The Tufts Daily - Thursday, April 8, 2021

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Thursday, April 8, 2021

Office of Sustainability and Eco Reps launch Earth Month programming with Zero Waste Week

by Rebecca Barker

Outreach Coordinator

The Office of Sustainability and the Eco Reps launched their annual Earth Month programming with the Zero Waste Week Challenge last week, which began on March 31 and ran through April 7.

The challenge required participants to clip a plastic bag to their backpacks or bags to store any trash that they accumulated throughout the week that is not recyclable or compostable, according to the Office of Sustainability’s website.

Tina Woolston, sustainability program director, learned of Zero Waste Week from a student with whom she taught an ExCollege course in 2010. This student had originally participated in the challenge at The University of California, Davis. Zero Waste Week has become an annual event ever since, and Woolston has continued to encourage engagement from students in her Sustainability in Action class.

Woolston explained that the public nature of Zero Waste Week — in which one’s trash is easily visible to others through the bags provided by the Office of Sustainability and Eco Reps — allows for participants to reevaluate their relationship with trash.

Woolston further noted that one of the biggest challenges for those who have engaged with Zero Waste Week in the past has been the embarrassment that people feel about their waste.

“Is it that we shouldn’t have trash, or we’re embarrassed about our own trash?” Woolston said. “There are a lot of values around trash — whether it’s good or it’s bad, or how close you should be to it.”

Kristen Kaufman, the Office of Sustainability’s recycling and waste reduction coordinator, noted that these sentiments toward trash allow for reflection and education during Zero Waste Week.

“We don’t care when we throw [trash] away for someone

else to deal with it, but when it’s attached to us, we do care,” Kaufman said. “You’re basically just carrying around the burden of the waste you produce for one week, and the other 51 weeks of the year, someone else is doing it … it’s just this practice and mindfulness and reflection and education.”

According to Eco Rep Maya Sze, who planned this year’s Zero Waste Week, keeping track of waste brings students to evaluate their behavior and consumption habits.

“Most people are quite surprised by how much they produce … once they see that, they can begin to take steps to reduce some of their waste,” Sze, a sophomore, said. “Let’s say you figure out that you eat a lot of chips … maybe instead of getting a lot of tiny bags of chips, [you will] just get one big one.”

The challenge also serves as an educational tool for how to dispose of waste. see SUSTAINABILITY, page 2

COURTESY HANNAH BRAY

Eco Reps hand out “Zero Waste Bags” at the Mayer Campus Center to encourage students to generate less waste.

University Chaplaincy hosts the Rev. Adam Russell Taylor for annual James A. Russell Lectureship

by Emily Thompson Staff Writer

The Tufts University Chaplaincy hosted its annual James A. Russell Lectureship on Spiritual Life on April 7, titled “The Work Ahead: Building a Just, Beloved Community.” The lecture featured the Rev. Adam Russell Taylor, the current president of Sojourners, a nonprofit organization committed to “faith in action for social justice.”

University President Anthony Monaco spoke, with University Chaplain Elyse Nelson Winger then welcoming and introducing the Rev. Taylor. She explained why she invited him to speak.

“I was reading Sojourners Magazine and following Rev. Taylor’s columns replete with faithful calls for justice for Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, for voting rights, for faith communities, pastoral and prophetic civic engagement in our society, and I thought, if we could invite Rev. Taylor to speak for this lecture in this moment, we would be fortunate indeed,” Nelson Winger said.

Taylor, a Baptist minister, began by extending his lec-

SOPHIE DOLAN / THE TUFTS DAILY

The Rev. Adam Russell Taylor, president of Sojourners, speaks at the James A. Russell Lectureship on April 7. ture on community building to those outside of the Christian community.

“The process of building the beloved community is one that involves and includes everyone.

People of every faith or no faith at all,” Taylor said. “All of us are vital to this conversation and project, and so I really welcome everyone in.”

He then reflected on the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., emphasizing his commitment to building a community rooted in faith and love and commenting on how to utilize that lesson in current times.

“Dr. King and so many other Civil Rights leaders understood that faith combined with civic activism can literally be the spark

plug, the catalyst for building social movements that can literally transform our nation,” Taylor said.

Taylor highlighted the importance of not conforming to a world that harms marginalized people. He also pointed out that inequity has only increased since the pandemic. “[Nonconformance] is desperately needed in the times in

EDITORIAL / page 7

ARTS / page 4

SPORTS / back

How professors can help their students during a semester with few breaks

After EP release, Melt looks forward to return to in-person concerts

Return of Tufts sports comes with shortened schedules, uncertainty

which we live today, when we are confronted with the dual pandemics of COVID-19 and a much longer standing pandemic of systemic racism that has haunted our country from its very inception,” Taylor said. “I believe that Dr. King pushes us to understand that part and parcel to spirituality and faith is a commitment to activism, a commitment to help make the world and our nation and our communities a better place and a commitment to address many of the root causes of injustice that so often perpetuate harm and perpetuate oppression and injustice in first place.”

He expanded further on this.

“We have an opportunity, I would even say a responsibility, to come out of this crisis and … build a nation in which we finally cast out the belief that some lives are worth more than others, and that some Americans are more American than others, where we embrace a much more inclusive ‘we the people’ and make the American creative liberty and justice for all truly a reality for all Americans,” Taylor said. see TAYLOR, page 2 NEWS

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FEATURES

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WEEKENDER

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FUN & GAMES

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OPINION

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THE TUFTS DAILY | News | Thursday, April 8, 2021

THE TUFTS DAILY Megan Szostak Editor in Chief

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Zero Waste Week to raise awareness for participants and entire community SUSTAINABILITY

continued from page 1 “Another goal of zero waste week is simply to teach others about what is recyclable and what is compostable. For example, many people think that coffee cups are recyclable but they actually aren’t,” Sze wrote in an email to the Daily. “When you’re thinking about what to put in your ziplock bag, things like this will come up. Items that you thought were recyclable actually aren’t.”

According to Kaufman, this aspect of the challenge is educational for participants and also

beneficial to the safety of workers in recycling facilities.

“If the wrong thing is in the wrong place, it can shut things down… at [recycling] sorting facilities,” she said. “That costs a lot of time, costs a lot of money, and the people working there also have to climb into the machinery and dig it out, and it’s an occupational hazard.”

Kaufman noted that people often do not often think about where their trash goes or who handles it after it has been disposed of.

“I think people are more or less kind of familiar with the

environmental implications [of landfills] … but I think people are still discovering and learning more about all the justice implications,” Kaufman said.

“Landfills are disproportionately located in low-income, BIPOC communities, which is an incentive for not putting stuff in the trash or not producing trash.”

Woolston hopes that the challenge will allow participants to think more intentionally about how much waste they produce, as well as the areas and communities that are affected by it. She believes the public aspect to Zero Waste

Taylor says COVID-19, systemic racism are twin pandemics TAYLOR

continued from page 1 Taylor acknowledged that there is not a single cure for the harm caused by COVID-19 and systemic racism, but still emphasized the need for persistence in addressing these issues through faith.

“I believe that our faith traditions provide timeless wisdom that can and must be used to combat and even cure these viruses, that a shared moral vision for our country can be one of the most powerful antidotes,” Taylor said.

He continued to stress that building a more beloved community is not inevitable, and that it will take work to achieve.

“It will require all of us to engage in this work together to combat the viruses of systemic racism and toxic polarization which represent both an imperative and a test of our faith in our spirituality,” Taylor said. “We will see an end to this COVID crisis, but let’s do it in a way that remakes and transform Boston and our nation and the places in which liberty

and justice for all are not simply an aspirational ideal, but become a reality for all.”

Taylor ended his lecture with a call to action.

“So Tufts students and alumni and friends … Now is the time to replace a broken and bankrupt moral vision with a more hopeful and unifying one. Now is the time to build the beloved community,” Taylor said.

The event turned to student questions before Humanist Chaplain Walker Bristol wrapped up the event with their closing remarks, emphasizing the use of

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Week allows for social diffusion on Tufts’ campus.

“Our office’s mission is to help change the culture at Tufts to be more sustainable,” she said.

“Something like this changes people’s mindsets and therefore how people see them acting, and that can end up changing the culture of a place.”

Sze echoed Woolston’s sentiments.

“Hopefully in the future, when [participants] buy something, they’ll think about what they learned from Zero Waste Week and maybe that will influence their choices,” she said.

history and its place in building community today.

“I invite us all to keep history alive among us, the history that lives within us and around us, celebrating the histories of resilience and transformation, but also telling the truth about the storied histories of violence, of slavery that are beneath so much of what we’ve created in this nation in particular,” Bristol said. “We have an extraordinary opportunity through coming into a relationship and into a deeper and beloved community, to give those stories the life they deserve and to make healing possible.”

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Kevin Zhang Tales from the T

Forever ‘neath the streets

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hat do CharlieCards, burlesque and the second coming of Christ have in common?

They’re all involved in the history of the Government Center station.

Apologies if you expected a more interesting answer; anyways, let’s talk about trains. In this week’s column: Government Center, Charlie’s backstory and the monstrosity that is Boston City Hall.

Government Center opened in 1898 as Scollay Square. The station sat on the Tremont Street Subway (America’s oldest subway

Features line!) which carried streetcars under Tremont Street. In 1916, Scollay Under station opened under Scollay Square. This station sat on the East Boston Tunnel, which carried streetcars (and later subway trains) beneath the harbor from East Boston.

Early transit planners evidently weren’t as visionary with naming as they were at building. Today, these lines are the Green and Blue Lines respectively.

The station sat under the dense, bustling neighborhood of Scollay Square. Among its major landmarks was the Howard Athenaeum, built in 1843 as a church for the Millerites, an Adventist sect that believed the world would end on October 22, 1844. It didn’t (I think), and in the ensuing Great Disappointment (coincidentally also what my par-

ents call the day I was born), the church was abandoned. Rebuilt into a theater, the Howard, and other nearby theaters, made Scollay Square a major entertainment destination in Boston.

Scollay Square station itself gained some fame after being referenced in the 1949 song “M.T.A.”

by Jacqueline Steiner and Bess Lomax Hawes, written in protest of a controversial streetcar double fare. The premise: everyman Charlie pays a nickel to board a streetcar. Upon arriving at his destination, he realizes he doesn’t have an additional nickel to pay the exit fare. Charlie is thus doomed to “ride forever ‘neath the streets of Boston,” living on sandwiches passed by his wife through the windows at Scollay Square. The song was a hit. Fast forward to today, we now

have the CharlieCard, and they say Charlie’s still riding.

By the 1940s, Scollay Square was gaining a reputation as a run-down red light district.

Theaters featured burlesque performances catering to Harvard students, and the Howard was closed after police observed one such performance. While still a vibrant, bustling neighborhood, calls were being made to improve the area’s image. If you were one of Boston’s planners in the 1960s, what would you have done?

Because their solution was to evict 20,000 people and raze Scollay Square to kingdom come.

The ‘60s were the era of urban renewal, massive, utopian highways and office blocks. Never mind that entire neighborhoods were obliterated — nobody cared (well, nobody important, anyways).

3 Thursday, April 8, 2021 From Scollay Square’s shattered remains rose a new Government Center, featuring a rebuilt and renamed “T” station and a vast, desolate plaza that stands mockingly over the bustling streets it crushed. In its center stands Boston City Hall, perhaps one of the most polarizing buildings in Boston.

Intended to feel futuristic and democratic, yet decried as cold and anti-urban, there is perhaps no better symbol of the failures of postwar urban renewal. The trains, of course, rumble on as the cities above rise and fall. Perhaps Charlie’s all that’s left.

Kevin Zhang is a sophomore studying civil engineering.

Kevin can be reached at kevin. zhang7@tufts.edu.

4 Thursday, April 8, 2021

Ramona Meng Xi Beyond the Underneath

Vinyl survival, Part 1

WEEKENDER

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Melt discusses lives as student-musicians and new ‘West Side Highway’ EP

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he slogan “Save Uptown” has been around for a while — on the internet and on a flyer that a staff member handed to me when I was visiting a vinyl market last weekend.

Uptown Records is Shanghai’s first vinyl-only store. Recently, the landlord informed it that rent will more than double.

When I went to the vinyl market last weekend, I arrived late. Uptown Records and some other sections were already packing up. The owner of a vinyl store handed me a card with an address when I was browsing through boxes of genres. He said it’s quite difficult to find his store, but it shouldn’t be too far off.

Interestingly, I didn’t recall any vinyl stores that are “easy” to find. The process of finding most of them is usually an exploration with trials and errors. Some of them are very small, some share space with other stores and some are just secretive. Perhaps the rent is cheaper that way, but I think covert locations also resonate well with the nature of vinyl records nowadays; they are niche and attract genuine music lovers.

I still remember the first time I found Uptown. I expected it to have a neon sign or logo somewhere, but the only aboveground cue was a small, faded sticker beside the dark, narrow entrance of an old apartment building’s garage. There are more turns and entrances inside the garage. When I finally stumbled upon the red door and the staircase that leads to the actual underground store, I was simultaneously charmed and awed by the location. To me, it’s fulfilling to find the “hidden parts” of Shanghai, but what’s even better is that the hidden location doesn’t affect its longevity. Uptown’s fervent supporters, as well as venerable reputation in both music and underground culture, have buttressed its existence.

I visited Uptown again after receiving the flyer. To my surprise, the vinyl section was entirely gone. Vintage clothes took over. The staff showed me a handdrawn map of the vinyls’ temporary new location, inside a tiny single room bar with only three seats by the counter table.

When I walked in, I instantly recognized the bartender. He’s a DJ I’ve seen constantly on posters, and he’s a vinyl lover too, I believe. Hearing a couple of people chatting about music and records was soothing and heartwarming. Despite a vinyl revival in recent years, classic vinyl records are still deemed obsolete in the mainstream, as modern technologies and the digital world sift them out. But they are still there, lining up quietly and unyieldingly, in boxes organized by genre, protected and loved by a small population of firm supporters.

April marks the 10-year anniversary of Uptown Records, but due to the huge rise in rent they are facing a dilemma. Future concerts and activities are listed for fundraising on the flyer I was given. I hope it will protect its original location instead of going above ground — this underground area is filled with too many memories, stories and stickers on the walls.

Ramona Meng Xi is a sophomore who has not yet declared a major. Ramona can be reached at meng.xi@tufts.edu.

VIA MELT

The cover of Melt’s debut EP, “West Side Highway,” is pictured.

by Maeve Hagerty Assistant Arts Editor

“Adrenaline and excitement and exhaustion” was how Marlo Shankweiler described her and her bandmates’ “double [lives].” “Awesome” and “intense” were some of the words used by Veronica Stewart-Frommer, but there is likely no better way to describe the band Melt than “sensational.”

When sitting down for a March 26 phone interview with three members of the dynamic and groovy seven-member group, it became clear just how amazing their music and double lives as musicians and college students truly are.

The band’s roots are in New York City, starting four years ago, but now scattered across numerous universities and institutions. With Tufts junior Veronica Stewart-Frommer on lead vocals, Eric Gabriel on keyboard and vocals, Shankweiler on guitar, Nick Sare on saxophone, Lucas Saur on bass, COULOU on trumpet and Josh Greenzeig on drums, the band is unique in its size and musical versatility.

Producing a rich mix of jazz, funk, indie rock and pop, Melt achieved success with its first single “Sour Candy”

(2017). After reaching the fifth spot on Billboard’s US Viral 50 Chart, “Sour Candy” launched Melt into a series of sporadic singles until their first EP “West Side Highway” dropped on Feb. 19.

Shankweiler, Gabriel and StewartFrommer described how the band started.

Gabriel explained how he and Stewart-Frommer “piecemealed the band together” during their senior year of high school, bringing in their friend Shankweiler and some of the musicians she knew to perform the first song that Stewart-Frommer and Gabriel had ever written together — “Sour Candy.”

Hearing them laugh about the original idea for the band’s name, “Toast,” made it clear that the foundation for Melt is the friendship which started the band and holds it together still.

After winning a Battle of the Bands competition, the group chose to record “Sour Candy” and post it to YouTube, where they remembered its surprising rise from “humble beginnings” to its appearance on the front page of Reddit after its release.

“In my high school, I would walk around the school, and teachers would just be playing it for their entire class . . . it was really a grassroots start,”

Shankweiler said, speaking about the band’s humble beginnings and the type of community support that propelled “Sour Candy” to success.

And ever since that grassroots start, Melt’s music has continued to amaze.

With an eclectic mix of musical tastes and influences combined with varying levels of musical training and education, the band members each contribute something unique to Melt’s sound.

Stewart-Frommer mentioned that her powerful, but equally tender, lilting voice was completely self-taught.

“My mom had this thing where … she didn’t want me to get singing lessons, because she wanted me to just have fun,” Stewart-Frommer said.

Gabriel mentioned that he also taught himself piano.

“I took a couple lessons here and there, but I just grew up listening to a lot of music — my dad plays piano,” he said.

Other members, like Shankweiler and bassist Lucas Saur, had much more extensive preparation and education in music theory.

Stewart-Frommer explained some of the reasons why she believed “Sour Candy” had touched so many people. see MELT, page 5

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THE TUFTS DAILY | WEEKENDER | Thursday, April 8, 2021

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Melt talks evolution of student-run band MELT

continued from page 4 “’Sour Candy’… truly was just us,” she said. “We were 18 … and I think that that is still the energy we bring, honestly, just because we really fell into this opportunity.”

Those humble beginnings, along with the group’s evident passion for music, shine through even on the more mellow tracks from Melt’s discography.

“West Side Highway” was noticeably more subtle and relaxed than some of the band’s previous releases, but still rich with ingenuity and soulful lyrics.

Stewart-Frommer explained that one of the silver linings of the pandemic was the amount of time it provided Melt’s normally scattered members to gather and produce a full EP.

“Quarantine was one of our first opportunities in a while to spend weeks on end together, hanging out and writing,” she said. “And a lot of music came out of that.”

Gabriel attributed the toned-down nature of the EP — as compared to the rest of the group’s music — to the lack of live concerts, making the writing process more somber.

During a regular year, though, Melt’s band members balance being college students with booking gigs and performing concerts. Stewart-Frommer touched on the difficulty of living this “double life.”

“It’s so much to be performing, and it’s so awesome, but just the whiplash of going from that life to this life can sometimes be . . . a little overwhelming,” she said.

Shankweiler discussed the strange transition the band members had to make from concerts to school life. She described the weirdness of being in a class where the professor was “talking about ancient Greece right now, but I just played a show for 500 people.” She equated the experience to having “different personalities.”

But overall, the feelings of gratitude and pride in the music they produce continue to characterize not just their discography, but the way they speak about the whole experience.

“It’s nice to have those kinds of two worlds going on simultaneously,” Gabriel said. “I’m in school, but then I also go off and do this crazy, fun thing every weekend.”

When asked about plans for the future, Stewart-Frommer’s answer was simple.

“I think we want to just keep having fun, and keep making music,” she said.

They expressed enthusiasm about playing live concerts again, an experience which Gabriel said was “not refined or perfected,” but was thrilling because of that. ”The best moments, at least on stage, are when I really feel connected to the audience,” Stewart-Frommer said.

Listening to the way the members of Melt speak of their connection to their audience, their music and each other reveals a whole new depth to their music. There is a level of intimacy in the connections they have made, and it bathes their music with refreshing new intricacies.

SURE, AT FIRST I WAS A LITTLE TAKEN ABACK

BY THE WHOLE PEEING STANDING UP THING. BUT I TAUGHT HIM TO THROW A STICK AND NOW HANGING OUT WITH HIM IS THE BEST PART OF MY DAY. — EINSTEIN adopted 12-09-10

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Opinion

7 Thursday, April 8, 2021

EDITORIAL

With little time off, professors should step up to reduce student burnout When Tufts announced the spring calendar in October, it was difficult to imagine what the absence of a full spring break would feel like. The revised calendar meant that students had a longer winter break and more time to quarantine after arriving in January, but also that the semester’s normal week of recuperation would be replaced with a single long weekend. Now, after a marathon of nine weeks of rigorous coursework and exams, students are experiencing the serious effects of burnout created by that decision.

Tufts faculty demonstrated their care for the welfare of their students when they voted to extend the fall exceptional pass/fail policy to the spring.

Now, as we come upon the end of the academic year, professors must continue to recognize the extraordinary circumstances of this semester and act with empathy. Otherwise, students will continue to have to choose between their academic success and their mental health.

While it is understandable that a full week of vacation might have brought the risk of students traveling and spreading the virus, this was not reason enough to get rid of spring break entirely. Some of Tufts’ peer institutions still found creative solutions, including “wellness days,” non-consecutive days off that in total could have allowed as much time to

Brendan Hartnett Democracy in The Daily

It’s more than just votes

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here has been outrage since Georgia passed Senate Bill 202. Democrats have objected to a bill that they believe will limit people of color from voting, corporations have been pressured to denounce the bill and Major League Baseball has moved the location of the MLB AllStar game out of Georgia in protest. A similar bill passed in Texas, drawing significant outrage and criticism from Texasbased corporations.

rest as a traditional spring break.

But aside from a single day off for a long “spring break” weekend, Tufts did not even meet students in the middle with wellness days.

Offering “Staycation” events but not real time off from academic work signals a frustrating lack of concern for student mental health, during a semester when academic stress only piles onto interlocking global crises.

Given that a last minute change to the entire university’s academic calendar seems unlikely, we urge another segment of the Tufts community — professors — to act where the administration has not.

Professors exercise considerable power through setting course agendas and schedules, and as they do so during this final month of the academic year, they should take into account how course activities will affect their students’ mental health and academic success. For professors who don’t normally do so during class time, this will require engaging with students to check in on their mental health and academic concerns, and then working with students to address them.

One way for professors to support overwhelmed students is to create their own wellness days.

Though some professors already took this commendable step ahead of Tufts’ “spring break,” these instances were the excep-

tions, not the norm. If similar gestures became more common, students would have room to breathe during a semester that has offered little.

Some classes may face constraints that make taking a day off impossible, but even in these instances, there are steps a professor can take to support their students’ mental health. These include replacing a mandatory synchronous lecture with a condensed asyn-

chronous lesson with the same content, or at least relaxing penalties that students face for missing an asynchronous class.

Even taking the measure of dropping each student’s lowest quiz or homework grade would reduce the stress that any individual assignment will cause.

During a semester in which heightened medical and financial concerns exacerbate the challenges of academic life, students deserve more, not

less time off than they would get in a normal semester. It is unfortunate that the university’s official calendar did not reflect this, but it is not too late for professors to step in and bring forth positive change. By supporting their students and understanding the toll continuous work can take on their mental health, professors have the power to work with their students to finish this semester as strongly as possible.

A few weeks ago, I wrote on the trend of states passing restrictive voting laws, and the need to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and H.R.1. My point still stands, but it must be readdressed and refocused, resolving confusion pertaining to the consequences of these restrictive voter laws.

Nate Cohn published a piece for “The Upshot” of The New York Times on Saturday in which he analyzed the consequences of restrictive voter laws on turnout and partisan politics. He concluded that these bills are not as detrimental as Democrats suggest, utilizing credible studies that prove restrictive voter laws do not significantly decrease turnout of either party.

What Cohn’s piece fails to highlight is the meaning behind

these bills. The issue with these restrictive bills is not that they will make it harder for Democrats to win elections. As Cohn asserts, that may not occur. The issue is in regard to democracy. Republicans in control of state legislatures are changing the rules of the game to advantage themselves over Democrats. This is undemocratic.

This is an abuse of power.

I have written extensively on the subject of competitive authoritarianism. There’s a reason for that: It is proving to be an overwhelming threat to western democracies, and the U.S. is not immune. The threat of competitive authoritarianism did not leave office with Trump. It simply changed. Now, competitive authoritarianism manifests within the U.S. as subnational authoritarianism, in which

officials at the state level are leveraging their incumbency to change the rules of our democracy in order to advantage their own party.

Perhaps these efforts put forth by Republican state legislatures will not limit Democratic turnout — though their redistricting efforts will certainly reward Republicans with more seats in the House. Yet the principle driving these bills must be feared. Democracies require tolerance for the opposition.

This has clearly died. What is holding U.S. democracy on its last leg is forbearance.

The principle of forbearance states that politicians should not do things simply because they can. While the U.S. Constitution has provisions that check the power of politicians, amending

voting laws in hopes of consolidating your party’s power is not forbidden, yet doing just that is antithetical to democracy.

Republicans are violating this principle of forbearance, utilizing their incumbency to obtain an unfair advantage.

Perhaps these bills will fail to restrict the vote, as Cohn suggests. That doesn’t mean they’re acceptable. These bills are being weaponized by Republicancontrolled state legislatures to advantage Republicans over Democrats in the national government. This is undemocratic.

This is a competitive authoritarian threat.

BY DERIN SAVASAN

Brendan Hartnett is a sophomore studying political science.

Brendan can be reached at brendan.hartnett@tufts.edu.

Sports

8 Thursday, April 8, 2021

Jenny Lu In the Paint

tuftsdaily.com

Spring sports return with unorthodox schedules

The NBA is not exciting right now

I

admit that I have been watching very little of the NBA, and a large part of that is due to the fact that the league is just not exciting right now.

Although many players have returned, the league seems to be plagued with injuries and load management more than usual this season.

Major stars such as Joel Embiid and Jayson Tatum were hurt or missed time with COVID-19. Reigning champions LeBron James and Anthony Davis are still out. Klay Thompson had a season-ending achilles injury before the 2020–21 season even started. LaMelo Ball, one of the most exciting new players in the league that was on track to win Rookie of the Year, suffered a likely season-ending wrist injury.

And then there are players who are out for periods of time despite being healthy (such as Kyrie Irving), which is most likely due to load management by teams. Although it is necessary to rest players to reduce the likelihood of injuries, teams should practice it sparingly and be more transparent about it.

Aside from injuries and load management, COVID-19 has also played a part in a less exciting season. More than 30 games were postponed this season and countless players have missed games due to contracting COVID-19 or contact tracing. Although these issues are understandable, the league could have taken more preventative measures, such as canceling the All-Star Game.

For a while now, the league has had a significant disparity in talent between the Eastern and Western Conferences.

A stacked Western Conference has been a source of many complaints from fans and is a reason why the NBA is open to considering the expansion of the league by adding two teams — but that’s a topic for another day.

If it weren’t for the “Weak East,” the blockbuster trade that allowed the Brooklyn Nets to become a powerhouse probably wouldn’t have happened.

When reporter Shams Charania broke the news that James Harden was being traded from the Houston Rockets to the Nets, many fans were quick to point out the precedent that the NBA set by vetoing the 2011 Chris Paul trade that would have paired him with Kobe Bryant. Now, it seems like “super teams” are becoming the new norm. In the super team era, the NBA now allows virtually any trade to happen even though the results, like this absurdly overpowered Nets team, are hard to take seriously.

Hopefully things will pick up with more players back and the 2021 NBA playoffs on the horizon, but there are several changes the NBA could make that would help the league become more exciting, including demanding more transparency from teams about load management and bringing more balance to the league by adding two expansion teams.

Jenny Lu is a first-year who has not yet declared a major. Jenny can be reached at jen.lu@tufts.edu.

NICOLE GARAY / THE TUFTS DAILY

Huskins Field is pictured on Aug. 28, 2020.

by Jack Adgate

Contributing Writer

The presidents of the NESCAC colleges and universities released a statement on March 9 saying that they would allow spring athletics competition to take place.

The conference left the decision to participate up to each school and required that a minimum of six schools participate in a sport for the season to take place. This spring, baseball, golf, men’s and women’s rowing, men’s and women’s lacrosse, softball, sailing, outdoor track and field and men’s and women’s tennis will be able to compete in conference play.

Tufts student-athletes will remain under university surveillance testing and must follow quarantine protocols like all other students.

While the continuation of a spring sports season provides Tufts student-athletes and sports fans with cautious optimism, the formatting of the schedules for each team reflects the difficulties of playing during a pandemic. The shortened nature of the season will put immense pressure on student-athletes to perform well, as their chances to qualify for postseason play are extremely limited.

Tufts will only be competing against other NESCAC schools, with some teams playing the same school for up to half of their schedule. Teams will not play any schools outside of the conference.

Cancellations and postponement of competition are likely, as schools must comply with their respective COVID-19 protocols to be eligible for competition.

Not only will athletes have a very limited window to win as many games as possible, but they are also going to be facing

real game action for the first time in over a year. Kyle Cortese, a senior captain on the men’s baseball team, explained how this quick start to the season has affected not only his personal preparation, but the team’s as well.

“Individually, I prepared as if COVID wasn’t a thing and as if it were a normal year,” Cortese said. “As a team, I’d say we’re all ecstatic to be able to play this year and have a chance to compete … Guys are gearing up, getting back into the swing of things and working hard to make sure we can play and compete at a high level this spring.”

Starting on the diamond, the Tufts baseball and softball programs will be playing weekend four-game splits against NESCAC East Division opponents, with two games played on Saturday and two on Sunday. The Saturday doubleheader will be played at one team’s field and Sunday’s will be played at the opponents’. This could pose a legitimate hurdle for athletes and coaches, as they will not only have to play twice in one day, but will also have to travel to another location the next day for two more games.

Tufts softball has already experienced their first taste of this “COVID-19 effect” on their season, as their originally scheduled four-game set with Bates was postponed and replaced by a doubleheader at Middlebury this weekend. The Jumbos split the doubleheader with the Panthers on April 3. The NESCAC softball championship will feature a best of three series between the top two regular season teams on May 8 and 9.

The baseball team will have to play seven inning games for the entire regular season, as opposed to the normal nine they would play given a normal season.

Baseball will participate in regular season play through May 2. Similar to softball, there will be a shortened, best two-ofthree NESCAC Championship series the weekend of May 8 and 9.

Cortese commented on the awkward format of the schedule, saying that it cannot get in the way of the main focus of the season: winning games.

“We have a little bit of a different schedule in regards to conference weekends,” Cortese said. “That being said, the most important thing for us is to control what we can control and let the little things take care of themselves.”

Tufts golf will face an extremely shortened schedule, with only two regular season events in April before the NESCAC rounds kick off at the end of the month.

Similarly, men’s and women’s tennis will play in only four matches before entering championship play early in May. The NESCAC championships for both tennis programs will be held as a single-elimination tournament.

Women’s tennis opened their season against Brandeis this past weekend after a cancellation by Bates, winning handily 9–0.

Men’s and women’s track and field face a six-meet schedule, in which they will compete against other NESCAC schools.

NESCAC championships for both teams begin May 1. Men’s and women’s rowing will compete in three regular season events before NESCAC prelims and championships begin May 1, with the women’s championship on May 8 and the men’s championship on May 9.

Men’s and women’s lacrosse face six and five game sets of NESCAC East Division opponents, respectively. After this regular season slate, the Jumbo lacrosse programs will have the chance to qualify for a three-round NESCAC tournament, with the men’s championship game held on May 8 or 9 and women’s championship game on May 1 or 2. Men’s lacrosse will open the season April 10 when they host Colby, while women’s lacrosse dominated their opener at Connecticut College April 3, winning 17–5.

Although this season may provide few opportunities for Tufts student-athletes to qualify for playoff and championship competition, the return of athletics this spring marks a positive on the road back to normalcy.