2009-12-09

THE TUFTS DAILY

Wintry Mix 45/35

Wallis resigns from Senate to study abroad BY

MATT REPKA

Daily Editorial Board

Junior Sam Wallis has resigned from his seat in the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate, he announced publicly last night.

In a written statement, Wallis explained that as far back as last spring’s TCU elections, he had wrestled with the prospect of studying abroad during the spring 2010 semester. He has decided to follow that path, and therefore cannot serve on the Senate next semester.

Wallis declared his resig-

TUFTSDAILY.COM

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2009

VOLUME LVIII, NUMBER 60

nation privately to the TCU Senate following the body’s final meeting of the semester on Sunday.

“I finally decided that I did not want to miss the opportunity of learning in a different part of the world,” Wallis said in his statement. He will study in Israel next semester.

Wallis told the Daily last night that he stayed on this semester in order to continue his work on various projects.

Tufts’ Election Commission will conduct a special election in January to fill his spot.

He said he is open to the possibility of running for another Senate spot upon his return. “I haven’t thought about senior year,” Wallis see WALLIS, page 2

Sternberg to step down

Dean of arts and sciences leaving after five-year term BY

MATT REPKA

Daily Editorial Board

On the occasion of his 60th birthday, Dean of Arts and Sciences Robert Sternberg yesterday announced that he plans to step down from his position at the end of June.

In an e-mail to the Tufts community announcing his decision, Sternberg detailed his plans to devote more time to his involvement in professional associations and to his research in psychology, but remained noncommittal about plans to continue teaching in the future.

“I have greatly enjoyed being dean but it was time for me to move on in my life, whether to another administrative position or to full-time teaching and research,” Sternberg told the

Daily in an e-mail. Sternberg’s five-year term as dean of arts and sciences ends on June 30.

In addition to continuing his research, Sternberg plans to revise the newest edition of a cognitive psychology textbook he authored and is starting a new book project, in addition to his six books currently in the process of publication.

He also announced that he and his wife, Karin, with whom he has co-authored several psychology works, are expecting a child.

University President Lawrence Bacow praised Sternberg’s tenure at the university. “Under his watch we have made important strides in admissions, financial aid, teaching and the curricusee STERNBERG, page 2

With an eye toward outreach, Hillel adds position BY

CARA PALEY

Tufts Hillel has added to its ranks this year Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg as its senior Jewish educator, a new position that is part of a nationwide initiative to engage more Jewish students on college campuses.

The role of a senior Jewish educator is to forge connections with students who are interested in embracing their Jewish roots, but who have not found a niche within the on-campus Hillel organization, according to Ruttenberg.

“Tufts Hillel is one of the best Hillels in the country,” Ruttenberg said. “But one mothership can’t be everything to everybody. Some students haven’t found their see HILLEL, page 2

LAURA HILL/TUFTS DAILY

The LGBT center is co-sponsoring a panel on religion and homosexuality tonight.

At event, panel plans to examine various religious views on homosexuality BY

EMMA GOLDSTEIN Daily Staff Writer

SCOTT TINGLEY/TUFTS DAILY

DAILY FILE PHOTO

Dean of Arts and Sciences Robert Sternberg plans to step down after his five-year term ends this summer.

Coakley wins Democratic Senate nomination

Daily Staff Writer

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg is filling Tufts Hillel’s new senior Jewish educator position.

Where You Read It First Est. 1980

Local religious leaders from the Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist traditions will discuss the intersection between religion and homosexuality at a panel tonight.

The panel, which will take place at 6 p.m. in the Interfaith Center, is the culminating event in a semester-long series of film screenings and discussions on religion and sexuality that senior Elizabeth Field and LGBT Center Director Tom Bourdon organized.

The first part of the panel will feature a discussion in which LGBT Center graduate intern Clayton Harmon, who will moderate the discussion, will pose questions that probe the panelists on their respective religions’ position on homosexuality. This will be followed

Inside this issue

by a question and answer session.

The intention is for the panelists to speak as religious experts rather than to present personal opinions on the subject. “What the chaplains are saying at the panel are not their own opinions,” Field said. “They are acting as experts.”

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, the senior Jewish educator at Tufts Hillel and one of the panel’s speakers, did not think that panelists would have trouble maintaining objectivity. “I am perfectly capable of separating what I think and what I know is going on,” she said.

According to Alexander Watling, a sophomore intern at the LGBT Center, the aim is to “foster an event where there could be a candid and very open

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley last night won the Democratic nomination for the late Edward Kennedy’s vacant U.S. Senate seat, beating three other contenders in an election marked by paltry voter participation.

On the Republican side, State Senator Scott Brown (LA ’81) ran away with 89 percent of the vote, beating his lone opponent, Jack Robinson.

As expected, turnout was generally low across the state, with election officials reporting a 10 percent turnout in Boston and similar figures in the rest of the state.

Freshman Steve Goeman, a volunteer for the Coakley campaign, and junior Michael Hawley, who served as president of the Tufts Republicans last year, both said that the results were unsurprising — though Goeman said that Coakley’s margin was unexpectedly large.

The attorney general captured 47 percent of the vote; her closest challenger, U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano, garnered just 28 percent.

“She won by a pretty substantial margin that I don’t think was expected,” Goeman said. “I thought it would be a little closer.”

The general consensus is that Brown will face an uphill challenge in the Jan. 19 general election to fill Kennedy’s seat, given Massachusetts’ largely Democratic leanings.

“It’s a deeply blue state and it’s Kennedy’s seat, which means that the Republicans are going to have a really tough time,” Hawley said.

Still, he believes that the Republican has a credible stake in the race. “Coakley comes across a bit as an everyday, ladder-climbing politician, whereas Brown is quite a bit more charismatic,” Hawley said.

“I think he has a chance but he has his work cut out for him.”

— by Ellen Kan

see LGBT, page 2

Today’s Sections

Butler University filed a lawsuit against a student after he criticized an administrator in a blog post.

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists drove their message home on Saturday night with a singeing performance.

see FEATURES, page 3

see ARTS, page 5

News Features Arts & Living Editorial | Letters

1 3 5 8

Op-Ed Comics Sports Classifieds

9 10 11 15

THE TUFTS DAILY

2

NEWS

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Sternberg will not pursue second five-year term as dean

In Hillel’s new position, rabbi attempts to engage more Jewish students

STERNBERG

HILLEL

continued from page 1

lum while also strengthening support for faculty scholarship,” Bacow said in an e-mail to the Daily. “Tufts is a better place because of his leadership.”

Sternberg is one of the most prominent names in the field of psychology. He has gained renown for his research in the areas of human intelligence and thought and developed the triarchic theories of intelligence and love, which describe the underlying elements of these cognitive capacities.

He is in his third year as president of the International Association for Cognitive Education and Psychology and is about to begin his term as president of the Federation of Associations of Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

At Tufts, Sternberg is the director of the Psychology of Abilities, Competencies, and Expertise (PACE) Center, while also a professor of psychology and an adjunct professor of education in addition to his role as dean.

Assistant Professor of Psychology Ayanna Thomas, who came to Tufts in 2007, praised Sternberg’s work as an influence on her own career.

“As a cognitive psychologist, I have been influenced

by Bob Sternberg’s work since the beginning of my career. His contribution to Tufts and the field is incalculable,” Thomas said. “It’s been a pleasure to work with him.”

One of Sternberg’s “signature contributions” to the school during his time as dean was

instituting a minor in leadership studies, according to University Provost and Senior Vice President Jamshed Bharucha.

Bharucha sent his own e-mail to the university shortly after Sternberg made his announcement, thanking the dean for his contributions to Tufts in both his capacities as an administrator and as a faculty member.

“The best part of being dean has been working and interacting with the people — the students, faculty, and staff,” Sternberg said. “That is what I will miss most.”

Sternberg remains unsure about where his time after the deanship will take him, but he told the Daily that if he returns to teaching, he plans to do so on the Hill.

“I have no plans to teach elsewhere — the students at Tufts are terrific and I could not ask for more,” he said.

Bharucha plans to establish in January a search committee to determine Sternberg’s replacement. The national search will culminate in the naming of the new dean of arts and sciences “late in the spring semester,” with a planned start date of July 1 for the successor’s term, according to Bharucha.

Bharucha added that the university’s flexible hiring freeze, adopted amid budget cuts during the economic downturn last fall, will not impact the selection of Sternberg’s successor.

“It’s a critical position, and we will fill it with the best possible candidate,” Bharucha said.

Harrison Jacobs contributed reporting to this article.

continued from page 1

scene. The idea is to have someone on campus who can facilitate the Jewish experience based on what they want to have.”

Hillel’s international parent organization created the senior Jewish educator position two years ago as part of a national Hillel movement to provide Jewish students with more individual attention and resources, according to Jeff Rubin, associate vice president of communications for the parent organization.

“What we found is that on many campuses where there are Hillels, Hillel professionals are so busy doing so many things that they don’t have the opportunity to go into depth with students,” Rubin told the Daily. “Rather than just give these Hillel professionals even greater responsibilities than they are already doing, we created these positions. This enables these individuals to really spend quality time with individual students.”

As a member of Hillel’s international board, Rabbi Jeffrey Summit, Tufts Hillel’s executive director and a 30-year veteran at the university, is up to date with Hillel’s national ambitions and was able to incorporate these new endeavors into the Tufts organization.

“Because the international center values the work that we do here at Tufts, they realized we were a good place to be part of the pilot campuses that were involved in this,” he said.

Summit said that while Tufts Hillel offered a wide range of

Wallis vacates leadership position on Senate’s Services Committee WALLIS continued from page 1

said. “But I’ve really enjoyed being a part of Senate, and I’d be interested in being a part of the body again.”

Wallis served this semester as cochair of the Senate’s Services Committee alongside Joel Greenberg, a sophomore.

“Sam’s spent five semesters on Senate, and it’s sad to see him go,” Greenberg said. “He’s been consistently one of our biggest thinkers,” he said.

TCU President Brandon Rattiner told

the Daily he is sorry to see Wallis go.

“On the one side, it’s a huge loss for the Senate to lose someone of Sam’s talent,” Rattiner said. “I’ve had the pleasure of working with Sam for three years, and he’s been one of the most impressive senators and most impressive people I’ve met at Tufts.”

But Rattiner sympathized with Sam’s decision. “I understand that he has to make the choices that allow him to have the best four years possible,” he said.

opportunities for student involvement, he believed many Jewish students have not found their place at the center. He thus brought the position to campus as a means of engaging a larger sector of the Jewish on-campus population.

The hope, he said, was for the center to become a resource “not just to the students who are very actively involved, but also to students who have Jewish questions and concerns and don’t necessarily, for any number of reasons, walk through the doors of the Hillel center.”

There are currently 10 senior Jewish education positions nationwide, according to Ruttenberg. Six of the 10 who currently hold the title just started their jobs this year.

“It’s a fairly new shift,” she said. “It’s exciting and experimental.”

Ruttenberg molds her approach according to students’ comfort levels. She explained how her interactions with Tufts students range from one-on-one coffee dates at the Danish Pastry House to larger group gatherings.

“It’s about getting to know people and figuring out what they want and letting something grow organically out of that,” Ruttenberg said. “I want to give people the chance to walk in the door and look around to see if there are any treasures they want to take home.”

Ruttenberg engages students in deep discussion on various topics, from Jewish spirituality in the Torah to relationships and dating. Her aim, she said, is to place topics that often arise in

students’ lives in the context of Jewish culture.

“We use a Jewish lens on the stuff they’re already thinking about and struggling with,” she said.

Hillel’s parent organization has embarked on other efforts to connect with students who have not found a haven in their respective campus Hillel. In line with its creation of the Jewish education position, the organization also designed the Campus Entrepreneurs Initiative and the Peer Network Engagement Internship. These programs hire student interns to engage their Jewish peers, according to Rubin.

“There are just amazing people on campus who have not found the right way to become involved,” Summit said. “These initiatives are trying to provide more resources to engage more people as they want to become engaged.”

Ruttenberg agreed that the senior Jewish education position and the center’s other programs offer different opportunities for student involvement within the campus Jewish community.

“This Hillel has a strong base,” added Ruttenberg. “The base is strong and active and vibrant, but it doesn’t have to be the only way that Jewish life plays out.”

So far, Ruttenberg has been pleased with her time on the Hill.

“Tufts students are incredible,” Ruttenberg said. “They blew me away with curiosity and are engaged in the world. People find ways to integrate all the parts of who they are. It’s been a real honor.”

Have something you want to sell?

Advertise with the Tufts Daily!

Panelists to discuss the intersection of religion and sexuality LGBT continued from page 1

discussion about where these religions intersect with homosexuality and homosexual behavior.”

Field said that a commonly held conception was that religion and the queer community were incompatible with each other. Organizers hope that the panel will be a forum to correct this misconception by introducing students to the diversity of religious views on homosexuality.

“People seem to think that religion as an institution has a single opinion about sexuality, that there’s no diversity … I want to recognize a variety of opinions, policies and ideas within the church or different religions,” Field said. “I do want to talk about the fact that some churches are not welcoming to LGBT people, but I want to recognize that LGBT people can be religious.”

Ruttenberg felt that the discussion would be a valuable exercise in exploring the process by which each religious tradition arrives at its position on this controversial issue.

“The way that each tradition makes

sense of what is a very hot issue across the board — even if we come to the same conclusions — I presume the paths to get there will be very different,” Ruttenberg said.

Watling expects tonight’s turnout to be large, based on the responses to the three film screenings that took place earlier in the semester. Each film dealt with homosexuality in a particular religious tradition, namely Judaism, Islam and Christianity.

The screenings were followed by discussions with religious leaders from the respective faiths, which Watling said went well.

“We had some very good discussions there,” he said.

The LGBT Center, student group Conversations, Actions, Faith and Education (CAFÉ), the Catholic Community at Tufts and the Interfaith Center are co-sponsoring tonight’s panel.

Other panelists include University Chaplain David O’Leary, Muslim Chaplain Naila Baloch, Protestant Chaplain Kerrie Harthan and Buddhist Sangha Advisor David Around.

Web and print ads are available.

E-mail business@tuftsdaily.com

Features

3

tuftsdaily.com

Butler case raises freedom of speech questions BY

CARTER ROGERS

Daily Editorial Board

Criticizing the actions of their college or university’s administration has been a common practice among students across the United States for decades.

But for Jess Zimmerman, a junior at Butler University in Indianapolis, doing so landed him not only in hot water with his school’s administration, but with a lawsuit as well.

In October of last year, Zimmerman began writing the “TrueBU” blog, which covered happenings Zimmerman deemed important at the university. Zimmerman wrote anonymously under the name “Soodo Nym.” The blog attracted the university’s attention after Zimmerman started to comment on what he believed to be the unfair dismissal of the Butler School of Music chair, Andrea Gullickson, who is also Zimmerman’s stepmother. Gullickson said that at the time, she was not aware that her stepson was behind the blog.

On the TrueBU blog, Zimmerman strongly criticized the dean of Butler’s Jordan College of Fine Arts, Peter Alexander, and Butler Provost Jamie Comstock.

In what the Federal Anti-Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation Project (Anti-SLAPP) called a “Textbook Cyber SLAPP,” Butler filed a libel and defamation suit against Soodo Nym to try to uncover the author. The project defines SLAPP suits as “meritless lawsuits brought against a person for urging a government result or speaking out on an issue of public interest.”

Zimmerman has since revealed himself as the author of the blog, and Butler University has dropped the lawsuit against Zimmerman but is pursuing disciplinary action against him, which is still ongoing.

Zimmerman’s saga raises questions of how free speech can exist on college campuses, and he said he has been following the Tufts Board of Trustees’

So fetch

S

JAMES CHOCA/TUFTS DAILY

A recent controversy surrounding a blog at Butler University has shed new light on free speech at college campuses. recent approval of its free speech policy.

As to whether he believes the issue of free speech is threatened on college campuses in general, Zimmerman said that he thinks the problem has probably spread nationwide.

“I hope it’s specific to Butler, but I see what’s happened at Tufts and I’ve seen it at a couple of other places, and I think universities and institutions of higher education need to be places in this country where free speech is absolutely held in the highest regard and is respected and understood as not only a law, but an absolute necessity,” Zimmerman told the Daily.

Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman said he believes the Butler case and the recent Tufts free speech policy are inherently different.

“The Butler case is what the student can say about the administration,” he said. “The policy that the Board [of Trustees] just adopted is not about what students can say about any particular entity, administration, or faculty, or other student groups or any individual student.

That’s not what this addresses, so the Butler case is a very specific example in a larger conversation. So the debate at our board and the policy they just came out with is much, much broader, and I don’t think you can so easily talk about the two at the same place.”

Reitman believes the Butler case is more related to slander and libel laws than free speech issues in general, though he said that the trustee policy does include a see CENSORSHIP, page 4

Local organization brings the flavors of East Somerville to life through recipes, narratives BY

ROMY OLTUSKI | WORD UP

ALEXA SASANOW

Daily Staff Writer

It’s often said that the best way to get to know a neighborhood is through the eyes of its locals. This is the mentality that drove the publishing of the new “taste-based guide” to East Somerville, compiled from the histories and cuisines of its residents and business owners.

COURTESY EAST SOMERVILLE COOKBOOK

The diverse residents, cultures and foods of East Somerville enhance the pages of a new community cookbook.

“Savoring East Somerville” is the latest project of the community-based organization East Somerville Main Streets (ESMS). The cookbook is a collection of recipes and stories from businesses all over East Somerville; while the first half highlights the neighborhood’s businesses, the second half is handed over to East Somerville residents, highlighting the vibrant stories of those who have been in the area for generations and those who just moved in.

The aim of the project was not only to introduce the greater Somerville area to the neighborhood, but also to introduce the neighborhood to all of its residents, said Tufts senior Becca Novak, who interns at ESMS and coordinated the production of the book.

“It’s a working-class neighborhood and doesn’t necessarily have a central place like Davis Square where a lot of social things can happen — [it has] just a main street,” she said. “I think the main [point] is that it’s a neighborhood full of people from a lot of different backgrounds and different kinds of businesses, and they don’t really know each other — some are English-speaking or Spanish-speaking and some are Portuguese-speaking — and [the goal is] to introduce them to each other.”

For an area that holds the distinction of being the “oldest and [most] ethnically diverse neighborhood in Somerville,” according to ESMS’ Web site, the cookbook offers its readers snippets of many different cultures, from the horchatas and stews of the

large Salvadorian immigrant population to the favored cocktails of its Albanian liquor store owner.

The book also offered opportunities for locals, as much of it was compiled by volunteer residents. When Novak began interviewing business owners, one of her goals was to get community members involved, and many who saw advertisements for the project in the newspapers and around town became a part of the process.

“It’s a very community-based project,” Novak said. “I could go in and say, ‘I want to make a cookbook,’ but this was a way that really built up the community.”

Mark Teiwes, a professional photographer and East Somerville resident, volunteered to take the photos of the business owners that accompany their stories.

“I used to live in Gloucester, and I did portraits of people working in the fishing industry up there,” he said.

“I moved to East Somerville about a year ago, and I wanted to do business portraits and I needed a local partner.

I went and stopped by the office of ESMS and I told them my idea, and they said, ‘By the way, we’re doing this cookbook project, with pictures of the businesses and the people who work there,’ so it just worked out. For me, it was just a great way to get to know my community and to be involved in it, as well as practice my art.”

Teiwes’ photos are highlighted by the book’s layout, done by graphic see COOKBOOK, page 4

everal weeks ago, a Daily reader by the name of Stanley wrote to me about my rather strong negative opinion regarding the misuse of “literally.” Stan (can I call you that?) himself didn’t seem to have much of a problem with the non-literal application of the word and pointed out that while getting all riled up about poor language usage, I failed to make mention of an important related point — that language evolves along with society and that, moreover, may not be such a bad thing.

And he was right. Well, mostly. I stand my ground about “literally” — there’s just no need to sacrifice a unique word for yet another intensifier — but the boy had a point.

If language were stagnant, we might still be speaking Latin or — gulp — reading more Beowulf. We certainly wouldn’t have arrived at some of the contemporary words we love most, and diphthongs would be splattered all over our essays.

It’s through slang, pop culture, mistakes and open-mindedness that we keep our language up to date, and if a few casualties along the road is what it takes, then so be it.

Consider, for example, the fabulous little word “meh.”

That’s right, I said “word.” Not expression; not colloquialism. Word. Last year, the Collins English Dictionary decided to include “meh” in its 30th anniversary edition after the apathetic expression, popularized by “The Simpsons” in 2001, became a hit.

Once upon a time, on par with the likes of “grrr” or “blech,” or perhaps even a little more indie, “meh” was the undefined, murky expression that could say just about anything, depending on voice inflection. But like Dr. Dre in the Dr. Pepper ads and post-Mean Girls Lindsay, “meh” sold out. Overwhelmed by popularity and success, “meh” lost its way, sacrificing its freedom and malleability for a spot in the limelight of the mainstream, corporate world of English: the dictionary.

Getting back to Stanley’s point, though, plenty of words like “meh” that are now considered formal English started out as improper speech or slang, and there is no reason to condemn the plenty more that are evolving right now.

Like eggcorns. If you haven’t used one before, you’ve at least seen one used. When picking up on a phrase aurally rather than visually, it is easy to mishear words and substitute them with ones that sound similar but distort the entire phrase’s meaning. For example, people often mispronounce “for all intents and purposes” as “for all intensive purposes,” which — known as a malapropism — sounds similar but doesn’t mean very much at all.

Eggcorns result from a similar slip of the ear but do not change the meaning of the word or phrase when spoken because, rather than replacing words with similar sounding ones, eggcorns replace words with homonyms. It is only in writing that eggcorns reveal their humor: “jaw-dropping” becomes “jar-dropping,” “haphazard” becomes “half-hazard,” “acorn” becomes “eggcorn,” the mistake that gave birth to the new word in the first place.

And it seems that adopting our mistakes as new English words is not uncommon. “Crash blossom” recently became the popularly used term for a grammatically confusing or ridiculous headline after one particular article, about a violinist whose career blossomed after a plane accident, was titled “Violinist linked to JAL crash blossoms.”

Sure, “crash blossom” and “eggcorn” haven’t quite made it into the dictionary yet. But their prevalence is growing, and “eggcorn” has gained such widespread recognition that your professors might even mention the word in class.

So the next time someone tells you that your personal catchphrase just isn’t going to happen, brush off your shoulders and keep your head up.

Two wrongs might not make a right, but apparently a few hundred more do.

Romy Oltuski is a junior majoring in English. She can be reached at Romy.

Oltuski@tufts.edu

4

THE TUFTS DAILY

New cookbook delivers recipes and local customs

Butler University student stirs up debate over freedom of speech

COOKBOOK

CENSORSHIP

continued from page 3

designer Laura Vivenzio, who has been volunteering for various ESMS initiatives for about a year. He described getting involved as “an organic process,” as well as a “really fun project.”

While most of Vivenzio’s previous work with ESMS had been on the promotions committee, the book offered new situations to introduce the greater community to the worlds inside East Somerville.

“I was selling the cookbooks at the Union Square winter market this weekend, and people would come up and be like, ‘East Somerville, where’s that?’ and flip through the books, and say, ‘There are all those restaurants just on that strip of Broadway?’” she said.

“It was really profound and pleasantly surprising to people that there’s so much to see and do in East Somerville, and hopefully this cookbook will introduce people to that, and they’ll spend more time there and do more business there.”

East Somerville has much to offer to the greater Somerville area, including Tufts. Vivenzio highlighted the plentiful “cheap eats” as incentives for college students to check out the area, and Novak noted the neighborhood’s international film nights and events like Honk! Fest that make it a welcome change of pace from campus life.

While those outside East Somerville might find a new weekend hangout within the

pages of the guide, residents will get to see their own faces and stories, as well as those of their neighbors.

“People will tend to go to the same restaurants they already know,” Novak said.

“When they see this and they see the picture of the business owner and a background story, then maybe that’ll start a conversation.”

Vivenzio noted that in the residents’ portion of the book, the street they live on is included with their story.

“I’m hoping that people will see the street names and maybe go knock on their door and say, ‘Oh, I made [your recipe] last night,’” she said.

Mostly, the guide aims to open doors and conversations between old-timers and newcomers, residents, business owners and tourists alike, highlighting the diversity of the neighborhood.

“People at the crafts fair were like, ‘Oh my God, there’s Ethiopian food, I had no idea; look at this group of people sitting at this funky table,’” Vivenzio said. “I think it’s really going to initiate people to check things out and try something new.”

Ad d i t i o n a l information about “Savoring East Somerville” is available at eastsomer villemainstreets. org, where the book is available for purchase. It’s also available at select businesses in Somerville and at various holiday crafts fairs in the Boston area, or by e-mailing Becca Novak at Rebecca.

Novak@tufts.edu.

FEATURES

continued from page 3

statement regarding slander and defamation.

The policy states, “The law, for example, provides that freedom of expression does not include the right to slander the reputation of another, to engage in specified forms of harassment, to threaten or obstruct a speaker who advances unwelcome ideas, or to incite another person to violence.”

“You don’t need a freedom of expression policy of any sort to address that question,” Reitman said. “There are all sorts of laws about defamation, slander and libel.

“The Butler case is an example of it, at least, according to the Butler administration,” he added.

Reitman also pointed out that for disciplinary action to be brought against a member of the community at Tufts in the case of slander or defamation, another member of the community who feels that he or she has been harmed must raise a complaint. Zimmerman was not aware of a requirement at Butler that an individual must raise a complaint with the university in order for it to pursue disciplinary action.

“I know our judicial process is different from many schools’,” Zimmerman said.

“The president of Butler, [Bobby Fong], has released three memos to the full faculty discussing what I allegedly did and proclaiming me guilty, so what Butler is doing is having verdict come before the trial,” Zimmerman said. “I’d prefer to have the trial before the verdict;

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

unfortunately I’m guilty and have a show to go through.”

Tufts Judicial Advocates, a student organization that aids students with the on-campus judicial process, has not seen any recent cases where alleged censorship is being practiced.

“We haven’t had any cases of it, and it’s not been brought to our attention,” senior Eddie Mishan, a member of Tufts Judicial Advocates, said.

One Tufts organization that is no stranger to controversy regarding free speech is Tufts’ journal of conservative thought, The Primary Source. Junior C.J. Saraceno, The Primary Source’s assistant Web editor, believes The Primary Source and Tufts students in general do not have much to fear regarding censorship by the university.

“I would say that I believe Tufts is a good institution,” Saraceno said. “I think all our criticisms from the Primary Source are warranted, and it’s having a diversity of campus media that lets students hear perspectives from all sides.

“I feel like a lot of kids on the Source think the Daily is kind of like a PR novelty most of the time for the university in pushing policy,” he added. “I feel that because [The Primary Source] is an asset to the university and to the university’s diversity, I don’t expect Tufts to react to offensive speech with censorship … It did charge [The Primary Source] with harassment, but it didn’t allow Tufts to be censored by student organizations.

It believes in freedom of speech.

[Tufts President] Larry Bacow said it himself.”

Saraceno said that, on the

whole, he believes The Primary Source has “a good relationship” with the university.

Zimmerman believes the lawsuit was brought on because Butler University does not appreciate criticism.

“I’ve seen much worse than what I wrote written online about people at Butler and about people in other places, and they simply don’t like good, solid criticism,” he said. “I think if that precedent is allowed to be set at an institution of higher education, it can be detrimental to the academy.”

As for speech that can be offensive, Zimmerman believes free speech must be protected at all costs.

“I support freedom of speech,” he said. “I think some speech is certainly more effective than others, and I don’t condone speech that is hurtful, and I certainly don’t condone speech that is hateful, but I absolutely believe in freedom of speech and freedom of expression. There’s some speech I don’t like that I will support under the title of freedom of speech without a doubt.”

Reitman said that the limits of free speech “always will be” an issue on college campuses and added that there is a necessary balancing act between promoting absolute free speech and limiting speech that “victimizes others and takes them out of the community in some way or makes them feel like they’re not valued.”

Although Zimmerman has taken down the TrueBU Blog, he continues to write about the ongoing situation at his new blog “I am ‘John Doe,’” which can be found at Akadoe.blogspot.com.

Arts & Living

5

tuftsdaily.com

CONCERT REVIEW

Long-time rocker still bursting at the seams

CARYN HOROWITZ | THE CULTURAL CULINARIAN

Bring on the sap

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists rock the Middle East ALEXA SASANOW

JULIE BARTOLOMEO/TUFTS DAILY

the Pharmacists’ upcoming record, “The Brutalist Bricks,” due in March 2010. In an interview earlier this month with music blog Stereogum. com, Leo said, “S--t sucks no matter who’s in charge,” and his refusal to accept the status quo comes across just as strongly on his records as it does in his live delivery.

Leo sings in a ragged falsetto so fiery and cutting that listeners can feel his whole being pouring onto the stage. This is felt especially in his most anthemic choruses, like that of his 2004 hit, “Me and Mia.” “If you believe in something beautiful, get up and be it,” he commands.

Leo ended his first set on Saturday with “Counting Down the Hours,” a song that finds him asking, “If I told you I felt ageless, would you tell me I’m not old?” Although Leo is nearly 40 and has been putting out records for almost 20 years, he’s aging far more gracefully than the musicians he worships. His new songs (and new Mohawk) hearken back to the punk songs he grew up on — and he confirmed their personal importance to him at the Middle East with covers of tunes by the Pogues and Cock Sparrer.

The new songs are loud and short, sounding like Leo spent a lot of time with his Minutemen records while writing his new album. More importantly, the songs are tight. He introduced “One Polaroid A Day” by saying it was only the third time he’d played it live, but the band didn’t miss a tambourine beat, reggae-guitar upstroke or vocal harmony. The new songs feature plenty of Leo’s signature vocal riffs to sing along with and rhythmic buildups to pump fists to.

Leo is a smart performer. Much of his set was unreleased material, but he’d tuck pockets of new tracks between old favorites, safely blending in the just-written stuff with the familiar discography. There was standard goofy stage banter, but what stood out was an easy rapport between band members as well as with the opening acts. Leo dedicated the Cock Sparrer

Musician Ted Leo, who has been putting out records for nearly 20 years, is not satisfied with the status quo in the United States.

see TED LEO, page 6

BY

Daily Staff Writer

“We have the best of an imperfect world,” Ted Leo sang to a soldout crowd at the Middle East on Saturday night — and the crowd sang it right back to him. His band, the Pharmacists, furnished him with heavy punk backbeats and squealing guitars, but the words were what captured the essence of the night and of this band’s message.

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists formed in Washington, D.C. around the begin-

ning of the decade, although Leo himself hails from New Jersey. After four full-length albums and a rotating cast of musicians, they’ve reached a peak in their history, with a steady fan base and an ever-evolving repertoire of smart, reggae- and punk-influenced rock ‘n’ roll.

The last two records, “Living With the Living” (2007) and “Shake the Sheets” (2004), have shown a more political bent than their predecessors, as Leo sings lines like, “To put it to you plain and bluntly/ I’m worried for my tired country.” That mentality doesn’t seem to be changing on tracks from

MOVIE REVIEW

Family drama and war horrors entangled in Sheridan’s ‘Brothers’ BY

BEN PHELPS

Daily Editorial Board

On the surface, “Brothers,” the new film from director Jim Sheridan, is a war movie. Tobey Maguire plays

Brothers Starring Natalie Portman, Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal, Bailee Madison Directed by Jim Sheridan Capt. Sam Cahill, a dedicated Marine about to ship out for his fourth tour in Afghanistan. Sam is celebrated by his town — and specifically his father Hank (Sam Shepard), an ex-military man — as a hero fulfilling the duty of protecting his country.

But as the title (and any trailer for the movie) implies, the film is about more than just war. It is also about family — and how one affects the other in ways most people couldn’t imagine. Based on the Danish film “Brødre” (2004), directed by Susanne Bier, “Brothers” ROTTENTOMATOES.COM

see BROTHERS, page 6

Jake Gyllenhaal delivers a solid performance in his supporting role as Tommy, Sam’s brother.

I

have a history of ending each installment of The Cultural Culinarian on an extremely sappy note. My first go-around, I wrote about the importance of food to my everyday life. Last semester, I discussed things you learn about food in college that can be transferred to the real world.

This semester will be no different; I am bringing the sap. Except this time it will be actual sap in the form of maple syrup, and I will spare you the emotional food-related life lessons.

Hanukkah starts this Friday at sundown — latkes before NQR anyone? — but sadly I will probably be holed up in the library for most of it. I decided to peruse some food sites for quick Hanukkah recipes that I can make in between study sessions, since latkes are too time-intensive for finals.

Apparently everybody forgot it was Hanukkah this week.

Every food-related Web site on the planet posted inventive recipes for Thanksgiving for weeks leading up to T-Day. Everyone from the Food Network to The New York Times already had recipes for fun and festive Christmas food featured prominently on their sites. Food and Wine has an article about a Hanukkah party with “Top Chef” judge Gail Simmons that features her versions of latkes and brisket, but there is nary a new and inventive recipe to be found. In fact, if you Google “Hanukkah,” the majority of the top 20 hits all have words like “tradition” or “familiar” in them. (There are also a ton of articles about President Obama’s announcement that he will cut the guest list for the annual White House Hanukkah party due to financial considerations, with a lot of Jewish newspapers dubbing it the “Hanukkah snub.” Oy vey!)

Believe me, I understand the reluctance to shake things up for the Jewish holidays; my family eats the same meals each year from Passover to Rosh Hashanah. Foods associated with a lot of Jewish celebrations represent the story of the holiday, so there are limited variations in the menu. With Hanukkah, for example, you eat fried foods to represent the miracle of the oil that burned for eight days when the Maccabees purified the Holy Temple in Jerusalem.

Latkes are the traditional Ashkenazi (a blanket term for Eastern European Jews) fried treat for Hanukkah. Fun fact: “Latke” is actually the Yiddish word for potato pancake while “levivot” is the Hebrew version.

Israelis eat “sufganiyot” for the holiday, which are fried, jelly-filled donuts.

So I eventually gave up on my search for new Hanukkah recipes and instead decided to see if there are other fried foods that are traditional for the holiday. Fried food also happens to go perfectly with my stress level right now, so I put down my textbooks and Googled around a bit.

It seems that a lot of Jews have adapted fried foods that are traditional to their geographic area to their Hanukkah celebrations. Beignets are common among Jews in the New Orleans area and Italian Jews eat fried artichokes. Jews in Hawaii eat malasadas, a fried yeast dough pastry that has Portuguese origins but is popular in the islands.

My favorite fried Hanukkah foods, however, are two that I discovered that are coated in maple syrup, an ingredient I crave when it gets cold outside (so it took me a while to get to the sap, sorry). Greek Jews eat loukoumades, fried dough that is usually soaked in sugar syrup, honey or maple syrup. Sephardic Jews have a similar tradition with bimuelos, except that with these fried dough balls the honey or maple syrup is put in the batter itself.

I’m pretty much thinking that holidays plus fried desserts plus my favorite wintertime sweetener equals a great way study break during finals. Oy vey and abruch!

Caryn Horowitz is a senior majoring in history. She can be reached at Caryn.

Horowitz@tufts.edu.

6

THE TUFTS DAILY

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

ARTS & LIVING

Solid acting from star-studded cast bolsters ‘Brothers’ BROTHERS continued from page 5 looks at what the loss of a loved one can do to a family, how its members cope and how the traumatic repercussions of war are felt by those both personally and tangentially involved.

Sam is married to his high school sweetheart, Grace (Natalie Portman), with whom he has two young daughters, Isabelle and Maggie (Bailee Madison and Taylor Geare). Sam’s brother, Tommy ( Jake Gyllenhaal), has recently been released from prison, and he fills in for Sam by taking care of the girls while he is gone.

“Gone” takes on a new meaning when Sam’s helicopter is shot down and he is presumed dead. But as anyone who has seen a preview for the film knows, Sam did not actually die. Drama arises when he comes home to a family that has been forced to move on and a wife and brother who have grown closer — and who he suspects have been sleeping together.

The film benefits profoundly from the performances by its three leads.

Maguire never seemed to bring much gravitas to his portrayal of the titular hero in the “Spiderman” films, but in “Brothers” he conveys the plight of a prisoner of war suffering from PostTraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) when he returns home. His sunken eyes and billowing rage and annoyance are completely understandable.

Portman delivers as the emotionally devastated wife. Her raw portrayal is both dramatic and believable.

Gyllenhaal does not shine quite as brightly as his co-stars, but Tommy’s loving interactions with his nieces and his desire to be there for Grace come off as genuine.

The film succeeds when it is focused on the family at home. Nothing particularly eventful happens, but the ways in which each person grieves and adapts are insightful. Unfortunately, the first half of the film is intercut with scenes of Sam and a fellow Marine being imprisoned and tortured in Afghanistan. The events are crucial, as they give the audi-

Leo engages with opening act in Boston concert TED LEO continued from page 5

ROTTENTOMATOES.COM

Natalie Portman’s performance stands out in “Brothers.” ence a view of the horror and atrocity that Sam has been through, which shape his attitude upon return. But they also slow down the pace of the film.

The second half of the film does a better job of providing a singular storyline. Sam is a changed man when he returns. He is jumpy, distant, apprehensive, accusatory and horrified by what he had to live through. His family is happy to have him back, but the sentiment quickly diminishes as his PTSD begins to show. Grace tries to understand by asking him about his experiences, but since it is no secret to the viewer, there is no plot-driven motive for him to admit the answer.

The intense emotions and drama of the film build to an exciting, if heavyhanded, climax. The conflicts eventually reach a calm conclusion, but the culminating scene would have worked just as well with a few less blunt exclamations of “You’re my brother!” between Sam and Tommy.

The film is intense, but without a lot of action. A dinner scene in the second act is among the best, with its slow build-up and quick explosion.

“Brothers” is driven by strong performances — not only by its leads, but also

by Madison and Geare as the young daughters — which make the film a well-examined look at the dynamics of a military family during wartime.

For the most part, “Brothers” avoids any overt commentary on the war.

In one scene, however, Sam’s eldest daughter replies that the bad guys are “the ones with the beards,” effectively showing how ingrained it has become that war is a matter of “us vs. them.” In “Brothers,” the war is mainly utilized as a lens through which to view the true workings of a family that, like any, has its share of problems.

Its timeliness and intimacy, bolstered by solid acting, make “Brothers” a gripping emotional thriller, even if it falls short of its vision in the end.

Jerseyites Titus Andronicus, who’d also played a song by the British punks. Later in the set, when Leo’s guitar quit on him mid-song, he laid it down and yelled, “Does anyone have a guitar I can borrow?” He then kept on with the song, holding the mic stand and pogo-ing around like Johnny Rotten, until Titus Andronicus’ Peter Feigenbaum presented Leo with his guitar.

The Pharmacists and Titus Andronicus have been on tour together for a while, and it’s easy to see why. Both bands hold their hardcore predecessors in high esteem, but pay tribute to the boss of their home state, with Springsteenreminiscent phrasing and arrangements. They play smart and simple music to dance, clap and scream along to in solidarity. While Titus tends to do more guitar noodling and literary name-dropping (the band is named after a Shakespeare play and its first record ends with a song called “Albert Camus”), it shares the Pharmacists’ unflappable energy and their need to call a spade a spade.

While their pairing might make it seem like Leo and the Pharmacists are getting ready to pass the torch to these glowing young ruffians, the reality is decidedly to the contrary.

Leo seems as ageless as he hopes to be, and while the lead single off of “The Brutalist Bricks” is called “Even Heroes Have to Die,” he’s aiming more to keep everyone honest than to predict his premature demise. Leo yelps, “Did we run for running out of time?” But a sense of urgency, not simply for lack of time, is the basis of his being — and Leo seems to be in no danger of stopping any time soon.

THE TUFTS DAILY

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

ADVERTISEMENT

Studying abroad spring 2010?

Be prepared for your semester abroad!

Required pre-departure meetings:

Programs Abroad staff and study abroad alumni will go over the pre-departure checklist, discuss health and safety issues, transfer of credit, cultural adaptation and much, much more!

Non-Tufts Programs

Tufts Programs

Non-Tufts Africa/Asia/ Caribbean/Latin America/ Middle East Monday, Dec. 14th @ 10:30 am

Tufts in Hong Kong Monday, Dec. 14th @ 11:00 am

*all meetings in Dowling 745*

Non-Tufts Mainland Europe Monday, Dec. 14th @ 1:30 pm

*all meetings in Tisch 304*

Tufts in Madrid/Paris/T端bingen Monday, Dec. 14th @ 2:00 pm

Non-Tufts UK/Ireland/Australia/ New Zealand Monday, Dec. 14th @ 3:30 pm

*Please note the location of your meeting: Tufts and non-Tufts will be held in different locations.* PLEASE NOTE: If you cannot make your non-Tufts meeting, please attend another non-Tufts meeting. If you cannot make your Tufts meeting, please attend another Tufts meeting.

Meetings are required.

Questions? Call x7-5871.

Impress your friends and family with your knowledge of historical events!

Impress your friends and family with a unique holiday gift featuring photographs from Bali, Cambodia, Haiti, Pakistan, Uganda and many more places as well as more than 365 seminal events!

The 2010 Beyond Borders Calendar featuring the work of Tufts students and alumni

is on sale this week in the Campus Center, 10am-2pm for the Tufts discounted rate of $10

7

THE TUFTS DAILY

8

THE TUFTS DAILY GIOVANNI J.B. RUSSONELLO Editor-in-Chief

EDITORIAL Naomi Bryant Managing Editors David Heck Alexandra Bogus Executive News Editor Nina Ford News Editors Tessa Gellerson Ben Gittleson Christy McCuaig Matt Repka Ellen Kan Assistant News Editors Harrison Jacobs Katherine Sawyer Saumya Vaishampayan

Robin Carol Executive Features Editor Marissa Carberry Features Editors Meredith Hassett Alison Lisnow Emily Maretsky Kerianne Okie Romy Oltuski Christina Pappas Charlotte Steinway Julia Zinberg Sarah Korones Assistant Features Editors Carter Rogers

Jessica Bal Executive Arts Editor Emma Bushnell Arts Editors Mitchell Geller Adam Kulewicz Catherine Scott Josh Zeidel Charissa Ng Assistant Arts Editors Benjamin Phelps

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

EDITORIAL | LETTERS

EDITORIAL

Guarding a reputation, but sacrificing principles Earlier this year, Jess Zimmerman, a junior at Butler University in Indiana and the author of the anonymous blog “TruBU,” was sued by his school for supposedly writing libelous statements about Peter Alexander, dean of Butler’s Jordan College of Fine Arts.

The university used this lawsuit as a thinly veiled and unfair means to compromise the anonymity of the blogger and bring him to “justice.”

Though Zimmerman did harshly criticize a member of the university administration, his statements against Alexander were in no way defamatory or slanderous and clearly did not merit a lawsuit. He stated that Peter Alexander “is power-hungry and afraid of his own shadow …

He drives away talented administrators. He frustrates students within the departments. He hurts the ability of the school to recruit talented students and faculty members.” Zimmerman’s criticism of Alexander was in direct response to what Zimmerman felt had been an unwarranted staff cut that the dean made. Though Zimmerman’s opinion of Alexander was quite scathing, his words were not libel.

The school, unappreciative of the feelings posted on the blog, set out to take down whoever had written them in order to protect its image. This is completely unfair to Zimmerman; the university has no business infringing on his right to anonymously publish an opinion, especially because the blog was independent from the school. As an academic institution that is supposed to support and cultivate free thought and discussion, Butler should have acknowledged the criticism as another form of student expression and simply moved on.

But even more deplorable than the school’s unnecessary censorship of a student’s writing is how the university used the lawsuit for the sole purpose of finding out the blogger’s identity.

The university clearly had little intention of going through with the suit; immediately after having the court force Zimmerman to reveal his identity, the administration dropped the case in order to pursue its own course of judiciary action against him.

The Federal Anti-Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (AntiSLAPP) Project defines this kind of

suit as a “CyberSLAPP,” meaning that its express purpose is, as the AntiSLAPP Project states, “to have the court force the speaker to reveal his or her identity. Once an entity learns the identity of an anonymous speaker, it can drop the meritless lawsuit and proceed with other methods of harassment or retaliation.” The university wrongly manipulated the U.S. legal system for its own personal benefit. Our laws should not be used as a means of blackmail; their purpose is to keep law and order. Suing Zimmerman was a way for the university to strong-arm him into giving up his identity and submitting himself to university punishment — a wrongful and overly suppressive step in and of itself.

Not only did Butler overstep in restraining the free speech of one of its students; it abused the judicial system and tarnished its own reputation in the process. Educational institutions should concern themselves with protecting and promoting students’ right to free speech and only censor students when their speech is patently slanderous or libelous.

impressed by their testimony, and I know my legislative colleagues were as well.

Massachusetts has a proud history of ensuring that all students have access to health insurance, and our institutions of higher learning were the first in having universal health care. Nevertheless, as members of the SHOC testified, student health insurance doesn’t always meet the needs of those it is meant to protect. In fact, in some cases the limited coverage creates problems where some students are forced to choose between

their education and their health care needs (see Ellen Kan’s Nov. 24 article, “Students push for Tufts health insurance reform,” in the Tufts Daily).

It is my hope that legislation pending on Beacon Hill will correct this problem, and it is through the work of Tufts students that this problem was brought to light and will be fixed.

Michelle Hochberg Executive Op-Ed Editor Crystal Bui Editorialists Vittoria Elliott Rebekah Liebermann Victoria Stevenson Marian Swain Nina Grossman Opinion Editors Laura Moreno Andrew Rohrberger Molly Rubin Devon Colmer Editorial Cartoonists Erin Marshall Alex Miller Louie Zong

ALEX MILLER

Ethan Landy Executive Sports Editor Sapna Bansil Sports Editors Evan Cooper Philip Dear Jeremy Greenhouse Alex Prewitt Michael Spera Alex Lach Assistant Sports Editors Daniel Rathman

Annie Wermiel Executive Photo Editor James Choca Photo Editors Aalok Kanani Danai Macridi Andrew Morgenthaler Josh Berlinger Assistant Photo Editors Kristen Collins Alex Dennett Emily Eisenberg Rebekah Sokol Tien Tien

Arlin Ladue Executive New Media Editor Jessica Bidgood New Media Editors Kyle Chayka Mick Krever Xander Zebrose

PRODUCTION Karen Blevins

Production Director Steven Smith Executive Layout Editor

Dana Berube Layout Editors Caryn Horowitz Andrew Petrone Amani Smathers Menglu Wang Adam Gardner Assistant Layout Editors Brian Lim

Grace Lamb-Atkinson Executive Copy Editor Rachel Oldfield Copy Editors Ben Smith Elisha Sum Ricky Zimmerman Sam Connell Assistant Copy Editors Sara Eisemann Katherine Evering-Rowe Ammar Khaku Niki Krieg Luke Morris Lucy Nunn Regina Smedinghoff

Ben Schwalb Executive Online Editor Christine Jang Online Editor Michael Vastola Executive Technical Manager Muhammad Qadri Technical Manager

BUSINESS Kahran Singh

Executive Business Director

Benjamin Hubbell-Engler Brenna Duncan Dwijo Goswami Ally Gimbel

Advertising Director Online Advertising Manager Billing Manager Outreach Director

The Tufts Daily is a nonprofit, independent newspaper, published Monday through Friday during the academic year, and distributed free to the Tufts community.

P.O. Box 53018, Medford, MA 02155 617 627 3090 FAX 617 627 3910 daily@tuftsdaily.com

LETTER TO THE EDITOR Dear Editor, Last Thursday, Dec. 3, a group of Tufts students testified at the State House and made this legislator and Tufts alum very proud.

Tufts students involved with the Student Health Organizing Coalition (SHOC) provided compelling testimony in support of legislation to reform student health insurance. I want to express my sincere gratitude to the students involved with the SHOC. As a member of the Joint Committee on Health Care Finance, I was incredibly

EDITORIAL POLICY Editorials that appear on this page are written by the Editorial Page editors, and individual editors are not necessarily responsible for, or in agreement with, the policies and editorials of The Tufts Daily. The content of letters, advertisements, signed columns, cartoons and graphics does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Tufts Daily editorial board.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Letters must be submitted by 4 p.m. and should be handed into the Daily office or sent to letters@tuftsdaily.com. All letters must be word processed and include the writer’s name and telephone number. There is a 350-word limit and letters must be verified. The editors reserve the right to edit letters for clarity, space and length.

Sincerely, Carl Sciortino, LA ’00 State Representative, Medford & Somerville ADVERTISING POLICY All advertising copy is subject to the approval of the Editor-in-Chief, Executive Board and Executive Business Director. A publication schedule and rate card are available upon request.

THE TUFTS DAILY

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

9

OP-ED TEDDY MINCH | OFF MIC C

Focused and engaged BY

Feeling the heat

ELIZABETH HERMAN

While each campus publication has its own perspective and prism through which it views the world, each attempts, in some manner, to discuss present issues in ways that are digestible and relevant to the student body.

And thus I think it important to clarify the focus of the Observer article that Duncan Pickard referred to in his Dec. 7 op-ed, “On campus: Why we should lose our national focus.”

The article, entitled “Mind the Gap: The Future of Healthcare in America,” attempts to address the issues of health care and health care reform from the perspective of young adults, and can be accessed at tuftsobserver. org.

The article opens by immediately linking its theme to Jumbos, saying, “As Tufts students prepare for graduation, they have a lot of things on their minds. Most of the time, they’re not overly concerned that they could become uninsured unexpectedly.

However, more and more young adults are slipping through the cracks of this country’s health care system as they try to find their footing in the midst of transition.” The article continues on to clarify the state of young adults’ current health care coverage and why reform is vital for both their own and the nation's well-being.

So how does this not tie into campus life? And, even if it does not, rather opting to address the larger issue of health care reform in America, why would that be objectionable?

Recommending that campus publications shorten their sight-line is exactly the opposite of what we need right now. Asking, “How can any article on as broad a topic as health care

T

MCT

make a significant contribution in three pages?” is the kind of fatalist attitude that contributes to inaction in the first place. I would hope that Pickard, as former Tufts Community Union president, would encourage Jumbos to engage with rather than retract from the wider world.

Articles in campus publications aren’t meant to be authoritative voices on issues, but rather are meant to spark debate among the student body. Of course you can’t solve the health care issue in three pages. It’s unlikely that the U.S. Senate will solve the problem with its 2,074-page proposed bill! But you can begin conversations.

And right now, we need more of those than ever. Monday was the first day of climate change talks in Copenhagen.

The aforementioned health care bill

is currently sitting in the Senate, waiting for action. President Obama just called for an increase in troop levels in Afghanistan. And that's just the beginning. If these issues don’t directly impact our lives as Tufts students and as — forgive the trite phrasing — human beings, then I don't know what does. And that is exactly what we need to be writing about.

As photo editor of the Observer, I completely understand that this may be viewed as a biased response. But I hope that this comment goes beyond the singular issue of the Observer’s health care article to the broader issue Pickard addresses in his op-ed.

Elizabeth Herman is a senior majoring in economics and political science. She is the photography editor of the Tufts Observer.

OFF THE HILL | LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY

In 100 years, life will be cooler but humans won’t

BY JACK JOHNSON

The Daily Reveille

I wouldn’t want to live 100 years from now. It’s tempting but shortsighted to only consider how cool it may be. Every morning we greet the world under a set of assumptions. We assume our car will start, our loved ones will be there and that a fat naked man is not watching us from a discreet vantage point. These assumptions are necessary to live out a normal day, but our society is full of foreboding trends that go unnoticed.

Examine a global population graph of the last 2,000 years. You’ll find the number of earthlings lay dormant for centuries before shooting upward at an almost right angle, thanks to medical advances, and soaring past Earth’s carrying capacity.

Exponential growth is not limited to these census charts. The first Nintendo console used an 8-bit pro-

cessor. The next one was 16-bit. The number reached 64 a few years later.

We don’t even keep track anymore.

This doubling trend has helped humanity reach its blissful neon reality — a technologically decadent global culture in whose way natural selection can no longer stand. We’re climbing a slope so steep — not just populously, not just technologically but culturally — we can hardly process our progress.

As I watch students stare at their touch phones with little incentive to look up, Henry David Thoreau reminds me: “Men have become the tools of their tools.” Things meant to simplify our lives have come to complicate them.

Now we can check our Facebook from our iPhone. Great, but whatever will we use to check our Facebook checker? Will we ever be able to check our iPhone from our iPhone? Probably, because we like to create necessities out of thin air.

MCT

When Isaac Asimov “predicted” the advent of the Internet, he thought it’d be used for learning. He probably envisioned Wikipedia or Google, not AddictingGames.com.

Humans may be great at discovering new technologies, but we can only be judged on how we use it. What will be the legacy of nuclear energy? A society may be categorized on [the] pool of available information within it, but it can be judged by its willingness to access it.

The information is there, but my generation doesn’t seem to care much.

Since when has the general public cared about health care? We know our auto insurance rates, but how about our cholesterol level? People think our president is an Islamic communist.

Every generation has idiots like this, but thanks to new mediums, their voices are louder every day. Thanks to new mediums, false information gets repeated more frequently. How many times before it’s true?

Humans are obsessed with the Armageddon. Couldn’t the writers of the movie “2012” wait just two more years to interpret the end of times?

Is it healthy for people to constantly project such cataclysmic thoughts into the global consciousness?

Based on this snapshot of our current culture and given the perpetual nature of objects in motion, do we have any reason to believe our society’s values will improve? Is a society more than the sum of its values?

When the Internet became mass marketed, humans became something else — a new species to which conventional wisdom does not apply.

Sometimes I wish I could go back to 1995, before the Internet came to my house. There is little value today in turning to the past because, though history repeats itself, I don’t think its writers had this in mind. Maybe they assumed too much.

he physics of the greenhouse effect, says former Director of the Center for History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics Spencer Weart, are “so basic” that the question shouldn’t be whether the effect would occur, but rather, “What on earth would make it not happen?” One doesn’t need to be a physicist to understand that releasing pollutants into the air is not a good thing. Public discourse during the run-up to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen that began Monday has been terribly misguided — there should be no question that global climate patterns can be distorted by pollutants. Rather, the important question for the United States is why it should make overtures for the Europeans while developing nations like China, India and Brazil are conveniently given a free pass in the face of a global problem.

In 1997, the Kyoto Protocol was ratified by a number of developed countries to reduce pollutant emissions (namely CO2) by 5 percent from 1990 levels by the year 2012.

Developing nations ratified the treaty but were exempted from obligations to reduce emissions. The United States chose not to ratify or endorse the treaty. The goal of the Copenhagen conference is to garner support for extending the Kyoto provisions that are set to expire in 2012 — and to gain official U.S. support for reduction measures this time around.

President Obama seems intent on announcing ambitious reduction targets for 2020 and 2050, but once again developing nations have gotten a free pass: Chinese Prime Minister Web Jiabao plans merely to reduce Chinese expansion of greenhouse gas emissions. Conveniently, because of preexisting Chinese energy efficiency measures, the Jiabao government will achieve its targets for reducing its expansion of CO2 release at little cost.

Meanwhile, the United States would pay a hefty economic price. The Waxman-Markey bill, which passed the House in June, proposes setting limits on fossil fuel emissions, effectively through an energy tax. But a Heritage Foundation carve-up of this legislation has shown that for a household of four, it would cause energy costs to rise astronomically.

The aggregate annual, per-household cost of electricity, natural gas and gasoline would rise by $436 in 2012 and by a whopping $1,241 by 2035. Macroeconomically, the bill is even more poisonous, with a projected reduction in gross domestic product of $393 billion annually, totaling $9.4 trillion by 2035.

Furthermore, green-job creation would not be enough to offset job loss, which has been predicted to reach roughly 1 million jobs annually through 2035 — a projection backed by two major Washington thinktanks as well as the National Black Chamber of Commerce.

The United States’ chief economic competitor, China, is exempted from any meaningful climate change culpability, although it is, in fact, the world’s number-one carbondioxide polluter. Nations like China, India and Brazil — and the major European powers, for that matter — are also fully aware of both the economic and political advantages they would gain from a self-induced U.S. economic contraction in the name of climate change. Brazil promised to terminate the clear-cutting and burning of rainforest reserves only if rich countries pay the price.

Other poorer countries are hoping for the extension of Kyoto-era provisions mandating aid from developed nations to help them reduce emissions — all while these less-developed countries are allowed to embrace unbridled economic development with no recourse.

The United States should not act unless its principal economic competitors also act in a meaningful, proportional capacity. The Copenhagen conference is as much about international competition and the order of global authority as it is about global warming. There are better ways for the United States to go green that don’t involve caving to the Europeans.

Teddy Minch is a senior majoring in political science. He hosts “The Rundown,” a talk show from 3 to 5 p.m. every Friday on WMFO. He can be reached at Theodore.Minch@tufts.edu.

OP-ED POLICY The Op-Ed section of the Tufts Daily, an open forum for campus editorial commentary, is printed Monday through Thursday. Op-Ed welcomes submissions from all members of the Tufts community. Opinion articles on campus, national and international issues should be 600 to 1,200 words in length. All material is subject to editorial discretion, and is not guaranteed to appear in The Tufts Daily. All material should be submitted by no later than 1 p.m. on the day prior to the desired day of publication. Material must be submitted via e-mail (oped@tuftsdaily.com) attached in .doc or .docx format. Questions and concerns should be directed to the Op-Ed editors. The opinions expressed in the Op-Ed section do not necessarily represent the opinions of the Tufts Daily itself.

THE TUFTS DAILY

10 CROSSWORD

COMICS

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

DOONESBURY

BY

GARRY TRUDEAU

NON SEQUITUR

BY

TUESDAY’S SOLUTION

MARRIED TO THE SEA

www.marriedtothesea.com

SUDOKU Level: Actually accomplishing work at the Daily.

LATE NIGHT AT THE DAILY Tuesday’s Solution

Dave: “I’m in the kitchen cookin’ things she likes.”

Please recycle this Daily

WILEY

Sports

11

tuftsdaily.com

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

After 52-point first half, Tufts staves off late-game rally

BY SAPNA

BANSIL

Daily Editorial Board

Monday night in Norton, Mass., the women’s basketball team put together perhaps its most productive offensive performance WOMEN’S BASKETBALL (6-1, 0-0 NESCAC) at Norton, Mass., Monday Tufts Wheaton

52 34

28 — 80 37 — 71

to date. Facing a Wheaton squad they met in the 2008 NCAA Tournament, the Jumbos crossed the 80-point mark for the first time this year, shot a season-best 50 percent from the floor and saw all five starters hit double figures in scoring.

As it turned out, they needed all the offense they could get.

Leading by 18 at halftime and by as many as 23 in the second half, Tufts withstood a late Wheaton charge and closed out an 80-71 victory, their sixth win in a row. Outscored 37-28 in the second half, the Jumbos yielded more than 70 points in a game for the first time since their season-opening loss to New Paltz and allowed the Lyons to shoot 44.4 percent from three-point range.

“It wasn’t our best effort defensively,” coach Carla Berube said. “It was a combination of things: I thought Wheaton ran their stuff well and made some big shots, but I also think we have work to do. We haven’t even come close to reaching our potential.

Things have been clicking well offensively for us lately, and we just have to pick it up on the defensive end.”

It appeared Tufts had the game well in hand when a layup by junior tri-captain Colleen Hart with 7:22 remaining closed out a 19-6 run and gave the team a commanding

74-51 lead. But over the final seven minutes, the Lyons shot 70 percent from the field — including four of five from beyond the arc — and outscored the Jumbos 20-6, trimming a potential runaway Tufts victory down to single digits.

“Their posts really started taking it to us,” senior tri-captain Vanessa Miller said. “We just had a hard time adjusting, posts and guards included. The guards tried to help down and dig in a little bit, leaving their shooters open for threes. Nobody was quite on the same page when we let them go on that run.”

Ultimately, Tufts’ lead, built up largely over the course of an electric first half, was too much for Wheaton to overcome. For the period, the Jumbos shot nearly 60 percent from the floor — at one point draining 20 of 27 shots — and racked up 52 points, their most in any half since Nov. 25, 2003. Tufts did a good chunk of its first-half damage in transition, turning 11 Wheaton turnovers into 17 points.

“Our strengths are in the transition game and making plays on the defensive end, so we’re not necessarily ever walking it up the floor and working a half-court offense,” said Berube, whose team has now outscored its opponents by 112 points in the first halves of games this season. “We’ve gotten a lot of steals from our perimeter players that have led to more possessions, easy baskets and more scoring in the first half, and even in the full game, than we’ve had in the past.”

Another reason Tufts was also able to blow the game open early was its continued sharp shooting from three-point range. For the game, the Jumbos shot 42.9 percent from beyond the arc, with seven of their nine three-pointers coming in the first half.

Through seven games this season, Tufts

SCOTT TINGLEY/TUFTS DAILY

see WOMEN’S BASKETBALL, page 15

Sophomore guard Tiffany Kornegay tied her career high with 18 points in Tufts’ 80-71 win over Wheaton on Monday, as the Jumbos brought their winning streak to six games.

WOMEN’S SQUASH

MEN’S SQUASH

Experienced Cornell squad sweeps Jumbos 9-0

Tufts wins two of three in busy weekend

BY

PHILIP DEAR

Daily Editorial Board

For the fourth time in its first five matches, the Tufts women’s squash team fell vic-

BY

WOMEN’S SQUASH (1-4) at Cambridge, Mass., Saturday Cornell Tufts

MICHAEL SPERA

Daily Editorial Board

After a tough start to its fall schedule, the men’s squash team finally found its rhythm

9 0

at Wellesley, Mass., Thursday

MEN’S SQUASH (2-4) at Cambridge, Mass., Saturday

Tufts Wellesley

Cornell Tufts

8 1

Tufts MIT

8 1

Boston University Tufts

0 9

9 0

tim to the strength of some of the toughest teams in the nation without winning even a single of the nine matches played.

On Saturday, the ruthless victors came from upstate New York, as Cornell took down the Jumbos in all nine games without dropping a set in Cambridge, Mass. However, the annihilation was less a function of Tufts’ inadequacy and more a result of Cornell’s incomparable depth and experience.

“Everyone played really hard,” junior tri-captain Valerie Koo said. “They were clearly a lot better, being [ranked] No. 6 in the country while we were No. 18. We went in with no expectations and tried to play really hard and have fun … from what I saw, everyone was being very competitive.”

ANDREW MORGENTHALER/TUFTS DAILY

lot of new girls who weren’t as strong or experienced,” said Sairah Mahmud, the only senior to play against Cornell.

“I think definitely later in the season we could have had a closer match, but all of these Cornell girls have been playing even throughout high school, which is not how it is for us.”

For the Jumbos, the loss came on the heels of their first win of the season on Thursday against Wellesley. In a 9-0 victory at Dana Hall, many of

on the court, taking two out of three matches in a marathon day of squash action this past Saturday.

Before facing Cornell, Boston University (BU) and MIT, the Tufts squad sat at 0-3 with losses at the hands of Williams, Middlebury and Bates. While the Jumbos knew that Cornell would be a difficult matchup, they had high expectations against MIT, whom they had beaten by a combined score of 33-3 over the previous four years, and BU, which Tufts has never faced before.

“The matches went as expected,” sophomore Henry Miller said. “Cornell is very strong

see WOMEN’S SQUASH, page 15

see MEN’S SQUASH, page 14

Junior tri-captain Val Koo kept it close in her match at No. 1 singles Saturday versus Cornell, but could not come through with a victory. Tufts fell in the match 9-0.

Unfortunately for the Jumbos, being competitive failed to translate into victorious matches. Both Koo, who played in the No. 1 spot on the ladder, and sophomore Alix Michael, who competed in the No. 2 slot, managed to earn seven points off their opponents in the final game of each of their matches, but that was the closest anyone came to winning a set. Tufts’ top two players consequently each fell 3-0 to their Cornell opponent.

The biggest obstacle Tufts confronted was one that could not have been avoided: inex-

perience. Six of the Jumbos’ top seven players on the ladder are either sophomores or freshmen. Cornell’s top nine, on the other hand, is almost exclusively made up of upperclassmen. This inexperience reared its ugly head Saturday for Tufts.

“It was tough because they played their full lineup against us, and sometimes teams like Cornell will drop a few of their top players when playing weaker schools,” Koo said.

“I think they’re a very strong team throughout the whole ladder, and for us, we have a

12

THE TUFTS DAILY

SPORTS

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

The Hillel Chanukah party is TONIGHT from 7:00-9:00pm.

Whether you believe in Santa Claus, Chanukah Harry, or Mystery Moses, all are welcome!

We can’t wait to see you there!

THE TUFTS DAILY

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

13

SPORTS

INSIDE THE NFL

ETHAN LANDY | CALL ME JUNIOR

Dallas’ December starts off sour yet again BY

The British are coming

ZACH GROEN

Senior Staff Writer

It might still be warm down in Texas, but after the Dallas Cowboys’ 31-24 loss to the New York Giants, the reality of December’s arrival has dawned upon owner Jerry Jones and company once again.

Over the past few years, the Cowboys have started off the season on fire, jumping out of the gates strongly in September and October only to fade down the homestretch. In fact, the Cowboys have not had a winning record in regular-season games played in December and January since 1996. Last season, the Cowboys finished 1-3 during the year’s final month, but the most disturbing aspect of their lateseason plummet was their performance in the final game of the year against the Philadelphia Eagles.

In a game that guaranteed the winner a wild card spot in the playoffs, the Cowboys barely even bothered to show up. Philadelphia walked all over Dallas, clinching the NFC’s final playoff spot with a 44-6 victory that sent the Cowboys home empty handed.

Unfortunately for Dallas, it appears as though its late-season shortcomings have not stopped in 2009. Dallas faces a brutal schedule the rest of the way, playing the 9-3 San Diego Chargers, the undefeated New Orleans Saints, division-rival Washington and the Eagles to close out the year.

Just a few weeks ago, the Cowboys looked primed for a playoff berth and an NFC East title, but if Sunday is any indication of things to come, Dallas might find itself sitting at home again come January.

Quarterback Tony Romo has shouldered most of the blame for the Cowboys’ recent December troubles, but on Sunday against the Giants, Romo was not the problem. Dallas’ signal-caller finished the day with 392 yards, three touchdowns and a 76-percent completion percentage, but the Dallas offense only generated 45 rushing yards. When the two teams met in Week 2, Cowboys running backs Marion Barber and Felix Jones gashed the Giants’ defense for a combined 220 yards and two touchdowns, but this time around, both players were relatively nonexistent.

All seemed well for the Cowboys when Romo connected with wide receiver Roy Williams for a touchdown pass with just over three minutes remaining in the first half. The touchdown gave Dallas a 10-0 lead, and it looked as though the Cowboys would take that momentum into halftime.

However, with their season hanging on the line, New York quarterback Eli Manning and the Giants had other plans.

On first down from the Giants’ 42-yard

W

MCT

Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo, shown here on Monday night getting sacked by the New York Giants’ Clint Sintim, threw for three scores as his squad fell 31-24 on the road. line in the second quarter, Manning took the shotgun snap and looked for an open receiver downfield. The Cowboys swarmed the pocket and looked to have Manning wrapped up for a sack, but in a moment reminiscent of Super Bowl XLII, Manning managed to stay on his feet and pitched the ball to tight end Kevin Boss, who then raced 16 yards downfield for a first down.

The play essentially encapsulated the Cowboys’ season: Wade Phillips’ team seems to always find a way to let opportunity slip away. The improvisational lateral sparked the Giants, as two plays later Manning hit rookie wideout Hakeem Nicks for a 21-yard touchdown.

Following the touchdown, Dallas regained possession of the ball but once again made another costly mistake. After catching a short pass in the flat, Barber turned to run up field and was stripped by

Giants’ defensive end Mathias Kiwanuka.

New York recovered Barber’s fumble, marched down the short field and took a 14-10 lead heading into the break when running back Brandon Jacobs plunged into the end zone from the one-yard line.

In the second half, Romo’s performance was negated by mental lapses from the defensive and special teams units. Though the Cowboys once again regained the lead, they lost all of their momentum as soon as the Giants’ offense took the field.

On New York’s first play from scrimmage, Manning hit Jacobs in the flat for what seemed to be a typical 10-yard gain.

However, the Giants’ big back turned upfield and rumbled down the sideline for a 74-yard score.

In the first half, it took New York less see NFL, page 15

DAILY DIGITS

63

21

Number of saves by goalie Scott Barchard against Saint Anselm last Saturday, which set the program’s single-game record. The Jumbos were outshot 66-29 on the day, but Barchard made the difference, helping Tufts to a 4-3 overtime victory. Barchard’s mark broke the previous record of 60, set by James Kalec in 2005. Last year, Barchard’s .927 save percentage set Tufts’ singleseason record, and the sophomore’s current mark stands at a NESCAC-leading .953.

Consecutive regular-season victories for the Indianapolis Colts, which tied the previous record set by the New England Patriots, who won 21 straight from 2006 to 2008. The Colts are 12-0 after their latest victory, a 27-17 win over the Tennessee Titans last weekend. Indianapolis will have a chance to set the new mark on Sunday at home in Lucas Oil Stadium against the 8-4 Denver Broncos.

3 Undefeated Football Bowl Subdivision teams that will not be playing for the BCS National Championship. Big East champions Cincinnati, Mountain West Conference top dog Texas Christian University and the Western Athletic Conference’s Boise State all finished without a loss. But two other undefeated teams, SEC Champion Alabama and Big 12-champion Texas Longhorns, will square off for the trophy in January.

59.9 Points by which senior quad-captain Rob Matera won the 3-meter diving event at the 2009 MIT Invitational this weekend.

Matera, who won the one-meter event by nearly 40 points, led Tufts to a secondplace finish out of seven teams. Scores of 319.70 in the three-meter and 293.15 in the one-meter were both over the NCAAqualifying standard for Matera. For his efforts, Matera was named the NESCAC Performer of the Week on Monday.

+112 The scoring margin for the Tufts women’s basketball team in the first half of games this year. The Jumbos scored 52 points in the first 20 minutes of their 80-71 win over Wheaton on Monday night, the most in any half since November, 2003.

It was the sixth straight win for Tufts, which brought its season record to 6-1 as it heads to the Regis College Tournament next weekend in Weston, Mass.

17 Games, out of 22, in which the Toronto Raptors have given up more than 100 points this season. Though the Raptors let up just 78 points in Saturday’s win over the Chicago Bulls, by far their lowest total thus far, Toronto’s defense has left something to be desired.

The Raptors are the fourth-best scoring team in the NBA, but their abysmal defense has them at just 9-13, eight games back of first place in the Atlantic Division.

e can all admit it. For all the niceties that are exhibited between the United States and Great Britain, we still kind of resent the English — at least a little bit.

Maybe it is the way they lord Oasis over us or how they claim that their version of “The Office” is better than ours (which, given the latest episodes, might be true), but those pesky former oppressors across the pond always seem to be flaunting their greatness.

Nowadays, there are very few ways to settle the differences between the United States and England. War? That’s already been done, in both the revolutionary sense and in 1812. And even I have to admit the English do have some definite advantages — namely a better national anthem. How can America compete with “God Save the Queen?” So, there is only one final frontier left for America to claim bragging rights — sports.

And since no American can understand cricket (believe me, I tried when I was in Australia; it’s basically impossible), and England had to try to get Luol Deng and Ben Gordon on its basketball team to be competitive, there is only one solution — soccer.

What makes last Friday’s draw for the 2010 World Cup so compelling was that the United States’ national team was placed alongside England, Algeria and Slovenia in Group C. That sets up a showdown between the Yanks and the Three Lions on June 12 in Rustenburg, South Africa, which might be the biggest game in U.S. soccer history.

Now, I haven’t forgotten about last summer’s Confederations Cup, in which the United States ended European Champion Spain’s 35-game unbeaten streak and reached its first-ever FIFA final before blowing a 2-0 lead in the championship versus Brazil. That was a crowning achievement for the U.S. team and certainly helped prove its status as a force to be reckoned with on a global level.

But the World Cup is a different story.

This is the biggest stage in all of sports and the one time when even non-soccer fans will follow America’s progress. Additionally, England is the one team that everyone in the United States knows for a fact is good at soccer. If you ask the average American to name a player on Ivory Coast, a dark horse to win the World Cup in July, they probably can’t do it. But England? If they don’t know Wayne Rooney or Steven Gerrard, well, they will probably mention David Beckham.

And that is why there will be more riding on this game than just the points, since both teams should probably advance to the Round of 16 anyway. What will be at stake is the way soccer is recognized in this country. U.S. Coach Bob Bradley’s team has a unique chance to put its stamp on how the sport is regarded in the United States.

Not that this hasn’t been said about 500 other times, but trust me on this one — a win against England on the world’s biggest stage would finally, once and for all, prove how far soccer has come in this country.

And in order to do that, the best players from the U.S. national team will need to prove that they belong on the same field as the best in the world. While some like Clint Dempsey and goalie Tim Howard already ply their trade in the English Premier League, the pressure will mostly be on one guy: Landon Donovan.

Though he never found his footing in Europe, Donovan is one of the best players on the U.S. squad and the best player in Major League Soccer. But MLS is still far from being the English Premier League and Donovan needs a strong showing to prove that he is worthy of being included in the conversation of the world’s best footballers.

And while I’m not expecting it, if he leads the United States to victory, Donovan and the United States will be recognized among the globe’s best.

But don’t worry England fans. Regardless of the outcome, you’ll always have David Bowie.

Ethan Landy is a senior majoring in English.

He can be reached at Ethan.Landy@tufts. edu.

THE TUFTS DAILY

14

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

SPORTS

ANDREW MORGENTHALER/TUFTS DAILY

Senior co-captain Zach Bradley, playing in the No. 2 spot on the Tufts ladder, won all three of his matches Saturday as Tufts won two of three during a busy weekend.

Tufts falls to Cornell after breezing through MIT and Boston University MEN’S SQUASH continued from page 11

this season, so that was obviously tough, but the MIT and BU matches didn’t surprise us too much, and I thought we played well overall.”

Topping off the Saturday tripleheader with a match against the Big Red, Tufts hoped to capitalize on a debilitated Cornell squad that had just suffered a close 6-3 loss against Harvard not too long before taking the court against the Jumbos. Cornell, 2-2 coming into the match, had other plans in mind, quickly defeating eight of nine Tufts opponents in straight sets for an 8-1 win.

Senior co-captain Zach Bradley, playing in the No. 2 position, captured Tufts’ sole win in a four-set match against Cornell sophomore Thomas Spettigue.

With Bradley controlling the serve at 10-9 in the third set for

match point, Spettigue battled back and took the set 12-10. In the fourth, however, Bradley’s agility and control of the T paid dividends in the 11-4 win to take the match from his worn out opponent.

“My opponent pulled out some nice shots, and he pulled it out in the third set there,” Bradley said.

“Going into the fourth set, I tried to limit some of the mistakes I was making in earlier matches and just tried to get him moving around more, and it worked.” “[Bradley]’s win against Cornell was great,” Miller added.

“That was huge. He is really impressing us this season.”

Before facing Cornell in the afternoon, Tufts crossed rackets with the Terriers for the first time in the program’s history. Tufts’ closest call against BU came in the No. 5 position, where Miller faced tough opposition from the

start with a first-set, 7-11 loss to Terrier David Scott. While Miller went on to win the next two sets, Scott stayed alive with a 12-10 victory in the fourth. In the final set, though, Miller skillfully returned drives and drop shots that allowed Tufts to take the match 9-0, its first shutout of the season.

“I think I got a little too confident in that match and I didn’t warm up enough before playing,” Miller said. “My opponent was deceptively good, but I was glad I was able to swoop down for returns. It was a close one.”

“We knew BU had some good players, especially at the top of the ladder,” Bradley added. “With the exception of a couple matches, the games went smoothly.

Everyone pulled it out in the end and buckled down when they needed to, and it was nice to pull off the sweep in that match.”

Tufts faced MIT on the

STATISTICS | STANDINGS

Engineers’ home court to kick off Saturday’s slate of matches. The Jumbos continued their trend of success against MIT, topping their opponent with an 8-1 decision. Tufts cleaned up with six straight set wins and one comefrom-behind victory in four sets from freshman Sheldon Taylor in the No. 4 position.

Taylor lost his opening set 11-13 but held his opponent to a total of 17 points in the following three sets. In the No. 8 position, sophomore newcomer Chris Stoj split two lopsided sets with his opponent, dropping the first 11-3 and winning the second 11-6. In the third set, Stoj lost narrowly in a frustrating 15-13 set, paving the way for his opponent Ishaan Chugh to take the match.

“We went in knowing MIT would be one of our weaker opponents, but I think everyone played pretty hard and took

SCHEDULE | Dec. 9 - Dec. 13 WED

Men's Basketball

Women's Basketball

Ice Hockey

(2-5, 0-0 NESCAC)

(6-1, 0-0 NESCAC)

(4-2-1, 2-1-1 NESCAC/ECAC East)

NESCAC

W Amherst 0 Bates 0 Bowdoin 0 Colby 0 Conn. Coll. 0 Middlebury 0 Trinity 0 Tufts 0 Wesleyan 0 Williams 0

L 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

OVERALL

W 4 5 4 6 2 7 3 2 3 6

L 1 2 1 0 4 0 3 5 3 0

Individual Statistics PPG RPG Jon Pierce 16.6 7.7 Dave Beyel 15.1 5.1 Dan Cook 8.0 2.9 S. Anderson 8.0 4.0 Alex Goldfarb 3.9 2.4 Matt Galvin 2.6 2.0 James Long 2.1 3.9 Sam Mason 2.1 3.3 Tom Selby 2.1 2.9 Bryan Lowry 1.3 1.6 Reed Morgan 1.0 0.3 M. Lanchant. 0.8 1.3 Team

APG 1.1 1.1 0.3 0.4 1.3 4.9 0.7 0.6 0.3 0.1 0.7 0.0

62.9 39.6 11.3

NESCAC

W Amherst 0 Bates 0 Bowdoin 0 Colby 0 Conn. Coll. 0 Middlebury 0 Trinity 0 Tufts 0 Wesleyan 0 Williams 0

L 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

NESCAC

OVERALL

W 7 6 5 4 3 3 5 6 3 6

L 0 2 0 1 3 3 2 1 2 1

Individual Statistics RPG 5.0 10.3 5.9 7.0 3.9 0.9 1.0 1.0 0.8 1.0 1.7 1.5

care of business,” Bradley said.

“It was good to see some of the younger players, who haven’t had too much experience playing this season in matches, go out there and get a bunch of wins.”

With winter break on the horizon, the team will see the return of some crucial players to its lineup, such as juniors Alex Gross and Ben Rind. While most Tufts students will be spending their breaks at home, the men’s squash team will be preparing for one of its biggest matches of the season against Colby College.

“We’re coming back early to train for the second half of the season,” Bradley said. “The way we’re playing now, we think we’re going to do much better than last season, and when we go up against teams like Colby, we’re confident that we have a chance to turn the tables on them this time around.”

APG 3.0 0.4 2.6 2.1 2.9 0.6 0.0 0.3 0.0 0.0 1.0 0.3

Colleen Hart Julia Baily T. Kornegay Kate Barnosky Vanessa Miller Lindsay Weiner S. Robinson Katie Wholey Sarah Nolet D. Collins Samantha Tye Bre Dufault

PPG 18.6 16.9 12.1 9.4 6.6 2.9 2.0 1.8 1.8 1.7 1.3 1.0

Team

73.4 41.3 13.1

W Bowdoin 4 Williams 4 Middlebury 2 Trinity 2 Tufts 2 Amherst 2 Colby 2 Hamilton 2 Conn. Coll. 1 Wesleyan 1

L 0 0 0 1 1 2 2 2 3 3

THU

FRI

SAT

SUN

Women’s Basketball

vs. Maine Maritime 7:00 p.m.

vs. Regis/ Framingham St 1:00/3:00 p.m.

Ice Hockey

Connecticut College 3:00 p.m.

Men’s Basketball

OVERALL

T W L T 0 5 0 0 0 5 0 1 2 3 1 2 1 3 2 1 1 4 2 1 0 4 2 0 0 4 2 0 0 3 2 1 0 1 5 0 0 2 4 0

Individual Statistics Pts. 8 6 5 5 5 5 5 5 4 4 64

Tom Derosa Zach Diaco Dylan Cooper Trevor John Matt Amico Dylan Plimmer Mike Vitale Lindsay Walker Doug Wilson Conor Pieri Team

G 1 4 4 3 2 2 1 1 1 1 23

A 7 2 1 2 3 3 4 4 3 3 41

Goalkeeping Scott Barchard

S 322

GA S % 16 .953

Team

322

17 .950

Men’s Swimming and Diving Women’s Swimming and Diving Men’s Indoor Track and Field

at Bates Pentathlon 12:00 p.m.

Women’s Indoor Track and Field

at Bates Pentathlon 12:00 p.m.

Men’s Squash

Women’s Squash

THE TUFTS DAILY

Wednesday, December 9, 2009 Housing

-

-

Two three brds, Two four brds Available Available for next years school year. June 2010 to May 2011. Shop now and get what you want. Very convenient to school. Call for appt now 617-448-6233

Cowboys could again miss out on playoff berth NFL continued from page 13

than three minutes to take a 10-point lead away from Dallas, and this time, it only took 19 seconds for the Giants to recover from a three-point deficit. Jacobs’ strike, combined with punt returner Domenik Hixon’s 79-yard return for a touchdown in the fourth quarter, proved just how flaky this Cowboys team can be.

Every December, people hear the same story from the players and coaches, but nothing ever seems to change. Over the past two days, Phillips has been badgered with questions regarding his team’s late-season struggles, and it has become apparent that even the man in charge has no idea what to say.

In fact, during his postgame press conference, Phillips said, “No I don’t think [the Cowboys’ problems in December are] a mental block, I think it’s something that [the media] made up.” But regardless of whether or not Phillips acknowledges his squad’s struggles, the Cowboys have been absolutely dreadful in December for over a decade.

Fortunately for Phillips, after this season, he likely will never have to field another question about the Cowboys’ lateseason nose dives. It is hard to envision Dallas beating either San Diego or New Orleans in the upcoming two weeks, so the Cowboys’ playoff hopes may once again hinge on beating their division rivals.

But if history is any indication, the Cowboys can look forward to an early offseason, and Phillips can start sending out his résumé.

15

SPORTS -

-

-

CLASSIFIEDS POLICY All Tufts students must submit classifieds in person, prepaid with check, money order, or exact cash only. All classifieds submitted by mail must be accompanied by a check. Classifieds are $10 per week with Tufts ID or $20 per week without. The Tufts Daily is not liable for any damages due to typographical errors or misprintings except the cost of the insertion, which is fully refundable. We reserve the right to refuse to print any classifieds which contain obscenity, are of an overly sexual nature, or are used expressly to denigrate a person or group. Questions? Email business@tuftsdaily.com.

Win over Wellesley helped Tufts prepare for Cornell WOMEN’S SQUASH continued from page 11

Tufts’ players experienced their first taste of success in a Jumbos uniform.

According to Koo, the elation that came from this statement victory actually helped the Jumbos deal with the knowledge that their outcome against Cornell was almost inevitably bleak.

“In general, people played really well coming off our big win against Wellesley,” Koo said. “[The win] helped our morale, and I think people were more competitive and more into the match because everyone had won on Thursday.

“As a team we had high spirits because of the win, but we knew Cornell would be tough,” she continued. “We tried to support each other and give constructive criticism. In

terms of what we need to work on, we just need to be a little more confident because you make stupid mistakes when you have negative thoughts.”

The Wellesley victory certainly was a big one for Tufts, which opened the season with three straight 9-0 losses at the hands of Bates, Williams and Middlebury. Though the fall portion of the season is now over, the Jumbos are intent on keeping their fitness high and getting prepared to return to competition in January. Once the winter season kicks off on Jan. 23-24 at the Mount Holyoke/Smith Round Robin, Tufts’ chances at victory should be much higher.

“We all know what we want to work on now because when you play better players, it shows your weakness a lot more,” Koo said. “[Over break we will

be] working out as much as we can. We are coming back to Tufts early to train as a team, so that will be good for us.

“We need to work on playing the right shots against schools that are better than us, but I think after break it will be better because we’re playing teams more on our level,” she continued.

There a few positive things, however, that the Jumbos will take away from this fall semester in spite of the tough losses.

“I think as a team we’re doing really well staying in the game, returning serve with girls who are better than us and staying in there throughout the entire point,” Mahmud said. “Our team’s pretty close and really supportive of each other. We learn from each other by watching each other’s matches.”

Jumbos will close out first half at Regis Tournament WOMEN’S BASKETBALL continued from page 11

has already made 52 threes. Hart, now four away from tying the program’s three-point record, has led the way with a blistering 26-of-50 clip from downtown. “[Berube] said when we were learning our new offense that we want layups or three-pointers,” Miller said. “What we’re really looking to do is drive and penetrate, break down the defense and then find the people on the three-point line that are open. It’s been working for us.

“We have a lot of good shooters this year, which maybe hasn’t always been the case for us,” she continued. “We’re definitely looking to utilize that because we do have a big size disadvantage.”

Before taking a two-week holiday recess,

the Jumbos will play in the Regis College Tournament in Weston, Mass. beginning on Saturday. The two games this weekend will close out a successful first half for the Jumbos, one which has featured a road victory at preseason No. 9 Brandeis and blowout wins over perennial New England heavyweights Salem State and ColbySawyer.

Though Tufts’ early season success is, on one hand, consistent with the high standards it has set for itself over the past two years, it does come as a bit of a surprise considering the turnover on the team’s roster. The Jumbos lost eight players from last season’s team — all listed at 5-foot-8 or taller — which has forced them to play a smallerthan-usual lineup and use inexperienced players in significant roles. Considering all

the changes it has undergone, Tufts, which yesterday climbed into the D3hoops.com national top 25, is content with its 6-1 start.

“There were some questions at the beginning of the season — just trying to figure out who we are, what our strengths are — but I’ve liked how we responded to the adversity of losing some key players from last year,” Berube said. “There’s a lot of work to be done, a lot of work ahead of us, but I like how this team is gelling.”

“Obviously, 7-0 would be much nicer, but nobody’s unhappy about 6-1, especially because we’ve gotten some wins against some teams that I don’t think people expected us to beat,” Miller added.

“We still have a lot of things that we’re not happy with, but to be 6-1 is a good position to be in.”

ATTENTION the FOLLOWING STUDENT ORGANIZATIONS, Register Your Group NOW! According to rules and regulations all student organizations (whether funded or not by TCU) must register with the Office for Campus Life. The act of registration implies that a student organization obligates itself to abide by all the rules and regulations of the University pertaining to student organizations. This includes using Tufts name, facilities, resources and access to funding from any Tufts source.

According or our records the following groups need to register: ALLIES Amalgamates American Sign Language ANCHORD (Christian a capella) Anthropology Collective Applejam Arab Students Association Architecture Society Automobile Enthusiast Beelzebubs Bhakti Yoga Club Book Club Cheap Sox Chorale Christian Fellowship Christian Science Organization Club About Nothing CoCoDA Comedy Collective Equestrian (Coed), Fall/Spring

Essence European Club Feminist Alliance Graduate Student Council Hip Hop for Social Change HIV/AIDS Collaborative Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Hybrid Racing HYPE Mime Troupe Imaginet InFusion Inter Fraternity Council Jackson Jills Judo Juggling Coalition Jumbo Marching Band Junior Class Council Knitting Club Media Advocacy Board Men's Activist Coalition

REGISTER NOW! ocl.tufts.edu Look for “Student Organization Registration” on the right of the main page Questions? Contact ocl@tufts.edu

Midnight Café Model United Nations Monty Python Society Multi Racial Organization of Students at Tufts Musicians Collective Off-Hill Council Origami Club Orthodox Christian Fellowship Pens, Paint and Pretzels (3Ps) Queer Straight Alliance Quiz Bowl Republicans Returning Students Organization ROTC Joint Operations Rugby (Men, Women) Sarabande Spirt of Color sQ! Symphony Orchestra Tap Ensemble Transfer Student Alliance TUTV Women in Computer Science

16

THE TUFTS DAILY

ADVERTISEMENT

Wednesday, December 9, 2009