Crimson staff writer

Olivia G. Pasquerella

Latest Content


‘Ideological Authors’: Harvard’s Hidden Ties to Dirty Wars in Latin America

In the 1960s and 70s, U.S. Cold War involvement in Latin America and the violent regimes it supported were hardly discussed at Harvard. Yet these two worlds — political upheaval in Latin America and the rarefied academic spaces of the University — were far less separate than one might think.


Advice to Josh: When Does Winter End?

As the weather fluctuates between the 30s and high 50s, and as the weeks hurtle by, it seems like spring should be coming. The air is slowly getting warmer, on average, and there are some buds starting to burst forth on bare branches. Still, Cambridge seems dreary and gray, and the midterm slump certainly isn't helping the sense of endless winter. So we're here to give Josh advice on knowing when exactly winter ends.


Hacking Harvard Bridge with Oliver R. Smoot

As a pledge, the fraternity made Smoot lay down on the bridge over 300 times, painting ticks at each smoot. Almost 70 years later, the Smoot markings remain, allowing pedestrians to measure their journey in “smoots.” According to a sign on the bridge, Cambridge and Boston are exactly 364.4 smoots apart.


The Possible Perpetrator in Your Crimson Cart

The Harvard administration’s pattern of punishing professors who have violated sexual harassment policies by putting them on temporary leave, and then quietly allowing them to come back relatively unscathed, further endangers younger students who may be unaware of their professors’ checkered histories.


C is for Capitalism: Cookie Monster Pays a Visit to Harvard Business School

The following is a transcript from Cookie Monster’s recent guest lecture at the Harvard Business School. Like Kim K., he also wore his finest pinstriped pantsuit, black leather trench coat, and (though not for public viewing) SKIMS undergarments. Unlike Kim K., Mr. Monster opted to perform his speech to the tune of his smash hit, “C is for Cookie.”


Take Off Your Damn Headphones

I remove my over-the-ear headphones (shocking, daring, brave!) and discover the beauty of Harvard’s unfiltered sounds and silences. I also discover that I have been breathing really loudly this whole time.


The Harvard Man Goes to Therapy

Your least favorite person in your Social Studies seminar visits a therapist. But don’t worry, “Harvard Man” — an archetype that plagues this particular ivory tower — isn’t cured. He will still interrupt you to explain your own lived experiences to you tomorrow.


(Comic) Stripping Down the Patriarchy

These scenes are from the panels in “Breaking Out,” one of the stories in the July 1970 edition of “It Ain’t Me Babe Comix,” in which popular female comic characters revolt against the men dominating their lives and defy their creators. The “uprooted sisters” team up “into small groups not unlike witch covens” and go picketing for women’s history and self-defense classes. They consider if they should “take that acid we’ve been saving and commune with the moon,” while Supergirl frees the inmates of a women’s prison.


Baking the World a Happier Place

Bake it Till You Make it LLC, a “community based organization dedicated to destigmatizing mental illness, normalizing mental health conversation and promoting authentic healing and recovery,” seeks to connect people through food.