THE TUFTS DAILY
Sunny 79/67
Seven freshmen elected; soph. resigns Seven freshmen were elected to the Tufts Community Union Senate yesterday, while sophomore Senator Faith Blake resigned yesterday morning, leaving her seat open. Lia Weintraub, John Asare, Joe Thibodeau, Christie Maciejewski, Allie Can Lei, Laura Lasako and Joe Donenfeld were elected to freshman Senate seats, Elections Commission Public Relations Director Will Yu said early this morning. They beat out six other candidates. In the vote for the Freshman Class Council, Emma Rosenbluth was elected president, Simmone Seymour as vice president of academic affairs, Nick Hwang as vice president of social programming, Yihao Li as treasurer and Noha Ahmed as secretary. Sixty-three percent of the
freshman class voted in the elections, according to Yu. Yu said Blake’s seat will be filled in a special election within 15 academic days of her resignation. Blake informed the Senate of her decision in an e-mail yesterday morning. “Recent decisions regarding my academic career have necessitated adjustments in my extracurricular activities,” Blake told the Daily yesterday. Blake spoke fondly of her experience on the Senate. “I really enjoyed working with all of the other senators, and I have a lot of respect for them,” Blake said. “It was a great learning experience.” —by Matt Repka and Brent Yarnell
Funding can’t be conjured up for Tufts Quidditch team BY JON
CHENG
Daily Editorial Board
Colleges in the United States may only admit muggles, but that doesn’t mean that students can’t get their wizard on from time to time. Since 2005, a real-world adaption of Quidditch, the famous school sport of the Harry Potter books, has been taken up by 400 collegiate teams nationwide, represented by the International Quidditch Association. At Tufts, however, Quidditch will need to work its magic if it is to stay afloat through the coming year. The one-year-old Tufts Quidditch team is running into financial problems because the Tufts Community Union (TCU) has declined to provide it with sufficient funding for equipment, tournament fees and travelling expenses. According to team co-president Carly Boxer, a sophomore, Quidditch has been denied funding from the TCU because it is only considered an activity within the Harry Potter Society, which itself falls under the umbrella of the officially established Beyond the Light: Sci-Fi and Fantasy (BTL) Club. This year, the BTL allotted $517 to the Harry Potter Society, according to the treasury budget report. Boxer said that only a small portion of that sum is given to the team, and equipment alone outweighs its allocated budget. According to TCU Treasurer and junior Kate de Klerk, one of the reasons the Harry Potter Society was allotted such little funding is because they did not include Quidditch in their reported budget. Thus, the TCU could only supplement the club’s original budget with a one-time funding grant, which was used last year to purchase the team’s broomsticks. De Klerk added that the Quidditch team’s predicament is
TUFTSDAILY.COM
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2010
VOLUME LX, NUMBER 11
a singular situation, and the club differs from other clubs and organizations, which, in contrast, are funded through a regular budgeting process. “If groups are coming in with new events, then we try to get estimates from them, and we try to allocate funds according to those estimates,” De Klerk said. “If they say a certain amount is going to cost this much, then we take their word for it. ... If during budgeting, there are costs they can’t estimate, they submit buffer funding requests for unforeseen expenses during the next fiscal year.” The Quidditch team, however, is not the only sub-group that has run into financial problems. Activities under the Leonard Carmichael Society and the Asian Student Union have requested budgets that were rejected by the Treasury. Besides funding, Boxer said, TCU refuses to recognize Quidditch as an official club under its control due to Quidditch’s status as a physically violent sport, which could be a liability. TCU decided that the Quidditch team would be better suited as a club sport under the Athletics Department. “[TCU] suggested that Quidditch go to club sports because they are funded in a completely different way,” De Klerk said. “We have strict procedures for yearly purchases, and the same goes for tournaments. We have a lot of procedures that limit the flexibility of funding that clubs use to pay for lodging and transport.” With regard to Quidditch posing a potential liability, De Klerk believes that the athletics department has more appropriate procedures for insurance and consent forms than does TCU, making it a better place for the Quidditch team. Boxer, however, disagrees, stating that Quidditch see QUIDDITCH, page 3
Where You Read It First Est. 1980
Univ. to welcome neighbors to Hill BY
AMELIE HECHT
Daily Editorial Board
The Office of Community Relations will on Sunday welcome residents of Tufts’ neighboring Medford/Somerville communities to the Hill for Tufts’ eighth annual Community Day. The event, hosted in conjunction with the Cities of Medford and Somerville, will feature free lunch, activities and performances by student groups on the Academic Quad from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Director of Community Relations Barbara Rubel expects 1,500 guests to be in attendance. “The idea of the day is to open up the campus and be generous and hospitable and welcome people,” Rubel said. “We hope that this event opens doors for people and they realize there is a lot to take advantage of on campus.” Rubel said that Community Day was designed to appeal to local residents who live near the Tufts campus. “We hope we are reaching out to people who have never been here before,” Rubel said. “Its always really interesting to run into people who live near campus but have never actually seen the campus. We try to make people aware of all the resources available.” Representatives from approximately 30 departments and student groups will staff tables at the event, as will 36 community organizations in Somerville and Medford, Susan DeAmato, the administrative assistant in the Office of Community Relations, said. “They will each be explaining what they do and have some
AALOK KANANI/TUFTS DAILY
Medford and Somerville residents participate in Community Day 2009 at Tufts. fun sort of activity or giveaway,” DeAmato, who is the main organizer of the event, said. More than 10 campus groups will perform on the main stage, and several others will teach dance lessons or perform on a side stage throughout the day, according to DeAmato. “We will also have two large kids’ activities tents with things like pumpkin painting, face painting and cookie decorating available,” DeAmato said. Organizers will place more emphasis this year on highlighting the achievements of faculty and academic groups on campus, Rubel explained. “This year we made a real push to get more faculty groups to come and display their research,” Rubel said. “A number of members of the engineering department are going to be on hand as well.”
The Office of Community Relations also focused this year on publicizing the event extensively, according to Rubel. “We have really tried to get the word out,” she said. “It’s been in the newspapers, and there was the mailing of postcards to several thousand Somerville and Medford residents.” Rubel said that she had seen enormous growth in attendance since the event’s inception seven years ago. That year, only 200 residents came to campus. “It has definitely grown over the years both in the number of groups presenting and in the number of residents attending,” DeAmato said. “A large part of the success is thanks to the student volunteers who are just willing to help out.” Besides the students from see COMMUNITY, page 3
James Glaser moves to different deanship BY
DAPHNE KOLIOS
Daily Editorial Board
James Glaser is no longer the dean of undergraduate education, but he hasn’t gone far. Dean of Arts and Sciences Joanne Berger-Sweeney appointed Glaser over the summer as dean of academic affairs for arts and sciences. Glaser succeeds Vickie Sullivan, a professor of political science who has returned to the faculty full-time. In an e-mail to faculty members, Berger-Sweeney praised Glaser’s experience and expertise, calling him “the perfect choice” for his new position. “Overall, under Dean Glaser, Undergraduate Education, Student Affairs and Student Services … [were] forged into a better and more unified organization,” BergerSweeney, who came to the university from Wellesley this summer, said. Glaser’s successor as dean of undergraduate education has yet to be announced. An interim dean is expected to fill the position soon. Glaser will now focus primarily on faculty affairs. He will split the responsibilities of overseeing departments in the School of Arts and Sciences with Andrew McClellan,
Inside this issue
who holds the same title. Glaser will also be responsible for hiring faculty members, giving promotions and determining tenure, among other obligations. Academic affairs deans provide a liaison between the administration and departments and interdisciplinary programs, McClellan said. In his old position, Glaser helped University President Lawrence Bacow establish the President’s Task Force on the Undergraduate Experience. That task force is credited with initiating the Summer Scholars Program, the Snyder Lecture Series and a revision of the dean advising system, among other projects, Berger-Sweeney said. Glaser also oversaw the Retention Task Force, which supported lowincome students. This task force led to the creation of the Health Career Fellows Program, new advising for recipients of federal Pell Grants, health insurance for students without coverage, a fund for disability testing for needy students and programming for first-generation college students, according to Berger-Sweeney. Glaser said that he had achieved his objectives as dean of undergraduate education. “I had come in with a set of
goals and aspirations and I had accomplished all I hoped to accomplish,” he said. “It was nearing the end of my tenure, and the [academic affairs] position fortuitously opened up.” As the process to replace Glaser as dean of undergraduate education continues, other members of the administration have assumed some of his old responsibilities, according to McClellan. “[Glaser] will retain some of those jobs — a few central ones that he wants to keep — and I, and others, have added to their administrative load to enable him to move into the new job and to make sure that the functions of his former job are addressed without any loss,” McClellan said. McClellan has worked previously with Glaser and said he looks forward to working with him again. “I have tremendous faith in his ability to do this job and enormous respect and admiration for him as an administrator,” McClellan said. Glaser professed that he loved working as the dean of undergraduate education and said his new position is a positive change. “It’s a new, interesting opportunity for me to grow personally,” he said.
Today’s Sections
Some say questions asked during the ROOTs program made students unessessarily uncomfortable
A review of a new film about Allen Ginsberg and an interview with the directors.
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see ARTS, page 5
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