Everyone needs a safe space—someplace where you can be totally comfortable with your thoughts, to process them or let them all go. Maybe that’s a chair in the corner of your room, maybe it’s a certain library, maybe it’s someplace on your run to East Rock. Mine is the Grove Street Cemetery. Really it doesn’t matter where it is, so long as your personal universe slows down when you’re there.

Those places are particularly important this Friday, because let’s be real, this week sucked. Midterms and papers reached the first high-water mark of the year, and all that academic negativity trickled down and contaminated the rest of life at Yale. Everyone was tired and crabby, dining hall food tasted worse than usual, and the sky stayed grey throughout. But when you go to your safe space, none of that matters. You’re comfortable, you’re where you belong.

But what happens when you try to institutionalize a safe space? Alisha Jarwala, PC ’15, offers an answer this week as she explores cultural houses at Yale. It’s an important look into how having a space to call your own shapes and shelters identity.

Of course, a personal haven isn’t the only way to find comfort. Meredith Redick, ES ’14, offers up her opinion on how Peter Salovey can foster a better environment at Yale for mental health. Alessandra Roubini, JE ’16, investigates comfort of a different kind, looking into new e-cigarette research at the Yale Medical School.

And as always, the Herald still offers up the usual bag of goodies. Will Theiss, BK ’16, chats with Nancy Kuhl, the Beinecke’s Curator of Poetry, Sarah Holder, SY ’17, talks about brothel law in Connecticut, and Will Adams, CC ’15, dives into the controversy surrounding Miley Cyrus.

After you read it all, take a moment to go where you feel safest. You’ll be glad you did. And if you don’t feel like you don’t have that place at Yale, remember there are only eleven days before fall break. Just hold on, we’re going home.

Keep breathing,

Colin Groundwater

Online editor