Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Bringing a little humanity to computer science: Digital Tools for Premodern Studies brings two fields together see FEATURES / PAGE 3

SPORTS FEATURE

Palleschi brings heart, skill to Tufts basketball

As(s)inine menu, service at Little Donkey in Cambridge see ARTS & LIVING / PAGE 5

SEE SPORTS / BACK PAGE

THE

INDEPENDENT

STUDENT

N E W S PA P E R

OF

TUFTS

UNIVERSITY

E S T. 1 9 8 0

T HE T UFTS DAILY

VOLUME LXXII, NUMBER 53

tuftsdaily.com

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, MASS.

Jim McGovern, Bill Browder discuss U.S.-Russia relations, defending human rights

by Elie Levine Staff Writer

Bill Browder, the founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, and Congressman Jim McGovern (D-MA) discussed the future of U.S. foreign relations through the lens of the 2009 trial of Sergei Magnitsky in an event sponsored by the Institute for Business in the Global Context (IBGC). The event was attended by about 60 people and took place at 5:30 p.m. on Monday in the ASEAN Auditorium in Cabot Intercultural Center.

McGovern said in his introductory remarks that Browder, the most prominent foreign capitalist in Russia until 2005, and worked tirelessly to promote human rights and defend justice during and after Magnitsky’s trial.

Browder said he began to investigate corruption in the Russian national economy when he realized that the companies he was investing in were being “robbed blind” by the government. He noticed that oligarchs hired government officials and manipulated those officials’ votes. Browder explained that he worked to expose “oligarchs who were challenging the presidency,” so remarkably, President Vladimir Putin was on his side for a time. Then, Putin arrested Mikhail

MAX LALANNE / THE TUFTS DAILY

Founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital Management Bill Browder discusses the case of murdered Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky and U.S.-Russia relations in ASEAN Auditorium on Nov. 28.

Khodorkovsky, who was once Russia’s richest man, and convinced other oligarchs to pay him to avoid similar fates.

“From that moment on, Putin became the richest man in Russia … and all of my activities became extremely unpopular with him because I was no longer exposing his enemies,” Browder said.

“I was exposing his own personal economic interests.”

In response to Browder’s expository activities, the Russian government detained him at the airport and deemed him a threat to Russian security the following day. He was then expelled from the country. Police officers raided his law firm and seized his assets. Browder said he hired Magnitsky as a lawyer and Magnitsky testified against the police officers who conducted the raid.

As a result, Magnitsky was arrested, detained and tortured. He was kept in cells with no heating, which nearly froze him to death, and with the lights kept on at all hours to promote sleep deprivation.

Over the course of his imprisonment, he was pronounced as in critical condition.

Officials promised to transfer him to a hospital; instead, they placed him in an isolation cell, chained him to a bed and beat him to death.

In December 2012, the Magnitsky Act, also known as the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, was passed with a vote of 92-4 in the Senate and a plurality vote of at least 85 percent in the House of Representatives. The act was initially introduced in 2010 by McGovern, and drew unprecedented degrees of support across partisan lines, according to Bhaskar Chakravorti, the executive director of IBGC. “The act directs the president to identify individuals responsible for the detention, abuse or death of Sergei Magnitsky, or of other Russians seeking to expose illegal activity by Russian officials,” McGovern said.

The 39 people on the “Magnitsky List” have been made ineligible for U.S. visas, or their visas have been redacted, McGovern said. Their assets have been frozen, and see MAGNITSKY, page 2

Tufts professor receives U.N. award for cholera outbreak prediction methods

by Minna Trinh

Contributing Writer

Shafiqul Islam, director of Tufts’ Water Diplomacy Program, received the Creativity Award in the seventh Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water (PSIPW ) from the United Nations (U.N.) on Nov. 2 for his work in cholera outbreak prevention.

Islam, who is also a professor in both the Tufts Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, was honored at the U.N. headquarters in New York in a ceremony presided over

by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and PSIPW Chairman Prince Khaled Bin Sultan Bin Abdulaziz.

Cholera is a bacteria in water that can kill an afflicted person within a day of infection through severe dehydration,

Please recycle this newspaper

Rain 53 / 47

/thetuftsdaily

Islam said. However, he added that cholera deaths are highly preventable and that if a good cholera outbreak prediction is made, those deaths can be easily minimized.

“A glass of water full of salt and sugar … if you [drink] this for 24 hours, cholera will essentially get out of your system,” he said. “If not, you may get killed [due to] dehydration.”

Islam said that over the past eight to 10 years, he and his research group have been working on a way to minimize cholera outbreaks, which have a disproportionate health impact depending on geographic location. “[Cholera outbreaks] continue to be a major health threat particularly in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America,” he said. “The cholera bacteria can live in two distinct environments: the micro-environment of the human

For breaking news, our content archive and exclusive content, visit tuftsdaily.com @tuftsdaily

tuftsdaily

tuftsdaily

body and the macro-environment of salty water.”

According to Islam, he and his research team came up with a method for predicting cholera outbreaks by using satellites, which allow for a faster mobilization of resources and more preparation for highly vulnerable groups before the outbreak occurs.

According to a 2011 National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) article, satellites were integral to Islam’s research because they can pick out green patches of ocean water that indicate the presence of phytoplankton. The cholera bacteria live in microscopic aquatic organisms called copepods, which feed on phytoplankton.

During the dry season in Bangladesh, where Islam conducted his research, river levels drop and ocean water comes in, bringing the cholera-infested copepods with it, according to NSIDC.

Contact Us P.O. Box 53018, Medford, MA 02155 617 627 3090 FAX 617 627 3910 daily@tuftsdaily.com

Islam said that by looking at his data, one can predict that a significant cholera outbreak will occur three months from now in countries, such as Mozambique, which are affected by water contamination.

“Through prediction, we can actively aim to prevent it,” he said.

Islam said that receiving the award in recognition of his years of disciplinary research was “humbling.”

“I hope … that it has created a global attention to this problem,” he said. “It can help us develop awareness [about cholera outbreaks].”

Islam collaborated with Ali Shafqat Akanda from the University of Rhode Island and Antarpreet Jutla from West Virginia University, two of his Ph.D. students who recently graduated from Tufts.

NEWS............................................1 FEATURES.................................3 ARTS & LIVING.......................5

see CHOLERA, page 2

COMICS....................................... 7 OPINION.....................................8 SPORTS............................ BACK

2

THE TUFTS DAILY | News | Tuesday, November 29, 2016

T HE T UFTS D AILY Arin Kerstein Editor-in-Chief

EDITORIAL

Sophie Lehrenbaum Jake Taber Managing Editors Evan Sayles Associate Editor Kathleen Schmidt Executive News Editor Gil Jacobson News Editors Melissa Kain Robert Katz Liam Knox Catherine Perloff Jei-Jei Tan Hannah Uebele Joe Walsh Juliana Furgala Assistant News Editors Jesse Najarro Danny Nelson

Miranda Willson Executive Features Editor Constantinos Angelakis Features Editors Nina Joung Becca Leibowitz Justin Krakoff Executive Arts Editor John Gallagher Arts Editors Eran Sabaner Isaac Brown Assistant Arts Editors Jocelyn Contreras Alison Epstein Elliot Storey Emma Henderson Executive Op-Ed Editor Shannon Geary Cartoonists Stephen Dennison Allie Merola Miranda Chavez Editorialists Frances DeFreitas Eriko Koide Anita Ramaswamy Noah Weinflash Phillip Goldberg Executive Sports Editor Yuan Jun Chee Sports Editors Maddie Payne Eddie Samuels Maclyn Senear Josh Slavin Brad Schussel Assistant Sports Editor Noah Smith Max Lalanne Mia Lambert Caroline Ambros Ray Bernoff Scott Fitchen Jean Gonzalez Kevin Ho Thaw Htet Lilia Kang Sitara Rao Evan Sayles Zachary Sebek Alexis Serino Seohyun Shim Angelie Xiong Ezgi Yazici

Executive Photo Editor Photo Administrator Picture Tufts Editor Staff Photographers

PRODUCTION David Westby Production Director Allie Merola Executive Layout Editors Sebastian Torrente Lilia Aronoff-Aspatur Layout Editors Jewel Castle Brianna Mignano Emily Sharp Astrid Weng Ezgi Yazici Alice Yoon Petrina Chan Creative Director Allie Merola Executive Graphics Editor Petrina Chan Graphics Editors Peter Lam Sebastian Torrente

Zach Hertz Executive Copy Editors Jei-Jei Tan Norrie Beach Copy Editors Arthur Beckel Caroline Bollinger Alison Epstein Gil Jacobson Melissa Kain Bibi Lichauco Kathleen Martensen Netai Schwartz Nihaal Shah Arielle Sigel Liora Silkes

Maxwell Bernstein Executive Tech Manager Nitesh Gupta Online Editor Mia Lambert Social Media Editor

BUSINESS Josh Morris Executive Business Director Eleanor Harvey Ad Manager

tuftsdaily.com

Trial and death of Russian lawyer prompts accountability law in United States MAGNITSKY

continued from page 1 they have been effectively prohibited from doing business in the United States, he explained.

The Magnitsky Act was initially specific to Russia, but McGovern was involved in its global expansion. Still, he emphasized that the act cannot be a substitute for reinforcing the rule of law in the face of human rights violations.

“We should all work for the day when judicial systems at the national level are strong enough and independent enough to investigate and punish the people who use their positions of power to repress their citizens’ most basic rights,” he said.

McGovern also stressed that the broader aim of the act is to defend human rights.

As the co-chair of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission in Congress, McGovern said he is committed to prioritizing human rights, even as military and trade issues tend to garner more attention from the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

McGovern said that the future of U.S.Russia relations with regard to Trump’s impending presidency “remains to be seen,” but he expressed a general sense of doubt that Trump would be successful in repealing the Magnitsky Act, primarily because it passed overwhelmingly in both the House and the Senate.

In an interview with the Daily,

Chakravorti described the impetus for hosting the talk. He said that the IBGC deals chiefly with the “intersection of business and the other aspects of the world,” and he emphasized the importance of the Magnitsky trial as an example of how international business intersects with issues of human rights.

Lis Tarlow, an alumnus of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and the former executive director of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, said she attended the talk because she was “absolutely interested in this case.”

“I have enormous respect for Bill Browder in his crusade for human rights,” she said.

Islam’s research takes interdisciplinary approach to cholera outbreaks CHOLERA

continued from page 1 He also noted that the research findings resulted from a collaboration between Tufts and the University of Maryland.

Kurt Pennell, chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, said that the team’s interdisciplinary approach led to consistent and significant results in the field of cholera pre-

vention and mitigations.

“We are grateful that [the U.N.] has not only recognized [the team’s] achievements but also provided prominence to this timely and humane work,” Pennell told the Daily in an email.

David Gute, a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, said that winning the PSIPW is an outstanding accomplishment.

“Professor Islam has made his career at the interface between disciplines which feature different ways of knowledge creation that require synthesis and integration,” Gute said. “As a public health practitioner, I can attest to the importance of such work in being able to better to respond to the continuing challenges posed by this global scourge.”

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Features

New course highlights growing academic recognition of digital humanities

3 tuftsdaily.com

Natasha Khwaja and Faryal Jafri Karachi vs. Kansas

Bubbles and boxes

F

RACHAEL MEYER / THE TUFTS DAILY

Professors Anthony Bucci and Marie-Claire Beaulieu pose together before their digital humanities class on Nov. 28.

by Hermes Suen

Contributing Writer

Coming from two distinct backgrounds, Associate Professor of Classics Marie-Claire Beaulieu and Computer Science Lecturer Anthony Bucci have teamed up this semester to offer an introductory course that provides insight into the emerging interdisciplinary field of digital humanities.

Digital humanities, in the context of the course, is primarily concerned with creating digital representations of ancient artifacts and using them to analyze, research and share knowledge, according to Beaulieu. She believes it represents the future of the humanities field and a growing trend in academia.

“This is where our field is headed in classics, as well as [in] many other humanities fields,” Beaulieu said. “We are increasing the use of these methods to pursue our own research.”

Joseph Auner, dean of academic affairs for Arts and Sciences and music professor, explained that the course is an example of a growing movement at Tufts to integrate digital analysis into the humanities and to create a more interdisciplinary environment at Tufts.

“The area of digital humanities is increasingly important, and every university is thinking about strategies toward supporting new kinds of teaching and research in the digital humanities,” Auner said.

Tufts already offers outlets in the area of digital humanities, including geographic information systems (GIS), which is supported by Tufts’ Data Lab, a university-wide resource that allows students to access data, workshops and research materials.

Another digital humanities resource at Tufts is the Perseus Digital Library. Developed by classics professor Gregory Crane, Perseus is a digital archive of ancient texts from the GrecoRoman world.

Beaulieu said that students use this

database heavily in Introduction to Digital Humanities and that it is readily accessible to all Tufts students.

Following this trend toward greater integration of computing and the humanities is the introduction of a new graduate program through the Department of Classics, which will begin next fall. In September 2016, the department announced that it was launching a graduate program through which students earn an M.A. in Digital Tools for Premodern Studies.

This program focuses explicitly on using computational methods and other digital techniques to analyze data from the ancient world.

Beaulieu explained that the Introduction to Digital Humanities course is crucial in shaping the direction of this new graduate program.

“This class will serve as a pilot [or] a prototype for this graduate [program], and graduate students will have to take this course as an introduction,” she said.

Beaulieu emphasized the benefits of focusing on this digital direction for those in the humanities field, such as herself.

“This makes [our research] shareable, so we can aggregate things and other people can re-use our transcriptions to do other work, such as making large databases, analyzing trends,” she said.

“We learn much more than we would have by just using analog methods.”

Beaulieu added that an emphasis on understanding computing has become pervasive across the humanities. For this reason, she feels that interdisciplinary courses like this one could be useful for any undergraduate student at Tufts.

Bucci is excited about the course’s ability to inform students and academics about the problems that arise when humans and machines interact through the study of both texts and artifacts.

“I really enjoyed the idea that we

can gain insight into something that happened so long ago via actual artifacts, which were found and were then encoded into data,” he said.

In creating the introductory course, Beaulieu and Bucci said they were approached by Soha Hassoun, the chair of the computer science department, who was looking to increase the availability and approachability of computer science education to non-majors.

The class currently has eight students from a range of backgrounds, according to Beaulieu. Students have been gaining hands-on experience through data analysis techniques, which Bucci said subconsciously teaches them important computer science skills.

“What is exciting about it is that we are teaching [computer science] skills without them being [computer science] skills. The students are doing things equivalent to coding while not writing code the way they would in a computer science course,” he said. “I think that students who might have a little apprehension about coding can learn a lot and recognize later that they had skills they didn’t realize they had before.”

Speaking as a computer scientist, Bucci noted that this is an innovative way of looking at computer engineering, as it offers the depth and historical context that typically comes from humanities fields.

“Most computer software related jobs are creating applications for banks or bureaucracies, and that can be very dry,” he said. “I feel like certain individuals in computer science who are looking for something more interesting can explore Latin, Greek and other classical fields in a way that they never dreamt would be possible [through digital humanities].”

Bucci feels that this course could change the way students view both see DIGITAL HUMANITIES, page 4

aryal (F): I remember coming to Tufts and thinking it was so diverse (whatever that means). When I expressed this excitement to some fellow peers, however, I was promptly corrected and told that Tufts was, in fact, not diverse at all. For me, it was all relative.

I’m the Kansas part of this column, and as you can imagine, Kansas is not the most diverse place in the world. I grew up as one of a handful of brown people in my entire school. Especially when I was younger, seeing a brown person around town was a pleasant but rare surprise. I had my worlds compartmentalized: my brown friends and my school (read: white) friends.

Natasha (N): Same for me. Just being home for Thanksgiving brought back the strangeness of being the only person of color in a space — something that was completely revolutionized for me when I went to college. My shift between college and high school, however, wasn’t centered around challenging previous categorization.

Rather, I started to rethink what I perceived as “normal.”

F: When I came to Tufts, my worldview began to shift. I started to see other examples of how people tore down these walls of separation that I had artificially built. It was helpful for me to see the lack of friend categorization modeled by people who came from different backgrounds. At Tufts, I don’t feel like I need to have my brown friends and my “school” friends, because now they are one and the same.

N: For me, instead of creating compartments for my Tufts friends, I started to challenge how I categorized myself. I went to a school where I thought it was normal to be suddenly called on whenever South Asia or Islam came up in class or be jokingly referred to as an international student. These things would make me uncomfortable, but I didn’t know how to confront the issue because I thought it was normal and okay. When teachers would go around asking what type of Christmas tree everyone had, I found myself having to lie in order to not attract questioning stares. When going between home and school every day, I was also going between my two spheres of normal.

F: I have to admit, it’s been hard to shake this categorization of the people in my life since I feel like I’ve been subconsciously trained to do it since I was so little. There are some places where I still feel like I need to categorize myself in a certain way. For example, my sorority is predominantly white, and I am still one of only a handful of people of color. My mental categorization sometimes now goes: “my sorority friends vs. my brown friends.”

N: What’s difficult about growing up in places where diversity isn’t the norm is that we’re forced to either compartmentalize ourselves or the people around us and operate in different bubbles. For so long, we drew our personas from our surroundings instead of building ourselves up from a collection of experiences. We’re still working on merging and popping these bubbles.

Natasha Khwaja is a junior majoring in international relations and anthropology.

Natasha can be reached at natasha.khwaja@tufts.edu.

Faryal Jafri is a junior majoring in international relations and minoring in economics.

Faryal is currently abroad in London and can be reached at faryal.jafri@tufts.edu.

4

THE TUFTS DAILY | Features | Tuesday, November 29, 2016

tuftsdaily.com

Course in digital humanities exemplifies changes in research methods, connections between fields

RACHAEL MEYER / THE TUFTS DAILY

Professor of Computer Science Anthony Bucci (seated) engages in discussion with Professor of Classics Marie-Claire Beaulieu during her presentation in their class on Nov. 28. The course is designed in the style of traditional introductory computer science courses at Tufts and is open to all undergraduates, though it will be counted as a Humanities credit by the school.

DIGITAL HUMANITIES

continued from page 1 computer science and the world.

“I would like to instill in students greater confidence in their abilities to work with computational techniques while also gaining a more informed skepticism of data products,” he said. “I would like to be able to see students look at these things with a discerning eye and understand the process behind making graphs and infographics. They will be able to see the world a little differently.”

Meha Elhence, a first-year enrolled in the course, explained that the class holds a unique niche in academia as it brings together two seemingly different arenas.

She said that the students in her class are currently working on their final projects, for which they develop a hypothesis about ancient civilization and then seek to answer it through computational techniques.

Her group is investigating whether or not the deities worshipped in a certain region had any effect on the names of people in the area.

Elhence explained that while she may not pursue classics or computer science as a career, she has gained important skills through the class that could help her in the future.

“I now know how to take data and make it meaningful by visualizing it in some sort of graph and making something that is easy for everyone to see and understand,” Elhence said. “[The course] has also taught me to teach myself things and learn how to use data analysis, despite never having used it before. I’ve learned to not always give up on something just because it seems boring at first.”

Junior Giles Bullen, who is majoring in film and media studies, said that students are getting more out of this class than just basic knowledge of digital humanities.

“[You gain] a specific mentality of not only questioning the data, where it comes from, why it appears the way it does, what it says, but also gathering it yourself and reexamining how you look at something like a book and the ways you can understand it,” he said.

Students will again have the option to take Introduction to Digital Humanities in fall 2017, according to Beaulieu. Seeing as this was the first time this course was taught, she said that she might change a few things the next time around.

“I would like to approach [the class] from a unified perspective — it

could be mythology or ancient religion,” she said. “It’s something that we are very familiar with and students are very interested in.”

While Auner described Tufts as somewhat of a leader in the field of digital humanities, he noted that the university is looking to further develop its involvement in the field.

“A big thing that we are exploring is the level of centralization,” he said.

“Currently, there are a lot of faculty working in this area, but it is distributed across many disciplines and departments.”

Auner said these new initiatives at

Tufts could move forward in several different directions to provide a broader and more comprehensive education for students.

“The traditional model of humanities research is the solitary researcher working in an archive on some question,” he said. “Now the archive is more of a virtual archive, and rather than the single scholar, there are teams of scholars working together and teams of people who are not scholars in the older sense. And you can ask really different questions because of the kinds of information you have.”

RACHAEL MEYER / THE TUFTS DAILY

Professor of Classics Marie-Claire Beaulieu uses a map to demonstrate data points during her class on Nov. 28. The class, which is taught jointly with Professor of Computer Science Anthony Bucci, meets every Monday and Wednesday in Eaton Hall.

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

ARTS&LIVING RESTAURANT REVIEW

Little Donkey suffers from confusing menu, steep prices

by Eran Sabaner Arts Editor

Although Little Donkey just opened its doors over the summer, the Cambridge gem has had no problems integrating itself into the neighborhood. Making reservations, which can be done online through Open Table, is particularly tough, despite the fact that the kitchen is open for late hours. Part of Little Donkey’s charm is its location; Central Square is arguably the most vibrant part of Cambridge, thanks to nightclubs and concert venues such as The Middle Eastern and Middlesex Lounge. The biggest accomplishment of the restaurant, however, is its vibrancy; unlike other Cambridge spots that die down early, Little Donkey is open until 2 a.m. from Thursday to Saturday, blurring the line between a fine-dining

restaurant and neighborhood bar. While Little Donkey’s concept is a refreshing continuation of a recent trend that started with Yvonne’s and Committee, its execution is substandard. A problematic menu, high prices and poor service are evidence that the venue has yet to find its footing.

Little Donkey is the third Boston venue from chefs and restaurateurs Jamie Bissonnette and Ken Oringer. Bissonnette and Oringer, both James Beard Award winners, are reputable names on the Boston culinary scene; after Toro and Coppa, they successfully expanded their business outside the city with Toro New York and, most recently, Toro Bangkok. The reason why the Bisonette-Oringer partnership works is because of the duo’s devotion to providing a solid dining experience with inventive dishes, fresh

ingredients and acceptable prices.

Such effort is unfortunately missing in Little Donkey. Little Donkey’s menu might be best described as international bar food. From farro kimchi fried rice to octopus a la plancha, the dishes are from all over the world and served in small plates. The abundance of different cuisines makes the ordering process complicated: It is difficult to find two complementing dishes when pizza bagel is listed right below foie gras. A better-edited menu would save diners from awkward interactions with waiters that end with the words, “I need an extra few minutes.”

In addition to the confusing menu, the restaurant suffers due to its extremely small portion sizes. Although the restaurant recommends that diners order two see LITTLE DONKEY, page 6

VIDEO GAME REVIEW

Gamers design dream theme parks with ‘Planet Coaster’

by Isaac Brown Arts Editor

Back in the early 2000s, “RollerCoaster Tycoon 2” (2002), was a blast to play.

One could design rides with just the right amount of corkscrews, helixes and inversions to get park-goers’ adrenaline pumping. Until now, few roller coaster design and theme park management games have achieved the same level of innovation and mechanical depth. Even the sequel, “RollerCoaster Tycoon 3” (2004), didn’t do enough to improve on its predecessor in a meaningful way. This was a well-documented phenomenon for many titles in the early 2000s, as developers made the switch over from 2D to 3D and began focusing more on graphics rather than the quality of gameplay. Along with the rise of consoles, this caused the genre to sink into relative obscurity.

“Planet Coaster” (2016) may very well be the chosen title to bring theme park games back into popularity. Made by “Elite: Dangerous” (2014) developers Frontier Developments, it’s the first game that truly lives up to players’ high expectations after “RollerCoaster Tycoon 2” in terms of gameplay depth, polish and (hopefully) longevity. As with other games, the goal is to create a theme park that attracts huge numbers of people and earns enough profit to fund more outlandish rides and decorations. But the depth in these games doesn’t just come from building roller coasters or doing exciting things like managing park finances and listening to customers complain about their inability to find the exit as the player dispatches armies of handymen to clean up their vomit. Using rides to tell narratives and designing the entire park to create an immersive, exciting experience

for every customer from the moment they step into the park until the moment they leave – that’s what amusement parks are all about, and that’s what “Planet Coaster” lets you do.

Whereas players previously might have plonked down a couple of rides, used prefab coaster parts to piece together coasters, scattered a few props and plants here and there to liven up the place and then called it a day, decoration in “Planet Coaster” is a far more thoughtful, intricate process. The game gives players far more freedom in terms of terraforming options and décor customization. Anyone who’s played one of “The Sims” (2000-present) titles knows how many hours one can spend building and furnishing a house to get it just right; managing the actual Sims’ happiness is mostly busywork in comparison. This game has see PLANET COASTER, page 6

COURTESY FRONTIER DEVELOPMENTS

“Planet Coaster,” a construction and management simulation video game, allows players creative freedom in constructing coasters.

5 tuftsdaily.com

Tommy Gillespie The Reel World

Christmas movies

A

s I sit on my parents’ couch writing this, my sister and I are watching our family’s favorite Christmas movie, “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” (2000). Yes, it is the live-action version; sorry, Boris Karloff fans. Some may chide me for “starting Christmas too early” and “forgetting about Thanksgiving,” but I disagree for two reasons. First, I think Thanksgiving is an overrated holiday, and I simply regard it as the teaser trailer for Christmas. Also, in my opinion, the Christmas season starts on September 25.

Every Christmas season, I realize that almost every family I know has an agreed-upon household favorite Christmas movie. These decisions aren’t taken lightly, and many people have very strong opinions about the merits of their preferred Christmas film. Many (myself included) also pass serious judgment on other families for their family Christmas favorite with a level of passive-aggressive rancor usually reserved for PTA meetings and block party gossip. For example, when people tell me that their family’s favorite Christmas film is “Elf” (2004), I simply smile and politely ask, “So, you’re an Adam Sandler fan as well?”

The factors that determine a family’s favorite Christmas movie are varied: Generational divide, background and philosophy all come into the equation. For example, my father, who was raised in small-town New Jersey in the 60s and 70s, believes no Christmas film can match “A Christmas Story” (1983). My maternal grandmother, who grew up in Queens in the 50s, is partial to “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946). If I had to estimate, she’s seen it about 12,000 times, and she cries each and every time she watches it.

The concept of the “family favorite” movie can also be observed with Disney movies. In our family, it is “The Emperor’s New Groove” (2000). We’re sort of like Disney hipsters on this note; most people we know are passionate devotees of films like “The Little Mermaid” (1989) or “The Lion King” (1994). I think the reason we never took to the more quintessential Disney fare is somehow tied to the fact that nobody in our family has ever been a singer or played an instrument. Therefore, we were never drawn in by those films’ famed musical numbers. I should mention that, when I researched this article, I found a website that ranked Disney songs by their strength, and it put many of those from “The Emperor’s New Groove” near the bottom.

Our choice in family films says a great deal about the character of our family, in my opinion. Both “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and “The Emperor’s New Groove” are heavy on comedy and mostly light on sentimentality, with a banter-driven style of humor and many pop culture references. Accordingly, a typical conversation between my sister and myself contains at least four references to “Bend It Like Beckham” (2002). Some families want to go around the table saying what they’re thankful for. In lieu of that, we continued our family tradition of teasing my grandmother about her traumatic first Thanksgiving dinner, when she forgot to make mashed potatoes.

Tommy Gillespie is a first-year who has not yet declared a major. Tommy can be reached at thomas.gillespie@tufts.edu.

6

THE TUFTS DAILY | Arts & Living | Tuesday, November 29, 2016

tuftsdaily.com

Central Square hot spot needs some work LITTLE DONKEY

continued from page 5 to three dishes per person, atomic particle-esque sizes require a four-dish minimum. The portions would be acceptable at a white cloth fine-dining restaurant such as Menton, but it does not fit well with the casual atmosphere of Little Donkey. When each dish is between $10 to $16, a four-course dinner is not very budget-friendly either.

The restaurant’s most advertised food is mantı, a Turkish dish described as

“Istanbul meat ravioli.” Mediterranean cuisine has been gaining interest on the Boston food scene for a while now, and Bissonnette and Oringer’s decision to include a Turkish dish on their menu is a pleasant surprise. Served with sour cream and red pepper butter, mantı will impress diners that are unfamiliar with Turkish cuisine.

Another problem with Little Donkey is its service. Since the working hours are long and the venue is always loud, it is difficult to blame waiters for the

lack of good service. However, a restaurant that advertises itself as a “neighborhood gem” needs to be friendlier.

Dismissive attitudes shatter the illusion of a casual hangout spot. The service problem once again reinstates the identity crisis Little Donkey has; it’s not clear how the Bisonette-Oringer team wants the restaurant to be viewed.

While the dining experience at Little Donkey is mediocre at best, the place is still worth checking out for its bar and overall ambiance. It’s difficult to find a

restaurant that caters to 20-somethings, and in a city filled with students and young professionals, Little Donkey is aware of this absence. The place would function much better if it branded itself as a cocktail bar that happens to serve food from a simpler, more concise menu. It is still not too late for Little Donkey to make adjustments, and the popularity of the eatery, regardless of its deficiencies, suggests an outstanding demand. With a little soul searching, Little Donkey has the potential to be a great Central Square offering.

Frontier Developments breathes new life into park simulation genre PLANET COASTER

continued from page 5 the same feeling of design freedom but on a far larger scale. Whether it is making one’s roller coaster wind through a medieval fortress or a giant moose, the player has the technology to do so.

Designers also have more reason to rejoice, since “Planet Coaster” supports user-generated content and allows players to upload their own designs and download those of others, helping players improve their abilities and be recognized for their hard work. Browsing through everyone’s creations is a lot of fun in itself and shows how detailed an attraction can get if players exercise their unbridled imaginations and push the game to its limits.

The enormous potential in “Planet Coaster” makes the game’s Sandbox mode far more fun than its Career mode, as players never need to compromise on their creative vision as they have unlimited expenses. It feels disheartening to have to choose between giving customers what

they need, like sufficient bathrooms, while a half-finished Euthanasia Coaster sits high above the park skyline, gathering rust. Limitations on creativity in such games seem like afterthoughts to satisfy the people who enjoy panicking at the end of each month when players have to pay all of the park employees’ salaries and pray they don’t slip into the red. Some people like that highstakes experience of trying to bring a struggling theme park back from the brink, but for those who simply wish to relax and create, “Planet Coaster” is the game that gives the creative COURTESY FRONTIER DEVELOPMENTS “Planet Coaster,” a construction and management simulation video game, was released for Microsoft Windows on Nov. 17. freedom to do so.

Today is…

If 2,000 people make a gift to Tufts today, we will unlock $200,000 in challenge funds from generous alumni and parents to support financial aid, faculty, and the student experience.

How YOU can help: 1. Make a gift (of any size!) tufts.edu/givenow6 2. Thank an alumni donor (Campus Center & Tisch Library 11am-8pm) 3. Spread the word via social media

#GivingTuesday #TuftsGivingTuesday

Tuesday, November 29, 2016 | Comics | THE TUFTS DAILY

tuftsdaily.com

Comics

LATE NIGHT AT THE DAILY Jei-Jei: “I literally do not f---ing care about your life.”

Comics

SUDOKU

DOONESBURY

BY GARY TRUDEAU

NON SEQUITUR

BY WILEY MILLER

Difficulty Level: Repelling the Bay of Pigs invasion.

Tuesday’s Solution

FOR RELEASE NOVEMBER 29, 2016

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle CROSSWORD Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Lewis

WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD? —

Because the GPS told her to.

Find your way over to our new restaurant in Medford Square ...use a GPS as needed. cnrguys.com 617-903-8538

64 Salem St, Medford

ACROSS 1 Energizes, with “up” 5 Onetime TWA rival 10 Lucy’s co-star 14 “Star Wars” princess 15 Bakery draw 16 “That’s so true!”

17 Misfortunes 18 Las Vegas loser’s complaint 20 [“Get off the stage!”]

22 Word with dog, horse or lion 23 Bank acct. posting 24 Critter “in the headlights” 26 Worked hard 30 Spoken 32 Make on the job 34 Explosive emotion 35 Eight, en español 36 Like some committees 37 Martini ingredient 38 Jack of nursery rhymes 39 “Give __ chance!”

40 Grate residue 42 Chinese-born architect I.M. __ 43 Techie’s hangout 45 “Doggone it!”

46 Dada pioneer Jean 47 Speak hoarsely 48 Landmark on Missouri’s state quarter 49 Georgia, but not Florida 51 Vatican City currency 53 Uncanny claim 56 Crime syndicate leader 57 What a judge may do during an arraignment 59 Grecian Formula competitor 64 Invention beginning 65 Roughly 30% of Earth’s land area 66 Fall zodiac sign 67 Denim pioneer Strauss 68 Chimed

By C.C. Burnikel

69 “No bid,” in bridge 70 Perfect spot DOWN 1 “I was home alone” isn’t a very strong one 2 Breakfast fruit 3 *Screenwriter’s work for the first episode 4 Merit badge holder 5 Analyzed, as a sentence 6 Got out of bed 7 “__ again!”

8 Invoice no.

9 Leader with a baton 10 __ Lama 11 Big bird from Down Under 12 “Hold on a __!”

13 Pentel filler 19 *Orangy Crayola color 21 *Simple-to-use 25 *Symbol of bureaucracy 27 Dizzy ... and a hint to the starts of the answers to starred clues 28 Great Lakes natives

11/29/16

Tuesday’s Solution Monday’s Puzzle Solved

©2016 Tribune Content Agency, LLC

29 Lairs of lions 31 “Of course!”

33 Ill-fated whale chaser 35 Rossini creation 36 Is home sick 38 Stretch across 41 Cul-de-__ 44 Tubular Italian pastries 48 Concert milieus 50 Suitcase tie-on 52 App downloaders

11/29/16

54 Kitchen strainer 55 Opposite of everything, in bageldom 58 Rancor 59 Jelly holder 60 Land “across the pond” from the U.K. 61 Gluttony, e.g.

62 Tear (into) 63 Exec’s degree

7

Opinion

8 tuftsdaily.com

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

EDITORIAL

The importance of Standing Rock post-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving is often considered one of the most wholesome holidays — in part because it has evolved into a day characterized by gratitude, self-reflection and appreciation of family and friends. It is also held in such high esteem because the traditional narrative teaches Americans that Thanksgiving was a time of peaceful unity between the indigenous people of this country and British colonialists.

This narrative is, in reality, a myth that has been taught over generations in an attempt to relieve ourselves of the guilt of our nation’s history and our treatment of indigenous people.

It is true that in 1621, pilgrims and Native Americans gathered at Plymouth to share a feast and – in indigenous tradition – give thanks for the land and the harvest. But this was not the end of the story, and for Native Americans it definitely did not end happily ever after. For Native Americans, Thanksgiving marked the beginning of a tragedy.

This past year, almost 400 years after the first Thanksgiving, Native Americans are continuing to fight for

the little land that this nation has left them. The Standing Rock protests follow the proposed construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, which, if completed, will move 470,000 barrels of oil across four states each day. The aim of the protesters in North Dakota is twofold: to protect the Standing Rock reservation’s water source from an oil spill and to protect the sacred lands of the Sioux that inhabit this area.

In many ways, these protests are historic. The scope of the demonstrations is unprecedented; people have come to Standing Rock from all over the world in an effort to show their support.

Yet, in many ways, this situation has repeated itself hundreds of times over the course of history. Between 1776 and 1887, the United States seized over 1.5 billion acres of indigenous peoples’ lands through treaties and executive orders; since then, Native Americans have continually struggled to maintain control over their land in the face of both the U.S. government and large corporations.

When the Keystone XL pipeline was being debated in 2015, various Native American tribes and environmental groups came together in protest. While President Barack Obama ended up vetoing the Keystone XL project, those who fought for it were wary of what was to come. Following Obama’s decision to veto, A. Gay Kingman, executive director of the Great Plains Tribal Chairman’s Association, stated that supporters should “keep the coalitions together, because there are more pipelines proposed, and we must protect our Mother Earth for our future generations.”

It is clear that this dark history continues as police used rubber bullets, water hoses and tear gas against hundreds of unarmed protesters last Sunday, injuring at least 160 of them.

This past week, while the majority of Americans spent Thanksgiving with their families, hundreds of Native Americans held a National Day of Mourning. This annual day of grieving, which takes place at Plymouth on the same day as Thanksgiving, is an opportunity for indig-

RECOUNT

BY SHANNON GEARY

enous people to share their voices on a day that essentially celebrates their silence. On Thanksgiving Day, the protestors at Standing Rock held a peaceful prayer circle, inclusive of all that were there, demonstrating exemplary behavior in the face of adversity.

In celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday and thinking about its historical importance, it is imperative that we, at the very least, all reflect on the situation at Standing Rock. As members of the Tufts community, we can stand up for those who are protesting by donating to the Indigenous Peoples’ Day at Tufts’ supply drive this Friday at the LGBT Center and by supporting the TCU Senate resolution calling on Tufts to divest from companies involved in the Dakota Access Pipeline.

The land of Standing Rock rightly belongs to the Native American people of the Standing Rock reservation, and it is tragically ironic that the day after Thanksgiving, federal officials decided to close access to one of the protest’s camping sites. It is our time and place to defend Standing Rock.

Tuesday, November 29, 2016 | Opinion | THE TUFTS DAILY

O OP-ED

Climate action under Trump

by Julia Hackel There is a lot of speculation as to what President-elect Donald Trump will do on the issues surrounding climate change.

Trump’s most infamous verbiage on the subject is that the Chinese government made up the concept of climate change so that U.S. manufacturing would be less competitive. For years, Trump has played an incredulous weatherman on Twitter, sharing the freezing weather conditions around the world and sarcastically implicating global warming . On his website, he states his intent to withdraw the United States’ role in the Paris Agreement and lift regulations, which would allow $50 trillion worth of oil and gas reserves on federal land to be tapped into. His nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) transition, Myron Ebell, is an unapologetic climate change skeptic and ominous leader.

The future of our planet doesn’t look good under a Trump administration, and we are likely to see regression rather than progression in climate change policy. Whereas President Barack Obama has prioritized the fight against climate change, Trump intends to undo restrictions and regulations that would protect our environment but harm industry.

An example would be the Clean Power Plan, a provision supported by Obama in which the EPA set emissions regulations on fossil fuel-powered plants. The aim is to reduce carbon pollution and require cleaner and more efficient plants.

The Clean Power Plan is currently under judicial review, and the fate of its implementation can be manipulated by Trump through his appointment to fill an empty Supreme Court seat. It is unlikely that Trump will take bold actions against climate change, but it is in areas of enforcement, regulation, funding and new proposals that progress on environmental issues will suffer.

Similarly, Trump has talked about “cancelling” U.S. involvement in the Paris Agreement. To do so by bypassing the four-year waiting period to withdraw, Trump would have to withdraw from the

overarching UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, signed by President George H.W. Bush in 1992. This would have largely negative political reverberations and set the United States on a path of reckless endangerment and non-cooperation with other nations to take responsibility for their global emissions. Because of these considerations, it is unlikely that such a bold move would be taken; however, the United States’ role in curbing global emissions could be seriously undermined

by Trump’s relaxed enforcement policies and his promise to open up $50 trillion worth of oil and gas reserves.

Atrophying American leadership in the race against climate change has implications beyond our 50 states. As the world’s second largest greenhouse gas emitter after China — which itself has been making tremendous progress in cleaning up emissions and innovating in the alternative energy sector — we, the United States of America, have a responsibility to clean up this planet, which is not only our home but also the home of many others.

A major reason some poorer countries signed the Paris Agreement was the $861 million in aid the United States promised to send overseas for clean energy development and climate change mitigation tasks. Trump said he would cease payment to the UN’s global warming programs, which would strip poorer dependent countries of vital funds we owe them.

Here lies an example of how the entitlement and privilege of one man could result in our rich country looking the other way as poorer nations try and fail to clean up a mess we contributed to.

But in a recent interview with the New York Times, Trump revealed he has an open mind and is taking a closer look at climate change. He even admitted to there being some connectivity between human activity and climate change.

However, staying true to his commitment to growing America’s economy and revitalizing the manufacturing industry, Trump said the extent of the connectivity between humans and climate change “depends on how much it’s going to cost our companies.” He proceeded to talk

about the noncompetitive position of the United States relative to other countries, citing the decline of thousands of factories. That the president-elect of the United States said the partial extent to which climate change can be attributed to humans depends on how much it will hurt business reminds me of the profit-driven populist he is. Under a Trump presidency, we can expect the regular omission of inconvenient facts that could change this country and our planet forever.

Regardless of how our president-elect chooses to act, the doubt he casts on the urgency of climate change renders it undeniable that there is a moral responsibility for universities to do everything they can to act on this crisis. It is up to us — students, faculty, staff, administrators and the university body as a whole — to leverage our position as leaders and pioneers in society by opening major dialogue about climate change and our role in causing and confronting it.

If you too feel a responsibility to act, consider joining Tufts Climate Action.

Tufts Climate Action brings awareness to issues of climate change and climate justice. We engage with the student body and administration to call on Tufts to divest from fossil fuels, thereby aligning the endowment with university values and refusing to profit from the destruction of our planet. As the political climate becomes more uncertain, it is even more important for us to act and have our voices heard. New members are always welcome to our weekly Monday meetings at 8:30 p.m. in Eaton 207 and are encouraged to message our Facebook page for further details. Lead with us in the fight for a just climate!

Editor’s note: If you would like to send your response or make an op-ed contribution to the Opinion section, please email us at opinion@tuftsdaily.com. The Opinion section looks forward to hearing from you.

Julia Hackel is a junior majoring in biology and environmental studies. Julia can be reached at Julia.Hackel@tufts.edu.

9

Jake Lawicki Jumbo Steps

The Ghost of Christmas Past is quite friendly

A

few weeks ago, my suitemates and I adorned our suite with spooky decor in preparation for Wren’s dorm-wide Halloween suite decorating competition.

We were brutally outdone by the ladies a few floors above us. Their skeletons, cobwebs and orange and black witch hats really did put our suite to shame.

I guess our construction paper pumpkin cutouts, large plastic rodents and neon lights neither did the trick nor won us a treat. Alas, we were not the ones who received a set of movie tickets. I hope Wren’s RAs hold another decorating competition, because I’m ready for round two. While all my suitemates were away for Thanksgiving break, I worked with some little elves to completely redecorate our common room.

And let me tell you, it was certainly a task and a half.

I cut up a decorative shopping bag and used it as wallpaper for my room’s door. I constructed a 3D Christmas tree using green masking tape, yarn, miniature ornaments and a plush Jumbo (in lieu of an angel or a star). I pinned an ungodly amount of ornaments onto our cork board wall and set up two desk-sized plastic trees to finish it all off.

My favorite decoration is our makeshift “fireplace,” assembled using colored construction paper and Sharpies. What makes it so distinctive are the 10 name tags dangling from the imaginary mantle. Each name tag bears a suitemate’s name alongside a big red “X” next to “Naughty?” To complete the look, each of us has hung an ugly sock under our nametag as a stocking stand-in.

To tell you the truth, I didn’t go through all of this trouble just to win a competition (one I don’t even know will be held). I did it because I wanted to hang up my special Christmas decor from last year — the ornaments, the plush Jumbo, the two trees.

Those things are more than just decor to me; they are objects my former roommate and I gaudily used to dress up our Tilton double last year. They are memories — memories of an unforgettable beginning to my yearly dorm decorating tradition, memories that remind me just how far I’ve grown in one year, memories of a fortified friendship.

I vividly remember decorating with my roommate last year, because what preceded it was just as vivid a memory. That night didn’t start the way it ended; before the walls were lit with Christmas lights, our room was split by the tension between us.

A semester’s worth of quarrels and misunderstandings had finally culminated in an extensive argument, which ultimately made me realize I needed to be more transparent with him about some things.

I won’t get into the nitty-gritty of what we talked about, but immediately after we talked, I proposed that we decorate the room together. The cheery beats of famous carols blared loudly, displacing any tension left in the air. There was now absolutely no room for distrust — just room to improve a lifelong friendship.

I guess it doesn’t matter if Wren’s RAs hold another decorating competition.

Seeing those Christmas decorations in my suite unequivocally beats any prize ResLife could ever give me.

Jake Lawicki is a sophomore who has not yet declared a major. Jake can be reached at jake.lawicki@tufts.edu.

10

THE TUFTS DAILY | Sports | Tuesday, November 29, 2016

tuftsdaily.com

Palleschi prepares for last chance at NESCAC, NCAA titles PALLESCHI

human body, responsible for carrying blood from the heart to the rest of the body. An enlarged aorta can cause aneurysms and weakening of the aortic wall. After learning of his condition, Palleschi took on a role as a team mentor and assistant coach, attending all practices and games.

For months, Palleschi’s mother relentlessly pursued options for Palleschi to receive treatment. Her main worry was that day-to-day activities could bring her son’s heartbeat above 140 bpm. In her opinion, it was not realistic for Palleschi to go about his daily life without letting his heart rate exceed 140 bpm, even without basketball, and he needed surgery to live a normal life. Thanks to her persistence, she found a doctor who agreed to operate.

This reopened the possibility of a future basketball career and an unrestricted life for Palleschi.

Ahead of the surgery, Palleschi was put in touch with professional basketball player Jeff Green, who at the time played for the Boston Celtics. Green had undergone the same surgery for the same heart condition in January 2012, about two years before Palleschi’s surgery. Palleschi was able to attend a Celtics practice and speak to Green, who reassured him about the procedure.

“He just said it really wasn’t that bad,” Palleschi said. “You think it’s terrible because you’re completely clamped open, but it’s not terrible at all, especially with the doctors you have. If anything, it makes you stronger afterwards, because now I have a double wide aorta because they give you a new aorta that your body makes a real aorta over.”

During surgery, a valve-saving aortic root replacement was performed, and as soon as Palleschi awoke after leaving the operating table, he was told that he would indeed be able to continue playing. After taking a semester off from school for the surgery, he returned fully recovered. “[I knew] as soon as I woke up,” Palleschi said.

“The only thing that would have hindered me coming back and playing was if my valve wasn’t okay. There were some things in the images that they couldn’t see — for example, I had a hole in my heart and they didn’t know that, so they fixed that up and that was fine.”

Palleschi returned to training on June 27, 2014, four and a half months after his Feb. 13 surgery. He chose a new jersey number, 2, to signify his second chance at basketball.

Although his teammates were wary of Palleschi’s physical condition, they didn’t take it easy on him, and Palleschi quickly got back into shape.

EVAN SAYLES / THE TUFTS DAILY ARCHIVES Ahead of his return, Then-junior tri-captain center Tom Palleschi swats an shot sway from the hoop in the NCAA Sweet 16 tournament game against Johnson and Wales University on March 11.

Palleschi was elected continued from back high school, building the foundation for what would be a particularly long and deep-rooted relationship with the coaches, the players and Tufts.

“It will have been five and a half years,” Sheldon said. “Once he got in, he used to come down all spring just to get out of Andover for the afternoon. He would come down and play or sit in my office for hours. [His graduating is] going to be a huge loss basketball-wise because I think [Palleschi] is one of the best centers, if not the best, in Division III. As a person, we’re going to miss him because he’s a little bit bigger than life. He knew everybody at Andover, and it’s the same way here.

Everybody knows him; he’s loud and he’s 6’8” so he stands out.”

Palleschi had a knockout season as a first-year, earning the NESCAC Rookie of the Year award and the D3hoops.com Northeast Region Rookie of the Year.

During his first season, Palleschi averaged 24.9 minutes a game, scoring an even 10 points per contest while shooting 51.3 percent from the field. He averaged six rebounds per game, making him the team’s second-leading rebounder and fourth-leading scorer with 261 total points.

During the summer before his sophomore year, the Palleschi family was blindsided when Palleschi’s father, Tom

Palleschi Sr., had a severe headache, was rushed to the hospital and had emergency heart surgery after doctors realized he was suffering from an aortic dissection.

Palleschi Sr.’s recovery was remarkable; the probability of him surviving the surgery alone was between two and 20 percent.

Knowing that the condition was genetic, Palleschi, along with his other male relatives, were subsequently tested. The results showed that Tom, as well as his uncle, also suffered from an enlarged aorta. The condition meant that Palleschi should not raise his heart rate above 140 beats per minute (bpm). He was also not a surgical candidate because Palleschi’s aorta was larger than normal but not large enough to warrant surgery under the medical guidelines. Palleschi faced the reality that after just one season with Tufts, his basketball career was over.

“He was a big impact. He was Rookie of the Year freshman year in our league and in all of New England,” Sheldon said. “What happened was that he had worked out and was in the best shape of his life when he came back in his sophomore year. His father had had that trouble over the summer as well as his uncle, so they had tested him but didn’t know where he was at, so he went through three quarters of our fall workout, but he could have died.”

The aorta is the largest artery in the

captain by his teammates. He returned to the court on Nov. 15, 2014 against Johnson and Wales University, where he was the team’s leading scorer with 15 points. Although the team went 13-12 that season, Palleschi thrived. At the end of the 2014-2015 season, he was named to the All-NESCAC Second Team with an average of 12 points, 6.1 rebounds and 2.4 blocks per game.

Following his return, Palleschi received media coverage from several Boston newspapers, including the Boston Herald, Boston Globe and Eagle Tribune.

Palleschi and the entire Tufts program reached new heights in the 2015-2016 season. The team went 23-7 and hosted the NCAA Div. III Tournament for the first time in program history. Palleschi finished the season as Tufts’ second-highest scorer, with 15 points per game, and was one of only two players who started all 30 games in the season. Palleschi’s 3.8 blocks per game led the NESCAC by a staggering 1.7 blocks per game margin. He also ranked third in the conference with 8.3 rebounds per game.

“Just seeing him go through that, a lot of players on the team took that to heart and started playing for a reason,” junior guard Kene Adigwe, who was also Palleschi’s teammate in high school, said. “We were coming off of a 13-12, very mediocre season, but everything he went through brought the team together and helped camaraderie and chemistry a lot.”

Re-elected captain last year, Palleschi was an integral part of the team both on and off the court. The Jumbos finished short of claiming a Div. III championship, falling in the NCAA quarterfinals to conference rival Amherst. But Palleschi’s personal accolades piled high. He was named to the All-NESCAC First Team, the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) All-Northeast Region Second Team and the D3hoops. com All-Region Second Team as well.

“The first year back, we were 13-12 and that was terrible, but last year it was an absolutely special group that we had,” Palleschi said. “Getting to host the NCAAs was a stroke of luck because Amherst women hosted, so Amherst men couldn’t host. Being able to play here was great; hopefully we get crowds like that again.

Making that run was unbelievable, especially making it to the Elite Eight.

Hopefully, we can go farther this year.

That’s the goal for everyone.”

In his final season as a senior, Palleschi was again re-elected captain, making him the program’s first three-year captain.

“I think [Palleschi’s brief role as a coach] did [impact how he is as captain]. He got to see it from another point of view,” Sheldon said. “He didn’t have to worry about playing or not playing because he knew he wasn’t going to play. He is my first three-year captain. Part of it was that he had gone through so much, but also he was older by then, and the team wanted to say ‘thanks for coming back.’”

Aside from his presence as a leader on the team, Palleschi is a dominant force on the court. Having twice been named to a NESCAC All-Conference team and having won NESCAC Rookie of the Year, he is one of the foremost players the program has seen.

Palleschi’s goal for this season is to advance further this season than the team did last season. He hopes to claim either the NESCAC Championship or an NCAA title. The team is 4-0 so far, its best ever start, so perhaps such achievements are within the Jumbos’ grasp. The end of Palleschi’s career will undeniably be a loss for the program — athletes with his playing ability and charisma are rare — but the team hopes to send him out with a championship.

Tuesday, November 29, 2016 | Sports | THE TUFTS DAILY

S

11

First-years provide offensive boost as Tufts shuts Becker out 3-0

EVAN SAYLES / THE TUFTS DAILY

First-year defenseman Jordan Haney moves the puck towards the enemy net in the home opener against the Trinity Bantams on Nov. 18.

MEN'S ICE HOCKEY

continued from back period, but then lost the face-off battle 35-31. Nugnes made 17 saves and Western New England sophomore goaltender Kevin Gollmer had 35 saves.

Nugnes noted that the team did not bring as much skill to the ice as it had in its opening games.

“We just didn’t play the game that we’ve brought to the previous four games,” he said.

“Western New England is a good team with good goaltending, but at the same time, we

faced a couple of unlucky bounces.”

In the opening round of the tournament on Friday, Tufts defeated Brockport 4-1. Senior tri-captain Mike Leary struck first at 6:59 in the first period to put Tufts on the board early.

Senior forward Pat Lackey assisted on the goal.

Tufts was on a power play with under a minute to go in the first period when junior forward Brian Brown and senior captain Sean Kavanagh worked the puck to first-year defender Cooper Stahl at

the right point. Stahl hit a slap shot in the top left corner of the net, expanding Tufts’ lead to 2-0.

Tufts added an insurance goal 3:52 into the second period when firstyear forward Machlan Sawden scored off the rebound from sophomore forward Nick Balboa’s shot. With the Jumbos ahead 3-0, junior forward Nick Flanagan netted the their final score of the game at 18:50 of the second period when he slipped the puck through the legs of Brockport sophomore goaltender Jake Moore after DeLabreure won a face-off. Brockport scored its only goal late into the third period at 17:59 after capitalizing on a turnover to score a short-handed goal.

Tufts killed all four of Brockport’s power plays and capitalized on one out of its five power plays. The Jumbos also outshot Brockport 26-25 and won the face-off battle 33-31. Senior goaltender Mason Pulde had 24 saves and multiple first-years took face-offs.

These include Tyler Scroggins who went 10-18, DeLabreure at 7-11 and Blake McIntyre with 7-11.

Tufts hosted Becker on Tuesday and won 3-0 for the season’s first shutout.

The Jumbo first-years were dominant on offense, as first-years scored all three goals. The first of the game came at 3:03 in the second period, as Farinacci and Brown assisted McIntyre. Stahl then scored at 14:51 on a power play, as

Brown and Farinacci assisted again.

Two Becker penalties, 11 seconds apart during the third period, gave Tufts a two-man advantage, and Scroggins capitalized 13 seconds in at 7:19 to bring the score to its final tally at 3-0.

Brown assisted on the goal.

Becker had nine penalties compared to Tufts’ four, and Tufts killed both penalties while capitalizing on two out of its seven power plays. Pulde made 35 saves and was barely challenged during the third period when he saw only five shots.

Brown and Farinacci lead Tufts with seven and six points on the season respectively. Farinacci’s five assists pace the team while Brown’s three goals tie him with Stahl for the team lead.

Looking forward, the team hopes to maintain its speed and momentum on the offensive end during its upcoming away games against Williams and Middlebury.

“We are going to work on limiting our opponents to no more than a goal a game, because if we can limit teams to one goal or less, we should be pretty tough to beat,” Kavanagh said. “We also have good team speed so we want to continue to use that to try and push back our opponents and maintain our high tempo.”

Tufts next plays at Williams at 7 p.m. on Friday before taking on Middlebury in Vermont at 3 p.m. on Saturday.

Tufts to host WPI in advance of Big Four Tournament MEN'S BASKETBALL

continued from back Tufts quickly extended its lead in the opening minutes of the second half, with Palleschi and Engvall combining for eight points to lead 46-35. Gray responded with two layups that kept the Jumbos from routing the Lions and running away with the game.

Tufts’ dominance was reflected in the statistics. The Jumbos shot 46.3 percent from the field and totaled 54 rebounds. Improved rebounding has been an emphasis since pre-season training.

The Jumbos scored 17 points off turnovers and had 27 bench points, demonstrating the impressive depth of the team, which is crucial for success once games are played in closer succession.

“We had a couple new guys play in the rotation and a couple guys who didn’t see as many minutes as last year,” junior guard Everett Dayton said. “After the first two games, those guys started to step it up, and we stepped up the defense for sure.

We [have still allowed] over 70 points in [two] game[s], so we have a long way to go to get to the point that we want to be at, but we’re definitely on an upward trajectory.”

The impact of Tufts’ bench players was apparent against MIT earlier in the week, when they scored 32 of Tufts’ 74 points.

Among these players was junior guard Vincent Pace, the Jumbos’ leading scorer last season, who returned this season after sustaining a torn ACL in the first round of

the NCAA Tournament last season. Pace finished with 15 points on the day.

“It’s definitely been a grind, but to get back out there with the boys and get back to competing has been worth it,” Pace said. “Its definitely been a long road, but I’m happy that I’m on the home stretch to getting back to 100 percent.”

It only took five minutes for the Jumbos to establish a lead against the Engineers.

Two three-pointers from Dayton and one from Pace gave the Jumbos a nine-point lead with 12:48 left in the first half. Pace racked up eight more points in the half, including a three pointer that put the Jumbos ahead 37-23 with three minutes remaining in the half. The Engineers responded with six unanswered points to close the gap to eight leading into the second half.

The closest the Engineers ever came to a lead in the second half was a six point deficit three and a half minutes into the period. Several consecutive free throw opportunities for Pace, Palleschi and Smith, along with four points from Garrett, put the Jumbos 14 ahead with just over five minutes remaining. In the following minutes, MIT scored nine points while Tufts was silent. The Engineers pressed hard to try and take the lead as the clock dwindled, but they were hindered by having to foul. Tufts converted six of its eight late game free throw opportunities to finish off the win 74-66.

One trend across the week was the high

number of turnovers the Jumbos committed: 15 in each game. This is largely due to the fast-paced nature of the Tufts offense, as the team passes the ball up the court quickly rather than have one player bring the ball into the opponent’s half.

Tufts hosts Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) tonight at 7 p.m., where the Jumbos will look to avenge its 85-70 loss from last season in an effort to extend their unbeaten streak to five games.

Following the contest against WPI, Tufts will travel to Waltham, Mass. this weekend for the Big Four Tournament, where

Tufts will take on Brandeis at 7:30 p.m. on Friday and the winner of the Babson vs.

Salem State game on Saturday.

“We’re just going to go into every game with the same attitude, which is that we know we are a very good team, and if we execute and do what we need to do then we can put ourselves in a position to win every single game,” Palleschi said. “We are aware of how talented of a team we are and the level that we’re able to play at. If we go in there and focus on that, then we’re a tough match up for anyone.”

EVAN SAYLES / THE TUFTS DAILY ARCHIVES

Then-sophomore guard Everett Dayton moves the ball towards the key in the game against UMass Dartmouth on Feb. 2.

Tufts sweeps Bryant and Brandeis, undefeated through opening weekend MEN'S SQUASH

continued from back ed player. First-years put on a strong display in this game as well, with Kumar, Wind, fifth-seed Frank Yandrisevits and sixth-seed Amun Sahrawat all picking up victories in their respective matches.

Raskopf said that their preseason training methods contributed to their 4-0 start

to the season.

“This year, we decided to start the season by playing challenge matches against each other for the first two weeks of the season,” Raskopf said. “This ensured match-level intensity at every practice and was pivotal in getting us in shape, both mentally and physically.”

Junior John Patrick has high hopes for

the first-years on the team, especially after their impressive performances at the start of the season.

“So far the freshmen are looking great,” Patrick told the Daily in an email. “They are incredibly talented and very capable of competing with many of the better players in college squash. The transition from high school to college squash usually takes a few

matches to get used to, but the freshmen have shown, especially with our win over Colby, that they are prepared to win.

The Jumbos travel to Hamilton College to face off against the Continentals and the New York University Bobcats on Dec. 3 before travelling to Vassar College to play the Bard College Raptors and the Vassar College Brewers on Dec. 4.

Sports

12 tuftsdaily.com

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Palleschi inspires Tufts basketball in final season

by Maddie Payne and Savannah Mastrangelo Sports Editor and Staff Writer

Just five years ago, senior co-captain Tom Palleschi started his basketball career at Tufts completely unaware of the trying journey ahead of him. One of the most decorated players in program history, Palleschi was nearly permanently sidelined by a rare and life-threatening heart condition.

The Haverhill, Mass native, who attended high school at Phillips Academy in Andover, became involved in the Tufts basketball program even before officially enrolling.

Palleschi visited campus and met coach Bob Sheldon before the end of his senior year in see PALLESCHI, page 10

Contributing Writer

Farinacci and defender Jordan Haney were able to force the puck out in front of the net. First-year forward Ross DeLabreure deflected the puck to score Tufts’ only goal of the game at 14:45.

Golden Bears senior captain forward Josh Twietmeyer scored the game winner at 15:18 of the first period, putting his team up 2-1 going into the second period. Just five minutes into the second period, junior forward Matt Smethurst of Western New England put the game out of reach with the final score of the 3-1 contest.

Tufts was called for seven penalties compared to Western New England’s five penalties, though Tufts successfully killed all six power plays and capitalized on one out of three power plays. The Jumbos also outshot the Golden Bears 36-20, including 20 shots in the third

Men’s squash, ranked No. 27 nationally, got off to a convincing start last weekend by defeating Boston College, Colby College, Bryant University and Brandeis University to earn a 4-0 record. The Jumbos did not graduate a single contributing player last season and look dangerous with a slew of promising first-years.

Tufts swept Bryant 8-0 and Brandeis 9-0 on Nov. 20 at Belmont Hill. Tufts dominated the Brandeis game, with each position needing only three games to be decided. The Jumbos did not drop a set during the contest.

In the Bryant match, the top three spots were close and needed four games each for a winner to be determined. Tufts again swept the competition. Many of the first-years, including firstseed Raghav Kumar and second-seed Connor Wind, were seeded highly and handled their positions well.

Tufts upset No. 20 Colby, arguably Tufts’ strongest opponent of the weekend, on Nov. 19.

The Jumbos beat the Mules 6-3.

Out of the top four seeded Tufts players, only the third position player, Kumar, managed to win his match, taking it 12-10, 7-11, 6-11, 11-8, 11-8 in a five set comeback. It was up to the lower-seeded Tufts players to seal the win for the Jumbos, and they did. Sophomore Cameron Ewan won his match in just three sets, the only such match of the contest. Tufts’ lower seeds’ ability to bring the score to 6-3 demonstrates the depth of the squad this season.

According to sophomore Brett Raskopf, the win against Colby meant a lot to the team.

“While the wins over Boston College, Brandeis and Bryant were expected, the win over Colby ensured that the team is off to the best start we have ever had,” Raskopf told the Daily in an email. “The win definitely turned some heads, as it is very rare that a team beats another team ranked seven spots above them in the rankings. This means top-ranked teams are going to take us very seriously this year, and we have to be ready for it.”

The Jumbos faced little difficulty in their season opener against the Boston College Eagles on Nov. 18, defeating them 8-1 and only dropping a point to the Eagles’ ninth-seed-

see MEN'S ICE HOCKEY, page 11

see MEN'S SQUASH, page 11

LAURA DE ARMAS / THE TUFTS DAILY ARCHIVES

Then-junior tri-captain center Tom Palleschi drives the ball down the court at the NCAA quarterfinal game against Amherst on March 12.

MEN'S ICE HOCKEY

Jumbos best Lions, Tufts beats Brockport, Engineers, extend unbeaten Becker, suffers first loss to streak to four games Western New England Sports Editor

No. 3 Tufts defeated the MIT Engineers and the Emerson Lions last weekend to go 4-0 in the season for the first time since that the program has gone unbeaten in the first four games in recorded history dating to the 19992000 season.

Last Tuesday, the Jumbos defeated the Engineers 74-66, avenging last season’s 72-69 loss.

On Saturday, the Jumbos picked up another win, defeating the Lions 87-72, a much more comfortable margin than last season’s 86-83 scoreline.

Senior co-captain center Tom Palleschi shone on Saturday, scoring 26 points against Emerson, tallying nine rebounds and four blocks.

The game was evenly matched early on, and the score remained tight. It was not until 12 minutes into the half that the Jumbos jumped out to a 22-18 lead thanks to seven free-throw points. The

Jumbos open season 4-0, upset Colby Mules

by Liam Finnegan

MEN'S BASKETBALL

by Maddie Payne

MEN'S SQUASH

Lions took a brief 22-23 lead on a 3-pointer from junior forward John Geary with 7:06 left in the half, but Palleschi, sophomore guard Ethan Feldman and junior guard KJ Garret scored to help the Jumbos regain the lead.

Emerson sophomore point guard Geoffrey Gray carried his team, scoring 22 points and collecting 10 rebounds in the game. Consecutive field goals from Gray kept the Lions somewhat competitive, but free throws from senior co-captain Tarik Smith and first-year center Patrick Racy as well as field goals from Feldman and junior guard Ben Engvall gave the Jumbos a seven point lead, 38-31, heading into the second half.

The Jumbos had to match up with 7’1” Lions sophomore center Mac Sashin for half of the game, successfully shutting him down by only allowing him to score one field goal and secure four rebounds. see MEN'S BASKETBALL, page 11

EVAN SAYLES / THE TUFTS DAILY ARCHIVES

Then-sophomore guard Ben Engvall races to recover the ball in the NCAA Sweet 16 tournament game against Johnson and Wales University on March 11.

EVAN SAYLES / THE TUFTS DAILY

First-year forward Machlan Sawden attempts to swat the puck away from a Trinity player in the home opener against the Trinity Bantams on Nov. 18.

by Savannah Mastrangelo Contributing Writer

After shutting out the Becker College Ice Hawks 3-0 on Nov. 22 at home, Tufts traveled to Rutland, Vt. this past weekend to compete in the Rutland Herald Invitational.

The Jumbos defeated The College at Brockport Golden Eagles 4-1 on Friday and fell to the Western New England University Golden Bears 3-1 on Saturday. The Saturday loss, which was Tufts’ first of the season, came in the Rutland Herald Invitational Championship game.

Western New England sophomore forward David Kleyman started the scoring off at 10:43 in the first period, after he intercepted a pass and successfully challenged junior goaltender Nik Nugnes one-on-one.

After a high-sticking penalty was called against Western New England at 13:39, Tufts first-years forward Anthony