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THE TUFTS DAILY
TUFTSDAILY.COM
Thursday, March 7, 2013
VOLUME LXV, NUMBER 30
Where You Read It First Est. 1980
Photographer captures moments in history by Smriti
Choudhury
Contributing Writer
Renowned Asian-American photographer Corky Lee yesterday evening delivered a keynote speech in the Remis Sculpture Court about his role in photographing Asian-American history to open his exhibition “A Place Called Asian America.” Lee shared a selection of his photographs from the exhibit with the attendees and described his humble upbringing and experiences throughout his 40-plus years of being a photographer. “I can’t sing or dance or write or paint, but give me a camera and you won’t regret it,” he said. “This has been my motto for about 40 years, and I will continue to do this work until I can’t.” He said he is passionate about making sure AsianAmericans are remembered
for their contributions in the United States. “[It is an] attempt to rectify the omissions of Asian -Americans as part of the fabric of society,” he said. Lee said his work has been reproduced in a variety of media outlets, including the New York Times and Time Magazine. The 24 photographs displayed included an array of vital moments in Asian-American history, from the 1982 public mobilization for the murder of Vincent Chin to AsianAmerican responses to the 2001 terrorist attacks. Among the serious photographs were visual captures of humorous moments, including a pair of Asian-American women who battled as competitive eaters and a flash mob dancing to Psy’s song “Gangnam Style.” Lee described the subject of see LEE, page 2
Major: Undecided takes first at BU by
Elissa Ladwig
Contributing Writer
Sketch comedy group Major: Undecided last Friday won first place for the third consecutive year at the annual Boston Funderdome competition hosted by Boston University. The group secured its victory over four other sketch comedy groups from schools including Boston University, Brandeis University and Emerson College. Senior Chloe Rotman, the president of Major: Undecided, expressed satisfaction with the team’s performance at the competition. “We are very proud of ourselves,” she said. “I think that three wins in a row lends us credibility within the greater Boston community.” Thirteen members of Major: Undecided performed at this year’s Funderdome, Rotman said, adding that each actor was chosen for his or her role based on auditions conducted weeks before the event. The sketches chosen for the competition also went through an audition process, she said. Out of over 35 possible sketches, each written by Major: Undecided members, the group selected four by a voting process. “This is really the only competition we do ... The pressure is definitely different for this,” Rotman said. “I feel like when we compose our set-list, it is much more focused and aggressive.” The comedy face-off consisted of three rounds in which teams were eliminated until only one team was left standing, according to Rotman. “We gave ourselves the biggest pep talk backstage,” she said. “We
Melody Ko / Tufts University
The Office of the Provost last month awarded five new grants to Tufts professors through the Provost’s Open Access Fund, of which Associate Provost Mary Lee is one of the leaders.
Provost’s Open Access Fund awards five new grants by Sara
Taxman
Contributing Writer
huddled and pep-talked and went out there with our game faces with the intention to destroy.” The 10-minute first round allowed groups to perform two sketches, she said. The three groups that garnered the most applause from the audience then moved on to the second round. “Our first sketch went well, but our second sketch went not as well as we intended, so we were a little bit worried,” Public Relations Director of Major: Undecided Lia Kastrinakis, a junior, said. “Right when we made it into the second round, we knew we needed to try our absolute hardest.” Rotman said that the team made up for the lackluster response to its second sketch by putting forward its best material, a musical sketch called “Polygamy,” for the second round. “I’d say that we performed ‘Polygamy’ better than we ever have,” she said. “Once we got that first laugh, from beginning to end it killed.” Kastrinakis explained that the team picked up the energy as the skit went along and received encouragement when the audience responded positively to its jokes. “It’s really nerve-wracking, but when you get that first initial laugh you just know that the sketch is going to go well,” Kastrinakis said. “That changes the whole energy too. Once it starts going well, everyone gets super into it.” Major: Undecided came out on top as the audience favorite with the third sketch, Rotman said, sealing its first place win. The third and final round, known as the “vicsee MAJORS, page 2
The Office of the Provost last month awarded five new grants to complete a two-year pilot of the Provost’s Open Access
Fund, which is designed to support faculty members in the publication or digitization of research and scholarships in open access forums. The five faculty members received support through
the eighth and final round of pilot funding, according to Associate Provost Mary Lee. Open-access forums provide unrestricted, free access see OPEN ACCESS, page 2
SJP recreates West Bank checkpoint for Israeli Apartheid Week
Justin McCallum / The Tufts Daily
Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), in recognition of Israeli Apartheid Week yesterday recreated an imitation checkpoint similar to those that can be found in the West Bank of Israel on the Tisch Library steps, mimicking what SJP member Caitlyn Doucette, a senior, called the “daily reality that Palestinians face in the West Bank.”
Inside this issue
Today’s sections
A newly uncovered collection of photos from the early days of the Daily makes its debut.
Medford comes together to make switchboxes a form of community art.
see FEATURES, page 3
see WEEKENDER, page 5
News Features Weekender Editorial | Letters
1 3 5 10
Op-Ed Comics Classifieds Sports
11 12 17 Back
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Thursday, March 7, 2013
Lee explains importance of remembering Asian-American history
LEE
continued from page 1
his photography as the product of community relations — taking photography leads from private citizens in the form of faxes, telephone messages and emails, and then traveling to places to capture any interesting moments relating to Asian-Americans. “In addition to civil rights subjects, I look for things that people are not familiar with, be it social commentary or some humor, as shown in the picture of the middle-aged, 5-foot-3inch women competitive eaters who, in 2010, consumed a combined 72 hotdogs in 10 minutes,” Lee said. The exhibition was made possible by the Asian-American Studies Committee, the American Studies Program and Asian-American Alliance with funding from the Nat R. & Martha M. Knaster Charitable Trust, which will also sponsor a photography workshop led by Lee from 6 to 8 p.m. today in the Alumnae Lounge. “I hope that the Asian-American minor program at Tufts is a spark that will ignite a fire of change for the path of an Asian-American major program,” Lee said. The photographs on display were selected by a group of student curators that volunteered to work together with Lee for the exhibition, according to sophomore Zoe Uvin. The students, including Uvin, sophomores Esther Kim and Shinny Vang and junior Diana Wang, began as early as December to compile this exhibition with their combined belief in the importance of the Asian-American narrative in American history as well as the need for support of the Asian-American studies program at Tufts. “The American history in my class years has always been dominated by the white majority,” Uvin said. “It was just my realization of taking the Asian-
Gabriela Ros / The Tufts Daily
Photographer Corky Lee, right, displayed his photo exhibition, titled “A Place Called Asian America,” to the Tufts community yesterday. America course, by accident, that Asian-Americans have been a part of American history for 300-plus years and that this minor could be an opportunity to teach students about the history they missed in their 12-plus years of schooling.” American Studies Program senior lecturer Jean Wu echoed the importance of
Major: Undecided wins sketch comedy competition MAJOR
continued from page 1
tory lap,” then gave the group members a chance to perform one last sketch as the winning team. The victory was the culmination of weeks of preparation, she said. “The truth is, we work really hard on this, and those of us who are in the core of
the group care a lot about how we perform, how we are perceived and just about the quality of the comedy we put out,” Rotman said. Kastrinakis mirrored Rotman’s sentiments, noting that the win was worth the time spent rehearsing. “It’s nice to have a little bit of validation that our hard work has paid off,” she said.
COURTESY Chloe Rotman
Major: Undecided, Tufts’ sketch comedy group, claimed first place for the third year in a row at last Friday’s annual Boston Funderdome competition at Boston University.
the Asian-American studies minor at Tufts. “The exhibition...is a momentous occasion for this department and the acceptance of the Asian-American studies minor at Tufts,” Wu said. As a whole, Vang said “A Place Called Asian-America” was a pivotal event for the Asian-American studies program and the importance of the inception of
this minor at Tufts. “I’m Asian-American, and I never knew about Asian-American history or how Asian-Americans were part of American history, so having an AsianAmerican studies minor helps students connect to their education,” Vang said. “Seeing myself as a part of history makes things more meaningful.”
Fund promotes faculty publication in open-access forums OPEN ACCESS
continued from page 1
to online materials for educational or research use. The Office of the Provost must now wait until the strategic planning process, “Tufts: The Next Ten Years (T10),” is complete before it makes any decisions regarding developing its Open Access activities going forward, Lee explained. “However, Open Access in general is here to stay,” Lee told the Daily in an email. “Our main goal with the pilot was to educate our faculty about the growing area of open-access publishing and digitization, and open academic resources in general, and I believe we achieved that.” The fund was initiated in 2009 by then-Provost Jamshed Bharucha. Including the most recent awardees, a total of 30 faculty members have received funding through the program, according to the Scholarly Communication at Tufts website. The February round of grants were awarded to Assistant Professor of Computer Science Benjamin Hescott, Associate Professor of the Agriculture, Food and Environment Program at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy Sean Cash, Biology Professors Colin Orians and J. Michael Reed and Department of Psychology chair Lisa Shin. Faculty from all three university campuses were encouraged to apply for funding in one of two categories, the Provost’s Open Access Publishing Fund or the Provost’s Open Access Digitization Fund, Lee said. The Open Access Publishing Fund provides for the publication of an article authored by a faculty member through an open-access journal, according to the Scholarly Communication at Tufts website. The Open Access Digitization Fund supports the small-scale digitization of research materials created by Tufts faculty, provided that the final product is added to the Tufts Digital Library. The Scholarly Communications Team
reviewed all applications and passed its recommendations along to the University-wide Committee on Teaching and Faculty Development, who made the final decisions, according to Lee. Faculty members were awarded grants ranging between $1,000 and $3,000. The fund is designed to extend the reach of Tufts’ academic scholarship, Lee said. “Making their work available for open access means that it will be freely available for educational and non-commercial study by anyone, anywhere,” she said. “Scholarship that is both high-quality and openly available is more likely to be used and cited, therefore raising the prominence of the faculty and of the affiliated institution, as well as increasing the opportunity for interdisciplinary work and reuse.” Lee explained that making Tufts’ research and scholarship freely available fits well with the university’s mission. “It shares the knowledge we create locally, globally, breaking barriers so that anyone who wants to read something can, instead of only those affiliated with well-respected institutions, [which is] in line with Tufts’ core values of active citizenship and impact,” Lee said. Hescott said he was awarded a grant to support the publication of his work with a computational biological tool. The grant, he said, will enable him to promote the use of his software among a wider audience. Shin said she received funding for her functional neuroimaging study of emotional interference in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). She hopes that open-access publication of her work will contribute to the general body of knowledge surrounding PTSD. “This should increase the number of researchers who will be able to replicate and extend the findings — or otherwise incorporate the findings into their own research — which should all lead to a better understanding of the biological basis of PTSD,” Shin told the Daily in an email.
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The Vagina Monologues return to campus, engendering open dialogue by
Emma Arnesty-Good Daily Editorial Board
Cohen Auditorium late last month filled to capacity for an unfamiliar and intensely personal purpose: sharing the stories of women and, more specifically, their vaginas. This year marked the return of the Vagina Monologues, a series of monologues compiled and written by playwright and activist Eve Ensler, to Tufts for the first time since 2010. The monologues are based on more than 200 women’s interviews that Ensler conducted and then published in 1996. The collection of 15 monologues in the Tufts performance centers on the female experience including both comedic stories and darker, more intimate accounts. “The monologues bring us through a wave of emotion, women’s experience, [and] address a lot of issues of women’s empowerment, violence against women [and] experience in general,” senior co-director and producer Dani Moscovitch said. Nearly 20 years after the book’s publication, the play is still popular and performed often. Moscovitch and co-producer and director senior Stella Benezra accessed the script easily from the official Vagina Monologues website, which offers rights to the script for free in exchange for a promise from the users that they will donate funds raised by the show to a local organization fighting violence against women and girls. Senior and stage manager Samantha Jaffe reported that over $7,000 had been raised from the shows to benefit the Transition House, a shelter for battered women in Cambridge, Mass. According to Read Our Lips, a website for Tufts women to post anonymously about their female experience in connection with the Vagina Monologues, a portion of the funds will also go towards the V-Day campaign. V-Day is a global activist group that works to end violence against women by putting on events such as the Monologues. The process of bringing the show to the Hill began this fall, when Moscovitch and Benezra held auditions to form a 22-person cast. They also convened the Vag-Team, a group that coordinated fundraising and publicity events for the Monologues. “A lot of the fundraising that we planned ended up being really great community-building,” Moscovitch said. “It was about as much, if not more, about promoting the messages and values of the show throughout the year and how we were going to do that together.” However, the main purpose of the show was to bring attention to conversations about women’s issues such as sexual violence, consent culture, sex positivity and sexual health. “Basically, it’s really important to us to — we say this a lot — to reclaim the conversation,” Moscovitch said. “Bringing that dialogue and that conversation to Tufts through the show and through our events [was] our mission.” Jaffe says that these issues are very relevant in light of the recent publicity surrounding sexual assault within the NESCAC at Amherst College and continuing conversations on the Hill on these topics. “I would say it’s been particularly salient this year,” Jaffe said. “It’s gotten a lot of attention from the activist community that already existed at Tufts ... I think that now is a timely moment for it.” According to Director of the Women’s Center Steph Gauchel, opening up the dialogue to different audiences can be one of the most beneficial aspects of an event like this. “I think that because the students put on the show, students’ friends and family come to see the performance,” Gauchel said. “People who don’t normally engage in this [now] can.” Gauchel said that these frank conversations about sex, sexual pleasure and the relationship a woman has with her vagina are important and are unfortunately too often considered taboo. “Sexual violence is also a conversation that doesn’t happen enough in terms of how often these things are occurring,” she said. In addition, several of the monologues aim to open up dialogue surrounding words like “vagina” and “c--t.” “It legitimizes these conversations and these platforms,” Moscovitch said. “It’s not weird to
Zhuangchen Zhou / Tufts Daily
Tufts students performed monologues expressing real women’s lived experiences during the Vagina Monologues. say ‘vagina’ or to talk about the issues that are brought up after you see the show.” Along with bringing complicated topics to the foreground, discomfort remains a significant side effect of the Monologues. According to Moscovitch, for instance, one member of the audience got up in the middle of the show and left the auditorium. Freshman Monologues cast member Sofia Adams, who is also a photo editor for the Daily, said that feeling uncomfortable should prompt questions about why that discomfort arises. “Being uncomfortable is definitely a legitimate feeling for being in a situation like that,” Adams said. During a monologue entitled “The little coochie snorcher that could,” a woman talks about impaling her vagina on a bedpost. Jaffe said every time this part of the monologue was performed, the audience laughed. “Everyone was laughing out of sheer discomfort. They didn’t know what to do except laugh,” she said. “You want people to have these reactions ... you want it to bring up emotions — that’s the point. And it’s not going to be every emotion and it’s not every woman’s story.” Moscovitch and Benezra said that they try to avoid generalizing the experiences expressed in the show to all women. “People take this show as being the voice of feminism,” Benezra said, “It’s one piece of work, it’s one interpretation of people’s experiences — it can’t be representative of all women.” “We wanted to make sure that people didn’t assume these were answers but rather question-starters,” Moscovitch said. According to senior Emily Wyner, who also performed in this year’s show, the cast, crew and several audience members met
last Friday to follow up. They discussed several of the many complexities and confusions raised by the Monologues. “We ended up talking a lot about how for this production in particular, you’re not totally playing a character, but you’re also not yourself,” she said. Wyner said that she felt this particularly while performing a monologue from the perspective of a transgender woman, even though she does not identify as transgender. For this piece, Wyner said she was especially conscious of not generalizing this experience for the entire transgender community. Wyner said she encouraged people to view the show through a critical lens as well. However, she hopes people still appreciate the overall positive value of the production. “I heard from many people that they walked away from the show feeling empowered and inspired,” she said. Jaffe said that the huge success of the show, which sold out Cohen Auditorium both nights, was equally empowering for all those involved in the Monologues. “[We] are really excited to make sure that Vagina Monologues becomes an event and a culture that people expect to be on campus every year,” Moscovitch said. “The longer something is a presence on campus, the more people start to hear about it and start to know what it is by virtue of being here, rather than having to seek it out.” Moscovitch and Benezra said that they hope that the community formed and conversations started extend beyond this show. “It doesn’t exist as a totally static production where we preach a particular message,” Wyner said. “These issues of gender and violence and sexuality get so much more complicated than that.”
Throwback Thursday In a remote corner of the Daily office, we discovered a dusty box of Daily photos of Tufts from the paper’s founding in 1980 through the ’90s. Starting today, we will be running a photo every week to share and remember history on the Hill.
Brionna Jimerson | Respect Your Elders
73 Days — but who’s counting?
O
ne of my best friends’ Twitter byline reads, “May 19, 2013, 11:30 a.m. in the J Field,” the time and place of his graduation ceremony. I think he is over the 76 Days celebration. Anyway, last Sunday we celebrated the 76 Days Celebration after Blizzard Nemo pushed back the 100 Days Celebration to last Sunday’s less symbolically trendy date, and members of the class of 2013 (and some subversive and hungry 2014 kids) filled the Alumnae Lounge, dressed in the most semi of semi-formal and ready to mingle awkwardly with classmates. It felt like pre-frosh orientation all over again, except this time there were free Jumbo magnets, sunglasses, portfolios and muffulettas. I did a couple of laps, talked to some acquaintances, gave awkward hugs to folks I haven’t interacted with since freshman year, stood around a table with my friends, made firm plans to get lunches and dinners (finally! No more “should!”) and watched the slideshow of photos that all looked the same. It took a while for the gravity of the moment to sink in — that in 76 days I would be referring to Tufts in the past tense, and my friend’s Twitter bio would come to fruition. While we are angst-ing it out over the next few stressfilled weeks, my friend is planning — at the ready and excited — to put Tufts in his rearview. But how did we get here? The 76 Days Celebration probably had good intentions — an excuse to enact “tradition” and get us all feeling warm and cozy about our Tufts career, just in time for alumni giving, before we forget some of the emotional and physical trauma that accompanies growing as people in a foreign environment on our own. We were nostalgic for 2009 in that lounge, but tradition and the whole thing is making me feel claustrophobic, like there’s something expected of me, and unless I agree with all of the fluff I’m unworthy, when in reality I’ve worked my ass off, and it’s a celebratory time. I’m alive. We’re alive. Where is the dance floor? I expect that I will feel more anxiety in the coming weeks than I felt in the whole of 2012. The countdown was initiated on the day I boarded the plane for pre-orientation in August 2009, and now I am coming out on the other side (yes, I have been in a portal-bubble for four years). The event may have been good in its intentions, but in my experience initiating countdowns brings with it the “should,” and we know how useful that is. But I don’t feel tethered to the Hill, the dining halls, the traditions; I’m ready to practice what I’ve been learning and to see what sticks. I’m ready to live on my own terms, sans a block schedule. Cue the claustrophobia. When it’s “tradition” time, we don the brown and blue in the name of “community.” I think of my friends at Tufts, many of whom I’ve seen fall apart and shed themselves, only to come out stronger — and traumatized, to be honest — on the other side, ready to pack Tufts up and run for greener (and hopefully less steep) hills. Between the celebrations, senior nights, senior dinners and other forced and inauthentic bonding moments, I’ve realized that so much time has lapsed between mindlessly wandering to the dining halls three or four times a day (remember when that was an option?) and now, fretting over projects, research, financial security and the simple things, like where the heck do we go from here? I motion for a collective nap and reassessment of life. Who’s with me?
Tufts Daily Archives
Tufts students protested the university’s reinvestment in post-apartheid South African companies in the early 1990s after the initial divestment in the late 1980s. Tufts ended up reinvesting despite student protests.
Brionna Jimerson is a senior majoring in American studies. She can be reached at Brionna.Jimerson@tufts. edu or @brionnajay on Twitter.
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Arts & Living
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Switchbox
artwork bolsters town unity
Courtesy Sara Allred
Medford’s Switchbox Beautification Project brings streets to life by
Claire Felter
Daily Editorial Board
A
local policewoman is driving along one of the main roads in Medford and, as she pulls up to the intersection, comes across a group of youngsters slathering paint onto the electrical switchbox at the corner. The policewoman pulls her car over to the curb, gets out and begins walking towards the group. As a few of the kids notice the nearing authority figure, they quickly blurt out, “We’re allowed to do this, we swear!” The officer, realizing the group’s anxiety, just as quickly replies, “No, I know! I just want to know how you guys signed up.” This is just one of the anecdotes that have come out of the Medford Switchbox Beautification project, and project coordinator Diane McLeod has many more where that came from. McLeod, who is the human diversity director for the city of Medford as well as a member of community group Medford Health Matters (MHM), took on the project in October of 2011. The inspiration for the undertaking came from similar initiatives in nearby Somerville and Malden, and once Mayor Michael McGlynn approved the concept, McLeod and others got rolling to find local artists and groups interested in “beautifying” the traffic light switchboxes. “We got a subcommittee that was interested in working on the project. We talked about the legalities ... we had to identify all these boxes. Throughout the city there are a lot of them,” McLeod said. “We connected with our electric commissioner, and he gave us a list of 21, and by the time we finished we found 28 that were ours.” McLeod drafted a letter that was sent out to various local art groups and schools in the city. The memo describes the project as turning the switchboxes into “proud pieces of public art”
Courtesy Diane McLeod
Decorated by the MUTS (Mural Up the School) club at McGlynn Middle School, this box represents the community-building that went into the beautification project.
and explains that participants would receive community service hours in return for working on the switchboxes. “We sent it all over the place, saying we would have a meeting in City Hall to talk about this project. People were out the door at the meeting,” McLeod said. The subcommittee then brainstormed themes for design: The boxes could represent Medford history, a particular piece of Medford or something more related to the Medford Health Matters mission, which involves healthy living and a healthy environment. As for funding, the MHM group received a grant from Mount Auburn Hospital to use towards the beautification initiative. “It went really well. We also solicited local paint shops and Home Depot to ask if they would be interested in helping or donating to this process. We got some sponsors that really helped us out [like] Hillside Hardware [and] Home Depot,” McLeod said. Groups or individuals interested in painting a box were given the chance to name preferred locations for their designs and McLeod’s team coordinated the logistics. Once the artists got their paperwork in, they received starter bins with pictures showing dimensions of the box and materials such as drop cloths, masks, wire brushes and orange traffic cones. “We gave guidelines and then they would go off with their paint and we would just wait for them to come back,” McLeod said. One of the project’s painters comes from the Hill. Sara Allred, the scholars program coordinator at the Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service, designed and painted two boxes near campus with her husband. “I spend a lot of time facilitating these partnerships where Tisch Scholars are connected with community partners and use their skills to create some sort of positive change or effect within the community. So when I heard about this, I kind of jumped at
it, because I do a lot of that work facilitating for students but I usually don’t have the time to do that work myself,” Allred said. Allred, who previously worked as an art teacher in Baltimore City public schools, thought the project was a great way to use her artistic abilities and give back to the Medford community. One of Allred’s boxes sits on the corner of Boston Ave. and Winthrop St. and features white elephants making their way across a crosswalk on a light blue background. The other, at Boston Ave. and Warner St., shows various colorful fruits and vegetables. “I was getting to do my job but do it on a personal level. And it is also just cool to walk to work and walk by my garden one [the Warner St. box] every day,” Allred said. It is not uncommon for Medford denizens or groups to take on more than one switchbox. Debbie Corleto, an art teacher at McGlynn Middle School in Medford, assembled a group of students to paint a box at Park St. and Salem St. “I had already had students who did murals for the Mystic River Festival, so [this time] what we did was submit a design with scenes from around Medford. They assigned us the switchbox by the fire station ... and we did a picture of the Royall House, an owl from Brooks Estate and the Condon Shell on Route 16,” Corleto said. However, when Corleto heard that there were switchboxes still to be painted, she took the opportunity to do one herself. While the students’ design displayed some of Medford’s historical landmarks, Corleto’s box showcases the city’s designation as a “Tree City USA” by the National Arbor Day Foundation. “For mine, I had photographs from a photo contest that were of trees from [Tobert] Macdonald
Courtesy Diane McLeod
Courtesy Diane McLeod
Covered with optimistic phrases and healthy living tips, this box reflects its artist — Master Nguyen of Medford’s Xtreme Ninja Martial Arts Center.
Painted by Debbie Corleto, a teacher at McGlynn Middle School, this box speaks to Medford’s lush history of greenery.
Park, because Medford is [a] ‘tree city,’” Corleto said. Suzanne Fee, another art teacher at McGlynn, was eager to get involved with her student group, the McGlynn MUTS (Mural Up the School) Club. Along with fellow club adviser and social studies teacher Brian Villard, the group decided to extend the club’s mission into the community. “When you do art in the classroom, it’s very ... insular. You make your art piece and put it on the fridge at home and your mom and dad look at it,” Fee said. “I wanted to show how art could change the community. In this case, it’s awesome because it’s going to be there for a long time.” The club’s design featured a bright, psychedelic background and different images of nature. The group then spray-painted black silhouettes partaking in physical activities like running and playing soccer. “We cut out an outline of our silhouettes ... Then we wet the paper and stuck it up on the box, and spray-painted it, and pulled it away. It was cool for the kids because they had never worked with large-scale and spraypainting before,” stated Fee. Ninja Cuong Nguyen of Medford’s Xtreme Ninja Martial Arts Center brought together a group of his karate students to paint one of the boxes at Spring St. and Central Ave. Nguyen emphasized the core values that he teaches his martial arts students when designing their switchbox. “What I teach the kids is mind, body and spirit. The core values are effort, etiquette, character, sincerity and self-control. That was the concept,” he said. Due to some rainy weather and the difficult task of handling many small details, the process took longer than expected. While the project was meant to come to a close by July of 2012, the majority of the boxes were completed by the fall. There are still two boxes that are yet to be painted, but will be completed by next fall. And while the process has been lengthy, McLeod said she is proud of the final product. “Everyone was very inventive. It’s so funny, because I never even noticed them before. You drive around the city and you think, ‘who notices these?’ Now they really stand out,” McLeod said. Residents say the Switchbox Project is slowly but surely changing the vibe in Medford. McLeod is already noticing a difference that is directly rooted in her initiative to support healthy living, community involvement and town unity. Besides the tale of the policewoman, there are numerous other anecdotes of motorists rolling down car windows to shout out words of encouragement as groups painted. A stranger brought Allred an iced coffee while she worked in the summer heat. There have been more lasting effects that McLeod has observed as well. “[Before] there was all kinds of graffiti on them and bumper stickers. Some of them really had to be scraped and sanded. The last process was putting a coat of wax on to prevent that, but they’ve all stayed in great shape,” she said. “There has been no vandalism. It’s a testament to how great they look and how much people really appreciate it.”
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Thursday, March 7, 2013
Theater Preview
CourtesY Justin McCallum
Senior Brooke Weber plays Alice in Pen, Paint and Pretzels’ adaptation of Alice in Wonderland.
3Ps prepares to delight audiences with ‘Alice in Wonderland’ by
Akshita Vaidyanathan Daily Editorial Board
The set in Balch Arena Theater for “Alice in Wonderland” welcomes audiences with a rich, vivid and vivacious background. The crew has painted the floor is beautifully with a periwinkle blue teapot and a chessboard with not plain, bold colors but amusing phrases like “pawn is the most underrated.”
What’s Up This Weekend
Blocks resembling a deck of cards, a book and dice that frame the stage, as well as quick-moving panels, make for a lively and engaging set. At one of the most entertaining moments in the play, the cast becomes a part of the set, creating the illusion that Alice is swimming in her own tears. Eva Le Gallienne and Florida Friebus adapted this interpretation of Lewis
Carroll’s famous story. Director Nadav Hirsh, a senior, plays with the imagination of the audience to keep them engaged throughout. Hirsh’s actors repeat the script’s puns and plays on words, ensuring the audience’s cogs stay moving and that they stay intellectually involved in the action. The directors have artfully reproduced well-known images from the
play, such as the Cheshire Cat scene. The Cat, played in this production by junior Jenna Wells, wears a velvet robe and an enchanting mask. In a later scene the Caterpillar — played by junior Rachel Adams — is draped in several shades of green. Alice herself, played by Brooke Weber, wears a classic blue dress with a white apron. see ALICE, page 7
Movie Review
Looking to make your weekend artsy? Check out these events: Alice in Wonderland: Pen, Paint, and Pretzels will put on its Spring Major production this weekend with “Alice in Wonderland.” The play is based on Lewis Carroll’s classic book and is directed by senior Nadav Hirsh. (Tonight through Saturday at 8 p.m. in the Balch Arena Theatre. Tickets can be purchased for $7 from the Aidekman Arts Center Box Office or by telephone at 617-627-3493.) Harborfest: The Hong Kong Students Association is hosting an event to highlight Hong Kong culture. The event will include free Chinese food, mocktails, blackjack and roulette and an opportunity to learn a little bit of Cantonese. (Tonight at 8:30 p.m. in Sophia Gordon Multipurpose Room. Admission is free.) Parade of Nations: The International Club presents its annual Parade of Nations event this weekend, showcasing the performance arts of various cultures. The event will include performances by student groups Sprit of Color, B.E.A.T.s, Tamasha, La Salsa and others. (Friday at 8 p.m. in Cohen Auditorium. Tickets are $3 and can be purchased at the Campus Center Info Booth or at tuftstickets.com.) Tufts Chamber Singers: Sweet.Honey. Rock.: The Tufts Chamber Singers will present a concert featuring choral works by Domenico Scarlatti, Robert Schumann, Sydney Guillaume and others. The program, led by conductor Jamie Kirsch, will also feature the music of Sweet Honey in the Rock. (Sunday at 7 p.m. in Distler Performance Hall. Admission is free.) — compiled by the Daily Arts Department
Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Nicholas Hoult stars as the titular character in “Jack the Giant Slayer.”
Predictability aside, ‘Jack’ is fun adventure by Jack
Feely
Contributing Writer
“Jack the Giant Slayer” — a re-imagining of the classic “Jack and the Beanstalk” tale — is Hollywood’s latest attempt to adapt a
Jack the Giant Slayer
Starring Nicholas Hoult, Eleanor Tomlinson, Ewan McGregor Directed by Bryan Singer classic fairytale into film. Some adaptations turn their source material into something darker — think last year’s “Snow White and the Huntsman” or this year’s “Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters” — while others keep things light, as with the other recent
Snow White movie, “Mirror Mirror” (2012) or “The Princess and the Frog” (2009). Instead, “Jack the Giant Slayer” opts for the middle road, maintaining a tone that lands somewhere between the seriousness of the “Lord of the Rings” series and the simultaneously medieval and self-aware fairytale humor of “Shrek” (2001). Like the films above, “Jack the Giant Slayer” veers away from its source material, venturing into more epic territory. Here are the main plot differences: 1. The beanstalk leads to a land inhabited not by one giant, but by an entire race of giants; 2. Jack, played by Nicholas Hoult, who is most known for his role as Beast in “X-Men: First Class” (2011), decides to scale the beanstalk because he wants to save a princess, played by Eleanor Tomlinson, and 3. Jack does not go alone, but is instead accompanied by a group of knights and the king’s powerhungry adviser (Stanley Tucci) who seeks
to use the giants as an army to conquer the world below. Although the fate of the world is at stake, the tone manages to stay light through most of the film. One scene has a giant wrapping the leader of the knights, played by Ewan McGregor, into dough and placing him in an oven next to two literal pigs in dough blankets. In another, the knight leader says, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this” — a not-so-subtle reference to McGregor’s role in “Star Wars.” Also, the computer-animated giants are less scary than they are funny. The giants’ humor is presented in a gross kind of way — burping, scratching their armpits and picking their noses as they please. Equally fun to watch is the adventureheavy portion of the movie. The climbing of the beanstalk is thrilling and it looks great see JACK, page 7
Thursday, March 7, 2013
The Tufts Daily
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Weekender Joe Stile | Amo
Top Ten | Stranger bands that could have been picked to headline Spring Fling 2013 It certainly is getting hot in here, and we’re not talking about the end of winter. All bad Nelly jokes aside, we at the Daily found ourselves a little surprised and, ultimately, underwhelmed by the Spring Fling lineup this year. So, here are 10 bands that would’ve proven more interesting as our Spring Fling 2013 headliner. 10) Brian Eno: You’re just going have to go ahead and Google him. You’ll laugh. 9) Mormon Tabernacle Choir: The Church of Latter Day Saints — bringing you Mitt Romney, exceptionally enthusiastic missionaries and the hits of today since 1860. 8) Weird Al: We’d all love to hear “Rolling
in Dewick” and “Moves like Monaco.” 7) Lana Del Rey: She’s been lauded as the worst SNL musical guest in history (even beating out Ashlee Simpson), but at least she has music that has come out in the last decade. 6) Beethoven: Not his reanimated corpse — just his remains on top of a grand piano. 5) S Club 7: We’re pretty sure that half of them are dead and the other half are just getting out of rehab ,but you know what they say, “Don’t stop, never give up, hold your head high and reach the top!”
3) The Cast of “Les Miserables”: I dreamed a dream Spring Fling would be/ So different from a night of Nelly! 2) Rebecca Black: Fun, fun, fun, fun! 1) Nelly Furtado: Whether you were actually confused or exercising wishful thinking, we all know who the better Nelly is. — compiled by the Daily Arts Department
‘Jack the Giant Slayer’ embraces its fairytale roots JACK
continued from page 6
— the giant plant looks realistic, and the views up into the clouds and down at the kingdom below are beautiful. The land of the giants is a complete unknown, and the anxiety the characters experience through separation and the suspense elicited while the characters explore the mysterious land of giants is where the film really shines. Where “Jack the Giant Slayer” falters, though, is in the third act, when it abandons adventure in favor of straight action. This final part of the movie involves the giants climbing down the beanstalk and attacking the kingdom, at which point a “Lord of the Rings” Helm’s Deep-style battle
erupts. To make things worse, this section of the movie leaves out all of the humor that made the first two acts so entertaining. After all is done, you are generally happy — Jack saves the day, marries the princess and becomes king — but it feels hollow, not only because the third act is bad, but also because the happy ending is ultimately too happy. Basically, all the bad guys die and all the good guys live. As frustrating as the third act is — keeping it a simple damsel-in-distress rescue story would have been more satisfying — the actors are what ultimately keep the movie engrossing. Nicholas Hoult and relative newcomer Eleanor Tomlinson do fine jobs as the leads, but it’s the veterans who steal the show. Stanley Tucci is just the
right combination of evil and funny; Ian McShane is perfectly cast as the somewhat oafish king; Bill Nighy is unfortunately underused, but he’s still great as the voice of the lead giant. Outshining the rest, though, is Ewan McGregor, who looks and acts ultra-cool as the lead knight, reminding us why he’s one of the biggest movie stars of the past 15 years. So, despite predictability and the Hollywood cliches, “Jack the Giant Slayer” is a fun and sometimes-hilarious actionadventure flick. Besides all the things above that the film does well, what makes this film worth seeing — if not in theaters, then at least on DVD or on-demand — is that it never takes itself too seriously and it remembers what it is — just a fairytale.
The Artsy Jumbo
Courtesy Justin McCallum
Freshman Imogen Browder embraces theater opportunities The daughter of two actors, freshman Imogen Browder came to Tufts looking for a break from the theater. Throughout high school, she participated in numerous theater productions, in addition to creating some of her own and starting a student theater group. “When I got to college, I was telling myself I wasn’t going to do anymore theater — that I was done, that I was going to pursue something more academic,” she said. Yet after meeting student theater group 3Ps, Browder felt so embraced
by the Tufts theater community that she auditioned for — and landed — the role of Mother in last fall’s production of “Day Father.” Browder said the role was one of her favorites so far, noting that the fact that the play was a world premiere was exciting to her. “[It was] very cool to delve into the nitty-gritty of this character who still doesn’t exist yet and try to make it my own and find interesting things about her,” she said. Browder also devotes her time to acting in Tufts Traveling Treasure
Trunk, a children’s theater group that performs for Boston-area children. She also keeps busy as a member of the track team and as a blogger and tour guide for the Admissions Office. Browder said while following her parents into a career in acting is a possibility, the decision is a long way off. “I think at the end of my four years here, I’d maybe like to give it a year and see what happens,” she said. —by Dan O’Leary
‘Alice’ matches wordplay with vibrant costumes and sets ALICE
continued from page 6
The costumes in this production, designed by Marisa Shapiro (who is also the Director of Production for 3Ps), are as vibrant as the set. Audience members can find their inner child as children’s music plays over the characters playing and running across the stage in one of the play’s opening scenes. F r e s h m e n Tyler Beardsley and Tim Kou play the idiosyncratic pair of the Mouse and White Rabbit and the rest of the cast manages to be equally as hilari-
ous. The cast feeds on the energy of each of the actors to keep the play vibrant and energetic from scene to scene. Hirsh and the prodcution’s assistant director, freshman Tori Otten, were focused on the idea of identity as they produced the play. “One of the reasons why we double cast and triple cast was because of this theme” says Otten, “In Wonderland, you can take on any identity you want.” This theme is reiterated in the script when the Duchess states to our young protag-
Aura
4) Yo Yo Ma: Nothing like some aggressive cello playing to get you through Spring Fling.
onist that “everything’s got a moral if only you can find it.” From a wacky Mad Hatter played by senior Jacob Passy, who is also a new media editor for the Tufts Daily to freshman Michele Herzog’s Queen of Hearts, this version of ‘Alice’ brings out the best in an old favorite. The production will run tonight through Saturday in the Balch Arena Theatre. Performances start at 8 p.m. and tickets can be purchased for $7 in person from the Aidekman Arts Center Box Office or by telephone at 617-627-3493.
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ranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami’s movies have always been intelligent and challenging pictures, but not until “Certified Copy” (2010) has one had such an emotional, yet accessible, tone. Literary critic Walter Benjamin argues in his essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” that a reproduction, no matter how close to the original, can never be as good as the original because it lacks its “aura.” Reproductions don’t have the context and aren’t part of the tradition of the original and are therefore inadequate. Why bring up an 80-year-old art history article in a film column (besides to be pretentious, that is)? Well, it’s because “Certified Copy” is more of a philosophical debate put on film rather than it is a traditional narrative. The film opens with James, played by opera singer William Shimell, directing a panel on his book. The book theorizes that copies have value because they can lead back to the original and to knowledge of the self. This opening plays out as the film’s central thesis gets tested through Juliette Binoche’s unnamed character’s afternoon together with James. In the span of one day, the couple morphs — from two people meeting for the first time to a deteriorating couple celebrating their 15th wedding anniversary. This bizarre transformation — which is spurred by a woman in a cafe mistaking them for husband and wife — is jarring, to say the least. The movie thankfully stays grounded enough in universal emotions to survive the initially bewildering situation. It isn’t clear at first if the couple is just play-acting being married or if they have become new people after the cafe. It seems likely that the film is using this ambiguity to get at the idea of the fluidity of identity, which allows these characters to drastically change over the course of a single evening. While the logic of all this is tangled and messy, the emotions could not be clearer, which keeps the picture from ever seeming muddled. This all ties into James’ argument about copies. Binoche’s character and James replicate all the gestures and semblance of a crumbling marriage, and the viewer feels for them, even though it’s only a reproduction, because they hit on ideas that are true, even if their relationship isn’t. It’s still heartrending to hear Binoche’s character explain how she feels like her “husband” has emotionally abandoned her, even though we know he hasn’t. It’s just as stirring to hear James say that he was there the best he could be, even though he never was. Their relationship is made up in their minds and yet it so deeply mimics the real thing that it’s easy to forget that it’s all an illusion. The “copy” of the real thing is just as effective as a genuine one here. A lot of this gets conveyed in Kiarostami’s camerawork. Most of the film is shot in long, static takes of characters’ faces. This allows every tiny expression to be seen and gives the viewer ample opportunity to register the complex feelings going through the characters’ minds. In the background of a lot of the couple’s conversations are bridal parties taking wedding photos. These work as a visual metaphor for the film’s philosophies. A wedding is a symbol of a couple’s love, but a photo shoot is an artificial representation of a situation that isn’t actually happening — most people are smiling in pictures to look happy, not because they’re actually happy. So right behind the relationship that Binoche’s character has with James, there is a symbol of both real love and artificial replication. It’s an extra layer to an enigmatic and thought-provoking film about love and imitations. Joe Stile is a senior majoring in political science. He can be reached at Joseph. Stile@tufts.edu.
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THE TUFTS DAILY Martha E. Shanahan Editor-in-Chief
Editorial Nina Goldman Brionna Jimerson Managing Editors Melissa Wang Executive News Editor Jenna Buckle News Editors Shana Friedman Lizz Grainger Stephanie Haven Amelie Hecht Victoria Leistman Patrick McGrath Audrey Michael James Pouliot Abigail Feldman Assistant News Editors Daniel Gottfried Xander Landen Justin Rheingold Annabelle Roberts Sarah Zheng Lily Sieradzki Executive Features Editor Jon Cheng Features Editors Hannah Fingerhut Jacob Passy Amelia Quinn Falcon Reese Derek Schlom Charlotte Gilliland Assistant Features Editors Jessica Mow Shannon Vavra
Editorial
Editorial | Letters
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Tufts rules heighten internship pressure
We have arrived in the season in which Tufts students and students across the country begin to receive news about their acceptance or rejection from coveted summer internships. In an age of scarce employment for liberal arts majors coming out of four-year colleges, internships are more and more necessary to building a resume that’s appealing to employers. Unfortunately, most of those now tend to be unpleasant — and unpaid — ordeals. These internships take advantage of students desperate for work in return for little but words on paper and “experience.” In addition to all of these obstacles to getting that all-important internship, Tufts’ internship policies only provide credit for summer internships if they are completed as registered courses, often costing the equivalent of tuition for a summer session “class,” in other words,
that is essentially not one. The cost of finding somewhere to live, commuting or giving up the opportunity to make money at a summer job is not manageable for many students in the face of the additional cost of paying for a summer session at Tufts. While the university makes grants available to ease the burden on eligible students seeking unpaid internships for credit, the grant application process tends to end before a student knows whether they have gotten into a certain internship or not. Students find themselves waiting for news of an internship while being unable to apply for grants that are purportedly meant to help them, but are left high and dry. Internships have a necessary weight in the lives of today’s college students whose need to break into their careers
early has increased as the number of jobs has decreased. Competition is fierce and the need to stand out is unquestionable. As such, an effective Career Services process for helping students navigate the grizzly world of unpaid internships is paramount to allowing them to succeed. In many ways, the program is quite successful in helping students with resumes, interview practice and finding internships. However, the deadly interplay of academics and employment makes getting credit a hurdle, high costs a normality and grants evasive. Though an earnest attempt, in many ways Tufts’ bureaucracy causes some students more trouble than it is worth in finding and legitimizing unpaid, for-credit summer internships. In such a competition-heavy environment, unnecessary hurdles are the last thing students need.
at the website listed on the advertisement, or on the website of the parent organization’s website: the David Horowitz Freedom Center. To call SJP’s week of peaceful, consciousness raising activism — whether one agrees with it or not — a catalyst for hate speech from a national organization designed specifically to malign Islam, MuslimAmericans and all communities who might be perceived within those categories is an incorrect reading of facts and a simple case of victim-blaming.
The actions of fear-mongers and hatespeakers are not dictated by the annual event of a week calling for a critical dialogue around Palestine-Israel — they are crafted out of a deep-seated malaise that uses the excuse of groups like Students for Justice in Palestine to lash out and disseminate their disgusting message.
denise amisial
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Letter to the Editor Dear Editor, Yesterday, upon opening the Daily and reading the Op-Ed section, I was horrified to read in Robert Persky’s March 6 Op-Ed “Radicals: revolution without solution” the statement that the presence of the Islamophobic and hateful advertisement published in the Daily on Monday was “because of SJP’s — and Israeli Apartheid Week’s — in-your-face, one-sided policies.” This is blatantly false if one takes even a cursory look
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, Duncan MacLaury Class of 2013
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The Tufts Daily
Thursday, March 7, 2013 Op-Ed
An open letter from Tufts Friends of Israel
by Itai Thaler, Shira Strauss, Ayal Pierce and Aliza Shapiro
Dear campus, As all Tufts students will have noticed by now, we are in the midst of Students for Justice in Palestine’s second annual Israeli Apartheid Week. This week is marked by various events and speakers and aims to make the case that Israel is an apartheid state. We, the board and members of Friends of Israel, firmly believe that the Palestinian narrative is extremely important. Indeed, the pursuit of a peaceful two-state solution will necessarily have to engage with and address many of the concerns SJP is raising. However, we must emphatically assert that Israel is not an apartheid state. Briefly put, Arab-Israelis have the same opportunities as Jewish Israelis. They serve as members of Knesset (the Israeli parliament), as Supreme Court judges and as prominent cabinet members. The Palestinians within the West Bank, on the other hand, are not Israeli citizens, nor do they wish to be — they have their own national movement, government and civil
OP-ED
structures in place. Any unfortunate consequences of Israel’s legitimate pursuit of security, regrettable as they may be, by definition do not indicate an apartheid system. But most importantly, the realities of Israel are far too complex to be addressed in one week of programming, much less in a single op-ed. Furthermore, if the Islamophobic and generally repugnant “Islamic Apartheid Week” advertisement and the justified outcry it elicited can teach us anything, it is that indiscriminately throwing around the term apartheid — a term so mired in powerful, hateful emotions — is simply hurtful and attempts to vilify a supposed enemy, rather than promote constructive dialogue. Labeling Israel as an Apartheid state does not lead to higher discourse — it prevents it. We at Tufts owe it to ourselves to have a serious conversation about the Israeli-Palestinian issue and not just devolve into another bout of op-ed wars and name-calling. So join us in attending SJP’s events. Listen to their speakers, talk to their members — hear their side of the story. But also know that it is just that:
one side of an issue far greater than one week could ever truly do justice. Look past the rhetoric and give this divisive issue the respect it deserves. We would also hope you come to our events, stop by our meetings, hear our take on the matter. FOI is first and foremost a resource to our campus for anyone who wants to discuss matters relating to Israel. We are open to all conversation, provided that it comes from a genuine desire for understanding, not further antagonism. There is enough conflict surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian issue; let us not add to it. We hope that you all have a meaningful week. Itai Thaler is a junior majoring in English and is the political chair of Tufts Friends of Israel (FOI). Shira Strauss is a junior majoring in biology and is a member of FOI. Ayal Pierce is a sophomore majoring in computer science and is co-president of FOI. Aliza Shapiro is a sophomore who has yet to declare a major and is co-president of FOI. Friends of Israel can be contacted at TuftsFOI@gmail.com.
Hungry for freedom by
Caitlyn Doucette
Arafat Jaradat, a thirty-year-old Palestinian resident hailing from the West Bank village of Sa’eer, died in an Israeli detention facility on Saturday, Feb. 23. Though Israeli officials initially posited that his death was caused by cardiac arrest, an autopsy completed in Israel revealed that the Palestinian father and husband had recently incurred approximately eight broken bones in his arms, ribs, legs, neck, and spine. Taking into account the fact that no evidence of heart problems turned up during the autopsy, Palestinian experts and officials have deduced that Jaradat died as a result of injuries inflicted by torture during his five-day detainment. The logical question to ask following this conclusion is: What sort of grave security threat did Jaradat pose to merit torture so intense that he lost his life to his injuries? The answer is shocking: Jaradat was accused of throwing rocks and an unconfirmed Molotov cocktail at an Israeli civilian in November. Jaradat’s death coincides with a growing movement among Palestinian civil society in solidarity with Palestinian political prisoners who choose hunger strikes as a means to resist the abhorrent conditions that prisoners are subjected to in Israeli detention facilities. A number of human rights organizations, including B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch and the UN, have highlighted the physical and psychological torture that exists alongside repulsive hygienic conditions in Israeli prisons. As of right now, around 3,000 Palestinians are participating in hunger strikes across the West Bank. One Palestinian man, Samer Isaawi, has held out his hunger strike for over 200 days, and physicians worry that he may die at any moment. Isaawi is being held under administrative detention, a policy whereby an accused person can be legally put in prison for up to six months with no charges. There is no limit to the number of times that this 6-month sentence can be renewed. This means that a Palestinian can legally spend the entirety of his or her life in jail without knowing what charges put him or her there, and thus is completely incapable of mounting any kind of coherent legal defense. One hundred and seventy-eight Palestinians are reported to be currently serving time under administrative detention, and Human Rights Watch called the practice “abusive.” Sarah Whitson, the Middle East director of Human Rights Watch, recently stated simply that “It is outrageous that Israel has locked these men up for months without either charging them with crimes or allowing them to see the evidence it says it has against them. The detainees evidently feel they have to put their lives in
jeopardy through hunger strikes so that Israel will end these unlawful practices.” Life in these facilities is so detestable and unjust that literally thousands of prisoners are willing to risk their lives in protest. This summer, through my work with a human rights organization on the ground in the West Bank, I translated the testimony of a Palestinian man (we’ll call him Tha’ir) into English so that human rights groups could advocate for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to open an investigation into his complaint. Tha’ir was tortured and sexually assaulted by a group of IDF soldiers during his 24-hour detainment. I had previously skimmed through a few of the United Nation’s reports on the deployment of methods such as sleep deprivation, binding in painful positions, choking, rape threats, and intense beatings in Israeli prisons, but that knowledge did nothing to prepare me for the emotional week I spent with Tha’ir’s testimony. I stared at a 12-page account of each terrible act that he was subjected to over the course of his ordeal, trying in vain to accurately translate the nightmare he underwent onto the written page. I read about how he was dragged barefoot through the streets of his native city, kicked in the stomach repeatedly, chained to a chair and beaten with a stick until it broke on his back, peed on, insulted and denied food, water, or a bathroom for approximately 20 hours. Soldiers attempted to insert foreign objects into Tha’ir’s anus and convinced him that his elderly father had died following his arrest, at which he nearly lost hope and confessed to a crime he did not commit. Tha’ir’s alleged crime? Throwing stones. And despite pressure from eight international human rights groups to find justice for this tortured man and situate his story in the larger context of detainee abuse in Israel, the IDF closed the case quickly and quietly. These repugnant realities are not isolated incidents. The people described above are not a small minority who have somehow
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Op-Ed
fallen through the cracks of the Israeli military legal system that governs the West Bank. They represent the institutionalized human rights violations committed on a daily basis by the Israeli regime in the West Bank, a regime that displays little regard for the dignity of Palestinian life. In light of these unacceptable circumstances, Tufts’ Students for Justice in Palestine will fast all day Thursday, March 7 as a symbolic act of solidarity with Palestinian hunger-strikers who put their lives at risk to resist the injustices of their incarceration. As Tufts students, we are all concerned global citizens. This is a human rights issue at its core and, despite the convoluted debate in which this conflict is enveloped, the Palestinian struggle for freedom is no different than any other social justice movement. It is time to stop pretending that the Israeli-security paradigm is the only lens through which we must judge this conflict, and by extrapolation, that some individuals deserve more rights than others. When we compartmentalize a socalled “security threat” as somehow less than human, we begin the process of “othering” an entire people. This type of logic leads to a dangerous and continuous curtailing of rights in the name of security, a trend George Orwell artfully cautioned us against almost 60 years ago. Palestinians are humans; thus analyzing this conflict through a framework based on human rights is the only way to guarantee equality and a just peace for everyone residing between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. If you have more questions about the Tufts chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine and our activism on campus and beyond, visit our website at tuftssjp.com.
Caitlyn Doucette is a senior majoring in international relations and Arabic. She can be reached at Caitlyn.Doucette@tufts.edu.
Walker Bristol | Notes from the Underclass
Our unjust investments
I
n 1990, Harvard University and the City University of New York publically rescinded their investments in Big Tobacco. By giving the finger to an industry with such enormous power, these institutions painted that industry as decrepit, immoral and corrupt, and encouraged others to do the same. And they did: among the many followers were the University of Michigan, the University of Toronto and Northwestern University. From that success, the movement to divest from fossil fuels takes inspiration — on campus, that movement is spearheaded by Tufts Divest. Member Cooper McKim describes Divest as “an unabashed group of passionate, young climate activists,” urging Tufts to rescind its fossil fuel holdings. Having only begun this year, the organization has firmly integrated into the activist network on campus and instigated an escalation strategy, increasing their visibility and impact more and more throughout the term. This strategy was heightened Monday with a demonstration in the lower patio of the Campus Center: three speakers and a march to Ballou Hall, chanting for the Board of Trustees to meet the demands to preserve the sanctity of our environmental future. “I think it was a great showing of student power and student support on campus, a really clear indication that we’re gaining in traction,” recalls Kit Collins, who protested on Monday. “It’s one small step in an effort to build campaign momentum.” The Tufts endowment exceeds $1 billion. According to their website, Divest is “asking Tufts to request that all of its fund managers apply a negative screen for the 200 publicly traded companies that hold the vast majority of the world’s carbon reserves.” But contributing to the fossil fuel industry is only the tip of the inhumane iceberg of Tufts’ investment practices. In 2010, a group of students calling themselves “Jumboleaks” produced online a “List of direct holdings” of the Tufts endowment. As went widely reported, infamous megacorps Monsanto, Nike and Goldman Sachs made the list. But it didn’t end there. There’s predator drone manufacturer Lockheed Martin, complicit in the deaths of thousands of innocent Pakistanis killed without prejudice by the CIA. Bank of America, whose sale of toxic loans into the secondary mortgage market ripped $1 billion and counting from the hands of U.S. taxpayers, also commands a handful of our university’s investments. Not to forget the shame-bodies-make-money retailer Macy’s, nor Hewlett-Packard, who profits from the illegal occupation of the West Bank by providing tracking systems and computers to the Israeli government and IDF to use at checkpoints. The issue at hand isn’t simply that our investments in these corporations are so significant that to divest would mean to tear them down. Rather, as is the case with most activism (especially supply-side activism), the loud conversation beginning around these corporations, where we begin to fully understand and communicate their sins. Given the interconnectedness among college campuses — and in the world at large — movements like these spread like fire and can, given time and passion, engulf injustice. None of this oppression stands alone: all of Tufts’ immoral investments share the thread of injustice, and are united by solidarity. But today, Tufts Divest targets Tufts’ antiprincipled, anti-sustainable investments in the fossil fuel industry. Alongside their peer organizations nationwide, they are building a force to move mountains. “Next year, when we go to Congress, we will have a movement so big and a public [and] so outraged that we will get the legislation that our generation needs,” activist Ben Thompson declared at Monday’s rally. “Legislation that says that one day, we will sit our children down to our tables ... [and] take pleasure in picking out each word that we will use to tell this beautiful story of how we took on the richest industry in history — and we won.” Walker Bristol is a junior majoring in religion and political science. He can be reached at walker.bristol@tufts.edu.
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Comics
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Doonesbury
Crossword
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Garry Trudeau
Non Sequitur
Wednesday’s Solution
Married to the Sea
www.marriedtothesea.com
SUDOKU Level: Dreaming of a white Christmas
Late Night at the Daily
Wednesday’s Solution
Melissa M.: “It’s noodle o’clock somewhere.” Want more late-night laughs? Follow us on Twitter at @LateNiteAtDaily
Please recycle this Daily.
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Wiley
Thursday, March 7, 2013
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G.J. Vitale | Who’s on First?
I Emma Boyd for the Tufts Daily
Junior Jana Hieber will compete in the pentathlon for the Jumbos at NCAA Division III National Championships this weekend.
Women’s Track and Field
Four Jumbos head to Illinois for Nationals Four members of the Tufts women’s track and field team will travel to North Central College in Naperville, Illinois this weekend for the NCAA Division III National Championships. Junior Jana Hieber will compete in the pentathlon for the Jumbos. Her season best 3287 points ranks 13th nationally, and she is no stranger to performing on the biggest stage. This will be her third straight appearance at the NCAA Div. III Indoor Championships after earning a career-best 3,401 in the pentathlon to place third in the meet last year. Hieber will be joined at the meet by the
senior throwing trio of Kelly Allen, Ronke Oyekunle and Sabienne Brutus, who will look to validate their four years as part of the Jumbos’ program. “After four years of hard work, we’re seniors, and we want to leave on a good note,” Brutus said. Allen’s season-best throw of 45 feet 6 and one quarter inches in the shot put ranks No. 11 nationally, and her best throw of 57 feet even in weight throw ranks ninth nationally. Allen also brings experience to the meet, having competed in both events at the Championships last year. Oyekunle will join her in both throwing
events, as she ranks 13th nationally in shot put and 12th in the weight throw, while Brutus will be the highest-ranked Jumbo competing with a season-best toss of 58 feet 1 inch in the weight throw that ranks sixth in the country. This meet is something that these athletes have been working towards and looking forward to for a long time. “You make sure you do your best at every meet, so when you get to Nationals it’s something that you’re used to doing,” Brutus said. “Going to Nationals is a big deal.” — by Alex Connors
Elephants in the Room
Kelsey Morehead Sophomore Women’s Basketball
Kate Applegate Junior Women’s Lacrosse
Your vote for the next Pope:
Favorite Gatorade flavor:
Spring break plans?
What could you never give up for Lent?
Thing you could beat Michael Jordan at:
Michael Jordan
Light Blue Frost
Hope College
Nutella
Being the Pope?
Beyonce
Blue Frost
I have no
Christine Garvey idea who the Senior candidates are! Women’s Swimming
Michael Winget Freshman Men’s Swimming
Cardinal Francis E. George
Glacier Freeze
Yellow
Island hopping! (Going to Long Green Orbit gum Island to play lacrosse)
Swimming Nationals
Netflix
A cooking contest
Chocolate eating contest
Relax and visit Anything Swimming trivia friends in New swimming-related York
all photos courtesy tufts athletics
Loria, businessman exraordinaire
was born in South Florida, and via this chance origin, I’ve been a Marlins fan since I can remember. It’s always been hard to be a Marlins fan. Even our two World Series wins were only possible because we limped into the playoffs from the Wild Card spot. The 1997 Series’ Game 7 was one of the best games in MLB history, and the image of Craig Counsell crossing the plate with his arms outstretched for the walk-off win is permanently ingrained into my head. But current owner Jeffrey Loria has done all he can to erase that memory. Why buy a team in the first place if you don’t care about the organization and the people who are involved in it? I’ll tell you why: because Loria never bought the Marlins. He was given the Marlins. In 2002, as part of a quasi-bailout, the MLB took the failing Montreal Expos off Loria’s hands for an amount that greatly overestimated their value in order to make the deal quick and painless. The Marlins’ owner at the time was John W. Henry — a great owner by the way — who left for the Red Sox, leaving the ownership of the Marlins for Loria to take over. The fish were sold to Loria for a grossly undercut sum, again to make the deal go through without any hitches. The next year, through virtually no work on Loria’s part, the Marlins came away with their second World Series victory. But in the wake of this success, Loria seemed to say, “OK, we got the championship and all the money that comes along with such an accomplishment, but I’m not willing to pay my players next year, so let’s get rid of them now.” He sold all but one starter from this championship-winning squad. This kind of ownership has deflated morale to the point of embarrassment, mainly because it did not stop there. After these past nine years of complete irrelevance in the NL East — and the eyes of South Florida baseball fans alike, as evidenced by the Marlins having the lowest attendance in the MLB — Loria tried to make a move or two during last year’s offseason. He brought in superstar shortstop Jose Reyes, closing pitcher Heath Bell and first baseman Carlos Lee, by far the highest-profile players signed by the Marlins in recent memory. What looked like a hopeful turnaround in the franchise’s attitude towards money was further encouraged further by the work done to secure a new stadium, which opened last season to the delight of Miami (the stadium was built on the site of the late Orange Bowl). Even further invigorating for locals was the name change from the Florida Marlins to the Miami Marlins, though the logo change produced mixed emotions. Just when things were looking up — though not for the team, of course, which struggled through the 2012 season — Loria went through with a complete fire sale of his team, new arrivals included. Without getting into excruciating details, the only Marlin worth mentioning who is still on the roster from the start of 2012 is outfielder Giancarlo Stanton. Loria has proven time and time again that he runs this organization like a business: extracting as much profit without concern for the success of the team. The city of Miami sacrificed millions of dollars to build the new stadium, and tickets were sold to fans under the impression that their team would be a force to be reckoned with. So much for that. Trust me, fans are not giving this guy any more of their money. I’m one of them, and almost everyone I’ve talked to shares my sentiments. Ticket sales will be abysmal again. The MLB needs to step in here, because Loria has gotten rich from this whole process, especially now that he’s sold away all of his big contracts, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. His unabated destruction of the Marlins franchise has made him a hated man everywhere south of Lake Okeechobee.
G.J. Vitale is a junior majoring in biologypsychology and English. He can be reached at Gregory.Vitale@tufts.edu.
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Thursday, March 7, 2013
Men’s Lacrosse
Jumbos dig deep to open up 2013 season by
Kate Klots
Daily Editorial Board
As the 2013 season opens up for the Jumbos, head coach Mike Daly’s squad begins their hunt for a fourth straight NESCAC lacrosse title. It may seem a farfetched goal, but Daly’s men are up to the challenge. The Jumbos last season fell 12-10 to Cortland State in a come-from-behind NCAA semifinal heartbreaker, but this spring, Tufts is determined to return to Championship Weekend. The last remaining members of the 2010 championship team now lead the Jumbos as seniors and hope to use their experience to get back to the peak of Div. III lacrosse. “Of course we see this goal as doable,” senior midfielder Brian Ruggiero said. “I think it speaks volumes to the type of program that Coach Daly has built here and the type of players he recruits that we now expect to be competing for that NESCAC title every year. That being said, the most important game is always the next one, so for right now we’re focused on [Saturday’s season opener against] Hamilton.” In addition to facing a rigorous schedule, Tufts will face the first two games of the season short-staffed while more than 20 members of the roster are temporarily benched in light of university-issued suspensions. Tufts must also deal with the graduation of several All-American and AllNESCAC impact players and adjust to new faces that have joined the team. “Coach Daly does a great job drilling our style of play at practice and in the film room to the point where it really becomes a habit,” Ruggiero said. “We lose guys every year — that’s the nature of playing a college sport — and we see this as just another opportunity, nothing more and nothing less.”
On the Hunt On the attacking end, the Jumbos have one primary role to fill. They will sorely miss co-captain Sean Kirwan (LA ’12), who finished his chances nearly every time they arose and is perhaps the best crease finisher in recent Div. III history. Kirwan, who has joined the Tufts lacrosse program as an assistant coach this season, became the Jumbos’ alltime leader in goals last spring, passing the previous mark of 148 to finish his career with 150. “Obviously, Sean was a tremendous player and team captain last year,” junior midfielder Beau Wood said. “He has been a great addition to our coaching staff because of his wealth of knowledge on the offensive side of the field.” While Kirwan’s absence will be noticed, Tufts proved itself by holding strong without him last year with an 8-2 record. Two very important starters — Wood and sophomore Cole Bailey — will improve the team’s chances by returning this season. Last year, the dynamic duo from the Severn School near Annapolis, Md. proved themselves a force to be reckoned with, delivering a one-two punch that many defenses found impossible to decipher. Bailey, who was named the NESCAC Rookie of the Year, led the conference with 68 points, averaging more than three per game. He also topped the charts with 42 assists — the second-highest number of assists in the conference was 23 from Amherst quad-captain Evan Redwood. As the season progressed, Bailey emerged as a crucial set-up man, and showed a willingness to take big hits in order to get the job done. Bailey’s long-time teammate Wood came out of nowhere in 2012, displaying a fluid style of play and ability to rip shots from the wings and top of the circle. After appearing in just four games during his freshman season, Wood opened his sophomore campaign strong, scoring four goals and an assist in his first collegiate start, and kept the momentum going to finish second behind Bailey with 66 points and lead the league in goals. The Jumbos also have a game-experienced candidate to step up as the
Oliver Porter / The Tufts Daily
Senior Sam Diss will take on a larger role for the Jumbos in the midfield this year as they try to fill the hole in the center left by graduated stars . third attackman in sophomore Chris Schoenhut. Schoenhut split time during the first half of the season last year, but emerged as a strong and intuitive player around the crease, demonstrating offball improvement as well. Dodging bullets The Jumbos return two of three offensive starters, but have suffered greater losses in the midfield, including last year’s co-captain Kevin McCormick (E ‘12), a two-time AllAmerican and All-NESCAC offensive midfielder who finished his senior campaign with 59 points. “It’s always tough when a team loses multiple players at one position, especially players like Kevin and George [Shafer],” midfielder Peter Bowers said. “But we feel that we have plenty of guys who can step up into more significant roles at the midfield.” Bowers, a junior, can help catalyze the Jumbos’ revamped midfield unit. The midfielder had 34 points in 2012, is also a capable dodger, and might well begin to fill the role of his predecessor. However, Tufts is primarily focused on employing
the talents of all of its midfielders. “The losses at midfield present a great opportunity for younger players to see more playing time, which is exciting for everyone,” Bowers added. “We are confident that our depth and talent at the midfield will allow us to fill the holes left by the senior class. As a team, we stress the importance of having leaders at every position — freshmen through seniors — so although it’s great to have some experienced guys at the midfield, we expect everyone to be a leader.” X Marks the spot At X, the Jumbos lost midfielder Nick Rhoads, whose breakout sophomore season helped the Jumbos to their firstever national title and whose sensational senior campaign put the Jumbos in a position of strength again and again. In 2012, Rhoads led the conference with 160 groundballs, averaging 7.62 per game, and posted the second-highest face-off percentage, winning 195 of 282 taken to reach a .591 mark. Although the graduate held the label of “face-off specialist” with disdain, one thing is certain: Rhoads brought something special to the circle.
“Rhoads was a large part of our success the past few years, but we are more than confident in the guys we have now taking face-offs,” Bowers said. “They’ve all been doing a great job in practice and continue to improve every day. All of them are capable of taking the starting role and performing well.” Ruggiero, sophomores Joel Berdie, Ryan Le and Jeff Chang as well as junior Justin Chang all have face-off experience, and although it is unfair to expect that any will immediately fill Rhoads’ shoes the Jumbos have a number of options from which to choose when taking the face-offs. “We are very fortunate to be loaded with depth,” sophomore midfielder Tim LaBeau said. “Guys were competing all fall at the face-off X and continue to push each other and improve in that crucial area of the game.” Added onus will be on Tufts’ wing players and other midfielders to step up. While the Jumbos also lose Mark Findaro (LA ’12), his counterpart Kane Delaney returns for his junior season after a sophomore season in which he accumulated 57 groundballs.
Thursday, March 7, 2013
The Tufts Daily
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“Our coaches and players are great with analyzing film and strategy to be the best we possibly can,” LaBeau said. “We are going to scrap for every ground ball on face-offs and are confident that this will be a strong facet of our game.” “With the exception of Findaro, our wing personnel hasn’t changed much since last year,” Bowers added. “All of the wing players have done well adapting to the absence of Rhoads and we are confident that they will continue to adapt to whoever is taking the face-offs.” A team in transition Tufts generally spends more time playing defense than it does offense, and the Jumbos wouldn’t have it any other way. For them, it is not time or number of possessions but rather the quality of those possessions that creates victories. “One of the great things about playing Tufts lacrosse under Coach Daly is that we have the green light to be on the attack at all times during a game,” LaBeau said. “Coach trusts us as great lacrosse players to look for every opportunity to attack the cage. We love to attack the defense during substitutions and will gladly score goals four-on-four versus six-on-six.” Thus, the fluidity of the Jumbos’ transition game becomes an essential factor in their success — if they can force opponents into mistakes on their defensive end and push the ball up with numbers, their scoring chances are extremely high. And this season, the NCAA introduced quick-restart rules that could further facilitate the Jumbos’ transition game. Tufts has the workhorses willing to carry weight at midfield. Senior midfielder Dylan Haas and senior shortstick defensive midfielder Sam Diss, who both played football in the fall, are quick and hardworking. Diss and Haas saw time in all 21 games last season, and combined for 44 groundballs and 11 forced turnovers. Senior Ben Saperstein and sophomore LaBeau round out Diss and Haas’ play. Extremely athletic, LaBeau can keep up with most opponents on the fly, while Saperstein brings added experience to the field. “We prepare for this style of play by practicing exactly how we play,” LaBeau said. “Our drills simulate game situations with defensive-middies attacking the cage on offensive, using uneven numbers and a rapid style of play.” Due to the Jumbos’ preferred pace, Rhoads’ absence may prove less costly to the Jumbos than it would be to a team that prioritizes length of possession. Anchors away At the defensive end, Tufts is anchored by close defenders Matt Callahan — a transfer from Div. I Fairfield University — Sam Gardner and Heard. The trio has now played two full seasons together, and though Callahan is the only one in the pack without a championship ring, it goes without saying that the trio won’t retire quietly. Heard and Gardner bring their own strengths to the Jumbos’ close defensive game and use their size to keep opposing attackmen on their heels. With two seasons of high-pressure postseason experience under its belt, the threesome has come far. “Playing with those guys for the past three years has been great,” Heard said. “We all have different skill sets and are able to combine those pretty effectively. The past couple years have allowed us to learn each other’s tendencies to the level that now each of us knows how the others will react to a situation. It’s been a ton of fun with them.” With a strong corps of goalkeepers to back them up in cage, the close defenders have some room to take risks and turn up the pressure. Each started every game for the Jumbos last season, combining for 104 groundballs and 46 forced turnovers. Heard, Callahan and Gardner are more composed and communicative than they ever have been, which puts them in a position to be not only physically dominant but also smart and formidable as a unit. Sophomore long pole Cem Kalkavan, who measures in at about 6 feet 4 inches, also knows how to use his imposing size and physicality to his advantage, and showed promise during his freshman campaign. Junior Nate Marchand stepped up last
Oliver Porter / The Tufts Daily
Cole Bailey took NESCAC Rookie of the Year honors last season and will look to continue his success as the Jumbos try to repeat as conference champs. season as an early substitute, often playing a role in man-down situations, and sophomores C.J. Higgins, Jeff Chang and Garrett Read also gained experience last year to provide extra muscle and relief to a unit that is sure to be worked hard. “Our defense seems deeper than ever and it gives the guys on the field added confidence,” Heard said. “Not only are we being pushed harder at practice, but knowing that we have such capable guys to sub for us allows us to not worry about conserving energy at points in the game.” Stopped cold Between the pipes, junior Patton Watkins, who took over the starting role from keeper Steve Foglietta (LA ’12) midway through his freshman season, will get the nod. During his sophomore season, Watkins finished fourth in the NESCAC with a goals allowed average of 7.96. His .575 save percentage was middle of the pack in the conference, but came in a Tufts system that plays more defense and allows more shots per game than nearly any other team. At the same time, Watkins averaged 10.40 saves per game and finished the season with 208 stops. The option of using Foglietta will certainly be missed, particularly in the clutch. However, senior keeper Tyler Page, who is talented and capable of making extremely tough saves, will back Watkins between the pipes. New arrivals The Class of 2016 represents the second recruiting class attracted to Tufts following the team’s national title. Several members of the incoming class are attackmen and midfielders, fitting well with the Jumbos’ current resupply needs.
“Starting my freshman year, I have come to realize that our program is easy to get integrated into,” Wood said. “We have incredible upperclass leadership and an amazing coaching staff that always gets the freshmen started off on the right foot. I feel like every year our freshman class gets more and more talented, and this year is definitely no different.” While the majority of these first-years will likely play second fiddle to the Jumbos’ returning starters, several have emerged as strong candidates for receiving time. Given the strong performances of so many rookies last season, it would be an injustice to underestimate the impact first-years could have on this Jumbo squad. “As the fall progressed into preseason, confidence was one of the biggest changes among the freshmen,” first-year attackman Kyle Howard-Johnson said. “The transition from high school to college lacrosse was definitely an adjustment, and it took time for the freshmen to realize that they could not only compete, but also excel, with a team of this caliber. As the season goes on, I believe that many freshmen will contribute significantly to the team and its success.” The team’s experienced players have also relayed Tufts’ goals, both longterm and immediate, to the program’s newest members. “The seniors as well as the coaches have impressed upon us a sense of urgency, as well as the ultimate team goal of winning a national championship,” Howard-Johnson said. “That’s what we expected when we came here, and it has been impressed upon us ever since. The seniors have also been great about mentoring the freshmen on and off the field. With that said, our focus
right now is on Tufts versus Hamilton this Saturday.” Save the date Each year, Daly has worked to improve the Jumbos’ strength of schedule, allowing Tufts to see one of the toughest regular seasons in all of Div. III. Heading into the season, three other NESCAC squads, No. 15 Bowdoin, No. 16 Trinity and No. 18 Connecticut College, join Tufts in the USILA rankings, while several other unranked NESCAC teams also will provide an immensely difficult challenge in conference schedule. As if playing in a highly competitive conference wasn’t enough, the Jumbos’ out-of-conference schedule is highlighted by an annual spring break roadtrip, which allows Tufts to see action against several of the sport’s top nonconference opponents. Tufts will square off with No. 6 Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J. before driving to the outskirts of Baltimore to face the formidable No. 2 Stevenson University Mustangs on March 19. Tufts rounds out its spring break with a home spat against No. 13 Western New England University. Despite the long road ahead, the Jumbos remain grounded in the present — Tufts has mentally and physically prepared over the long off- and pre-season for Saturday’s opener with Hamilton College, which the Jumbos will host on their own turf. “As a player in our program, it’s important to get better each day and we do so by approaching every day with that mentality,” Saperstein said. “Yes, our goal is ultimately to win the national championship, but right now our focus is on our first game against Hamilton.”
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INSIDE Women’s Track and Field 17 Men’s Lacrosse 18
tuftsdaily.com
Women’s Lacrosse
Caroline Geiling / The Tufts Daily
Senior co-captain Meg Boland will look to lead a young squad this year, as the Jumbos open their season Saturday against Hamilton.
Tufts looks to recover from early-ending last season by
Alex Schroeder
Daily Editorial Board
The expectations for last year’s women’s lacrosse team were high. They returned eight seniors to their starting lineup after advancing to the semifinals of the NESCAC tournament, and looked poised for another successful run. The experience was there, yet the results did not come. “It was definitely disappointing,” junior midfielder Kelley Cohen said. “We had a lot of huge losses due to injury at the beginning of the season, and it came down to just not being able to really recover from that. It just sort of spiraled downward from there.” And yet, despite the loss of those eight seniors — three of whom were named to the All-NESCAC second team — and a rocky season, the Jumbos are both confident and optimistic heading into the 2013 season that will start this weekend in a Saturday matchup at Hamilton College.
Last year, the Jumbos finished 9-6 overall and 5-5 in the conference at the middle of the pack, taking the No. 6 spot in the conference heading into the tournament. They ended the season tied for fifth place in goals per game, second in assists per game and third in both ground balls and points per game. In the past the 2013 team will differ in almost all aspects from the Jumbos of last year. Not only is there less pressure to live up to previous standards, but also less emphasis on the upperclassmen. While standouts such as senior Kerry Eaton — who led the Jumbos in goals last season and was selected to the All-NESCAC second team — and Gabby Horner bring individual talent and experience to the team, the Jumbos’ hallmark this year will undoubtedly be their youthfulness and freshness. “This year we are a completely new team,” junior midfielder Kate Applegate said. “We’re much younger, but our bench is so much deeper, which is different. But
it’s because we don’t have this massive senior class. The team feels a lot healthier and a lot more fun.” Without so many seniors to take the reins, the leadership and in-game awareness will be more equally spread throughout the squad. In fact, the sophomore class has exactly eight girls to match the eight seniors who left last year. While all eight probably won’t start, according to Cohen, most of them will step up to play integral roles in the lineup. “None of the then-freshmen from last year were in starting positions and a lot of them will be this year,” Cohen said. “A lot of them have taken the opportunity to be successful this year after the big loss of the seniors from last year. They are thriving under this condition and are our biggest class on the team. They are really contributing and working to become the back bone of the team.” The incoming freshman class rounds out the team’s of the team is. While the Class of 2016 holds only four of the 22
roster spots for the season, both Cohen and Applegate gave high praise for the manner in which the freshmen are getting involved. “They are really talented,” Cohen said. “They’re coming up to speed fast, learning our plays and learning the style of team.” “They are fantastic,” Applegate said. “They’re super positive [and] pretty much all-around athletes. You can put them anywhere on the field and they will do well. Their speed is good, their strength is good and their size is good. They will be contributors. Some of them will be starting, which is huge as a freshmen in any program.” With team morale and chemistry improved from last year, they will look to get on the right track early. If the Jumbos can fuse the young and raw talent with the postseason experience of the upperclassmen, the Jumbos could turn what appears to be a rebuilding year into a pleasant surprise.
Men’s Track and Field
Indoor Nationals preview All the hard work has paid off for the men’s track and field team. Nationals are finally here, which means that a select group will ship off this weekend to represent Tufts at North Central College in Napier, Ill. to compete against the best in the country at their respective events. Seniors Gbola Ajayi, Curtis Yancy, Mike Blair and Jeff Marvel, juniors Jamie Norton and Graham Beutler and freshman Mitchell Black comprise the Tufts delegation. The Distance Medley Relay team of Marvel, Beutler, Black and Norton is seeded the highest of the Jumbo individuals or teams competing, at third in the country. Tied for the third spot with Bates behind the University of WisconsinLaCrosse and SUNY Geneseo, which defeated the Jumbos this
past weekend, the Jumbos have a pretty significant chance to pull off a victory. They ran together for the first time at the Last Chance Meet, so their chemistry has not been fully refined, but having such an experienced group will go a long way to settle nerves and ensure that they run up to their potential. “I think I’ll be less nervous this second time around, and hopefully [I] can put us in a good position,” Beutler said. Black also qualified in the 800meter but elected to participate only in the DMR to avoid fatigue, seeing as the 800 starts just 25 minutes before the DMR. Blair, seeded fifth in the heptathlon, is the next highest-ranked athlete to represent Tufts. The school record holder in the event, Blair comes in with a seed point total of 4,900, just
over 200 points behind No.1ranked Zach Anderson of the University of Wisconsin-Stout. Ajayi and Yancy, the senior anchors of a formidable field team throughout the indoor season, will look to assert themselves amid impressive fields. Yancy is seeded seventh in the weight throw and will hope to build upon his school recordtying heave from February, while Ajayi is ranked tenth and will look to outperform his seed jump of 14.66 meters in the triple jump. Action kicks off Friday with the heptathlon and concludes Sunday with the crowning of the newest national champion. “I think all of us are ready to go and just compete at our Sofia Adams / The Tufts Daily best,” Beutler added. “Can’t The men’s track team will compete in NCAA Indoor Nationals this weekend. wait to see the — by Sam Gold results.”