice. Thank you YAK and JL for, once again, holding down the fort!! Special shoutout to IYG for incredibly dedicated and concise proofing despite the scrut dragging on way past what you agreed to — I’m sorry! We love you! And of course, thank you HD for dealing with hiccups and blips every week with much more composure and distress tolerance than I do. Y’all stay cooking. And eating. FMLove, KT + HD