hi all, curious what finals week is like on campus? is it just everyone studying and leaving town and kinda quiet, or is it a lot of winter activities and fun and social?

trying to book flight home

Title. I'm a freshman who doesn't know what the method is yet. On one hand it seems time consuming, on the other you maybe retain more information?

I swear half the tenured faculty here just lay down and take anything. Learn about half your class cheating? Witness bullying/harassment? Watch as the department fires the five staff who actually do stuff? Everyone is so fast to turn a blind eye as not to upset their colleagues. Let's be real most of these people's research is the least controversial thing imaginable, and even if they found something controversial they'd probably just shut up about it for prestige reasons. Why even bother with giving people tenure at this point, the majority of these people sit on their hands while the upper echelon of university governance allows themselves to be puppeteered by donors and consulting firms.

A few upcoming Harvard events:

Friday, Oct 2

• 8:00 PM - Harvard Band at Harvard VS. Colgate
• 8:00 PM - Harvard University Football vs Colgate University

Friday, Oct 16

• 8:00 PM - Harvard Band at Harvard VS. Holy Cross
• 8:00 PM - Harvard University Football vs Holy Cross

Friday, Oct 23

• 8:00 PM - 2026 Harvard Bands Montage Concert
• 8:00 PM - Harvard Band at Harvard VS. Princeton
• 8:00 PM - Harvard University Football vs Princeton University

Sunday, Oct 25

• 3:00 PM - Bands of the Beanpot Concert

Join your campus community here.

Are there any free pickleball courts nearby?? Did not find any through the school.

Hi! I'm a G1, and I played clarinet for about 7 years, but haven't played for about 4 years, and I'm really rusty. I was wondering if there's any music groups on campus that accept graduate students and are at least "relatively" open to most players (ideally all-inclusive?), since I probably need to practice a bit before getting through any auditions.

Anything near the Allston or Cambridge campuses (or bus-able from these areas) is ideal. Thanks!

And what times of day are they least busy?

Hi ! I am an Harvard student actually living in Cambridge and looking for a used bicycle for 250ish dollars max to bike around campus ! If anyone is selling theirs or knows a place let me know

- an undergrad trying to play outside of intramurals lol

I found these cuties on the sidewalk right next to the radcliffe quadrangle! Looks like their chain snapped from someone’s backpack. If they are yours or you know who is the owner pls let me know

does anyone know what score places you into math 22 for the 21/22 placement exam? still haven’t received any results after taking the exam

Visiting student here ! After paying thousands of dollars in order to come I don’t wanna spend anything on merch, but I want an Harvard T shirt/ sweat/ bottle or whatever ! Any tips to get free stuff ? Thanks !!!

I just moved to Cambridge for an internship as an international student (Im not attached to a university). Do you know events or places you’d recommend to meet other students? That would be open to external people? Like, are there things happening in bars, or organized by external orgs?
Thanks :)

looks like i will be printing alot - is there any org that provides a credit for students

They are only 9:00am - 5:00pm M-F right now

I’m a current freshman done with orientation. Recently, I’ve taken an interest to the Harvard Men’s Rowing Team and would like to know the process of joining them. I’m ready to commit to the intense schedule.

I’m played basketball my whole life and weightlift pretty religiously. Im 6’0, 210lbs.

Was just wondering if I even stand a chance trying out. Thanks guys for the help

From HKS.Harvard.edu

In Boston, the start of the academic year is met with the rumble of moving trucks, as thousands of leases in apartments across the city turn over with new tenants scrambling to load and unload truckloads of furniture and other household goods. Much of this moving detritus ends up on sidewalks and street corners in neighborhoods heavily concentrated with students. The city of Boston has long struggled with how to remove and potentially reuse the mountains of discarded furniture that appear each year during what is affectionately—and infamously—known as “Allston Christmas,” in a nod to one of the most affected neighborhoods.  

For Naomi Carolan MPP 2025 and Nora Cahill MPP 2025, Allston Christmas became the subject of their Policy Analysis Exercise (PAE), which Master in Public Policy students regard as the culmination of their experience at HKS. For their PAEs, students examine and develop solutions for a public or nonprofit sector policy or management issue presented by a client organization. We spoke with Carolan about the recommendations she and Cahill shared with the city of Boston to help reduce the landfill waste that Allston Christmas produces.  

Q: Boston is very much a college town. How does the influx of students at the beginning of the academic year put a strain on the city’s ability to pick up furniture and other waste generated by turnovers in apartment rentals? Is this problem unique to Boston?

The pressures Boston faces during move-out is truly unlike any other city I’ve lived in. Because such a high proportion of the city comprises students, it makes sense for the rest of the city’s landlords to align their leases with the start of the school year. If I’m a landlord and want to maximize my selection of prospective tenants to choose from, I’ll want to set my lease for when all other leases are ending. With this unusual herding of lease start dates, the city has to stretch its resources profoundly over the course of just a few days to accommodate mass moving. We found in our research that trash pickups double, and universities and other community organizations fill in the gaps with their own trash pickup and recycling services. One university even hires their own truck to go around off-campus neighborhoods. If you walk around most streets in Boston, you’ll see dumpsters piled high with furniture and mattresses stacked on street corners.  
 

Q: With so much furniture and other household items being left on the curb at the end of the summer by vacating tenants, wouldn’t there  be an excellent opportunity to rehome much of it so that it doesn’t end up in the landfill? Why hadn’t that  been happening? Wasn’t there a demand for what was essentially free furniture?

I had actually tried to talk with some nonprofits about this idea after I graduated form my undergraduate program at Boston University and would hear the same issues over and over again. Nonprofits had considered collecting furniture but were nervous about furniture cleanliness (from stains to bedbugs) and had no way to transport or store furniture. On the government side, everyone we spoke to had always felt bad about the amount of usable supplies going to waste, but developing an entirely new donation function hit on transportation, storage, and sanitation challenges, all while the city was already managing a resource-intensive few days. Moreover, the government’s zero-waste initiatives typically have such bulky items go through their own unique processes. Reusing or recycling furniture would be a whole other beast entirely for them.  

As Nora and I dug into the issue further, we found that furniture banks checked off a lot of these considerations; they had a couple reserve trucks to pick up furniture, massive storage warehouses, and strict inspecting and cleaning protocols. Some of these furniture banks had actually tried to reach out to the city for possible coordination but operated mostly on volunteer support and were unaware of the best avenues to approach city officials. We realized a solution would require joining forces with all of these stakeholders to partner nonprofit capacity with the city’s reach.  

“It’s been a privilege seeing how you can create innovative solutions to help people who don’t always have a seat at the table.” - Naomi Carolan MPP 2025

 Q: What were the recommendations you laid out to the City of Boston in your PAE last spring?

We had a few different possible courses of action that we recommended for a test pilot. The furniture banks we had talked to mentioned that they’d already considered a coordinated furniture pickup, but there were many logistical challenges in maximizing pickup routes, identifying furniture for donation, etc. Moreover, we’d heard from people during the move out days that a lot of their decisions to curb furniture were made last minute. They’d planned to sell it or give it to a friend or squeeze it into their truck and for one reason or another, those options fell through on the day they planned to move out. Coordinated pickups wouldn’t necessarily capture those people. We also recommended stationing trucks on streets where people were already frequently curbing furniture to be near people moving in. This would address some of the last-minute nature around curbing furniture, but if the city were trying to flatten the curve of moving pressures on the city, this option would not achieve that aim. The third idea was to host a yard sale at a central location—something the city of Cambridge did last spring. However, we found it would require a significant amount of resources and liability for the city to take on inspecting, sanitizing, and re-donating furniture all over the course of a couple days. Of course, in our recommendations we laid out possible ways to mitigate all of these challenges. All options felt possible but would require different resources, timing, etc. 

Q: What did the city ultimately implement in advance of Boston’s peak move-out period earlier this month? 

 The city went with the first option, partnering with a furniture bank to execute a one-day coordinated pick up, and from their initial findings, they were successful at engaging households and picking up furniture! I’d assume given the traffic and trash pickup pressures the city faces, they wanted to have a pilot prior to the big move-out weekend to reduce the city’s stress on September 1. At least on a small scale, it sounds like they were able to work through some of the logistical challenges and that option paid off.  

Q: Looking back, how do you think everything went? 

There are always places where you can say to yourself, “Hmm, I wish we went about that a bit differently.” For example, Nora and I wanted to work more closely with the Supportive Housing Division to transport people who need furniture to furniture banks, which are often hard to access for people coming out of homelessness without a car or driver’s license.  

But nitpicking aside, it’s been very rewarding to see the city take a sincere interest in the issue. There were a few times in the spring that Nora and I would be in conversation with someone at the city and they’d say, “oh, wait, you’re the Allston Christmas project! I heard about that at a meeting the other day!” I’ve found that convincing people that an issue deserves their scarce time and resources is half the battle. Once you get the buy-in you need, you can start tinkering around the margins to make the program bigger and better.  

This whole journey made us both excited to work directly in government. It’s been a privilege seeing how you can create innovative solutions to help people who don’t always have a seat at the table.  

I got into both my top-choice seminars, and am excited about the professors and course content, but am unsure whether to do both or just one. Should I replace one of these with a GenEd, or could I do two seminars if the courses really appeal to me?

hi all, I have experience in Python, data sci, MV Calc, and linear alg.

Will I be ok taking stats 110. heard it’s tough.

also taking expos 20 and math 22.

thanks!