Lately it seems as though I’ve become prey to tourists asking for direction. I don’t know what it is about me that leads them to swarm and attack with buzzing questions like “Where can we find the museum of natural history?” and “What’s that building over there with the huge stairs and pillars? Do you happen to know when it was built?” I understand that whenever Harvard’s campus isn’t covered in icicles the tourists take it as an invitation to invade but COME ON. I’m not a walking information center, the real is in the Holyoke center. Au Bon Pain marks the spot people!

Today I had to explain where it can be found to a deaf couple for whom I had to draw a detailed map and pantomime the directions. My favorite tourist encounter was with an elderly woman who streamlined toward me as I was passing out the March issue of the Voice. She wanted to know how to get to Memorial Church but proceeded to interrogate me about dorms, dining plans, tuition costs, my social life, and even the profile of Harvard’s minority population. Seriously. At some point I kindly gave her the tip to go and Google what she wanted to know because, frankly, the internet knows more about this school than I do.

To think that this weekend I am going to be prone to these kinds of attacks by a clueless hoard of a thousand admitted students except they will want to know where the party is and not how to find the nearest bathroom. My prefrosh won’t know what she got herself into when I hand her a map and give her a pat on the back to send her on her way because I ain’t dealing with it no more.

A small showing of Harvard came out to hear the Next Harvard Thinks Big Experts talk about the pressing issue of modern-day slavery and human trafficking on the evening of March 24, 2010. The panel consisted of professor Tim McCarthy, the Director of Human Rights and Social Movements at Harvard’s own Carr Center, professor of Sociology Orlando Patterson, journalist and author of A Crime So Monstrous Benjamin Skinner, author of Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern-Day Slavery Siddharth Kara, Katherine Chon, the founder of Polaris Project, an organization fighting for a world without slavery, and the headliner of the event Ashley Judd, actress and YouthAIDS global ambassador with Population Services International as well as a current student in Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

After Professor McCarthy’s long winded introduction of the big-shots of the panel, during which Professor Patterson squirmed, fidgeted, and fought to open his Evian water bottle, the panel was asked to speak of the roads that led them to become crucial figures of the modern slavery abolition movement. The drastically different stories of the panelists underlined the personal significances the cause has had in their lives.

Siddharth Kara, for example, threw his career as an investment banker at Merrill Lynch aside to use his background in finance and law in order to start a campaign to research current forms of slavery around the world to eventually gather his research and provide a foundational legal and statistical analysis of the business of modern-day slavery. Ms. Judd related her story and role in the issue of slavery with the composure and charisma of a Hollywood actress, not failing to downplay her celebrity by throwing out how humbled she is to be on the same panels with her heroes and role models. She also warned the moderate number of people in the audience that she would have to dip out early because she had a conference call awaiting her. Judd recalled her experiences in the brothels of Cambodia and Thailand, where her mission was to ensure women trapped in slavery were protecting their health. Read the rest of this entry »