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THE TUFTS DAILY

VOLUME LXI, NUMBER 34

Where You Read It First Est. 1980 TUFTSDAILY.COM

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Somerville schools, Tufts respond to bullying laws

In fundraising effort, BUILD keeps midterm studiers awake

by

Corinne Segal

Daily Editorial Board

Justin McCallum/Tufts Daily

Student members of Building Understanding through International Learning and Development (BUILD) last night delivered coffee to late-night studier sophomore Weilin Mun. All this week, the group is distributing coffee and tea ordered via Facebook as a fundraiser to support its trips to Guatemala and India this summer.

Continued anti-bullying efforts on the part of Somerville public schools and the Tufts community are coinciding with hearings led by Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley to review the state’s new anti-bullying law.

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick (D) last May signed into effect the bill titled “An Act Relative to Bullying in Schools,” which requires Massachusetts primary and secondary schools to develop bullying prevention plans and offer curricula on bullying.

The two hearings last month contributed to the aims of a commission chaired by Coakley that is charged with reviewing the existing laws and deciding whether additional legislation is

needed for them to be effective.

Massachusetts schools were required to submit their plans to combat bullying under the new law to the state this December for approval, according to Somerville Public Schools’ Director of Student Services Richard Melillo.

Approximately 98 percent of school districts met the state criteria, he said.

“Everyone’s bullying plan is probably a little different, probably a little tweaked to their community, but it has to fall in line with the state mandates,” Melillo said.

The new legislation, he said, was spurred by several incidents in which young Massachusetts students, most famously 11-yearold Carl Walker-Hoover of Springfield in 2009 and 15-yearsee CYBER BULLYING, page 2

Somerville laborers, residents protest nonunion worksite by

Brent Yarnell

Daily Editorial Board

Somerville union workers and residents engaged in a contracting dispute with a private realty company have over the past few weeks picketed and rallied at the construction site of a proposed housing complex about a mile east of Davis Square, claiming that the company has violated promises to the city of Somerville that they would hire local union workers.

The dispute started late last year, when KSS Realty Partners awarded the contract to develop the first condominiums on the site, the former location of a MaxPak paper factory, to a nonunion contractor.

Somerville resident and union organizer Rand Wilson said that in doing so, KSS violated an agreement it signed with Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone in 2007 that said the city would “encourage” the Boston-based developer to hire union workers.

City of Somerville Spokesperson Michael Meehan said KSS is in full compliance with the covenant, despite selling

a portion of the project to a nonunion contractor, because that stipulation is not legally binding. “‘Encouraged’ means ‘encouraged,’” he said. “It is, by definition, nonbinding.”

Somerville Board of Aldermen President Rebekah Gewirtz told the Daily that the aldermen nevertheless expect KSS to respect the 2007 agreement.

“The members of the board feel really strongly that when there’s this kind of language in the covenant, it should be honored,” she said. “There’s a certain level of frustration that an acceptable outcome hasn’t been met.”

KSS Realty will on Friday meet with the Boston Building Trades union, one of the unions involved in the dispute, KSS Director of Acquisitions Ted Tobin told the Daily.

Wilson said the campaign against KSS would continue until Tobin signs a project labor agreement guaranteeing that the company would hire union workers and establish universal-standards labor hiring see MAXPAK, page 2

UEP thesis student doubles as secondyoungest Mass. state representative by

Marie Schow

Contributing Writer

State Rep. Ryan Fattman (R-Worcester), who is also a Tufts graduate student in the Urban Environmental Policy and Planning (UEP) program, is at age 24 serving as the second-youngest representative in the Massachusetts House of Representatives.

Fattman in January was sworn in to the House as a Republican representative for the 18th Worcester District after in November beating four-term Democratic incumbent Jennifer Callahan. He now represents residents of the Bellingham, Millville and Blackstone communities,

along with parts of Sutton and Uxbridge.

Justin Hollander, Fattman’s advisor and an assistant professor at UEP, praised his ability to balance his work in both the academic and political realms.

“He has a real strength working in teams,” Hollander said. “Ryan was a strong student and a gifted leader.”

Fattman lists promoting lower taxes for the disabled and working mothers among his goals in the House, he said.

“You can really make a difference if you choose to get involved,” Fattman said.

Fattman added that he is aiming to see FATTMAN, page 2

Inside this issue

courtesy the office of Sen. John Kerry

Participants of Somerville-headquartered YouthBuild pose with Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who has long supported the national program.

Somerville-based YouthBuild gets $1.1-million grant by

Gabrielle Hernandez Daily Staff Writer

YouthBuild USA, a national nonprofit headquartered in Somerville, was last month the recipient of a $1.1 million grant that will allow it to double the number of young people benefiting from its Postsecondary Education Initiative.

YouthBuild helps low-income youth who have dropped out of the education system to pass their General Education Development (GED) exams and develop marketable job skills through construction of low-income housing.

The national philanthropy fund New Profit selected YouthBuild to receive the money through the Social Innovation Fund of the federal Corporation for National and Community Service.

The grant, along with funding from democracy-promotion organization Open Society Foundations, will help YouthBuild expand its efforts through its education initiative, which attempts to funnel participants toward college completion, YouthBuild Vice President for Asset Development Charles Clark told the Daily.

The money will increase the number of YouthBuild participants to over 1,000 participants nationwide from its current 500 and boost the number of local branches of the initiative.

Peter Levine, research director of the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service, said YouthBuild’s efforts at promoting postsee YOUTHBUILD, page 2

Today’s Sections

Take advantage of Boston’s roots and celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with a hearty dose of Irish spirit.

Using household trash, B.E.A.T.s ironically keeps Tufts’ music scene fresh.

see FEATURES, page 3

see ARTS, page 5

News Features Comics Weekender

1 3 4 5

Editorial | Letters Op-Ed Classifieds Sports

8 9 10 Back

The Tufts Daily

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News

Thursday, March 17, 2011

UEP grad student, a state representative, cites ‘broad, open perspective’ on the Hill FATTMAN

continued from page 1

Danai Macridi/Tufts Daily

Cyber bullying, a problem increasing with the growth of anonymous websites, has recently come under scrutiny by a university task force composed of students and faculty.

Local schools align with bullying laws; Tufts considers cyber bullying measures CYBER BULLYING

continued from page 1

old Phoebe Prince of South Hadley last year, committed suicide in response to bullying.

“It was a tragedy,” he said. “That brought this to the forefront of the state legislation.”

Somerville schools also developed a new reporting system via telephone, offered in four different languages with the option of anonymity, Melillo said.

When the school receives a report, usually through a teacher, the school’s principal initiates an investigation to determine whether or not the incident constituted bullying, Melillo said.

“The principal would make a determination on whether bullying occurred or did not occur,” Melillo said.

Proactive action, Melillo said, was necessary to eliminate bullying.

“We’ve been pretty proactive about this,” Melillo said. “We want to eliminate bullying from the Somerville schools.”

Though the state bill only applies to primary and secondary schools, Tufts students and faculty in conjunction with Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman have since November been working on a task force examining cyber bullying on campus.

“We’re trying to look at what the legislation’s been doing and trying to move on that process,” task force member Tabias Wilson, a sophomore, said.

Wilson said the state legislation sets a good example for Tufts to take similar action against bullying, especially that conducted over the Internet.

The task force’s goal this semester is to initiate discussion and form ideas about how Tufts can improve the student and university approaches to cyber bullying, he said. He said the members of the task force are in a “thinking phase” until the end of the school year.

“We want to use this task force …

to examine Tufts’ culture and how healthy the culture is,” Wilson said. “[There’s] very little discussion in an organized way about how to deal with the problem of cyber bullying in part at a college level.”

Tufts Community Union President Sam Wallis, a senior, said he does not prefer the term “bullying,” since the act is more far-reaching than the term suggests.

“It is a lot broader than what we’ve grown up hearing,” he said.

Wilson said Tufts’ culture fosters online harassment, most notably because of a lack of policy in place that addresses online behavior. He referred to Tufts’ policies that should address issues of harassment as “vague.”

“We don’t have any policy specifically,” Wilson said. “There’s not a space where [students] can get educated and talk about these things at Tufts.”

Wilson said that while he does not advocate legal action against student bullies, the university has the capability to release the IP addresses of students to find the perpetrators of online bullying.

Wallis said he would rather the cyber bullying discussion be a student-initiated effort, rather than a policy coming from the administration.

“I don’t think it’s necessarily the place of the university to come down with a heavy hand on things or find out IP addresses or go after certain people,” Wallis said.

Wilson said websites such as The College Anonymous Confession Board (College ACB) encourage vicious anonymous remarks, as well as online threats. He was unsure whether the First Amendment protects anonymous remarks such as these.

“That’s an issue that has not been debated — whether anonymity is covered by the First Amendment,” Wilson said. “There really needs to be clarity in that area.”

rework Massachusetts’ policy toward illegal immigrants to cease the provision of benefits “for people who should not be in this country.” As the ranking Republican on the Public Service Committee, he is charged with addressing public employees’ salaries and retirement, as well as collective bargaining among state employees.

“We need to equal the playing field,” he said of legislation he signed earlier this month that would limit unions’ collective-bargaining measures. Fattman is also currently working to rewrite the pension plan for House representatives, he said.

Fattman, who will complete his thesis this summer, served as the Residential Director of Lewis Hall in 2009. He was living on campus when, in January of that year, President Barack Obama took office.

“It was a very politically charged campus when I was there,” he said, adding that he was surprised to find how unique his conservative political leanings were while he was still on campus and working on his degree.

“Tufts is a pretty liberal school. I considered myself moderate, and I got to Tufts, and I thought to myself, ‘Wow, I’m a rightwing nut-job,’” Fattman said.

Following his service in the House, he has tentative plans to branch out to other fields beyond government, adding that his Tufts education has served him well.

“I think with the skills from Tufts and from being a [member of the Sutton Board of Selectmen], I could do consulting,” Fattman said. “I learned to have a very broad, open perspective at Tufts,” Fattman said.

A continued role in public service may also be in his future, however.

“I am very interested in running for higher office,” Fattman said.

House colleague Dan Winslow (A ’80) (R-Norfolk) spoke highly of his young colleague’s credentials.

“I really admire Ryan Fattman’s courage and leadership,” he said, adding that Tufts’ commitment to innovative thinking and public service was a key element in both of their careers.

“That sort of Tufts problem-solving has served me well, and I think it will serve Ryan well,” Winslow said.

Fattman began his career in politics as a member of the Town of Sutton Board of Selectmen in 2006, at the urging of members of the Sutton community, he said.

In the election he won one of the two open seats with 70 percent of the vote, becoming the youngest selectman in Sutton history.

“It was something I never expected to happen,” Fattman, who is currently serving his third term on the Board, said.

After his second re-election to the Board of Selectmen, a former member of the Board advised Fattman to run for the office at the state level, he said. The race against Callahan became prickly at times, he remembered.

Fattman in June during the campaign wrote an op-ed criticizing his opponent for her lobbyist funding as well as her salary as a representative.

“That’s where the race started getting a little testy,” Fattman said. Callahan organized a rally in a nearby town where participants, including Fattman’s third-grade teacher, held protest signs, one of which read, “Fattman is a liar,” he said.

Fattman said his ability to move was integral in his victory.

“I made a joke out of everything, and I believe that won the race,” he said.

Nonetheless, Fattman did not take his opponent lightly. “She was a tough opponent,” he said.

In 2008, Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government presented Fattman with the Rappaport Institute’s Public Policy Fellowship, awarded to 12 Boston-area graduate students enrolled in a public policy program.

Union representatives claim realty firm agreed to hire local workers MAXPAK

continued from page 1

practices on all of their projects, rather than separate standards for each trade.

“He can sit and meet with the building trades all he wants, but he’s got to sign a project labor agreement,” Wilson said.

Somerville Ward 5 Alderman Sean O’Donovan voiced strong support for unions and the Somerville laborers working on the project.

“The optimal outcome would be a substantial amount of union employment at that site, coupled with Somerville people in the non-union positions that would be needed to complete the project,” O’Donovan told the Daily.

The projects’ developers, employing workers from the firm GFC Development, plan to start construction this summer on the first of what will eventually be 199 housing units on the five-acre MaxPak site.

Pickets forced construction to a halt at the MaxPak site on March 3 and 4, and workers picketed again on March 9.

Tobin noted that the only contractor he has so far hired to begin excavation on the

site, RSG Contracting, is a union contractor. RSG backed out of the project after last week’s protests, the Boston Globe reported.

O’Donovan said the aldermen are counting on Curtatone’s support in negotiating an agreement with KSS. “The mayor could be instrumental,” O’Donovan said.

Curtatone has been facilitating talks between KSS, Boston Building Trades and the New England Regional Council of Carpenters since late last year, Meehan said.

Somerville Alderman-at-Large Bruce Desmond introduced an amendment to the city’s responsible-employer ordinance that would require all developers receiving city funding to hire local workers, though the amendment would not apply retroactively to the KSS, Gewirtz said.

“Boston has a similar ordinance that hasn’t been challenged legally that has been prohibiting Somerville workers from getting jobs at Boston sites,” Gewirtz said, adding that the aldermen have heard a legal opinion that the Boston ordinance would withstand a court challenge.

$1.1-million grant for nonprofit expands higher education opportunities for youth YOUTHBUILD

continued from page 1

secondary education are sorely needed.

“For 18- to 25-year-olds who don’t go to college, we as a society provide very little,” he said.

“We spend a lot on jail, a lot on the military and 3 percent of our GDP on college, but only a small proportion of our student population is going to four-year colleges,” he said.

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who in 1992 introduced a bill in the Senate that allowed for YouthBuild to receive federal funding, praised the organiza-

tion’s efforts in a statement

“YouthBuild saves lives, period,” he said. “It rescues kids who could fall through the cracks and empowers them to become members of the workforce with a college degree.”

In its first two years of operation, 38 percent of YouthBuild’s postsecondary education program participanet enroll in either two- or four-year college programs, Clark said, adding that the retention rate after the first year was 59 percent.

Levine expressed his excitement about YouthBuild’s growth as a model for social improve-

ments. In addition to its plans to expand its post-secondary education programs, the organization also has a “Green Initiative,” designed to teach participants retrofitting skills to construct green housing and has set up a program in which participants construct charter schools.

“We need programs like YouthBuild to experiment, to try something new. For about 30 years, we haven’t been trying much,” Levine said.

A study published by YouthBuild found that, on average, when a young person enters

the YouthBuild program, he or she estimates his or her own life expectancy at 40 years, and upon graduating the program, the average estimate goes up to 72 years, according to Levine.

“The real value is the idea that the kids come out with these skills,” Levine said.

Clark said the initiative has proven effective at improving the quality of life for participants.

“As a practical matter, someone who is entering a job or career market with only a GED or high school diploma is at a significant disadvantage in comparison with someone with

a postsecondary degree,” Clark said. “Our postsecondary education program could increase the opportunities available for graduates and allow them to position themselves for more persistent and rewarding futures.”

Junior Yun Luo, a Tisch Scholar who interns for YouthBuild as part of an individual project each scholar is asked to take on, emphasized the national program’s importance.

“YouthBuild has a lot of impact, not just on an educational level but on a personal level,” Luo said.

Features

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tuftsdaily.com

Boston goes all out for St. Patrick’s Day

Yuantee Zhu | What Would YuAntee Zhu?

Only a few days remain before spring break, and getting as far away as possible from chilly Boston is undoubtedly the first thought on the minds of most Jumbos. But before hopping on that plane to the tropical destination of your choice, it’s time to pay a little homage to St. Pat. With a rich Irish tradition and a penchant for cozy pubs, Boston is the place to be on St. Patrick’s Day. So, today, take advantage of the city’s Celtic history, put on your greenest shirt and go grab a Guinness. Hey … you’re one-eighth Irish, right?

D

City’s Irish roots offer many ways to observe the beloved holiday

by Sarah

Korones

Daily Editorial Board

City of Boston St. Patrick’s Day Parade Sunday, March 20, 1 p.m.

Boston’s parade might not feature a green river like the annual Chicago parade, but it does have an equally impressive history. Perhaps the oldest St. Patrick’s Day tradition in Boston, the annual Southie St. Patrick’s Day Parade celebrates both the Irish holiday and Evacuation Day, a holiday that commemorates the evacuation of British troops from the city in 1776. Today, the festivities take place in South Boston and loop around Dorchester Heights, the very spot on which the Continental Army perched with their cannons and weaponry as the British were forced out. The parade will feature military units, politicians and marching bands, as well as clowns and television characters for the younger crowd.

Irish Pubs There’s no better time or place to enjoy a drink in the middle of the afternoon than on St. Patrick’s Day in Boston. For senior Cady Macon, this last opportunity to spend the big day in Beantown is not to be missed out on.

“Last year I had an interview on St. Patrick’s Day,” she said. “When I went into the office at two, they were hanging up decorations. When I left at four, I saw two kegs of Guinness.”

This time around, Macon, who plans to go downtown for the celebration, made sure she would be free.

“I’ve never gone out in Boston for St. Patty’s, so I deliberately switched my flight to Friday night this year,” she said.

For one of the city’s rowdier celebrations, hop on the T and head to Faneuil Hall. From Kitty O’Shea’s to Ned Devine’s, it doesn’t take more than a glance at the signs to realize that the bars lining the old marketplace and surrounding streets are almost entirely Irish. McFadden’s (148 State Street) will open at 8 a.m. with a free Irish Breakfast

Dumped in Dewick ear Yuantee,

My girlfriend dumped me at Dewick last week, and I’ve since struggled.

First came the surprising tears over the initial shock, then the immediate abuse of a narcotic and then the lying in bed for days at a time. My friends want to take me out, but I don’t dare go out — not to parties, not to the gym, not to Tisch — for fear of running into that brutal she-thief who stole and destroyed my once happy heart. I still think there’s a chance we’ll get back together, Yuantee, but until then I fear I might do something really stupid really soon. What should I Zhu? -Dumped in Dewick

Gene Buonaccorsi/tufts daily

The Tufts EWo Women’s Ultimate Team yesterday held a St. Patrick’s Day bakesale in the Mayer Campus Center.

Buffet. The first 200 guests to arrive will receive free T-shirts, and patrons will have the chance to participate in contests throughout the day. The Black Rose (160 State Street) will also offer an Irish breakfast and will be giving away tickets to that night’s sold out Dropkick Murphys show at the Paradise Rock Club and Lounge.

If you’re not up for venturing all the way downtown, Davis Square offers plenty of equally attractive options.

Sligo Pub (237 Elm Street) is the ultimate Irish dive bar, and The Burren (247 Elm Street) will open at 6 a.m. on the big day for a full Irish breakfast followed by traditional Irish music all day long.

Irish Heritage Trail Although Boston’s many pub owners might disagree, not every St. Patrick’s Day celebration needs to revolve around green beer and Irish Car Bombs.

The holiday provides the perfect occasion to learn a little more about the city’s Irish heritage. The trail consists of a guide to Irish-American artists and other public figures from the 1700s to the present, and the path is divided into three sections consisting of sites in downtown Boston, in surrounding

Gene Buonaccorsi/tufts daily

Mint chocolate chip cookies were among the St. Patrick’s day offerings at a bakesale yesterday in the Mayer Campus Center.

neighborhoods and those in cities outside of Boston. A walk through the city along the Irish Heritage Trail will truly expose you to Boston’s immense Irish roots — even Fenway Park was built by a young Irish immigrant in 1881.

Irish Cuisine Although Shamrock Shakes from McDonald’s are enticing, they are certainly not the only festive foods one can indulge in on St. Patrick’s Day. Most pubs in the city will be offering special Irish fare throughout the day.

Grafton Street Pub & Grill (1230 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA), named after a famous shopping district in Dublin and situated in the heart of Harvard Square, will be offering a special St. Patrick’s Day menu alongside traditional Irish music.

“They will most likely have bagpipers come,” Amelia Sutton, communications manager for Grafton Street Pub, said. “They will be serving the traditional Irish fare — corned beef and cabbage, shepherd’s pie and a wild salmon.”

Even less traditionally Irish restaurants are getting in on the fun.

American restaurant 28 Degrees (1 Appleton Street, Boston, MA) in the South End will also be offering a special St. Patrick’s Day menu on March 17. Diners at this South End eatery can enjoy Irish soda bread, traditional lamb stew and a decadent Bailey’s cheesecake for dessert.

St. Patrick’s Day 5K Sunday, March 20, 11 a.m.

For those not wishing to blow their spring break diets at the last minute on heavy stews and even heavier beer, there are more active ways to spend the weekend. The St. Patrick’s Day 5K in South Boston will begin prior to the annual parade, and all proceeds will go to the Boys & Girls Club of Boston.

Although she isn’t Irish, senior Jillian Gruber is one Tufts student looking forward to the race. Gruber decided to spend her last day in Boston celebrating St. Patrick’s Day in a more healthconscious way.

“I didn’t get a spot in the President’s Marathon Challenge, so I decided to keep a look out for other shorter races around town,” she said. “The St. Patrick’s Day 5K seemed like the perfect opportunity.”

DD, This is a difficult question, because I am aware that each case of this sort is unique in some way, and also because I’ve always been the one doing the dumping. My safest advice, however displeasing, assumes she won’t be coming back. In most cases, attempts to win a dumper back will lead to further suffering and physical pain. Hence, the safe play: It’s time to move on.

So, you’ve drunk yourself to sleep. The first thing to do when you wake up, whether it’s this day or the next, is to turn on your light.

Pull up your blinds. Darkness is not conducive to healing. Then take a long, cold shower and, in it, masturbate. Shave. Flex your muscles in the mirror. Admire the hefty appendage dangling prestigiously between your quads.

Next, make yourself a hearty breakfast using whatever Market Basket delights are available in your refrigerator — your roommates’ foods are most certainly encouraged. You’ll need a full tank to get over the hill. Save any apologies for later.

Now, well-rested and well-fed, is the time for some drugs, as I know the difficulty in completing this next step sober.

Pack a backpack of nips and narcotics, and step outside. Don’t bother with a book, for there will be plenty where you’re headed.

You’ll enter Tisch and notice the brothel they call “The Reading Room” to your right.

You’ll enter this brothel and notice the ample quantity of coeds scantily dressed in indoor clothing (no coats, baby). But despite their dress, these magnificent beauties will not be there to socialize. Order lots of caffeine at the Tower Café and sit on a sofa under the paper cup chandelier, looking up at the light as your chemicals kick in.

You will wait, and soon, the angel of your nightmares, your Lolita, will also need caffeine. She may come from any of three doors, so keep an eye on all three. As soon as you see her, you must take your pack and cup and go. Go straight home.

Congratulate yourself on your couch with a drink. You went out to where you feared she was, and this alone is an enormously vital baby step. You’ll be doing keg stands and romancing Alpha Phi girls by the weekend.

Mind you, this is not what I would Zhu. I would get her back, because I’m a sucker for shooting for, and subsequently conquering, the impossible. I feed off my own suffering, anyway. And, as someone heading to medical school in June, I usually prefer to avoid heavy narcotic abuse when I drink.

So, hell — confront her in the library.

Show you’re doing fine without her while also announcing your intentions of winning her back. Be very blunt. Show her your pack of nips and narcotics, and propose to get naughty in the book stacks like old times. She likely will decline, and you will not win her back that day, but you will undoubtedly impress her. You can put your best foot forward on the gas, but at the end of the day, it’s her call if she wants to go for the ride. So, roll down your window and see if your once-fair maiden needs a lift.

At least, that’s what I would Zhu. Yuantee Zhu is a senior majoring in biology.

He can be reached at Yuantee.Zhu@tufts.edu.

The Tufts Daily

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Comics

Thursday, March 17, 2011

SUDOKU Level: Guarding Jimmer Fredette or Kemba Walker

Wednesday’s Solution

Late Night at the Daily

Wednesday’s Solution

Kochman: “He’s like a sour apple and I’m a juicy grapefruit.”

Please recycle this Daily.

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Bangin’ Everything in Weekender Arts & Living

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B.E.A.T.s brings infectious rhythms, quirky humor to Tufts The student group gives budding percussionists a new place to test their skills by

Andrew Padgett

Daily Editorial Board

Last week, after conducting some thorough research, I made a shocking discovery: There are non-a cappella music groups at Tufts. Some of these groups even play musical instruments.

Curious, I decided to investigate this matter further and stumbled upon a lively ensemble of skilled percussionists.

I call them percussionists instead of drummers for a reason; drums aren’t quite their preferred choice for a good bang.

I’m talking, of course, about Tufts’ wildest percussion group, B.E.A.T.s (Banging Everything At Tufts). And by everything, they mean everything: buckets, teakettles, postal service scratch boxes, ladders, traffic cones, water jugs, chairs, street signs, sinks, even bicycles.

“We’re not really so much a percussion group as we are a trash liberation group,” sophomore Jack LeMay said.

What this means is that, unlike m o s t other

performers, they don’t have to dish out hundreds of dollars at a music store to acquire the proper instruments. A simple, fun and completely free trip to an alley or trash dump will suffice.

“Where some people see trash, we see a potential instrument. Junkyards hold trash hostage. We rescue it,” junior Anna Gilmer said.

But members don’t just limit themselves to just the dumps.

There’s also Home Depot (or Treasure Island, whichever way you want to look at it). Places like this are a bangin’ time if you learn to see the musical potential in their seemingly commonplace products.

“We all hang out for a bit together and then go to Home Depot, and we bring drumsticks with us. And we see serious shoppers, checking out cabinets for their homes and whatnot, but we’re just banging on buckets and trashcans and anything metal in the store. It’s a dope time,” senior Alisa Healy said of the instrument search process.

So in case you haven’t figured this out yet, a unique culture and attitude permeates the spritely B.E.A.T.s musicians. At first glance, they could be classified as “street musicians,” but even this broad and generalizing term cannot fully encompass the music they make. There’s ultimately no way to stick a label on these guys (other than “awesome”) because there’s not much they won’t play music with — regardless of whether they find the materials in their friends’ kitchens or in a deserted parking lot.

“No household object is safe,” group president Jodi Bosin, a sophomore, said. Bosin is also a photo editor at the Daily.

These daring percussionists draw from a number of environments, transcending the boundaries of “street art” by simply playing their music anywhere they want (in- or outdoors), with anything they want. B.E.A.T.s prides itself in overcoming certain cultural and financial restrictions on what music is “supposed” to be.

“What we do brings access to anyone who wants to play music,” Gilmer said.

“Our music is for everyone,” sophomore Ben Silverstein, the troupe’s most recent addition, added.

While this is true for the music itself, the group still maintains a high standard of quality, holding rigorous auditions once or twice a year. On average, in the fall, around 75

students try out for the group, but only three or four make it in. This is partly in an effort to keep B.E.A.T.s at a relatively low membership so that things don’t get too disorganized.

Still, auditions are a fun time for everyone, even if you don’t get in, LeMay said. Though members keep hush-hush about the specifics of the audition process, they revealed to me that each round gets more intense.

As they progress from stage to stage, auditioners go through additional questioning and testing that may or may not be related to percussion.

As for the final selection criteria, this as well is a matter of utmost secrecy. But what the members can say is that it varies and depends on each individual person.

“Sometimes,” LeMay said, “we care more about the person’s personality and how they would function within the group, and other times we care more about their percussive abilities.”

“It’s definitely not just about how good your rhythm is,” Healy added.

Once auditions are over, a lucky few new percussionists go through a period of initiation, rife with undisclosed rites of passage that only the B.E.A.T.s members know. One of the results of these rites, however, jumps out from the mist of secrecy and shines brightly for all mankind to enjoy: the newly assigned nickname.

This serves as an important component of the group’s dynamic — each member possesses his or her own special nickname. To name a few: Buckwheat, Pumpkin, Slugnutz, Soupz, Beaches and Peter. During practices and events, and pretty much any other time, members tend to refer to each other by these names.

“The nicknames, I feel, are a part of this awesome B.E.A.T.s story and tradition that’s been developing over the years,” Peter, who declined to reveal his real name because “Peter” comprises his true identity, said.

According to the group’s website (tuftsbeats.com), “The confidential process of naming is not open for discussion, but it is said that a strange combination of free association, drawing, sing and dance, and meditation is involved.”

To shed some light on the folklore, the group was formed relatively recently, in October of 2002. After meeting every Wednesday and putting together a few songs, the original mem-

bers performed their first show in January 2003 at an AIDS outreach event in Dewick MacPhie dining hall. From then on, the banging only grew louder, especially with the occurrence of the following events: 1. The fall 2004 discovery of the Mukanda nation, a supportive motherland for all B.E.A.T.s bangists that unified the group in unprecedented ways.

2. Soon after, their first performances at the International Orientation and Gantcher Center shows propelled them to their current stardom.

3. The first ever 4/20 show in 2005, perhaps the most monumental of B.E.A.T.s events in history. Every year on April 20, they bang away in Dewick to celebrate how beautiful life on this lush, green hill really is.

“The 4/20 show is the most defining moment of the year for B.E.A.T.s,” Gilmer said.

With each year, the show adopts a new theme — past ones include “B.E.A.T.s Birthday Party” and “Welcome to the Stoned Age.” (They’ve kept this year’s theme under wraps thus far.) Members have been working extra hard to bring Tufts its best 4/20 yet, actively rehearsing and writing new material in preparation for the big day.

“I can’t wait to see what they’ve come up with for this year’s show,” sophomore Annie Callaway, who attended the celebration last year, said. “Each time I see them, they’ve evolved or branched out in some way.

They always have something new and original to share.”

Nevertheless, these great results don’t come without great effort. The songwriting process can be a long one, but also an exciting and fulfilling one.

“We jam in our closet for awhile, and after we find a few key parts of the song, we take just those parts into another room.

We do it sort of measure by measure,” LeMay said.

An innate tension between fluidity and order fuels much of the writing. Jamming gets the creative juices flowing, and then an actual structure and rhythm begins to balance them out.

“It’s a struggle between trying to organize people and just, like, letting it go,” Healy said.

The sound and structure of B.E.A.T.s songs can vary quite a bit, according to the number of instruments and musicians involved and the thematic con-

tent. During shows, the group frequently alternates between larger and smaller groups of people playing together, using different materials depending on the song.

But there are some objects the audience can always count on seeing (and hearing), including the teakettle, which is important for keeping time, and chairs, important for sitting purposes, but also for making various noises.

“Some people play certain instruments more than others,” Bosin said. “But we do usually switch it up depending on the song or jam,” she said.

And switch it up they have.

At the Issue as Muse show last Saturday, the ensemble surprised the audience in two distinct ways: first, by incorporating rap and freestyling into their typically instrumentals-only music, and second, by rapping proudly in favor of horsemeat as a legal food.

“We were supposed to go and perform for this environmental group, but they seemed wishywashy and we changed our minds,” Healy said. “Instead, we argued for the consumption of horsemeat. We talked about something valuable to the community at large.”

The standout line of the night, Silverstein said, was, “What’s on the menu? Horsemeat, brisket/ side of mashed potatoes for your buttered Seabiscuit.”

We had a great time,” he said.

Judging from this, I am incapable of telling what B.E.A.T.s will do next. But here’s what I can tell you: After sitting with some of these bold musicians in Soundbites for just over an hour, I am indubitably converted. Free the trash! Eat the horses! And most importantly, bang on everything you can — you never know what song is waiting to happen.

photos by dilys ong design by leanne brotsky

The Tufts Daily

6

Weekender

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Theater Review

‘The Select’ is an amusing but poor interpretation of Hemingway Volumes of alcohol that would put a college student to shame can’t make up for wordiness and length by

Maggie Selvin

Contributing Writer

Not a fan of Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” (1926)? Maybe you’ll find the novel a little more accessible in the New York-

The Select (The Sun Also Rises) Written by Ernest Hemingway Directed by John Collins At the Paramount Theatre through March 20 Tickets $25 to $69 based theater group Elevator Repair Service’s theatrical interpretation, dubbed “The Select (The Sun Also Rises),” which is playing at the Paramount Theatre.

If the concept of portraying Hemingway on stage seems strange to you, you’re not alone. After all, the beauty of Hemingway’s work is in his precise wording, and though this play tries to capture the earthiness of his writing through protagonist Jake Barnes’ (Mike Iveson) narrative monologues, even this device fails to do justice to the original piece.

The play opens with Jake delivering one of these speeches, about his companion Robert Cohn (Matt Tierney), who seems only peripherally aware that he’s being scathingly analyzed, as the two drown their sorrows in the first of many glasses of alcohol. It is immediately apparent that the dialogue comes straight out of the original book: As the plot begins to unfold onstage, Jake’s narration is punctuated with the occasional “I said,” or “I remained silent.” This technique somewhat maintains the connection between the adaptation and the text but comes off as overly selfconscious.

On the whole, Hemingway fans may be

disappointed to listen to the dulcet droning of Iveson’s uninspired and, frankly, annoying Jake. As Iveson plods his way through Hemingway’s words, he makes the protagonist out to be more of a sad sack than a wry observer of human nature.

Lucy Taylor, as Brett Ashley, offers one of the stronger performances in “The Select.”

She bounds across the stage with a vivacity that appropriately contradicts her fixation on the numbing agents of alcohol and cigarettes, which she constantly possesses in her skeletal hands.

Tierney delivers Cohn’s lines bashfully with his eyes on the ground, but his efforts to convey a shy personage result in many of his lines coming out unintelligibly.

Unfortunately, failing to project is a pretty common failing in this play: When Frances (Kate Scelsa), Cohn’s spurned lover, delivers a shrieking diatribe, the audience must strain to understand just what it is that she goes on about for a little too long.

The strength of director John Collins’ stage adaptation lies in his portrayal of the relationships between characters. Take a sardonic protagonist left literally emasculated after World War I, a Jewish former Princeton wrestler who holds more romantic ideals than his jaded cohorts, an aristocratic hottie with a devil-may-care demeanor, a slew of colorfully damaged characters in postwar Europe, several gallons of alcohol and a lot of sex, and it makes for an interesting dynamic.

It becomes apparent quickly that Brett — soon to be divorced from an English lord and remarried to the poor, jealous and perpetually drunk Mike Campbell (Pete Simpson) — has a romantic past with Jake. The two kiss, pull apart sadly, kiss again, fight and kiss again repeatedly throughout the play.

In order to understand fully the scope of this tragic and somewhat tempestuous love affair, you have to read between the lines a little, but the actors do a good job of hinting

Mark Barton/ArtsEmerson

The Lost Generation does not shy away from the bottle in this adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s ‘The Sun Also Rises.’ at Jake’s impotency and highlighting how it divides him and his beloved.

The drama unfolds against the backdrop of a wood-paneled bar, the walls of which are lined with countless bottles (and “countless” seems to be the number the characters set as their consumption goal). College students will undoubtedly get a kick out of the shameless way characters chug entire bottles of wine.

The play makes effective use of space. The set doesn’t change, yet serves as everything from a bar to a cafe to Jake’s office to his apartment. Later, when the gang takes a jaunt down to Pamplona, Spain, for bullfighting and a scandalous love affair between Brett and the bullfighter Pedro Romero (Susie Sokol), the stage is bathed in a yellow light that somehow transforms the bar’s atmosphere into that of sunny Spain.

Some of the high points of Collins’ adapta-

tion are the music and spot-on sound effects.

The sounds of bottles poured offer a comical effect, and the revving noises of taxis driving help diversify the static setting. The music — whether soft jazz, flamenco guitar or French pop — is always suited to the mood of the stage. A dance number to “Les Petits Boudins” (1967) has an upbeat, infectious quality that steals the show.

Overall, the play has some positive attributes but is somewhat of a disappointment for true fans of Hemingway. If you’re more interested in theater than literature, though, you’re in luck: When the dialogue seems tedious, take a look at what is going on in the background.

The bartenders spin wine bottles and act their wordless parts with hilarity, suggesting that Elevator Repair Service understands the fact that in Hemingway’s work, what isn’t said is just as important as what is.

What’s up this weekend?

Movie Review

Looking to make your weekend artsy? Check out these events!

Dropkick Murphys: Punk rock band the Dropkick Murphys are shipping up to Boston, performing a string of concerts in their hometown before heading on tour to Europe. (Tonight and Friday at 6 p.m. at the House of Blues. Tickets are sold out but can be found online for around $100.)

Courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Rango (Johnny Depp) unwittingly faces his greatest adversary.

Quirky ‘Rango’ triumphs as a Western parody by

Melissa MacEwen Daily Staff Writer

Imagine this: You are a nameless, Hawaiian shirt-toting pet chameleon who finds himself newly homeless and

Rango Starring Johnny Depp, Harry Dean Stanton, Isla Fisher Directed by Gore Verbinski alone in the middle of the Nevada desert.

After asking a passing armadillo for help, you are told to “follow your shadow” to a nearby desert settlement. A few death scares and a surreal dream sequence later, you finally stumble across another lizard: Beans (Isla Fisher), the orphaned daughter of a rancher. Beans takes you home to the good town of Dirt and leaves you to your own devices. Thus begins the story of Rango, Dirt’s newest arrival.

Rango ( Johnny Depp) soon makes

a name for himself among the toughest locals after wandering into the local watering hole and portraying himself as a reckless drifter. He names himself Rango, after the locals’ favorite cactus juice liquor, and, with a mix of luck and brazenness, slays the hawk that haunts the town. Delighted to be free of the hawk, the locals appoint Rango sheriff and tell him their plight: The water that has sustained Dirt for years has disappeared, and the ranchers fear their livelihoods may be next. On his quest to save Dirt and integrate himself into the community, Rango must handle a scheming mayor, a mafia of moles, the “Spirit of the West” and a budding romance.

“Rango” is the first animated film created by the special effects company Industrial Light and Magic (ILM). It is perhaps this novelty, or the successful working relationship between director Gore Verbinski and Johnny Depp that started with the “Pirates of the Caribbean” (2003, ’06, ’07) movies, which helped innovate “Rango” and makes it stand out against the background influx of recent animated films.

After all, “Rango” can hardly claim to

have an original plot. Instead, it is the movie’s quirkiness and flat-out weirdness that sets it apart from its animated rivals.

Take, for example, the mariachi band of owls that shows up intermittently over the course of the film. The band narrates important goings-on in the story and helps the movie segue between scenes, while adding some unexpected comic relief. “Rango” even pulls off a “your mom” joke and a full-fledged bat-flying parody of the classic helicopter attack scene from “Apocalypse Now” (1979) without seeming like it’s trying too hard.

Instead of trying to do anything very different or original, “Rango” basks in pointed self-mockery and effectively parodies the Western genre. Though there is a thin line between a film being humorously meta and a film being annoyingly self-referential, “Rango” manages to avoid this pitfall. Comparing “Rango” to an animated version of “Blazing Saddles” (1974) actually wouldn’t be too far-fetched.

Even though “Rango” is an animated see RANGO, page 7

Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS) Spring Open House — The Coming of the Civil War: The MHS marks the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War with events including an exhibition talk focused on photographs from the Abolitionist movement and the display “’Oil and Water Are Not More Contrary ... than North and South: Three Generations of Adamses on Slavery and Sectionalism.” Refreshments will be served throughout the day.

(Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston. Admission is free.)

Dervish: Dervish, one of Ireland’s most acclaimed practitioners of traditional folk music, is visiting the United States. The group’s striking musicianship and affecting catalogue of songs are sure to please anyone who attends. (Friday at 8 p.m. at the Somerville Theater. Tickets are $28.)

Steve-O: The “Jackass” member and clown-college graduate will be at the Wilbur Theatre for a stop on “The Entirely Too Much Information Tour,” no doubt hurting himself in bizarre, disgusting ways for his audience’s “enjoyment.” Talk about schadenfreude. (Saturday at 9:45 p.m. at the Wilbur Theatre. Tickets are $25-$35.)

—compiled by the Daily Arts Department

Thursday, March 17, 2011

The Tufts Daily

7

Weekender Mitchell Geller | Makes it Rain

Top Ten | Things We “Learned” from Rebecca Black’s “Friday” Video On the surface, Rebecca Black’s viral sensation “Friday” may just seem like a stupid tween phenomenon, in which some untalented 13-year-old got her pop star dreams falsely validated by her rich parents and Ark Music Factory. But if you dig deep enough, you’ll find some important educational messages buried in the subtext.

The Daily Arts Department has helped by pickin’ out the 10 most important lessons: 10. Gotta be fresh: Gotta go downstairs.

9. Gotta have my bowl: Gotta have cereal.

4. We we we so excited: We so excited.

8. Gotta catch my bus: At the bus stop.

3. Yesterday was Thursday: Thursday, Thursday.

7. There’s kickin’ in the front seat, sittin’ in the back seat: Which seat do I take?

6. It’s Friday: Today, it is Friday.

5. Everybody’s lookin’ forward to the weekend: Partying, partying (yeah).

2. Tomorrow is Saturday: Fun, fun, fun, fun.

1. Sunday comes afterwards: I don’t want this weekend to end.

—compiled by the Daily Arts Department

Album Review

Low-key debut album ‘My Divider’ is not likely to divide Dinosaur Bones fans by

Melissa MacEwen Daily Staff Writer

After heading south to America and building up a devoted fan base, Torontobased indie rock group Dinosaur Bones

My Divider Dinosaur Bones

Dine Alone Records has finally released its long-awaited debut album, “My Divider.”

Fans of the Dinosaur Bones EP will not be disappointed by the band’s first full-length album, which was released on March 8 and supplements the EP’s tracks with a varied collection of new material. The album, released by Dine Alone Records, was once again mixed and recorded by Jon Drew, who has previously worked with Canadian greats like Tokyo Police Club and The Arkells.

Though some of the EP’s clean mellowness has been lost to crunchier guitar and an increasing contrast between vocals and instruments, Dinosaur Bones has arrived in style with a delightfully cohesive album.

The most notable aspect of “My Divider” is how readily listenable the album is, and how it only seems to get better with each listen, as more of the songs’ components gradually reveal themselves. By carefully layering melodic instrumental harmonies with brooding, introspective lyrics, Dinosaur Bones has crafted an album that manages to be dreamy and laid back, but also maintains enough edginess to keep the album moving. Especially on tracks like “Life in Trees,” the band uses just enough dissonance to highlight the album’s underlying melodies.

Even more impressively, the band manages to make use of genuinely witty lyrics and complex rhythms without overtly drawing attention to them. Many of the musical

chartattack.com

The group poses in front of a colorful wall. traits that make “My Divider” so interesting to listen to, such as the unusual syncopation of “Sharks in the Sand” and “Hunters,” are so carefully worked into the songs that an inactive listener could easily miss them.

Nothing encompasses Dinosaur Bones’ skill for the melodic better than “Ice Hotels.”

Pairing ambience with delicately strummed guitar chords, “Ice Hotels” instrumentally displays all of the frigid emotional and physical beauty the song describes. Layered over this lush background, singer Ben Fox’s voice is intimate and sincere as he sings of a “Toast to the newlywed petrified bride/ Whiteknuckled grip/ Toes that keep tapping.”

From the sleepily spaced out end of “Ice Hotel,” “My Divider” jumps abruptly to Dinosaur Bones’ best known track, the tongue-in-cheek, guitar-driven “Royalty,” which was originally included on the EP. Cocky and somewhat brash, “Royalty” shows off the opposite side of Dinosaur Bones’ musical spectrum, with a throbbing bassline and self-assured lyrical delivery.

Dinosaur Bones is frequently, and aptly, compared to bands like Radiohead or The Smiths. “Life in Trees,” for example, employs bell-like guitar and pensive lyrics that, while

definitely giving a nod to the British rockers of their inspiration, manage to sound original and fresh. “We could be thieves and steal away after dark/ If only we sleep long enough to dream,” starts off the angsty track, which drifts through a relatively minimalist, instrumentally driven soundscape.

The song slowly darkens to an ambiguous resolution, before being followed by the hypnotic “Point of Pride.” The only song that comes close to sounding unoriginal is “N.Y.E.,” on which Fox sounds almost eerily like Julian Casablancas of The Strokes, especially when his voice is super imposed over the very Strokes-esque guitar.

Despite this similarity, “My Divider” is impressively edgy, without ever seeming overwhelming.

Having already performed with some of the most influential contemporary indie bands, Dinosaur Bones is now focusing on their Canadian fan base and will start touring in April with Tokyo Police Club. Later this year, Dinosaur Bones will share the main stage with A Perfect Circle and Rise Against at Toronto’s Edgefest. All that American fans can hope is that they return to the States before too long.

Depp’s voice work gives ‘Rango’ more depth RANGO

continued from page 6

film with desert animals for characters, it never feels exclusively like a children’s film. The language is frequently mature, and a number of the film’s scenes rely on alcohol use or violent imagery to drive the plot. After all, what bar scene would be complete without some drunken belligerence? And what chase scene wouldn’t improve with some crossdressing? Still, “Rango” does a remarkably good job of appealing to a wide age-range. Even if children miss some Dear Ark Music Factory,

Props to you.

We at the Daily Arts Department would like to commend you on the success of your latest video, Rebecca Black’s “Friday.” How on earth did you do it? Over 9 million views in just five days truly redefines the meaning of the word “viral,” not to mention our concept of the word “Friday.” And it’s not just the video: Her inspirational song has had us singing and deep in thought since our ears were first blessed with Rebecca’s delightfully auto-tuned voice.

The video and song raise issues we haven’t grappled with since our Intro to Philosophy class freshman year. For

of the more adult jokes or thematic elements, they can appreciate the animation and the action scenes, while adults will enjoy the movie’s rapid-fire punning and overly dramatized action scenes.

Also key to the film’s success is Johnny Depp’s performance. Depp manages to make Rango impressively human and give him a convincing depth of personality. Rango’s outlandishness is definitely drawn at least partially from Depp’s performances in “Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas” (1998) and the “Pirates of the Caribbean” series, but

example, which seat SHOULD she take?

Kicking in the front seat or sitting in the back seat: It’s so hard to pick.

Rebecca’s internal debate has led us to ponder myriad other issues: Which seat should WE take? Whether we’re talking about the car ride to Target this weekend or the car ride of the rest of our lives, this is clearly a very important decision. Rebecca has us wrestling with the thoughts of our future.

Your impending financial success is clearly well-earned. It takes some really talented men to accept handouts from wealthy aging parents who want to live vicariously through their moderately attractive and minimally talented teenage children. And

these origins do nothing to make Rango any less charming as a bravado-fueled, occasionally inept protagonist. Rango’s nascent relationship with Beans seems a tad forced, but this is more a matter of plot priority and audience appeal than of the actors’ performances.

With its tight dialogue, humor and unusual blending of the surreal and the classic, “Rango” has already emerged as one of the better animated films of the year. It has wide audience appeal and is definitely worth checking out over spring break. the way you gave yourselves that cameo in Rebecca’s video! The reflexive qualities of your brief yet significant car ride to what may or may not be a middle school party (located at one of those shady, sitcom-style make-out spots and also at a tree) have us pondering, well, everything. So meta.

So, Ark Music Factory, we would like to thank you. Your creation not only taught us the days of the week and in what order they come, but it also helped us rediscover ourselves. And now everybody’s looking forward to the weekend. Every weekend.

Sincerely, The Daily Arts Department

Bounce bounce to the future

A

few weeks ago Rick Ross spent $1 million at a strip club.

He definitely made it rain.

Lately the term has been used a bit loosely, but originally it was used to describe the activity at strip clubs where, to show their clout, patrons shower the naked women with dollar bills as though the singles were raindrops. It’s a metaphor.

The song that first shed light on this practice was Fat Joe’s “Make it Rain” (2006). The track takes one metaphor — dollar bills as rain — and runs with it, stretching it into a four-minute song featuring Lil Wayne. It’s good work, but it can’t match the use of metaphors in your favorite song and mine, R. Kelly’s “Ignition (Remix)” (2002).

Or that song’s precognition.

R. Kelly is famous for a number of things: having a great voice, being involved in a really creepy sex scandal, the “Trapped in the Closet” hip-hop era saga (2005-7) and two songs — “I Believe I Can Fly” from the soundtrack to “Space Jam” (1996) and “Ignition (Remix).”

What he isn’t so well-known for is being a modern day Nostradamus.

“Ignition (Remix)” isn’t just guaranteed to get any party super bumping; it also predicted, in detail, the United States’ automotive industry’s 2008-10 crises. While most listeners understand R. Kelly’s crooning to be a lame metaphor for sexual intercourse, dragged out and tenuously harped on for three minutes (which, in itself, would be better than Fat Joe’s song), a closer investigation reveals it to outline what happened to the U.S. auto industry more than half a decade before the crises took place.

In the song R. Kelly sings about carefree partying in a hotel, in a club and in a car. It is extravagant, wild, orgiastic — in short, a party that Bacchus himself would be proud of.

There is no thought to the result of the party — the rough morning after that Kelly and company will no doubt have to deal with.

This mirrors the auto industry’s lack of foresight. They were making plenty of money producing gas-guzzling super SUVs, ridiculously exorbitant sports cars and horrible sedans, and never thought about sustainability. Then the fuel crisis happened. In the song, these issues are touched on both implicitly and explicitly.

After the party moves from the club to a car — one of the industry’s biggest losers, a Lincoln Navigator — it settles into a hotel lobby and then to a hotel room so that the party doesn’t end when the lobby is cleared. In the room, Kelly suggests that he will “freak somebody.” This is similar to the way that the government took the auto industry to its metaphorical hotel room and (metaphorically) freaked it, bailing out the Big Three and restructuring them to try to save them — to try to salvage their party from totally ending.

And then the chorus kicks in, proclaiming that “It’s the freakin’ weekend/ I’m about to have me some fun.” R. Kelly has nothing at all to worry about, so he decides to totally let go of control. Things are good, so all there is to do is party, and if it doesn’t work out, well, at least he had a good time.

Sound familiar?

R. Kelly didn’t just predict the crash, though; he also managed to predict the rise of alternative fuels, using a sexy woman as a metaphor for foreign car companies who focus on these fuels: “Momma rolling that body got every guy in here wishin’/ [He was] sippin’ on coke and rum.”

The successful companies who were still having a “good time,” to extend the metaphor, were — and still are — the ones who looked elsewhere, such as to ethanol-based fuel, for which Coca-Cola (a corn-based beverage) and rum (ethanol) is the perfect metaphor.

People are often skeptical of seers, but if Nostradamus had been able to get the club as jumping as R. Kelly does, no one would doubt his prophecies. As it is, however, R. Kelly’s dulcet tones might be too smooth, as no one has noticed this completely undeniable prophecy until now.

At this point only time, and serious study, will tell what other horrible events Kelly’s sexy R&B has foreseen.

Mitchell Geller is a senior majoring in psychology and English. He can be reached at Mitchell.Geller@tufts.edu.

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Editorial | Letters

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Editorial

Tufts must outline specific cyber bullying policy With the recent implementation of Massachusetts state policies combating cyber bullying in public schools, the ever-complicated issue of how to deal with online harassment has begun to undergo new scrutiny on the Hill.

Students and faculty — including Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman — have formed a task force to address cyber bullying at Tufts. The issue of cyber bullying among Tufts students is certainly nothing new, and it is necessary that the university create policies and procedures to deal with such online verbal attacks, anonymous and not.

Unfortunately, there is no cut-and-dry solution to prevent and punish cyber bullying. Because many cases of harassment on the Internet are anonymous, they cannot be addressed in the same way as similar incidents that take place on campus. That being said, students, as members of the Tufts community, agree to a certain code of conduct that protects them and other students from verbal harassment, and Tufts has made it clear that incidents of bias and harassment are not tolerable on campus.

Students are aware of this code of conduct that they are bound to when they are on campus, but the university does not specify if nor when these policies apply to behavior online. If a student harasses another student in the Mayer Campus Center or threatens his or her roommate in their dorm room, that student will likely be aware that the university can take disciplinary action on him or her. But what if the student puts up a blog post or YouTube video exhibiting behavior or speech that Tufts would consider harassment deserving of disciplinary action? Would it make a difference if

the student did this while on campus versus off campus?

A student at the University of California, Los Angeles, (UCLA) recently posted a video to YouTube of herself making racist comments about Asian students at the university library. The video has gone viral, and UCLA is now considering disciplinary action against the student. This type of incident could easily happen with a Tufts student, and yet the university has no specific policy explaining whether such behavior falls within the realm of Tufts disciplinary action; the university would undoubtedly have a difficult time deciding what action to take. Additionally, it is not fair for the university to punish students for their behavior online if there are no specific policies outlining that such behavior is punishable by the administration.

Whatever the policy is — whether it encompasses all online content or none at all — the university needs to outline when and how cyber bullying falls under the umbrella of the rules of conduct in the Tufts student handbook.

In addition to instituting a policy, students also need to be educated about what cyber bullying is, what their resources are when they are victimized and what ramifications can occur when students harass or threaten others on the Internet. For students who are victimized online, they may feel that because the posts are anonymous, there is little that the administration can do to help.

In this same vein, students who post anonymously may believe that they can say anything they want without their identity ever being discovered. While laws surrounding online harassment are somewhat complex and still in the developing stages, students who post

anonymously may not consider the fact that legal charges of defamation can still apply to online comments and that the police are capable of locating the IP addresses of posts if evidence merits a warrant for this information.

The Daily does not support the university accessing student IP addresses at its own discretion, as this is a violation of student privacy. This does not mean, however, that the administration is helpless in terms of protecting students from harassment and threats on anonymous forums. The university should institute a strict policy of reporting cases of online harassment and slander to the police, and administrators should make students aware that such behavior is not acceptable and will not be overlooked. Even if it is difficult to obtain a warrant for such information and impose actual legal action, the university must explain to students that they can be held legally responsible for their online posts and that the university will not turn a blind eye. While this may not stop every student from posting libelous matter online, it may deter some students and help the university move in the direction of keeping students accountable for their actions.

The issue of enforcing punishment for cyber bullying is difficult and complex, but this does not mean that the university should be complacent and fail to take action. The administration must act quickly to outline a specific policy and make students aware of their resources and the potential legal ramifications for their behavior on the Internet. Online harassment in the Tufts community is not just a fear of the future — it is happening right now, and it is time to address this issue.

anything, the fact that it is a Tuftssponsored event only encourages students who wouldn’t normally do NQR to get out of their comfort zone, often with the help of alcohol. Putting aside all the accusations about Tufts’ supposed “binge drinking culture,” I would like to point out that tradition should stem from a student body continuing the actions of their predecessors, not because their school says they can or cannot do it.

Of course this will not be the end of NQR, as many students showed us Monday night as they gathered around the Res Quad for a sober run to protest President Bacow’s decision.

But I do believe that our president’s

decision was not an act of spite, but rather a gift of awareness. I like to believe that he was sitting in his house Monday night, proud as any father that we stood up for ourselves and proved him wrong.

I believe that NQR will now be brought back to its roots, with perhaps a smaller turnout, but with more emotion than ever. I can only hope that we can continue to prove him wrong and make NQR a safe and even possibly sober event by ourselves.

Erin Marshall Assistant Sports Editors

Executive Photo Editor Photo Editors

Assistant Photo Editors

Staff Photographers

Kristiina Yang Executive New Media Editor

PRODUCTION Andrew Petrone Production Director Sarah Davis Executive Layout Editor Leanne Brotsky Layout Editors Adam Gardner Jason Huang Jennifer Iassogna Sarah Kester Alyssa Kutner Steven Smith Rebecca Alpert Assistant Layout Editors Jennifer Betts Shoshanna Kahne Mackenzie Loy Alexia Moustroufi Emily Rourke Alexandra Husted Executive Copy Editor Sara Eisemann Copy Editors Niki Krieg Andrew Paseltiner Zehava Robbins Elisha Sum Ashley Cheng Assistant Copy Editors Benjamin Considine Linh Dang Patrick Donnelly Lauren Greenberg Drew Lewis Rebecca Raskind Melissa Roberts Alexandra Salerno Alison Williams Stefanie Yeung Darcy Mann Executive Online Editor Emily Denton Online Editors William Wong Ammar Khaku Executive Technical Manager Michael Vastola Technical Manager

BUSINESS Benjamin Hubbell-Engler Executive Business Director Laura Moreno Advertising Director Dwijo Goswami Receivables Manager P.O. Box 53018, Medford, MA 02155 617 627 3090 FAX 617 627 3910 daily@tuftsdaily.com

Letter to the Editor Dear Editor,

In response to an opinion piece about the Naked Quad Run (NQR) published yesterday, “Larry Bacow is not my homeboy,” I would like to offer up a different and perhaps more positive point of view regarding the events of the last few days.

I was initially just as upset as the next person when University President Lawrence Bacow decided that Tufts should not sanction NQR, but then I realized that perhaps his decision was not such a bad thing after all.

When all is said and done, this should never have become a Tuftssanctioned event in the first place. If

The Tufts Daily is a nonprofit, independent newspaper, published Monday through Friday during the academic year, and distributed free to the Tufts community. EDITORIAL POLICY Editorials represent the position of The Tufts Daily. 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.

Sincerely, Sarah Lockwood Class of 2013

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All letters must be word processed and include the writer’s name and telephone number. There is a 450-word limit and letters must be verified.

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The Tufts Daily

Thursday, March 17, 2011

9

Op-Ed

Finkelstein sets a dangerous precedent

by Shira Shamir

I was in the Old City of Jerusalem when I first learned that Dr. Norman Finkelstein would be speaking at Tufts. The irony was not lost on me. The news raised a red flag, not because of Finkelstein’s notorious tendency to demonize the state of Israel, but because of the potential ramifications for the Tufts community.

Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine has the right to bring any speaker they wish to campus, just as Finkelstein has the right to say whatever he wishes. The question is: Was his presence productive for dialogue on campus? I am less concerned with Finkelstein’s demagogic message than I am with the legacy he will leave behind at Tufts.

Finkelstein is regarded as one of the most controversial speakers on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His speeches are generally more inflammatory than thought-provoking and more dramatic than anything your mother might watch on ABC daytime television.

Currently an independent scholar, Finkelstein has held short-lived positions at several colleges and has written six books. His claim to fame came with “The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering” in 2000.

Despite being the son of two Holocaust survivors, he asserts that following 1967, Israeli and American Jewry created a socalled industry to monetarily and politically exploit the greatest tragedy of the Jewish people, the Holocaust. This “extortion racket,” as he calls it, was designed to extract compensation from European governments, as well as to justify Israel’s presence in the occupied territories.

Finkelstein almost completely ignores the other vital field that has formed around the Holocaust, which seeks to create awareness of the atrocities committed during World War II and to prevent further incidents of genocide. When he does acknowledge this area, he mocks it, even calling highly esteemed Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel “the resident clown of the Holocaust circus.”

Ironically, Finkelstein reveals his own hypocrisy through his fervent exploitation of the Holocaust. He capitalizes on his parents’ suffering in a thinly veiled attempt to legitimize his own weak contentions against Israel and American Jewish organizations.

Even more disturbing are Finkelstein’s unfounded comparisons of Israel to Nazi Germany. He draws a parallel between the Nazi-organized genocide of the Jewish people and the IsraeliPalestinian conflict and brutally contends that, “If Israelis don’t want to stand accused of being Nazis, they should simply stop acting like Nazis.”

Finkelstein makes this insensitive claim despite that British

military expert Col. Richard Kemp stated during the 2008 Gaza War, “I would say that from my knowledge of the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] and from the extent to which I have been following the current operation, I don’t think there has ever been a time in the history of warfare when any army has made more efforts to reduce civilian casualties and deaths of innocent people than the IDF is doing today in Gaza.”

Additionally, Finkelstein has publicly proclaimed his solidarity with the internationally recognized terrorist organization Hezbollah. The Iranian-backed extremist group was responsible for the most American deaths by terrorism before Sept. 11, as noted by Foreign Affairs, USA Today and others. However, following his meeting with members of Hezbollah in 2008, Finkelstein professed: “To my thinking the honorable thing now is to show solidarity with Hezbollah as the U.S. and Israel target it for liquidation.

Indeed, looking back, my chief regret is that I wasn’t even more forceful in publicly defending Hezbollah.”

Finkelstein also repeatedly denies that other internationally recognized terrorist organization Hamas’ autocratic rule in the Gaza Strip is a hindrance to peace.

Perhaps Finkelstein should indulge in some light reading of the Hamas Charter, which in Article Seven — among other areas — declares that Hamas, as an organization, seeks the destruction of Israel and the Jews, rejecting any hope for a diplomatic solution. Article Seven states: “The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say … there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”

While Hamas is not the only obstacle to peace, most Muslim and Jewish groups of all pragmatic political persuasion recognize its detrimental effect on the peace process.

Finkelstein has been challenged for taking on the title of “scholar” since his days at Princeton University. There, he could scarcely find any faculty member who would even read his thesis. Then, following his dismissals from several colleges, Finkelstein landed at DePaul University, only to be denied tenure there as well. He claims that the dismissals were for political reasons, but most scholars and professors across the country concur that his academic work simply lacks integrity.

Former Harvard University Professor of Political Science Daniel Jonah Goldhagen remarks that “Finkelstein’s work is, from beginning to end, a tendentious series of inventions.” while University of Chicago Professor Emeritus of Modern History Peter Novick declared his work “the hate campaign of a zealot.”

A more distressing issue involves his behavior toward students. During question-and-answer sessions, Finkelstein has a tendency to intimidate and mock students. The most alarming

instance was at the University of Waterloo where Finkelstein made a young girl cry, yelling at her and condemning her crocodile tears after she expressed that his comparisons of Israel to Nazi Germany offended her. A second example has Finkelstein calling a student’s question “filthy” at the University of California, Irvine.

Finkelstein’s lack of academic decorum and the unprofessional manner in which he handles situations are not befitting of any “scholar,” particularly one lecturing on the Tufts University campus.

At Tufts we’ve been incredibly lucky this year regarding dialogue on campus. With organizations like the New Initiative for Middle East Peace, Tufts has put itself in a position to be a model for universities all over to build a unique intellectual framework.

Earlier in the semester, I was fortunate to attend a joint retreat sponsored by the Office of the Provost that brought together members of Tufts Hillel, Students for Justice in Palestine, Friends of Israel and unaffiliated individuals. It was an incredible experience. Though differences were clear, the tone was remarkably respectful. What we saw was a desire and willingness to come together. We enjoyed open dialogue and disagreement without the heavy tension of polarization.

This is not the mentality that Finkelstein promotes.

Rather, he incites the hatred and polarization Tufts should so desperately avoid. A speaker like Norman Finkelstein cements the lines between groups and even pushes nonaffiliated persons into camps they never thought they would feel compelled to join. The idea is to create awareness and promote discussion on campus about the conflict, not to spread hatred through polarization.

I ask then: Is he the type of speaker we want to see advance dialogue on campus? Is this the direction we want to be headed? We can appreciate controversy, yes, but not antagonism.

The issue at hand is not about the rhetoric employed by Finkelstein, nor the Israeli-Palestinian conflict itself. It is about what this kind of speaker means for Tufts, a campus that enjoys an ethos incomparable to most other institutions of higher education. While I will unequivocally defend the right of an organization to bring engaging and even controversial events to campus, it is imperative that groups take into account the dire consequences of hosting inflammatory speakers and the imprint they leave in their wake.

We don’t need speakers to plant seeds of mistrust and polarization. We can do better.

Shira Shamir is a freshman who has not yet declared a major. She is a member of Tufts Friends of Israel.

Don’t forget to think before you support by

Matthew Nazarian

On Tuesday, March 8, The Tufts Daily published an article, “Senate backs more lenient marijuana policy,” in which sophomore Alex Baskin, president of Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP), adamantly fights for ... well, what exactly was it again? The right to smoke weed? You have a better chance of being disciplined for talking after quiet hours than you do for smoking marijuana outside.

In the article, Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman was quoted as saying that he did not believe anybody had been disciplined for marijuana this year. Yet SSDP garnered the support of 500 students who would like to challenge the policy and “reduce” it to a fine. Choosing an enforceable fine over an unenforced policy is hardly sensible.

I use the example of the SSDP not to call them out, but to draw attention to a larger trend. That is, many people at Tufts will simply support a cause that seems right. Often, what seems right is right, and these groups generate positive, informative discussions, which are an essential part of the Tufts identity. Tufts Against Genocide, a part of Tufts Hillel, recently sponsored an event during which we heard from genocide survivors from around the world. I was blown away. Genocide education is a worthwhile cause.

Awareness raised. Great success.

The irony comes when the “awareness raisers” do not thoroughly consider the facts themselves. My freshman year, there was a protest early in the fall semester. Fliers appeared overnight along with chalking: The administration was allegedly going to cut down the large tree on the president’s lawn. Students flocked to the scene. You all know this tree because it’s still there. Nobody was cutting it down. The information was a hoax. The most disturbing part of this story is that about 30 overeducated Jumbos attended the event, and not one of them thought to verify the rumor. Cutting down a tree that size is expensive, and Tufts is tight on cash (Damn it Madoff!). Nobody considered the possibility that if the administration was cutting down the tree, they might have a valid reason. The hoax exposed the fact that people will back a cause that appears worthwhile at first glance without submitting it to any scrutiny.

I once saw a lecture on the dangers of global warming.

The speaker was ridiculing the United States for not signing the Kyoto protocol. I asked her, “Why didn’t George Bush sign the Kyoto protocol?” She didn’t know. “Thank you,” I said, and sat down. What bothered me was not the politics.

The environment is worth protecting. What disturbed me

Aalok Kanani/Tufts Daily

was that someone who considered herself an expert on environmentalism did not even bother to find out exactly why she disagreed with her opponents. She had no interest in their reasoning. Instead of disproving the counterpoint, she labeled those with a different opinion as evil and called it a day.

Very recently, Tufts University was ranked in the top-12 worst schools for free speech by Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). The article appeared on the Huffington Post’s website. I was surprised myself, especially when I saw that the major transgression they cited was the university’s finding of the Primary Source, Tufts’ only formally conservative publication, as guilty of harassment for publishing a satirical article. The assertion that free speech suffers at Tufts seems to contradict this any-cause-goes attitude. On the surface, it may seem that we have plenty of free speech.

However, students at Tufts spend so much time fighting for what is right, that it is sacrilegious to hold the opinion that something may already be right.

At Tufts, the majority of the vocal population is com-

prised of those who want to see major change. In many cases, I agree with them. In my opinion, Tufts’ acceptance of the gay community is unmatched in the real world or at other colleges I have encountered. There are still steps to be made, but the Tufts community should be proud of what it has accomplished. However, this progress was made by persuading people with facts, not requesting blind acceptance. Sadly, at Tufts, a great deal of effort is spent inspiring discussion — but only the correct type of discussion. What often passes for honest discourse at Tufts is really like-minded Jumbos nodding at one another, which only widens the gap between two sides of an issue.

At Tufts, certain causes have been deemed “good.”

Saving trees is good. Fighting bias is good. Awareness is good. And these things really are good, but not everything done in the name of these “goods” is necessarily right. Tufts students must break the habit of neglecting to consider the opposing argument. Who knows? It just might be sensible.

Matthew Nazarian is a junior majoring in biology.

Op-ed Policy The Op-Ed section of The Tufts Daily, an open forum for campus editorial commentary, is printed Monday through Thursday. The Daily welcomes submissions from all members of the Tufts community; the opinions expressed in the Op-Ed section do not necessarily represent the opinions of the Daily itself. Opinion articles on campus, national and international issues should be 600 to 1,200 words in length. Op-Ed cartoons are also welcomed for the Campus Canvas feature. All material is subject to editorial discretion and is not guaranteed to appear in the Daily. All material should be submitted to oped@tuftsdaily.com no later than noon on the day prior to the desired day of publication; authors must submit their telephone numbers and day-of availability for editing questions. Submissions may not be published elsewhere prior to their appearance in the Daily, including but not limited to other on- and off-campus newspapers, magazines, blogs and online news websites, as well as Facebook. Republishing of the same piece in a different source is permissible as long as the Daily is credited with originally running the article.

The Tufts Daily

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Sports

Thursday, March 17, 2011

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All classifieds submitted by mail must be accompanied by a check. Classifieds are $15 per week or $4 per day with Tufts ID or $30 per week or $8 per day 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.

Head, hustle and heart key for wins MEN’S LACROSSE

down to business. We pride ourselves on the fact that we overachieve, in that every team out there has great talent, but can they use that talent to get a win?

We pride ourselves on taking that talent and turning it into wins with our hustle, our preparation, and what we call doing our ‘one more.’�

continued from page 12

It has two NESCAC opponents and a national contender to silence. Whether or not they have a 3-0 vacation will depend on head, hustle and heart. “There’s nothing else. There’s no distractions,� Witko said. “We have to get

James Choca/Tufts Daily

The men’s lacrosse team, here at a workout two weeks ago, will get into business mode next week, with a busy schedule that includes national No. 2 Stevenson.

AC;;3@

A COURSE FOR EVERYONE

Break offers occasion for team bonding WOMEN’S LACROSSE

Spring registration stressing you out? Relax.

Summer is just around the corner.

Over 250 day and evening courses to fit your work or internship schedule.

With three more road games, all of which require a substantial amount of traveling, the Jumbos admit they are at a slight disadvantage. This will not break the team’s spirit, however, as it focuses on the benefits that can be reaped from playing on the road. “It’s always nice to play at home,� Leidl said. “You’re obviously going to be more comfortable with the venue, and it’s a little frustrating that no one will get to see us play these really big games, but it’s really an awesome feeling to beat teams on their own turf.�

Spring break also offers a unique opportunity for team members to spend more time together without the constraints of

TUFTS SUMMER SESSION 2011

Registration ongoing now

First Session

May 25–July 1, 2011

Second Session

July 5–August 12, 2011

their academic schedules. “Spring break is a really good teambuilding time,� Eaton said. “No one else is on campus, and we don’t have classes, so it’s all lacrosse all the time.�

This team-building has been instrumental to the team’s success in the past.

The positive team dynamic is as evident on the field as it is off it, and this cohesiveness has contributed significantly to the quality of the Jumbos’ play. “We’ve always had great team chemistry,� Leidl said. “We get along so well as a group and it really shows on the field. It encourages a high comfort level and confidence in each other.

It really doesn’t matter who you are on the team, young or old. The whole team really just meshes.�

continued from page 12

Twelve-Week Session May 25–August 12, 2011

http://ase.tufts.edu/summer

StatISTICS | Standings Men's Lacrosse

Women's Lacrosse

(2-0, 1-0 NESCAC)

NESCAC OVERALL

Colby Middlebury Trinity Tufts Wesleyan Amherst Bates Bowdoin Conn. College Williams

W 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0

L W 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 2 0 4 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 0

L 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 1 2 1

Individual Statistics G A P

D.J. Hessler Sean Kirwan Matt Witko Ryan Molloy Kevin McCormick Andrew Fiamengo Alec Bialosky Nick Rhoads Sam Diss Beau Wood Team

6 11 4 3 4 1 1 0 1 1 36

6 0 4 3 1 1 1 2 0 0 19

12 11 8 6 5 2 2 2 1 1 55

Goaltending Steven Foglietta Tyler Page

GA 12 1

Sv S% 15 .556 6 .857

NESCAC OVERALL

Bowdoin Colby Middlebury Trinity Tufts Amherst Bates Conn. College Wesleyan Williams

W 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0

L 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1

W 2 2 1 1 1 1 0 1 2 1

L 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 2 1 1

Individual Statistics G A P

Gabby Horner Lara Kozin Kelly Hyland Stephanie Perez Kerry Eaton Casey Egan Kate Applegate

5 2 2 2 2 1 0

0 2 2 1 0 0 1

5 4 4 3 2 1 1

Team

14

6

20

Goaltending Sara Bloom

GA 13

Sv 2

S% .133

East Bates Bowdoin Colby Trinity Tufts

W 0 0 0 0 0

L 0 0 0 0 0

T W L 0 4 7 0 3 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0

West Amherst Hamilton Middlebury Wesleyan Williams

0 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0

NESCAC

2 2 0 5 0

T 0 0 0 0 0

East Bates Bowdoin Colby Trinity Tufts

W 0 0 0 0 0

L 0 0 0 0 0

T W L 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

T 0 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0

West Amherst Hamilton Middlebury Wesleyan Williams

0 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0

Individual Statistics AVG HR RBI 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

as of Mar. 13, 2011

(0-0, 0-0 NESCAC East)

OVERALL

3 0 0 8 0

USILA Div. III Men’s Lax

Softball

Baseball

(0-0, 0-0 NESCAC East)

(1-0, 1-0 NESCAC)

Ian Goldberg David LeResche Nick Cutsumpas Tim Mitropoulos Sam Sager Nate Izzo Derek Miller Scott Staniewicz Christian Sbily Frank Petrosky Team

.000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Pitching Chris DeGoti Kevin Gilchrist

W L ERA SO 0 0 0.00 0 0 0 0.00 0

NESCAC

OVERALL

4 1 0 6 0

2 3 0 5 0

Individual Statistics AVG HR RBI 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Lizzy Iuppa Mira Lieman-Sifry Bri Cilley Aly Moskowitz Emily Beinecke Lena Cantone Sara Hedtler Jo Clair Liz Pinzino Kayla Holland Team

.000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000

Pitching Izzie Santone Rebecca DiBiase

W L ERA SO 0 0 0.00 0 0 0 0.00 0

Ranking, team (No. 1 votes) 1. Tufts (11) 2. Stevenson (2) 3. Sailsbury 4. Cortland 5. Middlebury 6. Dickinson 7. Haverford 8. RIT 9. Roanoke

IWLCA Div. III Women’s Lax as of Mar. 14, 2011

Ranking, team (No. 1 votes) 1. Salisbury (19) 2. Hamilton (1) 3. TCNJ 4. Franklin & Marshall 5. Gettysburg 6. Trinity 7. Colby 8. Cortland 12. Tufts

NCBWA Div. III Baseball as of Mar. 13, 2011

Ranking, team (No. 1 votes) 1. Heidelberg (21) 2. Shenandoah 3. UW-Stevens Point (3) 4. Kean 5. Texas-Tyler 6. UW-Whitewater 7. Johns Hopkins 8. Marietta 17. Tufts

The Tufts Daily

Thursday, March 17, 2011

11

Sports

Men’s Crew

Undermanned varsity team readies for spring With deeper lineup, novice team will get valuable experience by

Nash Simpson

Daily Staff Writer

After competing in only two races this fall — the Quinsigamond Snake Regatta on Oct. 9 and the Head of the Charles Regatta on Oct. 24 — the men’s crew team is preparing for a much busier spring season, which will be marked by a plethora of races that involve both the varsity and novice lineups. The team appears to be ready for its nine-race season after enduring this fall’s rigorous training regimen that included a 5 a.m. wake-up time, long jogs to and from practice each morning and weekly lifts throughout the semester.

The varsity team will be slightly undermanned this season, as several team members have decided not to participate this semester for both personal and academic reasons. With the losses, the Jumbos are now down to six varsity rowers and two coxswains, just enough to fill a four-person boat with alternates.

“Being a smaller team, we definitely have our work cut out for us this season,” senior tri-captain Eugene Kim said. “We’re still optimistic for the spring, which should be a lot more fun than the fall.”

Despite this major setback, coach Jay Britt can still work with a strong sixperson racing team at the varsity level.

The varsity squad should continue to improve over the course of the season and will be back to full strength next fall with a slew of returning varsity rowers and a talented novice group that will gain valuable experience over the course of the spring.

“Let’s not forget that the future looks bright for the varsity squad,” Kim said.

“We should be back to around eleven [varsity] guys in the fall not including our novice squad.”

The novices, mostly freshmen and less-experienced rowers, have shown a great deal of promise over the course of the fall semester. Like the varsity squad, the novice team trained throughout the fall season and during winter break, putting the team in good shape heading into spring competition.

“After our winter training program, we’ve all gotten a lot stronger,” freshman novice rower Macgill Davis said. “At this point, it’s all about getting back into the motion of rowing. Rowing on the river is [very] different than [on] the machines.”

One thing that should not be a problem for the novice team is a lack of numbers.

Daily File Photo

The men’s varsity crew team, here at last year’s Head of the Charles Regatta, will hope for solid results with a thin roster this spring.

The young group, led by freshmen captains Ben Kane and Carter Palmer, consists of 18 rowers, 16 of whom are healthy and currently able to row. With the most freshmen in recent years currently in the program, the Jumbos’ rebuilding process is already well underway.

“I think we’ll do fairly well together,” freshman novice rower David “Lex” Clary said. “We may not have the same kind of talent as other schools, but we seem to have a lot of potential. ... After only a week [of practice outside], our new guys are rowing at a surprisingly competitive level.”

In a sport where either four or eight athletes are required to perform in perfect harmony, the novice squad is still trying to get used to new teammates, some of which just joined the team at the beginning of the semester.

“We got some new people over winter

break,” Davis said. “In practice, we’ve been getting used to the new rowers and [trying] to get all eight guys working together. I think we’ve gotten a lot better since the beginning of practices.”

A longer and more difficult training regimen over spring break will precede the team’s first race — an April 2nd home regatta — with strenuous practices for both teams twice a day. These practices are scheduled to be roughly two hours long and will consist of tiring drill work in which both teams will look to build physical endurance for the long season ahead.

Kim understands the importance of spring break practices after a few years of experience with the Jumbos’ crew program.

“Next week will consist of only three things,” Kim said. “Eating, sleeping and rowing.”

Games of the Week looking back (MAR. 12) | tufts 14, amherst 13 After suffering two close losses to Amherst last season, the women’s lacrosse team turned the page on the 2010 season, holding off the host Lord Jeffs to win its NESCAC opener, 14-13.

In her college debut, freshman attackman Gabby Horner scored one of her five goals with 12:50 remaining in the second half to break a 10-10 tie and give No. 13 Tufts a lead that it would never relinquish. Amherst sophomore attackman Marta Randall scored her game-high sixth goal with less than two minutes to go to bring the Jeffs within one, but the Jumbos’ defense held Amherst goalless from there to squeak out a tough one-goal win.

Junior attackmen Lara Kozin and Kelly Hyland each contributed two goals and two assists to the Jumbos’ attack while sophomore attackman Kerry Eaton added two points for Tufts.

On the defensive end, coach Carol Rappoli succesfully implemented her zone defense despite being without senior tri-captain defenseman Lily Colahan, who was sidelined after fracturing her hand in a scrimmage against Stonehill. Junior Maggie Casey and senior tri-captain Yael Tzipori filled in for Colahan at the “roamer” position on defense.

The women’s lacrosse team will try to avenge another 2010 loss this Friday against Colby for the second of four straight road games.

Virginia Bledsoe/Tufts Daily

looking ahead (Mar. 18) | 11 Marquette vs. 6 xavier In what some consider to be the most exicting first-round matchup of this year’s NCAA Basketball Tournament, the 11-seed Marquette Golden Eagles and the 6-seed Xavier Muskateers will square off tomorrow night in Cleveland.

Xavier junior point guard Tu Holloway is the clear leader for the Muskateers, averaging 20.2 points, 5.5 assists and 5.1 rebounds per game. The Muskateers went 15-1 in regular season Atlantic-10 conference play, losing only to Charlotte on Feb. 2 and to Dayton in the first round of the Atlantic-10 conference tournament last Friday.

Marquette, on the other hand, went just 9-9 in conference play, although they did play in the Big East, which is widely considered to be the nation’s best conference. The Golden Eagles have had success against some of the nation’s top teams, beating Syracuse, Notre Dame, Connecticut and West Virginia. Led by senior forward Jimmy Butler and junior guard Darius Johnson-Odom, who average around 16 points per game each, the Golden Eagles are 32nd in the nation in scoring, averaging 76.1 points per game.

The two teams have contrasting styles, with Xavier relying largely on the three-ball and Marquette depending on hard-nose play in the paint.

It may come down to whether or not the shots are falling for Holloway and the Muskateers. mct

—Compiled by the Daily Sports Department

David McIntyre | The Beautiful Game

The MLS’s Sweet 16

O

n Tuesday, the Los Angeles Galaxy and the Seattle Sounders kicked off the 16th season in Major League Soccer (MLS) history (LA won 1-0). And unlike real Sweet 16s, which are typically marked by teenage awkwardness and boring ceremonies, the game showed how far the league has come, both in terms of maturity and excitement.

In the early days, the MLS was rocked by instability, with franchises moving, renaming and closing seemingly every year and a quality of play that was, to put it lightly, not quite up to snuff. But in less than two decades, the league has undergone a transformation, and in many ways, the Sounders themselves are the best example of that growth.

Having entered the league in the 2009 season, Seattle is an extreme rarity in American professional sports: an expansion team that immediately garnered a huge, passionate fan base and a quality roster. The club won the US Open Cup in each of its first two years in existence (the first time an MLS club had won that trophy back-to-back) and set a league attendance record in 2010, averaging 36,173 attendees per match.

But more importantly, the Sounders found something that critics of the league believed would never exist: Americans who are passionate about soccer and willing to embrace the game in this country, year in and year out. The thousands that pack Qwest Field every other weekend from March to November care about the team in front of them, not Barcelona or Manchester United, and are willing to pay to watch it.

This season, that development of passion is bound to continue, especially with the addition of two new clubs, both in the Pacific Northwest: the Portland Timbers and the Vancouver Whitecaps. These clubs will continue to capitalize on the soccer-crazed region and form a natural rivalry with Seattle, a development which will foster even further interest in the sport. In fact, the process has already begun, even before any games have been played: The Timbers have already sold out their season tickets, and Vancouver has almost done so as well.

But even with the expansion of the league in recent years (four new teams since 2009), there has been no dilution of talent. Instead, particularly over the last five years, the quality of play in the league has drastically increased, and the number of young, talented American players has shot through the roof. Real Salt Lake, for example, has reached the semifinals of the CONCACAF Champions League, a competition previously thought of as impossible to win for American clubs because they were facing tougher (and primarily Mexican) competition.

Of course, as with all teenagers who turn 16, there are many challenges and new developments ahead. Issues like placing another team in New York (Cosmos, anybody?), the role of designated players like David Beckham, club profitability (or lack thereof ), attendance, the construction of new stadiums (especially for D.C. United) and ridiculously stupid team names (seriously, Sporting Kansas City?) will continue to confront the league for years to come.

But what the league has proven over the last 16 years is that, yes, it can be done. A professional soccer league can exist in the U.S.A and get a decent amount of support, continue to grow, sign some good players from overseas while developping some of its own players as well.

The MLS must continue on the path of sustainable development until people start including it as one of the five major professional sports in the United States and Canada.

David McIntyre is a freshman who has not yet declared a major. He can be reached at David.McIntyre@tufts.edu.

Sports

12

INSIDE Men’s Crew 11

tuftsdaily.com

WOMEN’S LACROSSE

Jumbos ready for busy spring-break slate against tough teams With chances to avenge defeats, four-game stretch includes three road games, three top-10 opponents by

Kelsey Perkins

Daily Staff Writer

After an impressive season-opening win against No. 17 Amherst last Saturday, the women’s lacrosse team will take on more tough competition during spring break, facing four challenging opponents in a nine-day stretch. Three of those four teams are ranked higher than the No. 13 Jumbos; the fourth barely missed the top 20.

First up is the game tomorrow evening against NESCAC foe No. 8 Colby in Waterville, Maine. Motivated by a narrow loss to the Mules in the 2010 season, the Jumbos will look to continue this year’s NESCAC success.

“The Colby game will be instrumental toward our goal of avenging last year’s losses,” sophomore defenseman Meg Boland said. “We only lost to them by two goals last year, and it would be a huge confidence booster if we could get backto-back NESCAC wins.”

Tufts is already well on its way to avenging last year’s defeats, having defeated the Lord Jeffs 14-13 last weekend at Amherst. With this first NESCAC victory under their belts, the Jumbos are feeling confident that they can keep up the momentum.

“Coming off a big win last weekend will help propel us into our spring break schedule,” sophomore attackman Kerry Eaton said. “The win against Amherst gave us confidence and made us really excited for the season.”

Andrew Morgenthaler/Tufts Daily

Sophomore attacker Kerry Eaton, pictured above in a scrimmage against Merrimack, scored two goals in Tufts’ win over Amherst Saturday.

The game against Colby is just the tip of the iceberg, as Tufts has three more games scheduled for a week when many students will be sipping cocktails on the beach. Beginning their nonconference schedule, the Jumbos will travel to Hoboken, N.J., to face No. 10 Stevens on March 21. Two days later, the team will travel to Haverford

EDITORS’ CHALLENGE: MARCH MADNESS EDITION FINAL FOUR

CHAMPION

Ben K.

for another out-of-conference matchup before returning to NESCAC play against No. 9 Williams on March 26, Tufts’ first home game of the season.

The Jumbos are unsure of what to expect from these nonconference opponents. They do know, however, that they will be tested.

“These are all big games,” sophomore

It’s business time: No. 1 team to face challenging opponents by

Claire K.

Daniel R.

Aaron L.

Phil D.

Steve S.

Ethan S.

David M.

Lauren F.

Alex L.

Matt B. see blogs.tuftsdaily.com/thescore for our tourney preview podcast

see WOMEN’S LACROSSE, page 10

Men’s Lacrosse

Claire Kemp

Daily Editorial Board

Alex P.

attackman Kaitlyn Leidl said. “Each team besides Haverford is ranked in the top 20, and all three that are ranked are ranked above us. Colby, Stevens and Williams all made the NCAA tournament last year, so these games will be tough.”

The men’s lacrosse team may not be going anywhere tropical for spring break, but next week’s action should be extremely heated. Coming off a 23-5 trouncing of Lasell on Tuesday, in which senior quad-captain attackman D.J. Hessler broke the program’s alltime scoring record, No. 1 Tufts will face two NESCAC teams they barely edged out in 2010 and — in a game that will attract national attention — No. 2 Stevenson University.

For Tufts, however, all the focus is currently on Colby. On Saturday, the Mules will come to Bello Field for a chance at an early season upset. It is certainly feasible: In 2010, the Mules had five losses against league opponents by a single goal, including a 10-9 loss to the Jumbos.

The Jumbos will have to continue the high level of play they’ve displayed in their first two wins to ensure that the Mules come no closer than last year’s one-goal margin. Unlike their win over Lasell, in which Tufts lost more than half of the face-offs, the Jumbos will not be able to rely solely on their defense against Colby, which last season scored more points per game than every team in the league not clad in brown and blue. The Mules, as a NESCAC opponent, will try to put more pressure on junior goalkeeper Steven Foglietta and subdue the hotshooting Hessler and junior attackman Sean Kirwan.

“Coming off the Amherst and Lasell games we’re not satisfied with what we put out on the field,” senior quad-captain midfielder Matt Witko said. “There were a lot of mistakes and a lot to build off of. … We truly believe our biggest opponent is ourselves, so we’re focused on our brand of lacrosse, our style and our fundamentals, and that’s more important to us than any opponent.”

On March 23, Tufts will hit the road and go to Owings Mills, Md., where another big opponent, No. 2 Stevenson, awaits. One of the Jumbos’ biggest assets in this game — in addition to Hessler, Kirwan and the defense — may be the element of surprise. Though the Mustangs face tough competition, such as No. 3 Salisbury, each year, the 6-0 team — though scoring an average of 17.67 goals per game and winning every game by at least seven goals — haven’t been challenged yet. Playing in the weaker Capital Athletic Conference, the Mustangs should have a hard time preparing for any NESCAC opponent, let alone one with as explosive an offense and as aggressive a defense as the Jumbos. They may be ranked right behind Tufts, but if the Jumbos come out guns blazing, the Mustangs may very well get caught on their heels.

“One thing Coach Daly has been preaching is not changing who we are but coming out and being ourselves day in and day out,” Kirwan said. “So, when we reach that big stage we can put in the same effort we have the entire year.”

The team’s short road trip will culminate three days later at Williams, where the Jumbos will take on another one of the three teams they edged 10-9 last season.

Coach Mike Daly’s demand for mental toughness is sure to come into play against the Ephs. The Jumbos will be emotionally rebounding from one of two things: a thrilling victory or an ego-rattling loss. Though the team showed last season that it has no problem with quick emotional turnarounds, national expectations are higher now.

The team’s mindset may be the key to defeating Williams.

All in all, next week will be like a workweek for the men’s lacrosse team. see MEN’S LACROSSE, page 10