To our readers:

We last wrote to you on the status of our print production in mid-March, days after Harvard sent undergraduates home due to growing numbers of coronavirus cases nationwide. At the time, we decided to suspend our print paper with the hope that Harvard students — including The Crimson’s staff — would safely return to Cambridge for the fall semester.

That did not happen. Case counts continue to rise, and the majority of our undergraduate readers — including most of our staff — did not return to campus this fall.

For that reason, we have decided to continue online-only production for the time being. We miss working through the early hours each weekday morning to publish a print paper, but recognize that without a building full of Crimson staff to put it together and a bustling campus to read it, we better serve our readers by delivering the news online.

Still, the past six months have brought more welcome changes. We continued to cover Harvard, breaking news and holding administrators to account from afar. We took photographs and created designs to illustrate this historic moment. We examined our own shortcomings with regard to diversity and began working to improve them. In the coming months, we will welcome a new class of editors to The Crimson, just as we do every semester.

In 1933, during another time of considerable uncertainty, former Crimson president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Class of 1904, told the paper’s editors to “keep the old sheet flying.” They did then, and we will now.

Sincerely,

Aidan F. Ryan ’21
President of the 147th Guard

Shera S. Avi-Yonah ’21
Managing Editor of the 147th Guard