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THE TUFTS DAILY
VOLUME LXVIV, NUMBER 36
Where You Read It First Est. 1980 TUFTSDAILY.COM
friday, march 13, 2015
Student groups react to planned TCU Senate travel cuts by Jei-Jei Tan News Editor
Ray bernoff / the tufts daily
Though JumBonnaroo went rather smoothly, one person required attention from TEMS at DU.
JumBonnaroo successful despite last-minute venue changes by Kathleen Schmidt News Editor
JumBonnaroo, a three-night music festival and fundraiser for Relay For Life, took place last weekend in spite of an Interfraternity Council (IFC) ban on all Greek life social events for that weekend. According to IFC President Evan Cover, the IFC instituted the ban in light of numerous alcohol-related transports the weekend leading up to JumBonnaroo at both Greek and non-Greek parties. “We really felt that we needed to step back, that we needed a week to cool down, reassess what happened that particular week,” Cover, a senior, said. Cover said he contacted every house that was planning on having an event last weekend and asked them to cancel, which they then did. According to Cover, the topic of JumBonnaroo was more difficult because of the huge organizational effort the event planners had made. Ben Silver, special events co-chair for Relay For Life at Tufts, said that by the time he received the call on Wednesday night to cancel the event, months of planning had been put into the fundraiser
and several hundred tickets had already been sold. “They had called to tell me that they were canceling all Greek social events and JumBonnaroo was a Greek social event,” Silver, a junior, said. “It was just a bad week last week, so to save Greek life from any major changes they put a hold on all Greek events and I was really exasperated at that point.” Silver suggested to Cover that they make JumBonnaroo a dry event so they could avoid canceling or rescheduling the event, neither of which were viable options, according to Silver. Cover then informed the fraternities scheduled to hold the events — Zeta Psi (Zeta) on Thursday, Sigma Phi Epsilon (Sig Ep) on Friday and Theta Delta Chi (123) on Saturday — that they could still host the fundraiser on the condition that it was a dry event. According to Silver, he pitched the idea of a dry event to the presidents of Zeta and 123 — Jeffrey Straus and Harry Woods, respectively — and both said they did not want to do a dry event. see JUMBONNAROO, page 2
The Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate’s decision to cut off-campus travel and related expenses from student groups’ budgets next year has elicited strong reactions from many student organizations, especially from members of groups that rely heavily on travel to interschool competitions. “Without travel funding [from] the Senate, we’re looking at a 90-95 percent decrease in our budget,” Tufts Mock Trial Treasurer Mandy Xu told the Daily in an email. She explained that in addition to semesterly dues, students in Mock Trial contribute a great deal to their competition and travel expenses each year. They also raise funds by networking with law firms and test preparation companies in the Boston area. “With so short a warning, we simply do not have the time and resources to build the type of fundraising and sponsorship infrastructure that would make up for the complete loss of our Senate aid,” Xu, a senior, said. “Without that Senate support, Mock Trial would be cost-prohibitive to any student on financial aid, and even students not on financial aid.” According to Xu, since the Senate does not allow groups to budget for tournaments in which participation is not assured, Tufts Mock Trial usually applies for supplementary funding for the National Championship Tournament in April each year. However, this year the fund has run dry, prompting the team to set up a GoFundMe fundraiser in an attempt to crowdsource donations for the tournament, which will be held in Cincinnati, Ohio this year. Xu described this strategy as a “desperate emergency appeal” which would not be sustainable in the long run. In an interview with the Daily published yesterday, TCU President Robert Joseph said he is still not sure what next year’s budget will be, although TCU Treasurer Adam Kochman said in the same interview that Senate may decide to fund regional travel. According to Xu, however, this is too late for Tufts Mock Trial. “Registration fees for the tournaments we attend have to be paid over the summer, and we have to confirm our attendance
before the school semester begins,” Xu said. “Competition groups have delicate infrastructures both within and between teams that cannot be sustained on ‘maybes.’ Not knowing whether we can compete means not knowing whether we can exist.” In response to Joseph and Kochman, Xu explained that Tufts Mock Trial had been receiving funding for travel, accommodation and registration fees for regional tournaments since team’s founding, which occurred before the Senate began to spend its surplus a few years later. “For 2016, they’re planning on going ten years back in time,” she said. Kochman and Joseph emphasized that it is unsustainable for the TCU Senate to continue funding national travel, but according to Xu, the regional travel funding that Mock Trial needs on a regular basis is the real issue. “This has been the talking point I’ve had the most issue with, because it distracts from the issue at hand,” Xu said, adding that national travel had never been built into groups’ budgets and was instead argued on a case-by-case basis for funding from the supplemental fund. “The cuts that the Treasury has made to our budget have nothing to do with national travel,” she emphasized. “We’re worried about regional travel.” “[TCU Senate] is eliminating all regional travel and associate expenses. For groups like Tufts Mock Trial, that means the elimination of our entire budget,” she said. “What we’re struggling with … is that they’re telling us we can’t leave the towns of Medford/ Somerville.” “Without competing, there is no purpose to Mock Trial,” she said. “There are groups for whom cutting regional travel is an inconvenience, and there are groups for whom cutting regional travel is fatal. We need the Senate to find a solution that does not result in the elimination of our presence from this campus.” Junior Arlene Rosenberg and sophomore Emily Garber, co-managers of Tufts Quidditch, explained that even though the team competes against other Boston teams every weekend, it needs to travel outside Massachusetts at least twice a year to compete in the Northeast Regionals in the see TRAVEL, page 2
Professors find strong teaching tool in social media by Yuki Zaninovich Assistant Features Editor
Whether through its ability to facilitate publicizing an event or cause to several thousand people at once, or through the ease with which it allows feedback on a product or idea to be gathered in great detail, social media has expedited the dispersion of information on a grand scale in recent years. Such a revolution has had a profound effect on the field of education. Associate Professor Calvin Gidney, who teaches Introduction to Child Development, is one of the many advocates for the use of social media in college classrooms. For the last several years, Gidney has been using a Facebook group to post articles pertaining to the material he teaches in his classes for his students to read in their free time. “It’s a space where we can have out-ofclass discussions about relevant issues that are in the news related to child development,” he said. According to Gidney, Facebook is an effec-
tive medium for inciting dialogue about articles due to its commenting function, which allows students to instantaneously post their thoughts and respond to one another. However, Gidney only uses posts and comments on articles as an extra credit opportunity for students. “I do want to encourage students to participate, but I don’t want to make it obligatory,” Gidney said. “I want Facebook to be a place where students read articles on child development because they think it’s cool and is something they would do [in] their free time anyways. It’s what makes a university such an exciting place to work, because you’re involved in this world of ideas for fun, and we all enjoy it.” Gidney also sees Facebook as a good substitute for email because it allows him to relay information to his students in a way that’s more accessible. “All of us at this university get too much [email],” he said. “It’s something that students ignore. I personally hate threaded discussions on email, but Facebook takes that
Inside this issue
process [into] a space that you can go to when you want to. It’s a place to go to during downtime.” Gidney does, however, keep directly course-related material strictly on Trunk. “I don’t want [compulsory aspects of the class] on Facebook because I like to keep a separation between leisure time and work time,” Gidney said. “If tests and things start to bleed onto Facebook, that would make it more like a work site.” For first-year Evan Fantozzi, a student in Gidney’s class, the separation of mandatory and optional work makes reading academiarelated articles during his free time easier and more natural. “Just like people post BuzzFeed videos about cats, and others having the social media instinct to click on them, the same thing happens for me with the Child Development articles,” Fantozzi said. “I don’t really think about it too much [when I click on the link], but I usually end up enjoying it and learning a lot. It’s a good way of getting us to learn in the off-hours.”
While Introduction to Child Development has only 61 students enrolled this semester, there are over 300 people in the Facebook group. Students who’ve taken the course in the past, as well as several friends of Gidney’s, remain part of the group, according to Gidney. He believes that the ability to enable current students, alumni and professionals from various fields to interact makes the page a valuable asset for students. “It’s a really fun, intellectual space where current students can interface with alums of the class [and vice versa],” Gidney said. Unlike Gidney, Associate Professor Richard Eichenberg, who is teaching Introduction to International Relations this semester, realized the value of social media in teaching by chance. In an effort to get information out to students quickly during this semester’s snow days, Eichenberg created a Twitter account for his class, but soon became aware of its other uses. see SOCIAL MEDIA, page 2
Today’s sections
Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble differs significantly from what one might expect at Symphony Hall.
The women’s basketball team looks to punch ticket to the Final Four this weekend.
see ARTS, page 5
see SPORTS, back
News Arts & Living
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Comics Sports
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