I Voted for Harris. Harvard’s Reaction to Her Loss Was an Embarrassment.

You may have thought there was a tragedy if you were on campus last Wednesday. Some people were crying. Many were devastated. Most were in shock.

The cause? President-elect Donald Trump had won back the White House.

I voted for Vice President Kamala Harris. I understand people’s disappointment. But the level of immaturity displayed last week, by students and faculty alike, was thoroughly disappointing. In the wake of Election Day, my peers played right into the hands of the right, who revel in nothing more than calling those on the left out-of-touch “liberal snowflakes” who can’t handle the slightest insult to their feelings.

Students’ shock that more than half the country prefers Trump to the left-wing orthodoxy that reigns unchallenged in these halls reveals the complete insularity of our campus. The prevailing bewilderment at the results proves that the criticisms of institutions like ours as ivory towers totally removed from the real world is startlingly accurate.

As many have argued — myself included — Harvard should take steps to remedy this lack of political diversity in order to, if nothing else, broaden the horizons of us inhabitants of the echo chamber. While the University remains so ideologically homogeneous, though, the faculty could at least discharge their pastoral responsibilities by guiding us to maturely process this kind of adversity.

They did not. The faculty — a group even more liberal than our student body, according to Crimson surveys — responded even more troublingly. Instead of motivating students to take the results in stride, professors and administrators offered lemon bars, converted their offices into election processing spaces for grieving students, canceled classes, and made quizzes optional.

Frankly, I am embarrassed. Are my peers — legal adults who also happen to be the best and brightest of our generation — really so immature that a personally unfavorable election result impedes their daily functioning?

Evidently, yes.

Some might call these actions from faculty and administrators care for the well-being of students. Others might argue that it’s necessary to validate the emotions of students. I, however, have a much simpler term. I call it coddling. And it’s insulting both that my peers needed it and the University was more than happy to oblige.

Students need to be able to face adversity head on and deal with it — not run away cowering to seek shelter in their safe spaces. Students will not be prepared for the real world if we believe we can be absolved of our responsibilities simply because something happened that we don’t like. Rarely are professionals allowed to cut work and shirk responsibilities because they are in a negative headspace.

Yes, the election results are upsetting. But upsetting things happen to people every single day. We need to be taught how to get through these situations — not to wallow in self-pity.

In an ideal world, students and faculty alike would have been able to retain enough of their composure to power their way through the excruciating stretch between the disappointing — excuse me, terrifying — day when they learned the results of the election and Veterans Day, a much-needed federal holiday.

Oh wait! In Harvard’s eyes, Veterans Day hardly exists. I received no recognition of the holiday from the College or the University aside from a single Instagram post by the former, and, as far as I’m aware, classes at the College took place as usual. In light of this, that numerous professors canceled classes last week is doubly appalling.

We can’t be bothered to adjust our schedules for those who have truly risked their physical safety for all of us, yet we hasten to kowtow to the emotional safety — quite a fantastical phrase, if you ask me — of those who have faced the slightest adversity. What a sad state of affairs.

To my peers, please grow up. The world is not ending. Your rights are not going to disappear simply because someone you equate with the Antichrist was elected by the majority of your compatriots.

To the University, please stop allowing them not to.

Henry P. Moss IV ’26, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a History concentrator in Eliot House.