2011-9-26

THE TUFTS DAILY

Cloudy 80/63

300 students volunteer with Reach Out! Day by

TUFTSDAILY.COM

Monday, September 26, 2011

VOLUME LXII, NUMBER 12

Where You Read It First Est. 1980

Monaco meets with U.S. congressmen

Gabrielle Hernandez Daily Editorial Board

The Leonard Carmichael Society (LCS) and Repair the World, an initiative run through Tufts Hillel, teamed up to send over 300 students to perform community service in the greater Boston area through Reach Out! Tufts Service Day on Friday, according to LCS coPresident Kevin Huang.

The event paired roughly 20 groups of students with 26 local nonprofit groups for an afternoon of service, according to senior Hillary Sieber, student co-director of Repair the World. The day was designed to spark long-term student involvement in community service, Sieber noted.

“We were really hoping it would generate buzz and create a sustained effort, and show people how easy it really is to give back to the community,” LCS co-President Amy Straus, a junior, said. “We wanted people to take their groups of friends and see that they could do something easy and helpful that could mean a lot to the community and be really valuable.”

Organizers kicked off the event with a performance by Tufts a capella group S-Factor and short speeches by University President Anthony Monaco and Rabbi Jeffrey Summit, the executive director of Tufts Hillel.

Participants signed up to volunteer in see SERVICE, page 2

Courtesy Felix Browne

University President Anthony Monaco on Sept. 21 met in Washington, D.C., with U.S. Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) and U.S. Reps.

Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Michael Capuano (D-Mass.), among others, to discuss issues relevant to the university.

Hodgdon eliminates plastic bags, water bottles by

Marie Schow

Daily Editorial Board

Hodgdon Good-to-Go this semester stopped selling singleserving beverage bottles and cans and offering plastic bags to shoppers in an effort to cut back on the amount of plastic waste generated by Tufts Dining Services, according to Director of Dining and Business Services Patti Klos.

Dining Services targeted Hodgdon, previously the greatest source of single-serving plastic water bottles on campus, as the primary site of its plastic reduction efforts, according to Klos.

“Bottle water was the main focus, but we said we could look at plastic bags as well,” Klos said. “We wanted to be more comprehensive in our approach.”

Hodgdon offered free Nalgene water bottles to students during the first two weeks of classes and now sells reusable bags.

Klos said that the changes have been in the works for a few years, though major pushes from student groups and classes last semester propelled them to implement the changes this year.

Members of two classes, Environmental Action: Shifting from Saying to Doing, offered through the Experimental College, and Environmental

Virginia Bledsoe/Tufts Daily

Hodgdon Good-to-Go has eliminated plastic bags and single-serving beverage bottles and cans in an effort to be more environmentally friendly.

Inside this issue

Justice and U.S. Literature, were responsible for pressuring Dining Services to reduce the number of plastic products on campus.

“Late last spring, after working with these two different groups of students, we felt that there was enough support,” Klos said. “The community seemed very open to the change in practice.”

Students in Environmental Justice and U.S. Literature last semester spearheaded an environmental campaign focusing on plastic bag consumption.

They generated a 620-signature petition for the removal of plastic bags from Hodgdon, according to Klos.

In addition, members of the ExCollege class last fall made the elimination of plastic water bottles their mission.

They led a social marketing campaign to survey students on plastic water bottle use and discussed possible means of reducing plastic water bottles on campus with Dining Services, according to Office of Sustainability Program Director Tina Woolston.

In previous semesters, the class led successful campaigns to eliminate trays from the dining hall and change default printer settings to double-sided.

“They talked to students and they talked to dining service staff to find options,” Woolston,

who taught the class, said.

“Then, in the spring, a group of students kept going with it.”

Research conducted by students in the class found that while almost 90 percent of the surveyed population had reusable water bottles, students still opted to buy plastic water bottles from Hodgdon because they were readily available. “[The students] were sort of armed with this information, so they were able to go to Dining Services and say people get this water because it’s basically free,” Woolston said.

After the class ended, students formed Tufts Against Plastic ( TAP), according to junior Daniel Markowitz. They continued their work from first semester after joining with Tufts Sustainability Coalition, he said.

Junior Kathleen Kidwell, who last semester led TAP, said she was not expecting such a positive reaction from students regarding the elimination of plastic water bottles.

“We were expecting a lot of resistance, so we put together education last summer,” she said.

So far, however, students seem to be accepting the change, she remarked.

“People are pretty happy with it,” Kidwell said, attributsee BOTTLES, page 2

Today’s sections

An examination of the state of the women’s studies program at Tufts.

Weekend performances of Schoenberg and Shostakovich at Distler Auditorium.

see FEATURES, page 3

see ARTS, page 5

News Features Arts & Living Editorial | Letters

1 3 5 8

Op-Ed Comics Classifieds Sports

9 10 13 Back

The Tufts Daily

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News

Monday, September 26, 2011

Community Day draws 2,000 area residents to campus by

Alex Hanno

Contributing Writer

Despite a discouraging weather forecast, approximately 2,000 community members trekked to the Hill yesterday for the ninthannual Community Day at Tufts, according to Director of Community Relations Barbara Rubel.

Community Day, sponsored by the Office of Community Relations and the Cities of Medford and Somerville, this year boasted nearly 40 outside community groups and 25 Tufts groups.

“The basic notion is showing the community what goes on at Tufts … flipping that over and having the community bring their work onto campus to share with the students who come,” Rubel said. “All sorts of exchange goes on between the Tufts people and the community groups that are there.”

Originally inspired by Somerville Alderman-at-Large Jack Connolly and put into action largely through the efforts of former University President Lawrence Bacow, Community Day has grown steadily since its start nearly a decade ago, according to Vice President of University Relations Mary Jeka.

“The first year we had less than 200 [people] … Last year, we had close to 2000,” Rubel said.

Fourteen student groups performed, including Blackout, Sarabande and the Amalgamates.

“This is one of my favorite gigs … it’s really one of the only events that brings in the outside community,” Amalgamates President Foster Lockwood, a junior, said.

The Center for Engineering Education and Outreach organized Lego games for kids while members of La Salsa gave dance lessons and the Tufflepuffs, Tufts’ Quiddich team, organized a match of “Kiddich,” Quidditch for kids.

Small children — as well as enthusiastic adults — enjoyed other creative activities including face painting and pumpkin and cookie decorating.

Virginia Bledsoe/Tufts Daily

Approximately 2,000 community members came to campus yesterday for a day of face painting, educational presentations, musical performances and caramel apples.

Community Day wasn’t all fun and games; faculty members set up educational, hands-on demonstrations that attracted people of all ages.

“The more people know about science and research … the more you’ll get kids interested in things that matter,” Professor of Biomedical Engineering Fiorenzo Omenetto said. Omenetto created a display that showcased the uses of silk and included actual silk worms.

The Department of Geology led a presentation about the strata of rock lying underneath the campus, while above ground, students from the School of Dental Medicine provided

instruction in proper tooth brushing to kids.

Environmental organizations, including Groundwork Somerville, Medford’s Energy and Environment Office and Tufts’ Eco-Reps program, also staffed educational tables.

“We really like getting the word out about the great environmental stuff that is going on,” Alicia Hunt, Medford’s energy efficiency coordinator, told the Daily. Busy setting up a demonstration about the advantages of hybrid cars, Hunt said that her office liked “to set a good example” for the local residents.

The Tufts Eco-Reps set up a demonstration that tested the difference in taste

between bottled and tap water in an attempt to prove that drinking tap water was not only better for the environment, but tasted better too, according to sophomore Katie Segal.

The Tufts University Police Department (TUPD), the Medford Fire Department, the Somerville Fire Department and other emergency services organizations took part in the day as well. TUPD offered eager kids the opportunity to climb onto their police motorcycle.

—Brent Yarnell and Amelie Hecht contributed reporting to this article.

Students volunteer for one-day service project SERVICE

preformed by student volunteers.

“Nonprofits have big ambitions and have a very small staff and limited resources, so the efforts of college students are very much appreciated,” Rubel said.

Though participants only conducted a day of service, organizers hope that students will continue to engage in community service throughout the year.

“We’re trying to show students how easy it is to volunteer, and try and sustain that feeling throughout the year,” Sieber said.

Organizers considered the day of service an overall success. “We had a great response from students who went out and were really excited about it,” Sieber said.

Straus said they hope to make the event an annual occurrence. “I think because it was the first event and it was so successful, we can only go up from here,” she said.

continued from page 1

groups, which included sports teams, fraternities, groups of friends and a cappella groups, according to Sieber. “It was an easy way for them, even though they’re not typical philanthropic groups, to give back to the community and bond at the same time,” she said.

The majority of nonprofit sites that took part in Reach Out! provide youth and elderly services or work on environmental sustainability projects. Participating sites included Groundwork Somerville, Cradles to Crayons, Eagle Eye Institute and the Eastern Service Workers Association, among others, according to Sieber. “[Reach Out!] was also to show Medford and Somerville, as well as the Chinatown and Boston communities, that Tufts really supports the extending communities,” Sieber said. Director of Community Relations Barbara Rubel, who serves as the LCS faculty advisor, said community groups highly value the work

Virginia Bledsoe/Tufts Daily

Reach Out! Tufts Service Day sent 300 students into the greater Boston area for a day of volunteering at 26 local nonprofits.

Visiting the Hill this Week WEDNESDAY “The Social Cost of Carbon” Details: The Global Developmental and Environmental Institute will host a Brown Bag Lunch Series on Wednesday. Stockholm Environment Institute Senior Economist Elizabeth A. Stanton will discuss the U.S. government’s flawed estimate of the social cost of carbon.

When and Where: 12:30 p.m. to 1:35 p.m.; 44 Teele Ave., Somerville Sponsors: The Global Development and Environment Institute THURSDAY “A Career in Environmental Sustainability Consulting” Details: Director of Sustainability Consulting for EBI Consulting Peter Crawley will deliver an informal presentation on how he came to work as

a sustainability consultant and educator. Crawley will offer attendees advice on attaining careers in environmental sustainability.

When and Where: 12 p.m. to 1 p.m.; Rabb Room, Lincoln Filene Center Sponsors: Environmental Studies Program, Tufts Institute of the Environment “Spoken Word Superstar: Kit Yan” Details: Slam poet Kit Yan will deliver a theatrical performance on Thursday.

Yan’s work is shaped by his experience as a queer female to male transgender Asian-American immigrant.

When and Where: 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.; Multipurpose Room, Sophia Gordon Hall Sponsors: Asian-American Center, LGBT Center, Women’s Center —compiled by Bianca Blakesley

—Amelie Hecht contributed reporting to this article.

Hodgdon reduces plastic waste BOTTLES

continued from page 1

ing the smooth transition in part to the free Nalgene water bottles offered at the beginning of the semester.

Kidwell said that Dining Services was very receptive to the students’ push for change.

“They really like having the students come to them and lay out a concrete solution,” she said. “It was very easy working with them.”

Tufts Dining Services conducted sig-

nificant research to design an effective marketing campaign and to find the right kind of reusable water bottles to offer. They finally found a water bottle that would fit under most sinks in Tufts dorms, Klos said.

Klos stressed the fact that all parties involved will benefit from the reduction of plastic goods.

“We are able to attend to other things and the end user has savings in their pocket,” she said. “It’s a win-win for everybody.”

Like what you see here? Then grab a fresh slice of the latest Tufts news on our blog, Jumbo Slice. blogs.tuftsdaily.com

Features

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tuftsdaily.com

Hannah Furgang | The Tim Tam Slam

This ain’t your grandma’s cotillion

O

Justin McCallum/Tufts Daily

The women’s studies program, which calls Eaton Hall home, was left without a director and is now struggling to provide structure for its students.

Without a director and lacking support, women’s studies pushes forward by

Maya Kohli

Daily Editorial Board

As an educational institution, Tufts strives to promote the importance of an interdisciplinary academic experience. In addition to requiring students to fulfill distribution requirements in the humanities, sciences, mathematics and arts, Tufts also offers a variety of majors and minors that cross academic boundaries.

Some of these interdisciplinary programs comprise the school’s most popular majors, including international relations and community health. Popular program minors include communications and media studies and Latin American studies.

While some of these programs are growing stronger each year, others are beginning to falter due to lack of leadership and resources. This summer, Associate Professor of English Modhumita Roy stepped down from her position as the director of the women’s studies program, leaving a gap that students say will have a profound influence on the coming year.

While it is one of the smaller academic programs on campus, according to Associate Professor of English and women’s studies core faculty member Sonia Hofkosh, there are 11 students majoring in women’s studies in total.

Women’s studies has been offered as a major at Tufts for the past 30 years. The program offers both a major and a minor, seeking to give students a comprehensive study of women and gender across various disciplines. In addition to taking core courses on feminist and gender theory, students take electives from various departments and are required to engage in research and a capstone project during senior year.

Although the program boasts an extensive core faculty of more than 50 professors and lecturers, students say that the absence of a program director creates complications that jeopardize their academic experience.

“The problem with not having a director is that students have nowhere to turn,” Sadie Lansdale, a senior pursuing a minor in women’s studies, said. “Students who want advice about going abroad and independent study projects or students who want to be pointed in specific directions in the field have nowhere to turn.”

“A director would be someone who has knowledge of all the different fields of women’s studies, which is information that we can’t get anywhere else.”

In addition to this lack of information,

the absence of a program director is particularly problematic for upperclassmen, according to senior Alyson Weiss, a women’s studies major.

“Without a director, we can’t declare the major. If you’re not declared as a major, you can’t start undertaking your senior project,” Weiss said, noting that the capstone senior project is a crucial part of the program. “Right now we are working blind. We have no idea if at the end of the day our project will be approved.”

The process of categorizing interdisciplinary programs at Tufts, which dictates the amount of funding and resources that individual programs receive, is a complicated one, according to Hofkosh. Under the leadership of then-Dean of Arts and Sciences Robert Sternberg, interdisciplinary programs were ranked on the basis of how many graduates had majored in each program within the past five years. Then the funds were allocated accordingly.

Women’s studies graduates fewer than 10 majors per year and therefore receives the lowest level of resources in terms of research stipends, scholarship money and course releases, Hofkosh said.

Students argue that this dearth of institutional support is a disincentive for faculty members willing to be the program’s director.

“Faculty that were offered the position would receive no compensation and only a $1,000 research grant,” Weiss said, citing figures confirmed by Hofkosh. “The administration was basically asking professors to volunteer a lot of extra hours with no administrative support.”

“The women’s studies program,” she said, “also doesn’t have any full-time faculty members, so the director has to do a lot more work than a director of a program or department that has more administrative support.”

Hofkosh shares many of the same worries and frustrations as her students.

“I and many of my faculty colleagues are very concerned about the gap in leadership for the program,” she said. “We are very concerned about the students. We feel they are being shortchanged right now.”

According to Hofkosh, the process of finding a new program director is complex. Sarah Pinto, an associate professor of anthropology and a core faculty member in the women’s studies program, stood up to take the job, but her plans to take leave in the spring made her unable to fulfill the commitment, Hofkosh said.

“Other faculty members weren’t willing to

take the director position with the compensation package they were offering,” Hofkosh said. “The package minimized the importance of the women’s studies program and wasn’t recognizing how important the work of director is.”

“Women’s studies is a program, we argue, that services the whole Tufts intellectual community by offering courses that many people take, sponsoring events, providing students opportunities to present research,” she added. “The impasse was that there wasn’t a faculty member to be director for this year because the compensation wasn’t recognizing how much work is involved.”

Despite these setbacks, Hofkosh emphasizes that the administration is attempting to rectify the issue at hand.

“I do feel like we have made progress helping Dean [of Academic Affairs for Arts and Sciences James] Glaser understand what’s involved in the job,” Hofkosh said.

“Unfortunately his hands are tied by the system that Dean Sternberg created. They are trying to be flexible, but they don’t want to change that chart. We are hopeful that it will be resolved soon in the conversations we are having with the administration.”

Both Weiss and Lansdale stressed that the positivity of their experiences as Women’s Studies majors outweighs the challenges they have faced.

“I took feminist philosophy fall of my freshman year, and that class changed my life,” Weiss said. “Women’s studies offers a lot of flexibility and works with individual students.”

“Women’s studies is one of the disciplines that you don’t leave in a classroom,” Lansdale said. “A lot of the clubs I’m involved in, there [are] always people from my women’s studies classes in them. It’s a community of people who are concerned about the state of the university and the world, and we are looking for ways to change it.”

Hofkosh added that the program also benefits faculty members.

“What’s important for me about the program is that it provides an intellectual community for faculty across disciplines,” she said. “It allows me to have a conversation with faculty who I wouldn’t have otherwise been able to meet.”

Despite the current setbacks facing the program, Lansdale encourages any students interested in the field to pursue it wholeheartedly. “Women’s studies doesn’t end when the class is over,” she said. “It’s a discipline that extends into every field of your life, regardless of who you are.”

h hey, stranger. That’s a lot of my face you’ve got there.

Now don’t get me wrong; I’ll drink up any form of attention I get like it’s fresh horchata on a warm August day. My professor got the first letter of my name right? Texting mom about it. Cat calls? I’m blushing. But I figure I need to draw a line somewhere. Like maybe I should learn your name before immersing myself in a waterfall of your sweat and saliva.

That being said, it’s just a suggestion.

You know what? To hell with it. This is FALL BALL. If there’s one important lesson I’ve learned so far during my time at Tufts, it’s that at Fall Ball it just doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that you’re a freshman and he’s a senior. It doesn’t matter that you’ve been dancing with the same girl for four songs now and you still don’t know what her face looks like. It doesn’t matter that you’ve never been so sweaty in your life and he’s in a morphsuit. Fall Ball means spending hours painting your nails and getting all gussied-up, and then promptly throwing all your standards out Gantcher’s windows.

Maybe you upperclassmen have spent enough nights on Pro Row to be unfazed by all the flashing lights and gyrating bodies. For me, it was the dance party of a lifetime. Actually, it was one of four dance parties of a lifetime, since you can bet your bottom dollar that I’ll have my finger on the mouse the second tickets are released for the next three years. And, no, I’m not planning on selling them for 30 dollars. Before you pull out your fancy-Nancy economic justification for ticket scalping, hear me out: you just missed out on an unforgettable night of grinding with 2,500 of your shmammered classmates, you fool. Betchya feel awful silly now.

See, I did my research. I knew this was going to be a night for the ages.

Those 2,264 views on the promo video?

You can thank my floor for that. One of the most in-depth hall conversations I’ve had to date has been over whether the guy at 1:33 or the one at 2:47 is happier (consensus: “Guys, we’re going to FALL BALL!”). That video propelled me through the week, the drop giving me just the adrenaline boost I needed to find myself dressed and ready to go by 7:30 on Friday night.

And, do you know what? Before you pity me, know that I’m proud that I left the dorm at 9 with my friends, even if it was a while before we actually made it into Gantcher due to reports of a “dead” dance floor (and just for the record, that wouldn’t have stopped me if I had been alone). I wasn’t embarrassed to be one of the first ones eking out a few “dance moves” when I finally went inside. So what if I tried on every single one of my friend’s dresses Friday after class because I didn’t own one that said “nice, but not too nice and OK to get pretty sweaty yet looks good without trying too hard”? I’ll be darned if I don’t live out my freshman year to its cliched fullest.

As I stare down at the peeling remnants of my sparkly purple nail polish, I can still hear the faint pulse of dubstep and see a hazy flash of club lights.

And I can’t help but smile.

I’ll be here to impart some more freshmanic enthusiasm when Winter Bash and Spring Fling roll around. Boy, I just love seasons!

Hannah Furgang is a freshman who has not yet declared a major. She can be reached at Hannah.Furgang@tufts.edu.

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The Tufts Daily

Features

Monday, September 26, 2011

Arts & Living

5

Chris Poldoian | Extra Butter

Do thumbs matter?

F

Ashley seenauth/Tufts Daily

Pieces by Arnold Schoenberg and Dmitri Shostakovich were performed this weekend.

Weekend opens with classical overtures in Distler Performance Hall by

Matthew Welch

Daily Editorial Board

An evening of Arnold Schoenberg and Dmitri Shostakovich may not be the merriest way to start off the weekend, but audience members seemed

more than pleased as they filed out of Distler Hall last Friday night.

The classical affair, dubbed “Piano Trios on the Brink,” featured two of the heaviest works of 20th century classical music: Dmitri Shostakovich’s sec-

ond piano trio and Arnold Schoenberg’s “Transfigured Night.” Tufts faculty member Donald Berman played piano, accompanied by Gil Morgenstern on violin and Ole Akahoshi on the cello.

Both pieces use emphatic arrangements and sharp

TV Review

Spielberg’s ‘Terra Nova’ recalls ‘Jurassic Park,’ ‘Avatar’ by

Alex Kaufman

Daily Staff Writer

The new Fox series “Terra Nova” — think “Avatar” (2009) meets “Jurassic

Terra Nova Starring Jason O’Mara, Stephen Lang, Shelley Conn Airs Mondays at 8 p.m. on Fox Park” (1993) — takes viewers into a fight-or-flight journey through time.

The show features a futuristic human civilization looking to relocate from a now-inhospitable planet Earth.

The series begins in the year 2149, when humankind is collapsing under the pressures of overpopulation and pollution — sound familiar? Sunlight, fresh air and fruit are extremely rare finds on this dark, devastated Earth. The government has mandated that each family have no more than four members and penalizes anyone who breaks that law.

“Terra Nova” centers on the Shannon see TERRA, page 6

dynamic contrasts to tell stories that mix elation and despair. Shostakovich’s piece was written as a celebration of the closing of the Nazi concentration camps in 1945, while Schoenberg’s see PIANO, page 7

Theater Review

Mark Twain’s classic gets musical treatment by

Priyanka Dharampuriya Contributing Writer

An opening slide at the production of “Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” reads: “All view-

Big River Written by William Hauptman Directed by Spiro Veloudos Lyric Stage Company of Boston through October 8th Tickets $40 to $60 ers looking for a plot will be shot.”

Fortunately, audience members don’t need to worry — this story has plenty of action to keep theatergoers entertained. The musical, presented by the Lyric Stage Company of Boston, is an adaptation of a lazy, simple story: Huckleberry Finn’s rafting adventure and his return home.

Most experience Mark Twain’s classic novel — focusing on themes of racism, slavery and morality in the Antebellum South — in a high school English class. While Huck ( Jordan Ahnquist) and Jim’s (De’Lon Grant) journey down the Mississippi involves delightful amounts of trickery, cross-dressing and grave robbing, the tale possesses a thematic

courtesy Brook Rushton/FOX

Fox’s ‘Terra Nova’ premieres tonight with dazzling special effects.

see RIVER, page 6

or weeks, the film “Drive” (2011) built up a healthy amount of hype. Ryan Gosling made the rounds on late night television, and TV viewers were assaulted with advertisements. Then came the reviews, which were, of course, glowing.

Everything seemed to be going well.

But “Drive” tumbled an unexpectedly large amount in its second weekend. For a film that garnered a 92% rating from critics on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, such a drop seems odd. Or is it? If you look beyond its critical reception, the answer becomes obvious. The film’s CinemaScore (an exit-survey given on a film’s opening day to determine audience’s viewing experiences) was a paltry C-. To put that into perspective, that steaming pile of CGI-laced awfulness known as “The Green Lantern” (2011) got a B. How can we explain this disconnect between critics and audiences? Well, in the case of “Drive,” we can attribute this to awkward marketing. Trailers and television spots suggested it was an action-heavy flick with lots of car chases, shootouts and oodles of cleavage (the latter courtesy of Christina Hendricks).

While Drive did include bursts of violence and a couple of fleeting glimpses of Ms. Hendricks’ physique, these moments were few and far between. With its minimalist dialogue, stylized cinematography and subtextheavy direction, “Drive” succeeded in creating a smoldering character study. And that’s the way critics interpreted the movie, too.

Unfortunately, what movie critics saw in “Drive” didn’t correspond to what audiences wanted to see. These warped expectations killed the film’s second-weekend box office results. People who wanted action watched “Killer Elite” (2011), and those who craved gratuitous cleavage stayed home to watch Nicki Minaj music videos.

The last critic/audience controversy to erupt over a movie was this past summer. When “The Tree of Life” (2011) hit theatres, critics cooed over its philosophical ideas and impressionistic cinematography. Roger Ebert compared it to Stanley Kubrick’s work, while A.O. Scott drew parallels to Herman Melville. Meanwhile, audiences were left scratching their heads and demanding refunds. With such a polarizing response, “The Tree of Life” wallowed in financial mediocrity. For a movie that was supposed to change the way we see cinema, it hardly made a dent in the box office.

Usually, the reactions of critics and viewers align, especially for older audiences. While we can certainly attribute the poor performance of “The Tourist” (2010) to its negative reviews, films that appeal to a younger demographic (think of the “Twilight” saga, which began in 2008) perform well in spite of the bad reviews.

Some films just skip reviews altogether.

Maybe you remember a mindless summer movie based on a popular Hasbro toy line?

The plot was an insult to anyone with an elementary school diploma. No, I’m not talking about “Transformers” (2007) — I mean “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” (2009). A movie like that doesn’t even screen for critics; after all, most hyperactive 10-year-olds don’t care what The New Yorker has to say.

One of my favorite Pixar movies is “Ratatouille” (2007). As an unabashed foodie and Francophile, I savored each moment of that movie. I’d go so far as to call it the best child-friendly movie about rat hoarding since the remake of “Willard” (2003). One of the film’s best characters is the restaurant critic Anton Ego (Peter O’Toole). With his sunken eyes, Ego peers down on everyone else in the film with a look of haughty disdain.

While Brad Bird invented that character, there’s no denying that many people feel this dislike for critics. We often find them to be distant. At best, they are helpful guides to your decision; at worst, they are stuffy and detached. I believe a critic’s word should be taken with a grain of salt. At the end of the day, it’s your 10 bucks. Go with your gut.

Chris Poldoian is a senior majoring in Spanish and economics. He can be reached at Christopher.Poldoian@tufts.edu.

The Tufts Daily

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Arts & Living

Monday, September 26, 2011

Musical a superb adaptation of classic Mark Twain novel RIVER

continued from page 5

bite and asks moral questions that both darken and enrich the story and its characters.

The musical’s writer, William Hauptman, handles that emotional intensity with levity, infusing the piece with peppy musical numbers and falling back on the occasional cliche. Huck’s internal transformation is marked by clever, accented little asides to the audience. The show is largely more lighthearted than the novel it’s based on.

That said, “Huckleberry Finn” is a fabulous show. The music is upbeat and bluegrassy at times, wonderfully idiotic in others, and it occasionally tumbles into strong and sentimental.

The opening overture combines the best of these musical moods, and sets a great tone for the first few scenes.

Those first few scenes do not live up to their potential. The humor is forced, the accents sound falsely twangy and Huck seems too old. However, once Tom Sawyer (Phil Tayler), Huck’s best friend and partner-in-crime, enters the picture, the cast is suddenly at ease.

Huck, Tom and the gang are overthe-top, and hilariously so. Jokes bounce between actors easily, and as Twain’s characters meander downriver, the show gathers momentum, excitement and depth.

Huck and Jim have wonderful vocal and stage chemistry — if only we saw it more often. They fade out of the plot in the first half, and are replaced by two con men who call themselves The Duke (Peter A. Carey) and The King ( J.T. Turner.)

In many ways, it’s refreshing to see a show not dominated by its leads,

but Huck and Jim’s relationship is too sweetly portrayed to miss. They excel in the play’s more lighthearted moments — catching a catfish the size of a toddler, for example.

The second act of the play joins Huck, Jim and the con men trying to make money in town, getting into trouble and fleeing. The last half of the play offers some of the show’s strongest moments — the actors breathe life into the scenes in the novel, and silly and hilarious moments abound.

Twain’s heavier themes gain momentum in the second act as well. In fact, one of the most touching scenes in the show features Huck writing a letter to the authorities, reporting that Jim has run away. Though he has been taught he is doing the right thing, he tears the letter up and decides to help Jim escape instead. Huck has an intuitive sense of right and wrong beyond what society has taught him, and his realization of that moral code is extremely moving.

This show certainly has its cheesy moments. At times — in the first act especially — the piece falls back on “gotcha!” humor. Huck’s miniature love story arc with the newly orphaned Mary Jane Wilkes (Erica Spyres) seems like a stretch.

Though the theater itself seats about 240, the thrust stage makes for an intimate show; actors are able to make eye contact with audience members to accentuate punch lines.

For the most part, the play lacks traditional scene changes; instead, the pictures of the river and countryside are projected behind them. This clever little bit of tech parallels the nature of the entire show — it seems a little weird, but it works.

Courtesy Lyric Stage Company, Boston

‘Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ is now playing at the Lyric Stage Company of Boston.

COURTESY Brook Rushton/FOX

‘Terra Nova’ is a special effects-driven epic with a cinematic bent.

‘Terra Nova’ takes viewers back in time through Spielberg’s eye for animation TERRA

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family’s struggles. Jim ( Jason O’Mara) and Elisabeth (Shelley Conn) are married with three children, the youngest of whom, Zoe (Alana Mansour), is now an illegal child. The show begins with a raid on their household as Jim is jailed and brutally assaulted by cops for illegal overpopulation. Things continue to get worse for civilians as life on Earth becomes to be too much to handle.

The only escape from the nightmarish present is to travel back in time. Scientists discover a rip in time, allowing them to colonize the Earth 85 million

years ago. Elisabeth, a trauma surgeon, has been recruited to travel back with her son, Josh (Landon Liboiron), and her daughter, Maddy (Naomi Scott).

Determined to bring his youngest daughter to safety, Jim devises a plan to escape and get Zoe on to the time travel line, even if he has to bash a few cops along the way.

The colony itself is mesmerizing. If there’s one thing producer Steven Spielberg does right, it’s employing the awe factor at its greatest capacity — that, and shooting stories that take place in prehistoric times. “Terra Nova” offers an epic display of colors, dinosaurs and vegetation that

could only exist millions of years before humankind arrived. The futuristic homes are fascinating, yet strangely simplistic.

Though the script is peppered with outdated and overused dialogue, the pilot still succeeds reasonably thanks to its exciting music, its actors’ expert delivery and the viewers’ itch to learn more about its new-old world.

But what will keep “Terra Nova” afloat after viewers become accustomed to the digital animation and artistic direction? A twohour movie can certainly keep an audience’s attention with beautiful graphics, but a television series with a minimum of 13 episodes will need to dig a bit

deeper.

Also, why would an entire civilization — filled with scientists who can manipulate time — go back to an era that results in the catastrophic annihilation of the entire dinosaur population? That’s not to say that all good television needs to be firmly grounded in reality, but this decision is too ludicrous to ignore. Hopefully, further episodes will offer a solid explanation.

However, some storylines have the potential to keep the series afloat, assuming they develop further. One of the pilot’s ambiguous arcs revolves around the overly-masculine Commander Nathaniel Taylor (Stephen Lang), who played Colonel Quaritch in

the movie “Avatar.” If the writers choose to pursue this thread, it could create some exciting dramatic tension.

Skye (Allison Miller) also holds a key to the show’s success. Her character guides Josh through the wild new world and brings refreshing energy to the screen in the process. It’s clear that a foreboding love triangle is already in the works between Skye, Josh and Josh’s girlfriend, who he conveniently left behind in the present day.

The two-hour long pilot of “Terra Nova” premieres on Fox tonight at 8 p.m. Hopefully, legend Steven Spielberg won’t let viewers down.

At least it can’t be worse than “Cowboys & Aliens” (2011).

Monday, September 26, 2011

The Tufts Daily

Virtuoso performances at Distler PIANO

continued from page 5

was a musical depiction of two fraught lovers walking through a moonlit park during an emotional breakdown.

The event opened with a unique arrangement of “Transfigured Night.”

While Schoenberg’s original was written for a string septet, the piece played at the event was arranged for a piano trio instead. This completely changed the dynamic of the piece. While the original was lushly orchestrated with rich interplay between the various string instruments, the arrangement on Friday was more focused and intense.

The piece’s examination of two lovers was reflected more deeply by the violin and cello, whose impassioned melodic lines merged in and out of consonance and dissonance.

Morgenstern and Akahoshi’s work on the violin and cello was almost telepathic in its synchronicity. Schoenberg conveyed the shared emotions of the lovers by employing rhythmically identical lines for the string instruments.

Both string players were always spoton with their delivery, maintaining complete rhythmic sync as the melodies themselves slid from octaves and unisons to more dissonant harmonies.

The piece would often segue from such confluent passages to increasingly tense ones, eventually climaxing with a dramatic, discordant segment that quickly came to a romantic resolution. While this pattern took many forms, it persisted through the work as a meditation on the elation and sadness that accompany troubled relationships.

Berman’s piano playing was understated but highly effective. The piano plays an almost entirely supportive role in “Transfigured Night,” and Berman was capable of molding his playing to the widely various needs of the piece.

When the piano did take center stage in a few passages, Berman displayed his talents with much aplomb. Berman played one such segment — a flurry of

delicate arpeggios — with such impressionistic finesse that one could have been listening to Debussy.

Once “Transfigured Night” was finished, the group was met with enthusiastic applause, bowing three times before the crowd quieted down. The next piece, Shostakovich’s “Piano Trio No. 2,” complemented the romantic inflections of “Transfigured Night” in an unexpected way. Shostakovich’s melodies were angular where Schoenberg’s were curvaceous, and the piece was played with far greater severity than “Transfigured Night.”

Once again, the string playing of Morgenstern and Akahoshi was superb, though their talents were displayed in a quite different way in Shostakovich’s piece. “Piano Trio No. 2” opens with a very high-registered melody from the cello. Akahoshi’s playing was so delicate that one could barely hear the friction between bow and string. His technique imparted the melody with a disembodied, ghostly air that complemented its mournful opening wonderfully.

Shostakovich’s usage of dissonance was far more obstinate than Schoenberg’s in “Transfigured Night,” which made for a more challenging listening experience. Despite the severity of Shostakovich’s harmonies, the piece was not without joyous moments.

Several pizzicato passages added a playful mood to the piece, as did several percussive piano segments that placed Berman in the spotlight.

Like “Transfigured Night,” the emotions of “Piano Trio No. 2” were capable of shifting from despair to uproarious joy within the space of a few bars.

Shostakovich’s compositional genius made these shifts seem organic despite their abruptness.

Conjuring such disparate emotions in the span of 75 minutes is no small task, but Berman, Morgenstern and Akahoshi succeeded with a seeming effortlessness that made the whole concert a true pleasure to experience.

Arts & Living

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The Tufts Daily

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THE TUFTS DAILY

Editorial | Letters

Monday, September 26, 2011

louie zong

Carter W. Rogers Editor-in-Chief

Editorial Niki Krieg Adam Kulewicz Managing Editors Amelie Hecht Executive News Editor Kathryn Olson News Editors Laina Piera Corinne Segal Saumya Vaishampayan Brent Yarnell Bianca Blakesley Assistant News Editors Gabrielle Hernandez Brionna Jimerson Michael Marks Elizabeth McKay Marie Schow Minyoung Song Mahpari Sotoudeh Martha Shanahan Executive Features Editor Jon Cheng Features Editors Maya Kohli Amelia Quinn Falcon Reese Derek Schlom Victoria Rathsmill Assistant Features Editors Margaret Young Rebecca Santiago Executive Arts Editor Zach Drucker Arts Editors Anna Majeski Charissa Ng Joseph Stile Ashley Wood Matthew Welch Melissa MacEwen Assistant Arts Editors David Kellogg Bhushan Deshpande Seth Teleky Devon Colmer Louie Zong Craig Frucht Michael Restiano

Executive Op-Ed Editor Op-Ed Editors Assistant Op-Ed Editors Cartoonists

Daniel Rathman Executive Sports Editor Matthew Berger Sports Editors Lauren Flament Claire Kemp Ben Kochman Aaron Leibowitz David McIntyre Alex Prewitt Ann Sloan Ethan Sturm Kate Klots Assistant Sports Editors Josh Berlinger Virginia Bledsoe Kristen Collins Alex Dennett Justin McCallum Ashley Seenauth William Butt Lane Florsheim Caroline Geiling Meagan Maher Oliver Porter Scott Tingley Dilys Ong

’

Editorialists

Executive Photo Editor Photo Editors

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Staff Photographers

From the Editor-in-Chief

Regarding Friday’s Daily

Those picking up Friday’s issue of the Daily in the dining halls may have noticed opinion pieces printed on standard printer paper and inserted into the Daily. The Daily had no prior knowledge of these pieces before they were brought to our attention.

The individuals who rummaged through our finished product to insert their own writings and present them as part of the Daily were extremely disrespectful.

The Daily strongly advocates campus dialogue. That is why we welcome letters to the editor and op-eds, where — as you can see below and to the right — anyone from an incoming freshman to University President Anthony Monaco can share their thoughts with the print and online readership of the Daily. Through extensive editorial scrutiny, we strive to make sure everything in the Daily is 100 percent factually correct, a process the pieces appearing in

Friday’s paper were not subjected to.

We would have welcomed the pieces in question as op-eds, and I would encourage the authors to, next time, submit them to oped@tuftsdaily.com, instead of subverting the hours upon hours of work that we put into each and every issue.

transgender people. Worse, the pinnacle of his column comes when he says he’d accept surgical treatment for gender dysphoria only if it prevented suicide, but that this wouldn’t be a triumph, as if a saved transgender life is not worth celebrating.

One need not be transgender, or have a full grasp of the topic, or even feel comfortable with the subject in order to understand why Ablow’s words are problematic. According to FBI crime data analyzed by the Human Rights Campaign, a transgender person is murdered in the United States every three weeks. And a number of studies have shown that hate crimes against transgender victims are especially violent in nature. While Ablow worries about Bono going under the knife on her path to wellness, perhaps he should instead be examining the mutilated bodies of victims of transphobia.

This year, I learned that my college roommate was transgender and had often

considered suicide out of the despair she felt in keeping her secret. That she is still alive, and beginning life as the woman she always knew herself to be, is a great relief to me. But I also know that her survival comes with the burden of living with the continual harm done by fearmongers like Ablow.

The university must allow all community members to voice their opinions, even ones that are patently unscientific. It is sad to note that, in this case, the opinion in question is also provably harmful, a blot on the school’s reputation. While the institution may not be able to disavow his comments, individuals among us can and should. If we raise our voices to counteract Ablow’s claims, perhaps we can represent our community’s best nature.

watch Chaz Bono for fear of putting their own gender identity into question.

Setting aside Ablow’s astounding ignorance of questions of identity and apparent belief that “kids do what the TV tells them,” such comments undermine Tufts’ claims to inclusiveness and damage the university’s ability to claim a climate hospitable to all kinds of students, their personal identity notwithstanding. Just as racist, homophobic or misogynist comments would be cause to dismiss a professor, I can see no reason that such comments against those with a transgender identity are any less serious.

The editorial noted that Ablow is not a fulltime faculty member, his position at Tufts is not paid, and he has not given a lecture in five years. If anything, his tenuous relationship to Tufts should be that much easier to sever,

and if his attachment to Tufts is that thin, that is all the more reason that his bigoted opinions should not be associated with the university as a whole. Of course his comments represent a difference in opinion from the “general Tufts consensus,” but there exist differences of opinion that can actively damage the university’s ability to maintain a safe academic and social environment. Professor Ablow’s opinion would be one of them. His tenure at Tufts needs to be terminated. If the university wants to claim a commitment to tolerance, firing a staff member publicly spouting hateful remarks would be a good start.

Sincerely, Carter Rogers Editor-in-Chief

Ellen Kan Executive New Media Editor

PRODUCTION Jason Huang

Production Director Alyssa Kutner Executive Layout Editor Rebecca Alpert Layout Editors Jennifer Betts Shoshanna Kahne Sarah Kester Emily Rourke Elliot Philips Assistant Layout Editors Emma Spero Andrew Paseltiner Executive Copy Editor Ben Considine Copy Editors Patrick Donnelly Sara Eisemann Katrina Knisely Drew Lewis Ashley Cheng Assistant Copy Editors Linh Dang Lauren Greenberg George Le Gregory Witz Audrey Kuan Executive Online Editor Darcy Mann Online Editors Ben Schwalb Will Wong Ammar Khaku Executive Technical Manager

BUSINESS Laura Moreno Executive Business Director

Letter to the Editor Dear Editor, As the Daily has noted, Keith Ablow, a psychiatrist affiliated with Tufts, has recently made headlines for his comments on Chaz Bono and, by extension, all transgender individuals. At first, considering that even some of his fellow Fox commentators took him to task for his remarks, I assumed he would simply be laughed off the public stage. But as the resulting controversy keeps affording him opportunities to make uninformed and damaging statements, bearing Tufts’ name as he goes, I wanted to voice my concern as a member of this community and as a human being.

Ablow’s comments, already discredited by the American Psychological Association and many of his well-respected peers, are not based in science. He uses rhetorical claims (including a version of “monkey see, monkey do”) and grotesque analogies (women sawing off their arms, for instance) to drive home a lurid point that denigrates

Sincerely, David Valdes Greenwood Lecturer, English

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

Letter to the Editor Dear Editor, The recent editorial “Calls for Ablow resignation too extreme” failed to acknowledge the implications of Professor Keith Ablow’s offensive comments on transgender identity. While the editorial stated that “Ablow’s inflammatory remarks…went against Tufts’ environment of inclusiveness,” the editorial’s conclusion is that sacking Professor Ablow would amount to punishing a difference of opinion.

However, the editorial ignores that such an opinion is exactly why dismissal is appropriate and that his comments do not amount to a mere intellectual disagreement with university standards. His comments compare the transgender identity to someone who seeks to cut off their own arms and warns that parents should not let their children

The Tufts Daily is a nonprofit, independent newspaper, published Monday through Friday during the academic year, and distributed free to the Tufts community. EDITORIAL POLICY Editorials represent the position of The Tufts Daily. Individual editors are not necessarily responsible for, or in agreement with, the policies and editorials of The Tufts Daily. The content of letters, advertisements, signed columns, cartoons and graphics does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Tufts Daily editorial board.

Sincerely, Ben Van Meter Class of 2013

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.

Monday, September 26, 2011

The Tufts Daily

Africana department vs. multicultural program

by Justin

Pequeño and Libby Shrobe

On Sept. 14, 2011, Dean of Arts and Sciences Joanne Berger-Sweeney sent an announcement to the Tufts student community regarding multiple new initiatives focused on diversity and inclusion. Among these initiatives was the proposal for the creation of a new academic program. From her announcement, it seemed that this proposal stemmed from the task force on Africana Studies that convened throughout last spring.

However, this new proposal moves away from the idea of a department specifically focused on Africana Studies to an umbrella program focused on comparative race and ethnicity studies, as cited as goals in her letter to the Tufts community.

Though at first glance this seems like a simple, comprehensive solution to create an inclusive education, we believe otherwise. A program jumbling Africana, Latino/a, Asian American, Judaic and possibly gender/women’s studies conflates these multiple identities together. This program would be devaluing the individual experiences and knowledge surrounding each identity by lumping them all into one category of racial and ethnic others.

It also creates a diluted academic program where none of these individual fields of study is given ample resources to expand to its full academic potential. Tufts would not be affording each field, and identity, its own rightful place in academia.

Secondly, the lack of resources for this new program is problematic. A program receives significantly fewer funds than a department and more importantly, programs cannot hire their own tenured faculty. Dean Berger-Sweeney mentions that the reasoning behind creating a program and not a department is that “pro-

grams often offer more flexibility and allow for faster implementation and a more robust curriculum, universitywide, than a department would.”

Dean Berger-Sweeney cites successful programs that already exist at Tufts, such as international relations and community health. However, she fails to mention that these programs are able to offer a “more robust, university-wide curriculum” precisely because of their ability to draw on the resources and faculty of Tufts Medical, Dental, Nutrition and Veterinary Schools, Sackler, the School of Public Health and The Fletcher School. Unless this umbrella program is given the same amount of resources (i.e. funding, faculty and facilities), what are the real chances of creating a sustainable program that will prosper as these other programs have?

The new program does account for three new faculty positions. However, their role in the program is secondary to their role in their home department, as Dean Berger-Sweeney stated during her open office hours on Tuesday, Sept.

20, 2011. Is this really enough to create a whole new program? Though this program will draw from some preexisting courses and faculty, the addition of three faculty members can by no means fill in the curricular voids needed to offer a comprehensive program focusing on all of these identities equally.

Our calculations estimate that the addition of three new faculty members would equate to a maximum of 12 new courses throughout an academic year.

Twelve courses are barely enough to offer one new major, let alone all of the majors being proposed under this umbrella program. If this program is going to be held as a legitimate and essential part of our Tufts curriculum, we will need to see far more faculty and courses added to the equation than is

currently proposed.

Therefore, instead of this proposed program, we suggest an alternative: Create an Africana Studies department that is accountable and sustainable.

An Africana Studies department would not just benefit a handful of students.

It would broaden academic opportunities for the entire campus and as an interdisciplinary field it would reach out to and benefit many students — no matter their major or field of interest.

Africana Studies is also important to all students because it adds perspectives from marginalized groups that are otherwise not focused on in Tufts’ primarily Eurocentric curricula.

Eventually, we would love to see the creation of multiple departments, one for each of the aforementioned identities, and those beyond. A department and adequate support for each, with proper resources that are thought out thoroughly and deeply, will ensure strong academic fields of involvement, and in turn offer the opportunity for a more rigorous, thoughtprovoking curriculum. But this takes longer than a year to create and takes more than just three new faculty positions. We want a quality department, not a makeshift program.

At the end of the day, people invest in what they care about. If Tufts cares about providing a diverse and inclusive education for their students, if they really care about seriously addressing the issues that have plagued this university since its conception, they will do more than what is necessary to ensure that each field will be actualized.

We want an Africana Studies Department. Now. Justin Pequeño is a senior majoring in American studies and psychology. Libby Shrobe is a junior majoring in psychology and American studies.

Dead silent: We need to speak up by

Brian Pilchik

Do you know the feeling of anticipation? The anxiety before taking a big test, standing up and giving a big presentation, or walking into an interview? The stomach-lurching feeling just before that moment, the sense of being at the height of a roller coaster, wondering why you got on the ride?

Can you imagine having a terrifying appointment at 7:00 p.m. tonight, and checking your watch to find that it’s 6:25 p.m.? Maybe you pace nervously.

Maybe you rehearse what you are going to say, what you need to do.

What if you knew that, in just a couple of minutes, you had to take a deep breath, ignore the quickening pounding in your chest and tell yourself, “I got this.” Then you had to walk into a room, sit down, take a needle in the arm and die. Forever.

For as long as I can remember understanding it, I have been unable to believe that the death penalty is right. For almost every other crime imaginable, the punishment is fine or imprisonment, never an eye for an eye.

But, somehow, there is still a sentiment among some that execution is a valid form of “justice,” that killing a killer makes everything OK in the world, and that the government should have the power of life and death over the citizens it arrests.

Wednesday marked a tragic event in the realm of capital punishment. A 42-year-old man by the name of Troy Davis counted down until 7:00 p.m., when he was to be executed in the state of Georgia. His conviction was the killing of a police officer. The case against him was built nearly exclusively on witness testimony; no gun was ever found. Despite seven of the nine key witnesses in the case against him having rescinded or disputed all or

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Op-Ed

parts of their testimony, courts continually ruled against him. He maintained his innocence, offering to submit to a polygraph (lie detector) for questioning; his request was denied.

I had tried to do what I could to intervene. Tuesday evening, I called Judge Penny Freesemann, asking her not to allow this to happen. I emailed the executioner, urging him to refuse his task. I signed numerous online petitions, joined Facebook groups and events and watched the public ground-swelling of support on Twitter and in protests around the world. I created a pin and wore it Wednesday, hoping that the uninformed would ask me what it was for. I even participated in a symbolic “Die-In” event on MCT campus, sponsored by Tufts Amnesty International. I spent a good 20 min- with the 15 abolitionist local states utes lying “dead” on the Tisch Library and 137 countries worldwide in stoppatio, startling the passersby as my ping the tears and bloodshed. One arm shot up to offer him a handout, day, the Supreme Court will acknowlmy eyes still closed and my body still edge the meaning of cruel and unusual, renew the precedent of their 1972 parallel to the ground.

But this issue wasn’t up to a student decision, and end this. vote; my actions had little effect. Just That won’t happen until the public before 7:00 p.m. Wednesday evening, is outraged. That won’t happen until the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in the hundreds of protestors in Georgia to consider a stay of execution for become millions of protestors around Troy Davis. At around 10:30 p.m., they the world, standing up not for one returned their verdict: denied. The man, but for every human being the same evening, Texas inmate Lawrence United States has slotted for extermiRussell Brewer was executed at 6:21 nation. That won’t happen until people like us, students on college campuses p.m. CST. In the face of a government lead- around the country, speak up. ing its citizens into death chambers, Wednesday night, I was shaken.

Anne Frank once wrote, “Despite Wednesday night, Troy’s sister and everything, I believe that people are even Officer MacPhail’s family were really good at heart.” The fact that we shaken. Let the country shake, shake have “death chambers” in this coun- and wake up. try terrifies me, yes. The fact that our I can live without the death penalty. government sanctions executions like Couldn’t you? some ancient barbarians or French revolutionaries disgusts me, yes. But I know there will come a day when the Brian Pilchik is a sophomore who has not citizens of the United States will join yet declared a major.

Prashanth Parameswaran | The Asianist

Is spring in the air in Malaysia?

I

returned home to Malaysia in early July to find a mix of fear and excitement hanging in the air. A widespread protest for electoral reform was scheduled to take place on July 9, energizing those agitating for political change and worrying others expecting government repression. A week later, thousands of peaceful demonstrators in the so-called Bersih 2.0 rally were doused with water cannons and fired with tear gas by the Malaysian police, and over 1,000 were arrested. Another brave attempt by Malaysian citizens to assert their freedom had been forcibly forestalled by their fearful government.

Little wonder that, in talking to some Malaysians at a social gathering over at Harvard University this weekend, I found that they remain skeptical even after Prime Minister Najib Razak, in a televised address earlier this month, vowed to repeal several of the country’s security laws. This includes the draconian Internal Security Act (ISA), which gives the government sweeping powers to detain suspects indefinitely and has been used to put opposition party politicians and activists behind bars. Is some version of the Arab Spring in the air in Malaysia? If Mr. Najib follows through with the slew of civil rights reforms he has promised, they will be nothing short of historic.

That’s a big if. True, Mr. Najib, a Britisheducated economist and the son of Malaysia’s second prime minister, has tried to introduce several bold reforms since coming to office after his governing coalition’s poor showing in the 2008 elections. He clearly understands what many have been arguing for years: that Malaysia needs to complete its transition to a full democracy and avoid being caught in the middle income trap. In March 2010, Mr. Najib told The Economist that his reforms were “nothing short of bold and courageous”, and that he did not “believe in incremental change.”

He may have spoken too soon. Many of his initiatives, including an effort to abolish proMalay affirmative-action privileges, slash fuel subsidies and introduce a good and services tax, have since been rolled back, scaled down, or pushed forward as he wrestles with staunch opposition from conservatives within his own party determined to preserve a network of patronage and rent. Many are beginning to question his ability to lead, with one recent poll showing his ratings slide to 59 percent this August from 79 percent over a year ago.

His latest grand gesture is being read as an attempt to shore up his sagging popularity and win Malaysia’s middle ground ahead of elections to be held within the next year or so.

If so, Malaysians will need a lot of convincing.

First, it is still not clear whether these reforms will be watered down or rubbished altogether by conservatives within Mr. Najib’s party, the United Malay National Organization (UMNO). His own Home Affairs Minister and a known hardliner, Hishamuddin Hussein, dismissed any talk of abolishing the ISA just two days before Mr. Najib made his announcement, suggesting either that the reforms were either not discussed between major Cabinet members or that strong disagreements remain.

Furthermore, perhaps expecting a backlash against “bold and courageous reform,” Mr. Najib also pledged to replace the repealed security laws with two fresh ones. It is not clear what the shape of these new laws will be, although they are expected to also allow preventative detention, albeit with more judicial oversight and limits on police power.

Skeptics worry that these fresh laws will ultimately change nothing substantively and amount to little more than window dressing.

Given Mr. Najib’s past performance, it is not surprising that many Malaysians remain cautiously optimistic about his current reforms. It is clear that their sixth prime minister likes to dream big. What remains to be seen is whether he can bring his party, and ultimately his country, along with him.

Prashanth Parameswaran is a second-year student at The Fletcher School. He can be reached at Prashanth.Parameswaran@ tufts.edu.

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

The Tufts Daily

10

Comics

Monday, September 26, 2011

Doonesbury

Crossword

by

Garry Trudeau

Non Sequitur

Tuesday’s Solution

Married to the Sea

www.marriedtothesea.com

SUDOKU Level: Feeling the love tonight

Late Night at the Daily Friday’s Solution

Alyssa: “Last night I spent two hours looking for kangaroos in Australia on Google Earth.”

Please recycle this Daily.

by

Wiley

Monday, September 26, 2011

The Tufts Daily

Sports

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The Tufts Daily

Sports

Monday, September 26, 2011

The Tufts Daily

Monday, September 26, 2011 Wanted

Services

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$$ SPERM DONORS WANTED $$ Earn up to $1,200/month and give the gift of family through California Cryobank’s donor program.

Convenient Cambridge location.

Apply online: SPERMBANK.com 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.

Team hopes to make weekend sweep at Bowdoin VOLLEYBALL

continued from page 15

into the tournament with an 11-1 record, were playing at home and took the first set 25-22. After Tufts pulled out the second set 27-25, it was smooth sailing: The Jumbos outclassed the Engineers in the next two frames, 25-16 and 25-17. Junior Kiersten Ellefsen had eight kills and no errors in the win, while classmate setter Kendall Lord had 42 assists, bringing her season total to 311, good for 10.42 per set.

“That game really showed our depth, because it was the last game of the weekend and a lot of freshmen came in and played so well,” Spieler said.

“We’re going to have more games like that right in a row, and especially coming off the loss to Springfield, we played much better as a group against MIT, which was great to see.”

The semifinal match against Springfield, played earlier the same day, was the Jumbos’ first

taste of defeat on the season.

The first three sets were very hotly contested, with the loser scoring at least 20 points each time, but the Pride emerged with a 2-1 lead heading into the fourth frame. From there, the Jumbos seemed to tire, as the eventual champion Springfield took the third set convincingly, 25-15.

“They’re one of the best teams we face, they’re ranked 25th in the nation and they went on to win the whole tournament, so it’s not a disappointing loss at all,” senior tri-captain Lexi Nicholas said.

“Even when we’re at our most exhausted, people still want to get in the game, have fun and give their best, and that was the most important thing about the weekend.”

Of course, the Jumbos would not have been playing Springfield and MIT if it were not for their results in Friday’s games, which were the team’s first two at home this season.

The nightcap against Smith was a particularly convincing victory, as Tufts never trailed in the match and did not allow more than 16 points in a set en route to a straight set victory.

It was the usual suspects leading the way for Tufts.

Spieler finished with 12 kills and Hopper added 13. Lord had 35 assists and seven digs, while senior tri-captain Audrey Kuan continued her seasonlong mastery of defense with 16 digs. Kuan is also the executive online editor of the Daily.

The most exciting game of the weekend was the very first one against Endicott College.

It featured numerous lead changes, tenacious hitting and blocking on both sides and a stirring comeback from Tufts after dropping the first set.

With the Jumbos trailing 10-6 in the second and already one set down, head coach Cora Thompson called a timeout and told the team to pick up its intensity. That pep talk

proved to be a turning point in the match, as Tufts rallied from 23-22 down to take the set, thanks to a timely ace from Kuan and strong hitting from Hopper.

“Coach always seems to know exactly what to say, and she just told us play our game,” Spieler said. “We definitely could have been playing better up to that point, and that really got us back on the same page mentally so we could regroup and come back.”

Endicott responded with a comeback of its own in the third set. With Tufts up 22-18 and poised to take two sets to one advantage, the Gulls took six of seven points to go up 24-23 before winning the set 26-24.

But Tufts had the answer, and never looked back after going ahead 6-5 in the fourth set, taking the fourth 25-14 and the fifth 25-11 while never trailing.

Lord finished with 57 assists, six aces and 13 digs, while Brennan added 19 kills and 13 digs and Spieler had 14 kills

and 5 digs.

It was our first game at home, and I think there were some jitters for everybody,” Nicholas said. “But Coach picked us up and put us back on our horse, and we came back strong to get that win.”

The Jumbos will play another home game tomorrow against UMass Boston before heading on the road again next weekend for a trio of NESCAC games against Bowdoin, Bates and Colby, all three of which will be played at Bowdoin. The squad knows this is a critical point in the season, as a weekend sweep would leave Tufts with a 5-0 record in the conference.

“It’s definitely a big NESCAC weekend, but the game against UMass is also important because they’ll be one of the best teams we face the whole season,” Spieler said. “Bowdoin is also always one of our biggest rivals, so we know this weekend is going to be so important for the rest of our year.”

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The Tufts Daily

14

Sports

Monday, September 26, 2011

Running game reestablished in season-opening loss to Hamilton Lindquist impresses in quarterback debut on Saturday FOOTBALL

continued from page 16

Junior receiver Dylan Haas had four catches for a gamehigh 82 yards for Tufts, which had zero turnovers for the first time since Nov. 7, 2009.

“It’s something for us that we stress every day,” he said.

“Ball security is the numberone thing. I don’t think there’s any team good enough that can turn the ball over and expect to win the game. It’s a true testament to the staff that our focus is on protecting the football.

It’s a huge exclamation point for us moving forward.”

What the Eck? While Lindquist was solid in his first start, his Hamilton counterpart, junior Jordan Eck, was the star.

Eck completed 88 percent of his passes (29-for-33) for 260 yards and two touchdowns and rushed for another score, earning himself NESCAC Offensive Player of the Week honors. Eck threw seven interceptions in six games last season, but he was nearly perfect on Saturday, directing scoring drives of 68, 64, 48 and 92 yards. Five receivers had at least four receptions and three had at least 60 yards for Hamilton, who won its first season-opener since 1992 and beat Tufts for the first time since 1991.

“It’s not a disappointment,” said Civetti, who called Eck “the difference” in the game. “It’s an opportunity to get better. Let’s just continue to grow. We’ve got a young team, there’s not a tremendous amount of experience out there. After the first game, I’m coming away saying, ‘We’ve got a chance.’”

The Jumbos planned to stop the Continentals’ running game, which they did for the majority of the afternoon. Sophomore James Stanell averaged just 3.6 yards per attempt on 24 carries.

For comparison, Stanell averaged 5.1 yards per carry last season.

Alex Dennett/Tufts Daily

Senior defensive end Nick Croteau, seen here in a scrimmage against Bowdoin, had the lone sack of the day for Tufts.

Senior tri-captain J.T. Rinciari led the way with 11 tackles, and senior defensive lineman Nick Croteau, who converted to the position from tight end in 2010, had five tackles, 1.5 of them for a loss.

“The defense played fantastic,” Civetti said. “They wanted to stop the run and stopped it. I told the team after, I’m proud to be their head coach. No one likes to lose, but we got a chance. We’ve got some fight in this team. That’s something we can build upon.”

Run, Jumbos, run While Tufts’ agenda specifical-

ly involved limiting Hamilton’s output, the Jumbos’ offense looked noticeably different from last season’s no-huddle, spread attack.

Though the team went nohuddle at times, sophomore running back Ryan Pollock had 20 carries for 70 yards in Civetti’s new, balanced offense, including a seven-yard scoring plunge in the fourth quarter that brought the Jumbos within a score.

Tufts was last in the NESCAC in rushing yardage per game last season, and passed the century mark as a team for the first time

since Nov. 7, 2009. Lindquist also had 46 yards on 11 carries.

“Pollock and [sophomore Jon] Sobo are just great runners, so we trust them with the ball,” Lindquist said. “The offensive line is pretty experienced, so we have a lot of faith in the running game and the ability to set a tone.”

Quick hits According to multiple tweets from Steuben Field, rock star Jon Bon Jovi was in attendance. His daughter reportedly attends Hamilton.

The Continentals’ first sea-

son-opening win since 1992 could not have come at a better time for the school. Hamilton was celebrating its bicentennial throughout the weekend and announced that 3,277 people attended the game.

Senior linebacker Nick Falk, the Jumbos’ leading returning tackler, did not play. The tri-captain has been nursing a high ankle sprain suffered during Tufts’ scrimmage versus Bowdoin on Sept. 16. Civetti praised Falk’s sideline leadership during the Hamilton game but said there is no set timetable for a return to action.

Wellesley, No. 12 Amherst, No. 15 Trinity on this week’s docket FIELD HOCKEY

continued from page 16

four, and each team surrendered two penalty corners.

Though they were playing on a faster surface than their home field, Tufts’ attack struggled to use the speed to its advantage. The Jumbos headed to the bench at the intermission looking for answers to an unexpectedly strong Colby defense.

“We probably underestimated them,” Griffith said. “They put up a really good fight and proved they are a team to be taken seriously in the future.”

“I think it was a good learning experience coming from behind,” sophomore forward Chelsea Yogerst added. “All NESCAC teams are really good

and we were reminded of that Saturday.”

Just seven minutes past the half, Colby proved how serious they were as they beat senior goalkeeper Marianna Zak for the 1-0 lead. The goal served as a wake-up call for the Jumbos, though, as the visitors took over the momentum for the rest of the game.

Finally looking like the top10 team it is, Tufts attacked Colby with 14 shots and nine penalty corners in the second period. And, looking desperate but composed, the Jumbos eventually got the job done.

“We knew we were in the game, it just wasn’t translating on the scoreboard,” Griffith said. “So we kept pushing and

were able to get two key goals and keep it from going into overtime.”

For the tying goal, freshman midfielder Maggie Chapman weaved her way into Colby’s circle and sent the ball to junior forward Lia Sagerman, who found the back of the cage with 8:10 remaining. Six minutes later, the offense again found itself deep in Colby’s zone and earned a penalty corner. Though the initial shot was blocked, Griffith collected the rebound and put it home for the late 2-1 edge. Tufts’ defense held off Colby’s threats to tie, and the Jumbos walked off slightly rattled by the close call but with another win added to their four-game streak.

“It was our first game on the road and the first game of the season on AstroTurf,” Griffith said. “There were a lot of variables on Saturday but we need to learn to not let that affect us. We played pretty frustrated, but we’re taking it as a learning experience. At the end of the day, a win’s a win and we’re moving forward.”

Tufts will have to shake it off and look ahead, too, as the Jumbos have three games in the next six days — two against ranked opponents.

Tomorrow, Tufts will travel to non-conference foe Wellesley for, hopefully, a repeat of last year’s 6-0 blowout.

“We’re really excited for Wellesley,” Griffith said. “Mid-

Tufts takes on Amherst and Trinity next weekend

WOMEN’S SOCCER continued from page 16

largest margin since their 2010 season opener against Middlebury, which it won by the same score. Tufts now has 10 goals in its first five games after scoring just 15 in 14 games last season.

The new-look offense has the Jumbos looking like one of the most dangerous teams in New England.

“We changed the offense this year to have a target forward and two wings, so there is more of a defined position for each of the forwards,” Stewart said.

“I think that is definitely helping, and I think everyone is working well as a

team. More people are scoring and working together to score instead of just one person carrying the team.”

The Jumbos are ranked fifth in the region at the moment, but may move up following their draw with No. 23 Wheaton — No. 3 in the northeast — and this convincing win. No. 5 Williams and No. 15 Springfield currently sit above Tufts in the national rankings.

Neither Tufts nor Amherst made the top 25.

Through three NESCAC games, Tufts has now earned seven points with a win and two draws. This leaves the Jumbos tied with Williams and Middlebury,

though the Panthers have played four games. The only team that remains perfect in the conference is Amherst, which won its third straight game on an extra-time goal against Hamilton.

Tufts will travel across the state to try to ruin that perfect mark on Saturday.

Though the Jumbos are off all week, the game will be made more difficult thanks to a change in NESCAC scheduling that forces teams to play a pair of weekend doubleheaders over the course of the season. Tufts will host Trinity, which also has yet to lose this season, on Sunday.

“It’s a huge weekend with two of the

week games have been tough for us in the past so we’re getting really pumped up for it.”

The Jumbos will need to get pumped and score early, because they can hardly afford another grueling contest heading into the weekend doubleheader against NESCAC heavyweights. The team is focused on the present but is aware that things will need to improve before Saturday’s trip to No. 12 Amherst, which will be followed by a battle on Bello Field with No. 15 Trinity on Sunday.

“This weekend we learned we need to stay focused on every single opponent,” Yogerst said. “All we can do is take it one game at a time.”

better teams in the league,” Stewart said. “We have to play both games as well as possible. The first is on the road so hopefully we come out strong there.

On Sunday, we are going to be tired, so it’s going to be a big mental battle for us.”

With the first part of the season in the books, the Jumbos have been happy with the way they have played, but they won’t let complacency stand in the way of getting better.

“I think we are doing okay, but I think we have a lot of room for improvement,” Love-Nichols said. “We are in a good place, and we have good places to go.”

The Tufts Daily

Monday, September 26, 2011

15

Sports

VOLLEYBALL

Zach Drucker | The Loser

Wins over MIT, Smith and Endicott leave Jumbos 9-1 on year

Gangrened Gang Green

Tufts goes 3-1 at MIT Invitational by

David McIntyre

Daily Editorial Board

Heading into the MIT Invitational, the volleyball team had two main goals: stay undefeated, and keep its

F

VOLLEYBALL (2-0 NESCAC, 9-1 Overall) MIT Invitational at Cambridge, Mass., Saturday Tufts MIT

22 27 25 25 — 3 25 25 16 17 — 1

Tufts Springfield

22 21 22 15 — 1 25 25 22 25 — 3

Cousens Gym, Friday Smith Tufts Endicott Tufts

13 25

16 25

9 25

25 23 26 14 11 19 25 24 25 15

— 0 — 3 — —

2 3

early-season momentum going before a trio of NESCAC games this weekend.

While the Jumbos’ flawless record was broken after a 3-1 loss to Springfield, wins over Endicott, Smith and MIT helped them finish third in the tournament and improve to 9-1 on the year.

Perhaps even more positive for the Jumbos was their continued cohesion and resilience on the court, despite a roster that is primarily composed of first-year players. Time and time again over the weekend, the Jumbos battled back from early deficits, thanks largely in part to those freshmen. Hayley Hopper was named to the All-Tournament team, and Kelly Brennan finished with 48 kills in the four matches.

“We definitely had a good weekend, and it’s the most games we’ve played in a row to this point in the season,” senior tri-captain Cara Spieler said.

“We played against some really top teams, and so even though it was a building weekend, we were able to raise our game to a higher level.”

The victory against MIT in the thirdplace match on Saturday was probably the most impressive, especially considering that the Engineers came see VOLLEYBALL, page 13

Alex Dennett/Tufts Daily

Freshman outside hitter Hayley Hopper lived up to her name with a kill during Friday’s victory over Endicott.

DAILY DIGITS

15 Consecutive defeats for the Bills against the Patriots before their 34-31 win yesterday afternoon. The Patriots seemed well on their way once again, jumping out to a 21-0 lead in the second quarter. But with the help of running back Fred Jackson, who finished with 161 total yards and a touchdown, Buffalo inched its way back into the game.

With 3:25 left to go and the game tied, the Bills drove 79 yards to the Patriots’ one-yard line before letting the clock run down and kicking a game-winning field goal.

1991 The year in which Hamilton last beat Tufts in football before the Continentals won 24-16 in the season-opener for both teams on Saturday at Steuben Field in Clinton, N.Y. Hamilton also hadn’t won an opening game since 1992 before junior quarterback Jordan Eck threw for two touchdown passes and ran for a third, leading him to be named the NESCAC Offensive Player of the Week. The Jumbos, down 24-10 at halftime, got within a score in the fourth quarter but had two lengthy drives stopped just short.

4 Interceptions thrown by Tom Brady in yesterday’s game, which matches his total from the 2010-2011 season. All four came after the two-minute warning of the second quarter, as the Bills benefited from a combination of mistakes and luck. Brady also finished with 387 yards and four touchdowns, but it was not enough to stop the upsetminded Bills, who were led by quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick. Fitzpatrick finished with 369 yards and two touchdowns.

29

2-18

18:35

Goal differential between Tufts and Colby field hockey since 2005 before the Mules nearly upset the No. 9 Jumbos on Saturday, ultimately falling 2-1. Over the past six seasons, Tufts had outscored Colby 32-3, including victories by scores of 7-0, 5-0, 5-1 and 5-0. This weekend, however, the Mules built up a 1-0 lead early in the second half and Tufts needed goals from senior co-captain Lindsay Griffith and junior Lia Sagerman to narrowly avoid a historic defeat.

Record of the Boston Red Sox since Hurricane Irene in games in which they have scored less than nine runs.

This stretch, a mixture of inconsistent hitting and a beat-up pitching staff, leaves them just a game ahead of the Tampa Bay Rays in the wild card race. The Red Sox have three games remaining against the Baltimore Orioles, while the Rays have three against the New York Yankees.

Total time, in minutes and seconds, that the women’s soccer team has trailed in their first five games of the season. The Jumbos only trailed against Wheaton and quickly equalized on a penalty kick from senior co-captain Lauren O’Connor. This has helped them build up a 15-game unbeaten streak that goes back to the 2010 season. They will try to keep it alive this weekend against conference leader Amherst and Trinity.

rom an early age, my passion was football… and Gushers.

Those things are delicious. My dad and his dad before him have owned season tickets to the Jets since the ’70s, when the Jets played in Shea Stadium. That’s right: There was a time when America’s worst baseball stadium was also America’s worst football arena.

I would accompany my dad and my grandpa to every home game, back in the good ol’ days when you could carry a tin of homemade cookies and a metal thermos of hot chocolate into a stadium without security concluding you had a bomb.

I remember straining to see Jets favorites like Vinny Testaverde, Curtis Martin and Mo Lewis exit the locker rooms through a tunnel to raucous fanfare, their deep exhalations visibly piercing the crisp, wintry air. I watched, and still watch, Fireman Ed (the Jets’ fiercest supporter) silence tens of thousands of people by simply propping himself up on a fat guy’s shoulders and outstretching his arms like a silhouetted scarecrow, then pumping pure adrenaline into my boyhood heroes before kickoff by leading an invigorating chant of “J-ET-S! JETS! JETS! JETS!” Yet, until recently, most of my memories have been bittersweet, since the Jets haven’t been a true contender for 40 years. Not since “Broadway” Joe Namath, a baby-faced quarterback known for his lavish lifestyle and dieselpowered throwing arm, who followed through on a seemingly outlandish guarantee, have the Jets even been back to the Super Bowl. Since then, the Jets have seen more than 20 starting quarterbacks come and go without success.

I know some wistful Jets fans out there are asking, “What about Chad Pennington? He led us to three playoff berths and a 41-0 romp of Peyton Manning in 2002! “ Hey, I love Chad as much as the next Jet fan. More even. He brought humility and Southern charm to a game plagued by loudmouths and showoffs and even backed it up with the NFL’s best-ever career completion percentage — a whopping 66.0 percent.

But the guy had a bum rotator cuff and the arm strength of a T-Rex. (Cue the image of Marlon Brando saying, “I coulda been a contendah!”) You can’t win two Comeback Player of the Year Awards without having two pretty dismal seasons in between. Those same nostalgic Jets fans are now meekly nodding in agreement. Sorry, Chad. We’ll remember you as a Jet idol forever, but we’ll never forget that you never led us to the Promised Land.

Now, we have Mark Sanchez, a young gun with the potential to be a champion. He has a cannon arm, exceptional mobility that gives him the ability to extend plays — a quality that has never really been seen in a Jets QB — and playoff experience with six postseason starts, the most by any QB in Jets history. See, I told you the Jets were bad!

Plus, Sanchez is a lifelong student of the game who buries his nose in the playbook as if he were in an organic chemistry class.

Football, however, is not just about playing by the book but also performing on intuition and raw talent. So, with Sanchez at his current level, the Jets team resembles an ex-girlfriend of mine who shall remain nameless: Both tease with empty hope — the Jets slogan last season was “Opportunity has never knocked this hard!” — and false promises (read: Rex Ryan’s “We will win the Super Bowl!” and my ex’s “First it’s my turn, then it’s your turn”) but the fan/the boyfriend always falls short of the Holy Grail because the team/ the girlfriend really only knows how to defend. Also of note, my ex had a nice pair of feet.

Zach Drucker is a senior majoring in international relations and Spanish. He can be reached at Zachary.Drucker@tufts.edu.

Sports

16

INSIDE Volleyball 15 Daily Digits 15

tuftsdaily.com

Women’s Soccer

Jumbos stomp Mules, remain undefeated Success on set pieces keys victory again by

Ethan Sturm

Daily Editorial Board

If there were any lingering doubts about the Tufts’ offensive prowess, they were answered definitively on a WOMEN’S SOCCER (2-0-1 NESCAC, 3-0-2 Overall) at Waterville, Maine, Saturday Tufts Colby

2 0

1 0

— —

3 0

rainy Saturday afternoon in Waterville, Maine. The Jumbos thoroughly dominated an overmatched Colby side, scoring early and often and bringing home a 3-0 victory from their first road trip of the season.

“We are getting more offensive opportunities,” senior forward Jamie Love-Nichols said. “We aren’t always connecting well, but I think we are a more offensive team this year and it’s showing.”

The Jumbos had scored first in each of their four games this season, and once again came out looking to do just that. It paid off when, in the 11th minute, a long clearance from senior left back Cleo Hirsch was run down by Love-Nichols. She won the fifty-fifty challenge and found herself in on goal.

Freshman goalkeeper Emily Brook got her leg on the shot to the right post, but the ball still trickled into the net for the early lead.

Tufts would add its other two goals off set pieces, an area of the game that the Jumbos have excelled in all year.

The first came in the 38th minute, when Tufts earned a free kick about 40 yards away from goal, and senior co-captain Lauren O’Connor delivered a perfectly placed ball to the far post. Sophomore forward Anya Kaufmann played the ball back across goal, where classmate Maeve Stewart easily finished it from less than five yards out for her first tally since the Jumbos’ last game against the Mules in October 2010. Though she is

Scott Tingley/Tufts Daily

Freshman forward Alina Okamoto notched her first collegiate goal on Saturday against Colby.

Field Hockey

Tufts dodges upset-minded Colby Jumbos score twice in last eight minutes for win

Before the No. 9 field hockey team traveled to Colby Saturday, no one thought the by

Claire Kemp

Daily Editorial Board

FIELD HOCKEY (2-1 NESCAC, 4-1 Overall) at Waterville, Maine, Saturday Tufts Colby

0 0

2 1

still recovering from an injury, Stewart has been the team’s most dangerous threat coming off the bench in the last two games.

“I just keep thinking, ‘how can I best help the team out there,’ since I can’t be out there as long as I usually would be,” Stewart said. “I have 15 or 20 minutes to just go as hard as I can to help the team, so I am just trying to play as simply as possible and giving it my own.”

While the second half was more of a back-and-forth, the Jumbos still managed to add to their lead in the 67th minute. Junior Alyssa Von Puttkammer played in a dangerous corner that ended up loose in the box. Freshman Alina Okamoto was in the right place to fire home the first goal of her collegiate career, all but sealing the game in the process.

“We’ve been successful [on set pieces] because the players who are taking the kicks have been playing phenomenal balls.” Stewart said. “All we have to do is make our runs and get on the end of them.”

In the end, Tufts outshot Colby 15-10 over the course of the game but only 6-5 in the second half. Three goalkeepers combined for the shutout: junior Phoebe Hanley, along with sophomores Kristin Wright and Rachel Chazin-Gray.

They only needed to make two combined saves.

While the scoreboard undoubtedly showed a dominant performance, the team was disappointed by the energy they came out with in their first road game. The trip to Waterville was longer than three hours, and definitely took its toll.

“Everyone was definitely a little tired, and the energy level wasn’t as high as we would have liked,” Stewart said. “It definitely wasn’t our best performance yesterday, and we need to be tough when we go on the road against some of the other teams in the NESCAC.” The 3-0 victory marked the team’s

Football

Notebook: Jumbos give it a shot, come up short by

Alex Prewitt

Daily Editorial Board

The nerves quickly disappeared for Johnny Lindquist.

After that, it was business time.

FOOTBALL (0-1 NESCAC, 0-1 Overall) at Clinton, N.Y., Saturday

— 2 — 1

Tufts 3 7 0 6 — 16 Hamilton 7 10 7 0 — 24

0-3 Mules would be much of a challenge for the Jumbos.

But after a scoreless first half, it was Colby that struck first and, suddenly, Tufts found itself on the wrong side of a 1-0 game.

After junior forward Lia Sagerman scored the equalizer with just over eight minutes left, senior co-captain midfielder Lindsay Griffith came up with the late-game heroics for the Jumbos and slammed the winning goal home with 2:07 left on the clock.

Tufts got out to a slow start in its first road game of 2011, playing even with Colby throughout the first half. The Jumbos fired off only eight shots compared to the Mules’

Alex Dennett/Tufts Daily

see FIELD HOCKEY, page 14

Senior co-captain Lindsay Griffith knocked home the winning goal with just over two minutes left on the clock.

see WOMEN’S SOCCER, page 14

In the senior’s first collegiate start and the football team’s season-opener, Lindquist nearly engineered a fourthquarter comeback, buoyed by a lockdown defense, but fell short as Tufts lost to Hamilton 24-16 on Saturday.

Lindquist went 19-for-32 for 215 yards and a touchdown after entering this season having thrown just one collegiate pass. And with the Jumbos down eight points in the fourth quarter, Lindquist marched his team into Hamilton territory on consecutive drives.

The first, a nine-play 58-yard series which began on the Tufts 6-yard line, ended on a questionable spot by the referees on fourth down. The second, which ultimately ended

the game, was stymied by four straight incomplete passes from the Hamilton 20.

“When the field compresses it gets harder; we just didn’t make the plays we needed,” Lindquist said. “We needed a defensive stop and we got one, then we had all the confidence in the world driving down the field, but it just didn’t come together at the end.”

Still, the Jumbos are seeing the positives from interim head coach Jay Civetti’s first game atop the program.

After heading into the fourth quarter down 24-7 — the only touchdown coming on a 3-yard strike from Lindquist to junior tight end Nick Kenyon in the second quarter — the defense forced two straight three-andouts in the fourth quarter, setting up the potential comeback that fell just short.

“It definitely brought back some memories,” Lindquist said of his first start since high school. “Everything came together. You got the pre-game jitters, of course, but it’s a good feeling. If you don’t get those then I don’t think you’re ready to play.” see FOOTBALL, page 14