2011-3-1

THE TUFTS DAILY

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TUFTSDAILY.COM

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

VOLUME LXI, NUMBER 22

Where You Read It First Est. 1980

Tufts professor to chair Harvard board by

Elizabeth McKay

Daily Editorial Board

Bruce Wang/Tufts Daily

TCU President Sam Wallis, pictured above second from right at a Feb. 27 Senate meeting, was part of a delegation of senators representing Tufts at the inauguaral NESCAC summit.

TCU Senators discuss alcohol abuse with NESCAC peers at conference by

Kathryn Olson

Daily Editorial Board

Two Tufts Community Union (TCU) senators this weekend attended the inaugural New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) Summit on Alcohol to share Tufts’ experiences with the problem of underage drinking.

TCU President Sam Wallis and Senator Yulia Korovikov represented Tufts at the summit hosted at Connecticut College. The aim of the summit was to help participants gain a better understanding of underage alcohol abuse at NESCAC schools.

“The goal of the summit was to identify which problems all NESCAC schools face and how

New event marks end of Black History Month by

Laina Piera

Daily Editorial Board

Students, faculty and members of the community last night gathered at Granoff Family Hillel Center to close out Black History Month with a celebration of black history and culture.

The Black History Month Celebration, sponsored by the Tufts Black Men’s Group and the Africana Center, featured performances by the all-female a capella group Essence, the ENVY Step Team, Berklee College of Music student Nick Hakim and Matt Rose and the Crossover Kidz, a hip hop/rap band also made up of students from Berklee.

Sophomore Gabrielle Raymond also read her essay, which took second place in January’s MLK Reflections Contest.

There was an open mic for attendees to share their thoughts about black history and culture.

Senior Shabazz Stuart, one of the event’s organizers, said the idea for the event came up two weeks ago when members of the Black Men’s Group realized there was a void to fill.

“Black history is American history,” Stuart said. “To know black history and to understand black history is to understand who we are as Americans.

We talked about priorities for the semester. We said, ‘No one’s doing anysee CELEBRATION, page 2

they’ve attempted to work them out,” Korovikov, a sophomore, said. “We asked ourselves, ‘What can we do better as a group to work towards a better system?’”

Summit participants concluded that students abuse alcohol at dangerous levels and that shots of hard liquor pose the greatest risk see ALCOHOL, page 2

Harvard University last week announced that a Tufts professor, Leila Fawaz, will serve as president of its Board of Overseers for the 2011-12 academic year.

Fawaz, the Issam M. Fares professor of Lebanese and Eastern Mediterranean Studies, will assume her position after Harvard’s commencement in May. She is the founding director of Tufts’ Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies and has served on the Harvard board since 2006.

The Board of Overseers is one of two governing bodies at Harvard. The board assists the Harvard administration in an advisory capacity and oversees the visitation and review of Harvard’s schools, according to Fawaz. The other body is the recently revamped Harvard Corporation, which supervises finance and business affairs.

Fawaz says she hopes to use her tenure as president of the board to continue to guide Harvard’s evolution.

“Together with my fellow overseers, I hope to support

[Harvard] President [Drew] Faust and her colleagues in their vigorous efforts to adapt to changing times and to maintain Harvard’s standing as one of the best universities in the world,” Fawaz said in an e-mail to the Daily.

Members of the board elect the president yearly, according to Harvard’s Senior Communications Director John Longbrake.

Robert Shapiro will round out the board’s leadership as the vice-chair of the Board’s executive committee. Shapiro, a prominent Boston lawyer and former president of the Harvard Alumni Association, will also assume his post in May. Fawaz predicts that the board’s goals for the coming academic year will crystallize in the coming months.

“I anticipate that we will be thinking about such issues as Harvard’s evolving international agenda, its efforts to think innovatively about teaching and learning in the college and across Harvard’s schools and the ways the different parts of the see HARVARD, page 2

Boiler failure at Tufts heating plant left uphill dorms with decreased heat The uphill central heating plant, which is responsible for heating the dormitories in the area, on Sunday experienced boiler problems that caused a temporary reduction in the temperatures of many buildings.

“We did have heat in all the dorms, just at a lower rate,” Director of Facilities Services Bob Burns said. “We never lost heat. We were putting out reduced heat, because we lost a boiler.”

Despite the reduced heat levels in uphill dorms, the Department of Facilities Services did not receive any reports of complaints from members of the Tufts community, Burns said.

Vice President for Operations Dick Reynolds said that Facilities monitored the temperatures of the affected dorms; boiler problem did not last long enough to significantly reduce temperatures in affected buildings.

“Nothing ever got below 64 degrees,” he said.

Two of the boilers used to generate heat for uphill dorms stopped working, Reynolds said. The central plant, located by the smokestack adjacent to Dowling Hall, usually runs on two out of its three boilers at a time, but on Sunday was down to just one operational boiler.

One of the boilers’ pumps malfunctioned due to low-quality fuel, and the third boiler — an older piece of equipment typically reserved as a backup — would not start, Reynolds explained.

“We were unable to get fuel to one of the boilers because of a problem we’re having with delivery of oil to the plant,” he said.

“There has been a problem with fuel delivery and quality of oil.”

The inability to pump fuel to the boiler was due to both poor oil viscosity and a technical failure of the pump, according to Burns.

Inside this issue

DANAI MACRIDI/TUFTS DAILY

Several uphill dormitories, including Carmichael, were affected by a boiler failure on Sunday.

He said that all of the residence halls serviced by the central plant — and therefore impacted by the boiler crash — are uphill: Blakely, Carmichael, Hallowell, Hill, Hillside Apartments, Houston, Miller, West and Wren.

Reynolds said that heat in other buildings and downhill dorms is supplied by separate heating plants.

“We have a number of heating systems around the campus. So many dorms were unaffected,” Burns said.

The boiler stopped functioning at approximately 9 a.m. on Sunday, Reynolds said.

Facilities was notified of the problem by an alarm that goes off when a boiler goes out of service, and responded quickly to try to repair it, Burns said.

“For about 12 hours, we had people working on it all day [Sunday],” he said.

Reynolds said one of the boilers started up again around 9 p.m. the same day, and

he estimates that normal heat returned to dorms by midnight. Facilities yesterday was still working on the boiler that had been experiencing pump difficulties, Reynolds said.

At approximately 10:30 p.m. on Sunday, Reynolds sent out an e-mail to let residents of affected dorms know that Facilities had restored the central plant to its standard working capacity.

To prevent future boiler problems at the central plant, Burns said that Facilities is looking into modernizing the aging equipment.

“We want to make sure we provide good service to the community,” Burns said.

Reynolds said updates to the central plant are planned for this summer, while boiler replacements remain longer-term goals.

—by Jenny White

Today’s Sections

Chef Dan Barber (LA ’92) has made a passion for cooking developed at Tufts into an award-winning career.

The Daily’s photo department takes an upclose look at a few cultural events held this weekend.

see FEATURES, page 3

see CAPTURED, page 8

News Features Arts | Living Captured Editorial | Letters

1 3 5 8 10

Op-Ed Comics Sports Classifieds

11 12 13 15

The Tufts Daily

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News

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Groups collaborate to put on Black History Month celebration at Hillel

CELEBRATION

continued from page 1

thing for Black History Month. There’s no opportunity for Tufts students to come out and celebrate such a part of history.’”

Senior Hameto Benkreira, another event organizer, said the group wanted to commemorate the end of Black History Month with an event involving a broad spectrum of the community.

“We really wanted to bring a crosssection of the campus together to celebrate this event. … There’s not always such a diverse crowd that’s reflective of the Tufts campus,” Benkreira said. “We thought it would be a good way to close out Black History Month with a community gathering. We really worked hard to reach out to a lot of people from all over campus.”

The organizers approached Tufts Hillel to host the event, worked with the Center for STEM Diversity and obtained funding from the Office of the Dean of Student Affairs.

Sophomore Groom Dinkneh, who also helped organize the event, said he invited Matt Rose and the Crossover Kidz to the celebration after seeing Rose perform at a similar event at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology a week and a half ago.

“I went there and Matt, from the group that performed, recited the same poem on stage [that he performed tonight],” Dinkneh said. “When I heard it, I was like, ‘Man, we need this kid to come out’. So I ran up to him and grabbed his number. Lo and behold, he happens to be an artist, so he brought his whole band out and made them the feature and really got the crowd really involved today.”

Sophomore Sabienne Brutus heard about the event from Dinkneh and thought it would be an interesting event to attend given the outside involvement and venue, which is different from venues of other Africana

Bruce Wang/Tufts Daily

Organizers sought to attract a broad spectrum of people to last night’s event, which marked the end of Black History Month.

Center events. She said she especially liked Essence’s performance of “I Am Not My Hair” by India Arie.

“It speaks to me, so I definitely enjoyed that,” Brutus said.

Stuart hopes that this event will become an annual tradition.

“I hope we started something here tonight,” Stuart said. “Hameto and I are both seniors, but I hope this continues. Black History Month is an important opportunity to look back retrospectively at black history, as far as the narrative of black people in America, so I hope this happens again.”

Bruce Wang/Tufts Daily

The ENVY step team performed at last night’s Black History Month celebration.

After serving four years as Harvard overseer, Senators share Tufts experience Fawaz will head the board starting this summer with tackling alcohol abuse HARVARD

ALCOHOL

university can work together both academically and administratively,” she said.

Fawaz, who was born in Sudan and raised in Lebanon, received her B.A. and M.A. in history at the American University of Beirut, before receiving her A.M. and Ph.D. in history from Harvard in 1972 and 1979, respectively.

Her career at Tufts began in 1979, where she has served as chair of the Department of History and as dean for humanities and arts.

Fawaz succeeds prominent appellate and Supreme Court litigator Seth Waxman, who is also a former solicitor general of the United States, as president. Shapiro will follow Mitchell Adams, executive director of the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative.

Shapiro and Fawaz have served together on the Board as overseers for four years, and Shapiro is looking forward to a period of close cooperation, he told the Daily.

“We’re very close colleagues and close friends,” he said.

“We’re really looking forward to working together.”

Shapiro served on the Ha r v a r d Corporation G over nance Review Committee, which in December recommended reforms to the Corporation in response to concerns raised about its effectiveness. These changes included doubling the number of board members and instituting six-year limits on their terms.

“There were many months of study and discussion and

to student health, Wallis, a senior, said at Sunday’s Senate meeting.

Attendees formulated a resolution to address campus alcohol abuse, declaring that any solution to the problem would ultimately lie in the hands of students and not administrators, Wallis said.

“As students, we tend to say, ‘The administration needs to change this policy,’ or ‘The Programming Board has to hold these events, and we will respond,’ but the truth is we shouldn’t be looking for the administration to solve our problems,” Wallis said. “We need to pick up our end of the bargain.”

Tufts revised its alcohol policy in the summer of 2009, imposing harsher sanctions on students found violating campus alcohol regulations. Students raised concerns that the new policy would have a dangerous effect, discouraging students from seeking medical attention.

Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman convened an Alcohol Task Force, composed of students and administrators, to evaluate the policy and formulate strategies to reduce binge-drinking practices.

The review process led to the announcement this past summer of a revised alcohol policy that is more nuanced and includes a forgiveness clause for offenders.

Both Korovikov and Wallis acknowledged that Tufts’ alcohol policy is more forward-thinking than that of many of its NESCAC counterparts.

“Our policy is more holistic; it’s not just a policy, but includes a social responsibility aspect,” Wallis said. “In that sense, Tufts is leading on this issue.”

The Senate was part of the extensive discussions on the uni-

continued from page 1

continued from page 1

Courtesy George Ellmore

Leila Fawaz, the Issam M. Fares professor of Lebanese and Eastern Mediterranean Studies at Tufts, will serve next year as president of Harvard’s Board of Overseers. careful consideration about what will be good changes,” he said.

Fawaz also expressed her excitement about the changes and hopes that Harvard’s two governing boards will continue to complement each other’s work.

“I am confident that the boards will continue to work collaboratively, and I

fully support the decision to enlarge the corporation and its capacity,” she said.

Harvard degree-holders elect 30 board members to six-year terms, according to Longbrake. The 2010-11 board that elected Fawaz includes a film producer, an astronaut and the director of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

versity alcohol policy, issuing in November 2009 a resolution advocating for the creation of a social-norms marketing campaign to curb the perceived dangerous drinking culture on campus.

Korovikov in the fall started the campaign to reduce over-consumption of alcohol and to emphasize student responsibility.

Wallis said that the summit reenergized the Senate’s efforts to engage in a campus-wide conversation regarding students’ alcohol usage.

“We are looking with reinvigorated enthusiasm to find the best ways to get students involved and active in social life while practicing safe drinking habits,” Wallis said.

One of the main topics of discussion centered on ways to engage upperclassmen in the responsible drinking conversation, so that they can serve as role models for younger students, according to Wallis.

Conversations with the other NESCAC school representatives made clear to Wallis that establishing an alcohol policy that both emphasizes student safety and respects federal law is a tricky undertaking.

“Tufts has been able to strike solid balance of staying within the law while making sure students aren’t afraid to call for help,” he said.

Korovikov agreed, adding that most students feel safe requesting medical assistance in the event of an emergency.

“Tufts has done an incredible job in making sure students feel safe and comfortable,” she said.

“There are other things that can be worked on, but we have an incredible starting point.”

Wallis said that NESCAC schools plan to hold a similar summit next year, though the discussion may not focus on alcohol abuse.

Features

3

tuftsdaily.com

PROFILE | DAN BARBER

Romy Oltuski | The Dilettante

Alum ascends the ranks of culinary stardom

From catering on the Hill to serving the Obamas, Dan Barber is on a roll

Courtesy Irene Hamburger

Chef Dan Barber (LA ’92), owner of two Blue Hill restaurants in New York, is intent on making an impact in the culinary world.

Penning menus for two award-winning restaurants, writing opinion pieces for The New York Times, giving talks for innovation group TED and lecturing at a Harvard University food-science course are not typically activities of a celebrity chef. But Dan Barber (LA ’92) is unlike your everyday Bobby Flay or Ming Tsai.

As chef-owner of two Blue Hill restaurants in New York, 42-year-old Barber has championed the culinary world with both his inventive cuisine and his influential thinking in the field of sustainable agriculture, which earned him the James Beard Foundation’s coveted Outstanding Chef Award in 2009 and a spot on Time Magazine’s annual list of the world’s 100 most influential people in the same year.

Barber’s path into culinary superstardom is a far cry from what he set out to do after graduating from Tufts nearly 20 years ago.

“My plan was to get a Fulbright [to study in China], but it got canceled a month before I was leaving,” Barber told the Daily. “So I ended up having no place to go and no plans.”

Barber decided to travel across the country to California and abroad to Spain with a few of his Tufts friends as they backpacked to a new culinary destination every couple days. Though his food tour was one of the factors that drew him to the life of a chef, Barber also credits his childhood experiences both in and outside of New York City as his first and most significant initial foray into the culinary world.

“My father was always taking me out, so I was introduced to different cuisines and cultures,” Barber said.

His time spent at his grandmother’s farm in the Berkshires was just as influential.

“That’s where I spent a lot of time farming and haying the lands,” he said. “I think whatever we do in our lives we tend to want to recreate happiness from when [we were] younger.”

Barber carried on that passion at Tufts, where he started an on-campus catering business with his friend Gene Choi (LA ’92).

“We started up this catering deal to have people invited to these different homes depending on whose house was available and cooked really extravagant meals. We cooked pastas, used cast-iron

by Jon

Cheng

Daily Editorial Board

kitchen equipment and nice silverware,” Barber said.

More than a profitable business venture, Barber’s vision was about spreading the art of good cooking, which was lacking on campus at the time. As they had hoped, the catering business soon achieved campus-wide acclaim.

“We never really earned much money, but it was a lot of fun and social,” Barber said. “It was a small collection of [a] dozen when we first started out, then at the last party it felt like there were a million people there.”

Intent on pursuing cooking further, Barber sought advice from University Professor Sol Gittleman, who served as provost at the time and taught his German literature course.

“I used to go to [Gittleman’s] office to talk to him about what I was going to do with my life,” Barber said. “His eyes instantly lit up when I told him about my consideration to become a chef, and without his encouragement I don’t know whether I would have been what I am today.”

Despite his culinary experience and his advice from Gittleman, going into cooking was still more of an accident than a conscious plan.

“I always thought of cooking as a way to earn some money and move from there,” he said.

Upon concluding his food tour, Barber’s career only went upward. He worked at La Brea Bakery in Los Angeles with pastry

chef Nancy Silverton before enrolling in culinary school at the French Culinary Institute in New York. He left for France shortly after graduating and returned to New York a year later to work for famed chef David Bouley before finally opening the first Blue Hill outpost in 2000 with his brother and sister-in-law.

Less than two years after opening the restaurant, Food & Wine Magazine named Barber one of America’s best new chefs, and Blue Hill subsequently earned commendation by online restaurant reviewer Gayot as one of the 40 best restaurants in the country. After opening Blue Hill at Stone Barns, in Pocantico Hills in New York’s Westchester County, Barber was inducted into Food & Wine’s Hall of Fame.

The accolades are still coming, and Barber cites a single reason: The restaurant’s food — including vegetables, herbs and meats — comes directly from Barber’s farm, even at his Manhattan eatery in Greenwich Village. Barber also embraces a farm-to-table foraging concept, whereby the dish attempts to reflect how the ingredient was grown or raised, a notion that has been in the forefront of Barber’s written work.

“In a recipe for braised lamb, for example, it’s a look in how you raise that lamb before you cook it — it’s a recipe of a recipe,” Barber said. “The meaning of that recipe is critical for the future of our see BARBER, page 4

Recipe | from the kitchen of dan barber

Balsamic-glazed Brussels sprouts Ingredients: 2 cups of Brussels sprouts, cut in half lengthwise 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar 3 tablespoons olive oil or canola oil Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions: 1. Preheat the oven to 400°F. 2. Pour oil into a pan and heat.

3. Add Brussels sprouts to the pan face down.

4. Let the Brussels sprouts cook until they become brown and crusty.

5. Put the pan in the preheated oven and let it sit until the sprouts are roasted.

6. Remove the pan from the oven and flip the sprouts over. Then drizzle balsamic vinegar while lightly tossing, until no extra vinegar remains.

7. Add salt and pepper and serve.

Serves two people as a side dish

The art of feng shui

A

fter having some trouble sleeping, I decided to forgo the suggestions most had given me — sleeping pills, exercise, fewer all-nighters — in favor of one I thought I could more realistically take on: feng shui.

Feng shui, from what I gathered from its Wikipedia article, is the ancient Chinese practice of orienting space to bolster a positive energy called qi — basically, baby-proofing your house. Except instead of protecting an infant, you’re protecting an invisible life force that’s both part of you and not part of you, loosely translating into English as “air.”

Thus began my mission to turn my living space into an airtight, Zen paradise and get my sleep back — temporarily skipping over the feng shui desk organization manual my housemate had given me, as it allotted two-ninths of the desk to traditional desk items and the rest to plants and candles.

On to wall color. It would be easier to adapt my personality and life circumstances to my existing wall color than repaint, I decided, so I browsed through a feng shui color manual, fingers crossed that green would make an appearance. Lo and behold, green is the perfect color to sustain the qi of both those who are distinctly NOT looking for companionship and babies. Score.

The rest of my task, however, required more effort than simply adopting a misanthropic, infantile personality. I was frantic upon learning that with my bed so close to a window, my qi could easily escape through it at any time; it was entirely possible I no longer even HAD a qi.

Set on winning it back, I read on about bed placement: far away from windows but not cramped against a wall; far from the door but definitely not in view of a mirror, worst of all one at the foot of the bed; not in the path of the qi-killing draft that runs between the door and the windows, but the door must been seen from a sleeping position. I was doomed. My many-windowed room was an unsolvable jigsaw puzzle. The bed was now stranded in the center of the room not knowing how to nurture its own qi after being flung around in all directions.

And as if I hadn’t done enough to alienate my qi, the sharp corners of my night table have allegedly been impaling it this whole time! Not only had I flunked baby proofing, I had done the equivalent of stabbing the baby. Then there was the matter of waking up to a beautiful and inspiring image; I currently woke up to my heater, a crowded extension cord and the collection of used mugs I had compiled throughout the preceding day. No wonder my qi had booked it out the window.

I finally settled on a reconfiguration that was satisfactory save for the mirror in which I could see myself if I slept in most natural positions, but I resolved to simply inch up and down the bed at night until I disappeared. In addition, after much thought about which inspiring image I should like to wake up to, I decided to tap into my household’s living room collection and bring in the life-sized Elvis cutout, unwitting courtesy of Leonard Carmichael Society’s Las Vegas Night. (Before and after shots available online.)

Yes, my room is now something I wouldn’t altogether associate with hideousness. But I learned a few things — like those sharing a bed should always call the outside to leave their qis feeling freer. And while my green walls may bar that piece of advice from ever pertaining to me, I wouldn’t trade in my newly misanthropic disposition for anything after sleeping the way I did last night and waking up to the King at the foot of my bed.

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

Oltuski@tufts.edu.

The Tufts Daily

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Features

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Tufts graduate becomes influential chef, advocate for healthier eating BARBER

continued from page 3

ecological health, and the future [of our] ecological health is critical for the future of our human health.”

Seasonality is an even more radical factor in his flagship Stone Barns outlet.

Because of the limited availability of much of what is in stock, there is rarely a dish that remains on the menu all year.

“Part of the challenge and excitement of a chef is embracing the four seasons,” Barber said. “We don’t have a dish that stays on for [more than] a couple nights — maybe even an hour.”

In fact, Blue Hill at Stone Barns doesn’t offer a specified menu for this very reason. “[Each menu] was made up that way because of the harvest of the day. It’s the nature of nature, but not the nature of cooking,” he said.

According to Barber, four- to eightcourse menu options, priced at $85 to $135, are wholly based on what is available during the month. Last month, that was based around 22 ingredients, including Hakurei Turnips, African geese, cosmic carrots and Peruvian ‘altitude’ potatoes, among others.

Ingredients aside, Barber experiments heavily with novel farming techniques.

One innovative example is the process of flavoring charcoal out of biochar, a process he briefly covered in his Harvard lecture last fall.

“After we slaughter a pig, we use the bones, carbonize them and make a biochar out of the bones … like how it’s used to season or stock a soup,” Barber said.

“It’s been interesting and very flavorful.”

Barber’s expertise with innovative culinary procedures has shaped his strong views about sustainable agriculture. He has expressed his views through his New York Times op-eds, his TED talks and his involvement in the World Economic Forum in Switzerland two years ago.

One problem, Barber said, is the harmful effect of the food world’s evolution.

“Over the last 20 or 30 years, the world of food has changed dramatically from the kinds of foods that our parents and grandparents enjoyed,” he said.

Although environmentalists and Barber share concern for the revolution in agriculture, Barber’s focus pertains specifically to its effect on the flavor of food.

“We had all these dramatic changes, but the biggest interest for me has been about the effect on how food tastes,” Barber said. “In a world that increasingly looks to produce food cheaply and quasi-efficiently, we get worse-tasting food and degradation on our environment and our health.”

One way of bringing about collective action against this evolution — or, rather, devolution — of food is to be involved in the process. Barber has recently been chosen as an advisory board member to Harvard Medical School’s Center for Health and the Global Environment.

President Barack Obama, who dined at Blue Hill on a date with his wife last year, has also appointed Barber to serve on the President’s Council on Physical Fitness, Sports, and Nutrition.

“The job entails speaking about and being an activist for some of the things that Michelle Obama has been advocating, like the Let’s Move campaign that calls for better eating for kids,” Barber said.

Barber foresees the council having longterm effects on the American diet.

“We have not just famous athletes advocating exercise, but pediatricians and lawyers on the council that advocate childhood-eating patterns,” Barber said.

“That’s an awesome realization, so hopefully, as a council, we can do some quality reforms, [but] it’s too early to tell.”

“Too early” may come quicker than he expects, and the council may take its next steps as early as this spring.

“I’m meeting in May with [Vice President Joe Biden], and there is a lot of strategizing. So we’ll see how it goes from there.”

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GODDARD CHAPEL FORUM ON RELIGION IN AMERICA SPRING, 2011 Wednesday March 2, 2011

6 PM Goddard Chapel

Professor Ingrid Mattson Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations Hartford Seminary “Counterculturalism and the Formation of American Muslim Identity” Cosponsored by The Chaplain’s Office, the Fletcher School, and The International Center Tufts University, Medford, MA 02155 – (617) 627-3427 Website: www.tufts.edu/chaplaincy

Arts & Living

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tuftsdaily.com

Restaurant Review

Foundry On Elm offers typical gastropub fare, unique drinks in a cozy atmosphere by

Rebecca Santiago

Daily Editorial Board

The complications of balancing innate dichotomies could be very real ones for an ambitious gastropub like Foundry On

Foundry On Elm 255 Elm Street Somerville, MA 02144 (617) 628-9999 Price Range ($-$$$$): $$$ Elm. Contradictory forces are already manifest in the blend of “gastronomy” and, well, “pub,” but this upscale tavern faces a bigger challenge than simply providing customers with delicious food and equally delicious beer.

While a quality meal and brew are of course priorities, a gastropub must strike the right atmospheric balance between spirited and refined, cozy and extravagant. Everything from the decor to the friendliness of the servers plays a role in defining this delicate equilibrium.

Luckily, Foundry’s got the whole atmospheric harmony thing down pat, and the food’s not half bad, either.

Even with six flat-screen televisions around the room and clustering at the bar, Foundry is still a pretty romantic place to meet a special someone for dinner or a drink. The black-and-white marble bar adds a hint of luxury and makes that Boddingtons (or, if you’re under 21 like me, that glass of lukewarm water) taste just a little more special.

Maybe it’s the soft, flattering lighting that gleams dimly off the red leather booths and dark wooden tables.

If the lighting doesn’t seal the deal for

Rebecca Santiago/Tufts Daily

Classy decor and comfort food meet at Davis Square’s gastropub.

Foundry as your next date locale, one look at the menu probably will. The dinner menu is filled with buzzwords like “aioli” and “gruyere,” and although the prices are a bit too high for food that’s only slightly gourmet, footing the bill will make you look good. Shelling out $14 for Foundry’s most expensive appetizer, a housemade charcuterie plate, is significantly classier than swiping a sweetie into Carmichael — yeah, even if it’s stir-fry night.

Foundry offers a respectable variety

of dressed-up drunk food, like a croque monsieur sandwich ($10) and poutine ($9), a popular Canadian dish of French fries topped with cheddar curds and beef gravy. For its more sober clientele, there’s a raw bar that culminates in a $45 seafood tower that includes oysters, clams, crab claws, shrimp and tuna tartare.

The menu almost lives up to its highfalutin’ promises. Though some dishes have a few nice twists, like the fried slices see FOUNDRY, page 6

Movie Review

Gallery Review

‘Housemaid’ delivers tense setting but thin characters

MFA documents medium’s push for artistic legitimacy

by John-Michael Sequeira

Daily Staff Writer

Melodrama tends to conjure up images of soaps — the iconic mood lighting, a gorgeous cast and confrontations ren-

The Housemaid Starring Jeon Do-youn, Lee Jungjae, Youn Yuh-jung, Seo Woo Directed by Im Sang-Soo dered laughable by contrivance, poor acting or, more frequently, both. The genre is

frequently shrugged off as the cinematic equivalent of the “airport novel,” both deliciously entertaining and indulgent in its simplicity.

With Im Sang-Soo’s “The Housemaid,” however, a level of artistry and visual craft work its way into the body of this familiar framework, lending a formal appeal to what might otherwise be an uncomplicated affair, forgettable by design. Still, his skill with composition and ability to fashion an atmosphere of dense, erotic foreboding are frustratingly undermined, at least in part, on account of being saddled with skindeep characters and a muddled plot. see HOUSEMAID, page 6

by

Anna Furman

Contributing Writer

“Modernist Photography 1910-1950,” an exhibit currently on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, covers a

Modernist Photography 1910-1950 Gallery 335 in the Arts of the Americas Wing, through July 3 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 465 Huntington Avenue Boston, MA 02115 (617) 267-9300 critical time period, in which the growth of photography as an art medium was significant in its reflection of the rapid technological developments of the early 20th century.

The exhibit is in the new Art of the Americas Wing and is nestled between modernist and abstractionist exhibits — works by Stuart Davis, Georgia O’Keefe, Alexander Calder and Jackson Pollack — and a room celebrating realism, with pieces by Edward Hopper, Andrew Wyeth and George Bellows.

The exhibit is mostly concentrated in one room of the wing, and the small scale of the photographs on display makes for an intimate reflection upon early photography and its historical implications. This intimacy provides a nice contrast to the dynamic and some-

imdb.com

Lee Jung-jae and Jeon Do-youn have remarkable chemistry, but their characters fall flat.

see MODERNIST, page 6

Madeline Hall | The Tasteful and the Tasteless

Obscure Oscars

T

he beauty of being someone relatively insignificant in the greater world of pop culture commentary is the distinctly low level of expectation for my critiques. Realistically, writing a cultural commentary column at Tufts does not earn the opportunity to go and report live at the 2011 Academy Awards. Instead, while watching from the safety of my room, I opted to wear my saggy high school sweatpants and an unsightly men’s waffle shirt. In short, I donned apparel slightly less professional and glamorous than that designed by Christian Dior or Versace.

There are other aspects of the Oscars that are less flashy than what we see on the red carpet. The Atlantic on Feb. 25 published an article entitled “Oscars 2011: Everything You Need to Know About the Tech Awards You Usually Ignore,” which reviewed the finer details of three oftenoverlooked Oscar categories. The article discussed the nominations for Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing and implored readers to appreciate just how much time goes into the technical side of movies. The title alone does an effective job of summarizing the typical treatment of these categories: usually ignored, and for quite some time.

Initially, I was heartened by the article. I believe recognition for behind-the-scenes efforts always takes the form of “too little, too unenthusiastic.” There’s something distinctly less sexy about faceless sound mixers slaving away in a booth in comparison to Best Actor nominee Javier Bardem (but I should be fair; nothing is sexier than Javier Bardem.) The lack of appeal should not lessen their importance, though; the technological side of filmmaking is just as important as the performance side. Taking an objective look at the general American public makes me doubtful that most Oscar viewers will get excited for the techies.

From a cultural perspective, the major problem with the Oscars is the elitism associated with the award show. The vast majority of movies nominated have a distinct “Oscar” aura, which really translates to “highbrow.” It’s a bit of a stretch to ask common TV-watchers to accept the interruption of their regularly scheduled programming in order to broadcast a lengthy award show with such an elitist attitude.

Further asking these same viewers to care about an aspect of filmmaking largely obscure to them seems a little cruel.

The people prominently featured at the Oscars are also of an elite stratum of stardom. Take the two hosts of this year’s ceremony, James Franco and Anne Hathaway.

Both are well-known and mostly well-liked actors with lowbrow starts to their careers, but both have taken steps toward the elitist mentality with their roles. Franco has graduated from his earlier films (among them “critically acclaimed” “Never Been Kissed” (1999)) to more mature roles in films like last year’s “127 Hours” and “Howl;” and upon seeing Hathaway in “Rachel Getting Married” (2008) it’s hard to remember she was ever in “The Princess Diaries” (2001) — though you should try, TRY to remember her outrageous hair. Even the Academy’s attempts at choosing accessible hosts to normalize the show fall short. If they really were looking to please the masses, Justin Bieber would host every year, right?

I think I ignore an important aspect of the elitism of the Oscars. For one night, the lowbrow American masses get an inside look at the glamour of Hollywood and maybe that’s incentive enough to watch and forget the taste stratification. Of course, I can’t kid myself; my Sunday sweats rudely remind me I do not shine the same way as Natalie Portman, but I don’t mind in the end. At least I’m not some crazy ballerina.

Madeline Hall is a sophomore who has not yet declared a major. She can be reached at Madeline.Hall@tufts.edu.

The Tufts Daily

6

Arts & Living

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

The strengths of ‘Housemaid’ fail to outweigh a meandering, predictable plotline HOUSEMAID

continued from page 5

A remake of a 1960 film of the same name, it focuses on the titular housemaid, Eun-yi (Jeon Do-youn), who has just become the live-in nanny for an incredibly wealthy couple. In addition to caring for the precocious, quirky Nami (Ahn Seo-hyeon), she will also look after the soon-to-be-born twins expected by the gorgeous, and very pregnant, wife, Hae-ra (Seo Woo).

What follows, for anyone fortunate enough to have seen the trailer — which was superb — or those who intuit the all-tooinevitable outcome, is a sexually charged affair between Eun-yi and the estate’s patriarch, Hoon (Lee Jung-jae).

As a director, Sang-Soo is tasked with presenting this material in a manner that’s compelling, erotic and ultimately tragic but never overt, and he does so brilliantly. The nuance with which sexuality ripples through Eun-yi’s daily tasks is tantalizingly suggestive, and hints of voyeurism color her early interactions with Hoon in a way that reaffirms the foregone conclusion of their affair without belaboring it.

When the sex does, in fact, begin, silence is expertly manipulated, offering up a familiar storytelling device in a manner that’s wholly unexpected. Hoon’s initial seduction of Eun-yi, which borders dangerously on coercion, is carried out nearly wordlessly, made both chilling and provocative all at once.

The film’s depiction of sexuality is refresh-

ingly unapologetic — neither romanticized nor puritanical. It cuts to the quick of lust, seamlessly linking it to fear, power and persuasion, then captures this steely vision with artful imagery and frank, believable dialogue. It never takes the tack of fading into the morning after, and with that comes an air of artistic legitimacy.

Accompanying that commitment to creative vision is a sharp aesthetic approach to set and cinematography, in which gorgeously lensed, sumptuous interiors are cased in shining marble and harsh glass. Black pervades the film, creeping into every nook of the strangely hollow mansion, as if its coldness mirrors the contents of its owners’ hearts.

It’s a quality that begins to seep, less successfully, into the writing, a capacity in which Sang-Soo proves less adept. While Eun-yi is, by this token, left pleasantly opaque and sealed off as a protagonist — we’re never privileged with an insider’s look at what makes her tick — the surrounding cast lacks depth. Whereas Eun-yi’s outward appearance conveys the presence of a complex, submerged interior, the wealthy couple appears morally vacant.

And while that is perhaps some commentary on money leading to the vanishing of one’s soul, the narrative would have been better served in three dimensions, not two.

There simply isn’t enough doubt at work once Hoon’s adultery is exposed and schemes are hatched. The screenwriter becomes more a puppeteer in this sense, taking too many precautions out of the fear that we’ll ever be

imdb.com

Jeon Do-youn portrays the title character in this eerie remake. thrown off familiar ground. The audience is left to look on as strings are pulled, and little takes shape organically with the characters.

Instead, we’re faced with a tale so rife with plot and subplot that the people are quickly transformed into pawns.

This narrative meandering, which takes hold shortly after the beginning of the tryst, saps the film of its immediacy and forward drive, leaving it to languish in the hands of the scowling, vengeful wife. And perhaps it’s not so much Hae-ra’s character as it is

Sang-Soo’s tendency to overtly foreshadow her motives that cuts the film’s legs out from underneath it. In either case, a sense of dramatic inertia is irretrievably lost.

At 107 minutes, it’s a brisk film, but this weakness at its center fails to bridge the foreboding opening and blistering conclusion satisfactorily. We’re left with fascinating pieces, but a broken portrait. If the undeniably eerie final scene is any indication, SangSoo has creativity in spade — let’s hope he finds consistency to pair with it.

Inventive, ‘slightly gourmet’ recipes lack a needed zing at Foundry FOUNDRY

continued from page 5

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Charles Amos Cummings Fund © 2003 Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

‘Abandoned House’ from the series ‘The Inhabitants’ by Wright Morris (1940-41).

Gallery celebrates the early 1900s rise of photography as legitimate art form MODERNIST

continuedfrom page 5

times overwhelming rooms drenched in kinetic sculptures and Pollack splatters.

The works in this exhibit were pulled from the museum’s own cache and the Lane Collection, part of the estate of a mid-century industrialist and his wife.

The photographs range in content from nudes and still lifes, to the machine age and the American city, to Edward Weston’s 1941 illustrations for a new edition of Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass,” covering rural and city landscapes. Featured artists in the exhibit include Weston, Alfred Stieglitz, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Charles Sheeler and Ansel Adams.

There is a prevailing tension in the exhibit between the handcrafted look of pictorialism and a more naturalistic abstraction.

What role does the photographer have in the work? If he or she has composed the piece with meaning and intention and if the piece is successful in the communication of its aesthetic or thematic message, does that validate the photographer as an artist and the photograph as a piece of art?

Stieglitz, a prominent early 20th-century photographer and advocate for photography as a legitimate art, championed a more “straight photography” that would celebrate natural subjects by flattening out forms and making them abstract. This abstraction has the power to nullify any social or spatial context that the subject might otherwise connote, and in this specific rendering of the subject, the photographer asserts an artistic voice.

A set of four gelatin silver prints by Sheeler entitled “Nude” (1918-19) are particularly attention-grabbing. These photographs, taken of the photographer’s wife, Katharine Baird Shaffer, celebrate this sort of artistic voice that was so revolutionary for early 20thcentury photographers. When I first looked at these photographs, I recognized them as

a series of beautiful and abstract shapes, complementing each other in bizarre but interesting ways. Then I took a few steps closer, and realized that what I was looking at was actually a body. The curve of her leg, the roundness of a nipple, the protrusion of an elbow — all become recognized as individual segments of a greater whole.

The importance of individual parts to a whole brings to mind machinery and the many changes that modernization brought.

The odd angle of the camera in each frame and the absence of the subject’s face from the work removes her identity as both an individual and a human, effectively transforming her body into a sculptural form that provokes a feeling of anonymity.

There is a sense of wonder and mystery to her body that, when viewed alongside her apparent loss of identity, may be referential of art history’s traditional manner of representing women. One of the main focuses of these photographs is the plumpness of her body parts. Her legs, stomach and arms all fold into each other in a very evocative way that connotes traditional womanly qualities of nourishment and comfort. Unlike most traditional paintings of nude women, however, her body is not sexualized or objectified, but is instead realized.

Sheeler renders the subject’s body into a sculptural object and, in doing so, asserts himself as an artist, not merely a technician.

Early photographers struggled with their validity as artists; many critics viewed painting, the prevailing medium up to this time, as the finest of fine arts.

Now, within the span of 100 years, we have come to recognize photography as a valid art form to be celebrated and studied, criticized and appreciated. For a chance to enjoy all “Modernist Photography 1910-1950” has to offer, visit the exhibit any time between now and July 3. Or better yet, make several visits, as prints from the Museum’s collection will be rotated periodically.

of lemon topping the calamari appetizer ($10), they also serve a few disappointments, like the bland basil aioli alongside the calamari. The excellent crust on the roasted garlic, exotic mushroom and tallegio flatbread ($12) elevates it one shade above the calamari, but the cheese-to-mushroom ratio is a little off, and the flavor profile isn’t particularly subtle or developed.

The Foundry Burger ($10) is good, especially complemented by a surprisingly green and fresh pickle wedge, but who can screw up a burger?

To put it simply, the cuisine is good but nowhere near mind-blowing. The major problem is that, while above-average and sometimes flat-out yummy, the food is missing a bite, a kick or even an enhancer.

This is where the establishment’s dualistic nature steps in. Not to advocate that drinking is the only way to enjoy a meal at Foundry, but it’s true that one of the first things alcohol influences is perception. Plus, Foundry has a well-stocked bar and an expansive list of cocktails with fun names like Old Granddad’s Cherry (house-infused bourbon, sweet vermouth and bitters) and Ginger Smash (Maker’s Mark bourbon, mint, lemon and ginger).

Their beer menu boasts a lot of local Massachusetts beers — naturally, Sam

Adams is on the list, but so is Pretty Things “Baby Tree” from Cambridge and Clown Shoes “Eagle Claw Fist” from Ipswich.- And Foundry’s Sunday special brings glasses of wine down to $5.

End the meal on a sweet note with the pineapple upside-down cake ($7), topped in caramel, coconut ice cream and toasted coconut. That is an order, not a request, although the chocolate-crusted Bailey’s cheesecake ($7), drizzled with chocolate mint sauce and Bailey’s Crème Anglaise, may be an acceptable alternative.

One final great thing about Foundry: Its menus aren’t strictly limited to the dinner, bar and booze varieties. The restaurant has a lunch menu and, more unusually, a brunch menu, which has an entire section set aside for poached egg dishes (all $12). Other eye-catching offerings include Grand Marnier French toast ($10), which comes with a seasonal fruit compote and maple syrup, and the Mediterranean scramble ($10), a hearty, savory dish filled with chorizo, peppers, scallions and tomatoes.

Compared to other gastropubs, Foundry isn’t too special. It has a nice atmosphere and better-than-decent food, but nothing worth writing home about. Its sultry setting and interesting culinary medley, however, set it apart from other establishments in Davis Square, making it definitely worth checking out.

Rebecca Santiago/Tufts Daily

Foundry is just swank enough to impress a date and just relaxed enough for flannel.

The Tufts Daily

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Healthy Volunteers Wanted for HIV Vaccine Research Study Brigham and Women's Hospital researchers are looking for healthy men and women to participate in HIV Research Studies.

You may be eligible to participate in one of the investigational, preventive studies currently being conducted, if you meet the following criteria: - HIV negative adult - 18-50 years in age - In good health All participants receive counseling and testing at no cost. Compensation is also provided.

FACT: You cannot get HIV from participating in an HIV Vaccine Research Study.

Call and volunteer today @ 617.525.7327, or email vaccines@partners.org.

For additional information please visit www.hvtn.org

TAKE YOUR PROFESSOR TO LUNCH DURING MAJORS WEEK

MARCH 7—11 2011 Ask your favorite or soon to be favorite teacher to lunch at Carmichael or DewickMacPhie Halls and SPIRIT will foot the bill. More information will be provided in an email to all undergraduates.

MAJORS WEEK OPEN HOUSES

March 2

History Department Reception 12:00-1:20 pm East Hall Lounge

Sociology Department 12:00-1:15 pm 124 Eaton Hall

March 9

Chemistry Department

March 7

American Studies Major Information Session 12:00-1:00 pm Eaton 202

Info Session 12:00-1:15 pm Pearson Chemistry Building Room P112

Breakfast with IR

English Department

9:30-10:30 am Cabot Mezzanine

Geology

4:00-5:00 pm Dept Conference Room Bromfield-Pearson

Meet the faculty 12:00-1:15 pm East Hall Lounge

Mathematics Department

Open House Open Block Lane Hall Room 7

Political Science Department

German Studies Open House

12:00 pm Eaton Hall Room 206

12:00-1:30 pm German House 21 Whitfield Road

March 10

12:00 pm Eaton Hall, 3rd Floor

4:30 pm Eaton Hall, 3rd Floor

Major’s Day Event 12:00-1:30 pm Olin Center, 2nd Floor

Open House 12:00-3:00 pm 112 Packard Avenue

Department of Religion

Department of Anthropology

Romance Languages

Community Health

Philosophy 5:45-6:00 pm Miner Hall, 2nd Floor

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Captured

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Captured

meagan maher/tufts daily

Getting cultured:

Tufts groups offer a peek into world heritages justin mccallum/tufts daily

See Jumbo Slice at blogs.tuftsdaily.com for more photos

Ashley seenauth/tufts daily

meagan maher/tufts daily

ashley seenauth/tufts daily

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

The Tufts Daily

Captured

9

virginia bledsoe/tufts daily

ashley seenauth/tufts daily

With a South Asian culture show, a Japanese children’s music concert and a Klezmer recital taking place at Tufts this weekend, students had the chance to take a trip down culture lane. meagan maher/tufts daily

meagan maher/tufts daily

The Tufts Daily

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THE TUFTS DAILY Alexandra W. Bogus Editor-in-Chief

Editorial Mick Brinkman Krever Saumya Vaishampayan Managing Editors Martha Shanahan Executive News Editor Michael Del Moro News Editors Nina Ford Ben Gittleson Amelie Hecht Ellen Kan Daphne Kolios Kathryn Olson Matt Repka Corinne Segal Jenny White Brent Yarnell Elizabeth McKay Assistant News Editors Laina Piera Rachel Rampino Minyoung Song Derek Schlom Executive Features Editor Jon Cheng Features Editors Sarah Korones Emilia Luna Romy Oltuski Alexa Sasanow Falcon Reese Assistant Features Editors Angelina Rotman Sarah Strand Amelia Quinn Ben Phelps Executive Arts Editor Emma Bushnell Arts Editors Mitchell Geller Rebecca Santiago Matthew Welch Allison Dempsey Assistant Arts Editors Andrew Padgett Joseph Stile Ashley Wood Rebekah Liebermann Executive Op-Ed Editor Bhushan Deshpande Op-Ed Editors Larissa Gibbs David Kellogg Rachel Oldfield Jeremy Ravinsky Daniel Stock Elaine Sun Devon Colmer Cartoonists Erin Marshall Alex Miller Louie Zong Craig Frucht Editorialists Kerianne Okie Michael Restiano Joshua Youner

Editorial | Letters

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Editorial

In time of budget cuts, schools should be sacrosanct It is no secret that the financial crisis has affected a wide segment of the population. Yet while the worst of the crisis seems to have abated for many, its most recent victims aren’t even old enough to vote.

The Boston School Committee on Dec. 15 voted to close nine public schools and merge eight others into four. The U.S. Department of Education is currently investigating these closings on grounds of discrimination because the majority of students at these schools come from low-income families. Fortyfour percent of affected students are Latino and another 46 percent are black. Superintendent of Boston Public Schools Carol Johnson claimed that the schools were selected because they were the lowest-ranked among families in the area, had poor academic performance and subpar facilities.

Racial discrimination aside, lowincome students need access to free education more than any other student group in the country. Education is ultimately going to be their ticket to a better life. Shutting down schools in their area is definitely not the way to help them go about this.

Similar decisions are unfortunately being made in other states as well.

Michigan state officials last week ordered the city of Detroit to close half its schools in order to balance deficits and cope with a declining student population. The average size of a high school class would shoot up to about 60 students. Though Detroit is not facing the same discrimination charges as Boston, the main issue here is still the same: By the time the plan is over, 44 schools will be closed and educational opportunities for students throughout the city will decline considerably.

The slow economic recovery has made it clear that something has to be cut in order to close budget gaps.

Though it is always difficult to change the status quo, there are some plausible targets that wouldn’t hit students nearly as hard. School administrators, for example, tend to be both overly plentiful and overpaid in most public schools. That’s not to say that a school can function without a principal, but many have multiple superintendents, assistant principals and secretaries whose tasks can be consolidated. It would be far more prudent to trim these positions rather than shutting down entire schools.

Certainly we can’t expect a few administrative salaries to compare to

the savings of shutting down or merging 17 public schools, but the underlying argument still stands: Students should not be affected.

When the financial crisis first hit in 2008, University President Lawrence Bacow made it his goal that any cuts made to the university’s operations would not be felt by students. Instead, Tufts implemented a modified hiring freeze, declined to give most faculty and administrators’ raises and put capital projects on hold — all in the name of keeping the “student experience” untainted.

It is unfortunate that children much younger than college students and at such early stages in their educational careers have to suffer in order to balance budgets. Children in school now are one day going to be the future of this country. While it may seem easy now to close schools, save money and fill in the budget gap, such a tactic is something that is undoubtedly going to hurt the country in the long run. Terminating expendable positions such as those held by administrators needs to be considered first before states decide to shut the doors on its public institutions.

When money is tight, things need to be cut back but educational opportunities for children should be sacrosanct.

Louie Zong

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Off the Hill | Rutgers University

Political comments require information

The U.S. health care system is evil — or so teen pop sensation Justin Bieber would have you believe, according to a recent interview with Rolling Stone.

On a semi-related note, [New Jersey] Gov. Chris Christie [(R)] has made it known that he — unlike a large portion of University students — is not a big fan of MTV’s “Jersey Shore.” In fact, Christie plans on telling his “good friend” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo [(D)] to “take [the cast] back” to New York because New Jersey does not care for them. How are these not-quitenews items related? It’s simple — on one hand, we have a pop culture figure making claims about politics, and on the other, a political figure making claims about pop culture. But the big difference is that Christie is qualified to make his claims publicly. Bieber is not.

This is a time in which pop culture and the government have been comby the

Daily Targum

The Daily Targum

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.

ing closer together. In fact, they have merged to the extent that people perceive […] President Barack Obama as a sort of celebrity president. Is this conflation a good thing? In some ways, it is absolutely harmless. For example, it is kind of fun to find out what songs elected officials have on their iPods. At the same time, people have to remember the crucial difference between pop culture and politics. Namely, that pop culture is a matter of taste, while politics are a far more complicated beast.

As a human being, Christie is automatically a member of mass culture.

As such, he has every right to espouse his opinions on something like “Jersey Shore” in a public forum. Everyone has that right — pop culture is something everyone is a part of. It informs our everyday lives, no matter how much we try to remove ourselves from it. One need not be an expert on something like trashy reality television to express [his] feelings about it.

But not every human being is a political expert — especially when it comes

to something as complex as health care. Of course, Bieber is entitled to his opinion — everyone is allowed to have an opinion on pretty much everything.

But when media outlets like Rolling Stone and The Huffington Post print someone like Bieber’s comments on health care, all they are doing is wasting space. Bieber’s opinions on health care do not constitute news. Does anyone really care what a [17]-year-old pop singer thinks about American health care? If they do, they shouldn’t.

If Bieber wants to express his opinions on health care — something he is not intimately acquainted with — let him do it. Just don’t waste time and paper letting the world know what he said.

In short, it comes down to this: When politicians talk pop culture, it humanizes them, and citizens like to feel closer to their elected officials.

When pop culture icons talk politics, it makes them sound simple. Of course, this is a sweeping generalization, but it certainly applies in the case of Justin Bieber.

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ADVERTISING POLICY All advertising copy is subject to the approval of the Editorin-Chief, Executive Board and Executive Business Director. A publication schedule and rate card are available upon request.

The Tufts Daily

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

11

Op-Ed

Ad-free entertainment: a satire

Queering gender

Brian Pilchik

Nearly two weeks after the event, journalists are just now beginning to uncover some of the hidden truths behind “An Evening with The Onion.”

The“free” event, sponsored byTufts Lecture Series (TLS) and Programming Board, on Feb. 17 brought to campus two alleged “employees” of The Onion, “America’s Finest News Source” and satirical web and print publication. The evening seemed innocuous enough at first, but as the days passed, anonymous conspiracy theorists on campus have raised serious questions as to the identity of the speakers and their hidden motives.

A supposed raffle for a Kindle lured large crowds to the event, but no raffle drawing seems ever to have taken place.

This news left one student wondering whether setting fire to her entire paperback collection had been appropriate pregaming for the event after all.

Publicity efforts (or the mere irresistibility of Kindles) must have succeeded, as the lecture drew a crowd of 10,479 students and 1,165 faculty members, or roughly everyone on campus but a single freshman. When asked to comment, the individual (whose identity will remain hidden, but whose Facebook username is available upon request) stated, “I just, I couldn’t find Cohen Auditorium. I still kinda don’t know where anything is around here.” The student then proceeded to wander off campus in search of the elusive gym.

Despite this outlier, event organizers were reportedly pleased with the turnout, noting that having the entire campus in one place “allowed the brainwashing to be as effective as possible.”

A week of undercover investigation on the President’s Lawn spent straining to catch snippets of conversation from the President’s house yielded further information. As it turns out, no representatives from The Onion had actually been available to attend their own publicity stunt, so graduate students from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy were asked to fill in at the last minute.

When pressed for comment, University President Lawrence Bacow revealed that the individuals masquerading as journalists “could not have written witty graffiti on the bathroom stalls of Dewick, let alone worked for a national publication.” The two graduate students posing as Onion writers merely cut together screenshots, videos, and headlines from public Onion archive material in order by

Elisha Sum | InQueery

I justin mccallum/tufts daily

to create the illusion of having worked at the publication’s office.

Students present for the event were quick to confirm these revelations, citing “weak humor” and “cheap shots” as tipoffs that the “employees” did not, in fact, work for The Onion.

“I knew it!” insisted one sophomore.

“Onion sandwiches? They had no idea where the title even came from!”

A sixth-year student agreed. “Those Keynote slide transitions kept freaking out the guy with the beard, and that’s when I knew the dude was phony. Cause, ya know, The Onion predicts the future, so he would have totally seen it coming.”

The elaborate facade was created in order to maintain the valuable contract the university has signed with the publication, wherein The Onion agreed to a “voluntary donation” of $33 million to the university in exchange for a harmless hour alone with the minds of impressionable young consumers. The fine print demanded that Tufts students “volunteer” to take care of all advertising and logistics for The Onion’s event. Event organizers were also required to shamelessly delay the beginning of the presentation for 15 minutes while nothing but the official Onion logo was projected onto a 50-square-foot screen. They also used this time to inconspicuously name-drop book titles during the Q&A session (achieved with the help of planted audience members) and showed embedded subliminal messages in videos featuring President Obama, cleverly disguised as embedded subliminal messages within a video featuring President Obama.

A spokesperson for The Onion denied both its endorsement of the evening and the possibility that their company would engage in anything so obviously narcissistic.

“It’s not that we deny audaciously indoctrinating thousands of students to our products through the guise of ‘an evening of entertainment,’ as we have many similar events around the country,” he said. “It’s just that we would never allow the most dangerous campus in the nation to sponsor one of them.”

When asked to explain the recent explosion of hits on TheOnion.com traced to the university IP address, the spokesperson declined to comment.

Despite the recent hiccups, Tufts Lecture Series is expected to continue with the remainder of its scheduled speakers. In the spring, Home Depot will be educating the student body on where to purchase the best ratchet and adjustable wrenches.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education canceled an appearance set for later in the semester, observing that they could gain more popularity merely by bumping Tufts’ campus to number 11 on their antispeech list. In its place, Tufts Lecture Series is looking to host a lecture on the American Marketing Association’s newest study, “If You Raffle, They Will Come.”

This article was provided to you for free by the same people who give out those energy drinks and T-shirts outside the Mayer Campus Center.

Brian Pilchick is a freshman who has not yet declared a major.

Off the Hill | University of Southern California

White House sets dangerous precedent by

Daniel Charnoff The Daily Trojan

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced Wednesday that the Obama administration “will no longer defend” the Defense of Marriage Act. DOMA, a 1996 law that allows states to not recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states, was seen as an appropriate compromise in the mid-90s, but has since become a lightning rod for criticism from gay rights activists.

In his announcement, Holder clarified that the administration will continue to enforce the law, as is its constitutional responsibility, but that both he and President Barack Obama had concluded that the law itself, in particular Section 3, which defines marriage at the federal level as between a man and a woman, was not constitutional.

Therefore, the President has encouraged the courts to re-evaluate the Act and instructed the Justice Department to stop defending it in trial, while still permitting civil society groups to do so.

It is important to note that Obama’s decision does not, despite a widely seen Fox News report that was subsequently shown to be completely false, shirk the executive branch’s constitutional duties. The administration is not breaking any laws.

It is, however, throwing the considerable power of the Presidency behind the cause of gay rights in a controversial way, as it is

unclear that the Justice Department’s role is to actively oppose in court the very same laws it is expected to enforce on the street.

For this reason, Obama and Holder’s decision sets a dangerous precedent.

Regardless of one’s position on gay marriage — I happen to agree that Section 3 of DOMA violates LGBT community members’ constitutional rights — this is not the proper means through which to reach a desired end.

In part, the problem with the Justice Department’s new policy is that it is part of a trend. Last year, Holder announced that the Justice Department would no longer enforce federal laws against medical marijuana in states that permit its sale and use.

This was another sensible idea, that the federal government should not be wasting its resources chasing the perpetrators of relatively harmless activities sanctioned by the states, but again it was achieved through questionable means.

The combination of these two policies establishes the expectation that presidents can use their executive power to steer the law a certain way. That is supposed to be the purview of Congress.

Though I have written here before that the American system of government is currently biased in favor of the legislature, the Justice Department’s actions in these instances go too far and target the wrong policy areas.

It is important for the President to have more autonomy in economic and national security policy, which can be dangerously

muddled by Congressional politicking.

On social matters such as gay marriage and drug enforcement, however, it is the give and take of Congress that leads laws to change gradually over time.

The Obama administration’s new DOMA policy is not only of questionable constitutionality, it is also poor strategy.

By establishing a standard that the President can use the power of the Justice Department to change the law, Obama is leaving room for his hard-fought victories to be overturned easily by future ideological opponents.

The next Republican president could, for example, use Obama’s model to oppose health insurance reform or even gay marriage itself, by lending federal support to states that will surely continue to fight it after its inevitable legalization.

This hypothetical situation demonstrates how shifting the prerogative for social change from Congress to the executive branch could lead to wilder swings in policy, replacing the gradual reform that has marked most of American history.

Though at times American gradualism can be frustrating, it at least reflects public opinion and avoids the possibility of regression.

Our traditional channels of social change, popular opinion leading to legislative and judicial reforms, are worth preserving.

Despite Obama’s great intentions in fighting DOMA, his new policy risks winning the battle, but losing the war.

s it a bird, is it a plane? A simple question that’s simply answered. But what about: Are you a boy, or are you a girl?

This might seem like another simple inquiry, but it can prove complicated for those identifying as genderqueer. As a general term that refers to gender identities that do not fit into the traditional understanding of gender as either man or woman, genderqueer is a catch-all label that can encompass other constructions, such as third-gendered, androgyne, intergendered, gender-fluid, and agendered. This label has, of late, been gaining momentum as an alternative, and its viability relies on the idea that sex and gender aren’t the same.

The question of ‘boy or girl’ reinforces the gender binary. The expectation is that a clear-cut answer will be provided. In particular, it doesn’t account for intersex and trans identities, since they do not fit into the simple two-gender system. Intersex people cannot biologically be classified as only male or female, and transgender people do not feel that their gender identities match their assigned sex. And of course, the question clearly excludes people identifying as genderqueer. These individuals reject identifying as male or female, even if they feel more of an affinity for one over the other. Their mindset allows for a paradigm beyond the dual-gender system.

For genderqueers, signifiers of gender in relation to masculinity, femininity and appearance may vary and blur the lines of “boy” and “girl”. For example, a gender-queer individual might be a femalebodied person who appears “male” and dons stereotypically feminine attire, or a male-bodied person that looks typically masculine and athletic but sports makeup and skirts.

People who label themselves as genderqueer may envision their identity as outside of social conventions. Perhaps they feel androgynous, or like both a man and a woman, or even neither, or something outside of the current gender structure. Maybe their identity is fluid; one moment, one hour, one day or any length of time to the next could entail a shift in identity. In essence, all these labels could be restricting and limiting to gender-queers whose identity cannot be conveyed sufficiently through the traditional vernacular.

Speaking of language, it is important to understand the varying preferences of gender-queers in terms of gender pronouns.

Some may be fine with the usual “he” or “she,” but others may ask that they be referred to using various gender-neutral pronouns. Besides the usage of “they” and its other forms (“their” and “them”) in the singular sense, there is also the choice of using gender-neutral terminology, such “ze,” “zir,” “sie,” “hir” and “per.” It is also possible that an individual’s name is the preferred form of identification. Lastly, an individual may want some variation of all those choices, or a combination of them. The point is to realize that people of varying gender identities exist within the group identifying as gender-queers, and it is important to respect their wishes and appropriately refer to them.

Another aspect of gender-queerness is that it has nothing to do with sexuality.

Gender identity and sexual identity are separate parts of an individual’s identity. The fluidity or refusal of the malefemale sex categories already complicates assigning sexual identity, such as bisexual or homosexual. It is even more complicated for intersex individuals who may identify as genderqueer. Of course, others may choose to fall back on a biological sex to more easily assign a sexual orientation. And obviously, genderqueers fall along the spectrum of sexuality, from straight to pansexual.

In sum, gender-variant individuals exist and wish to be acknowledged and respected, and we cannot ignore that.

Elisha Sum is a senior majoring in English and French. He can be reached at Elisha.

Sum@tufts.edu.

Op-ed Policy The Op-Ed section of The Tufts Daily, an open forum for campus editorial commentary, is printed Monday through Thursday. 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

12

Comics

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Doonesbury

Crossword

by

Garry Trudeau

Non Sequitur

Monday’s Solution

Married to the Sea

www.marriedtothesea.com

SUDOKU Level: Saying W-W-W faster than World Wide Web

Late Night at the Daily Monday’s Solution

Mick: “Guys, this is a newspaper, not a whorehouse.”

Please recycle this Daily.

by

Wiley

Sports

13

tuftsdaily.com

Men’s Lacrosse

Transfer Callahan brings Div. I experience to promising squad by

Philip Dear

Daily Editorial Board

The men’s lacrosse team is a talented group of players. No one can deny it; The Jumbos are the reigning NESCAC and NCAA Div. III Champions.

But how good are the Jumbos, actually? Is playing Div. III lacrosse comparable to playing in the more televised, glorified Div. I? The best way to find out is to talk to someone who has played in both settings.

Enter Matt Callahan.

Callahan, a sophomore transfer from Div. I Fairfield University, has a bold answer to the question of how the Jumbos stack up against the nation’s top Div. I squads.

“I believe that our team this year could beat any team, at any level, when we play to our ability,” he said.

Callahan was a highly touted recruit coming out of Phillips Exeter Academy in 2009 as an All-American long-pole defenseman. He started 12 of 14 games during his freshman season at Fairfield, sitting out the other two with a concussion.

He thrived at Fairfield from an athletic standpoint, but the overall experience wasn’t exactly what Callahan wanted out of his time in college.

“I decided to transfer because I wanted to have more balance in my college experience between academics, athletics and social/extracurricular activities,” he said.

The Jumbos’ national title was certainly an added reason to come to Tufts, yet Callahan’s process of choosing a school was underway long before — and continued after — the championship run. And with the graduation of Tufts’ Third Team All-American defenseman Eytan Saperstein (LA ’10), as well as other defensive starters, Callahan’s transfer couldn’t have come

at a better time for the team.

“We graduated a lot of defensive players, but we also have a lot of younger guys who are capable of playing, and adding Matt has increased our depth at defense and provided us with another impact player,” senior quad-captain defenseman Alec Bialosky said.

The addition of Callahan to the team will add to the strong roster, according to senior quad-captain attacker D.J. Hessler.

“We had all the confidence in the world in the guys we still had on the team, but it is always great to get a talented player like Matt to come to our team,” he said. “His experience playing last year will help to be a voice of leadership on our defense.”

Of course, no one appreciates a great defender as much as a goaltender.

Sophomore goalie Tyler Page, a former teammate of Callahan’s at Phillips Exeter, knows well the type of presence Callahan has around the crease.

“Having Matt as a part of the defense in front of me definitely makes my life easier,” Page said. “He is an extremely consistent player on the ball so I don’t have to worry too much about getting slides ready for him. But I believe his strength is his off-ball defense. He is a great communicator and really helps to bring the defense together as a unit.”

When it comes to slides — defensive shifts that occur after an offensive player gets past his defender — speed, vision, communication and, in most cases, intuition are vital to success.

According to Page, Callahan’s abilities help make the slide system smooth.

“We are a quick-sliding team that relies more on our collective team defense than on individual talent, so a leader like Matt is essential to our style of play,” he said.

Callahan’s transition to Tufts has been a fruitful one both in terms of

Courtesy Matt Callahan

Sophomore Matt Callahan, who transferred from Div. I Fairfield, will look to aid the NCAA Div. III champion Jumbos’ defense. his lacrosse play and in his personal and academic lives, which is just what he was hoping for when he decided to transfer to the Hill in mid-June.

“My experience at Tufts thus far has been outstanding,” he said. “In general,

Tufts left out of NCAA tournament for first time since 2007

—by Ethan Sturm

see MEN’S LACROSSE, page 15

MEN’S SWIMMING AND DIVING

Women’s Basketball

The women’s basketball season officially came to an end yesterday afternoon with the announcement of the 64-team NCAA tournament field.

Though four NESCAC teams were awarded bids, including two that will be hosting firstand second-round games, the Jumbos — ranked ninth in the region and sixth out of NESCAC sides — were denied entry for the first time since 2007, a season only senior guard Vanessa Miller was around to see.

“For the last three years, it has always been like another season after NESCACs,” senior tri-captain guard Lindsay Weiner said. “NCAAs have always been one of the most intense and fun parts of our season, and to not be going is disappointing. I feel like I’m waiting for practice to start up again. This is one weird break.”

The season started off promisingly for the Jumbos, who despite losing Miller due to a lack of eligibility and losing junior forward Kate Barnosky to a knee injury, rattled off wins in 10 of their first 11 games. But two overtime losses to Williams, including a heart-breaker last weekend in the NESCAC Tournament, kept the Jumbos on the outside of the bracket looking in.

Stay tuned for more coverage in tomorrow’s Daily.

I really enjoy my classes and the location of campus. Lax-wise, I couldn’t have asked for a better transition. The guys on the team were incredibly wel-

Jumbos come in third at NESCAC Championships by

Aaron Leibowitz

Daily Editorial Board

Williams prolonged its reign over the NESCAC men’s swimming and diving world this weekMEN’S SWIM AND DIVE NESCAC Tournament, at Brunswick, Maine Friday-Sunday 1. Williams 2. Amherst 3. Tufts

James Choca/Tufts Daily

Senior Lindsay Weiner and the rest of the Jumbos were left out of the NCAA tournament bracket yesterday for the first time in four years.

1,741.5 1,614.5 1,318

end in the conference championships at Bowdoin, winning its ninth-straight title and 10 out of the last 11. The Ephs earned 1,741.5 points to edge out the Amherst Lord Jeffs (1,614.5), while the Jumbos finished third with 1,318.

It was the sixth straight year that Williams, Tufts and Amherst have occupied the top three spots, but only the second time in that span that the Jumbos have finished third.

The Jumbos entered the weekend striving for second place, but knew that challenging the Ephs and Lord Jeffs would not be an easy task.

“It was a blast,” senior quadcaptain Gordy Jenkins said, his voice hoarse from three days of screaming. “It was pretty exhausting but it was so much fun. We would always like to place higher,

but we were very content with how we did.”

The championships, which began Friday morning and ended Sunday night, featured one preliminary round and one finals round each day.

Williams took the lead on day one and never relinquished it, although the Lord Jeffs made a strong push during the final session. Trailing by 103 points at the start of day three, the Lord Jeffs cut the deficit to just four points with four events remaining. However, the Ephs pulled away late to hold onto their crown. Their 127-point margin of victory was the smallest at the championships since 2003.

Tufts freshman Johann Schmidt, who won most of the events in which he participated this season, took first place in both the one-meter and threemeter diving championships to earn Diver of the Meet. It was no easy task for Schmidt, who placed second behind Amherst freshman Colin White in both preliminaries before overtaking him in the final round.

Senior Trevor Stack received the four-year high-point award for diving after placing fifth in the one-meter and seventh in the three-meter competition.

On Friday, the Jumbos had two NCAA qualifying times in relays.

Jenkins, Juniors Owen Rood and

see MEN’S SWIM AND DIVE, page 15

The Tufts Daily

14 Alex Prewitt | Live from Mudville

Sports

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Women’s Track and Field

Next year’s Oscars

W

ith The Oscars officially over, I have nothing left to do except wallow in sadness that 363 days remain between now and the next installment of the world’s greatest spectacle. Forget March Madness or Opening Day; I’d rather watch Natalie Portman. Who cares about the NBA Playoffs or the potential NFL lockout when the award for Best Live Action Short is on the line? Green outfields pale in comparison to red carpets.

In the interim, I need to find a way to sustain my attention. And thanks to my anonymous network of sources, I’ve stumbled across a gold mine. Currently in the works are a batch of remakes of this year’s Best Picture nominees, and I have the exclusive synopses. And if these heart-pounding blurbs are any indication, next year’s ceremony won’t be nearly as painful.

“Inception”: In a spine-tingling actionthriller, a down-and-out leader rallies the old gang together for one last corporate espionage. Funded by a wealthy Russian entrepreneur, these men infiltrate deep into the minds of a rival — planting an idea into the target’s subconscious — to trade away his best player, the face of the franchise and arguably the best point guard in the NBA. Filled with shots (of the 3-point nature) and Favors (of the Derrick nature), this film is sure to keep you on the edge of your seat, even if the NBA’s regular season cannot.

Starring: Avery Johnson, Mikhail Prokhorov and Deron Williams, with a guest appearance from Utah Jazz General Manager Kevin O’Connor as the bumbling village idiot.

“The Kids Are All Right”: The follow-up to the wildly popular New York Jets installment of HBO’s “Hard Knocks,” this warm, romantic comedy tells the story of a working-class man whose sexual exploits land him in hot water after he discovers that he’s fathered nine children with eight women across six states. Can his burgeoning football career bring in enough cash for child support, or will be have to put insulting pretty-boy quarterbacks on hold to raise a family?

Starring: Antonio Cromartie, Alonzo, Keris, Myjunia, His Daughter Who Just Turned Three, Another Son Named Tyler, Another Daughter Born Oct. 16 Named London, Another Daughter Named Lelani and A Newborn Named Jerzie.

“127 Hours”: A documentary about the average twi-night double-header between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. Starring: Joe Girardi, Terry Francona, Cowboy Joe West and boredom.

“True Grit”: A coming-of-age tale set in contemporary America, “True Grit” perfectly captures the heart and soul of the nation’s pastime. We follow the lives of the grittiest of all baseball players as they rise to worldwide fame, giving 110 percent and putting their heart and soul into the game every time they step onto the field. Whether diving to reach ground balls, running hard on every play or sliding headfirst into home, these guys really look like they’re just having fun out there.

Against all odds, determination, scrappiness and true grit will carry them to the top.

Starring: Eric Byrnes, David Eckstein, Chone Figgins, Brett Gardner, Dustin Pedroia and, once more, David Eckstein.

Random non-sequitur: Maybe this year’s batch of Best Picture nominees isn’t for you. Maybe you long for the glory days when kids’ sports movies were at their most cheesy. For nostalgia more than anything else, I’ve created the Kids’ Sports Oscars, designed to award those ’90s sports films we all grew up on.

Who was a better female character, Julie “The Cat” Gaffney or Becky “The Ice Box” O’Shea? What was funnier, the kissing booth scene from “Cool Runnings” (1993) or kissing Wendy Peffercorn in “The Sandlot” (1993)? What was more absurd, a 12-year-old becoming manager of the Twins or the Junior Goodwill Games making the front page of USA Today? You can vote for these categories — and 15 others — on my blog, which is linked below. The winners will be posted in the near future in a later version of this column.

Alex Prewitt is a junior majoring in English and religion. He can be reached at Alexander.Prewitt@tufts.edu. His blog is livefrommudville.blogspot.com.

Justin mccallum/Tufts Daily

Junior Nakeisha Jones, pictured in the high jump last month, reached 38-3 1/2 in the triple jump this past weekend. She is ranked seventh nationally.

Small squad excels at All-New Englands

by Connor

Rose

Senior Staff Writer

The All-New England Championships provide an opportunity for the women’s track and field team to compete against some of the best athletes in New England, spanning Div. I to Div. III, and often result in personal or season-best times. Even with only a few athletes competing, the Jumbos did not disappoint.

The University of Connecticut, a Div. I program, dominated the meet this past weekend, finishing in first place with 186 points. The runner-up was another Div. I school — Southern Connecticut State with 52 points. Tufts finished well behind with 8.5 points.

The Jumbos were not aiming for a team victory in the meet but instead looked to improve on individual performances. Junior Nakeisha Jones improved her national qualifying mark by triple jumping 38-3 1/2. The result leaves her ranked seventh nationally, with only one more weekend left to hit qualifying marks. Fellow junior Heather

Theiss also had a great performance in the pole vault, and while her mark of 11-6 1/2 barely missed the provisional height, it was a personal best and a school record. Theiss finished tied for sixth in the competition.

The Jumbos were able to grab a provisional qualifier in one of only three events on the track that they competed in. With senior Amy Wilfert unavailable for the meet, the Distance Medley Relay team was not able to compete at full strength. However, the 4x400 relay team was able to pick up the slack and run an impressive time. The foursome of sophomore Alyssa Corrigan, senior tri-captain Kanku Kabongo, junior Dayorsha Collins and freshman Jana Hieber ran a season-best 3:55.98. Because of the conversion used for banked tracks, the NCAA converted the result to 3:57.58 for qualifying purposes, a time that is well under the provisional mark of 3:59.50. Yet the foursome is still on the bubble to earn a spot at nationals.

“We were all very happy because not only did we hit the provisional mark, but we also ran a time that will get us into a competitive heat next weekend,” Corrigan

said. “That will be helpful in trying to better our time and giving us a chance to travel to Nationals.”

The Jumbos have shown a lot of depth this year at the 400-meter distance, and that provides a lot of flexibility for coach Kristen Morwick in picking the relay legs.

“The team that ran this Saturday represents just one of many combinations that we have tried out,” Corrigan said. “We are really lucky because our team has amazing depth in the 400 this year, so there are a lot of great choices for this relay.”

Next weekend, the 4x400 relay and the rest of the team will travel to the Armory in New York City to compete at ECACs. The Jumbos have put in a lot of hard work, and this will be their last chance to prove they can compete on a national level.

“We have all been training hard all season, so it is a matter of being confident that we are ready to run a great time and push through the end of the race,” Corrigan said. With that sort of attitude, the 4x400 and other Jumbos are looking to make one last push to the finish.

Men’s TRACK and FIELD

Marvel, Rose shatter 17-year-old school record for 800-meter run at All-New Englands by

Lauren Flament

Daily Editorial Board

Sophomore Jeff Marvel and junior Connor Rose took full advantage of an famously fast track this weekend at the All-New England Championships at BU. Both Jumbos stepped on the track Friday night in the fourth and final heat of the preliminaries for the 800-meter run, and when they stepped off, both had set new personal records (PRs), broken the school record and qualified for NCAAs. Marvel and Rose, who is also a senior staff writer for the Daily, took second and third in their heat, with times of 1:52.12 and 1:52.44, respectively, both of which shattered the school record of 1:53.10 that was set by James Lavallee in 1994.

“It was good competition, and it set up perfectly, so I’m really happy with it,” Marvel said. “Since there was such great competition, my plan was just to start out in the back and let them pull me out and then start to move up in the last few laps and finish strong.”

Marvel and Rose both did just that, in by far the fastest heat of the event.

UConn’s senior Michael Rutt finished first, over 2.5 seconds ahead of any other athlete in the prelims, with an impressive 1:48.35.

“When a guy runs that fast and he

takes the heat out that quick, it’s a lot easier to run a faster time than when you start out the race slower and have to make up ground,” Marvel said.

Marvel’s time on the banked track converts to 1:52.72 on the flat track, which narrowly slips under the automatic NCAA qualifier of 1:52.80. Rose’s time converts to a 1:53.04, well under the provisional qualifier of 1:54.90 and just .24 seconds off the automatic pace.

While Marvel will definitely compete at NCAAs in two weeks at Capital University in Ohio, Rose’s fate depends on how many athletes the NCAA accepts into the event, a number usually between 12 and 16. Currently, Rose’s time ranks him as the 10th fastest Div. III athlete in the 800 meters nationally, while Marvel is just ahead in eighth. “[Connor] ran awesome. It was definitely a long time coming,” Marvel said.

“I think he’s had the ability to run that fast — it was just a matter of being in the right place at the right time and having the opportunity to run that fast.

It was a great race for him.”

Next weekend is the last chance for other athletes around the country to hit the automatic qualifier and will be Rose’s final shot at securing a trip to Nationals.

Next week, he plans to run the same event at the IC4As at BU.

Both Rose and Marvel’s record-breaking times were new PRs by more than 2.5 seconds each. Marvel bested his indoor PR of 1:54.94, and Rose improved his from 1:54.97, both set earlier this season at the Valentine Invitational on the same banked track.

The pair gained entry into the finals in the 800-meter on Saturday, which included 10 athletes. Marvel’s time in the prelims was first among Div. III athletes and ranked him sixth overall heading into the finals, while Rose was the last athlete to qualify for the finals. Marvel took eighth with a time of 1:55.78, while Rose, who sat out part of the indoor season due to an Achilles injury, rested his foot instead of racing.

“It’s definitely hard to PR by 2.8 seconds and to feel good the next day, so that was a tough race,” Marvel said. “I got out well, but I just didn’t have the energy left to close from racing the day before.”

Another strong performance from the middle-distance crew came from freshman Jamie Norton in the 1,000-meter run. In the prelims on Friday evening, Norton posted a PR with a time of 2:31.47, winning his heat and capturing the sixthfastest mark of the day. The time bested his old PR of 2:32.14, run earlier this seasee MEN’S T AND F, page 15

The Tufts Daily

Tuesday, March 1, 2011 Around Campus CHAPLAIN`S TABLE - “Faith and Food, Fasting and Feasting: Perspectives on Religion and Food” Thursday, March 3. MacPhie Conference Room/Dewick Dining Hall 5-7 PM Come hear Protestant Chaplain, Rev. Kerrie Harthan, speak on her topic, “The Business of Food” All are welcome; no meal points needed.

Around Campus THURSDAY, MARCH 3, 2011 NOONTIME CONCERT Goddard Chapel 12:30 PM. Come hear Nick Dinnerstein play the cello.

This is a free concert; all are welcome.

15

Sports

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Middle distance depth on display for Jumbos in ‘redeeming’ weekend meets MEN’S T and F

continued from page 14

son at the Bowdoin Invitational.

“Jamie set a freshman record in the 1,000,” Marvel said. “It seems like he PRs every weekend that he races. He’s really fun to watch race, and especially since he is a freshman, it seems like he has a lot of room to improve and a lot to give to the team in the future.”

But Norton’s big weekend did not end there. In the finals of the event on Saturday, he set yet another personal best, running a time of 2:29.98, earning sixth and becoming the only freshman in Tufts’ history to break the 2:30 mark in the 1,000meter. According to Norton, the first 200 meters in the final was the fastest lap of his life. He never looked back.

“There was just a fast group of people,” Norton said. “In that heat, there were at least four people who have run under 2:28, so those guys were going to win it and going for a really fast time, so [everyone] went out hard. All I had to do was hold on. I hadn’t really ever been in that position before; a lot of other races I’ve been in have gone out slow.”

Sophomore Sam Haney’s Saturday also included a big PR, as he ran 4:14.98 in the mile, scoring fifth from an unseeded heat. The front pack went out in 2:11 for the first 800 meters, after which Haney closed hard with a 2:03 in the second half of the race — evidence that with

faster competition from start to finish, Haney would likely have finished even faster. “[Haney] knows he’s got a lot more in him,” Norton said. “He was frustrated that the race went out so slow. It’s obviously a really fast time, but he’s looking for more next week to see what he can do.”

Freshman Liam Cassidy added another best in the mile, running a 4:18.77 for his first time under the 4:20-mile barrier.

On the field side of events, sophomore Gbola Ajayi set personal bests in both the long jump and the triple jump. He advanced to the finals of both events, where his jump of 45-7 3/4 in the triple jump earned him seventh and his jump of 2-10 3/4 in the long jump earned him ninth.

The Jumbos also put together a successful crew of relays this weekend. In the 4x800meter relay, sophomores Dan Kirschner, Adam Brosh and Thiago Lima and freshman Bobby McShane combined for a time of 7:53.81, qualifying for next weekend’s ECAC Championships. The foursome competed on tired legs, for Kirschner, Brosh and McShane had all competed the night before.

The 4x400 team of junior Ben Crastnopol, sophomore Vinnie Lee and freshmen Clint Porte and Graham Beutler ran a time of 3:22.23, the fastest mark posted by the relay yet this season.

Among 35 scoring Div. I, II

Callahan’s presence on defense could be key for Jumbos MEN’S LAcrosse

continued from page 13

coming and are a group of just great people that I thoroughly enjoy spending time with.”

It’s a mutual respect. His friends and teammates consider themselves lucky to have Callahan with them during their Tufts careers. And as if fate itself had dressed Matt in brown and blue, a spot opened up for him in a Wren suite this year with many of his sophomore teammates, including Page and their fellow Exeter alum Sam Gardner, who is also a defenseman and was Callahan’s roommate at Exeter.

“When Matt decided to transfer to Tufts, I was very excited because I knew what it would mean for our lacrosse team and because of our friendship,” Page said.

“We had a kid who was supposed to live in Wren with us this year transfer out, so Matt was able to move into our suite and get to know a bunch of the guys right away. Having Matt at Tufts has been great both on and off the field.”

A revamped defense laden with high -school classmates could be a recipe for success for the Jumbos, who struggled at times last season to stifle opposing offenses. Fortunately for those hoping for back-to-back titles, Callahan’s transition into the Jumbos’ defensive sets so far has been as seamless as he could have hoped.

“The coaching staff certainly knows how to win,” he said. “I just want to contribute in any way they think is best to help continue the success of the team.”

Courtesy Kelsey Rose

Sophomore Jeff Marvel and junior Connor Rose left it all on the track in the last stretch of their record-setting 800-meter race on Friday. and III schools at the meet, Tufts tied for 22nd. Yet the squad was not looking for a high team placement this weekend, but rather focused on putting people in the events where they had the most potential to qualify for future weeks.

The strong performances this weekend bode well for the weeks to come. The PRs from

Marvel, Haney and Norton mean the three could do big things next weekend when they combine with a 400-meter runner — likely from the successful 4x400 relay of this weekend — to try to improve Tufts’ NCAA provisional qualifier in the distance medley relay.

“It was a great weekend for us overall. A lot of guys were disap-

pointed with Div. IIIs, because we came in sixth, but this was a redeeming weekend for a lot of guys,” Norton said. “People threw down fast times that we had hoped to run last weekend.”

TheteamwillsplitbetweenIC4A’s and the ECAC Championships at the Armory in New York City to get in some final personal bests and national qualifiers.

In prelims, Testa sets Tufts record for 50-yard backstroke men’s swim and dive continued from page 13

E.J. Testa, and senior David Meyer won the preliminary 200-yard freestyle relay before finishing third in the final. Rood and Testa also teamed up with seniors Zed Debbaut and Michael Del Moro for a national B-cut qualifying time in the 400yard medley relay, placing fourth. Del Moro is also a news editor for the Daily.

Testa topped off his day by setting a Tufts record in the 50-yard backstroke preliminaries and posting a B-cut qualifier in the finals, finishing fourth just ahead of Del Moro. Debbaut also came in fourth in the 50-yard breaststroke, touching the wall 0.22 seconds before Jenkins.

In spite of these performances, Tufts found itself in third at the end of the day with 481 points, trailing Amherst by 95.5 points and Williams by 212.5.

The Jumbos made their strongest push for second place on Saturday evening when freshman Kyle Savidge, senior Joe Lessard and junior Joe McLoughlin finished three-four-five, respectively, in the 1000-yard freestyle. “[That race] put us within 40 or 50 points of Amherst, and that was huge for us,” Lessard said. “[Freshmen] Kyle Savidge and Joe McLoughlin are kind of like the unsung heroes — guys whose names you might not read all the time in the Daily or in the athletics website write-ups, but who consistently swim well ... Two freshmen [Savidge and Schmidt] had our top two performances of the meet, and that bodes well for us in the long term.”

The relay team of Rood, Testa, Zebbaut and Del Moro had continued success on day two, taking fourth place and earning B-cut times in both the preliminaries and the finals of the 200-yard medley relay.

Del Moro posted two more B-cut times on

Andrew Morgentaler/Tufts Daily

Junior E.J. Testa and the men’s swimming team came up short of their goal of second place this weekend at the NESCACs, but still finished in the top three for the sixth straight year.

Saturday in the preliminaries and finals of the 100-yard backstroke, earning fourth in the conference.

Nonetheless, after day two, the standings were unchanged. Williams sat on top at 1,228.5, with Amherst in striking distance at 1,125.5 and Tufts not far behind at 930.

The final session on Sunday night featured seven finals events. The Lord Jeffs won two of the first three, clawing their way to within four points of first place.

But Williams kept its cool — as nine-time reigning champs tend to do — proceeding to win the 200-yard breaststroke and the final event, the 400-yard freestyle relay.

Williams also received some help from Bates’ victory in the 200-yard butterfly and Schmidt’s win in the three-meter dive.

Sunday highlights for Tufts, in addition

to Schmidt’s performance, included Rood, Testa, Meyer and Jenkins’ third-place finish and B-cut time in the 400-yard freestyle relay and Rood’s fourth-place mark in the 100-yard freestyle.

As always, the Jumbos had an incredible level of energy at the meet, not only from the 24 guys who got in the water but also from the rest of the team, which made the trip to Bowdoin.

“The best part for me was seeing our other 22 guys who weren’t swimming for NESCACs rooting for us,” Jenkins said. “I had a couple instances where I was just feeding off the energy of our fans.”

The Jumbos will now wait to find out which swimmers and divers have earned a trip to the National Championships, which begin on March 23 at the University of Tennessee.

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The Tufts Daily

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Tuesday, March 1, 2011