17 minute read
Editorial
The Crimson Edi orial board Harvard, Not Students, Should Pay for Local Food Options
CommonWealth Kitchen, a Dorchester nonprofit, is bringing local food businesses into Har vard kitchens. The nonprofit rents out kitchen space to local food start-ups, many of which are minority-owned, and then connects them with large opera tions in need of food — including hospitals, offices, and, universities.
Last summer, Harvard and other lo cal universities partnered with CommonWealth to purchase products from these start-ups.
Though it is more expensive for the University to buy food products from these small vendors as opposed to large wholesalers, the appeal of local food seems to outweigh this cost.
We appreciate the positive effects of Harvard’s initiative to support local ven dors and give back to the surrounding community. Given its large wealth and influence, as well as its sometimes perni cious effects on the surrounding neighborhoods, we have repeatedly asked that Harvard give back more to the great er Cambridge and Boston community. Sourcing food from these local businesses is an important method of support, and we are also happy to see the increased diversity in food options that the deal seems poised to yield. As many of the small food startups in question are minority-owned have culinary styles that might be unknown to a lot of stu dents, we also hope that HUDS will display information on the origins of these local products, if possible.
But beyond these hopes, it is vital ly important that Harvard itself absorb the extra cost associated with buying lo cal food rather than passing it onto students. Tuition is already a serious strain on many students and their families, and in improving food options Harvard must not worsen this financial burden. Partic ularly for middle-income students not on financial aid who would bear the full weight of the cost increase, we are ap prehensive about the effect of these new purchases.
Also, it is important that this out sourcing does not disadvantage existing HUDS workers.
The last HUDS strike is still in recent memory, so we are very aware of their struggles. If the increased cost of lo cal food procurement adversely affects HUDS workers, that offers another rea son for caution. We believe that Harvard should absolutely expand the variety of food options and work with local busi nesses. But in doing so it cannot pass on the costs of that decision to students and employees.
In addition, as Harvard thinks about expanding food options in a way that takes into account a diversity of back grounds, we also hope that it thinks about offering more inclusive meals for those with dietary restrictions — includ ing vegan, vegetarian, Halal, and Kosher options, to name just a few — into the dai ly menu.
Students with these restrictions de serve the same quality of food as everyone else, and we hope the University seizes on this newfound relationship with local food suppliers to ensure they get it.
This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journal ism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar top ics.
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Transactional Experiences Column Andrew W. Liang A box of chocolates
Afew weeks ago, as I was seeing Morocco with a few friends, we decided to get away from the coastal cities and visit the full interior of the country. Luckily, we found a driv er online who was willing to take us. The deal?
For several hundred U.S. dollars, he agreed to drive us more than 22 hours across three days, from the country’s coast to the southern border — and then back. The full drive traversed moun tain ranges, limestone canyons, and the world’s largest non-polar desert. The terrain was insane; a one-way trip inland lasted roughly 12 hours, if you didn’t take too long for lunch. In between naps and gazes out the window, I couldn’t help but think of the remarkable nature of this transaction. Here was a man we had nev er met before. Yet, he drove us — at times, more than 10 hours a day — across an en
tire country. He was a citizen who’d never been beyond his nation’s borders, and we were three college students from an other continent. The one thing we knew we had in common? A single price upon which we agreed.
Smith famously wrote that “it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest.” As so many on cam pus and elsewhere castigate the free market, characterizing it as greedy and immoral, we would do well to remember Smith’s favorable view of transactions. The word “transaction” unfortunate ly possesses a negative connotation. After all, Dean Khurana tells incoming freshman classes to strive for “transfor mative,” not “transactional” experiences in college. Certainly, friendships should not be transactional. But for many of the things that we have in our lives, a trans action was at work (and happily so). As you know already, such trades helped you to procure the phone you’re using, the clothes you’re wearing, the Ubers you ride in, and the food that you eat. Smith’s great insight — which holds true today — is that when everybody is pursuing their own self-interest, the unintended con sequence is that both people’s needs and desires are fulfilled. The market revolves around one defining mechanism: if there is profit to be made, sellers are willing to move mountains to make it.
Take the commonly cited — and con troversial — example of prices after a hurricane. Let’s say that right as a storm rolls through, flooding hits many nearby grocery stores that sell paper towels. Be cause of the suddenly limited supply, remaining stores are able to charge much higher prices, so the cost of paper towels skyrockets from $1 to $25. At first glance, the act of profiting so handsomely from a disaster seems greedy and unjust. So why shouldn’t we establish a law to say that paper towel prices cannot rise in natural disasters?
Such controls were common in the 1970s under presidents Nixon through Carter; the price of gas was limited to an artificially low price by well-mean ing politicians. But the results spoke for themselves. In this situation, if there were four individuals who needed gas, the one who got it was simply the first one to arrive at the station. Because the price was so low, the first person in line could fill up their entire tank, leaving no gas for the other three. Price controls en couraged overconsumption when supply was low. The lesson here is that natural ly high prices serve the unintended purpose of encouraging lower consumption. The same goes for the paper towels in our hurricane example. With a high er price, households now will likely buy only one paper towel roll instead of their usual four; in return, many more house holds are able to have a roll. This is a far more equitable distribution than if the first few people were able to buy all the paper towels, leaving everyone else with none.
In turn, paper towel sellers elsewhere naturally act like the market’s version of FEMA; as they see the higher prices in this area, they’ll ship more paper towels in, trying to capitalize. And the supply will keep on increasing until the price comes down to its normal level.
Let’s say instead the government tries to impose both a price and a quantity
control: every household can only buy one roll, but at an affordable price. The problem? There is no extra profit to be made, and paper towel sellers from else where don’t have the incentive to come in and provide more, leaving the supply low. Lastly, if we’re worried about the in dividuals in the area whose incomes are too low, the government should subsi dize the individuals, so they can be guaranteed a $25 paper towel.
But the answer should be to make markets more free, not to reduce their effectiveness; if the government puts a ceiling on the price, no matter how well-meaning it is, the poorest individu als cannot be guaranteed even one roll. Few would consider this more moral or fair than the market outcome.
It’s popular today to complain about capitalism, and the complaints undoubt edly are made with good intentions. But noble intentions here do not mean good consequences.
There is an unintended beauty to free enterprise, and we’ve become so accus tomed that we tend to ignore it. So we denounce the free markets, self-interest, and the business world. After all, it’s easy to tear something down. It’s much hard er to remember exactly what is at stake of being lost.
OP-ED
Leave Marijuana to the Market
In a January 24 ruling, a Middlesex Superior Court judge lifted Cambridge’s two-year moratorium on certain cannabis sales per mits. The moratorium, passed by the Cambridge City Council in September 2019, gave historical ly marginalized groups — including women, minorities, and those who have been impacted by the war on drugs — a two-year window to be the sole operators of recreational marijuana shops in the city.
Though the moratorium was creative and well-intentioned, it was a complete failure in real ity. Not only was it unconstitutional as argued by the judge, but it was also based on economic fal lacies and misconceptions of the cannabis market. The Cambridge City Council showed either apathy or ignorance for standard economic theo ry when crafting the policy. The resulting moratorium helped no marginalized groups and effectively banned the sale of recreational cannabis in Cambridge.
Despite its short-lived nature, the deficien cies of the moratorium are indisputable. Not one recreational marijuana dispensary is open in Cambridge even though 71.3 percent of Cam bridge voters supported full marijuana legalization during the 2016 Massachusetts referendum. The moratorium added restrictions on permits — stunting supply in an already over-regulated sec tor. In other towns, many medical marijuana dispensaries applied for and received permits to sell recreationally. The moratorium prevented Cam bridge’s existing medical marijuana dispensaries from pursuing this natural transition. As a re sult, Cambridge has no recreational dispensaries while weed shops have popped up in surrounding Massachusetts towns.
Though the moratorium effectively constitut ed a ban on cannabis sales in Cambridge, the intentions of the policymakers were noble. The City Council was trying to address serious issues in the legal cannabis market. White, upper-class en trepreneurs dominate the market in many states. Black people, who suffered disproportionately as a result of the war on drugs, have not reaped the benefits of legalization. Only 1 percent of dispen saries nationwide are owned by black people.
The moratorium righteously attempted to help the victims of the war on drugs reap the benefits of legalization. So, why haven’t minorities uti lized the head start?
While the moratorium effectively prevented white males from joining the market, it did not address the underlying issues that have kept mi norities out of the legal cannabis industry. Federal banking regulations prevent many cannabis enterprises from receiving loans and opening bank accounts.
As a result, it is very difficult to open a weed dispensary without significant liquid capital, which most aspiring small business owners, espe cially minorities, do not possess. Members of minority groups in Cambridge most likely had difficulty financing their recreational marijuana companies and, as a result, could not benefit from the banishment of competition.
Essentially, the moratorium did not address the fundamental issues of access to capital that have prevented low- and middle-income Ameri cans from accessing the market. Competition was not the fundamental problem in the market, so its absence did not help aspiring small business owners. Though the moratorium did not direct ly hurt aspiring minority business owners, it did hurt owners of medical marijuana dispensaries and Cambridge consumers.
So, the moratorium failed. Now, what can be done to help both Cambridge’s consumers and historically marginalized groups?
The first necessary step is the deregulation of the cannabis market. Ideally, the striking down of the moratorium should allow for an influx in com petition. However, city officials such as Quinton Zondervan have indicated support to appeal the ruling and use other options to “get in the way” of existing medical marijuana dispensaries seek ing permits to sell recreationally. These efforts to further delay the implementation of recre ational cannabis sales must be strongly resisted. Four years after its popular legalization, canna bis should finally be sold recreationally in Cambridge.
But, what about the historically marginalized people that will likely be left in this free-market framework? The moratorium failed because it did not address the underlying financial barriers pre venting middle-class minorities from entering the legal marijuana market. New policies provid ing tax breaks, subsidies, and access to low-interest loans would alleviate many financial impediments without creating massive market distortions.
Minorities do not need a head start to enter the cannabis market. In fact, structural issues prevent the historically marginalized from cap italizing on head starts. Policymakers should focus on providing owners of weed shops access to loans and the banking system. Allaying the ob structions of banking regulations is the only way to change an industry that has essentially become a white, upper-class marijuana hegemony.
The Cambridge City Council should continue to propose creative policy solutions to complex social issues. However, they should also ensure that future proposals are effective and viable. In this case, the City Council must do a closer anal ysis of the economic complexities of the cannabis industry to create a policy that gives Cantabri gians access to safe, legal marijuana and grants historically marginalized people the opportunity to open their own profitable businesses. By Jonathan l. Katzman
Researchers Create New Material for Computing
By Brie K. Bu hanan Crimson Sta Writer
A team of researchers from Harvard’s School of Engineer ing and Applied Sciences, McMaster University, and University of Pittsburgh discovered a new material that can exhibit chemical and mechanical re sponses to light — paving the way for computing to be exe cuted with only beams of light rather than hard materials.
At the heart of the team’s work is a unique type of hydro gel, according to a recent paper the team published in Proceed ings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Hydrogels are non-linear optical materials, a class of ma terials that change when they interact with light.
Interaction with light al ters how the light propagates through the material, accord ing to SEAS graduate student Amos Meeks, a co-author of the paper.
Anna C. Balazs, a professor of engineering at the Univer sity of Pittsburgh and another co-author of the study, said the hydrogel’s exposure to light or heat triggers a chemical reac tion that causes the material to shrink.
The collapse of material con denses the polymer and forces the light to become highly lo calized, rather than dispersed. When the light disappears, the hydrogel is able to return to its original state.
The unique feature of the group’s newly created hydro gel is its ability to couple several different responses at once, particularly the response to a light stimulus that ultimate ly causes the material to contract and alter the dispersion of light, according to Balazs.
“The optics is talking to the chemistry, which is talking to mechanical response, which in turn feeds back on the optics,” Balazs said.
“Creating those kinds of feedback loops is very novel.”
Balazs said that the idea of a feedback loop could pave the way for the creation of materi als with new features in the future.
“The integration of acting on different responses to give you one performance is stun ning, and that’s the real advance here,” Balazs said.
“What it really allows you to do is create materials that can maintain their state and are self-regulating. In response to a stimulus they can modu late their internal properties so they can deal with that stimu lus.”
Kalaichelvi Saravanamut tu, an associate professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biol ogy at McMaster and a co-author of the study, noted that the findings also contribute to wards an emerging field called “materials that compute” — soft constructs that are respon sive and designed with local computational ability.
“The paper presents a cre ative platform to generate soft adaptive constructs that could perform computational opera tions with visible light beams - without the need for exter nal processors or electronic components” Saravanamuttu wrote in an emailed statement about the research.
She added that the team’s work is distinct from other op tical computing approaches.
“It is important to make a distinction between this work and other approaches to optical computing that examine ways to replace electronic functions in a digital computer with pho ton-based counterparts,” she wrote.
Meeks said there are still many questions that need to be answered before this type of material could be applied or put to use.
“This is kind of the first demonstration of this phenom enon at all in these types of materials,” he said.
“There’s a lot of questions that would still need to be an swered before there’s any kind of application.”
brie.buchanan@thecrimson.com
Cyber From Page 1 HKS Involved in Prepping Iowa for Cyber Threats
The Defending Digital Democracy project has held cybersecurity preparedness exercises with election officials from 44 states, according to the state ment.
The statement also clarified the project had no role in devel oping or testing the app used during the caucuses.
“It was not a technical exer cise, and the technologies used on Caucus Night were not used or tested during the exercise,” the statement read.
“Members of the D3P team, including Eric Rosenbach and Robby Mook, were not involved in vetting, approving or testing specific technologies used by the parties on Caucus Night at any time before, during or after this exercise.”
Eric B. Rosenbach, the co-director of the Belfer Cen ter, and Robert E. Mook, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign manager in the 2016 election, helped to start the Defending Digital Democracy Project.
Iowa Democrats used an app developed by Shadow Inc. — a company founded by ex-Clinton campaign staff ers — to have precincts report their results this year.
In a press conference Tues day, Iowa Democratic Party chairman Troy Price blamed a “a coding error” for the delay in the results.
In a statement posted on Shadow Inc.’s website, the company’s chief executive offi cer, Gerard Niemira, acknowledged the failures in the process used to relay the Democratic caucus results from Monday evening.
“We sincerely regret the de lay in the reporting of the results of last night’s Iowa caucuses and the uncertainty it has caused to the candidates, their campaigns, and Demo cratic caucus-goers,” Niemira’s statement read.
“As the Iowa Democrat ic Party has confirmed, the underlying data and collec tion process via Shadow’s mobile caucus app was sound and accurate, but our process to transmit that caucus results data generated via the app to the IDP was not.”
The state’s Republican Par ty — which used a different app than the Democrats to tabulate their caucus results — had no reporting problems.
“Our reporting system worked flawlessly,” Britt said. “We never had an issue on cau cus night.”
The GOP race in Iowa was virtually uncontested. Presi dent Donald J. Trump received 97 percent of the state’s Repub lican delegates.
Harvard Government Pro fessor Jon C. Rogowski, who was in Iowa for the caucuses, said that the party’s failure to release timely results this year could lead to it losing its status as the first in the nation to vote. “This very well could lead to Iowa losing its place as the first state to participate in the primary process,” Rogowski wrote in an email.
“A number of other propos als have been floated over the years, including a nationwide primary, or choosing another state that may be more demo graphically representative.”
Iowa, which receives dis proportionate attention from presidential candidates, has an electorate vastly less diverse than that of the broader Dem ocratic electorate.
While more than 9 in 10 Iowa caucus-goers on Monday were white, according to en trance polls, that figure is closer to 60 percent for the party in the entire country.
As of Wednesday evening, former South Bend, Ind., May or Peter P. M. Buttigieg ’04 held a narrow lead in Iowa over Ver mont Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) with 92 percent of pre cincts reporting.
jasper.goodman@thecrimson.com
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