OUTRAGE: New therapy dog exclusively for not_us

This morning, NRS discovered that Countway library, following in the footsteps of another ivy league institution will begin offering a therapy dog named Cooper starting on June 7. Cooper will be available for play dates on Tuesdays and Thursdays for thirty minute sessions to help students cope with their stress. NRS immediately called Countway to confirm that this was not a belated April Fools joke. The General has confirmed that Cooper, one of the most adorable dogs ever (see photo), is in fact real.

Shockingly, NRS has also confirmed that graduate students are the only students based at the Longwood campus who WILL NOT BE ALLOWED TO PLAY WITH THE PUPPY. We have often noted that graduate students seem to be second class citizens on this campus, as is evident by our lack of societies, the fact that we are not allowed to ever erase chalkboards, our Harvard IDs don't work at hospitals,not_not_pwang can't download MatLab for free while medical students can, and just a general attempt by everyone at this campus to pretend like we don't exist.

This is despite the fact that at a lunch with the Dean of the Medical School last week (the invitation to which, by the way, we can only assume was an accident since all other invited guests were medical students... but I shamelessly went for the free lunch anyway), an NRS reporter heard him admit that nearly the entire operating budget of this campus comes from institutional costs taken from research grants. Essentially without the research we do, Harvard couldn't afford to educate any medical, dental, or public health students. So, we bring in the money, but everyone would rather pretend that we don't exist and that we don't deserve to play with puppies. This latest insult is perhaps the worst of all in its blatant attempt to exclude a very small portion of students from receiving the puppy therapy that we all so desperately need.

The reason we aren't allowed to play with the puppy? Apparently, this was the owner's decision because he wanted to limit the number of students that would see the puppy. This is perhaps understandable, but the fact that HSPH and HSDM students, in addition to HMS students, are allowed to visit the puppy suggests that this factor couldn't have been that limiting. In fact, it makes the exclusion from access to the puppy feel rather targeted to our demographic. If there are so few graduate students on this campus that 99.9% of medical students have never even realized that we exist (despite sharing classrooms and lunch rooms with them) why do they think we would suddenly overwhelm a puppy? Cooper probably wouldn't even notice us either.

This leads us to believe that the mental health of graduate students is just not important to this institution, despite a high level of depression and a low attrition rate among Ph.D. students. And we at NRS find this blatant favoritism to be completely outrageous, mostly because that puppy is just so damn cute.

Perhaps the worst part is the fact that they chose to advertise Cooper's arrival in the NRB, home to many graduate students and very few medical, dental, or public health students. We can only assume this was so that they could rub the adorable puppy in our faces. It's not fun to exclude people if they aren't even aware of what they are missing out on. Now every morning as I head for yet another day of crushing defeat and depressing data in lab, I will have the face of a very cute puppy taunting me as a I walk in. Is it really necessary to have TWO posters of the puppy in the same display case? Only if you want to make sure I feel sufficiently sad about how I get to play with no puppies EVERY SINGLE DAY. Yes, not only is there no interest in letting the puppy help attenuate our depression, they are using the puppy to make us EVEN MORE DEPRESSED. Thanks, guys.

The final insult is the fact that the puppy will be making his debut over the summer. A time when there are very few medical, dental, or public students at all. And those that are here are definitely not stressed out because IT'S SUMMER. And unlike graduate students, summer still means something for them. While we spend our summers rushing to publish and get data for grants to keep the medical school operating, they will be playing with the world's cutest puppy (with the notable exception of my family's dog). So, readers, we ask you, IS THIS FAIR?

Clearly not. So the real question is, what are we going to do about it?