2011-4-7

THE TUFTS DAILY

Sunny 53/35

VOLUME LXI, NUMBER 43

Where You Read It First Est. 1980 TUFTSDAILY.COM

Thursday, April 7, 2011

President’s marathon team to be cut in half next year by

Michael Del Moro Daily Editorial Board

The university’s partner in the President’s Marathon Challenge (PMC) starting next year will cut in half the number of Tufts community members it sponsors to run the Boston Marathon.

For the past nine years, John Hancock Financial Services has been the primary sponsor for the 200 charity numbers given to Tufts as part of the challenge. University President Lawrence Bacow originally brokered the relationship between John Hancock and Tufts, a contract that was originally meant to last 10 years. The two institutions made the deal to cut the PMC participants by half — to 100 runners — this semester in exchange for extending the partnership for two years beyond the original 10-year agreement, according to Executive Director of University Development Eric Johnson.

To participate in the marathon, all runners must either meet strict qualifying times or receive a charity number that waives the requirement if they raise funds to donate to a charitable cause.

In return for bypassing the qualifying stage, PMC participants must raise a certain amount of money in order to run. Students are required to raise $1,000 and non-students, including faculty, alumni and parents, must raise $2,500 to benefit programs at the

Friedman School of Nutrition.

John Hancock did not make the change for economic reasons, but that instead cut the grants because it is seeking to diversify the charitable activities it benefits, according to Johnson.

“John Hancock is very interested in supporting a broader range of nonprofits,” Johnson told the Daily. “This was a way of kind of getting what both sides wanted … and [giving] them the opportunity to provide to more nonprofits in Boston besides Tufts.”

PMC Director Don Megerle, who called the challenge one of Bacow’s legacies at the university, was disappointed with the decision and said the change could threaten the dynamics of the team, which runners have grown accustomed to over the years.

“It was a discussion that we had with John Hancock last fall. We were trying to figure out a way to extend our relationship beyond two [more] years,” Johnson said, adding that the original contract would have allowed for only two more years with 200 challenge runners.

“It would have been difficult to go from 200 members to all of sudden having nothing, so now we have four years [with 100 runners each],” he said.

Johnson added that the university would continue to negotiate with John Hancock to try to lengthen the relationship beyond two additional years, but that such an extension has not yet been see PMC, page 2

Air Force ROTC cadets accepted to flight school by

Kathryn Olson

Daily Editorial Board

While many Tufts seniors continue to grapple with their post-graduation futures, two juniors already know what they’re doing — and it’s no desk job.

Air Force Reserve Officers Training Corps (AFROTC) cadets Brittany Trimble and Jared Kaminski last month learned they have been guaranteed slots with the U.S. Air Force’s flight school following their graduation from Tufts next year.

Trimble and Kaminski were two of 750 AFROTC college juniors nationwide who applied for the competitive positions — only 502 were awarded slots. Trimble will enter pilot training, and Kaminski was accepted to train as a Combat Systems Operator (CSO), or navigator.

All four of the cadets in AFROTC Detachment 365 — the unit based out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with which Tufts’ cadets complete their ROTC training — who applied were awarded positions in the school, according to U.S. Air Force Captain Daniel Sawicki, who instructs the detachment.

Kaminski was also placed on the waitlist for a pilot position and is optimistic that he will be accepted to the higher training program.

We’re crossing our fingers,” Sawicki said, going on to praise the Tufts cadets’ dedication.

see ROTC, page 2

courtesy Brittany Trimble

Tufts AFROTC cadets Brittany Trimble, pictured above, and Jared Kaminski, both juniors, learned last month of their admittance into U.S. Air Force flight training.

Inside this issue

Daily File Photo

Following the leak of financial documents, the university will neither pursue the leaker of 2010 financial documents nor adjust its investment policy.

University to maintain current policy in wake of Jumboleaks by

Amelie Hecht

Daily Editorial Board

In response to the leak of the university’s alleged investment information by the newly established group Jumboleaks on Saturday, the university is not at this time actively pursuing the individual or individuals who disclosed the information, according to Executive Vice President Patricia Campbell.

Jumboleaks released a confidential list of 35 companies in which it purports the university had a direct holding in 2010, citing the dual goals of promoting financial transparency and encouraging investment in socially responsible corporations.

The group did not reveal who provided them with the list.

The university also has no plans, as of yet, to alter either its endowment transparency policy or its investment strategies, Campbell said.

The organization, composed of current and former Tufts students, claimed on its website that the published document represented a complete list of the university’s direct investments in the year 2010. Campbell declined to either confirm or deny the authenticity of the leaked information, but she did acknowledge that the university last year possessed direct holdings and this year does not.

Members of the student-composed Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR) have access to a password-protected website with a list of the university’s direct holdings, Campbell said. This list, she believed, was what was published on the Jumboleaks website. “[A list of our direct investments] was made available to those handful of students … and it would appear it might have been one of the students that had that password-protected access — [who] chose to share that informa-

tion rather than keep it confidential,” Campbell said.

Relationship with the ACSR Campbell said that the leak would not alter the university’s relationship with ACSR, which the university created in 2007 to allow for greater student input on direct investments. The three undergraduate students who compose ACSR, according to Campbell, are privy only to information regarding direct investments. Because the university currently possesses no direct investments, the body at this time has no access to current investment information.

ACSR members are required to sign a non-disclosure agreement when they assume their positions, a contract that remains in effect post-graduation.

Current ACSR member Maggie Selvin, a sophomore, said that no consequences were ever clearly expressed for students found breaking the agreement, though none would ever consider doing so.

“We never had a discussion about it because it was a non-issue,” she said.

“It’s something we do as a sign of respect for the Board [of Trustees], and it was absolutely unquestioned that none of us would ever consider disclosing it.”

Gabe Frumkin (LA ’10), who was influential in the founding of ACSR and served on the committee for two years, said that the Jumboleaks incident should demonstrate to the university the need to provide the ACSR with additional power as a means of involving students more deeply in investment decisions.

“If the administration is savvy … [it will see] it is a really good time to be a more proactive partner with the ACSR,” he said. “Now is a good time to be reminded and to learn that the committee hasn’t really helped Tufts yet because the ACSR hasn’t had the substantive role that similar organizations see JUMBOLEAKS, page 2

Today’s sections

With the 2012 election season off to a start, new forces within the Republican Party will likely play a large role.

Iceland isn’t all cold and Björk: It’s also home to an exciting new music scene.

see FEATURES, page 3

see WEEKENDER, page 5

News Features Weekender Editorial | Letters

1 3 5 10

Op-Ed Comics Classifieds Sports

11 12 13 Back

The Tufts Daily

2 Police Briefs Sleeping with the enemy A student flagged down at 3:30 a.m. on Friday morning a Tufts University Police Department (TUPD) car on Professors Row to report that one of his housemates had just robbed him.

In an altercation at his Sunset Avenue residence about 10 minutes before, the student said, his housemate struck him, stole two bags and fled. Two TUPD officers later that day arrested the housemate, a 24-year-old male who does not attend Tufts, and charged him with assault and battery and larceny.

TUPD valued the worth of the stolen items at $250, though TUPD Sgt. Robert McCarthy declined to discuss

See tuftsdaily.com for an interactive map. the content of the bags, as the case is ongoing.

Smoke and mirrors Two TUPD officers at 12:15 a.m. on Saturday responded to noise reports at a Powderhouse Boulevard house party.

Upon its arrival, TUPD met officers from the Somerville Police Department already on the scene. The officers observed fog seeping out of one of the doors, which they found to be coming from a fog machine inside the house.

—Compiled by Brent Yarnell based on reports from Tufts University Police Department

PMC coach Megerle says next year’s cuts may threaten team dynamics PMC

continued from page 1

finalized with the company.

Megerle said it is too early to tell how the change will affect the relative number of students, faculty, alumni and friends who can participate in the challenge, although Johnson — who has run the race with the team nine times — said the proportions would likely remain the same.

“We’ll have the same kind of balance we had with 200 members,” he said.

“There will obviously be less on all of them, but we’ll try to make sure there is strong balance for all of those groups.”

Ryan Kring, a senior who is running on the PMC team for the first time this year, said he was disappointed with the change but noted that it reflected parallels with the Boston Athletic Association’s recent trend toward making the marathon more of a competitive athletic event.

“It’s a great program that Tufts has, and it’s unfortunate that they’re reducing

their numbers,” Kring said. “I love being on the team. It’s amazing.”

“For Tufts, it’s really been a good program and has helped the school’s reputation, as well,” he added.

Kring expressed hope that the challenge would continue under University President-Elect Anthony Monaco.

If John Hancock representatives saw firsthand Tufts students’ dedication to the challenge, Kring said, they might change their minds about reducing the numbers of Tufts students that could participate.

“If they ever come to a place like a Tufts or a Harvard [University] … watch what goes on, see the inner workings of the training and the bonding of the team and the life-changing that goes on in the kids, they’d say, ‘Gee, this is much more than running a marathon,’” he said. “To do an event as awe-inspiring as the Boston Marathon really makes you feel good about yourself and makes you feel like you accomplished a lot.”

News

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Tufts cadets secure post-graduate slots in Air Force flight school ROTC

continued from page 1

“Both cadets are very motivated and well-rounded, and what that means for the Air Force is that we end up with very qualified leaders. The combination of a Tufts education and ROTC training builds strong character and strong individuals, which is what the Air Force and our government need and what both exhibit,” Sawicki said.

Trimble and Kaminski will begin training next summer, and their positions require a service commitment of 10 and six years, respectively, according to Sawicki.

“Being a navigator is a lot of responsibility and an amazing experience,” Kaminski said. “I see myself doing well because I work well under pressure. It’s also pretty awesome to be part of something bigger than yourself. … It’s more than just a typical 9-to-5 job.”

Sawicki said Trimble, as a pilot, will after a year of basic training be assigned an airplane and start her career in the Air Force.

“The pilot position is a pretty inclusive career path for quite a while,” Trimble said.

“You fly operational missions and are stationed places overseas,” she said.

Trimble, whose father was also a pilot in the Air Force, expressed her thrill at learning she had received the slot. “This is definitely a dream come true,” she said.

“I’m so excited. … It’s nice to see all that hard work pay off.”

She noted that unlike most college students, AFROTC cadets accepted to flight school essentially have their career paths set for them.

“It’s hard, especially at our age, because most students will say, ‘I need to get this degree so I can apply for this internship so I can get this job,’ and finding a career is a really long process,” she said. “But for us, your junior year you know what you’re going to be doing. You get a sense of, ‘There’s my life after college.”

Admission to flight school is based on cadets’ entire AFROTC career, making the process extremely competitive, Sawicki

Courtesy Jared Kaminski

Junior Jared Kaminski was accepted last month to train as a navigator in the U.S. Air Force. said. Students are evaluated on, among other things, their GPA, performance in a written exam and physical fitness tests, and how they rank among their peers.

Kaminski joined AFROTC as a sophomore and was accepted to the Air Force Academy but opted instead for a more collegiate lifestyle at Tufts, where he studies mechanical engineering.

“Initially, I thought it would be really cool to design planes, and then I went into training and realized I wanted to fly them,” Kaminski added.

Trimble said that, because of her upbringing, a career in the Air Force had always been in the back of her mind.

“I grew up with a hint of the military aspect … and was brought up with a lot of values reflected in the military. As I got older, ROTC stood out as something I wanted to try,” she said.

Trimble said that she plans to work as a pilot for much of her military career.

“I’m definitely looking to stay in the military. The pilot spot is a minimum of 10 years; most people make a career out of it, and that’s what I’m looking to do. I would like to do as much time serving as possible, and I’ll see where things take me after that.”

University expects no shift in investment transparency or strategy post-leak JUMBOLEAKS

continued from page 1

at a number of other schools has had.”

Martin Bourqui (LA ’09), one of the founders of Students at Tufts for Investment Responsibility (STIR) and currently the national organizer for the nonprofit Responsible Endowments Coalition, noted that ACSR lacks the power to influence investment decisions that exists in some similar committees at other universities.The group would benefit from additional authority, he said. “[ACSR should] make real recommendations about financially secure and ethically sound ways that we can move forward to a more sustainable and just endowment,” he told the Daily. “Right now, [ACSR] does not have that power; the Tufts [ACSR] does not have the ability to take action that most other committees in the country do.”

Sophomore Kelsea Carlson, another current member of ACSR, said that the group’s alleged lack of power was not of concern to them.

“We are restructuring our relationship with the [B]oard as well as our goals, so power is not a relevant concern of ours,” she said in an email. “The people we speak with on the Board respect our voices and want to work with us towards common goals, which we’re very pleased about.”

This year ACSR has shifted its focus to learn more about corporate social responsibility, especially with regard to environmentally responsible investments, according to Carlson.

“Our goal this year has been to pinpoint how exactly we can be most effective working with, rather than in opposition to, the [B]oard,” she said.

“Therefore, we haven’t actually [been] advising them in the way most people understand ACSR, but we believe this new work is equally important.”

Selvin said she does not think that Jumboleaks’ push for university transparency will in any way impact the university’s relationship with ACSR. “I think that this whole issue is kind

of unrelated to the ACSR,” she said.

“Issues of transparency are not our primary concern; it is neither something we are advocating for nor contrary to our goals.”

A push toward transparency Senior Will Ramsdell, a representative of Jumboleaks, said he recognizes that the leak may have been a setback for the administration’s dialogue with students regarding transparency, but he hopes that the incident will raise the student body’s awareness of the issue.

“This is not going to help student transparency advocate relationships with the administration, and we understand that,” he said. “I am not optimistic that the university will see the need for transparency — however, I am optimistic that the student body will see the need for transparency and that this issue will be incorporated into ongoing dialogue now that it has entered community awareness.”

Jumboleaks hopes for transparency in all aspects of university policy and management, not just in the financial sphere, Ramsdell said.

“Fiscal transparency is just one of the ways in which the general transparency argument has come up most frequently because it is something that is obvious,” he said. “We clearly see that we need to have transparency in this particular instance.”

The university has no plans to make its investment information more publicly available, according to Campbell, citing restrictions imposed by thirdparty investment mangers as part of the reason for secrecy.

“It’s been an issue for a while, this endowment transparency and socially responsible investing, and our Board has considered it a number of times and has had a clear position that — I think for pretty good reasons — this is something that they believe should be handled by our trustee investment committee and our professionals in the investment office,” she said. “They have determined that it may not be in the best interest of

Tufts to open [investment information] up in a broader way.”

Sophomore Caroline Incledon, president of STIR, fears that the Jumboleak incident may have been a step backward for university-student relations.

“It could harm a push for endowment transparency,” she said. “We need to [work] in a way that is more respectful and collaborative.”

STIR has denied any involvement with the leak.

“Tufts would be well advised to think critically about what funds it is invested in; if they are out of line with the university’s mission, we should take necessary steps to correct that or reinvest in other areas.”

Gabe Frumkin (LA ‘10) Former ACSR member Some students have stressed that the fact that the list is from 2010 does not make it any less relevant. Frumkin and Ramsdell both emphasized the importance of understanding history, and Ramsdell noted that the university’s lack of a clearly articulated shift in philosophy toward investments in the past year makes it likely that the university remains invested in similar corporations, even if now through fund managers rather than through direct holdings.

The lack of public awareness of a change in university investment policies since 2010 is what fuels the student push for transparency, Incledon noted.

“The fact that the list of holdings is outdated is definitely important because Tufts may no longer be invested in these companies, or it may still be invested in these companies,” she said. “That uncertainty is what drives

endowment transparency movements.”

Socially responsible investments Students and alumni examining the leaked list have expressed disappointment and frustration that the university has invested in companies such as agricultural product producer Monsanto, which has engaged in controversial business practices.

A corporation’s commitment to social responsibility is not currently one of the Board of Trustee’s priorities when considering where to invest, according to Campbell.

“Now, they’re not unmindful. If there was something truly terrible in the world and it was clear that a particular investment was supporting that, I don’t think that we would support that,” she said. “But it’s not something that’s a pillar of how they make every investment decision.”

The fact that the university no longer maintains direct holdings and instead invests through fund managers creates a “double-blind” system, Frumkin noted, making it even more challenging to examine the social responsibility of the corporations in which the university is invested. He said this does not, however, prevent the university from giving due consideration to the social implications of the university’s investments.

“Just because we don’t have direct holdings doesn’t mean that Tufts couldn’t be an active investor if it chose to be,” he said. “Tufts would be well advised to think critically about what funds it is invested in; if they are out of line with the university’s mission, we should take necessary steps to correct that or reinvest in other areas.”

Incledon is hopeful that the leak will encourage more discussion on campus about socially responsible investment.

“I think it will encourage important conversation; people now realize that the endowment has social and political implications,” she said. “Many people were unaware of the implications of the endowment investments until they saw what Tufts could be invested in.”

Features

3

tuftsdaily.com

And they’re off: 2012 election season begins by

Alexa Sasanow

Daily Editorial Board

President Barack Obama announced the start of his re-election campaign Monday morning, asking supporters — by text message and email and through his newest campaign video — “Are you in?”

This announcement officially kicks off the 2012 Presidential Election Season and, with it, speculation about who will run against him, what kind of Republican he will face and what the electorate will look like come November 2012. Economic trouble and Obama’s initiatives during his first 2 1/2 years in office have had a great effect on our political climate and conversation since 2008, but so has the Republican Party.

The rise of the Tea Party and its rallying of the American conservative base will likely have an effect on the names that will appear on next year’s ballots.

Still, none of the prospective Republican candidates have officially announced their bids.

“My guess is that May and June are going to be big months in showing up the field,” Matt Bai (A ’90), chief political correspondent for The New York Times Magazine, said last month at an event sponsored by the Tufts Institute for Political Citizenship. “The next eight weeks or so are going to tell us a lot, and it’s not worth getting too wrought up about before that.”

Bai said that the best strategy for Obama at this point is to start raising money, but that he does not have to go into full-fledged campaign mode for quite some time.

“He’s in pretty good shape, which is one of the reasons incumbent presidents often win,” Bai said. “He’s got

(Still) Poor on Packard

D

ear Yuantee,

MCT

President Barack Obama greets students at the University of Southern California last October. a relatively unified party, no obvious candidate to oppose, so he can sit back and let the Republicans tear themselves apart, which is comparable to what happened in 2004. Bush was arguably weaker than Kerry and should not have been able to win, given economic conditions and Iraq, but was greatly helped by divisions in the Democratic Party.”

According to senior Michael Hawley, former president of Tufts Republicans, the divisions within the Republican Party have greatly widened since the Tea Party became a powerful movement, as more traditional Republicans find themselves facing an energized and critical base.

“I think the Tea Party has pulled the Republican Party back towards its roots and foundational principles and has allowed them to reclaim their role as the fiscally disciplined party, not the party of profligate spending,” he

said. “I would be extremely surprised if the [2012] candidate is opposed by the Tea Party.”

According to a March 2010 Gallup poll, 49 percent of Tea Party supporters identify as Republicans and 43 percent identify as independents, all of whom could have a significant influence on what kind of Republican candidate will go up against Obama. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) is the strongest potential candidate, according to Gallup, but other popular names include Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R), former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R). Whether the candidate will be a Tea Party supporter like Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) or someone strict on the Republican Party line like former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R), see ELECTION, page 4

Street Smarts: Tufts’ sartorial scene

Ever notice the Jumbos on campus who put more into their wardrobes than a momentary thought about which pair of sneakers doesn’t clash with their sweatpants? We have, and some of their sartorial styles caught our eye in particular.

Compiled by Romy Oltuski

Photos by Justin McCallum

“I’m in astronomy right now and I get really bored, so I do a lot of online shopping.”

—Marisa Shapiro, sophomore

Yuantee Zhu | What Would YuAntee Zhu?

“It was nicer weather, so I decided to nix the tights and go for knee-highs but sag them down a bit. And I put it together with my circle scarf, which I wear every day, and an army-colored jacket.”

—Maggie McCarthy, freshman

“I’m from New York City, but I’m studying abroad in Paris and Hong Kong and I’m looking forward to the fashions there.”

—Zac Schwartz, sophomore

See Jumbo Slice at blogs.tuftsdaily.com for the full shoot.

Eight weeks ago, I sought your advice on how to make money, and you advised me to build a chicken coop, raise chickens and sell fresh eggs. “Flawless,” you called this awful idea. “Bulletproof,” you swore. So naturally, I followed what you would Zhu, and now have no money; six dead chickens; a large, gnarly stash of rotten eggs; an exgirlfriend; and a broken neck. On top of this, I graduate in six weeks with an English degree and no job prospects. You failed me once, Yuantee, but I want to give you the chance to bail me out of debt. What should I Zhu? —(Still) Poor On Packard, PP, As much as I love hate mail, I am utterly baffled as to how you failed to make lots of money raising chickens — especially with six of them. Did you not try advertising fresh eggs on TuftsLife, by stapling flyers all around campus or by doing whatever the hell the pseudo-overachieving majority of Tufts students like to do to promote its borrowed agendas? No, you didn’t? And what about the winter elements? Do I have to go into why winter elements may pose an obstacle to raising chickens? Must I advise you to keep only one or two chickens, not six, and to keep them warm and fertile? I’m fired up! Damn!

Listen, son. I can’t spell out every detail for you in 600 words or less. When you assess my advice, you must think outside the chicken coop. Expand on my ideas and fill in the goddamn blanks. The chicken coop is a money-making machine, not to mention a chick magnet, human chicks included. I suggest you try it again.

Now, to address the problem of your exgirlfriend: For my benefit, I’m going to assume you want advice on how to get her back. Build a chicken coop. Get rich. Get your girl back.

Now, to address the serious problem of graduating with an English degree: I live in a house with three English majors and they’re all losers. They’re also all poor and always will be. In fact, they are such English-major losers that they planned on building a chicken coop, but instead spent weeks meticulously crafting an email to our landlord asking for permission. Unfortunately, we found out the neighbors on both sides were allergic to chickens. Rotten luck.

As an English major, you don’t actually have any easily profitable options. You could be a teacher, but it takes time and money to get certified and you’ll be in school for the rest of your life. And school sucks, right? It’s always sucked.

Don’t worry, though. I’ve got a couple solid ideas for you, based on what I’ve gathered about your personality from your letters and my knowledge of English majors. Just make sure to send me a thankyou note and 3 percent of your yearly salary after one of these puppies makes you a wealthy man: Write other people’s papers for money, obviously. Write jokes for The Situation or Brian Agler. Write speeches for Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.). She’s hot and educated-ish. Write for Sarah Palin’s TV show, “Alaska.” Also hot and educated-ish.

Write songs for the Tufts band Knives For Sale. They play the same 35 original songs every Thursday night at The Burren and could use some new material.

Lay brick. And don’t worry, there’s nothing wrong with laying brick. My dad laid brick.

Invent something that will be extremely useful to a lot of people and will make you a lot of money.

Marry a wealthy woman, preferably hot and educated-ish.

Buy a plot of land, and commence work on a chicken farm.

At least, that’s what I would Zhu.

Yuantee Zhu is a senior majoring in biology.

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

The Tufts Daily

4

Features

2012 candidates cannot ignore Tea Party ELECTION

continued from page 3

the influence of the Tea Party cannot be discounted in the upcoming weeks, according to commentators.

Hawley said that the Tea Party’s sway on the GOP has generally been a positive one, but he is concerned that whichever candidate the Tea Party officially backs may not be able to make it in the general election.

“Especially in states with more moderate electorates, the Tea Party may have a tendency to push candidates too far to the right to win a general election,” Hawley said. “I hope that isn’t the case on the presidential level, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility.”

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and his son, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), have both said that there is a 50 percent chance that they will run in 2012. While the elder Paul was thought by many of as a quirky fringe candidate in the 2008 election who often noted his experience as an obstetrician and opposition to the war in Iraq, he is now popularly hailed as the “godfather” of the Tea Party movement. Both he and his son currently hold considerable sway over its followers.

“You can’t ignore him,” Bai said. “What used to be the fringe candidate is now the kind of person who can start a national movement and raise a lot of money based on passion.”

Hawley said that the values emphasized by the Tea Party line up with those of many Americans, just not necessarily those of the Obama administration, the Democratic majority ruling the Senate and, until recently, the House of Representatives.

“People tend to perceive the Tea Party as an organization of extremists, but for the most part, they seem to be advocating values that, not too long ago in our nation’s history, were widely popular,” he said. “Low taxes, low government regulation, low tolerance for a welfare state, opposition to rampant illegal immigration and deliberate self-humiliation of this country on the world stage.”

The recent pro-union activism that

began in Wisconsin in reaction to Gov. Scott Walker’s (R-Wis.) attempt to do away with union rights for state workers, for one, spread an investment in workers’ rights — central to the Tea Party’s stance — across the nation.

“A generation of attacks by employers and judges and right-wing lawmakers [has] whittled away at the right of association and collective bargaining so that now union protection is available to only eight percent of private sector workers compared to thrity-five percent a generation ago,” Robert Ross, professor of sociology at Clark University, said at a labor teach-in at Boston University on Monday. “You have a right to join together to worship, to associate, to pressure your school superintendent, to vote for wacky parties and candidates. But if you are an activist for a union campaign at work, you have a twenty-five percent chance of getting fired.”

According to Bai, the heated discussion about unions and union rights has been a challenge for Republican politicians.

“I think Wisconsin in particular has been a real problem for the Republican cause in this regard,” Bai said. “Walker gave the high ground to Democrats on an issue where it wasn’t clear and that’s sort of a gift. The challenge for Republican candidates is, ‘How can I turn that conversation away from Wisconsin’ to talk about places where they have a moral high ground.”

While it is still unclear who will be running against Obama in 2012, Bai said, it is useful to look at Obama’s current ratings when gauging what is to unravel in the upcoming election.

Currently, he has a 46 percent jobapproval rating and, as of January, a 53 percent favorability rating.

“That’s not a guarantee of anything, because Jimmy Carter had a wonderful favorability rating and that didn’t translate to anything people thought was leadership,” Bai said. “But that many people see him as a force for good and an honorable person is a real foundation for him going into re-election.”

Thursday, April 7, 2011

SPANISH

Summer Session Courses Offered!

For more information on any of these courses, or to register online, please visit:

http://ase.tufts.edu/summer SESSION 1

SESSION 2

Spanish 0001A Elementary Spanish I Kelly - MTWTh - 8:45 - 10:30 a.m.

Spanish 0002B Elementary Spanish II Mederos - MTTh - 6:00 - 8:15 p.m.

Spanish 0003A Intermediate Spanish I Rosso-O’Laughlin - MW - 6:00 - 9:30 p.m.

Spanish 0004B Intermediate Spanish II Older - TWTh - 6:00 - 8:15 p.m.

Spanish 0021A Composition and Conversation I Rosso-O’Laughlin - TTh - 6:00 - 9:30 p.m.

Spanish 0022B Composition and Conversation II Simpson - MW - 6:00 - 9:30 p.m.

Spanish 0022AX El Espiritu de Puerto Rico Levy-Konesky - TTh - 6:00 - 9:30 p.m.

Spanish 0092B Special Topics: The Chicano Experience Cantu - TTh - 6:00 - 9:30 p.m.

Spanish 0191A New Latin American Cinema Mazzotti - MW - 6:00 - 9:30 p.m.

Advertisement

!"#$%&'()&$*+,,&-' A Resolution Calling for the Reestablishment of a Community Service Alternative to the Violation of Noise Ordinances Fine WHEREAS violations of local noise regulations currently result in a $300 fine per house for a first offense and a $600 fine per house for each subsequent offense, as per the Tufts University OffCampus Living: Violation of Noise Ordinances policy; and WHEREAS 50% of the Tufts Community Union (TCU) currently receives undergraduate financial aid; and WHEREAS according to the Dean of Judicial Affairs, Veronica Carter, there used to

exist an option to perform community service in the Medford/Somerville area as an alternative to paying the noise violation fine; and WHEREAS a policy encouraging community service would strengthen the relationship between Tufts and its host communities; therefore BE IT RESOLVED that the TCU Senate supports the reestablishment of the option to perform community service in the Medford/Somerville area in place of a monetary fine; and BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that it is the opinion of the TCU Senate that the reinstatement of a community service option could alleviate the financial

burden associated with the current Violation of Noise Ordinances policy; and BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the TCU Senate believes that while Judicial Affairs should aid students in locating community service alternatives, ultimately it is the responsibility of the student to locate and perform the community service.

Respectfully Submitted on April 3 2011 by Tomas Garcia and Yulia Korovikov Adopted by a vote of 30-0-0

**Announcement** The final Senate meeting of the year on April 10, 2011 will began at 7:00pm in the Sophia Gordon Multipurpose Room.

We hope to see you there!

Weekender Arts & Living

5

tuftsdaily.com

Iceland: More than meets the eye An icy spring break reveals a hot music scene

photos: fundraw.com, flohof.uib.no, heardelementary.org,coveralia.org, chinpomatic.com design by leanne brotsky

by

Matthew Welch

Daily Editorial Board

America’s fascination with Iceland is a relatively new phenomenon. Beginning with the explosion of Björk and The Sugarcubes onto the international scene in the late 1980s, Iceland’s rich musical culture has created an alluring image of the small island and its people. The country’s unique artistic scene is a product of a different national outlook that, if espoused by other countries, could help build a stronger international music community.

The American public’s perception of Iceland as a beautiful, mysterious island filled with glaciers and volcanoes is perfectly complemented by the nation’s music, which often features voluptuous melodies and vast soundscapes typified by groups like Sigur Rós.

“Most of the songs I heard [in Iceland] were louder drone and shoegaze tracks that could vamp for a long time with the same kind of pulse. They sounded powerful and grand in a way similar to the magnitude of the geographical features,” said Neil Foxman, a freshman who visited the country over spring break with a group of friends.

Iceland’s small population — roughly 300,000 — gives the island a tight-knit vibe that translates itself readily to the music scene. Cities like Boston and New York have populations that dwarf Iceland’s, creating a busier, more hectic environment for aspiring musicians. While Bostonians are accustomed to larger venues like the Bank of America Pavilion and clubs like Central Square’s The Middle East, Iceland’s performance spaces are predominately small bars with stages. This smaller scope, combined with capital city Reykjavik’s diminutive size, makes for a more communal concert-going experience that combines listeners from all age groups.

It’s hard to imagine seeing a Bostonian crowd singing along with a fledgling band at one of its first gigs, but such a sight is commonplace in Iceland, where new musical acts are welcomed with a warmth

rarely seen in the States.

“You can see that everyone in Iceland loves their bands.

Everyone sang along, even when the band was playing newer material. We all got really into it, even though we were the only foreigners there,” Cameron Yu, a sophomore who also visited over spring break, said.

Part of this unique reception can be attributed to the musical institutions of Iceland, which are dedicated to providing aspiring musicians with exposure and funding for new projects. Institutions like the Kraumur Music Fund, which is advised by musical giants like Björk and Kjartan Sveinsson of Sigur Rós, provide financial and public-relations support for new groups.

Even the government gets involved.

The state-sponsored Iceland Music Export devotes itself to increasing global awareness of Icelandic music by promoting new albums overseas and providing information about local artists on its website.

Iceland’s well-honed musical sensibility has even brought popular American bands to its stage before their names were established at home. The annual Iceland Airwaves festival is the most common platform for exposing new local and international artists. Every year, droves of Europeans and Americans with an ear for new music and unfamiliar bands attend the five-day festival, which has been covered by publications as reputable as The New York Times.

Brooklyn-based indie rock group Clap Your Hands Say Yeah played one of the most popular concerts of the festival back in 2004, before its first album was even released.

The fact that such an isolated place could keep tabs on Brooklyn’s underground music scene is impressive, and the exposure the country gives to bands from around the world is laudable.

The warm reception received by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is a testament to how willingly Icelanders absorb new music.

Other notable bands that have played the festival include TV on the Radio, Hot Chip and Thievery Corporation.

This year, American indie-rockers Beach House will be playing the festival, which will take place Oct. 12-16.

Part of Iceland’s musical zest stems back to the years after World War II, when Iceland’s material wealth grew exponentially after British and American occupation forces drove down unemployment and galvanized a new political movement that emphasized national productivity. For the first time in the country’s history, Icelandic citizens had the wealth and cultural exposure necessary to develop a music industry.

Until this point, Icelandic music had been firmly based in medieval traditions that stemmed back to the nation’s settlement in the ninth century. Icelanders’ exceptional musical receptiveness capitalized on these new cultural opportunities, triggering an artistic explosion. The vibrancy of Iceland’s culture is largely a result of this zeal for both local and international artists, unmatched by other European nations with more historically rooted musical traditions.

This unique attitude has been a major source of appeal for musically minded travelers around the world.

“Iceland’s music was definitely a reason for my visit. There’s a lot of good stuff coming out of there — some folk/classical/electronic fusion that you can’t find anywhere else,” sophomore Ben Weitzman said in a reference to Bedroom Community, a record label that features artists as diverse as Iceland’s Valgeir Sigurðsson and America’s pre-eminent composer wunderkind, Nico Muhly.

Despite Reykjavik’s relatively small population — compare its roughly 120,000 people to New York City’s 8.2 million-electronic, classical, pop and virtually every other major genre is equally represented within the capital, with clubs hosting acts specializing in everything from shoegaze to folk.

“One of the craziest moments of the trip was a bossa nova show we saw in a Haitian

cafe in Reykjavik. I couldn’t believe what a strange combination of cultures there was in that room,” Yu said.

The prevalence of American country music on Icelandic radio was equally surprising.

“I hardly expected to drive through the west fjords listening to Toby Keith,” Weitzman said.

Iceland’s considerable musical receptiveness did not prevent a degree of culture shock from gripping a few Tufts students who visited. One of Iceland’s premier upand-coming bands, Agent Fresco, was described as having jazz and funk influences by posters around the city. The concert, however, was a little different from its advertisements.

“I think their genres are a little confused — they ended up being this grungy math rock band. I was a little surprised,” Weitzman said.

Iceland’s different perception of genre has helped make its eclectic music scene what it is. The students said that the bands they saw combined genres in new, interesting ways.

“Icelandic bands aren’t afraid to experiment. When I saw Borko, they had a horn section playing along with synth pop lines and a live drummer, who played rock beats all night long. Definitely unusual,” Yu said.

Iceland’s unique musical culture marks a welcome change of pace from Boston’s more hectic scene, yet while the openmindedness and musical diversity of Reykjavik is impressive, the larger populations of American cities like Boston and New York give them more bands to draw from. In fact, the fiercer competition within American urban musical circuits has led to a musical culture that can prize marketability over ingenuity and ambition.

Yet while the vast array of groups and music scenes within American culture make it incomparable to the smaller pool of musicians in Iceland, the gap may not be unbridgeable — the two countries boast different but ultimately complementary music cultures that can serve to diversify many a listener’s playlist.

The Tufts Daily

6

Weekender

Thursday, April 7, 2011

TV Review

Dreary and methodical, ‘The Killing’ makes for killer TV by

Ben Phelps

Daily Editorial Board

Crime and murder shows are a dime a dozen these days. “CSI,” “Law & Order,” “Criminal Minds,” their multiple spin-

The Killing Starring Mireille Enos, Billy Campbell, Joel Kinnaman, Michelle Forbes Airs Sundays at 10 p.m. on AMC offs — it’s safe to say that you could turn on your TV at any moment and find a team of detectives investigating the latest whodunit and trying to bring a killer to justice.

Where “The Killing,” AMC’s newest drama series, varies from those shows, though, is that the titular crime is the focus of the entire 13-episode season, not just one episode. Each week’s installment does not tie up a different case in a neat little bow. Instead, the murder is drawn out, giving the audience the chance to see how it actually affects those parties involved.

Sarah Linden (Mireille Enos) is the lead homicide detective investigating the murder of young Rosie Larsen.

Although Linden was about to move to Sonoma, Calif., (a sunny change

Chris Large/Courtesy AMC

Stan Larsen (Brent Sexton) learns the news about his daughter. from perpetually rainy Seattle, where the show is set) with her fiance and son, her final case keeps her around, partnered with Stephen Holder ( Joel

Kinnaman), the detective who was supposed to take her place.

Enos plays Linden with a calm quiet that is unlike any TV detective we’re used

to (especially any female detective).

Holder has his own skeevy style of invessee KILLING, page 8

Gallery Review

‘Flowers and Festivals’ showcases Japanese woodblock prints by

Puloma Ghosh

Contributing Writer

During the Edo period in Japan (16151857), woodblock printing was a common and popular art form. The Japanese took

Flowers and Festivals: Four Seasons in Japanese Prints At Gallery 176B, through Aug. 28 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 465 Huntington Avenue Boston, Massachusetts 02115 617-267-9300 the Buddhist idea of ukiyo, or “the floating world,” and interpreted the notion of the transient nature of the physical world as a reason to enjoy and appreciate fleeting material joys. From there came a trend of paintings and woodblock prints revering this tangible realm, called ukiyo-e, depicting scenes of nature and the everyday world.

Currently on exhibition in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is a collection of such woodblock prints from the Edo era, entitled “Flowers and Festivals: Four Seasons in Japanese Prints.” The collection depicts the four seasons in Japan through vari-

ous woodblock prints portraying beautiful scenes of nature, various festivals and Japanese cultural traditions.

The process of woodblock printing is tedious and difficult, and the Japanese prints are masterful specimens of the elusive art. They read as a single image and are put together so attentively that the evidence of the many layers involved in the crafting process can hardly be recognized. The viewer still gets a sense of depth from the seemingly flat coloration, though, and the scenes depicted are beautiful and meticulously attentive to detail.

In prints such as “Plum Estate, Kameido” (1857) by Utagawa Hiroshige I, a viewer can really appreciate the easily overlooked beauty of nature. The piece highlights even the barest tree branch. In this case, Hiroshige depicted the lovely white plum blossoms in a garden in Kameido, resting on a dark twisting tree branch and silhouetted against the bright pink sunset. This simple-yet-striking composition highlights both the brilliant shade of the sky and the delicacy of the little white plum blossoms. The composition was later imitated in an oil painting by Vincent van Gogh.

The scenes that include people, rather than focusing exclusively on nature, are just as enchanting. In “Young Couple Lighting Pipes beside the Sleeping Dragon Plum

Tree” (circa 1767-68), Suzuki Harunobu depicts the same plum trees of Kameido that appear in Hiroshige’s piece, but with the addition of two boys stopping for a smoke in front of them. Once again, the white of the blossoms are highlighted by the interplay between the color in its surroundings and their lack thereof. This time, it’s the red and blue detailing in the boys’ garments that brings out the contrast.

Cherry blossoms were also a major symbol of Japanese culture and nature. In several pieces, artists display the magnificence of the blossoms covering the trees in spring — the flowers look almost like snow. Another print

by Hiroshige, “Cherry Blossoms at Night at Nakano-cho in the Yoshiwara” (1834-36), showcases the cherry blossoms in a striking display of the detail these prints are able to convey. His piece shows a night scene of Yoshiwara, the pleasure quarter of Tokyo, which was a popular subject for ukiyo-e artists. The tiny cherry blossoms against the night sky and the detailed patterns on the garments of the courtesans form a stellar example of the skilled way in which these prints were created. Picking out and lining up such tiny details in a woodblock is no easy task, and it is done without a hitch in this print.

In general, this collection is very elegantly composed, and although the title, “Flowers

Dance Preview

Sarabande readies to set fire to the stage tonight Aparna Ramanan

Contributing Writer

“Oh my God, you guys, we look so good,” freshman Ani Loshkajian said to her fellow Sarabande dancers. Loshkajian had just finished filming one of the dance group’s pieces from their biannual show, entitled this semester “Set Fire to the Rain.” She ran over to the rest of the girls, who were either still on stage or in small groups on the floor ready to start their pieces and began chatting excitedly.

Watching the girls cluster together, an outsider gets a sense of ordinary collegegirl camaraderie. But the girls transform into something extraordinary when they take to the stage, twisting their bodies to the different strains of artists like Jónsi, Nelly and even Florence + The Machine.

Loshkajian, who is also producing the show, and her co-producer Leah Small, a sophomore, are tasked with putting together this semester’s Sarabande show, which is comprised of 10 dances, seven senior solos and features performances by guest groups, including Bhangra, Tufts Dance by

Collective ( TDC) and Tufts Tap Ensemble.

President Molly Schwartz, a senior, is choreographing both a dance and a senior solo. “I’m actually a little bit nervous,” she said. “I think solos are great because we get to fully express ourselves through dance more than we do through other people’s choreography styles.”

Although 11 different dancers choreographed the various parts of the show, the pieces are united by a similarity in dance styles. “The show is mostly modern with a lyrical base, although we have ballet this year,” Schwartz said.

“This semester is a little different than years before because most of the girls are trained in similar styles, whereas previously, girls came from more varied backgrounds,” junior Christina Aguirre said.

In addition to pieces choreographed by more seasoned seniors and juniors, this show also features two pieces put together by freshmen Yessenia Rivas and Emily Durning. Durning’s piece is about dance and the freedom of expression it offers. see SARABANDE, page 7

Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

‘The First Bath of the New Year’ (1810s) by Utagawa Toyokuni I. and Festivals,” is rather superficial and does not really indicate the depth and skill of these prints, the exhibit brings out the ukiyo-e spirit thoroughly and beautifully.

From the office of the Tufts Daily Dear Rutgers University Programming Association, So let us get this straight. You paid Snooki — Snooki of the big pouf, little brain and potentially radioactive skin — $32,000 to speak at your university last week? Like, to give a speech? Made of words? Good one.

We don’t mean to come off as judgmental. We understand that Rutgers and the Jersey shore (not to be confused with “Jersey Shore”) are separated by only a couple dozen exits on the Parkway, and we’re sure the turnout for the event was pretty impressive. Besides, we heard she had some important things to say. For example, she talked about how the “Jersey Shore” cast members took really long showers to avoid being on camera. There’s something to take away: good hygiene. Nicely done, Snook.

We’re sure that’s not all the audience gleaned from the, er, discussion.

After all, the Princess of Poughkeepsie is iconic. She’s the voice of a generation. Unlike Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison, who’s receiving a mere 30 grand to speak at your commencement ceremony this spring.

God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change.

Actually, in all seriousness, this was kind of a brilliant move. Maybe the press coverage you receive about this lapse of judgment (or sanity) will finally make the media forget Rutgers’ (allegedly) false reputation for having the highest incidence of STDs of any American college campus. Oops, wait, we’re the media, and we haven’t forgotten. Sorry, Slutgers. And sorry for bringing it up again.

Good luck with that, The Daily Arts Department

The Tufts Daily

Thursday, April 7, 2011

7

Weekender Mitchell Geller | Makes it Rain

Top Ten | Ways Entertainment Board should use the leftover comedy show funds Michael Ian Black last semester canceled his Tufts appearance at the last minute, allowing Entertainment Board to schedule an even better comedy show this semester. They booked Nick Swardson, but it was recently announced that his show has been canceled as well. The board has pledged to save the funds at this point for an event in the fall. The Daily Arts Department came up with the top 10 ways they should instead spend the money.

10) Snooki: Apparently she’s going for $32k an appearance, so it’s good that we’ve started saving now.

9) Rebecca Black: Jokes! No one wants Rebecca Black.

8) Trays for Dewick: All of this not laughing at comedians is making us hungry, and we need some way to carry all that food.

7) Owls: Imagine an infinite stream of owls shrouding the campus in silver. And unlimited screenings of “Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole” (2010).

6) All-inclusive Arts Department vacation: :-P B-) XD 8=D :-] :\ {:-* <(-_-)>. We may’ve lost it. We could use some time off.

5) Subscriptions to The New York Times for everyone: Tufts students need to stay informed, and now that The New York Times is charging for online views, what else are we going to read on our laptops during class?

4) Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Colbert: We don’t want Rebecca Black, but we do like “Friday,” and no one’s done it better than the dynamic duo of Fallon and Colbert.

Plus they can carpool with The Roots...

3) More Sudoku/Crosswords: If you’re reading this list, you’re doing it wrong.

Fold the page over and get back to the games.

2) Invest in the search for Carmen Sandiego: We just want to know: Where in the world is she?

1) Charles Manson: Because we’re all looking for a little something to believe in.

—compiled by the Daily Arts Department

Dancers prove dedication, ability in ‘Set Fire to the Rain’ SARABANDE

continued from page 6

“It isn’t anyone’s spotlight. It is about sharing and being together,” freshman Lauren Harris said.

Rivas’ piece, which features five male dancers from Spirit of Color, is about five relationships that are breaking up and the frustration each girl feels.

“I’ve choreographed before in high school,” Rivas said. “But here, I was given so much freedom. It is nerve wracking, though, to know that my dance will be shown right next to [Schwartz’s] and the other seniors’.”

Every member of Sarabande performs in multiple dances, with each piece featuring about eight to 10 dancers. Although there is no overall theme to the show, many of the dances possess a special meaning to the dancers.

“We don’t have any particular theme, but something all the dances have in common is that every choreographer has stretched themselves to the fullest and so has every dancer,” Schwartz said.

Many of the girls are especially excited for the All-Sarabande dance, choreographed this semester by senior Alyza Delpan-Monley. The piece examines the meaning of home to each of the dancers and what it means to be at home and leave it as well. This dance is a complete deviation from the lighter, ’80s-themed “Call on Me” finale of last semester’s Sarabande show.

Delpan-Monley’s piece drives home the realization that this is the final show for Sarabande’s seniors. “I’m going to miss the seniors so much.

I can’t imagine Sarabande without them. But with [Delpan-Monley’s] dance, it’s made me realize how strange it will be to not see them next year,” Rivas said.

The group held auditions at the beginning of the spring semester but did not take anyone new. Schwartz notes that the goal for next year would be to get enough girls to keep the group size (18 dancers, not counting students abroad) the same, but if not, she believes the enthusiasm of the remaining dancers will be enough to sustain the group.

Considering the energy and excitement that permeated the rehearsal, this should not be a problem for

Justin mccallum/tuftsdaily

Sarabande’s latest show, ‘Set Fire to the Rain,’ is opening tonight.

Sarabande next year. “I just love them all so much. Every day I walk into rehearsal thinking, I’m so excited to do all the dances,” Schwartz said.

So to say goodbye to the graduating

What’s up this weekend?

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

Jamnesty: Tufts Amnesty presents a night of music, tasty treats, good company and human rights education. Performers include Matty Dowd, S-Factor and Stevie Wolf, and staff will be on hand to discuss human rights violations around the world and what you can do to help. (Tonight at 8 p.m. in Hotung Café.

Admission is free.)

“Set Fire to the Rain”: Sarabande presents this semester’s performance, featuring dancers from Sarabande, Spirit of Color, Tufts Dance Collective, Bhangra and other dance groups from on and off campus. Danish Pastry House will provide pastries during intermission, with all proceeds going toward Japanese relief

efforts. (Tonight at 9 p.m. and Friday at 8 p.m. in Cohen Auditorium. Tickets are available at Aidekman Box Office and are free with Tufts ID.) Playing with Fire: The Jackson Jills, Tufts’ oldest all-female a cappella group, present their spring show, featuring a special guest performance by Envy, Tufts’ all-female step team.

The show will serve as the Jills’ senior send-off and the release party for their newest album.

(Friday at 7:30 p.m. in Goddard Chapel. Tickets are available at the Mayer Campus Center info booth for $5 and at the door for $6.)

Tufts KSA Express: Korail: Tufts’ Korean Students Association presents its 2011 culture show, complete with a live band, drama performances, dances, free food and more.

seniors or to cheer on the rising underclassmen, come to the Sarabande show tonight at 9 p.m. or Friday at 8 p.m.

Tickets are free at the Balch Arena Box Office with a Tufts ID.

(Friday at 9 p.m. in Dewick-MacPhie Dining Hall. Admission is free.) sQ! vs. Zombies!: Co-ed a cappella group sQ! performs its spring show with a special guest appearance by BlackOut, Tufts’ all-male step team. (Saturday at 8:30 p.m. in Goddard Chapel. Tickets are available at the campus center info booth and are free with a Tufts ID.) TAST Nightmarket: The Taiwanese Association of Students at Tufts (TAST) presents its biggest event of the year, featuring food, games and performances by breakdance group Turbo and Marcell the Magical Magician. (Saturday at 9 p.m. in Dewick. Admission is free.)

—compiled by the Daily Arts Department

Oscar Wilden’ out

S

ure, many rappers grew up poor in urban centers and experienced violence and hard times, but as Chris Rock put it in “No Sex in the Champagne Room” (1999), “There’s no way the ODB committed all those crimes.”

Hip-hop is storytelling, and the best rappers are the ones with the most vivid imaginations. It’s weird, then, that it’s so vital for rappers to keep up the facade of being gangsters, or to borrow a line from Oscar Wilde’s famous play, “the vital Importance of Being Earnest.”

Earnestness isn’t just highly sought after by late-19th century British bachelors, it’s also necessary in contemporary rappers. I’ve mentioned this before in terms of Rick Ross, or as he’s often called by his detractors, Officer Ricky: see, Rick Ross, arguably the most successful cocaine rapper (not the best, though: that would be Pusha T), never actually sold cocaine. Despite his own undying earnestness, Ross, born William Leonard Roberts II, worked as a corrections officer before he began rapping about his everyday activities, namely “hustling.”

What irony there is in hip-hop is often hard to highlight because the actual life stories of rappers run the whole gamut from Jay-Z, who recently published a book dissecting a number of his songs, parsing truth from fiction, to Waka Flocka Flame, who appears to actually be a gangster if the number of times he’s been shot, or shot at, in the past year means anything.

Rap fans rarely question their entertainers, but basically all songs — not just rap songs — are fiction. So it’s really weird when a new act comes around with violent, disturbing or otherwise antisocial lyrics and everyone freaks out and tries to figure out if the act is being autobiographical or not.

This is exactly what happened in the ’80s with the rise of gangsta rap, then in the late ’90s when Eminem started rapping about killing his wife — and everyone else — and again in the past few months with Tyler, the Creator’s (and the rest of Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All) skyrocket to fame on a missile of horrifying (albeit hilarious and amazing) lyrics and images, and The Weeknd’s — a mysterious Canadian R&B artist — similar ascent.

The OF crew raps about truly detestable topics (rape, murder and deviant sexual taboos, to name a few) and culls their aesthetic from various cultural taboos, from Satanists to skater punks to skinheads.

The Weeknd sings nonstop about bizarre sex and excessive drug use. Both artists have unique sounds, have risen to fame at breakneck speeds and are almost certainly not singing about their real lives.

In “The Importance of Being Earnest” (1895), Algernon Moncrieff has a practice that he calls Bunburying, where he gets out of appointments by saying that he has to visit Bunbury, his imaginary friend who is (constantly) sick. When Tyler, the Creator says that he’s going to chop up a girl who rejected him (or when he says that he’s going to stab Bruno Mars), he is effectively Bunburying. When the singer of The Weeknd announces that his object of desire should be on drugs for whatever it is he has in store for them, he, too, is Bunburying.

The Weeknd’s “House of Balloons” (2011) is one of the most menacing albums I’ve ever heard, and Tyler, the Creator’s debut, “Bastard” (2009), while one of the best debuts in recent memory, is similarly difficult. Both are dark and violent and antisocial and terrifying (in the best ways possible). But they’re also palatable and enjoyable because they’re fictional. (Both are also free self-releases from the artists, so you have no excuse to not check them out.)

So it’s not like the world of hip-hop is without irony, it’s just that most fans are the Cecilys and Gwendolens — the duped love interests of Wilde’s play, read a book sometime — of the world: They want to be in love with an Earnest of their very own, and rappers are more than happy to oblige.

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

The Tufts Daily

8

Weekender

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Adaptation of Danish series poised to thrive with host of strong performances KILLING

continued from page 6

tigating, but Linden is all about thoughtful observation, and Enos expertly captures her penchant for few words.

Although Linden is unquestionably the lead, the police investigation is only one of three main stories being told. Rosie Larsen’s mother Mitch (Michelle Forbes) and father Stanley (Brent Sexton), as the emotional anchors of the series, are the second focus. Their evolution in the pilot episode alone, from thinking Rosie just spent the weekend at a friend’s house to learning she had been killed, was heartbreaking and terrifying to behold.

Their story is one not normally seen in crime dramas, beyond the typical single-scene breakdown, but if there is anything “The Killing” reminds us of, it’s that Rosie is far from the only victim of the horrific crime.

The third piece centers on Darren Richmond (Billy Campbell), a city councilman running for mayor. His story at this point has the most tenuous connection to the murder storyline, but when Rosie’s body is found in the back of a town car belonging to his campaign, the connection becomes immediately more substantial. Campbell seems to play the principled politician well, but it’s hard to pass judgment before his role in the grander story is clearer.

The other big difference between “The Killing” and your run-of-the-mill crime procedural is that it airs on AMC, the basic-cable home for prestige drama. That platform, and the network’s desire to keep building upon the brand it has established with “Mad Men,” “Breaking Bad” and “The Walking Dead,” are what enable the series to play out as a long-form murder mystery that’s more about the characters than the case.

Series showrunner Veena Sud, who adapted “The Killing” from the hit Danish series “Forbrydelsen,” has taken that creative freedom and run

Chris Large/Courtesy AMC

Detective Sarah Linden (Mireille Enos) in AMC’s ‘The Killing.’ with it. Sud, as a veteran of CBS’ “Cold Case” (2003-10), is no stranger to crime dramas, but here she is doing a complete 180 in terms of story length and character building and so far seems to be having no trouble.

Sud has also done a terrific job thus far establishing the dreary tone and atmosphere of the series. Although the

costumes are not as rich as Don Draper’s suits in “Mad Men” and the landscapes are nothing compared to the picturesque backdrop of Albuquerque, N.M., in “Breaking Bad,” “The Killing” nevertheless has a distinct style after only two episodes. The sound of rain is constantly in the background, and the color palette is full of cold blues and greens,

setting the scene for a chilling tale.

If anything, “The Killing” most resembles AMC’s sole failure, “Rubicon.”

Both share a slow, methodical pace and intensely human characters. If “The Killing” can, unlike “Rubicon,” just make sure to stick the landing, it looks like we might have another AMC classic on our hands.

The Biology Department Presents THE BARNUM MUSEUM LECTURE 2011

VIRGINIA ZAKIAN

Princeton University Harry C. Wiess Professor of Life Sciences

“DNA replication through G-quadruplex motifs is promoted by the S. cerevisiae Pif1 DNA helicase” Friday, April 8th, 2011 4:00PM-5:00PM Barnum 104

The Tufts Daily

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Advertisement

Interested in representing the Asian-American, LGBT, Africana, or Latino Communities on Senate?

Important Dates

GENERAL INTEREST MEETING THURSDAY 4/7, 8PM, BRAKER 225

CANDIDATES MEETING

MONDAY 4/11, 9PM, PEARSON 106

CANDIDATES FORUM #1 THURSDAY 4/21, 8PM, PEARSON 106

CANDIDATES FORUM #2

RUN FOR A TCU SENATE COMMUNITY REP SEAT!

MONDAY 4/25, 8PM, BRAKER 001

ELECTION DAY

TUESDAY 4/26, ONLINE @ WEBCENTER Questions? Visit the Elections Commission online at ecom.tufts.edu or email us at ecom@tufts.edu.

9

The Tufts Daily

10

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 Bhushan Deshpande Larissa Gibbs David Kellogg Rachel Oldfield Jeremy Ravinsky Daniel Stock Devon Colmer Erin Marshall Alex Miller Louie Zong Craig Frucht Kerianne Okie Michael Restiano Joshua Youner

Editorial | Letters

Thursday, April 7, 2011

editorial

Marathon should not leave with Bacow

The already-selective President’s Marathon Challenge (PMC) will next year have to turn away even more interested participants, as the event’s primary sponsor has announced that it will be reducing the number of participants from 200 to 100 for the 2012 Boston Marathon. John Hancock Financial Services will cut in half the number of Tufts community members sponsored by the company in order to focus its charity efforts on other organizations. While it is regrettable that John Hancock chose to cut the team, it is understandable that the company would want to focus funding and efforts on other charity organizations in order to diversify the types of programs that it supports. Tufts, however, should do everything that it can to keep the team’s numbers at their current level in spite of these cutbacks.

Rather than simply allowing the number of participants to decrease by 50 percent

and accepting the possibility of the program being cut entirely a few years from now, the university should begin seeking other sponsors or means of funding PMC so that it can be a lasting Tufts institution. For the past nine years, 200 Jumbos have had the opportunity to run on the Tufts team — currently the largest-known collegiate marathon team in the country — in exchange for raising funds for programs at the Friedman School of Nutrition. Students on the team raise $1,000 in donations, while other members of the Tufts community raise $2,500.

Many eager participants are turned away every year because of the limited number of slots on the team. PMC has brought students, alumni and faculty together over the past nine years, and students who participate frequently cite it as one of their most meaningful experiences at Tufts. Running the marathon helps teach students not only the value of health and fitness, but also the

value of philanthropy.

Tufts puts considerable emphasis on active citizenship and giving back, so it should ensure that students who want to participate in this charitable endeavor are able to do so. The fact that the money from PMC’s fundraising goes back to the Tufts community through the Friedman School is all the more reason for the university to step up to maintain the current status of PMC and continue to allow 200 participants to join in the efforts.

It is unlikely to be easy to raise the money to pay participants’ entrance fees and maintain the current number of students who can participate. But the university should recognize how important PMC is to Tufts and find a way to maintain its present state.

University President Lawrence Bacow may be leaving the Hill this year, but PMC, his brainchild, should remain for future Jumbos to enjoy and learn from.

ERin marshall

Executive Op-Ed Editor Op-Ed Editors

Cartoonists

Editorialists

Ben Kochman Executive Sports Editor Philip Dear Sports Editors Lauren Flament Claire Kemp Alex Lach Alex Prewitt Daniel Rathman Noah Schumer Ethan Sturm Matthew Berger Assistant Sports Editors Aaron Leibowitz David McIntyre Ann Sloan Meredith Klein Virginia Bledsoe Jodi Bosin Danai Macridi Dilys Ong James Choca Lane Florsheim Meagan Maher Justin McCallum Oliver Porter Ashley Seenauth Aalok Kanani Andrew Morgenthaler

Executive Photo Editor Photo Editors

Assistant Photo Editors

Staff Photographers

Kristiina Yang Executive New Media Editor

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

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

Off the Hill | University of Kansas

This anniversary, remember the Civil War veterans who died preserving our country

by Schumaker

The University Daily Kansan

Saturday, April 9 marks the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War. The war took countless lives, abolished slavery and converted our country from a loose collection of states into a unified nation. It was a transformative event on par with the American Revolution.

To commemorate this momentous event, many Southern states are celebrating Confederate History Month, which is exactly what it sounds like. In addition, Confederate Memorial Day is celebrated in one form or another in eight states, including North and South Carolina, and twice in Texas. This makes perfect sense, because nothing shows that you love America like honoring a group of people who actively fought against it.

The celebrations in these states tend to forget that slavery was the major cause of the Civil War and instead focus on how awesome guys like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson were. The championing of Confederate heroes like Lee and Jackson and the omission of slavery are part of an ideology known as the “Lost

Cause of the Confederacy”.

It’s an intellectual movement that attempts to portray the Confederacy in a more favorable light. Slavery is no longer the cause of the war, but states’ rights.

Confederate leaders are portrayed as chivalrous gentlemen, while Union heroes are casually dismissed. U.S. Grant is portrayed as a boozehound, the abolitionist John Brown as a psychopathic killer. The North is portrayed as a gang of bullies encroaching on Southern freedom. They attempt to retell the Civil War with the Confederacy as the heroes and they’ve been very successful with it.

If you think I’m exaggerating, look at the Civil War in popular culture. Hardly any movies about the [Civil War] feature Union protagonists. From “Birth of a Nation” (1915) to “Gone With the Wind” (1939) to “The Outlaw Josey Wales” (1976) to “Jonah Hex” (2010) to “Cold Mountain” (2003) to AMC’s upcoming TV show “Hell On Wheels” (2010), pop culture regularly casts Confederates as the heroes of the story.

The Confederacy wasn’t some quirky aspect of Southern culture that needs to be appreciated. To borrow a phrase from Aaron Sorkin, they weren’t wearing wooden shoes;

they were fighting a war that would literally destroy America.

Robert E. Lee is a celebrated war hero and an undeniable genius on the battlefield.

Confederate supporters like to point out that he detested both slavery and secession and only served in the Confederacy due to his loyalty to Virginia. However, people did not always feel that way. Fellow Southerner and staunch Unionist Montgomery Meigs hated Lee so much, he established the new national cemetery in Lee’s front yard at Arlington so he could never return home.

Henry Adams wrote “I think Lee should have been hanged. It was all the worse that he was a good man. … It’s always the good men who do the most harm.” The fall of the Confederacy led directly to the establishment of the [Ku Klux Klan], as famously depicted in “Birth of a Nation” and since then, supporters of the Confederacy have been chanting “the South will rise again!”

I don’t think the Confederates were evil men, but they were the antagonists in a war to preserve America.

So, when the anniversary of Lee’s surrender at Appomatax rolls around, honor those who died preserving our country, not the traitors who tried to destroy it.

Correction Yesterday’s article “No ‘neighsayers’ as Tufts wins region for first time in 11 years” incorrectly stated that the March 27 competition against Stonehill College ended with a final team score of Tufts 372, Stonehill 262. In fact, Stonehill ended with 362 points.

Yesterday’s article “Somerville population down slightly, diversified, according to census data” incorrectly indicated that 2011 census data contradicted Justin Hollander’s argument about the relationship between population and housing availability. The data confirmed it. In addition, the article incorrectly said that Dennis Sullivan attributed an increase in the number of local housing units to a recent vote in the Board of Aldermen. These were errors made during the editing process and were not the fault of the writer.

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.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Letters must be submitted by 2 p.m. and should be handed into the Daily office or sent to letters@tuftsdaily.com.

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

The editors reserve the right to edit letters for clarity, space and length.

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.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

The Tufts Daily

11

Op-Ed

Nonstandard text-messaging rates will apply by

Brian Pilchik

I don’t know much about the Tufts Community Union ( TCU) Senate; I’ll admit that up front. I do know, however, the amount of money they allocate to various club budgets. It’s right there on their website, senate.tufts. edu. It says, for example, that the Tufts Republicans received roughly $3,500 for 2011. Freshman class council gets $2,600. TuftsLife runs on $1,700. You get the idea; we’re talking about a few thousand dollars for a typical student activity organization. Later this month, though, Senate will consider spending a whopping $20,000 on a new “service” for the university. That might sound a bit pricey for new hydration stations or extended hours at Tisch. It sounds even pricier when we realize what they’re actually considering spending it on: text messages. So I wonder, is that really worth it?

Absolutely not. The benefits?

Minimal. The service would allow students to request, via text message, information from sites like TuftsLife. In addition, “professors, student groups and departments would be able to send out updates to subscribers,” according to Tuesday’s article in The Daily. But let’s not forget that professors, student groups and departments can already distribute information via email. With

the Internet, these groups can contact their members for free. When I get an email from a group, I can look at it on my laptop or any computer on campus.

If I have a data plan, I can even check the web on my phone, saving me the time of getting to a computer. And if I really wanted a text message, I can set up my Tufts email to forward messages as texts to my phone, absolutely free. That point warrants repeating: Students can redirect emails as texts for free. So what’s to gain from a new texting service?

The proponents of this incredible expense seem to honestly believe that it can provide us with something new.

The fact is their idea is a few years too late. We already have the systems in place such that the Tufts University Police Department ( TUPD), the faculty and student organizations can contact any student via the university email system. In the case of emergencies, TUPD already has a texting program.

We already have the technology we need; why are we looking to buy more?

If we are going to consider purchasing an additional program, we have to ask ourselves a few important questions. For instance, do we really want our phones buzzing every time Tufts Democrats or the Office of the Provost and Senior Vice President decides to send out a message? Wouldn’t we rath-

er those go to our email inboxes, where they currently end up?

Furthermore, who would this service really benefit? The faculty, for all the times they need to text students? The library, which already sends perfectly good emails? The student groups, which will have less potential funding available to them after this purchase?

No. An information dissemination system like this benefits the very people proposing it: websites like TuftsLife.

Now don’t get me wrong; there is absolutely nothing terrible about TuftsLife having a new and improved way to contact its users. But should this come at the expense of the Tufts Community Union?

And let us not forget the price tag.

If this were a $2,000 project, it would more than double TuftsLife’s budget.

At that kind of cost, we may want to consider whether or not the program’s benefits are worthwhile. But that’s not the price in question; this “SMS short code” is a $20,000 purchase, more than a 1,000 percent increase in TuftsLife’s budget. That’s no trivial amount.

Earlier this year, the TCU Senate voted 6-13 to reject this very proposal.

I cannot agree more with Senator Yulia Korovikov, who, according to the the Daily, voted against it because “there are better uses for the money given the recent technological advances.” That is

to say, students who need quick access to the Internet use smartphones, and all students have access to the email system on campus. I’ve mentioned it before, I cannot stress it enough: If you want emails texted to your phone, it’s not hard to set up, and it’s absolutely free. Google it or shoot me an email for instructions.

Think of all the other things we could do with those tens of thousands of dollars. Think about what you believe in, what you support. Would you like to see Tufts become more environmentally friendly? Would you like to see more funding given to particular student groups? If you were asked to list some ideas for the university, would “SMS short codes” make your list?

On April 26, the choice is yours. As we elect our new senators and executives, we will have to decide: Do we want next year’s leaders spending $20,000 on text messages or would we prefer that they put the money toward the projects they promised us during their campaigns? Do we want extra thousands available to our organizations or would we rather our phones vibrate every few minutes with a new update from TuftsLife?

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

Help advocate for a special convoy to the Great Lakes region of Africa

by Jamie

Norton

Last October a group called Falling Whistles came to Tufts as part of their national speaking tour to talk to us about the deadliest conflict since World War II. As some of you may know, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is in the midst of genocide. Over a thousand people are being killed every day, and 1,200 women are being raped every month. The entire country is simply consumed by violence.

In the late 1800s, present-day DRC was colonized by King Leopold II of Belgium. He aimed to extract resources (mostly rubber and ivory), primarily using forced and slave labor. During his reign, he committed countless crimes against humanity. He used his superior weaponry and technology to wipe out any resistance by natives. The Congolese had no voice in government — the white colonizers had a complete monopoly on violence and state power.

It is estimated that the population was halved during this colonial period.

Finally in 1960, present-day DRC gained independence from Belgian colonial rule. The people of the DRC were finally able to rule their own land, and they elected Patrice Lumumba as Prime Minister. Lumumba was a true man of the people, aiming to bring peace to the DRC after a century of violence and destruction. He said to his people, “Together, my brothers and sisters … We are going to rule not by the peace of guns and bayonets but by a peace of the heart and the will.”

This peace of heart and will lasted a short six months until Lumumba was assassinated by a rebel group backed by the United States and Belgium, and replaced by the military leader Mobutu Sese Seko. Mobutu immediately drew the nation back into a violent and bloody resource war, with a corrupt, weak government.

Since 1960, the DRC has been continually manipulated and exploited for its resources. The DRC is one of the most resource-rich nations in the world, holding 30 percent of the world’s cobalt and 70 percent of its coltan, and is the world’s fourth-largest producer of diamonds. Yet it has one of the lowest GDPs in the world.

Rebel groups constantly battle for control over these resources and control over the vast wealth they receive from

MCT

selling resources on the black market to Western industries. There are at least 10 different rebel groups around the country, as well as the rag-tag national Congolese army. What do all of these groups have in common? They all want control over the resources, and they all commit crimes against humanity against Congolese citizens to do it. Mass murder, mass rape and use of child soldiers are commonplace throughout the DRC, and it goes unnoticed and unpunished by the international community. Western exploitation is a major contributor and funder of this, yet few people in the West even know that it is happening.

Falling Whistles is a non-profit organization founded in 2008 in order to bring an end to the war in the DRC. Although they are based in Los Angeles, they have an office in Washington D.C., and thousands of circles and followers around the country.

Our big campaign this year is to ensure that free and fair elections are able to happen in the DRC on Nov. 27.

Elections are a sign of stability; they increase the legitimacy of the government and people’s trust in it. Until the DRC has a strong, stable government, it will never be able to suppress rebel groups, end violence and control and benefit from its resources. In order for that to happen there needs to be a certain amount of international support. That is why Falling Whistles is advocating for the U.S. government to appoint a special envoy to the Great Lakes region of Africa.

A senior-level envoy for the Great Lakes region, reporting directly to the secretary of state, is essential to pulling together a comprehensive policy for the DRC and making a positive difference in the region. The U.S. government has yet to present a coherent strategy for resolving the crisis in the

DRC. Instead, the DRC’s policy sits on the back burners of various undersecretary, ambassador and deputy portfolios in the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Pentagon and the White House.

The DRC’s vital strategic importance as a regional, political and economic actor has been well documented — what happens in the DRC ripples through all of Central Africa. With 6 million dead, millions in displacement camps, 200,000 victims of rape, elections fast-approaching and armed groups committing mass atrocities every day — like rape, slavery, child soldiering and conflict mining — the need for an envoy could not be more urgent. Only a senior-level envoy can pull together a coordinated U.S. and international policy in time to have the needed impact on the DRC’s elections and to end violence in the region.

While many politicians on both sides agree that this envoy is an appropriate, perhaps necessary, thing to have, it still has not happened. With election season rapidly approaching, the time is now for action.

Please, if you are interested, I ask you to go to fallingwhistles.com, watch our video and sign the petition. It will take two minutes of your time. If you want to do more, which I hope you will after seeing the video, I urge you to spread this message to everyone that you know. We want to get our message out to as many people as possible.

Also, if you are interested, you can join our event on Facebook called, simply, “Sign a petition for free and fair elections in Congo,” and follow us on Twitter, either at fallingwhistles or FWboston.

Thank you for your time and in advance for your support. Together we have the opportunity right now to play a major role in bringing change to the DRC, to Africa and even to the world as a whole. Elections are a major step towards stability, legitimacy of government and, ultimately, peace. You can help show the world that our generation will not make the mistakes of our predecessors and stand by and do nothing while genocide and poverty occur around the world.

Jamie Norton is a freshman who has not yet declared a major.

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 Crossword

Comics

Thursday, April 7, 2011

SUDOKU Level: Knowing what a wicket, crease, stump and bail are

Wednesdayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Solution

Late Night at the Daily

Wednesdayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Solution

Prewitt: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s always been my problem with â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;24â&#x20AC;&#x2122;: They never show him pooping.â&#x20AC;?

Please recycle this Daily.

2011-2012 FINANCIAL AID DEADLINE April 15th!!

Undergraduate Requirements: FAFSA CSS Profile IDOC

http://www.fafsa.gov https://profileonline.collegeboard.com http://idoc.collegeboard.com

REAL Students: Submit the FAFSA, your 2010 Federal Income Taxes, W2s & the REAL Application directly to the Financial Aid Office.

International Students: Submit the International Financial Aid Form & copies of your parentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; income documentation directly to the Financial Aid Office.

A COURSE FOR EVERYONE

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

Registration ongoing now

AC;;3@

Graduate Students: Submit the FAFSA by May 1st if you wish to be considered for federal work study in addition to loans. Please contact your individual school/department regarding grant aid requirements.

Spring registration stressing you out? Relax.

Summer is just around the corner.

Need help? Have questions?

TUFTS SUMMER SESSION 2011 First Session

May 25â&#x20AC;&#x201C;July 1, 2011

Second Session

July 5â&#x20AC;&#x201C;August 12, 2011

Twelve-Week Session May 25â&#x20AC;&#x201C;August 12, 2011

http://ase.tufts.edu/summer

Drop-in Hours Every Thursday from 2-5pm Financial Aid Office, Dowling Hall For further information go to: http://uss.tufts.edu/finaid/apply/ Questions? Please contact Student Services at 617-627-2000 or studentservices@tufts.edu

The Tufts Daily

Thursday, April 7, 2011 Housing Somerville Apartment for Rent On Powder House blvd, 3 bedrooms, living room, dining room, modern kitchen and 2 bathrooms.

Hardwood floors, f+R porches, parking tel. day 6173545170, 1,950/month. Cell. 6172400800

Housing UPLAND RD, 1 BLOCK FROM CAMPUS All renovated gorgeous !! new e-in kitchen with d/w, modern bath,hardwood floors,new windows,new gas heating system, w/d, F+R porches, parking for 3 cars. Rent is $680.00 per person without utilities. Available 6/1/11 or may consider 9/1/11 call for details. Contact 617-230-0215 or email nickkondilis@yahoo.com

Wanted $$ SPERM DONORS WANTED $$ Become a California Cryobank donor and earn up to $1,200/ month, receive free health and infectious disease testing, and help people fulfill their dreams of starting a family. Convenient Cambridge location. Apply online: SPERMBANK.com

TASA hosted two cricket viewing events CRICKET

continued from page 16

But Ahmed admitted the game was not quite enthralling enough to convert her into a cricket follower.

“It’s fun to be here in this great atmosphere. But I don’t really know what’s going on in the game,” she said.

Even those unversed in cricket rules appreciated the exuberance felt by the Indian and Indian-American students as they watched Indian Captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni hit a six to seal India’s win by six wickets.

“It means a lot to the whole country.

It’s a release to a lot of people,” junior Avinash Asthana said.

TASA also gathered on March 31 in the Hill Hall lounge to watch the IndiaPakistan semifinal match. The game was particularly intense because of the contentious history between the two countries. In a rare gesture, the Prime Minister of India Manmohan Singh invited the Prime Minister of Pakistan Syed Yousaf Raza Gillani to watch the game with him in India.

Most people agree that the game helped to strengthen the relationship between the countries. “It brought the countries together,” junior Muhammed Arham Shoukat said. “It’s called ‘Cricket Diplomacy,’ and it has worked every time in the past.”

Like with the India-Sri Lanka game, students enjoyed an exciting viewing of the match. According to Malhotra, there were more people watching the stream of the Pakistan game due to the game’s political nature and because

more Tufts students hail from Pakistan than Sri Lanka. Those watching the game were so loud, he said, that at one point the Hill Hall Resident Director came out to complain and quiet them down.

Though India won the semifinal, many Pakistan fans, including Shoukat, also attended TASA’s streaming of the IndiaSri Lanka game.

“As a nation, we were proud of our team. It wasn’t a huge setback. But most [Pakistan fans were] in favor of Sri Lanka [in the final],” he said, smiling. “Basically just India losing.”

TASA has provided a warm environment for international cricket fans.

“I think this is the only place at Tufts where it makes me feel at home,” Shoukat continued. “I’ve seen [cricket] games in India and in Boston, and it’s the same atmosphere as [it was watching with TASA]. People are going at each other but laughing at the same time.”

Malhotra echoed similar sentiments about the success of the events.

“These have been some of the most memorable times that some of us, myself included, have had at Tufts,” he said.

“There’s so much excitement and pride, and everyone’s in good spirits.”

Whether that excitement will ever trickle into the entire student body at Tufts, though, is uncertain.

“I don’t think so,” Malhotra said.

“Americans don’t have big enough attention spans for a nine-hour game — which is just the short one-day version of cricket.”

13

Sports -

-

-

classifieds policy All Tufts students must submit classifieds in person, prepaid with check, money order or exact cash only.

All classifieds submitted by mail must be accompanied by a check. Classifieds are $15 per week or $4 per day with Tufts ID or $30 per week or $8 per day without. The Tufts Daily is not liable for any damages due to typographical errors or misprintings except the cost of the insertion, which is fully refundable. We reserve the right to refuse to print any classifieds which contain obscenity, are of an overly sexual nature or are used expressly to denigrate a person or group. Questions? Email business@tuftsdaily.com.

Rondo’s post-Perkins struggles have contributed to Celtics’ stumble INSIDE NBA

continued from page 16

2. Can the Spurs turn things around?

Question marks surround those very Spurs, whom the Lakers threatened to bypass after a recent six-game San Antonio losing streak. With all three stars — Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili — facing various ailments, San Antonio has seen its conference lead, which has been around eight all season, dwindle to just three and a half games as of April 6. With just four games remaining, the Lakers no longer pose a threat to actually take the top spot in the conference, but the Spurs should be concerned with the losing streak, during which they gave up an average of 108.3 points per game.

Even for this year’s Spurs team, which played a more free-flowing, up-tempo style than in years past, the defense was substandard. Most troubling of all, however, are the three straight games the Spurs lost at home to close out the losing streak after having lost just two home games over the entire season before that.

It will be interesting to see how San Antonio handles these final games and whether it wants to get their starters back in sync or opt for the resting alternative. Given Popovich’s record of having little interest in the regular season, it would not be surprising to see heavy minutes for DeJuan Blair, George Hill and Gary Neal as the Spurs try to keep their veteran, many-time-champions rested and primed for a playoff run.

3. Same question for the Celtics While the Boston Celtics have not had a losing streak as long as the Spurs’, their struggles have been just as prominent. Boston is just 8-8 since March 9 and has not appeared the same since the trade of Kendrick Perkins to the Oklahoma City Thunder. Still, more than the Perkins move, it has been Shaquille O’Neal’s inability to get his enormous self back onto the court that has hurt the Celtics. While Perkins only played in 12 games this season with the Celtics, Boston found success on the court with O’Neal, a four-time champion compiling a 28-9 record.

But with injuries to Shaq, his fellow

O’Neal ( Jermaine) and Nenad Krstic, the Celtics have lacked front court depth, and they rank 29th in the league in rebounding.

What has changed drastically since Perkins’ departure, however, is the play of All-Star point guard Rajon Rondo, who has suffered from an ailment that could be described as post-Perkins depression. Since the trade, Rondo has averaged just nine assists per game, well below his average of 11.3. Beyond the statistics, Rondo has seemed lethargic on the court, has almost stopped penetrating entirely and has gotten routinely burned by lower-tier point guards like Kyle Lowry and Darren Collison.

Still, his recent 22-14-5 performance against the Spurs in an impressive 10797 road victory for the Celtics displayed what makes Rondo such a special player. He is the engine that makes the Celtics go, and if he can regain his early season form, the Celtics should be able to turn the jets back on for another deep playoff run.

4. The Battle for Silver Lining On the other side of the standings is the race for 30th place, between tweedle-dee (the Cleveland Cavaliers, currently 16-61) and tweedle-dum (the Minnesota Timberwolves, currently 17-61). The winner (though in this case, they will be losing more games) will have a 25 percent chance of being awarded the top pick in the 2011 draft; the team with the secondworst record’s odds of getting the first pick drop to 19.9 percent.

The Timberwolves, losers of 11 straight games, may be without leading scorer and league-leading rebounder Kevin Love for the remainder of the season and will face a much tougher schedule than the Cavaliers. Cleveland appears to be “peaking” at exactly the wrong time, winning three of seven games, including an intensely satisfying victory against LeBron James and the Heat last Tuesday. For their marginal improvement, however, the Cavaliers may be jeopardizing their chances at the top pick, which would be a nail in the coffin for what has been arguably one of the most depressing seasons in NBA history.

Softball

justin mccallum/tufts daily

Freshman Jo Clair is four home runs short of the Tufts single-season record.

Clair named New England Player of the Week Jo Clair is on fire. After hitting her 10th home run on Tuesday against Wellesley, the freshman catcher was named the Eastern College Athletic Conference’s (ECAC) Div. III New England Player of the Week. She also earned NESCAC Player of the Week honors.

In her first 20 games, Clair has 27 RBIs, is batting .427 and is the league leader in homers, total bases (62) and slugging percentage (1.016). Clair’s home run total also places her

just four shy of the Tufts single-season record set by Courtney Bongiolatti (LA ‘05) in 2005.

There are still 17 regular-season contests remaining for Clair to break the record.

The Glastonbury, Conn., native has helped lead the Jumbos to a 12-9 overall record and 3-0 in conference play. They have won eight of their last 10 games and will host Brandeis in a doubleheader on Sunday.

—by Aaron Leibowitz

The Tufts Daily

14

Sports

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Race4Rwanda 5K Walk/Run Join us for a 5K walk/run around Tufts’ campus to support:

x Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village in Rwanda x The Welcome Project in Somerville x The Medford Family Network WHEN:

Sunday, APRIL 10TH 10am: Sign-in • 11am: Race

WHERE: Begins and ends at Outdoor Track (Ellis Oval), Tufts University REGISTER: Online at www.Rwanda5K.com $10 Tufts Students-$20 General Public Pre-Registered-$25 Day of

Runners and walkers of all abilities welcome!

Thursday, April 7, 2011

The Tufts Daily

15

Sports

David McIntyre | The Beautiful Game

The end of an era

L

MCT

Henrik Sedin and the Canucks are the odds-on favorite entering the NHL playoffs, though many teams have upset potential.

Canucks’ Stanley Cup prospects complicated by injuries INSIDE NHL

continued from page 16

since Feb. 28 — while the Flyers have been going through a rough patch, seeing a oncecomfortable East lead vanish in the process.

The Flyers face a tough contest at the seven-seed Buffalo Sabres tomorrow night before concluding their regular-season slate against the New York Islanders the following day. Expect this battle to continue up until the last day of the regular season.

The Boston Bruins are at least the three-seed at this point, having sewn up the Northeast Division. But an ugly 5-3 loss to the streaking New York Rangers Monday night — in which the Bruins led 3-0 in the second period — raises questions about the mental toughness of a team that otherwise has the talent to make a deep playoff run.

As things stand, the Flyers and Caps will play either the Rangers or Sabres. Despite the low seeding of the two New York squads, neither Philadelphia nor Washington has to be too excited about these potential firstround opponents. Both might be bubble teams, but they’re also physical squads backstopped by world-class goaltending — the kind of team ideally poised to pull off a playoff upset. The Sabres’ Ryan Miller, who represented the U.S. Olympic team in Vancouver last year, and All-Star Henrik Lundqvist are the kinds of goalies that can shut down even the Flyers’ and Caps’ highflying offenses.

In the Western Conference, the Canucks have demonstrated that they are the class of the league, led by last year’s Hart Trophywinner Henrik Sedin, his twin brother Daniel and goaltender Roberto Luongo, an All-Star in the prime of his career. They lead the West by a sizable margin over other division winners, the San Jose Sharks and Detroit Red Wings.

From their record alone, the Canucks are the odds-on Stanley Cup favorites. But two recent injuries — a freakish eye injury to center Manny Malhotra from a puck to the face, and the second concussion to defenseman Dan Hamhuis in seven weeks — complicate Vancouver’s postseason outlook. Hamhuis could be back for the playoffs; Malhotra will probably not be.

After the division leaders, the rest of the West is as muddled as it has been all year.

Entering last night’s games, four points separated the fourth and eighth seeds, and the ninth- and tenth-place teams were just two points shy of that. The Calgary Flames and Dallas Stars are on the outside of the playoff picture looking in; their hopes are rapidly fading as the number of games dwindles.

In what would have been difficult to foresee prior to the start of the regular season, the defending Stanley Cup champion Chicago Blackhawks are clinging to the eighth seed and a potential first-round matchup against the powerhouse Canucks.

With so little separation between the Hawks, Anaheim Ducks, Phoenix Coyotes

and Los Angeles Kings, playoff matchups will be impossible to predict until the last day of the season.

As in the Eastern Conference this year, even the lowest playoff seeds are strong teams capable of an upset, and Chicago is probably the best example of this. The parity of this year’s league is a sober warning to any higher seed that might be anticipating an easy first-round matchup.

Ultimately, part of the charm of the playoffs — hockey’s “second season” — is that statistics, playoff seeds and home ice advantage — the types of things fans and hockey writers analyze and fret about throughout the year — only matter so much once the postseason rolls around. Hockey has a rich tradition of upsets and improbable playoff runs — witness the Flyers, who qualified for the postseason on the last day of the regular season last year before battling their way through to the Stanley Cup Finals. So as much as fans can analyze and anticipate what will happen this month and beyond, it’s impossible to say for sure how any of it will turn out.

Each of the sixteen teams that makes it to the playoffs next week will be able to wipe the regular-season slate clean and will be free to write their own playoff destiny. All the regular season means at that point will be home ice and a tiny number preceding a team’s name on television. The rest is up to those teams to determine, and it’s going to be a lot of fun to watch.

Wheel good: Recruit Ferris earns Vermont’s Mr. Basketball

Courtesy Essex High School Athletics

Ben Ferris will compete for a spot in Tufts’ guard-laden lineup in the fall.

When Ben Ferris arrives on campus next fall, he will be bringing lofty expectations — and some shiny hardware — along with him.

Ferris, currently a senior at Essex High School, was named as Vermont’s Mr. Basketball earlier this week by the Burlington Free Press. These are not his first accolades of the spring: He was also named the Gatorade Vermont Boys Basketball Player of the Year just two weeks earlier.

After being a key cog to the Hornets’ Division I state title run during the 2009-10 season, the 6-foot-3-inch Ferris was asked to be the star on a young team that had lost the rest of its starting lineup to graduation. Facing double teams almost from day one, Ferris still managed to find a way to deliver, finishing the season averaging a double-double at 23.4 points and 10.2 rebounds per game, while also dishing out 6.5 assists.

While the team had an up-and-down

year, Ferris was able to lead the squad to an unlikely victory against the future state champions — Rice Memorial.

At Tufts, Ferris will look to continue the success that he had in high school. As the tallest guard on the roster, he will be competing for playing time with junior Amauris Quezada, sophomore Alex Goldfarb, and freshmen Kwame Firempong and Oliver Cohen, all major contributors in the Jumbos’ 2010-11 campaign, which ended at 13-12.

He will also be in competition with fellow recruit CJ Moss, a 6-foot guard from The Taft School in Watertown, Conn. Ferris knows it will not be easy to break into the lineup, but he plans to do all he can to make it happen.

“I think I’ll be competing for a lot of playing time,” Ferris told the Burlington Free Press. “I’m definitely going down there and working as hard as I can.”

—by Ethan Sturm

ast Saturday, an unexpected and disappointing event occurred. No, I’m not talking about the announcement of The Roots as the Spring Fling band (seriously, no Wiz Khalifa?), but instead about an event that last happened over nine years ago: Jose Mourinho lost a league match at home.

The actual game, a 0-1 defeat of Real Madrid at the hands of lowly Sporting Gijon in the Santiago Bernabéu, was frankly a horrible game to watch.

Sporting had one shot on goal (which happened to go in) and spent the rest of the game with 11 men behind the ball, looking only to “park the bus” and sit back to absorb the Real Madrid pressure.

But the game had much more significance than your typical, drab 1-0 soccer game. Mourinho, the tactical mastermind, the man who always pulls out the right move, the two-time Champions League winning coach, was finally defeated in his own backyard.

On its face, besides the record — nine years and 151 games without a home league loss — being broken, the defeat does not look like that big of a deal because it was only one game of a 38-game season. But not only does the loss leave Madrid eight points adrift of Barcelona (which Mourinho admits is an insurmountable total), it also signifies the end of an era in Mourinho’s career.

Mourinho is regarded as the greatest coach of his generation and is truly unique among the top managers in the world. Sure, Sir Alex Ferguson and Pep Guardiola, among others, have also had remarkable success, but both of those managers have stayed at one (giant) club through their careers. Mourinho, meanwhile, bounced from Porto to Chelsea to Inter, found the right mix of players each time, and took each club to the pinnacle of its respective league.

Thus, when Mourinho demanded his release from Inter to go to Real Madrid, everyone assumed he would do it again: Despite Barcelona’s dominance of La Liga over recent years, the Portuguese mastermind would just break out his Midas touch and fix the problems of a club that has not won the league since the 2007-08 season despite spending billions of dollars on players.

But while the process was the same, the results have been starkly different: Mourinho has worked his usual magic, but Real Madrid now only has an extremely slim chance to win La Liga (they would need a Barcelona collapse). Surely, Mourinho’s tenure at the Bernabéu has not been without success (he will almost surely send the club through to the Champions League semifinals), but his express aim when he left Inter was to win La Liga and dethrone the Catalans. Anything else should (and will) be a failure.

Mourinho himself recognizes this and has already hinted that he wants to return to England and leave Madrid in the near future, even though he has three more years left on his contract.

Even though I don’t think he would leave after just one year (he stayed at Porto, Chelsea and Inter for at least two years each), he realizes that if he does not win La Liga next season, he needs to cut his losses and get out of the Spanish capital before his reputation is damaged further.

At only 48, Mourinho still could have another 20 years of coaching ahead of him, and any club he goes to will have a chance to win major trophies.

But as for his time at Real Madrid and his reputation as a talisman of automatic championships? That era is all but over.

David McIntyre is a freshman who has yet to declare a major. He can be reached at David.McIntyre@tufts.edu.

Sports

16

tuftsdaily.com

CRICKET FEATURE

Wicket awesome: TASA organizes viewing for the World Cup Tufts students watch as India beats Sri Lanka for first title in 28 years by

Ann Sloan

Daily Editorial Board

The world’s second-most popular sport sometimes seems to be nearly invisible at Tufts. Last Saturday night and Sunday morning, more than 2 billion people from 220 countries worldwide tuned in to watch the Cricket World Cup Final that pitted India against Sri Lanka, marking the first final between two Asian nations. Yet the sport’s popularity has yet to firmly entrench itself in America’s — and Tufts’ — sports scene.

But if you happened to wander by Barnum 104 between 5 a.m. and 2 p.m on Sunday, you would have found a different story. Cheering and chanting flooded from the room as upwards of 60 students, including many members of the Tufts Association of South Asians (TASA), flocked together to watch the game that resulted in India’s first championship victory in the past 28 years.

“It was one of the most successful events of the year. It really brought together different types of people,” President of TASA Ashish Malhotra, a senior, said. “I expected a strong international student turnout, but I was pleasantly surprised by many of the IndianAmerican students who came out.”

Knowing that a certain niche of students was interested in watching the World Cup cricket matches, TASA decided to host an event to broadcast the games. Though many websites offered free live streaming of the matches, TASA

courtesy Neha Madhusoodanan

Over 60 students gathered in Barnum 104 early Sunday morning to watch the Cricket World Cup Final. bought a stream from Willow TV to avoid the possibility of the stream being disrupted.

Aside from a slight glitch at 11:32 a.m when the stream cut out for no more than a minute, the event went smoothly and boasted a turnout of both international and American students. Malhotra used

the TASA e-list and word of mouth to publicize the event.

The crowd included both cricket experts and people new to the sport. Freshman Noha Ahmed, who previously knew nothing about the sport, decided to watch the game with TASA to see what all the hype was about.

INSIDE NBA

Lakers blossoming in final stretch by

Alex Lach

Daily Editorial Board

As the 2010-11 regular season heads into its final week, numerous debates rage across the league: Is Derrick Rose really the MVP over Dwight Howard or LeBron James? Tom Thibodeau, Gregg Popovich or George Karl for Coach of the Year? Does any part of Shaq’s body remain healthy? But while these theoretical and statistical queries occupy our minds, there is still a week’s worth of games to be played and there are also playoff implications aplenty.

Here are three contenders’ (and one not-so-contender’s) storylines worth following as the season wraps up next week.

1. Have the Lakers peaked too soon?

The Los Angeles Lakers have played outstanding basketball since the All-Star break, compiling a 17-3 record since Kobe Bryant’s dominating, maybetried-a-little-too-hard-for-anAll-Star-Game performance in Los Angeles. Oft-injured Andrew Bynum has been the key to the run for the Lakers, averaging nearly 13 rebounds a game, while the offense has found a beautiful balance. The Lakers have moved the ball extremely well, and having Lamar Odom at full health as a bench player, where he is most comfortable and productive, is enormous for Los Angeles.

A question floating around the league, however, is if the Lakers are using up their best basketball too early. Over the years, we’ve seen teams like last year’s Miami Heat finish the regular season on an impressive run, only to sputter out in the playoffs. But with

“It was pretty exciting. I’m surprised by how much pride everyone has, even when they’re not around their families,” she said. “People were willing to wake up at five in the morning to watch — that’s dedication.” see CRICKET, page 13

INSIDE NHL

Canucks, Flyers, Caps lead playoff charge by

Matt Repka

Daily Editorial Board

All 30 National Hockey League (NHL) teams began the season last October with visions of hoisting the Stanley Cup at its conclusion in June. With just a handful of games remaining in the regular season, only 19 can still lay claim to that dream for this year.

Some, like the Presidents’ Trophy-clinching Vancouver Canucks, can cruise into the postseason at the top of their division, home-ice advantage all but assured. Other teams closer to the playoff bubble, especially in the Western Conference, will be fighting for playoff seeding until

the last day of the season. With less than a week until the first game of the Stanley Cup Playoffs on April 13, the slate of potential first-round match ups — and the parity of this year’s playoff-bound teams — looks like it could deliver one of the most thrilling postseasons in recent NHL history.

In the East, the Philadelphia Flyers and Washington Capitals have battled at the top of the conference for the No.1 seed — which guarantees home-ice advantage until the Stanley Cup Finals — all the way down the stretch.

The Caps have been surging since the trade deadline — 14-2-1 see INSIDE NHL page 15

Club Tennis

Tufts competes at nationals for the first time

MCT

Rajon Rondo has yet to return to the form he displayed before Celtics center Kendrick Perkins was traded to Oklahoma City.

Phil Jackson at the helm (and not, say, Erik Spoelstra) and the seasoned, playoff-savvy crew that wears purple and gold ever-conscious of the demands of two extra months of basketball, don’t count on this team resting on the laurels of its late-season dominance. With

the No. 2 seed wrapped up, and the late-season charge to overtake the San Antonio Spurs all but a pipe dream now, expect the Lakers to decrease their starters’ minutes and switch into playoff mentality. see INSIDE NBA, page 13

Just four years after the club tennis team was recognized by the Athletics Department, it has made its way to the sport’s biggest stage.

Seven Jumbos traveled to Cary, N.C., yesterday and will compete today through Saturday at the USTA Tennis On Campus National Championship.

Though the team missed out on an automatic berth by finishing outside the top three at the New England sectional tournament this October, Tufts applied to a national lottery and got a wildcard into the 64-team draw, senior captain Joshua Lund-Wilde said.

Despite the team’s underdog status, it has plans to make some

noise on the national scene.

“Even during the sectional tournament we pulled a bunch of upsets because no one’s taking us seriously,” Lund-Wilde said. “ I expect us to pull some upsets early and have a good time.”

Tufts will compete in a roundrobin pool play today against the University of Arizona, Penn State and William and Mary.

Based on today’s results, the team will be assigned a singleelimination bracket.

“Our goal is just to finish as high as we can in our pool, to get maybe second or third, and then to get as far in the bracket as we can,” Lund-Wilde said.

—by Ben Kochman