Harvard Affiliates Reflect on, Respond to Government Reopening

In the wake of the government’s reopening after a 16-day shutdown, affected Harvard affiliates have begun their gradual return to normalcy. Though funding will return for programs like the MIT-Harvard Reserve Officers’ Training Corps and government-funded research projects, many expressed concerns that the impact will not be fully curtailed in the immediate future.

Astrophysics was among the research areas directly impacted by the shutdown. Harvard researcher Mark J. Reid of the Harvard College Observatory said he was relieved by news of the government’s reopening.

Reid, whose research relies on data collection obtained from government-funded telescopes, said he was concerned that a year’s worth of research would go to waste. A crucial data point was two weeks due from collection, and further delay would have made doing so impossible.

“The shutdown point came really close to wasting half a million dollars of National Science Foundation research,” said Reid. “Another two weeks and it would have been very bad.”

Although Reid’s research will continue, he said that it will take a few days for the telescopes to become fully operational. In addition, many researchers are waiting to use the equipment.

The shutdown has also been felt in the classroom as online resources provided by the federal government became unavailable.

Audrey J. Gaskins, a teaching fellow for a class on nutrition and health, said she was forced to find an alternative assignment for her section while the National Institutes of Health website was down. Students doing thesis research through government sources were also unable to access information they needed. Website functions resumed quickly after the shutdown, allowing research to resume immediately.

While the shutdown had little or no direct impact on ROTC training procedure, certain elements of the program were affected.

No new national ROTC scholarships could have been offered during the shutdown, and freshman ROTC cadets who had not finalized their contracts were prevented from doing so, effectively postponing any pay they could have received.

During the shutdown, members of the ROTC program did not receive tuition or stipend payments from the government.

Alyssa Pybus, a sophomore at MIT who participates in the joint Harvard-MIT Army ROTC program, told The Crimson prior to the reopening of the government that without her stipend for this cycle, she planned to borrow money from her parents to pay for food.

Even after the reopening, ROTC participants have still not yet received payment.

“We have no idea when that’s going to happen, my guess would be that it would take some time,” said ROTC cadet Anne M. Nonnamaker ’16.

Reflecting on the shutdown, students at the College expressed reservations about the present state of the political system.“I feel everything that happened was a systemic issue,” said Benjamin J. Hughes ’14. “It can easily happen again. Probably will.”

As a government concentrator, Hughes said he also sees potential for the shutdown to negatively affect career outlooks. “I don’t think anyone would view what happened as positive. No one would say this is a positive or a sign of healthy democracy.”

Kathryn G. Walsh ’14, a social studies concentrator, said she believes that this incident can be a lesson for the future.

“The shutdown can’t always be used as a political pawn,” she said. “I think that the two weeks of shutdown forced both sides of the line to realize the need to work together better.”