Before classes even started, campus was teeming with students who returned a week early for Optional Winter Activities Week (OWAW). Activites ranged from the academic to the leisurely: the Harvard Shooting Club hosted an "indoor paintball brawl;" a group of students explored and studied Harvard's 3,500-acre forest in Petersham, Mass.; the Food Literacy Project taught cooking lessons; and the Martial Arts Research Institute of Salem, Mass. taught stick fighting. These featured activities represent only a small fraction of the dozens of activites hosted during Harvard's first OWAW.

Photos by Meredith H. Keffer and Jennifer Q. Zhu/The Harvard Crimson and courtesy of Clarisse Hart, Caroline B. Lowe, Michael R. Traver, and Victor Shnayder