reached for a brat and some cheddar. American students from the Yard dormi- (a south Indian stringed instrument) in Well, no, I replied, but my town is right tories; he also promoted admissions the cultural show Ghungroo or listen to across the Illinois border, so it’s very simi- changes that reduced the proportion of RecKlez (a Klezmer band composed of lar, I would think. The other partygoers Jews in the freshman class from 27.6 per- Harvard students) during Cultural Rhythms. seemed unimpressed with my connection cent in 1925 to less than 15 percent in 1933, I may not feel completely at home in any (despite the fact that my best friend from at the end of his career. cultural organization on campus, but nei- home is a University of Wisconsin “bad- Historically, minority groups have been ther am I someone President Lowell might ger”), and I left feeling that my state’s lack marginalized on Harvard’s campus, so the have prevented from attending Harvard of frozen-custard production rendered us need for a strong, positive, minority pres- (if I were male, that is) in the first place. somehow even more boring than other, ence has been great. A female friend ex- Cultural organizations are an integral more dairy-inclined states. I was crushed. pressed that sentiment at a staging of The part of Harvard not only because they bring I found that, like many of my peers at Vagina Monologues last year. When a male diversity to the College, but also because Harvard, I missed the “culture” of my friend asked why there was no produc- they give majority students the experience home when I came to school. Unfortu- tion dedicated solely to male genitalia, of what it feels like to be in the minority. nately, the “culture” of my home happens she replied, “There is: it’s called history.” And truthfully, being in the audience for the to be Leave It to Beaver-style whitewashed, That focus on the white male contribu- cultural events I attend has taught me just station-wagon-driving, unassumingly ag- tion to society is true at Harvard, where as much as I would have learned on stage. nostic, Midwest suburbia, and to those even the introductory courses required of With open eyes, and an open mind, even who don’t have the personal connections all concentrators in popular disciplines the “culturally blanched” among us can feel to such a place, well, it’s a harder sell than such as history, English, and social stud- like a part of something rich. something as visibly warm and interest- ies barely touch on material from outside ing as a big Irish family party or a perfor- Europe and the United States. Berta Greenwald Ledecky Undergraduate Fellow mance of Mariachi Veritas. And the fact In this respect, it seems petty to be- Emma Lind is a history and literature concentra- that I had no conforming religious beliefs moan the sense of cultural vacancy that I tor who lives in Winthrop House with three other no longer made me stand out—as it had feel as I watch my roommate play her veena women and one veena. in my Catholic high school. Instead, it made me uninteresting. It was hard to cultivate the feeling that my “culturally SPORTS blanched” heritage was worth celebrat- ing, and I started to believe that without any external validation, it was nothing worth missing. But thinking along those lines defeats Disruptive Influence the purpose of having cultural organiza- tions in the first place. What I failed to see—and what many fail to recognize—is attacker Greg Cohen scrambles defenses. that the absence of a cultural organiza- tion for the “majority” (as opposed to the e was a world-beater be- ,” says head men’s lacrosse minority) does not imply that the major- fore he arrived at Har- coach Scott Anderson. “I went to the ity lacks a valid culture. What it does vard. In 2003, as a new emergency room and when the radiologist suggest—and rightly so—is that, judging high-school graduate, came out with the x-ray, I knew it was the on the basis of history, there is no need to Greg Cohen ’07 played on end of Greg’s season. It was devastating.” draw attention and appreciation to that theH U.S. under-19 national lacrosse team Though Cohen lost a year of athletic de- culture in this context. When Kuumba and scored nine goals in six games to help velopment, he met adversity with aplomb, was founded in 1970 by five black under- the United States to victory in the Junior attending all the team’s practices and graduates, the Harvard class of 1972 con- World Championships. Then, as a fresh- games. “The way he handled things was tained only 51 black students. The tenure man, he quickly emerged as a dangerous very impressive, very mature,” Anderson of former Harvard president Abbot Law- attackman, leading the Crimson in scoring says. “It gave me good perspective,” Cohen rence Lowell, class of 1877 (and for whom with 26 points and being named Rookie of recalls. “You realize how much you miss Lowell House is named), is rife with mo- the Year by the Intercolle- playing. I also realized that I had made a ments of active discrimination. In June giate Lacrosse Association. great choice by coming to Harvard: you 1920, seven students were expelled from But on the first day of practice his don’t want to pick your school based only the College (and from Cambridge) under sophomore year, Cohen broke his right on a sport.” (A history concentrator who the suspicion of homosexual activity. In arm in a bad landing after dunking during lives in Quincy House, Cohen also prac- 1922—only decades before Kuumba was a pickup basketball game. “He’s probably tices martial arts with the hapkido club.) founded—Lowell expelled all African- the only guy on the team who can dunk a Last year, he returned to lax with a

www.gocrimson.com JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNAL

vengeance, scoring at least one goal in all The men’s lacrosse team holds a cold-weather 13 games and earning honorable mention practice on artificial turf inside the well-lit, all-America status from the U.S. Intercol- high-ceilinged bubble inside . Many other field-based sports, like , softball, legiate Lacrosse Association and a sec- soccer, and field hockey, can work out there as well. ond-team all-Ivy nod. He was second on Harvard’s squad in goals (23), assists (7), and points (30). But “It’s part of the sub- tlety of our sport that statistics can miss the big picture,” explains Anderson. “We ask him [Cohen] to be the focal point of the opponents’ defense—he draws dou- ble-teams every time he dodges [moves with the ball on o≠ense]. Even outstand- ing defensive players can’t really cover Greg one-on-one; they’ve tried that, and HARVARD ATHLETICS it doesn’t work. So he gets people to the sport, and the Onondaga, Eastern season, Cornell ranked first in the nation. move, to ‘slide’ o≠ their own man onto Cherokee, and Ojibwe languages also This year, for the first time, Harvard held him for the double-team. The goal we have words for it.) “Maybe we haven’t un- winter practices inside the Stadium bub- score may be two or three passes away, derrated Greg Cohen,” wrote Inside La- ble (above) and has three games sched- but he set it in motion.” crosse magazine, which devoted a full page uled on the Stadium’s new artificial turf. Lacrosse coaches recognize Cohen’s to him in a piece on underrated players. (The Cannons, a professional ability to disrupt a defense and this year “Maybe we just know how good he’s lacrosse team, will also play six night put him on the preseason “watch list” for going to be.” games under new lights at the Stadium the Tewaaraton Trophy, given annually to Extraordinary speed is the key gift that from May to August.) the game’s preeminent college player. helps the six-foot, 185-pound Cohen be- (Tewaaraton is the Mohawk word for la- devil defenders. “In high school, he pretty Lacrosse is a growing sport. Its three crosse; Native American tribes invented much ran by everybody,” says Anderson. traditional hotbeds are Maryland, Long “He was so e≠ective that he Island, and upstate New York, but nowa- scored most of the time days, “There is a much broader geographi- from right on top of the cal base than ever,” says Anderson, who is goal. In college, it’s harder in his twenty-eighth year at Harvard and because team defenses are twentieth as head coach. “We see great better.” Consequently, Co- players from Texas, California, Ohio, and hen has improved his out- Michigan, to name a few.” Yet 80 to 90 side shooting (top shoot- percent of the players still come from ers can hit the six-foot- North America; despite its rapid growth, square goal from nearly 30 lacrosse has not yet become a global sport yards away) and has be- like soccer, tennis, or basketball. come more aware of the Harvard has shared the Ivy men’s overall defensive schemes lacrosse title three times (in 1964, 1980, Harvard faces. and 1990) and fields a strong squad this The Crimson plays a spring, with many returning from last tough schedule in a sport year’s NCAA tournament team. Attack- with lots of parity; the Ivy man Evan Calvert ’07, an excellent pure League is so strong that shooter, led the Crimson in points last last spring it sent four year with 26 goals and 12 assists. Defense- teams (Harvard, Penn, man Eric Posner ’09 excels at stripping Princeton, and Cornell) to away the ball, and face-o≠ specialist John the NCAA tournament. Henry Flood ’07 ranked eighteenth na- Princeton and Cornell are tionally last year in face-o≠ win percent- consistent powerhouses age (55.2 percent). Joe Pike ’10 and Evan (the two colleges have won O’Donnell ’08 have shown both skill and or shared the Ivy men’s title guts in goal. (Aside from their helmets every year since 1996, ex- and chest protectors, lacrosse goalies cept 2003, when Dartmouth wear little protective equipment while Speedy attackman joined them), and early this facing a hard, solid-rubber sphere, Greg Cohen goes through some paces inside the Harvard Stadium bubble. Photograph by Tracy Powell slightly smaller than a tennis ball, streak- ing their way at up to 100 miles per hour. “Those goalies get the worst bruises you’ve ever seen,” Cohen says.) And lax is an aggressive, hard-hitting contact sport up and down the field. “The first time people see it they are shocked by how hard people are getting slashed,” Cohen reports. Much of the slashing comes from each team’s three defenders, who wield six-foot-long sticks (the three midfielders and three attackmen use 40-inch-long sticks, al-

though when a team goes on defense, one PAUL BUCK/EPA/CORBIS midfielder will run o≠ and a fourth six- CRIMSON INTERMEDIARY: At a press conference, new starting foot stick can come onto the field with pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka (center) is flanked by translator Masafumi Hoshino ’02 (left) and agent Scott Boras (right). The Red Sox retained Hoshino, an environmental-sciences his replacement). Longer sticks allow de- concentrator in college, to serve as personal Japanese-English translator for Matsuzaka, fenders to keep attackers further away whom the Red Sox signed in a deal worth a reported $103 million. from them, creating more room to deal with feints and fakes. hard hit, they call it a ‘brush,’” he says. 60 seconds, giving opponents a good op- Checking an attacking player often “You’re not supposed to push from be- portunity to score by playing “man-up.” means “whaling someone on the arms hind, or hold people with your stick, or hit Cohen’s older brother, Steven Cohen with your stick,” Cohen explains—that’s the arms, but you can hear the cracks ’06, was a man-up specialist, a fine shoot- the “slashing”—and though the rules when they do.” Those who ignore these er who had eight goals and six assists last don’t allow slashing the head, “if it isn’t a proscriptions are sent o≠ the field for 30 or spring. The Cohen brothers (there is a younger brother, Je≠rey, a high-school ju- She is not just another female Chinese-American nior and lacrosse attackman) grew up in Olympic hockey star. Julie Chu ’06 (’07), a two-time Syosset, on Long Island; a lacrosse-play- Icy Pinnacle Olympic medalist in and a member of the ing uncle gave them their first sticks. “I al- U.S. national team since 2000, has won this year’s ways had a brother to play with,” Greg re- Patty Kazmeier Award, which recognizes the preeminent player in women’s intercol- calls. “It’s a real advantage. Steve paved legiate ice hockey. Chu (see “A Rush from Olympus,” March-April 2003, page 77) is the way—I wanted to be as good as he the fourth Crimson player to win the Kazmeier in the award’s 10-year history. Her was, and he was good.” Crimson predecessors are A.J. Mleczko ’97 (’99), who won in 1999, Jennifer Botterill Steve and Greg played for the Syosset ’02 (’03), who won twice, in 2001 and 2003, and Angela Ruggiero ’02 (’04), who won High School team and then had three in 2004. Chu, a three-time all-America selection, earned a silver medal with the U.S. years at Harvard together. “Steve fills up a Olympic team at Salt Lake City in 2002 and a bronze at Torino in 2006. room—he’s a real talker,” says Anderson. This season, she was chosen as Ivy League Player of the Year. Chu led a Harvard “Greg is quieter. They were both so proud team that lost 1-0 to the eventual national champions,Wisconsin, in quadruple over- of each other’s accomplishments. Greg time in the first round of the NCAA tournament. In tandem with Meghan Agosta of even had a little shrine to Steve on the top Mercyhurst College, Chu led the nation in scoring this year. Both players tallied 66 of his locker.” There was no voodoo in- points, with Chu’s 48 assists the country’s best figure. Chu also ranked first nation- volved in the shrine; Greg isn’t supersti- ally in points per game (2.20) and assists per game (1.60). During her Harvard ca- tious. “What the shrine did is remind reer, she set a Crimson record with 196 assists.Add her 88 goals and Chu’s college people of Steve’s positive attitude, and career point total of 284 ranks first in NCAA history. the energy and enthusiasm he brought to Known as one of the most selfless players ever to the game every day,” says Greg. “It basi- skate for Harvard, the redoubtable Chu, a psychology cally consists of a picture of Steve, a dia- concentrator, volunteers at a homeless shelter and gram of his favorite man-up play, a small belongs to Harvard’s student-athlete advisory com- steel I-beam—‘steel’ is the name of our mittee. “In my 13 years of coaching at Harvard, no man-up formation—and some scented one has distinguished herself more than Julie,” said candles.” head hockey coach Katey Stone.“Her commitment to Steve now works in finance on Wall her teammates, coaches, and school far exceeds that Street, and after graduating, Greg plans to of any of her predecessors. She is a gifted athlete and rejoin him on that downtown field,

a true humanitarian.” DAVID SILVERMAN/DSPICS.COM shooting for a di≠erent kind of goal. craig lambert

Julie Chu, top scorer Harvard Magazine 73 in the history of NCAA women’s hockey.