Citizens Arrest Stuns RC Section During Landmark LCA

Class

The duality of

The Booming Climate Tech Ecosystem at HBS

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What Is the Social Purpose of a Firm? COMMUNITY

Aditya Rau (MBA ’24) reflects on the impact of a new RC course and argues for its expansion.

Love on the Brain

After Valentine’s Day, HBS students reflect on the state of romance on campus.

Rory Finnegan, Editor-in-Chief

We’re a few drinks deep when the topic finally comes up. Maybe we’re at Daedelus or Alden & Harlow or someone’s apartment in Continuum. It probably took us three tries to schedule this but now that we’re here, we gush about how great it is to be catching up (“it’s been so long!”) After complaining about classes, the craziness of our calendars, and the disorganized treks we’ve gone on recently, we’re ready to talk about it. Like clockwork, someone asks the question: “So… how’s your love life?”

Sound familiar? I thought so. For those who arrived at HBS single, this is a conversation we have again and again. Even the happily married among us are hungry for gossip, eager to know who is hooking up or going out or crushing on a section mate.

In February, love is especially top-of-mind – with Valentine’s Day as a social focal point for couples and singles alike. This year on campus, several new and old HBS traditions brought it even more to the forefront.

The first was a series of pitch nights across RC sections, but not the type you might think takes place at a business school. Instead, students prepared slides to show off their most eligible single friends in front of one to two other sections. Alice Zhai (MBA ’24), a social chair for Section B, helped put together the “BAE” singles pitch night in collaboration with Sections A and E. “I was surprised how many people put themselves out there,” she told me. When I asked Joe Sciamanna (MBA ’24), one of Section E’s social chairs, if he knew of any matches coming out of the event, he hedged, “None that I can comment on.”

(For what it’s worth, I heard secondhand about at least five different singles exchanging numbers across sections).

The Asian Affinity Business Association Club further buoyed the wave of romantic gestures with its annual “Candygrams” campaign, enabling students to send a sweet treat with an optionally anonymous message for just $6. I was thrilled to find that my seatmate had received a joking candygram from one of his friends. When he deemed the candy too sugary (he had big plans at the gym that day), I took one for the team and pocketed all of his Lindt truffles.

New to HBS this year, and arguably most newsworthy, was Marriage Pact. The dating questionnaire, whose algorithm uses the latest research on romantic compatibility to create optimal matches, was started by two Stanford students several years ago. It is already popular on college campuses across the country (Harvard included); HBS is its first trial with graduate students.

Marriage Pact launched at HBS via word of mouth on the evening of February 13th. Initial reactions to the questionnaire varied. One friend told me that he thought it was stupid – “at first when I saw it I got the ick” – but agreed that it would, at the very least, be an interesting social experiment. By the next morning, February 14th, Marriage Pact was all the buzz on campus. “Once people found

This was the question on the lips of RCs as they stumbled back into Aldrich after winter break. Dusting off their boots after trekking to Patagonia and their skis after exploring Jackson Hole, first year students gathered to participate in the first-time offering. The course, “The Social Purpose of the Firm (SPF),” was designed to help students reflect on both a firm’s purpose and their own.

Over two days, RCs read and discussed cases on companies working on clean energy and battery storage above the arctic circle (Northvolt), designing and managing responsible

AI (Microsoft), producing life-saving drugs (United Therapeutics) and expanding financial access (Equity Bank). Discussions on the work of firms active today were complemented by a historical analysis of the operations and troubling legacy of the first publicly traded company (The Dutch East India Company). “We felt strongly that students should have an opportunity to engage with this fundamental question of purpose,” said Debora Spar, course head for SPF and Senior Associate Dean for Business and Global Society. In doing so, RCs considered issues such as the capabilities mismatch between the private sector and the public sector, the importance of

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