flâneur

Amanda Nguyen: How I Survived the Aftermath of My Rape | TIME

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T he taxi drops me off back in front of my dorm, Kirkland House. Back to where I was raped. People joke that Harvard is like Hogwarts, but they’re not far off. Each of its 12 houses harbors its own culture, its own rituals, even its own specific architecture. Kirkland has a colonial-style dining hall, a quaint library, and a grandiose common room—the kind of ostentatiously pretentious chamber that is exactly what people think of when they conjure up an image of Harvard. Dark, polished mahogany walls are framed by crimson velvet drapes. A grand piano sits adjacent to a sizable fireplace. The Kirkland crest and an oil portrait of a 19th-century house “master” adorn the walls. This place defines prim and proper. Nothing untoward is supposed to happen here. Advertisement Advertisement Forty short paces separate the gate where I’ve been dropped off from the door to my room, but right now it feels like a chasm. I don’t want to go back. In movies, they never depict the clean-up after the trau

The taxi drops me off back in front of my dorm, Kirkland House. Back to where I was raped. People joke that Harvard is like Hogwarts, but they’re not far off. Each of its 12 houses harbors its own culture, its own rituals, even its own specific architecture. Kirkland has a colonial-style dining hall, a quaint library, and a grandiose common room—the kind of ostentatiously pretentious chamber that is exactly what people think of when they conjure up an image of Harvard. Dark, polished mahogany walls are framed by crimson velvet drapes. A grand piano sits adjacent to a sizable fireplace. The Kir

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