The Harvard Crimson - Volume CXLV, Vol. 61

THE UNIVERSITY DAILY, EST. 1873  |  VOLUME CXLV NO. 61  |  CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS  |  FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 2018

The Harvard Crimson We call on Harvard to do everything it can to defend the student’s legal rights.

In a back-and-forth affair, men’s vollyball alternated winning sets with Columbia. SPORTS PAGE 13

EDITORIAL PAGE 12

Polling Says Union Vote Too Close To Call At HLS, Students Push for Change By SHERA S. AVI-YONAH, MOLLY C. MCCAFFERTY, and CAROLINE S. ENGELMAYER Data Analysis By BRIAN P. YU and PHELAN YU CRIMSON NEWS EDITORS

The results of the election that will decide whether Harvard teaching assistants unionize are too close to call, according to exit polling data collected by The Crimson. Exit poll results adjusted for response bias suggest a slight majority—50.6 percent—of eligible students voted in favor of unionization. But the margin of error—plus or minus 2 percent—means The Crimson cannot be certain the election will result in unionization. The Crimson used a 95 percent confidence interval, the standard for election polling, to calculate the margin of error. The final result will likely be decided Friday. National Labor Relations Board officials are set to tally the ballots in the NLRB’s regional office in downtown Boston starting 9:30 a.m. Friday. The unionization election took

By AIDAN F. RYAN CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

NENYA A. EDJAH—CRIMSON TECHNOLOGY CHAIR

SEE UNIONIZATION PAGE 6

Arts can be H G U O R H T DANCING T S A P S ’ A Z N A G E L E left 4 columns or right 4 columns

SEE PAGE 7

By LUCY WANG

Part fashion show, part dance party, Eleganza is young compared to the 382-year-old College. But age has not prevented the show from gaining mass popularity. On its website, Eleganza asserts it is Harvard’s largest student-run event “with over 50 board members, 60 models and dancers, and a sold-out crowd.”

PHOTO COURTESY OF MELANIE Y. FU / CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

A group of Harvard Law School students recently wrote an open letter calling for the school to ensure that law firms who recruit on campus “protect the rights of their employees” to come forward and seek legal action if they “experience harassment, discrimination, or workplace abuse.” The letter stated that several law firms that recruit summer associates from the Law School have recently begun requiring new hires to sign mandatory arbitration agreements along with non-disclosure agreements. Further, the letter said these agreements “cover all employment-related claims between the employee and the firm,” which include complaints of both sexual harassment and discrimination that are prohibited by Title VII and other civil rights legislation. Students laid out specific policy changes they would like to see the Law School implement. For one, they want the Office of Career Services to require employers who recruit on campus to remove the mandatory arbitration and non-disclosure agreements from their contracts. The letter also calls for the Law School to create and distribute “an anonymous workplace climate survey” for students who return from summer employment. Attached to the open letter is a petition that has garnered 281 signatures at the time of publication. The petition lists a goal of 300 signatures. Molly M. E. Coleman, one of the letter’s organizers, said in an interview Thursday that the issues were first raised by a lecturer at the Law School who found out firms were asking students to sign these agreements. “Ian Samuel, who was a lecturer at the Law School, broke the news that Munger Tolles, which is a major law firm based out of L.A., was asking their summer associates to sign mandatory arbitration agreements,” Coleman said. Coleman said they realized this was not an isolated incident, and their “serious concerns” about the impact of the agreements led a group of students to organize on the issue. “It became clear that there were a number of law firms that were asking their employees to sign these agreements,” Coleman said. “We don’t know how many at this point, nobody knows.” Sejal Singh, another organizer of the letter, pointed to the particular salience of law firms requiring summer associates to sign mandatory arbitration and non-disclosure agreements in the wake of the #MeToo movement, which sparked national conversations about workplace harassment.

SEE PROTECTIONS PAGE 10

For Faculty Diversity, Progress in Spurts

Women Form New Final Club, Exister Society or ‘X’

SEE PAGE 10

By CAROLINE S. ENGELMAYER AND MICHAEL E. XIE CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

By KRISTINE E. GUILLAUME CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

A University-wide report tracking the growth of faculty gender and racial diversity across Harvard’s individual schools found that some schools— like the Law School and the Graduate School of Education—have seen growth in the number of women and minorities on their faculties, while others—like the Graduate School of Design and Harvard Kennedy School— have made little to no progress in diversification over the past decade.

SEE DIVERSITY PAGE 10 INSIDE THIS ISSUE

Harvard Today 4

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has been selected as Harvard’s Class Day speaker. COURTESY OF WANI OLATUNDE

News 6

Editorial 12

Sports 13

TODAY’S FORECAST

Students have formed a new all-female final club called the Exister Society, according to an email sent to some undergraduates Wednesday night and obtained by The Crimson. The group is partnering with the mobile dating app Bumble to host a party April 23, according to the email. The club—nicknamed the “X”—is hosting the party at a club in Central Square, per the email. The party is titled “Parental Advisory Explicit Content.” The X, which was founded in fall 2017, is currently all-female, according to X President Eliza Alston ’19. The club’s formation came some time before the Harvard Corporation—the University’s highest govPARTLY CLOUDY High: 53 Low: 36

erning body—voted in Dec. 2017 to officially approve the College’s policy sanctioning members of unrecognized single-gender final clubs and Greek organizations. The social group policy, which took effect with the Class of 2021, bars members of single-gender social groups from holding campus leadership positions, serving as captains of varsity athletic teams, or receiving College endorsement for prestigious post-graduate fellowships. Madeleine L. Lapuerta ’20, campus director at Harvard for Bumble, said in an interview Sunday that her job is to seek partnerships to “spread word around” about the dating app. She added that the X’s party serves as a way to “promote Bumble.” “My whole role in this was literally

SEE EXISTER PAGE 6

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