The Tufts Daily - Sunday, May 17, 2020

THE

INDEPENDENT

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T HE T UFTS DAILY

VOLUME LXXIX, ISSUE 39

MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, MASS.

Sunday, May 17, 2020

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COMMENCEMENT 2020

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THE TUFTS DAILY | News | Sunday, May 17, 2020

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INVESTIGATIVE Mail Services workers allege unhealthy work environment, racial discrimination under former manager; student workers claim weeks without pay see INVESTIGATIVE page 4

NEWS Monaco reflects on year’s accomplishments, discusses plans for fall semester see NEWS page 6 University leadership disapproves of award given to Tufts SJP see NEWS page 6

University to reduce summer dining staff as negotiations continue over benefits, pay see NEWS page 7

Monaco reaffirms commitment to students following Department of Education’s Title IX reforms see NEWS page 7

FEATURES Longtime roommates say goodbyes, share favorite memories of past 4 years see FEATURES page 18 Students share experiences combatting COVID-19, express anxiety over interacting with loved ones see FEATURES page 16

ARTS Kota the Friend talks new sound, inspiration for upcoming album see ARTS page 21 ‘The Moth’ podcast shares life’s little moments, brings comfort through short stories see ARTS page 23

OPINION Editorial: Reflecting on issues, university decisions of 2019–20 see OPINION page 26 Class of 2020 models civic engagement, advocacy on campus during time at Tufts see OPINION page 26

SPORTS Staff picks: 10 best moments of 2019–20 in Jumbo athletics see SPORTS page 30

From NESCAC to NCAA titles, fall sports teams close out big seasons see SPORTS page 31

Promising performances from winter sports teams hint toward future success see SPORTS page 33

tuftsdaily.com

INVESTIGATIVE

3 Sunday, May 17, 2020

More than 140 community members told to quarantine due to single case of COVID-19

by Austin Clementi and Caleb Symons

Executive Investigative Editor and Staff Writer

Editor’s note: Students’ names have been changed in order to protect their privacy.

Tufts Executive Vice President Mike Howard informed the Tufts community on March 12 that an undergraduate student had tested positive for COVID-19, the first known case at Tufts. Howard assured community members that the student was in isolation and receiving care.

Health Service had tested the student, Jack, for COVID-19 two days earlier — the same day that University President Anthony Monaco announced the suspension of in-person classes and asked students to leave campus.

However, university officials waited until the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) confirmed Jack’s positive case to begin conducting contact tracing. Though Howard told community members that Jack had been in isolation, Tufts Executive Director of Media Relations Patrick Collins wrote in an email to the Daily on April 19 that more than 140 people may have been exposed to this single case of the novel coronavirus.

By the time university officials began contact tracing, many students on the list were wishing their friends goodbye and planning their travel home. At least one had already left campus and returned to their family. Any of them could have been carrying COVID-19.

Meanwhile, two students who shared an off-campus apartment with Jack felt the university left them to fend for themselves. Jack’s housemates recounted a disorganized, “unhelpful” and “unprofessional” response from high-level administrators in the Office of the Dean of Student Affairs (DOSA) during their 14-day quarantine.

The Daily has not been able to determine whether any of the more than 140 contacts resulted in another case of COVID-19. Nonetheless, accounts from members of the Tufts community about the days surrounding Jack’s positive test reveal a lack of coordination among state, local and university officials over how to handle potential cases during the early days of the pandemic.

Research published in April by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that infected individuals may transmit the virus up to 72 hours before developing symptoms. The World Health Organization advises that patients may be most contagious around the time of the onset of symptoms.

Jack was tested for COVID-19 on March 10. In the three days before Jack’s visit to Health Service, he made a transatlantic flight, attended crowded social functions and otherwise lived a normal college life.

Dozens of people, including many members of the Tufts community, could have been infected in a worst-case scenario. Those people may have become contagious as soon as two days after exposure, according to the CDC. Details about the virus’ transmission remain unclear, however. In early March, public health officials were working with even less definitive information.

“All of the actions the university took in response to this situation came during a time of great challenge,” Collins wrote in an email to the Daily. “Guidance from the CDC and the Massachusetts DPH was evolving daily, information about the novel coronavirus was incomplete and still emerging, and the immediate future was hard to predict or prepare for.”

According to Collins, it was impossible for Tufts to determine when or where Jack contracted COVID-19.

One week before Jack tested positive for COVID-19, however, he traveled to London for a high school reunion.

Jack estimates that 70 people attended the reunion on March 6, including students from at least five European countries. Two of those countries, Spain and France, reported several hundred cases at the time and had either implemented social distancing measures already or did so soon thereafter.

However, Jack does not recall that any of the attendees were sick and was not particularly concerned about contracting the virus.

“I’m more of a risk-tolerant person,” Jack told the Daily on March 14. “I guess the other thing was that the U.K. wasn’t remotely bad at that time — the figures were minimal, just like every other country.”

Jack returned to Boston on March 7 and attended a mixer at Arts Haus that evening with around 90 other people from five student organizations.

The following day, he spent about 30 minutes at Commons Marketplace in the Mayer Campus Center before meeting with four students at Tufts’ Collaborative Learning & Innovation Complex (CLIC) at 574 Boston Avenue to discuss their work for an extracurricular organization. Later that day, Jack attended a meeting for the same club at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), along with a student from the CLIC meeting, two MIT students and a student from Northeastern University.

On March 9, Jack went to an economics class in Braker Hall and a physics class at the CLIC with 44 other students, according to Tufts’ Student Information System.

Jack developed a cough that evening. After waking up the next morning with a fever, he went to Health Service immediately.

Jack tested negative for influenza, and Health Service staff ruled out the common cold due to his fever. Based on Jack’s symptoms and travel history, they requested that the DPH authorize a test for COVID-19.

DPH refused.

DPH Director of Media Relations Ann Scales could not comment on Jack’s case but explained that COVID-19 testing was much more limited in early March than it is now.

“At that time, there was guidance from the CDC about who should be tested and we were following their recommendations and approving which specimens should come into the State Public Health Laboratory for testing,” Scales wrote in an email to the Daily.

DPH eventually authorized the test after further requests from Health Service and recommended that Jack isolate at home. Health Service instead chose to quarantine Jack on campus “out of an abundance of caution” to prevent further community spread through his housemates, according to Collins.

Before being ushered to a designated ‘health suite’ in Hodgdon Hall, Jack gave Health Service staff a list of people with whom he’d been in contact in recent days. Of the students on that list, only Jack’s four housemates were contacted by the university before March 12.

On March 10, Jack’s housemates were told that he had been placed in quarantine after being tested for COVID-19. DPH did not require that Jack’s housemates quarantine themselves, and two, Danny and Wes, told the Daily they attended classes that afternoon.

The following morning, however, Health Service advised Jack’s housemates to isolate themselves in their apartment “out of an abundance of caution,” according to Collins.

Officials from Health Service also requested that they leave a bag with Jack’s belongings outside his quarantine room in Hodgdon on March 10.

This required entering Jack’s bedroom and handling his clothing and laptop, among other items. Health Service did not recommend that

Jack’s housemates use protective equipment or take any measures to shield themselves from exposure to the virus, according to Danny.

Collins denies that Tufts put Jack’s housemates at risk.

“Any deliveries of belongings by friends of the student who tested positive for COVID-19 in isolation were made in a safe manner devised with input from health staff,” Collins said.

That evening, Monaco announced that Tufts would conduct courses online for the rest of the semester and asked students to leave campus. The decision was appropriate, despite its potential to disperse any asymptomatic cases around the country or overseas, according to Sen Pei, an associate research scientist at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.

“If there are some people getting infected and then moving to other places, like what happened in China … that is a situation we don’t want to see here in the U.S.,” Pei said. “But it’s necessary to close the school because if we let students stay in schools, there’s much higher risk of transmission in school.”

On March 11, Howard informed the Tufts community in an email that a student had been tested for COVID-19.

“We are following all [DPH] recommendations pertaining to quarantine and isolation,” Howard wrote. “We are in close contact with public health authorities and will continue to follow their guidance on this matter.”

The following afternoon, around 4 p.m., Health Service told Jack that he had tested positive for COVID-19. Both the Medford Health Department and Health Service staff interviewed Jack that afternoon to identify people with whom he had been in contact, according to Collins.

Howard announced the positive case in an email to the Tufts community just after 6 p.m. and said that community members who may have had contact with the infected student would receive guidance on self-quarantine from the Medford Health Department.

Jack gave Health Service a student contact for the Arts Haus party earlier that afternoon as part of his list of contacts. However, representatives from one of the organizations present at the party already suspected the student tested on March 10 was in attendance.

When Jack’s positive case was announced on March 12, the club representatives sent DOSA a list of their members who attended the party and encouraged the other clubs present to do the same.

The good-faith effort turned into a disjointed attempt to identify party attendees. Some of the clubs gave DOSA the names of members who were at the party. Others told their members to reach out to DOSA if they had attended.

University officials ultimately pieced together a list using information provided by the clubs and by individual attendees, as well as a Facebook attendance list for the party.

DOSA staff worked late into the night on March 12 to contact more than 140 community members who may have been exposed.

In individual emails to the students, DOSA requested that they stay at home for two weeks and answer questions about their travel history and plans, contact with infected persons and whether they had attended the March 7 party at Arts Haus. Students living on campus who may have been exposed to the virus were given permission to stay in their residences until they completed their quarantine, according to Collins.

DOSA also told the students that they “likely [were] not contagious to others” if they did not have a fever, cough or shortness of breath. But public health experts were still learning about the virus’ transmission in early March and even now remain unsure to what extent this is true.

The current belief is that asymptomatic and presymptomatic people are less likely to transmit COVID-19 but can still do so, according to Pei. “Based on our estimation, in China, the infectiousness of people [who] have no symptoms or have mild symptoms is about half as contagious as people [who] develop symptoms,” Pei said on April 1. “When they cough, the [viral] load in their droplets will be lower than the people who have symptoms.”

However, Elizabeth Lee, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University, told the Daily in an email on April 9 that the “relative infectiousness” between people who experience symptoms and those who do not remains imprecise.

In addition to students who attended the Arts Haus party, DOSA contacted the students with whom Jack met on March 8 for an extracurricular project, students in his two classes on March 9 and Arts Haus residents.

Students in a different economics class, held on Tuesdays and Thursdays, in which Jack is enrolled received the same email from DOSA just after 10 p.m. Half an hour later, DOSA told them that the email was a mistake and that Jack did not attend the course that week.

The Medford Health Department informed MIT and Northeastern on March 12 that the students who attended the meeting at MIT on March 8 may have been exposed to COVID19, according to Collins. The MIT health center provided its respective students with quarantine guidance that night. Northeastern officials did not respond to requests for confirmation that the university also alerted its student to the potential exposure.

Meanwhile, Tufts students flowed in and out of Arts Haus and the Campus Center, as well as classrooms in Braker Hall and the CLIC, in the days after Jack spent time there.

Based on CDC guidance, the novel coronavirus can remain on various surfaces for days.

But Facilities Services only began disinfecting potentially contaminated spaces on March 13, after DOSA and the Medford Health Department completed their contact tracing, according to Collins.

That day, Tufts staff called every student on the list of more than 140 in order to discuss their individual circumstances, including housing details and health guidance, Collins said.

Students in quarantine were asked to complete a daily survey for Health Service to monitor their well-being, and those quarantined on-campus had meals delivered to them by Dining Services.

Jack said a call with staff at Tufts’ Counseling and Mental Health Services was particularly valuable.

“I think the administration has done pretty well,” Jack said on March 12. “They try to be helpful and supportive where they can. A lot of the things that make this feel really miserable, I feel like [are] out of their control and more circumstances of what solitary confinement or isolation is like.”

Jack’s four housemates in his off-campus apartment were among those asked to self-isolate. When Tufts tested Jack for COVID-19 on March 10, however, the housemates did not immediately receive guidance from Health Service on quarantine procedures.

Instead, when Jack told the group that afternoon that he may have contracted COVID-19, Danny took it upon himself to isolate as best he could. He asked a professor if he could take a midterm exam, which was held in Cohen Auditorium on March 10, in a separate room.

Collins affirmed that the administration adhered to guidance from state officials and the Medford Health Department when it contacted Jack’s housemates. see COVID-19, page 4

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Students allege inappropriate behavior by dean as administrators take on contact tracing COVID-19

continued from page 3 Danny and Wes said that when Tufts asked them to quarantine, they were running low on food in their apartment. According to both housemates, Tufts suggested that the group order food from UberEats or other delivery apps whose fees were on the rise at the time. Instead, the housemates relied on friends to deliver their groceries, according to Danny.

Students quarantined on campus were offered meal delivery from university dining centers.

On March 17, Jack received the second of two negative tests for the virus 24 hours apart — a CDC-approved standard for ensuring that patients are no longer contagious with the virus.

The next day, March 18, at approximately 6 p.m., Associate Dean of Student Affairs Kevin Kraft, who communicated with Jack’s housemates throughout their quarantine, informed them that Jack would be returning to the apartment the following day at noon, according to Danny and Wes. Danny and Wes protested this decision, demanding confirmation that Jack was no longer

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contagious. They told Kraft that they did not wish for Jack to return until after their quarantine had ended or they could be sure he was no longer contagious.

According to the two housemates, Kraft became “antagonistic” in light of their requests.

Danny alleges that Kraft called him and Wes “selfish” and “unreasonable” for requesting proof that Jack was no longer contagious and refused to provide this documentation. Wes said that Kraft singled him out as a pre-med student, saying he should be governed by “facts” and questioned his judgment.

According to Wes, Kraft insinuated that the housing group were being bad friends by denying Jack a place to stay in their house, telling the students that Jack was struggling in quarantine. “[Kraft] lost his cool before we did,” Wes said.

Wes admitted the dean was likely stressed due to difficulties created by the pandemic.

Kraft told the students that the Medford Health Department had confirmed that Jack could return home. Danny told the Daily that when he contacted the Medford Health Department, its staff could not definitively confirm or deny that Jack’s return would be safe but said documen-

tation that he was no longer contagious should have been easy for Tufts to provide.

Collins, however, was unsure that Tufts would be able to provide such documentation.

“As a general rule, personal medical information is protected due to privacy considerations,” Collins said.

Meanwhile, when Danny and Wes asked Jack whether he would be willing to isolate longer, Jack agreed.

The housemates and DOSA eventually reached an agreement to allow Jack to return after their period of isolation was over, on March 24.

Danny and Wes chose to stay with friends when Jack returned.

Collins declined to comment on the interactions between Kraft and Jack’s housemates, citing privacy concerns.

“At all times, staff acted in the spirit of helping community members understand and address the difficult circumstances created by the spread of COVID-19,” Collins said. “We appreciate the staff and the students who made sacrifices, showed flexibility and ingenuity, and worked together in a highly disruptive situation.”

Mail Services employees allege racial discrimination, unfair pay practices

by Fina Short

Features Editor

Editorial Cartoonists

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When rising junior Olivia Smith wanted a job in the Tufts University Mail Services Department, she was able to start working on the mailroom floor just one day after walking in to ask about employment opportunities.

“I strolled in, and there’s actually no process to get hired,” Smith said. “I just talked to Sheila, who was the current manager at the time. She was like, ‘Oh yeah, you can start tomorrow morning.’ She didn’t ask me a single question.”

At Mail Services, Smith would learn that student employees do not receive weekly schedules. Instead, each employee came in to work whenever was most convenient for them on a week-to-week basis, a practice students said often elongated wait times to pick up packages and increased stress in the mailroom. Such were the conditions under former manager Sheila Chisholm, a Tufts University employee of 38 years whose unannounced departure in October formed one of many recent management upheavals the mailroom faced.

Seated at the base of first-year dormitory Hill Hall, the Medford location of the Mail Services Department and its inner workings typically operate away from public scrutiny. Yet accounts from employees, past and present, reveal a history of management upheavals that have left many of the facility’s four full-time and fifteen part-time workers reeling.

In the span of six months, Mail Services has seen the abrupt departure of longtime Support & Administrative Services Manager Sheila Chisholm, followed by the hiring and subsequent exit of Adam Lavertue, a former Groton Post Office postmaster convicted of embezzling funds from the U.S. Postal Service.

All the while, Mail Services student employees have gone weeks without pay, employees have suffered under allegedly racist management practices and the department’s full-time workers report troubling discrepancies in pay rates even after union negotiations.

Lack of scheduling, management practices compound stress Most current student employees at Mail Services were hired by Chisholm, a longtime Tufts University employee. Employees described working for Chisholm as unpredictable and stressful.

Rising junior Anya Tisdale, who began working at Mail Services in mid-September 2019, said that Chisholm’s management style hindered productivity in the mailroom.

“Everyone knew it wasn’t efficient, the way it was working. There would be a line out the door, and she would be like, I need you to readdress stuff, or I need you to do a quality check and make sure everything’s in alphabetical order,” Tisdale said.

Tisdale felt acutely aware of the long lines of students that would form around the time of Black Friday, when the office had to process anywhere from four hundred to six hundred packages.

“You’re scanning stuff in, you’re scanning stuff out. You have to make sure things are in order, you have to readdress stuff. You have to look for packages, like if things are not in the system, where can I find them? It’s a lot of hard work that I think a lot of people don’t realize until you actually work there,” she said.

The Daily received no response to repeated requests for comment from Chisholm over the course of multiple weeks.

Unpaid student labor Student workers at Tufts are due to receive pay through direct deposit on a weekly basis. Tisdale said that at times she went two to three weeks without getting paid because Chisholm forgot to enter her hours, and when Chisholm left, she didn’t receive pay for another two weeks.

Mail operator and driver Larry Singer explained that student employees logged hours either by swiping their student IDs into the system at Mail Services or by emailing their hours to Chisholm on a weekly basis. Those who emailed their hours to Chisholm depended on her to send their hours to the Facilities Services department, which she often forgot to do. On numerous occasions, Singer stepped in to ensure that the students received pay.

“These kids wanted to get paid. They didn’t know where to go. So I helped them along …

I’m the in-house guy, so that’s not in my job description,” Singer said.

Director of Facilities Operations and Maintenance Jeff McKay and Senior Facilities Director Cory Pouliot denied having heard that students were not receiving pay for multiple weeks on end.

Students said Singer often stepped in as a de facto advocate or manager when Chisholm was not around or providing unclear directions, along with other more senior employees.

At times, he took on the role of mediating conflict between Chisholm and student workers.

“She did have a problem with some students. She treated them differently than she treated other students,” Singer said. “I tried to

buffer it a little bit, with her. To the point where [there was] one student she wouldn’t even talk to. I had to talk to [the student] myself. There were issues. Students felt very uncomfortable.”

Discriminatory treatment Each Mail Services employee interviewed by the Daily reported witnessing Chisholm’s discrimination of employees of color. After getting hired to work at Mail Services, Tisdale said that her first conversation with Chisholm caught her off guard for what she felt was unconcealed racism.

For example, Tisdale stated that when she told Chisholm she was from Boston’s West End, Chisholm said she was surprised because the area is expensive.

“I was sitting over there like what do you mean by that? What do you mean? I was like, are you trying to imply that I’m poor or on the lower-class end?” Tisdale said.

While surprised by this initial conversation with Chisholm, Tisdale said it became increasingly clear that the manager was polite to some students and not to others.

“She would be friendlier with students that were white, and then when it came to the black students and students of color, she would be walking on eggshells … There were times when she would tell some of the white student workers to tell black student workers what to do,” Tisdale said.

She recalled incidents where employees of color were singled out or disproportionately punished for minor infractions, including when a black full-time worker was harassed by Chisholm for wearing a hood in the workplace despite the lack of an official dress code.

“He told me that he was working on his computer right under the vent so he put his hood on because it was cold,” Tisdale said.

“And she asked him to take the hood off, and he was like, ‘okay I’ll take it off,’ then [he] put it back on because it’s cold. She kept asking him to take the hood off, then … said, ‘oh doesn’t he look like a thug when he wears his hood?’”

Morgan Kleinberg, a graduating senior who began working at Mail Services in February 2017, said that she felt this incident was an instance of blatant racism.

As a white student, she said that Chisholm often invited her into her office to perform more complex tasks or even to take charge of other student workers, which Kleinberg described see MAIL SERVICES, page 5

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Sunday, May 17,Sunday, 2020 | May INVESTIGATIVE 17, 2020 | News| |THE THETUFTS TUFTS DAILY DAILY

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Student workers hope management shift will improve work environment MAIL SERVICES

continued from page 4 as Chisholm asking her to “do [Chisholm’s] job managing some students.”

At one point, Chisholm began complaining to her about the performance of Kleinberg’s coworkers, behavior that made Kleinberg feel uncomfortable and unsure of what to say.

“I felt very trapped. I felt like I was in a very precarious situation,” Kleinberg said. “I did not want to say the wrong thing to her, and I certainly was not going to trash-talk anyone who worked there … so it put me in a very weird position that, reflecting on it now, I should not have been put in, especially by any senior-level management.”

Lead Mail Operator Serge Lebrun, one of four current full-time employees at the Medford office, agreed that he saw differences in how Chisholm treated employees.

“She treats people — immigrants — she treats differently than other Americans. That’s something we all witnessed,” he said.

Lebrun described an incident where he momentarily forgot to close the back door of a van he was driving away from the mailroom loading dock. Still in the parking lot, Lebrun realized the van door was ajar and got out to close it. He noticed Chisholm outside watching him.

“At first she just told me, be careful. In the morning she called me into her office and said, I sent you an email, but I know you don’t look at your email easily, so therefore I printed you out a copy … She gave me a written warning.

She threatened me that my job could be terminated in the letter — because of the door I left open,” Lebrun said.

After presenting Lebrun with a written warning, which he later submitted to the Office of Equal Opportunity, Chisholm brought him to discuss the incident with McKay. Lebrun described feeling as though the meeting was a setup to get him fired.

“I was very calm. She expected me to blow up, say I could not deal with that guy, then kick [me] out. So I was very calm. Anyway, after I finish, [McKay] says — it’s ok you’re all set,” Lebrun said.

Lebrun stated that Chisholm, the day before she left her job without explanation, called him into her office with another letter which included the mail truck policy. The next day, Friday, Oct. 25, she left and wasn’t heard from again.

Lebrun expressed incredulity that after decades of employment at Tufts, it appeared that Chisholm wanted to fire him over the door.

Jackson Francois, a former Mail Services employee who has since transferred to Tufts’ facilities’ grounds department, said that he decided to transfer out of Mail Services due to Chisholm’s management practices despite otherwise loving the job.

“I thought the job was amazing … I love talking to people, so I got to meet the students — I actually built long-standing relationships with a lot of the students that came through there. But she truly just would make the job miserable,” Francois said.

Under Chisholm, Francois and other employees dreaded coming into work at times.

“You ask any of those other guys, we would wake up in the morning and feel like, ‘do I really have to go to work today?’” Francois said.

He expressed a general reluctance to call anyone racist, yet described years of wondering why himself and two other immigrant employees were treated differently by Chisholm.

“If a mistake was made between the three of us, there was a huge meeting … And we were made to feel inferior. She made it a point to belittle us,” Francois said. “It’s just those things, you just wonder — obviously there’s something about the three of us.”

Civil Rights Act responsibility Labor lawyer Stuart Newman explained that a private employer like Tufts University is legally compelled to investigate harassment claims and prevent discrimination, racial or otherwise.

“Assuming that the jurisdictional standards are met, which is really pretty easy, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination based upon, among other protected categories, race, in the private sector,” he said, adding that institutions must investigate claims of discrimination.

Newman, who works in the labor and employment law department of Atlanta-based law firm Seyfarth, said employers receiving complaints about discrimination should also provide resources such as anti-harassment training.

“If there was a claim that certain employees and certain other employees engaged in some acts that would constitute racial discrimination or racial harassment, then the employer would have to go ahead [and perform] its duty to provide a harassment-free workplace,” he said.

Regarding complaints of discrimination by Chisholm, McKay and Pouliot told the Daily in an email that they were not able to comment on the behavior of individual employees. They did, however, specify that managers did receive anti-harassment training.

“Under University policy, discrimination or harassment complaints are directed to [the] Office of Equal Opportunity for review,” Pouliot wrote. “Facilities Operations provides extensive training in coordination with the Office of Equal Opportunity and outside consultants for our managers and staff.”

Shipping-receiving rates Full-time employees Singer and Lebrun stated that those working full-time at the Medford office of Tufts University Mail Services experience discrimination in pay rates. Despite the high capacity of the Medford location, which processes over 70,000 packages per year, Medford employees are not paid at the higher “shipping/receiving” rate of other employees at the Grafton, Boston and Fenway campus Mail Services offices.

“It’s unfair to us. We do more work, most of the work, and the other guys do less …

We cover all four campuses. We do shipping, receiving, all types. But those guys don’t receive packages, don’t ship things out, but they get shipping rate. I just don’t understand why,” Lebrun said.

Former Mail Services employee Eduardo “Junior” de la Rocha stated that upon joining Mail Services, he was told that he would be performing what he saw as the job function of a shipper/receiver.

“When I started, [Chisholm] gave to me a manual [with] what we’re doing over there — and in the manual she said we’re doing shipping and receiving. But they never pay us shipping and receiving,” he said.

According to the most recentTufts University and Service Employees’ International Union (SEIU) contract, shipper/receivers are paid an hourly rate of nearly 12% more than mailroom operator/driver leads, and up to 19.7% more than mailroom operator/drivers.

In 2016, Mail Services employees filed a grievance with the union advocating to be paid shipping/receiving rates. The negotiations were settled with promises of a “blended rate,” an incremental pay raise still not matching that of shipper/receivers.

“They tried to pull the wool over our eyes by giving us something that had nothing to do with what we were asking for, and then they tried to tell us that we won,” Francois said.

McKay and Pouliot told the Daily in an email that the SEIU and the university hold responsibility for negotiating such issues, rather than Tufts Facilities Services. They indicated no awareness of the issues raised by Lebrun, Singer and Francois.

Lebrun stated that Mail Services used to keep track of all packages shipped and received; however, Chisholm allegedly asked employees to destroy evidence of this practice so that it was not clear that the office shipped packages.

“When she was there, she asked one of the employees to dump all of the recording books. The UPS books we use to ship things

out,” Lebrun said. “Because no one could see a record of shipping. But I kept one myself.”

Francois echoed Lebrun’s claim, stating that he remembered being told to get rid of record books once Mail Services had transitioned into keeping records of shipping online.

“Before we did everything in a book, and then she found a way to get the whole process done online,” Francois said. “Once we did that, towards the end … she asked us to throw away all the books. She didn’t give us a reason, she just said ‘hey can you guys get rid of these.’”

Lebrun kept a copy of a book containing dates and times.

Lebrun and Singer both expressed a feeling of being shunted to the side by administration and of experiencing difficulties negotiating pay with the university through their union. Lebrun stressed that he is disappointed to receive a lesser pay rate after decades of loyalty to Tufts.

“We feel that we have been taken for granted, and also made us feel there is a sense of discrimination. Me, especially who has been working in the mailroom in Medford for over 20 years … All of us in the Medford campus are angry against such [an] act,” Lebrun said in a written statement.

Inconsistent management On the October morning Chisholm left Mail Services for good, she gave no indication that day would be her last on Tufts campus after 38 years of service.

“One day on a Friday afternoon, she just said ‘I’m going to lunch, I’ll be back,’ and we never saw her again,” Singer said of her departure.

Tisdale corroborated Singer’s statement, saying she had no idea Chisholm meant she did not plan to return.

“It was like she did all the time,” Tisdale said.

“So no one knew if there was any kind of underlying implication that she wouldn’t be coming back. It just sounded very normal, to like what she would do. It wasn’t anything that was out of the ordinary.”

Employees did not receive an official explanation regarding Chisholm’s sudden exit, nor have they heard from her since. McKay and Pouliot declined to comment on the conditions of her departure.

After Chisholm left Mail Services, Kleinberg said that it became noticeably easier to perform the tasks expected of her at work each day.

“It was hard working at Mail Services,” she said. “Morale was really low when she was around. It just wasn’t a fun place to work until she left. Once she left, the job became a lot easier.”

Smith also noticed a clear difference in the work environment after Chisholm’s departure, stating that mailroom efficiency increased despite lacking an official manager for the duration of November and December 2019.

“Actually, when she left, I would say the lines started going down, it actually got more organized, we were doing our own thing, which we liked. And then [McKay], the actual boss, was like ‘oh you’re not going to get a new manager, you guys are fine on your own,’” Smith said.

“Then after break we had a new manager.

That’s Adam.”

On Jan. 6, Chisholm was succeeded

by Adam Lavertue, a former Groton Post Office Postmaster who recently pleaded guilty to embezzling $7,000 from the United States Postal Service after first being charged with stealing government funds on Sept. 6, 2019. Tisdale noted that this information can be quickly found on Google.

“The thing that is baffling, is that this is the first thing that comes up when you Google this [man’s] name, but Tufts hired him … There’s no way that you don’t do a background check,” she said.

When asked about the hiring of Lavertue, McKay and Pouliot told the Daily in an email that they would not discuss individual employees due to privacy considerations. However, they noted that the university does not take

responsibility for background checks when seeking to fill short-term positions.

“Frequently, the University contracts services through an outside agency to provide temporary employment for short-term assignments and for open positions while we actively look to permanently fill certain positions,” Pouliot wrote. “In such situations, the outside agency performs all University required pre-placement verifications, prior to individuals [being] assigned.”

Tisdale remembered Lavertue being hired in early January then dismissed without ceremony by the end of the month. Mail Services employees did not receive an official statement regarding Lavertue’s departure, yet observed what they deemed as clear signs that he would not be returning.

“They changed the locks on the mail services door a few days after this guy left. So they know. They’re aware of the fact that this guy committed fraud,” Tisdale said.

In January, Smith recalled coming to work to find the full-time staff unsure of Lavertue’s location and unable to contact him over the phone.

Notably, during his short stint at Mail Services, Lavertue helped reorganize the mailroom so employees did not have to store packages in a cramped and unsafe back room as they had under Chisholm, giving some students a sense of optimism that the work environment would improve.

“The ‘WXYZ’ packages used to be kept in this … back stairwell. It was kind of dangerous because it had a very low pipe that I barely cleared — I’m like 5’2,” Kleinberg said. “So the guys were always hitting their heads, everyone’s hitting their heads, very dangerous but [Chisholm] just kept packages back there because it was convenient.”

Before his departure, Lavertue worked with student employees to arrange packages in a different location, mitigating the inconvenience of using the “back stairwell.” Kleinberg said she had felt happy to have a manager working to improve their space.

A temporary manager, Residential Facilities Coordinator Jennifer Bevins, has subsequently been appointed in the interim. Tisdale and Kleinberg both expressed that they have seen a marked improvement in atmosphere and organization while working for Bevins.

“Jen’s been really great and understanding of all the turmoil in the office,” Kleinberg wrote in an electronic message to the Daily. “She’s been supportive to the students, even though I imagine it’s not part of her normal job responsibilities to take on this work.”

Bevins did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Tisdale stressed that any negative experiences she has had working at Mail Services are a product of management, rather than the atmosphere created by other employees.

“Everyone that works that is not a higher-up has been absolutely wonderful,” Tisdale said. “I don’t have any complaints about any other person on the staff that works there or any of the student workers. It’s just, within the time that I’ve worked there, so a little over half a semester, we’ve been through two managers and they were both awful.”

Kleinberg said she hopes Tufts students picking up packages from Mail Services can empathize with student employees by recognizing that long wait times or other perceived issues are often not the fault of student workers themselves.

“A lot of people complain about it, we get a lot of complaints from parents and stuff, but like we’re really doing our best … We appreciate all the students who appreciate us dealing with Sheila,” Kleinberg said. “So anyone who’s nice to us, that comes across.”

Austin Clementi contributed reporting to this article.

News

6 Sunday, May 17, 2020

tuftsdaily.com

Q&A: Monaco Tufts SJP wins student organization award, outlines possible rouses administration disapproval return in fall, reflects on turbulent year

by Robert Kaplan and Austin Clementi

Executive News Editor and Executive Investigative Editor

Bookended by a string of consecutive incidents of hate and a disruptive pandemic, the 2019–20 academic year witnessed significant changes to Tufts’ campus. University President Anthony Monaco joined the Daily via Zoom to discuss these developments and more.

The Tufts Daily (TD): What were some of the significant issues, accomplishments and challenges this year before the coronavirus pandemic caused the campus to shut down?

Anthony Monaco (AM): We had a lot of new academic programs, many new graduate programs in fields such as computer engineering, global business administration, health informatics and analytics — which was very popular — human-robot interaction, and also sustainability. We also had our first undergraduate program called Tufts Civic Semester which enabled participants to engage in a semester of service before beginning their studies at Tufts.

We also had a lot of new leaders joining us, including our new provost and senior vice president, Nadine Aubry, and three new deans, Alastair Cribb, Nadeem Karimbux and Rachel Kyte at the Cummings School, the Dental School and the Fletcher School, respectively. Another very important person in my team is Mike Howard as the executive vice president and a new chief information officer, Chris Sedore. We also had a change in leadership after the research and scholarship strategic plan was completed and Caroline Genco from the [Tufts University School of Medicine] joined us as the vice provost for research. It was certainly an interesting year to have so many new leaders that had to gel in the way they worked together and keep that dynamic momentum going but we seem to have done that very well.

We also opened up a number of renovated or new facilities: Barnum-Dana, which was offline for some time, has now come back with its new inhabitants. We also got well underway and finished at least the steel before the COVID-19 construction halted for the Joyce Cummings Center down by the MBTA stop. Our new squash facilities were completed. We had our first home match there. We also completed new solar installations on the roofs of Lewis Hall and the Science and Engineering Complex and we’re continuing plans to expand our renewable energy portfolio on the Medford/Somerville campus.

We also enhanced our undergraduate life with all the renovations and the completion of CoHo and making that available for the first time, and renovated Miller and Houston, and as I’ve said the eight-court facility for squash.

The [School of the Museum of Fine Arts] also got some additions with a new cafe that’s helped to strengthen their community, so they have more options for food and drink during the day. At the [Tufts University School of Dental Medicine], we see MONACO, page 12

NICOLE GARAY / THE TUFTS DAILY

The Academic Quad is pictured on April 25.

by Connor Dale News Editor

Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) won the 2020 Collaboration Award as part of the Office for Campus Life’s (OCL) annual student organization awards ceremony on April 22, prompting swift disapproval by University President Anthony Monaco and other members of the Tufts administration.

SJP received the award in recognition of the coalition the student group has built as part of its “#EndTheDeadlyExchange” campaign, which seeks to end military training trips for the Tufts University Police Department (TUPD) and all other police militarization on campus. According to SJP member Julia Asfour, the coalition comprises 20 other student and activist organizations on campus.

“Importantly, these are clubs with a bunch of different interests — we’re not just focusing on clubs that promote justice-oriented issues, but instead we’re bringing together individuals who are passionate about our mission and who can connect it to their own struggles,” Asfour, a rising senior, said. “So that’s what we really wanted to focus on when building this coalition — including as many voices as possible.”

According to the OCL’s website, the Collaboration Award celebrates student organizations that have made collaboration a top priority in their programming and have demonstrated they can “break down barriers” between diverse populations and build connections between student organizations on campus. SJP received the award at a virtual ceremony on April 22 hosted by the OCL over Facebook Live.

The following day, Monaco, Provost and Senior Vice President Nadine Aubry, Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences James Glaser, Dean of Student Affairs and Chief Student Affairs Officer ad interim Nancy Thompson, and Dean of the School of Engineering Jianmin Qu released a

statement condemning SJP’s receipt of the award.

“We strongly disapprove of this award in light of SJP’s concerning policy positions, including its association with the [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions] movement, elements of which we view as anti-semitic,” the statement read. “We as senior leaders take responsibility for this outcome, which should not have happened, and recognize that the award has caused a great deal of pain and concern for Jewish members of our community and others who share concerns about SJP’s policy positions, particularly in light of rising anti-semitism in the U.S. and around the world.”

Tufts will not be rescinding SJP’s Collaboration Award, but will instead reevaluate the process by which award decisions are made, according to Patrick Collins, Tufts’ executive director of media relations. The administration’s statement said the awards process currently does not involve academic deans or senior university leadership and this year did not include students.

Members of SJP issued their own statement one day later expressing outrage at the administration’s position, saying they were disappointed to see not only the efforts of their members and club diminished, but also the efforts of more than 20 other student organizations “disparaged” by senior university leadership.

“Not only is [the administration’s statement] really insulting and horrible to us, but it is also insulting to all of the clubs that we have worked so hard with and that have put a lot of effort into this campaign,” Molly Tunis, a graduating senior and member of SJP, said. “It feels like this award is being taken away from them.”

SJP members said that the administration’s statement poses significant harm to the Arab students in the club who remain targets of such accusations that delegitimize their organizing efforts,

as well as dismisses the Jewish students and organizations involved in the #EndTheDeadlyExchange campaign.

They also criticized the university for tokenizing students of color and their advocacy on social media while subsequently criticizing their efforts.

“I think a lot of the reason why so many people are frustrated is that Tufts has a history of putting down activists and making it really hard to organize on campus — especially for organizers of color and students of color — only to brag about how justice-oriented the student body is,” Leila Skinner, a rising junior and member of SJP, said.

SJP is calling on the Tufts administration to revoke its statement and to issue a public apology for dismissing the work of SJP and its coalition of other student and activist groups on campus. As of May 3, 45 student organizations had signed onto SJP’s statement.

The coalition is encouraging members of the Tufts community to email the administration in support of SJP, calling on Monaco and the other administrators to rescind and apologize for their statement.

Additionally, over the weekend following the statements, SJP organized a “twitter storm” in which users barraged Monaco’s and the university’s Twitter accounts with messages in support of SJP. According to Tunis, SJP has received an outpouring of support both from within and from outside the Tufts community.

“We have been getting messages from students, alumni and local organizations who are wondering how they can support us and how they can get involved,” Tunis said. “And I think this just shows that not only are there people on this campus that care about this issue, but also a ton of people outside of Tufts who have been recognizing the work we’ve been doing for a lot longer than just this past week.”

Collins said the university stands by the administration’s statement.

News

Sunday, May 17, 2020 | News | THE TUFTS DAILY

Tufts to cut 2/3 of summer dining staff as union talks stall

Monaco, administration respond to new Title IX regulations, gather committee

by Alejandra Carrillo Deputy News Editor

Dewick-MacPhie Dining Center is pictured on April 25.

by Alexander Thompson Staff Writer

The university plans to reduce summer dining staff to about 20, a third of the normal total, and remains vague on plans for benefits payments in talks to replace an agreement that guaranteed full pay to workers which expired yesterday, officials from UNITE Here Local 26, which represents the workers, said.

Local 26 Executive Vice President Mike Kramer and Tufts’ shop stewards met with David Ossam, Tufts’ director of labor relations, and Patti Klos, Tufts’ director of dining services, as well as other top management on April 22 and May 6 to discuss the agreement.

Tricia O’Brien, a retail division shop steward who works in Mugar Café, said that the university is refusing to continue paying wages to the 60 workers, the number who normally work over the summer.

“What we wanted was that everybody that worked last summer, the amount of people that worked, pay them for the summer,” she said.

The union also wants Tufts to cycle the workers, as they are doing currently, so that all 60 of the employees they want to see paid are able to work.

Instead, the university intends to put 20 slots up to bid by seniority, according to O’Brien.

Patrick Collins, Tufts’ executive director of public relations, declined to comment on the ongoing negotiations, but confirmed the university’s intentions to cut the number of positions down to 20.

“The university appreciates the contributions of all of its employees whose work enables students, faculty and staff to study, learn and work at Tufts,” he wrote in an email.

In a May 1 email appeal to local elected officials, O’Brien, speaking on behalf of unionized workers, criticized the university, accusing them of “trying to initiate a union busting strategy so they can go back in time and treat their dining workers as the unseen and unheard.”

“Management has used stalling practices and have basically ignored any sincere requests that we have made,” O’Brien wrote in the email to the Daily.

Local officials and student activists have stepped up pressure on the administration over the issue in recent days.

NICOLE GARAY / THE TUFTS DAILY

Katjana Ballantyne, the Somerville city councilor who represents Ward 7 south and west of Tufts’ campus, wrote a letter calling on University President Anthony Monaco to accede to the workers’ proposals.

“As we move forward at this time I am requesting you extend your compassion and community spirit for your employees and aid the Tufts University Dining workers of your institution,” she wrote. “We are all in this together.”

On-campus activists have adapted their advocacy to the pandemic. Tufts Labor Coalition urged students to call or email senior administrators in a series of Facebook posts over the weekend of May 2, while Christine Tringale, an assistant sous chef at Hodgdon Dining and vocal advocate in the workers’ labor movement, put together a video message and social media campaign.

Local 26 also proposed that Tufts continue to pay into union health insurance and pension plans, give hazard pay to those who do work during the summer, pay out accumulated vacation time and allow workers who do not work to seek unemployment benefits.

Normally, workers who do not work during the summer are not eligible for unemployment benefits as they are still employed by the university. The union wants laid off workers to be able to seek these benefits.

The university has not yet given a definite response to these proposals at the two sides’ latest meeting, O’Brien said.

O’Brien criticized Monaco directly. “[President] Larry Bacow at Harvard, he took a 25% pay cut. Why wouldn’t Monaco do that to save jobs and why [wouldn’t] top managers do that? That’s what happened at Harvard,” she said.

The university has been burdened by the financial impacts of the coronavirus pandemic, with $15 million in losses projected for this fiscal year and as much as $50 million next fiscal year.

Collins said that the university has taken drastic steps to mitigate the financial fallout, like freezing hiring, salaries and capital projects, but still paid all dining workers in full through May 9 even though many did not work.

The sharp rhetoric from the union is a dramatic reversal from March when workers praised Tufts for its decision to pay wages through the entirety of the spring semester and Local 26 touted the university as an example for other area universities.

7

In response to the United States Department of Education’s recent changes to Title IX regulations, University President Anthony Monaco and other administrators affirmed Tufts’ commitment to combating sexual misconduct and gathered members of the Sexual Misconduct Steering Committee to determine future action.

The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) released final Title IX regulations on May 6, some of which include defining sexual harassment as unlawful sex discrimination and allowing for those accused of harassment or assault to question evidence and accusers, according to an article by ed.gov.

Universities that, like Tufts, receive federal funding must comply with the new rules by Aug. 14.

Monaco expressed concern over the new changes in an email to the Tufts community on May 7.

“After an initial review, we are deeply disappointed and concerned; the regulations create new definitions, processes, and procedures that could reverse years of progress in addressing and preventing sexual misconduct on college campuses,” Monaco wrote.

An undergraduate student who chose to remain anonymous but owns several social media accounts named Tier Town Survivor spoke about the new regulations.

They called on the university and community members to recognize that sexual violence is not only carried out by men against women.

“Anyone of any gender can perpetrate and anyone of any gender can be a survivor,” they said.

The Title IX changes come after Monaco and others in higher education responded last year to the Department of Education’s originally proposed regulations. In 2019, Monaco affirmed the university’s commitment to preventing and eliminating sexual harassment at Tufts in an email.

“We are deeply committed to continuing our efforts to eradicate sexual misconduct from our community and strongly urge the Department to reject any changes that would be counterproductive to that goal,” he wrote.

Monaco’s most recent May email echoes these same objectives.

He acknowledged that the release of the new regulations presents a greater challenge to institutions and their respective community members, who are also working to combat the effects of COVID-19.

“The timing of these proposed changes, coming in the midst of a pandemic that is challenging and changing colleges and universities in unprecedented ways, places an additional stress not only on institutions but most importantly on our students, faculty and staff,” Monaco said.

Members of the Sexual Misconduct Steering Committee, which is made up of faculty, staff, students and Monaco, will gather to discuss how the university can best respond to the regulations, according to the email.

Under the new regulations, colleges are not required to deal with complaints of sexual harassment that occur outside the United States.

“The section of the rule that permits schools to ignore sexual violence that occurs outside of school would allow countless assaults to go unchecked,” the anonymous student said.

They also advocated for the protection of survivors who are marginalized, including LGBTQ survivors, survivors with disabilities, male survivors and survivors of color.

Jill Zellmer, executive director of the Office of Equal Opportunity (OEO) and Title IX coordinator for the university, explained some of the steps Tufts has taken in response to the Title IX changes.

“The President’s Sexual Misconduct Prevention Steering Committee is creating two subgroups to work on the two biggest issues we need to address in the next 100 days before OCR requires implementation,” she wrote in an email to the Daily.

According to Zellmer, the two of the greatest issues are modifying the university’s current Sexual Misconduct Adjudication Process and bolstering the informal process options, while providing a high level of resources and support for all those involved in these processes, as the new regulations largely will only allow action on the basis of formal complaints.

She added that members of the Steering Committee — both students and employees — will have the option of joining one of these subgroups, which will meet to share ideas about how best to modify Tufts’ formal and informal processes.

Zellmer noted that Tufts’ legal department and the OEO have been speaking to law firms and other peer institutions to ensure that the university implements the best practices and complies with the regulations.

She explained that students play an important role in the university’s response and action plan.

“Students play a key role in these discussions,” Zellmer said. “We are ready for these challenges and … to build the best process we possibly can within the confines of the new regulations.”

US DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is pictured on Dec. 3, 2019.

8

THE TUFTS DAILY | News | Sunday, May 17, 2020

tuftsdaily.com

Pandemic response opens Tufts receives $4.7 million from CARES Act, $2.3 million to go to new chapter in townemergency financial aid gown relations

by Alexander Thompson Staff Writer

After years of tension over housing and taxes, Tufts’ efforts to help its host communities respond to the coronavirus pandemic may have turned a new leaf in relations, raising hopes that warm feelings and the close partnership could endure even after the crisis is over.

At a community meeting 10 weeks ago, a Somerville resident suggested to Mayor Joe Curtatone that he sell the city’s portion of Tufts’ campus to Medford.

“I always joke we oughta make them a city unto themselves and let them come up with their own

fire department and find out what the cost is,” another resident said.

At the meeting, which served as an update on the status of the negotiations over the payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) program, Somerville residents and officials vented their frustrations with Tufts.

In a similar meeting on Oct. 29, the mayor took a tough line with the university, threatening that “all bets are off” if it did not make concessions in the talks.

He called donations from the Sackler family “blood money.” see TOWN-GOWN, page 13

PATRICK MILEWSKI / THE TUFTS DAILY

A Somerville community meeting is held at the Tufts University Administration Building on March 5.

Struggling coronavirus economy hurts graduating seniors

by Liza Harris News Editor

Disclaimer: David Levitsky is a former managing editor at the Daily. He was not involved in the writing or editing of this article.

With the global economy taking a major hit from the COVID19 pandemic, many graduating seniors are struggling to determine their next steps into the job market.

An article published in 2006 by three economists found that college seniors graduating into a recession face hardships in salary and earnings for up to eight to 10 years. For some graduates, entire industries have been put on hold.

Jake Zaslav, a graduating senior, said the television production industry has been halted almost entirely, with most companies in a hiring freeze.

“It’s really anxiety-producing, because even when the main crisis is over, who knows when the media will go back to normal?”

Zaslav said.

Other Tufts seniors have been stripped of full-time employment offers, including David Levitsky. He called the impact of COVID-19, “in a word, overwhelming” for the Class of 2020.

“Before you can even start a job search, you have ‘the worst market since the Great Depression’ hanging over you.

Everyone is just overwhelmed,” Levitsky said.

He received a job offer in October, but it was rescinded in March.

“The company I was going to work at sells restaurant technology, so it’s a pretty tough industry to be in right now,” Levitsky said.

Although Levitsky has managed to secure a different job, he noted that it is extremely difficult for people entering more traditional job fields.

“I have friends that are interested in banking or real estate or more traditional fields,” he said.

“Morale, especially for people that are going down more traditional career paths, is low.”

Philip Oreopoulos, one of the authors of the 2006 article and a professor of economics at the University of Toronto, wrote in a draft op-ed that seniors who graduated from college during times of economic hardship earned about 10% to 15% less in the first year after graduation, compared to “peers who gradusee ECONOMY, page 13

by Madeleine Aitken Assistant News Editor

Tufts received $4.7 million in federal COVID-19 relief under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act which was signed into law on March 27. The CARES Act allocates roughly $2 trillion budgeted to aid individuals and businesses across different sectors.

This money comes on the heels of the news that Tufts anticipates coming in over budget this fiscal year as a result of costs related to the coronavirus pandemic, with an estimated budget deficit of $15 million.

Of the $4.7 million Tufts received, a minimum of $2.3 million must be used to fund emergency financial aid grants for students, according to the CARES Act. “This funding will provide emergency financial aid grants to students for expenses related to the disruption of campus operations due to coronavirus such as food, housing, course materials, technology, health care, and child care expenses,” Patricia Reilly, associate dean of financial aid, wrote in an email to the Daily.

Reilly acknowledged the financial difficulties many students have faced in the last weeks.

“Tufts was very pleased to be notified of this federal funding to provide some additional assistance to our students in financial need during this time,” Reilly said.

Reilly explained that the money will be disbursed appropriately through student accounts, and that the hope is to get this money out within the next two weeks.

However, it’s not clear at this time which students can expect to receive money, nor how much.

“Interpretation of the federal guidance will likely continue to evolve. Each Tufts school is establishing a committee to review requests for emergency funding, and all decisions will be reviewed by the committee,” Reilly said.

Vice President for Finance and Treasurer James Hurley is in touch with executive administrative deans and financial aid directors of each of Tufts’ schools to determine how the $2.3 million student component will be divided and disbursed.

Aside from that amount, there is another $2.4 million that can be spent at Tufts’ discretion.

There is a similar uncertainty around how to spend the $2.4 million.

“We are still working to understand what is allowable under both the institutional and student components of these funds,” Hurley wrote in an email to the Daily. “We are using the most recent guidance provided by the Department of Education and we are engaging with our external advisors as well as peer institutions to understand the appropriate use of these funds.”

Executive Director of Media Relations Patrick Collins said that the advice from the Department

of Education will likely continue to change.

“The Department of Education guidance is likely to evolve and interpretation of the guidance will continue to evolve as well … the university will continue to work to understand the allowable use [of ] these funds,” Collins wrote in an email to the Daily.

For now, Hurley said, the plan for the institutional component of $2.4 million is to cover costs associated with the changes Tufts has had to make to its teaching practices due to COVID-19 and the resulting transition to online learning.

Examples include using the money to “cover the costs of changes to the delivery of instruction, expand remote learning programs, build IT capacity to support remote learning, train faculty and staff to operate effectively remotely and purchase equipment or software or pay for online licensing fees,” Hurley said.

Hurley also said, however, that it is possible some or all of the additional $2.4 million Tufts received, which has been deemed as “institutional,” could go to students as well.

This would be in addition to the $2.3 million that must be awarded to students through the CARES Act. “Depending on the need that emerges from the schools, we may need to consider using the institutional component for student-related reimbursements,” Hurley said.

Cover to cover: Class of 2020’s 4 years on campus, reviewed

by Tufts Daily News Staff The Class of 2020’s time at Tufts was one marked by historic events and systemic changes.

From student activism and an overhaul of Greek life to virtual classes and a postponed Commencement, the Daily has documented some of the most memorable moments in the past four years. As the Class of 2020 graduates, the Daily is reviewing the history it leaves behind at Tufts.

2016–17 The election of Donald Trump to the presidency saw a rise in campus tensions and set the tone for the Class of 2020’s first year on campus.

Hundreds took part in a walkout planned by Tufts United for Immigrant Justice to express support for Tufts’ undocumented students and call for the university to be designated a sanctuary campus.

University President Anthony Monaco made an appearance, and while he did not explicitly support the sanctuary campus movement, he read a statement reaffirming the university’s com-

mitment to protecting its undocumented students.

The day before election day, the Tufts Observer published an article detailing an act of hazing and sexual assault during a fraternity event. The piece called for the abolition of fraternities and precipitated a campus-wide movement for the abolition of Greek life.

Though participation in Greek life had risen to nearly a quarter of the student body the previous year, nearly half of the members of the Delta chapter of Alpha Omicron Pi left the sorority early in the fall, following disagreements with the national organization over the chapter’s decision to extend a bid to a transgender woman.

The Chi Omega sorority also saw a drop in membership, with members criticizing the national organization and Greek life as an institution.

In response to these calls, the university began investigations and placed a hold on social events and recruitment for all chapters.

Labor was also a prominent issue. The university barely

avoided a strike while negotiating janitor contracts and nearly faced a National Labor Relations Board hearing over unpopular schedule changes. Graduate students in the School of Arts and Sciences voted to unionize, and part-time faculty members rallied to support the renegotiation of their contracts.

Rising senior Benya Kraus was elected Tufts Community Union (TCU) President. The TCU Senate faced controversial resolutions, including an unsuccessful resolution proposed by free speech group Students Advocating for Students calling for changes to the university sexual misconduct policy and a resolution, passed 17-6-8, that called for the university to divest from companies that TCU Senate said were involved in the occupation of Palestinian territories. Tufts celebrated its first Indigenous Peoples’ Day in the fall, a victory for the TCU Senate, which had twice passed resolutions in support of the holiday.

Tufts had a number of visisee REVIEW, page 14

News

Sunday, May 17, 2020 | News | THE TUFTS DAILY

COVID-19 puts hold on Peace Corps, Fulbright plans for graduating seniors

by Abbie Gruskin News Editor

COVID-19 has thrown a wrench in the plans of graduating seniors preparing to embark on international volunteer work or study abroad opportunities, with international programs including the Peace Corps and the Fulbright U.S. Student Program postponing upcoming travel due to the ongoing global impacts of COVID-19.

Director of Career Development Donna Esposito estimates these changes have forced roughly 20 graduating Tufts seniors to hold off on their previously scheduled volunteer work and studies until at least the fall.

Tufts was named a “top producer” of Fulbright recipients for the sixth consecutive year in 2019, and 12 students have already received Fulbright scholarships this year, according to Anne Moore, program specialist in the Office of Scholar Development.

At least a couple more students are now delayed in starting international volunteer work through the Peace Corps, according to graduating senior Elisa Sturkie, who recently accepted an offer to teach English as a second language in Costa Rica. She would have started in July.

Fulbright is encouraging all current students to return to the U.S., and it sent students back from China and other similarly affected countries as early as January, according to Moore.

The Peace Corps website reports that as of March 15, all current volunteers are being evacuated and their service suspended.

The application processes for these and other programs ran according to schedule through the spring, but Fulbright announced at the end of April that upcoming programs would be delayed until at least this upcoming January. Many graduating Fulbright seniors were originally scheduled to start their studies in the fall, according to Moore, who oversees the awarding of all Fulbright scholarships at Tufts.

Sturkie said her volunteer work with the Peace Corps has been suspended along with all other Peace Corps work until after Sept.

30, and that no official departure date has been set.

“Everybody’s sort of in the same boat, is like the one upside, I guess,” Moore said.

“I worry about what will happen if it winds up getting moved past January, but … if Fulbright doesn’t start up in January that’s going to be the least of our worries. At some point the world has to begin again.”

Sturkie echoed Moore’s feeling of unease.

“It’s out of everyone’s hands,” Sturkie wrote in an email to the Daily.

For Sturkie, these recent changes have dashed plans that date back to her high school years, when she first grew interested in the possibility of living and working abroad. Once at Tufts, she chose her three majors — English, Spanish and peace and justice studies — with the intent of applying them to future volunteer experiences overseas.

“I have always wanted to live abroad and use my Spanish, and this seemed like a great opportunity to do so while also working towards social justice,” she said.

Sturkie explained her process with the Peace Corps and her decision to accept its offer.

“They interviewed me in early February for over an hour … and then offered the position three days later.

You’re only given three days to decide, but for me it was pretty easy,” Sturkie said. “Peace Corps was what I wanted to do more than anything, and I had

received a posting I was really interested in and felt prepared for.”

After Tufts announced on March 10 its move to online instruction for the remainder of the semester, Sturkie’s Peace Corps plans changed rapidly. The Peace Corps first moved all medical clearance dates to the end of May and then, roughly one week later, announced that all current volunteers would be evacuated from their posts, according to Sturkie.

“That’s pretty much when I knew that my departure date was going to change,” she said. “They emailed just a few weeks ago to confirm this … I have no idea when my actual departure date will be — just that it will be some time after September. I really hope to still be able to serve, but it’s going to depend on when they allow us to return to service.”

On campus, Esposito explained that the Career Center is working to help all graduating seniors with tips shared through weekly eNews messages, online appointments, Zoom events and new platforms like Interstride, which is designed to help international students search for jobs.

The Career Center has also reached out to Moore to connect with Fulbright recipients, but does not have access to the names of students joining the Peace Corps due to a federal law that prevents such sharing of volunteers’ identities, according to Esposito.

“We are encouraging students to stay the course, to conduct research into industries that are hiring, and to pivot if need be,” Esposito wrote in an email to the Daily.

“Individuals should think about what Plan B could look like, whether it’s exploring a different industry, considering a year of service, or tapping into another set of personal competencies to refocus on a new role.”

Sturkie has a temporary job near campus lined up for the summer months, but anticipates that planning beyond that point will become increasingly difficult.

“I can’t exactly wait a year without a steady source of income,” she said. “And employers don’t want to hear that I might pick up and leave when the Peace Corps decides to reopen, either. It’s a bit of a tough spot.”

Sturkie will begin considering other options in a few months but is uncertain about whether she should wait for the international opportunity with the Peace Corps to reopen.

“At the end of August I think I will have to reevaluate and make a decision either to apply to full-time jobs, grad school, or hold out hope that I still might be able to serve in the near future,” she said. “We’re all unsure of how long we should wait for these opportunities, or if we should start looking more seriously into contingency plans.”

Looking ahead, Moore anticipates that the Fulbright application process will restart as normal during the 2020-21 academic year and that universities will adopt a combination of in-person and online approaches to learning.

She believes that students awarded Fulbright scholarships — as well as those embarking on other international pursuits — share a sense of optimism that bodes well for the future beyond the current pandemic.

“We want international connection and communication and mutual aid through shared intellectual inquiry, that is the core value of the Fulbright,” Moore said. “The means by which that happens may shift … to take the time to talk with students about these opportunities helps us envision a future … it helps us have faith that our values will continue.”

9

Faculty react to wage and salary freeze, budget deficit

by Jessica Blough and Madeleine Aitken News Editor and Assistant News Editor

Staff and faculty will experience a wage and salary freeze next year as the university halts most raises in response to a major budget deficit.

The wage and salary freeze, announced on April 14 in an email to university employees, halts both merit cycle increases and those related to increases in the cost of living, according to Executive Vice President Mike Howard, Tufts’ chief administrative officer. It excludes increases promised by contracts.

Administrators anticipate that the COVID-19 crisis could cause the university to run a deficit of $15 to over $50 million between this fiscal year and the next, depending on how long the public health emergency lasts.

Along with the wage and salary freeze, the university also instituted a hiring freeze, suspended spending on capital projects and halted other discretionary spending.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant negative impact on the university’s budget, as has been the case at other colleges and universities nationwide. In response, it has become necessary to take immediate steps to control costs where possible,” Howard wrote in an email to the Daily.

The last time the university instituted a wage freeze was following the 2008 financial crisis, according to Howard.

The faculty, across many departments, said they are most affected by the freeze.

“Most everyone who teaches and does research anticipates, in normal circumstances, a merit raise,” Bruce Hitchner, chair of the classical studies department, wrote in an email to the Daily.

Both full-time lecturers and part-time lecturers have unionized in recent years, part-time in 2013 and full-time in 2015.

Both groups are in the middle of five year contracts. The full-time lecturers’ contract, which was renewed in 2019, stipulates that union members will receive salary increases for fiscal year 2020 “in accordance with University’s Annual Merit Review Program,” but the salary freeze suspends all funds of the merit program.

The part-time faculty’s contract, renewed in 2017, lays out wage increases across all departments through fiscal year 2022.

The Academic Quad is pictured on April 25.

The wage freeze can be especially difficult considering Boston is a city with a high cost of living and many professors are supporting families at home, according to Department of Biology Chair Catherine Freudenreich.

“It is also a particularly challenging time for faculty with young children who are at home, rather than at school or daycare, and need extra attention,” Freudenreich wrote in an email to the Daily.

Freudenreich said that transitioning to online learning has created more work for faculty, which has not only increased their responsibilities as professors but also cut into the time they usually devote to research.

“The biology faculty all put in a lot of extra hours this spring to switch their classes to online and adjust their courses to work as best as possible for our students,” Freudenrich said. “They will probably also be spending more time this summer working on fall courses, to prepare in case courses have to be taught in a dual manner (both in person and online) this fall.”

While this could make the wage freeze feel like it’s hitting even harder, the general opinion among professors is understanding of the situation and of why the freeze was necessary.

“I sense that most of us accept and understand the decision in the circumstances,” Hitchner said.

Nevertheless, Freudenreich suggested that faculty might be more accepting of the salary freeze if administrators were more involved in the financial sacrifices.

“At [Harvard University], top administrators all agreed to take pay cuts to do their part in managing the financial situation of the university. No word about that at Tufts,” Freudenreich said.

Along with Harvard, administrators at Stanford University, University of Southern California and the University of Oregon have announced that they will take pay cuts to decrease costs over the next fiscal year, according to Inside Higher Ed. Athletic coaches at institutions across the country have followed suit. Thus far, no Tufts administrators have announced they plan to take pay cuts.

Faculty and staff have not yet been asked by the university to take pay cuts, but Howard said he did not rule out the possibility.

NICOLE GARAY / THE TUFTS DAILY

10

THE TUFTS DAILY | News | Sunday, May 17, 2020

tuftsdaily.com

Degrees presented in 1st-ever online conferral ceremony Tufts University is awarding 3,648 degrees today across all of its constituent schools and programs in a pre-recorded virtual ceremony posted online at 8 a.m.

EDT., which will not name individual graduates or feature a Commencement speaker.

University President Anthony Monaco announced on March 30 that in-person Commencement ceremonies would be postponed until the danger of the coronavirus pandemic subsides, though he initially told the Tufts community four days earlier that the end-of-year event would be cancelled entirely.

Graduating members of the undergraduate Class of 2020 were outraged by the initial decision, quickly gathering about 4,800 signatures on an online petition which requested in-person Commencement be rescheduled instead. Tufts has not yet determined when the physical ceremony will take place.

Of the 1,469 degrees awarded today to undergraduates by the Schools of Arts and Sciences and Engineering, 664 are Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degrees, 558 are Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degrees, 215 are Bachelor of Science in Engineering (B.S.E.) degrees and 32 are Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.) degrees.

The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences is awarding 466 degrees today, 185 of which are Master of Science (M.S.) degrees and 148 are Master of Arts (M.A.) degrees. Another 55 are Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degrees, 30 are Master of Arts in Teaching degrees, 21 are Education Specialist degrees, 15 are Master of Fine Arts degrees, 10 are

Master of Public Policy degrees and two are Doctor of Occupational Therapy degrees.

Through the Graduate School of Engineering, 316 degrees will be awarded today, 162 of which are M.S. degrees.

Sixty three are Master of Science in Engineering Management (M.S.E.M.) degrees, 51 are Ph.D.s and 40 are Master of Science in Innovation and Management degrees.

The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy will award 414 degrees, of which 259 are Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy (M.A.L.D.) degrees, 62 are M.A. degrees, 45 are Master of International Business degrees, 25 are Master of Laws in International Law degrees, 12 are Master of Arts in Transatlantic Affairs degrees, seven are Ph.D.s and four are Master of Arts in Humanitarian Assistance degrees.

The School of Dental Medicine is awarding 241 degrees in total, which include 228 Doctor of Dental Medicine (D.M.D.) degrees and 13 M.S. degrees.

The School of Medicine will award 216 degrees today, 146 of which are Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) degrees.

Another 36 M.D. degrees will be awarded through its Maine Track program, along with four combined M.D. and Master of Public Health (M.P.H.) degrees, also through the Maine Track program. The remainder is 15 combined M.D./M.P.H. degrees and 15 combined M.D. and Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.) degrees.

Meanwhile, 224 degrees will be awarded in total through the School of Medicine’s Public Health and Professional Degree programs. Ninety five of these are

Master of Science in Biomedical Sciences (M.B.S.) degrees, 54 are M.P.H. degrees, 46 are Master of Science in Medical Science degrees, seven are combined Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (D.V.M)/M.P.H. degrees, five are combined M.B.S./M.P.H. degrees, five are combined M.B.S./Master of Business Administration in Health Management degrees, four are Master of Science in Pain Research, Education and Policy degrees, four are Master of Science in Medical Science/M.P.H. degrees, two are Master of Science in Health Communication degrees and two are Doctor of Public Health degrees.

In the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, 56 degrees will be awarded today, 27 of which are M.S. degrees. The remaining degrees include 25 Ph.D.s and four combined M.D./Ph.D.s.

The Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy will award 113 degrees today, 77 of which are M.S. degrees. Another 14 are Ph.D.s, along with 12 Master of Nutrition Science and Policy degrees, eight Combined M.S./Dietetic Internship degrees and two Master of Arts in Humanitarian Assistance degrees.

Finally, the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine will award 142 degrees today, 92 of which are D.V.M.s. It will award another 16 Master of Science in Conservation Medicine degrees, 12 Master of Science in Infectious Disease and Global Health degrees, 10 Master of Science in Animal and Public Policy, seven combined D.V.M./M.P.H. degrees, four combined D.V.M./Master of Science in Laboratory Animal Medicine degrees and one Ph.D.

Staff Writer

“It was just an idea without a roadmap 20 years ago, it was much smaller than it is now,” Solomont said. “So moving into Barnum and moving into this iconic building with the elephant in front … [it] was a big deal.”

Solomont added that every Tisch College event has been used to tell the story of its 20th anniversary, from the Tisch College Distinguished Speaker Series beginning in fall 2019 to the creation of a campaign course focused on the 2020 election provided by the college over winter break.

This past academic year, Tisch College also launched the Center for State Policy Analysis to focus on state-level policymaking, and hosted U.S. Rep. Will Hurd at an event on Sept. 6. Some of Tisch College’s see TISCH COLLEGE, page 15

see PETA, page 15

— Robert Kaplan

by Sarah Sandlow

Assistant News Editor

PATRICK MILEWSKI / THE TUFTS DAILY

West Hall is pictured reflected on the door to Tisch College at Barnum Hall on Feb. 21.

McAndrew explained that a celebratory dinner was also supposed to be held on April 16 at Gifford House, honoring 20 leaders who have shaped 20 years of Tisch College. Like many other events, it has been postponed. She said they are working on producing videos about Tisch College’s impact and are planning a big speaker event in the fall.

“All of our [current] distinguished speaker events are going to be co-branded as part of the 20th anniversary,” McAndrew said. “I think all of those events will be part of the celebration, and I would expect, whenever we’re back together in the fall, that we would plan to have a lot of those events focused around the election because our assumption is that it was and is going to be a big topic, given where we are in the world and [with] COVID-19.”

Solomont said he thinks the move to Barnum Hall was Tisch College’s biggest single event of this semester.

by Sam Klugherz

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) last month sent a letter to University President Anthony Monaco, demanding that Tufts immediately prohibit any new animal experiments and finalize and end ongoing tests, as well as publicly release information about the status of animal experiments conducted by the university.

The April 15 letter was prompted by Tufts’ decision to suspend all non-essential on-campus research, including research involving animals, as part of its COVID-19 response.

“Animal orders, imports and exports will be stopped. Critical animals/cages or those requiring treatment should be labeled, and consideration should be given to reducing cage census,” Vice Provost for Research Caroline Genco wrote in a message to members of the Tufts research community on March 19.

According to Shalin Gala, PETA’s vice president of international laboratory methods, this decision likely resulted in the killing of animals deemed non-essential for research.

“PETA is now questioning why any of these animals are being bought, bred, or experimented on in the first place,” Gala told the Daily. “The COVID-19 pandemic should be a moral and scientific reckoning for the school.”

PETA’s letter urges Tufts to end all current and new animal experiments, ban the breeding and purchase of new animals, switch to alternative research methods and tell the public how many animals were euthanized.

Tufts has taken steps to minimize the impact of on-campus research suspension on animals in its facilities, according to Patrick Collins, Tufts’ executive director of media relations. “[These steps include] suspending new experiments involving animals, suspending the new acquisition of animals, providing guidance to researchers on planning and mitigation and arranging for continued emergency animal care if a lab’s essential personnel were unable to provide it,” Collins wrote in an email to the Daily.

Tufts asserts that it is committed to the humane and ethical treatment of animals, despite PETA’s demands. On-campus animal experiments are kept to a minimum as a matter of policy, according to Collins.

“All researchers are required to justify the use of animals before their research is approved,” Collins said. “When animals are used, Tufts’ policy is to use the fewest animals possible to achieve research results.”

He added that protocols and policies for animal experiments are reviewed by Tufts’ Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, which ensures Tufts’ compliance with federal guidelines so the university can continue to receive federal funding for animal research. Animal

Tisch College to continue celebration of 20th anniversary into spring 2021 The Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life celebrated its 20th anniversary this spring, commemorating the statement of purpose signing on April 21, 2000 which created the college dedicated to civic engagement.

Tisch College intended on celebrating the anniversary throughout the calendar year 2020 but has since postponed it due to the closure of campus in March caused

by COVID-19, according to Director of Communications, Strategy and Planning at Tisch College Jennifer McAndrew.

Dean of Tisch College Alan Solomont (A’70) said that he was present when Tisch College was conceived. Although the university has long maintained its commitment to civic engagement, it was unusual at the time to create a college with a dean around that concept.

“It just seemed like this would be a great opportunity to celebrate the work Tisch College has done, and the impact that it’s had on the university,” Solomont said. “We wanted to use this anniversary as a way of focusing the attention on what’s been accomplished and what’s been done.”

McAndrew said that many anniversary events are expected to be extended through the next academic year due to the shortened spring semester.

One of the most memorable events that occurred this semester was the move to Barnum Hall from LincolnFilene Hall, which was celebrated on Jan. 24 with a symbolic ribbon-cutting ceremony.

PETA calls on Tufts, other universities to end animal testing amid COVID-19 crisis

News

Sunday, May 17, 2020 | News | THE TUFTS DAILY

11

Green Line Extension construction continues amid pandemic

Victory to leave Tufts, assume new role at Duke

by Yiyun Tom Guan

by Sara Renkert

Staff Writer

The Green Line Extension (GLX) project of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) will continue its construction amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. This project’s contract was awarded in November 2017 and is scheduled to be completed by December 2021.

While the cities of Somerville and Medford issued construction stoppages to adhere to social distancing guidelines, the GLX project is deemed essential by Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, according to Rocco DiRico, Tufts’ director of government and community relations.

The GLX is a state project and therefore not subject to city-wide construction suspensions, according to the city of Somerville’s website.

On March 31, the MBTA Twitter account posted a picture of construction workers receiving social distancing training, with trainees sitting distantly from each other and the instructions projected on a screen.

In an email to the Daily, MBTA Director of Communications Joe Pesaturo shared pictures of the construction sites, which display single-occupancy bathrooms, signs that urge social distancing and workers wearing masks and other personal protective equipment.

At an April 13 meeting of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation Board and the Fiscal and Management Control Board, GLX Program Manager John Dalton discussed both the project’s current status and COVID-19’s impact on it.

According to Dalton, there have been no COVID-19-related supply chain problems regarding construction materials or workers.

“We have begun to hear about potential supply chain impacts, [though] we haven’t felt any quite yet,” Dalton said.

“Between the supply chain and the labor force, whether it’s union directions or people coming in ill, we’re keeping eye on them every day.”

He said areas involved with the project, including two sites near Tufts’ Medford/Somerville campus, will remain under construction.

Conscious of the construction’s effects on communities and businesses, the MBTA has been working with the communities of Cambridge, Somerville and Medford to avoid as much disruption caused by the project as possible.

“Working closely with @ CambMA, the GLX team reached out to neighbors about timing this key lift while maintaining access to essential deliveries,” the MBTA tweeted, referring to the installation of steel beams at Water Street in East Cambridge and tagging the City of Cambridge’s twitter account.

As Tufts anticipates a decrease in revenue and the suspension of its capital projects, it is unclear how the continuation of GLX will impact the university budget, according to Gretchen Von Grossmann, director of capital programs.

“The University is considering several scenarios for all active design and construction projects and will be prepared to move forward as appropriate once conditions allow,” Von Grossman wrote in an email to the Daily. “It’s premature to predict the

budget implications of project delays.”

Executive Director of Media Relations Patrick Collins said Tufts University has taken measures to address projected shortfall, including a moratorium on hiring and salary freezes.

Collins said the university could take further action depending on future circumstances.

“Additional measures may be taken in coming weeks as more information becomes available, economic conditions become clearer, and federal, state and local health authorities provide guidance on the timing of possible resumption of normal operations,” Collins wrote in an email.

The Daily first reported on the GLX in October 2015, after the MBTA announced that the project faced $1 billion in excess costs. The project initially broke ground in 2012, but experienced various delays.

The project once again broke ground in 2018, with completion expected in spring 2021. The project website now reports a completion date of December 2021.

GLX has been met with skepticism by those in the surrounding areas. In addition to the tremendous cost of the project itself, which left residents to consider if taxes will increase and how communities benefit from the project, it was widely speculated that the arrival of a new T-station would come with increases in housing costs.

Bridge closures necessitated by the project have also had negative impacts on local businesses.

The closure of Broadway Bridge was estimated to have reduced circulation in Ball Square by 20%. The detours are projected to be lifted by July 2020.

EVAN SLACK / THE TUFTS DAILY ARCHIVES

A sign promoting the MBTA Green Line Extension project is pictured on April 17, 2018.

News Editor

Executive Director of the Career Center Gregory Victory announced on April 14 that he will be leaving Tufts in July to become the Fannie Mitchell executive director of the career center and assistant vice president of student affairs at Duke University.

Victory has occupied his current role at Tufts since July 2016. Donna Esposito, director of career development, will become the interim executive director of the Career Center starting June 1 and will also hold on to her old position.

Mary Pat McMahon, former Tufts dean of student affairs and current Duke University vice provost and vice president for student affairs, announced Victory’s new position at the university on April 21.

Victory explained that accepting the job at Duke will give him the opportunity to apply his career experiences to change Duke’s Career Center.

“The opportunity to take what I have learned at Tufts and transform career services at Duke was too good of an opportunity to pass up, and a chance to move South (out of the snow belt) and

to work again with Mary Pat McMahon were added bonuses,” he wrote in an email to the Daily.

Victory expressed that one of his proudest accomplishments involved raising the visibility and capacity of the Career Center at Tufts.

“I am proud of the fact that we had a major culture shift in the way that the Tufts community talks about the Career Center,” he said. “There is still work to do but we are serving students at a much higher level than ever before.”

Victory also recognized that during his time at the center, career services increased its focus on employer engagement, adopted new career-oriented technologies such as Handshake, The Herd and Interstride, as well as expanded partnerships in alumni relations and the athletic department.

Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences Jim Glaser commended the innovations and leadership that Victory brought to the Career Center over the years.

“The Tufts Career Center made major strides under Greg’s leadership. He not only brought vision and strategic thinking to the position, but he modeled for see VICTORY, page 15

TCU Senate closes year with internal elections

by Alexander Janoff Assistant News Editor

Tufts Community Union ( TCU) Senate concluded an academic year shortened by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic with internal elections on April 26.

Internal elections were conducted with online Qualtrics surveys that were sent to each voting member of the Senate body. Outgoing TCU President Shannon Lee noted that usage of Qualtrics for the Senate’s internal elections was a useful trial run for a possibly more widespread usage of the platform in the future.

“The Elections Commission is trying to move towards Qualtrics for their general and presidential elections instead of Voatz,” Lee, a graduating senior, said. “I think this [is] a nice opportunity to try it out in a very low-stakes environment.”

Grant G e b e t s b e r g e r, Ra b i y a Is m a i l a n d Ti m Leong contested the election for TCU Vice President, which Gebetsberger, a rising senior, won.

Incumbent TCU Treasurer Sharif Hamidi won re-election uncontested.

Taylor Lewis, Andrew Vu, Tim Leong and Ibrahim AlMuasher contested the election for TCU Parliamentarian, which Lewis, a rising senior, won.

Sarah Tata and José Ma r t i n ez contested the election for TCU Historian, which Martinez, a rising junior, won.

Jalen Little, Eve Abraha and incumbent Carolina Olea Lezama contested the election for Diversity Officer, which Olea Lezama, a rising junior, won.

AlMuasher and Ismail contested the election for the Administration and Policy Committee Chair, which Ismail, a rising junior, won.

Tata, Ismail and incumbent Iyra Chandra contested the election for Education Committee Chair, which Chandra, a rising junior, won.

Amma Agyei and incumbent Little contested the election for Outreach Committee Chair, which Little, a rising sophomore, won.

Annika Witt and incumbent Leong contested the election for Services Committee Chair, which Leong, a rising junior, won.

Eleven senators contested six seats on the Allocations Board. Tata, Little, Leong and Elizabeth Hom all won re-election while Ismail and Abraha filled the remaining two seats.

TCU Senate had passed five resolutions during the 2019–20 academic year before see SENATE, page 15

12

THE TUFTS DAILY | News | Sunday, May 17, 2020

tuftsdaily.com

Monaco discusses divestment committee progress, response to SJP MONACO

continued from page 6 continue on the installation of the elevator to enhance the access, [because] as you know when they finished the new entrance to the dental school, they needed another elevator to help with the volume of patients. We understand that will be one of the first projects to be completed when things go back to action in the next couple weeks.

We had a fantastic celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Africana Center.

We had a big event here in a tent out at the back of Gifford House, and we had a lot of alumni come back who hadn’t engaged with the university even since graduation. It was wonderful to see so many people there to celebrate that important milestone.

We renewed a number of commitments.

We joined a lot of colleges and universities in an amicus brief reaffirming our commitment to DACA and undocumented students. We completed the work on the task force on student mental health, and that report put through a lot of changes and processes, policies and resources for students, and I want to thank all the students, faculty and staff who engaged with that, which was really quite a long process over almost two years.

We’re tremendously grateful also for those who helped us in the Brighter World campaign. We are now very close to the $1 billion mark of $1.5 billion, and we received a lot of funding through our annual Giving Tuesday last November and that was quite a record-breaking success.

We’ve also been able to strengthen our academic funding through the campaign.

We’ve already had commitments for 47 new professorships, and 21 of those were made through a professor partnership challenge which was just coming to completion in the last year.

Lastly, one of the most noteworthy actions was the removal of the Sackler name from all the programs and facilities at the School of Medicine. We also pledged to increase our support of programs aimed at the prevention and treatment of substance abuse and addiction. These were guided by the findings of the Stern Report, which we made available to the members of our community. We’re very grateful to the many members of our community for their contributions to our discussion on this important issue.

TD: Since campus closed in March, is there anything you wish Tufts had handled differently? Is there anything you’re particularly proud of in the way Tufts handled the pandemic?

AM: I don’t think I would say there’s anything major that I wish I had done differently, but I am also very fortunate that we had such amazing faculty, staff, alumni and friends of Tufts who stepped up to help us in this challenging time and allowed us to help others. They’ve really shown exceptional resilience and imaginative creativity and innovation in the way that we had to move to transitioning to distance learning.

Also, I was very fortunate to have logistics expertise from our Fletcher fellows who were on campus; they really aided us in trying to change our operations to what was needed at the time. And that allowed us to make our facilities and spaces available to help our communities. It also provided a model for other universities and colleges who then were able to generously share their campuses with their first responders and medical personnel that were in their communities.

There were always going to be small hiccups along the way, but I am very, very fortunate that we have such amazing people at Tufts who were stepping up and making sure that our students were looked after.

TD: Do you believe campus will reopen in the fall?

AM: The trajectory of how the pandemic runs its course over the summer is important in the scenarios that we’re planning for, but even if we open in September, or a month later, or in January, we still need to make detailed logistical plans on how we’re going to run residential life, how we’re going to run the work environment, including the classrooms, how we’re going to do health surveillance, how we’re going to do tests, how we’re going to isolate students who are COVID-19 positive and what’s our strategy for quarantine.

[Gov. Charlie Baker] just announced opening procedures for May 18. That’s going to be phased. We’re aligning our opening and repopulating with that phased approach, so we’re going to be starting this summer with our research labs and clinics, and then testing our procedures and protocols in those scenarios, in those work environments and those clinical environments. With students going back to get their accreditation, especially in the clinical environment, it’s important that we learn how that works on the smaller scale so that when we scale that up to September, we’ve learned from any issues that have arisen and their solutions.

On the educational side, we know that we are going to have students that are not able to get back to campus because of international travel, visa restrictions or certain health restrictions. And then we know we have many students who are eager to get back to campus to have the residential experience. We know that we will be catering to two audiences, but the majority we would like to see back on campus. For that purpose, the faculty are thinking in their departments how they will teach courses, but it will have to have some part of a hybrid model in order to cater to at least the lectures in some classes that are large, which we also may be restricted in delivering on campus — it depends on what the final guidance is. So you can see how you could spend time in the classroom in smaller groups for discussion and do that on Zoom for those who can’t come back, but the lectures for many classes may be either captured [on campus] or prepared beforehand as we did at the end of spring semester.

I’m not saying that’s the only model we’re looking at, but that’s the model we’re preparing, because it’s what we think would be able to cater to the educational needs of all of our students.

TD: Has the Stern report and the reaction to the decision to remove the Sackler name caused changes in how the university handles donations? Specifically, are there more structured processes for accepting donations now?

AM: We’re very committed to learning from this episode in the university’s history and to be directed by the findings of the Stern report, so we’re taking action on all of his recommendations. We’ve implemented many changes that emerged from our discussions following the Stern report and we’re doing very deep background checks on all potential major gift donors and also those we’re considering for honorary degrees — it’s a very similar process. We have created guiding principles for accepting gifts, which are going to be posted to our website, and we’ve organized a senior leadership faculty review committee that would then look at those donors and do that due diligence before we accept or go down a further path of a conversation about a gift. However, due to the COVID-19 crisis, the group has not had to have its first meeting yet, but it probably will get going in the next couple of months.

TD: How much progress has the Responsible Investment Advisory Group

KYLE LUI / THE TUFTS DAILY ARCHIVES

Tufts University President Anthony Monaco poses for a portrait in front of Ballou Hall on April 30, 2019. made in evaluating Tufts’ investments in the fossil fuel industry?

AM: When we last were discussing the RIAG there was a lot of discussion about the membership, and I think we solved all those issues. Unfortunately, again, the COVID-19 crisis hit, and the investment office was all hands on deck as they watched our endowment drop. It’s now recovered partly as everyone’s has, but we didn’t think it was the right time to launch that in the middle of the crisis and expect people to focus on that singular issue. I just had a conversation with Mike Howard saying we need to get this started now that the major part of the crisis is getting easier.

We might be able to get this going by the end of the summer, maybe when students are back. There will be a couple of new members because some of the student members will have graduated. We just had the conversation to reignite it.

TD: You co-wrote a statement last month that expressed disapproval over Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) winning the Office for Campus Life’s Collaboration Award, especially with respect to SJP’s support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. How do you respond to the calls from SJP and others for the administration to rescind that statement and issue an apology?

AM: I think the statement that I co-signed was very clear. We can’t endorse an award that recognizes a group whose concerning policy positions include association with the BDS movement, elements of which I view as antisemitic. So for that reason we will not be rescinding the statement.

TD: The U.S. Department of Education earlier this month announced long-anticipated changes to Title IX regulations, and you wrote a message to the Tufts community in response on May 7. What may the Sexual Misconduct Prevention Steering Committee recommend regarding implementation, and how does Tufts plan on responding? Can you describe the first meeting?

AM: I thought it was a very good meeting, given we were discussing very disappointing changes to some areas of the guidance and regulations around sexual misconduct in educational institutions. The committee is united in trying to work through those.

We have excellent legal experts, and the [Office of Equal Opportunity] has experts and professionals in sexual misconduct investigation. Both of those groups are known nationally for their expertise in this area, so they’ve already been able to analyze these changes and to parse them into how they would map to our protocols and procedures, and where we are clearly still within the guidelines and where we might have to make changes. And then committee members, including all the students who represent various constituencies on campus, are working with those professionals to change our policies and procedures accordingly.

We did this very successfully in the first major changes when the Sexual Misconduct Prevention Task Force was working, and the students had a major contribution to those changes. I hope this work — which is going to be split into two sub-groups, working on two of the biggest areas we need to focus on — that, in the next 100 days, we’re going to be able to implement this when the students come back. It’s going to be challenging, but I am confident that we have the commitment of our staff and the students at the Steering Committee to make that happen.

TD: What are some specific areas of concern over the new Title IX regulations?

AM: The definition of harassment is something that is different, and also how cross-examination would work. I think those are the big areas that need some work, and there are others. We’re still trying to interpret everything and understand things. [We are] talking to our colleagues from other institutions [about] how they’re interpreting this to their current policies.

Editor’s note: This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

News

Sunday, May 17, 2020 | News | THE TUFTS DAILY

13

PILOT talks on hold TOWN-GOWN

continued from page 8 Last fall the City of Medford joined Somerville in pushing for state-level legislation that would force Tufts to provide development plans.

The complaints reflect years of simmering discontent in Medford and Somerville surrounding Tufts’ housing policy, use of city resources and PILOT payments.

Then came the COVID-19 pandemic.

On March 18, days after announcing the closure of campus, The Boston Globe published an op-ed by University President Anthony Monaco outlining a host of measures the university was taking to support hospitals and its neighboring communities. He wrote that the university would open its residence halls to quarantined patients and medical personnel, donate equipment and utilize Tufts experts.

“Tufts University is prepared to take these steps and has informed local health care leaders and the mayors of Somerville and Medford that they can count on us to help address their needs,” he wrote. He urged other universities to take similar measures.

He carried that message from insider outlets like the Massachusetts private colleges’ trade group podcast to prime time with an appearance on PBS’ Amanpour and Company.

Curtatone lauded Monaco’s efforts.

“I have to give a big shout out to President Monaco and Tufts for leading, really by example, in how you utilize the campus and university resources in this type of crisis,” he said. “President Monaco

has been a leader far out in front of any other academic leader in the country that I know of.”

Curtatone’s praise differs greatly from his tough rhetoric during the PILOT talks.

“In any passionate negotiation you have some inherent tension or conflict as a part of the process,” he said.

Tufts officials, led by the president and Rocco DiRico, the university’s director of government and community relations, began meeting with officials from Somerville and Medford in early March. Since then, the partnerships have blossomed along the lines laid out in Monaco’s op-ed.

Curtatone said the Somerville Department of Health and Human Services and the city’s incident response team meet regularly with Tufts’ crisis response team. Curtatone, Medford Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn and Monaco have a WhatsApp group chat where they text or speak by phone.

The partnerships yielded early results when the university signed contracts with Medford, Somerville and Cambridge Health Alliance to house first responders, health care workers and COVID-19 positive patients across campus.

Lungo-Koehn said in an April 30 interview that a Medford first responder had already used the housing in Community Housing for a number of days.

“To have that option through the summer available to Medford is just a sigh of relief to know that if a first responder does need housing that they’re able to safely house on Tufts’ campus and protect their family, espe-

cially [a] family member that is vulnerable,” she said.

The housing agreement is not the only joint initiative the two sides have worked on. When Medford bought software for a program that monitors and assists vulnerable seniors, Tufts paid 80% of the cost, the mayor said. Tufts officials met with the city on May 1 to discuss plans to develop a contact-tracing application, and half a dozen Tufts students are already working for Medford as contact tracers.

“Between these seven or eight things Tufts is doing for Medford and Somerville, it’s pretty remarkable,” she said.

Tufts has also provided refrigerator space for Somerville food banks and suspended rent for its properties on Boston Avenue, according to DiRico and Natasha Perez, a spokeswoman for the City of Somerville.

Lungo-Koehn, who began her first term as mayor in January, said that the close collaboration with Tufts for pandemic response has made for an auspicious start to her relationship with the university.

“As mayor I’m starting on a really good footing with Tufts University and I’m happy with everything they’ve done, and I’m hoping this leads the way to further great negotiations on a PILOT program,” she said.

It’s still unclear how the pandemic response will impact the underlying fault lines in the university’s relationship with its host communities.

PILOT, the money and services Tufts voluntarily provides Medford and Somerville in place of its full property tax obligation, is perhaps the most contentious of these

as both cities have been negotiating new agreements for more than a year.

Tufts paid $450,000 to each city for fiscal year 2020, as it did the year before, though residents and elected officials have called the sum too low in the past.

Lungo-Koehn had just formed a new PILOT negotiation task force when the pandemic broke out, leading to the cancellation of the group’s first meeting.

She intends to resume the talks when possible.

According to Katjana Ballantyn, the Somerville city councilor for Ward 7 and member of the PILOT negotiation team, Somerville’s talks are also “on pause.”

However, the same fundamental disagreements that have kept the two sides apart since last spring will still be present when the city and the university go back to the table, she said. “[Housing] will still be an issue for certainly Somerville residents, because there’s an economic issue for people who are without work, concerned about whether they’re going to be able to pay their rent,” she said.

Curtatone acknowledged that there is work left to do on the agreement when talks resume, but said that collaboration on the coronavirus response already accomplished the underlying goal of the PILOT talks.

“The really orienting goal or value of the PILOT is to reaffirm in not just words the partnership between Tufts and its host communities,” he said. “I’d submit, unsolicited, what President Monaco and Tufts have been doing in the midst of this health emergency has done that.”

Career Center to provide online support, Zoom workshops ECONOMY

continued from page 8 ated when unemployment rates were 3-4 percentage points lower.”

In the op-ed he provided to the Daily, Oreopoulos acknowledged that the impacts of COVID-19 may be worse.

“The longer the ‘stay at home’ restrictions, the more likely a longer economic downturn, compelling hundreds of thousands of graduates to settle for lower-paying occupations unrelated to their field,” he wrote.

Oreopoulous does not, however, believe that students are without options. He suggested volunteer work, online classes to acquire new skills and graduate work as potential pathways for students.

“Youth could instead consider acquiring new skills … now would be an excellent time to pursue a one- or two-year graduate program of interest that leads to higher earnings, a new career, or a chance to enter the labour market in better times,” Oreopoulous said.

The Tufts Career Center, as well as certain professors, have taken steps to help graduating seniors.

“We have been sending proactive, tailored weekly messages to seniors with guidance and advice, resources focused on different themes … we are, of course, holding many online appointments with seniors and advertising Zoom events,” Director of Career Development Donna Esposito wrote in an email to the Daily.

Executive Director of the Career Center Gregory Victory said that he has also been encouraging graduates to consider alternative paths to what they had originally planned.

“What could a plan B be? Explore a different industry, consider a year of service, tap into another set of your competencies to refocus on a new role,” Victory wrote in an email to the Daily.

The Tufts Career Center is pictured on Jan. 21, 2017.

The Career Center, however, has only been informed of fewer than a dozen fulltime job offers being rescinded.

“What we are seeing more of are companies pushing back start dates to later in the summer or early fall, vs rescinding full-time offers,” Victory said.

Nevertheless, the coronavirus pandemic may present even worse challenges for graduating seniors than the economic recession of 2008, given the timing and sudden severity of the virus.

“There was a bit more lead time with the last major recession and many more [seniors] did go to grad school or do a year of service at that time,” Esposito said.

Levitsky noted that Jack Derby, a lecturer in entrepreneurial marketing at Tufts, has utilized his connections in an effort to help his students.

“Some teachers that I know are actively searching job boards or are combing through their networks to see if any colleagues are hiring. Ideally, that’s something that more professors can do,” Levitsky said. “I’m not sure if Tufts or other teachers are extending that help.”

Zaslav said, however, that there is only so much the Career Center and the university can do to help graduates, especially in certain industries.

SEOHYUN SHIM / THE TUFTS DAILY ARCHIVES

“[The Career Center and Tufts] can provide all these services, but they can’t give me a job where there are no jobs, and in TV, there are no jobs,” Zaslav said.

Oreopoulous encouraged graduates to continue focusing on the future and staying positive.

“My advice to graduates this year is to take a long-term perspective. What matters is your long-run well-being, not how much you earn,” he said. “The pandemic presents opportunities to gain experience, help others, and mature in ways you never otherwise would have imagined.”

14

THE TUFTS DAILY | News | Sunday, May 17, 2020

tuftsdaily.com

2016–20: 4 years in review REVIEW

continued from page 8 tors, including former Secretary of State John Kerry, “NBC Nightly News” anchor Lester Holt, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine and Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, whose presence provoked a protest and walkout.

Even actor Matt Damon made an appearance, showing up twice at the Steve Tisch Sports and Fitness Center.

At the end of the year, a group known as TuftsLeaks published documents online that included department budgets, the salaries of thousands of staff and faculty and the ID numbers of student employees with salaries listed.

2017–18 The Class of 2020’s second year saw Tufts make national news on account of a much-publicized resignation from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy’s Board of Advisors, a conclusion to the previous year’s Greek life investigations and new directors at half of the Group of Six centers.

In November 2017, second-year MALD candidate Camilo Caballero published op-eds in the Daily supporting a petition to remove former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci (LA’86) from the Fletcher School’s Board of Advisors. Scaramucci sent a letter threatening a defamation lawsuit and demanding a public apology as well as the retraction of both op-eds.

Scaramucci resigned the next morning.

The fall also saw an end to the Greek life investigations that started the previous year. One fraternity, Pi Delta, chose to dissolve rather than resolve allegations of misconduct. Two fraternities, Delta Upsilon and Zeta Psi, were suspended until September 2018. One fraternity, Theta Delta Chi, was found responsible for multiple violations of university policy and had its recognition revoked without room for appeal until 2027. Three fraternities — Pi Rho, Delta Tau Delta and Theta Chi — were placed on disciplinary probation. One sorority, Chi Omega, was placed on disciplinary probation until December 2018, and the other fraternities and sororities were found to be in good standing with the university.

In another attempt to address the ongoing housing shortage, the university made progress on the Community Housing (CoHo) project, which was first suggested by the Residential Strategies Working Group. The project, originally named Capen Village, was approved by the Medford Zoning Board of Appeals on Jan. 11 and opened to juniors and seniors in fall 2018.

Rising senior Jacqueline Chen won the election for TCU president against rising senior Adam Rapfogel.

TCU Senate passed a number of resolutions. One called for the pass/fail deadline to be extended to 10 weeks for all students and was affirmed by a faculty vote on Feb. 7, 2018. The Senate also unanimously passed a resolution calling for the separation of the Asian American Center and Asian American identity-based housing to improve accessibility to the center.

The Group of Six saw major changes. Hope Freeman, Julián Cancino and K. Martinez were hired as center directors for the LGBT, Latino and Women’s Centers, respectively. In February 2018, the university announced the creation of a first-generation student center, the FIRST Resource Center, and in April, Martinez stepped down as Women’s Center director, citing hostility at Tufts on and off campus.

The year saw another victory for labor activists, with Tufts Dining workers voting overwhelmingly to unionize in April 2018.

The end of the year was tinged with mild controversy, however, with some students expressing disappointment over the choice of former DuPont CEO and Tufts alumna Ellen J. Kullman (E’78) to deliver the 2018 commencement address.

Kullman faced criticisms over violations of environmental regulations that occurred during her tenure as CEO of DuPont.

2018–19 The year began with the initial rollout of CoHo, bringing in 45 new beds to campus for juniors and seniors. By the second semester, 39 more beds were added as the second phase rolled out, with the final phase set for next fall.

The political climate on campus was tense leading up to the midterm elections. On Nov. 1, 2018, less than a week before the midterms, reporters for the Daily discovered posters reading “It’s ok to be white” around campus, covering getout-the-vote signs placed by JumboVote.

The posters have been linked to white nationalists, including former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke.

The ballot questions for that year’s midterm elections were equally important to Tufts, particularly Question 3, which threatened to exclude gender identity from a list of state-held protections.

The statewide Yes on 3 campaign, which upheld transgender rights, was campaigned for aggressively on Tufts’ campus, and Question 3 passed in favor of retaining protections based on gender identity.

During the midterm elections, Ayanna Pressley was elected to represent Massachusetts’ 7th District in Congress.

Pressley is the first African American woman to represent Massachusetts on the national stage.

In the second semester, Julián Cancino, the former director of the Latino Center, left Tufts, leaving three of the Group of Six centers without permanent directors. The FIRST Resource Center, aiming to serve first-generation students, opened for its first academic year.

Housing in areas other than CoHo also saw major changes throughout the year. In February, the Office of Residential Life and Learning announced that the SMFA Beacon Street dorms would house only first-years in the coming academic year due to historically large class sizes.

Carmichael Hall would house only firstyears in the coming year; Harleston Hall would house only sophomores.

In February, Rabbi Naftali Brawer found posters containing anti-Israel messages defacing the Granoff Family Hillel Center. The act was decried as antisemitic and as holding the whole of the Jewish diaspora responsible for the acts of the state of Israel.

Identity-based tensions on campus continued as a message in favor of survivors of sexual assault on the Cannon was painted over with “Trump 2020” and eggings on campus occurred. One of the victims cited “transmisogyny” as the reason for the egging.

The year also saw rising tensions between dining workers and Tufts, as UNITE HERE Local 26 continued to negotiate for a fair contract. In particular, students and workers held a picket outside of Carmichael Hall with an attendance of over 800 as students shouted slogans in support of the dining workers. Shortly afterward, the dining workers voted to authorize a strike, which was narrowly avoided when Tufts and the workers reached an agreement on April 29.

2019-20 The Class of 2020’s final year at Tufts was shaken by a series of developments that again made Tufts the focus of national news, before being cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic in March.

The Jumbo statue is pictured on April 25.

Former Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, U.S. Senator for Massachusetts Ed Markey and Karl Rove, a former special advisor to U.S. President George W. Bush, were some of the many guests who visited Tufts as part of the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life’s Distinguished Speaker Series during the Class of 2020’s senior year.

While impeachment proceedings of U.S. President Donald Trump prevented then-Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bennett from visiting, fellow candidate Marianne Williamson met with Tufts Democrats in October.

Margot Cardamone became FIRST Resource Center director after the Office of Student Success and Advising was dissolved in September, and Marvin Casasola was hired as the next Latino Center director.

Early in the fall, campus was struck by three consecutive incidents of hate within one month. First, a Jewish student on Sept. 15 returned to their residence hall to discover a swastika affixed to their door; second, a different student on Oct. 2 found a homophobic slur carved into their door; third, a sign was defaced at the African American Trail Project exhibit in the Aidekman Arts Center. After the final incident, Monaco announced the formation of two Bias Response Teams to focus on supporting the Tufts community.

The Tufts community also learned in September that Monaco attended a meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman the previous year, though the university did not disclose it at the time.

Tufts again made headlines in December by deciding to remove the Sackler name from its health sciences campus and programs and establishing a $3 million endowment focused on substance abuse and addiction prevention and treatment. The university made the decision following the completion of an independent review of its relationship with the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma by former U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts David Stern and Attorney Sandy Remz.

Tufts announced on Jan. 2 that “Medford/Tufts” would be the name of the new Green Line Extension station under construction at the intersection of Boston Avenue and College Avenue for the cost of $2 million over 10 years. When completed, the station will be directly adjacent to the Joyce Cummings Center, a new academic building under construction since June 2019 and in planning since 2015.

The Class of 2020’s final semester at Tufts began with Tisch College’s historic move to Barnum Hall from LincolnFilene Hall, which also coincided with

NICOLE GARAY / THE TUFTS DAILY

the beginning of its 20th anniversary celebrations. Barnum Hall had been closed for about a year since extensive renovations began in May 2018 and finished the following summer.

Divestment lobbying made headway in February when the administration appointed members to the Responsible Investment Advisory Group for a review of Tufts’ investments in the fossil fuel industry. The Board of Trustees established the advisory committee four months prior, after nearly seven years of student activism on the issue.

The semester was upended, however, when Monaco announced on March 10 the closure of campus and shift to online classes due to the escalating COVID-19 pandemic. Tufts confirmed its first positive case days later while students spontaneously organized financial and material support through Tufts Mutual Aid. Although classes resumed remotely on March 25, campus buildings were shuttered as many students were forced to return home, some petitioned to remain and others still were quarantined on campus. Students studying abroad as well as exchange students at Tufts all returned home, though some faced great difficulty as travel bans were implemented worldwide.

Dining workers’ hours were cut with most dining locations closed, but they secured an agreement to extend benefits through the end of the semester. Among other academic policy modifications, faculty approved a new and temporary “Exceptional Pass/Fail” grading system, which was opt-in and would satisfy all academic requirements. The administration reaffirmed its commitment to meeting full demonstrated need in financial aid, despite an expected $15 million budget deficit in the current fiscal year and an estimated $50 million shortfall in the next.

Having initially canceled ceremonies entirely, the administration responded to outrage from many members of the Class of 2020 by promising to hold in-person Commencement when it would again be safe to do so. Today, Tufts will hold a virtual all-university degree conferral ceremony.

Robert Kaplan, Austin Clementi and Zachary Hertz contributed reporting to this article.

Editor’s note: The 2016–17, 2017– 18 and 2018–19 recaps in this article are reprinted from the 2018–19 Commencement issue of the Daily.

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Sunday, May 17, 2020 | News | THE TUFTS DAILY

15

Tisch College refocuses research activities on pandemic TISCH COLLEGE

continued from page 10 distinguished speakers this year included Cyntoia Brown-Long, a criminal justice reform advocate who spoke on March 5, and Tarana Burke, the founder of the #MeToo movement, who visited Tufts on Nov. 7.

According to McAndrew, Tisch College was planning on holding anniversary events during the 2020 commencement ceremony, such as honoring the inductees to the Honos Civicus Society, Tisch

College’s civic engagement honors society, holding a family brunch for the students and families involved in Tisch College and celebrating the winners of the Presidential Award for Civic Life. Although the events will be included as parts of the virtual degree conferral, Tisch College looks forward to celebrating its students when in-person commencement is held.

McAndrew said that Tisch College’s work continues despite the pandemic — especially its research initiatives. Its work has refocused on subjects such as voting by mail and young people’s views of the

2020 election with respect to COVID-19 response.

“The research is really important right now given that young people are now scattered all over the country,” she said. “Just keeping on top of that and being able to be flexible and fast-moving and adapt our research agenda is something that we’re really proud of that Tisch College has been able to do.”

Solomont explained that Tisch College, founded as the University College for Citizenship and Public Service, was initially an experiment, with Tufts being one

of the earlier universities to start thinking about the civic responsibilities of higher education. The college has since expanded its research activities and is able to influence ideas around civic engagement and political participation, and it is one of the distinguishing characteristics of Tufts.

“I don’t think there’s another university in the country where this mission is as important to the culture of the university, the mission generally of preparing students for civic life,” Solomont said.

“It has flourished in ways we had never imagined.”

Tufts research facility closures spark concerns about animal subject usage PETA

continued from page 10 experiments are also overseen by a staff of veterinary care professionals.

Collins explained that Tufts’ research, including projects that work with animals, is valuable to medical advancements and treatments.

“Much of our research is aimed at preventing and alleviating disease and suffering in both humans and animals, and at addressing important societal problems and needs,” Collins said. “For example, anyone who is being treated for diabetes … or has received an organ transplant has likely benefited from animal research.”

Gala disagreed with the assertion that animal experiments are essential in helping to advance medical care.

“In our view, there should be no such thing as non-essential animal research taking place in laboratories, especially at the expense of taxpayers who pay nearly $18 billion each year for failed animal tests,” Gala said.

Gala claimed that studies have found animal research to be unsuccessful when it is applied to humans.

“Ninety-five percent of all new medications that test safe and effective [in] animal tests actually end up failing human clinical trials,” he said.

PETA has reached out to more than 80 universities and research institutions in addition to Tufts that have announced they are ramping down animal research in response to the COVID19 pandemic, which has resulted in the killing of thousands of animals, according to Gala.

Collins said Tufts will not be responding to PETA’s letter.

“The university thoroughly complies with all governmental reporting requirements pertaining to its research enterprise and will continue to do so,” Collins said. “It does not provide data on its research operations to private parties.”

Going forward, Gala hopes that universities and research institutes like Tufts will be more transparent with the status of their animal experiments and programs.

“It’s important for … universities to be transparent in their implementation programs, especially during this

RAY BERNOFF / THE TUFTS DAILY ARCHIVES

A lab in the Science and Engineering Complex is pictured on April 28, 2018.

COVID-19 pandemic, so that the public is kept fully informed regarding how universities are using taxpayer dollars to deal with animals who they deem to be non-essential,” Gala said.

Gala also hopes that universities and research institutions will transition to

more human-relevant and animal-free research methods.

“Animal testing is really a scaled paradigm, and there are much better and more sophisticated ways of advancing human healthcare, without harming animals,” Gala said.

Esposito to fill Victory's position as interim Career Center director VICTORY

continued from page 11 our students a way to comport oneself on the job market—with energy and integrity,” he said in Duke’s announcement.

Esposito similarly described the impact that Victory had both at the Career Center and more broadly at Tufts.

“Greg has a clear commitment to social justice, inclusion and equity. His energy, enthusiasm and passion for the work of the Career Center and students

have been a hallmark of his tenure,” she wrote in an email to the Daily.

Esposito explained that her goal in leading the Career Center will be to work from an already-established base of support.

“My philosophy is to meet people where they are and move forward from there,” she said. “I will continue to provide leadership based on these perspectives, coupled with the hands-on experience of managing a professional team for many years, and a commitment to equity, inclusion and social justice.”

Victory is confident that Esposito will continue to bring progress to the Career Center in her new role.

“Donna and I worked closely together during my time at Tufts and she will continue to build upon the great work of the career center team. Donna is beloved by students and staff and I know I am leaving the Career Center in very capable hands,” he said.

He explained that he will miss the Tufts community and its students.

“I have loved my time here due in large part to my amazing team at the

Career Center … and of course the amazing Tufts students,” Victory said. “I will miss them dearly but will take their commitment to making the world a better place … with me.”

He thanked the Career Center staff members for their continual excitement in the work that they do and for supporting his projects.

“I give credit to the amazing staff at the Career Center, who got on board with my sometimes crazy visions and continued to be energized by our work,” Victory said.

Outgoing TCU President Lee reflects on Senate's productive year SENATE

continued from page 11 campus shut down in mid-March, halfway through the spring semester. Some addressed academic issues, such as the resolution calling for the publishing of course syllabi online.

Others addressed national and global issues, such as the resolution calling for TCU Senate to stand with and support students with undocumented status and those with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status.

One of TCU Senate’s accomplishments was the passage of a plan to eventually hold departmental faculty diversity consultations, in which professors could discuss issues around diversity, accessibility, equity and student support, according to Lee. “This is something that Senate has pushed for many years, but we finally

made a lot of headway on it this year which was really exciting,” Lee said.

TCU Senate also lobbied James Glaser and Jianmin Qu, the respective deans of the Schools of Arts and Sciences and Engineering, to form a “task-force” that would reevaluate Tufts’ World Civilization Requirement. “[ This] was one of the main objectives of [the] TCU Senate Education Committee this year but has been a subject of interest of TCU Senate since I was a first-year,” Lee said.

Lee attributed the Senate’s productivity this year to widespread agreement within the body about its mission.

“This year something that Senate did really well is we were all on the same page in terms of our goals,” Lee said. “I think people were really on the same page about why they’re on Senate [and] why they do this work.”

Shortly after University President A n t h o n y Mo n a c o a n n o u n c e d t h e c l o s u re o f c a m p u s d u e t o t h e COVID-19 pandemic, TCU Senate allocated $50,000 out of the student activities budget to the FIRST Resource Center to help students in need.

“When we found out about what happened with school shutting down, we immediately got to thinking about how [we could] use the student activities fee budget in a way that would be beneficial to the students,” Lee said.

When it was discovered that the original $50,000 would not be sufficient, TCU Senate allocated an additional $50,000.

“With such quick turnaround, that money really did impact students and help students,” Lee said.

The closing of Tufts’ campuses also altered the way in which the

Senate itself operated , accord ing to Lee. “We’re still engaging with senators, we’re still engaging with students,” Lee said. “It’s all virtual, which is obviously not the same, but it could be worse.”

With a number of other senior TCU Senate members graduating alongside her, Lee said that an important duty of future student leaders is to advocate on behalf of students who may not have the resources to continue learning online.

“Senate is in a really unique space to support students during this really uncertain time,” Lee said. “So I think there needs to be more efforts to be made on Senate’s part to advocate on behalf of students who don’t have the adequate home life situation to devote their full effort to their studies.”

16 Sunday, May 17, 2020

Features

tuftsdaily.com

From engineering masks to caring for patients, Tufts students fight COVID-19

by Fina Short

Features Editor

COVID-19 scattered Tufts students across the country after campus’ closure forced classes online and students indefinitely indoors. From emergency rooms to engineering labs and Zoom calls, a select group of students worked tirelessly to mitigate the impact of the novel coronavirus.

Below are nine of their stories.

Building medical solutions For Chris Markus and Courtland Priest, joining The Ventilator Project was an easy call. In mid-March, both engineers received an email from Tufts professor Eric Miller notifying them of the Seaport-based organization — a new operation composed of engineers working to develop a lowcost ventilator, specifically for COVID-19 patients. They both applied online and were quickly invited to join the team.

“It wasn’t difficult at all,” Priest said of the decision to join the project. “My gut was, it’s the single most gainful thing that I can do with my engineering experience right now.”

Both engineers now work on the project for seven days a week, up to 12 hours a day.

Priest, who graduated with a mechanical engineering degree in December 2019 and will return to Tufts this fall for a mechanical engineering M.S., often stays in a hostel downtown leased to the project, in order to remain close to his job. Markus, a graduating senior, has balanced full-time work in the office with his final semester of electrical engineering coursework.

“People there work longer [hours] than me,” Markus said. “Nobody’s under any illusions about the direness of the circumstances. It’s really important that we get this out as fast as possible.”

The Ventilator Project draws from a network of over 200 employees, who contribute both remotely and through in-person work at the Seaport office. The team aims to accelerate development so that its ventilator prototype can gain approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under the Emergency Use Authorization process as soon as possible.

“We’ve been following the engineering process, so you make a design, test it, iterate on it … which is how any engineering company develops a product, but faster,” Markus said. “So instead of our iteration cycles being months, they’re days.”

The Ventilator Project recently made first contact with the FDA, Markus said, and is currently undergoing testing for Emergency Use Authorization. The project is currently seeking to recruit more medical and engineering professionals and is accepting donations through its website.

As Markus and Priest found a local operation in The Ventilator Project, rising senior William Liu, who is studying mechanical engineering, joined a bicoastal effort when he signed on to help build an adapter connecting goggles to a surgical mask.

In late March, Liu got an email from James Intriligator, a Tufts mechanical engineering professor, inviting him to collaborate on a project with Barrett Larson, founder and director of Stanford Anesthesia Innovation Lab, and Scripps Mercy Hospital anesthesiologist Jan Sliwa (A’06, M’11). The project aimed to build an adapter that could transform a snorkeling mask by connecting it to antiviral filters used in hospitals, helping health care workers reduce their risk of exposure through more extensive facial protection.

“The adapter connects a snorkel mask to a medical grade filter. Most hospitals have a lot of [filters] … Everyone wearing this mask is already wearing an N95 mask. And this mask provides an additional layer of protection because sometimes even N95 masks leak a little bit,” Liu said.

Liu, who frequents the Tufts makerspace, got in contact with a student at a Stanford lab who sent him a design file for the adapter. He was tasked with determining how to print the adapters, after adjusting the file to ensure that it would print correctly on Tufts’ equipment.

“I went into Nolop, the makerspace at Tufts, and printed 120 in the first round,” Liu said. “I threw out a few of them and I think I saved around 80 of them. The second day I sent 60ish to Stanford and the Scripps Mercy Hospital.”

After printing the adapters, Liu immediately brought them to the Somerville UPS store; they arrived in California the next morning. After Scripps Mercy Hospital confirmed that the adapters worked, Liu sent 21 more adapters to other locations in California. He thanked Professor Intriligator for getting him connected with the successful project, and added that he believes Tufts has made exemplary efforts to respond to the pandemic.

“The hospital covered the shipping costs, but the material costs, my hours on it, the machine and all that, everything else is covered by Tufts. I think that’s pretty amazing,” Liu said.

Samia Tariq, a rising junior who spent the month of April working at CVS pharmacy in Davis Square, expressed similar pride in how the Tufts community has responded to the pandemic.

“The unexpected hardship fund that’s out, Tufts Mutual Aid, the FIRST Center, Margot [Cardamone], Jared [Smith] — they’ve all done such a good job at helping students in need, and I could not be more thankful for that,” Tariq said.

COVID-19’s first responders Jacob Stavis planned to spend the spring semester of his junior year abroad in London.

Now he works up to 72 hours each week as an EMT with Boston’s Armstrong Ambulance Service, after his abroad program ended mid-semester due to COVID-19.

Stavis, who first began working with Armstrong in February 2019, returned to a work environment dramatically different from the one he knew before the pandemic.

“There’s been a massive rise in 911 calls and cases, at least that we’ve been getting sent to,” Stavis said. “It’s an entirely different atmosphere. In bases, even when we’re not on calls, when we’re hanging out we have to wear masks. It’s kind of surreal.”

When responding to each call, Stavis and his team double up with both surgical masks and N95 masks, along with full-body gowns, face shields, goggles and gloves.

Rising junior Charley Sun, who works alongside Stavis as an Armstrong EMT, noted that between calls, they now thoroughly spray down their ambulances to mitigate any possible spread of germs.

“I think there’s a lot more extreme emphasis on protecting yourself, your partners and the patients … If you get somebody that’s symptomatic, with symptoms that match that of COVID-19 or somebody who has tested positive for [COVID-19], in those cases we always decontaminate the truck with a chemical spray after the call,” Sun said.

Stavis feels fortunate that his company can provide EMTs with adequate protec-

tive equipment, yet he expressed frustration upon seeing more groups of people outside as the weather improves.

“I’ve seen so many people who could have [COVID-19] who are really close to death, and it’s a horrible thing to see,” Stavis said. “It kind of brings a new kind of reality to the situation. I feel like if everybody would be able to see how debilitating and how horrible [COVID-19] can be for some people, everyone would just stay inside more.”

Tamara Liang, a rising junior, shared similar concerns. As a patient care associate at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Liang works night shifts on multiple floors housing patients diagnosed with COVID19. She highlighted the loneliness she sees in patients whose family members cannot visit them.

“They’re so lonely. And if someone does pass away, even then they can’t let family see them just because the family could still get it,” Liang said. “Can people just listen so this can be done with, and people don’t have to suffer anymore? It’s really disheartening.”

Liang said she felt compelled to keep her job at the hospital, which involves drawing blood and labeling samples for lab testing. She works at Mount Auburn alongside her sister and two cousins, all of whom have chosen to continue working during the pandemic.

“If they need help at the hospital why should I not help? They need an extra hand and I’m an extra hand. I’m in my twenties, I’m healthy,” she said.

After each shift at the hospital, Liang takes extra precautions to enter her house, wiping down all of her possessions both when she leaves the hospital and immediately prior to entering her house; once inside, she always takes a hot shower.

“Of course I was scared at some points because I live with my 88-year-old grandmother, and she has a history of health problems. I didn’t want to bring anything back, but I never seriously considered not working there anymore because of it,” Liang said.

Sun, who lives with his parents in Andover, Mass., echoed Liang’s worries of protecting his family. He has taken extra measures to protect them from possible transmission of COVID-19, including avoiding public spaces in the house and wearing a surgical mask when inside.

“Keeping my parents and family safe is actually my number one priority,” Sun said.

“My nephew was born at the end of March, and I haven’t really been able to see my brother and sister-in-law except from behind a glass door. It’s really unfortunate, but I think it’s necessary to keep them especially safe.”

Tariq, who is on the pre-medical track, also met concern from family when she decided to keep her job working as a pharmacy technician. Nevertheless, as an aspiring medical professional she felt it was important to stay at work during a health crisis.

“I want to go into the health field. I want to become a doctor. So in my mind it’s something I’m going to have to do in the future,” Tariq said. “I felt better because I was continuing to help individuals that need these things, like their medications.”

At the pharmacy, Tariq said she noticed customers stocking up on three or four months’ worth of prescriptions, many of whom did not want to come into the pharmacy due to health concerns.

To limit cross-contamination risks, CVS stopped checking customers’ IDs when picking up prescriptions and instituted a delivery program so that vulnerable patients would not have to come into the store.

“CVS as a company implemented a variety of precautions for [its] employees — we wear PPE [personal protective equipment] every day from the moment we get in to the moment we leave … as we would come in we would get our temperature checked from our manager before we were allowed to work,” Tariq said.

Crafting solutions over Zoom Jessie McIsaac, a climate and conflict fellow with nonprofit Peace Rising, saw her job change dramatically with the onset of the pandemic. While she previously focused on efforts to map global environmental conflict, the organization opted to shift its efforts entirely toward fighting COVID-19 through policy advocacy.

Through work with Cambridge City Council Member Quinton Zondervan, the organization has generated plans to combat food insecurity amid rising unemployment, among other issues including supporting local farms. McIsaac, a graduating senior at Tufts studying biology and environmental studies, decided to focus her efforts on increasing accessibility for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits.

“My policy recommendation that I wrote for the city of Cambridge [advocates] generating a comprehensive list of changes to the SNAP application program and benefits process … as well as a list of resources that are going to be immediately available for people struggling with food insecurity in Cambridge,” McIsaac said.

Peace Rising is currently working with a number of other local organizations in hopes of increasing awareness of resources available for those who need them.

“We’ve been collaborating, communicating with other groups such as Green Cambridge, and we’re scheduling a new meeting with the Cambridge Center for Economic Empowerment. We’ve been meeting with other groups via Zoom as well,” McIsaac said.

Rising senior Saherish Surani also found policy work amid the pandemic, returning to the United States from a semester-at-sea program to join the Watertown Response Team, which is part of the Massachusetts COVID-19 Academic Public Health Volunteer Corps. As a communications coordinator, Surani helps create graphics communicating optimal COVID-19 safety practices, and parses Centers for Disease Control and World Health Organization guidelines to create readable and informative materials — along with translating communications into Portuguese.

“I feel like I’ve learned a lot of useful things, even in the logistics of how Watertown is relatively smaller than a lot of cities and towns in Massachusetts — and [in] working with [the city] to find out what kind of marketing channels [it uses] and what kind of graphics appeal to the community,” Surani said.

Concurrently, Surani works with Refugees Thrive International and as a campaign fellow for Massachusetts 4th congressional district candidate Dave Cavell. Across each internship, Surani said she has been both challenged and fascinated by the nature of remote work, especially while campaigning.

“Something that comes up in one of our weekly meetings is … someone asks a question and then we don’t know how to respond, because it’s just such an unprecedented time,” she said. “I feel like that’s just something that’s very true in anything I’ve done, even campaigning. No one’s campaigned in a pandemic … it’s really cool how we all pull together.”

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‘Community will always matter’: Group of Six continues to support students remotely

by Amelia Becker

Executive Features Editor

Following the announcement that Tufts would be transitioning to remote learning and students would have to leave campus, the Group of Six identity-based resource centers worked to support students in this new environment.

Director of the Asian American Center Aaron Parayno’s initial response to the announcement was thinking about what this change meant for students.

“The first thing that a lot of us thought about was what does this mean really for you all, the students,” Parayno said. “So I [thought] about supporting students in whatever capacities they needed.”

Jessica Mitzner Scully, program administrator for the Women’s Center, said the Women’s Center was thinking similarly about how to best help students.

“We knew that there would be students struggling with personal, financial and logistical issues, so we tried to make ourselves available so that folks could come to [us] with questions and concerns,” Mitzner Scully wrote in an email to the Daily.

The response from the Group of Six shifted as more information on COVID-19 arose and university policies changed.

“As things evolved we had a better understanding that we were not going to be coming back, so then it was trying to figure out the best way to make sure that everyone had some level of support,” Parayno said.

One of the first things some of the identity-based resource centers did was organize a food pantry for students leaving campus to drop off any unwanted food. Parayno spoke about the large number of donations received at the Asian American Center, in addition to donations at similar food pantries organized at the Women’s Center and the FIRST Resource Center.

“The first couple of hours people were just dropping a couple things off and we were putting it in one of our smaller rooms. Within a day we saw the growth of the donations, so we were able to organize it into a much larger enterprise to support students who were

moving out, so that we were conscious of food waste, but also supporting students who were still around, ensuring that they had access to food,” Parayno said.

The Asian American Center, along with the Women’s Center, the FIRST Resource Center, Tufts Food Rescue and Tufts Mutual Aid, worked to find a space where students would have access to the food pantry, even as staff members were asked to stay home. Parayno described this as a “community effort” on the part of multiple groups on campus. The food pantry is now housed in the Mayer Campus Center.

The Group of Six remains open during this time, assisting students in various ways.

“As you know, all of the Group of 6 offices are open (FIRST, LGBT, Women’s, Latinx, Africana, Asian-American) to support students in whatever support looks like in the moment,” Hope Denese Freeman, director of the LGBT Center and interim director of the Women’s Center, wrote in an email to the Daily.

Meeting with students virtually is one way Group of Six staff members have continued to support students.

Katrina Moore, director of the Africana Center, and Domonique Johnson, program manager of the Africana Center, have been doing outreach to students, both those at home and those still on campus.

Moore spoke about the importance of seeing students, even if virtually, to maintain personal connections.

Mitzner Scully highlighted how the staff of the Women’s Center remains accessible, just through a new platform.

“We continue to be available to students for meetings through Zoom, and we are checking in with our students to see how they’re doing and how we can support them,” Mitzner Scully said.

Parayno said that he is willing and glad to move his schedule around to make sure international students are getting the support they need.

“It’s making sure students who are international really get that support and … something we’ve been really conscious and aware of is trying to make sure that students don’t fall through,” Parayno said.

Virtual meetings, however, have made it more difficult to check in on students.

“It’s so much more difficult now that we don’t have that face-to-face interaction or we don’t have that constant interaction with students in the ways that we did when we were on campus,” Parayno said. “Part of it is knowing some of the students who needed more support when we were on campus and just making sure that we’re being in constant communication with them.”

Freeman has worked to support LGBTQIA+ students who may not have the same support in their home communities that they have at Tufts.

“Support for students also [varies] by state as there are some states that do not have the same protective policies in place that Massachusetts does when it comes to it being illegal to discriminate based on gender identity and sexual orientation,” Freeman said. “This poses challenges because we want to make sure students are supported, affirmed and not self-isolating because in these states there are no resources in rural towns and some urban areas.”

The identity-based resource centers are providing programming for students during this time. Some of their regularly scheduled programming is being adapted to a virtual format, while new programming is also being created to respond to the current needs of students.

The Black Women’s Collective and the Black Men’s Group have continued to run through the Africana Center with the help of their facilitators. The Africana Center’s sophomore year program wrapped up online, although scheduling virtual meetings took more effort than meeting in person, Johnson said.

Both the Africana Center and the Asian American Center have offered cooking demonstrations. Cooking with Dom from the Africana Center is an event where students would normally come together to cook, but now Johnson has recorded these cooking demonstrations for students and uploaded them to YouTube. The Asian American Center has shared traditional recipes on its Instagram page.

“Being able to share community from home to the community on campus, even though it’s

virtually, we thought that was a good opportunity,” Parayno said.

The Asian American Center celebrated Asian Pacific Islander Desi American Heritage Month, which normally happens in April on college campuses, through virtual programming, including infographic posts and Instagram takeovers, among other means, Parayno said.

New programming has also been created in response to feedback from students.

“One of the things people enjoy about the programming that we do at the Women’s Center is the opportunity to gather together in community, so the shift to online programming has necessarily meant reevaluating some of that,” Mitzner Scully said. “But it has provided an opportunity for us to check in with our students to ask them what would help them during this time and what kinds of things they would like to see from us.”

At the Women’s Center, students responded that they would like a creative outlet. The Women’s Center in turn transitioned its Creative Workshop program to Zoom, Mitzner Scully said.

“Some of our interns and other students in the community have helped lead skill-sharing workshops on embroidery and friendship bracelet making, and we have been excited to hear feedback that people are really enjoying those events,” Mitzner Scully said.

The Asian American Center has organized new virtual programming as well, including virtual workouts and study sessions, Parayno said.

Many of the identity-based resource centers are continuing to work with their student interns. Student interns provide insight to what students currently need from the Group of Six, Parayno said.

Student interns are also able to facilitate programming and skill sharing, Mitzner Scully said.

The Africana Center has partnered with its alumni base to provide support for students, Moore said.

All of the identity-based resource centers have been active on social media during this see GROUP OF SIX, page 19

Senior Profile: Meehan enters biotechnology field despite initial discouragement

by Sam Russo

Executive Layout Editor

Graduating senior Emma Meehan doesn’t like being told that what she wants to do, particularly as an engineer, isn’t possible.

Of the fewer than 30 graduating chemical engineers from the Class of 2020, she is the only one to have studied abroad. And as an involved member of the Tufts chapter of the Society of Women Engineers, Meehan has been prepared for some of the challenges she’ll face entering a male-dominated field.

In fact, Meehan knew she wanted to be an engineer when her high school teacher, a chemical engineer himself, told her she shouldn’t.

“Senior year, I was in a general engineering class, and [the teacher] was talking about as a senior what you’re going to do after you graduate. And I remember telling him ‘Oh, I think I’m going to do chemical engineering. That sounds really interesting.’ And he [said], ‘Really? I don’t really see you as an engineer … I don’t know if that matches your learning style.’” Meehan said. “And I was like, ‘Okay. Sounds good. I’m definitely going to be a chemical engineer now. That’s what I’m going to do.’”

Meehan is particularly interested in biotechnology, and at Tufts, she has come to a greater appreciation of the positive impact the field can and does have, especially in light of the coronavirus pandemic. Her summer internship at a gene editing company that

specializes in rare disease research has helped her understand the power of her chosen field.

“Going into college, I always had this idea that drug manufacturing would be really cool. And I never really understood the impact of it until I actually started working in the field,” Meehan said.

Interning at a small company, Meehan was able to see firsthand the whole process, from research to clinical, she said.

Meehan also spoke about the relevance of the biotechnology sector right now during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Biotech is in the spotlight right now, especially with everyone racing to find a vaccine for [COVID-19]. That’s an example of how disease and infectious diseases are never going to go away, and that’s something people deal with every day,” she said.

Meehan acknowledges some of the negative connotations associated with biotechnology and gene editing, but focuses on the many benefits it has as well.

“It’s such a great field because you’re helping people in a way that actually enables them to live a more normal life and a more healthy life … Someone who’s dealing with a really difficult and life-changing disease could be cured forever, and that’s something that’s just amazing,” Meehan said. “Not a lot of other industries can say that they’re completely changing someone’s life for the better.”

After Tufts, Meehan will be taking this excitement with her to Pfizer, where she’ll be doing a two-year rotational program, allowing

her time to explore three different areas within the engineering and manufacturing sectors.

Even though she’s deeply passionate about biotechnology, Meehan hasn’t allowed that to limit her. She has worked to keep her education and her Tufts experience as varied as possible, spending time as a member of Greek life, the Tufts Mountain Club and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.

“It makes me feel more well-rounded to not just focus on one topic and not just be around people who come from the same backgrounds and have the same interests.

And I think that that’s a really cool and unique thing for Tufts,” she said.

When she reflected on why she came to Tufts in the first place, Meehan talked about her hosts during Jumbo Days. They lived in Lewis Hall, which she, along with many other Tufts students, called “Dirty Lew.” Even so, her hosts had decorated their dorm beautifully to make it feel warm and welcoming. The atmosphere certainly extended well beyond the physical space.

“They had some of their friends come over, and we were just hanging out in their room. I think we played Super Smash Bros or something. And the people were so genuine and so nice and asking [the other potential student and me] questions and not treating us like we were high schoolers, just treating us like people,” Meehan said.

That feeling of warmth and caring, along with a sense of curiosity, is what characterizes Tufts for Meehan as she says goodbye.

Emma Meehan is pictured.

COURTESY EMMA MEEHAN

For Meehan, one of the defining parts of her Tufts experience is “how dedicated people [at Tufts] are, and how open people are to talk about what they’re learning and what they’re interested in. I think I’ve grown so much as a person just meeting all different kinds of people here,” she said.

In light of these experiences and what she gained from exposing herself to new areas and different people, Meehan encourages members of the Class of 2024 to try things that make them uncomfortable and to build new connections.

“It’s a cliche: trying new things and learning who you are … but I think definitely those are the times I’m going to remember the most,” Meehan said.

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THE TUFTS DAILY | Features | Sunday, May 17, 2020

tuftsdaily.com

First year to Senior year: Roommates face hard goodbyes after 4 years living together

by Jillian Collins

Assistant Features Editor

This graduation season brings varied emotions to all seniors as they look back on their four years spent at Tufts. However, some seniors also have to say goodbye to the only roommate they have ever known. For these seniors, their first year roommate was integral to their college experience and supported them all four years.

Here are the stories of Sarah Tessler and Maddie Oliff, Anna Champion and Emma Wolfe, Paul Katsiaunis and Paul Di Filippo, Arianna Burnham and Christine Koh and Aberdeen Bird and Alexa Bishopric.

Sarah Tessler and Maddie Oliff Living on the East Coast already, Tessler thought it would be fun to room with someone from farther away. Oliff, from Chicago but Jewish like Tessler, seemed like a great fit. Tessler used this as the impetus to make the first move and message Oliff on Facebook before their first year. This not only solidified their living situation for their first year but also their next four.

Oliff claims they were friends as soon as they hugged for the first time during pre-ori-

Looking to apologize, Tessler made a decorated card for Oliff, but spilled glitter all over Oliff’s bed as she gave it to her. Although mad for a bit, they got over this small hardship quickly.

For Tessler and Oliff, they are more than roommates; they are family.

“Sarah has just a different label of a friend than any of my other friends at Tufts because she has kind of replaced my sisters,” Oliff said.

Both could not comprehend what it would be like to not be friends with their roommate.

Looking forward, they recognize the power of a good living situation.

“It’s so nice to have someone to come home to and be your best self and sometimes your worst self,” Oliff said. “And like having that home base.”

For these two, their roommate relationship is ingrained in their college experience.

“Maddie is Tufts for me and will always be Tufts for me,” Tessler said. “She is family.”

Anna Champion and Emma Wolfe Champion and Wolfe were not only roommates but also teammates on the Tufts quidditch team. As first-years, they were often confused for one another, and it got to the

COURTESY SARAH TESSLER

Sarah Tessler and Maddie Oliff are pictured as first-years (left) and seniors (right). entation in the Lewis hallway. Just from meeting Oliff’s mom, Tessler knew they were going to be in for a fun first year, she said.

Tessler was right. Throughout their first year, their room remained the hot spot for social gatherings. As they shared the same group of friends, it only made sense that the two spent the most time in their dorm room.

What elevated their friendship to be more than that of roommates was their shared passion for education. In their first-year spring, they both decided to take an education course together. Already personally close, in the classroom they were able to get intellectually closer as they shared about their different educational backgrounds. As seniors, they even taught an Experimental College class about the education system as co-teachers .

Looking back on their years, most of what they recall is only good times. Tessler still keeps notes that Oliff left for her in their old dorm rooms. Only one memory comes back sour.

Sophomore year, Oliff got really into knitting.

She made a scarf and allowed Tessler to wear it to a date, but Tessler ended up losing it.

point where they received the duo nickname “Anemma” by other teammates. On the team, they were always traveling buddies. They credit much of their friendship to this team.

“It was really great to have a teammate also be your roommate. [Our first] year especially because we were really able to bond over the quidditch team,” Wolfe said. “The room became the hangout spot for all the [first-year] quidditch players and even some of the older players too.”

In their dorm room, game nights were frequent. On Champion’s Wii they played Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. with their friends.

They had a tradition that whenever anyone new came over they were forced to make their own Mii character on the console.

Originally, Champion was really nervous that Wolfe was not going to like her. However, right off the bat they became friends. Over the past four years, they have blended into each other, speaking the same and sharing many mannerisms.

Next year, they, unfortunately, will be living in different cities. This transition is hard for them to grasp.

ARIANNA BURNHAM AND NICOLE GARAY / THE TUFTS DAILY

Arianna Burnham and Christine Koh are pictured as first-years (left) and seniors (right).

COURTESY ANNA CHAMPION

Anna Champion and Emma Wolfe are pictured as first-years (left) and seniors (right).

“Anna has been such a constant supportive presence in my life, and, of course, we are going to be still friends and still gonna talk. But it’s gonna be weird to not be able to come downstairs and have Anna watching Supernatural on the TV,” Wolfe said. “Hanging out with Anna has always been a refuge for me.”

Both Champion and Wolfe feel that their friendship defined their life at Tufts.

“Almost every memory that was super influential at college, Emma was right there.

I could not have had the college experience I had without Emma,” Champion said.

Wolfe feels the same way.

“I cannot separate the good memories of college with the good memories of Anna; they are the same,” Wolfe said.

Paul Katsiaunis and Paul Di Filippo Katsiaunis and Di Filippo, originally matched on the Tufts roommate survey with a 98% pairing, both thought it would be too difficult rooming with someone who had the same name.

They decided to room with others for their first year. Against the odds, they both ended up being in the same FIT pre-orientation group, and right away they became best friends.

During their first year, even though they did not live together, they spent almost all their time together, even sleeping over at each other’s rooms. From sophomore year to senior year, they lived together, and they will continue doing so after graduation in Boston. Over the years, sharing a name and space has only made them closer.

When reminiscing over their roommate relationship, all they can remember are the shenanigans they participated in. One time, Katsiaunis came to Di Filippo’s room at 4 a.m. on a Tuesday to show him a child’s tricycle he found. At dawn, they raced the tricycle down Packard Avenue. Another time, they wore matching Canadian tuxedos — full denim outfits — to a formal event, where they each were meeting mystery dates. At one point, they even adopted a pet fish for a full year.

“Every shenanigan that goes down is day to day. You don’t think twice about it,” Katsiaunis said.

Once they moved in together sophomore year in West Hall, the shenanigans only increased. They created a duct tape table they shared between their beds to rest their phones on at night. On nice days, they would put their speakers by the window so their music would fill the quad as tour groups passed.

Through spending so much time together they created their own way of speaking. They claim they watched the movie “John Wick” (2014) weekly. They always quote this movie and other YouTube videos when they speak.

“When we are talking in public, people won’t understand us,” Di Filippo said. “It is our own nonsense gibberish.”

One of the only issues they had is that Di Filippo always wanted to keep the windows open no matter the weather outside, while Katsiaunis preferred them closed. “[Di Filippo] likes the room freezing. He likes the room two degrees,” Katsianus said. “It could be snowing and he wants the windows

all open, and [he’d] like to poke a hole in the wall to make it more cold.”

Looking back on their time at Tufts, they feel as if they could not have had the same experience without being roommates. Katsiaunis explained how compatible they are.

“Ever hear in physics like constructive interference, we definitely feed off each other’s energy. It’s like a multiplier,” Katsiaunis said.

Arianna Burnham and Christine Koh First connecting in the Tufts Class of 2020 Facebook group, Burnham and Koh planned a meetup in New York City. Meeting in person, they learned they didn’t only share common interests, like their Facebook blurbs suggested, but they also had compatible personalities. Then at Jumbo Days they met up again, and sealed the deal on rooming together for their first year.

Burnham and Koh shared their first dorm room in Houston Hall, where they made their other friends too. Most of their social life was spent in the common room or bouncing between other friends’ dorm rooms in the building. Outside, they also copy edited for the Daily together.

Their first roommate triumph together was making the boys bathroom on their floor gender neutral. Their dorm room was right next to the designated boys bathroom, and a lengthy walk from the designated girls bathroom. Not wanting to make that hike every time they took a shower, they asked to integrate the bathrooms. Although it was never “official,” they set the precedent on the floor.

As roommates, they say they balance each other out. Burnham is more on the shy and laid-back side, while Koh is more outgoing and loud. Their living compatibility is what brought comfort to their first year at Tufts.

“Living with someone and starting out [your first] year with someone, you just immediately have each other as your main support see ROOMMATES, page 19

COURTESY PAUL KATSIAUNIS

Paul Katsiaunis and Paul Di Filippo are pictured as first-years (above), and seniors (below).

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‘I really thought we had all this time left’: Longtime roommates part ways ROOMMATES

continued from page 18 system,” Burnham said. “Once we came back to our room it wasn’t like we were in a social setting any more. It’s like you’re at home, and that’s very much what our friendship felt like.”

Over their four years, they have noticed their influence on one another. Burnham commented that Koh helped expand her music taste. Koh realized she had picked up on many of Burnham’s phrases. For the two, it was really the little things that brought them closer.

“You get to know the other person’s daily life so much better when you live with someone, rather than a typical friend,” Burnham said.

“The tiny aspects of what you do everyday. This is just a person who knows so much more.”

The two are going to miss the convenience of living together that they had these past four years.

“Whenever anything happens or we go somewhere and see people, or something like that, we would always come home to each other. We would always nightcap together,” Koh said. “You’re always together without even making plans or anything.”

Aberdeen Bird and Alexa Bishopric “Literally I walked into the room, and Alexa ran over and hugged me, and I was like ‘oooh,’ and then she was like, ‘I’m so sorry if that was really weird,’ and then I was like, ‘ohh we are going to

be friends,’” Bird said, as she recalled meeting her four-year roommate for the first time.

Bird and Bishopric were friends as soon as they met. As first-years, they enjoyed getting ready together before going out. They would blast music and, while getting ready, they would swap clothing items and pick out each other’s outfits. “[As a first-year], especially, it was so nice to have a roommate because neither of us really became friends with other people in our dorm,” Bishopric said. “It was nice to come home to someone.”

Outside of the room, they were co-presidents of the Students for Environmental Awareness club in their first-year spring and sophomore fall.

Bishopric, who is from Miami, had never experienced cold winters before coming to Tufts. Her mom, who was excited for her, sent them sleds in the mail. On the first snow, they went sledding down the President’s Lawn.

“Alexa’s perception of snow over college has been really funny,” Bird said. “She loved snow at first, and I was like ‘You aren’t going to like it,’ and then last year Alexa said, ‘Aberdeen you are right, I hate it.’”

When Bird was looking for a roommate, she didn’t have that many requirements. She just wanted a clean roommate that would go out

COURTESY ABERDEEN BIRD

Aberdeen Bird and Alexa Bishopric are pictured as first-years (left) and seniors (right). with her and wouldn’t monogram their room.

Bishopric has surpassed those expectations.

“I feel like we have the same sense of humor, that other people wouldn’t think is funny,” Bishopric said.

If you told them their first year that they would be living together senior year, they both agreed they wouldn’t have been surprised.

Next year, they unfortunately will not be living together, which will be a difficult change.

“We haven’t not lived together in four years,” Bishopric said. “I really thought we had

all this time left. Especially senior spring, with senior week and all these fun things. I imagined us doing a lot of that stuff together, and having that goodbye.”

Bird is going to miss all of college, which she got to experience with her long-term roommate, Bishopric.

“It’s always nice to be able to run downstairs and be like, ‘Listen to this thing that happened,’” Bird said. “[I’m] feeling all sad and sappy. When else besides college do you live within 10 minutes of all of your friends?”

Group of Six responds to needs of students amid pandemic GROUP OF SIX

continued from page 17 time, promoting their virtual programming and connecting students with resources.

The Women’s Center has been sharing resources, from housing to mental health, on its social media, particularly Instagram, Mitzner Scully said. The Center’s Instagram page has also served as a place to share positive content.

“We have been sharing some more uplifting things too, like pictures of our pets or images of the things that are helping us cope right now,” Mitzner Scully said. “It’s grown into a really great, engaging community, which we are excited to continue.”

Social media is a way to stay connected with resources on campus, in the community and on a national level, Freeman said.

“We make sure that our social media is staying connected with various communities that fall under the LGBTQIA+ umbrella,” Freeman said.

To address the email fatigue that some students were feeling initially, the Group of Six has adapted to be more active on social media.

“We all kind of joked that we can now add ‘social media manager’ to all our resumes [because we have] been trying to navigate that space to ensure students get that information,” Parayno said. “[Email] communication is important, but at the same time it can be very overwhelming, so it’s just trying to figure out that balance.”

The Group of Six has been able to share events and resources that are now available to students for free, Parayno said.

“It’s a great way to collaborate with other spaces as well,” he said. “It’s how [we can] work smarter and not harder in times like these.”

During this time the Group of Six has worked together to continue to provide programming and resources for students.

Staff at the various identity-based resource centers can serve as a home base for students,

and overlap between the centers allows for more resources and points of contact for students.

“Knowing that there’s also overlap between our centers, some [students] do just find home in one space but a good amount of them really find community in multiple spaces, at least in that regard we’re able to have multiple touch points with the students,” Parayno said.

The Group of Six centers have been uplifting the work of the other centers and sharing these resources with their own students.

“All of the identity-based centers have been doing an incredible job creating opportunities for virtual community-building, so we are trying to be sure to connect our students to those events and resources as well,” Mitzner Scully said.

This community response extends beyond the Group of Six. “I think it’s been great to have the response from colleagues to really be there and try to support the students,” Parayno said. “It even extends

beyond the Group of Six, folks from [Counseling and Mental Health Services] and [the Office for Campus Life] have been really great about partnering with us and uplifting each others’ things.”

Parayno hopes that during this time students have felt support from various on-campus resources and continue to push the university to serve students as best as it can.

While the programming and support the Group of Six offered during this time doesn’t replicate the physical community on campus, all of the directors are working to keep community connections strong.

“At the end of the day what this has shown is that community will always matter, and that’s something that I hope to carry forward,” Parayno said. “It’s really shown that community in the abstract, but also community in the physical space of the Center, really matters.”

The FIRST and Latino Centers did not respond for comment in time for print publication.

Senior Profile: Islam gives back through education

by Madeleine Aitken

Assistant Features Editor

Graduating senior Prince Islam is the son of two Bangladeshi immigrants, neither of whom were able to pursue formal education.

Therefore, getting a good education was a priority in Islam’s house growing up.

“I went through [New York City’s] public school system, and my parents have always been very education-oriented, because of their backgrounds, because they saw education as a pathway,” Islam said.

That pathway led Islam to Tufts, where he majored in computer science and minored in math. He took a number of classes in the education department, including his favorite class out of all four years — Steve Cohen’s “School and Society,” a course many Tufts students have considered to be a formative experience throughout the years.

“It was a lot of eye-opening stuff about the state of education in the United States today,” Islam said.

Islam came into Tufts knowing he wanted to pursue education. Cohen, he said, helped him think about exactly what he wanted to do and who he wanted to impact.

“I was always interested in education but I think he really just brought out that passion to the fullest,” Islam said.

Outside of the classroom, Islam was involved with multiple educational programs.

Through Tufts Literacy Corps, Islam helped middle school students with literacy skills. He also worked to build literacy skills and bridge the literacy gap with preschoolers in the area through Jumpstart.

“There are a lot of preschoolers from lower-income backgrounds who go to kindergartens knowing thousands of fewer words than their more affluent peers. So I had the opportunity to go into those classrooms and see that gap, and hopefully do a little something to help amend that gap,” Islam said.

After graduation, Islam will be able to put some of that experience to use in his own classroom, working as a high school math teacher in the Bronx come September, a post he got through Teach For America.

Islam is looking forward to devoting himself to benefitting the communities he has been part of, including low-income immigrant families.

“I chose Teach For America particularly because of the people that I would be around,” Islam said.

While at Tufts, he devoted himself to the first-generation student community in particular. When he arrived at Tufts in 2016, he said there wasn’t much of a community for individuals from low-income, first-generation families like himself.

Islam attended a meeting by the FirstGeneration College Student Council, now the First-Generation Collective, which was just a few students at the time.

“It was just a couple kids, in a room, talking about their first-gen identity, and I realized, hey, this is exactly what I want to expand on,” Islam said.

When Islam became president of the FirstGeneration Student Collective at the beginning of his sophomore year, his goal was to get first-generation students together to talk about their identity and provide a space for students to meet and get to know each other as first-generation students.

Islam also said that in his four years, he has seen Tufts, as an administration, take steps toward supporting first-generation students, with the establishment of resources like the FIRST Resource Center and the Building Engagement and Access for Students at Tufts pre-orientation program.

“When I look at the first-generation community today versus what it was when I first stepped onto campus, it’s like night and day. It’s incredible. And I’m really excited for the first-generation students that are coming in,” Islam said.

For Islam, the best parts of his Tufts experience have centered around connecting with individuals from all over. While New York City is a very diverse place, before coming to Tufts, Islam found himself surrounded by friends who were also Bengali, Muslim and working class.

Prince Islam is pictured.

COURTESY PRINCE ISLAM

“I finally had a chance to forge really close friendships with people who are a lot more affluent than I was,” Islam said. “White, Asian, Latino, from all across the spectrum, from all around the United States … and from around the world.”

To the incoming first-years, Islam said that it is fine to not truly know who you are or what you want yet — that’s what college is for.

“Don’t feel pressured to do everything, just focus more so on who you are and learning who you are,” Islam said.

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Senior Profile: Thorne finds community through music, memes

by Sidharth Anand Features Editor

If you have frequented the “Tufts Memes for Quirky Queens” Facebook group, you have most likely come across Kirt Thorne.

“It would have to be my numerous posts on the meme page,” Thorne said, when discussing what people know him most for on campus. “Any degree of fame, or notoriety, associated with me comes from the meme page.”

In addition to posting popular content on the page, Thorne is responsible for helping popularize the Primal Scream on campus He is also a talented clarinet player for the Tufts University Wind Ensemble and has been photographing various groups and organizations across campus. As he completes his senior year, he reflects on why he came to Tufts, what defined his experience here and what he will leave behind.

Hailing from Brooklyn, N.Y., Thorne is a double major in economics and French.

He mentioned committing to Tufts after his experience at Jumbo Days.

“It’s a classic cliched story where you come to a school and it feels like home, but it did,” he said.

Thorne said that he had a preexisting interest in both of his majors and wanted to devote significant time to the fields.

“I just loved language,” he said about French. “I knew that majoring in it meant that I could spend enough time where it would be worthwhile for me.”

Thorne cited similar reasons for majoring in economics as well.

The “Tufts Memes for Quirky Queens” group was formed in the spring of Thorne’s first year in 2017. He mentioned seeing groups for other schools and was

happy to see one created at Tufts. He decided to get involved after joining the pages of other schools.

“I liked the idea of seeing memes about things I did not understand,” Thorne said.

“I definitely think the best ones I have seen have required some background knowledge about the school.”

Thorne mentioned that having prior knowledge about various aspects of the Tufts campus makes the content relatable and inspires what he posts on the page.

“The community aspect of the page comes from the fact that the posts are ‘Tufts inside jokes,’” he said.

Thorne said that he loves the community aspect when posting on the page. He also said that the number of people who liked his content was surprising to him.

“I expected only a few people would resonate with things that I found funny about the school. It is nice to know that there are people who agree with me about things that deserve a laugh,” he said.

Beyond his frequent posting on this page, a central element of Thorne’s Tufts experience has been his involvement with the Wind Ensemble. Having been involved since the second semester of his first year at Tufts, Thorne said that he has found a tightknit community that has kept him coming back each semester.

“The people [in the Wind Ensemble] have been defining for me. The kind of person that finds the ensemble enjoyable is exactly the kind of person I want to be friends with,” Thorne said.

Thorne credited the director of the ensemble, John McCann, with engendering a community-oriented and stress-free environment that made him enjoy the ensemble thoroughly.

“The community that [McCann] has built in the last 30 years and the kind of person that he seeks out for [the] Wind Ensemble is just wonderful to be around,” Thorne said.

In addition to this, he said that the music itself represents a nice break from the academic rigor that a typical Tufts student spends a lot of time on.

Thorne said that he was initially involved with the Wind Ensemble to maintain his exposure to the clarinet, but later he continued doing it because of how much he enjoyed the community aspects of the group.

As a defining moment that captured this aspect, he mentioned the trip the ensemble took to New Orleans in 2018.

“This was the moment I felt fully immersed and engaged in the group. Staying in a hostel with many people I did not know that well and playing games with them late in the night made me realize how integral the ensemble was to me,” he said.

Thorne said that he has been playing the clarinet since the fourth grade, and that the Music Advancement Program he participated in at The Juilliard School was instrumental in setting the foundation for him.

He said that the weekly meetings had a range of classes that included orchestra, theory and a clarinet choir.

“It was a marathon of music, which was brilliant, but was incredibly formative for me,” Thorne said. “Those four years of doing that every week taught me how to play the clarinet.”

Beyond his community involvement with the Wind Ensemble and the Facebook group, Thorne said that he thinks his legacy will comprise of something he created to connect the campus at large, the Primal Scream.

Kirt Thorne is pictured.

COURTESY KIRT THORNE

“An incredible defining moment for me at Tufts was the first Primal Scream,” he said.

“I did not expect any people to show up, but so many did.”

Ultimately, looking back on his time at Tufts, the Primal Scream stands for the kind of durable tradition Thorne wants to leave behind as he moves from Tufts.

“Twenty years from now, I want to tell people working at the school that my favorite thing was the Primal Scream, and for them to tell me that they are still doing it,” he said.

Beyond Tufts, Thorne will be working at a fixed-income investment management company in New York. As he leaves, his parting advice for incoming first-year students is to cherish all of the memories that come their way.

“Treasure every moment, even the seemingly non-eventful ones,” Thorne said. “As someone whose Tufts career was ended prematurely, I can safely say that you never know what memories will stick with you.”

Senior Profile: Lee promotes sex positivity on campus, addresses health care inequalities

by Kayla Butera Staff Writer

Senior year of high school, Aram Lee was in a predicament: Wellesley College or Tufts?

“I didn’t know what to expect from either school, but when I visited Tufts, it happened to be one of those rare sunny days where everyone’s out on the quad, enjoying the sun in the midst of a busy April,” Lee wrote in an email to the Daily. “I felt such a sense of community and belonging, and I knew that Tufts was home.”

Lee hails from Hattiesburg, Miss., where she has spent most of her life. Lee went from “swelteringly warm” Mississippi to her new freezing Bostonian home at Tufts.

“Most of what you hear about the South is untrue (we do wear shoes), but I would say it somewhat prepared me for understanding the complexities of identity,” Lee said. “It’s rooted in history (there’s even a book that recently came out about the history of race in my hometown from William Sturkey) and generations of archaic ideals, but you’ll also find a strong, familial sense wherever you go here.”

Plus, the barbecue is “killer,” she added.

Having a passion for studying the connection between biological makeup and how minds work, Lee majored in biopsychology. When she began her coursework at Tufts, she recognized the glaring inequities in health care for marginalized people today.

“I was reminded of my own experiences trying to access mental healthcare in a small town in Mississippi. This grounded me in my desire to participate in a study of continuous novel discoveries about the brain and behavior and also draw

attention to the ways in which systemic inequalities can severely affect mental health (and even our brain chemistry)” she said.

For two years, Lee worked for the Laidlaw Foundation as part of the first cohort of Laidlaw Scholars at Tufts. The Laidlaw Foundation supports young people to become healthy and engaged by investing in ideas, advocating for changes in systems and learning, its website says.

Lee worked on a project with her friend Peter Lam during her time there.

“My project … was on developing a theoretical mobile application to combat binge-eating disorder using enhanced cognitive behavioral therapy and gamification,” Lee said.

Outside of her coursework, Lee has been involved in several activities on campus. Lee said that these activities gave her a place to build community and explore her identity.

Lee was a co-coordinator for Sex Health Reps, where she feels that she has grown with the program and has worked to dismantle preconceived ideas around pleasure and desire.

“The group offered a platform to discuss topics that still carry so much stigma and myth; for me, it was so crucial to dismantle these preconceived ideas around pleasure and desire,” Lee said.

“I wanted to change our perceptions of who ‘deserves’ to feel pleasure and what intimacy can look like in different spaces.”

Under the Center for Awareness, Resources and Education (CARE), the Sex Health Reps are a group of students that is committed to promoting positive sex and consent education on campus.

“I feel so lucky to have been able to work with an incredible team of peo-

ple at CARE to develop a program that provides a plethora of resources around sexual health and wellness for the wider Tufts community and continues to empower students through sex positivity,” Lee said.

The program would meet in the basement of Health Service, collaborating on ideas and facilitating workshops in firstyear dorms. Since then, it has expanded, working with other student organizations on campus, and hosting larger events like Pleasure Market and Sexy Trivia. Members of the club even began participating in Orientation Week this past year, using skits and trivia.

“Our mission has always been to serve as a resource and spread awareness around consent and sex positivity, and as each year passes, we have further developed our standard events and curated new experiences for the students,” Lee said. “Even our content has evolved to be more accessible to all students, for those who have sex and for those who do not, to redefine intimacy as we commonly know it.”

In addition to being a Sex Health Rep, Lee has also been a member of the Action for Sexual Assault Prevention e-board.

Lee spoke of the e-board, a tight-knit community of resilient and passionate individuals.

“I am proud of our impact and our fight to center survivors’ voices and needs,” Lee said. “Our resistance against an institution that fails to believe and support its survivors has been tumultuous, but our allies, our members, and the unfailing fortitude of our e-board will ensure that our voices will never be silenced.”

Looking back on her time at Tufts, Lee recalled one of her favorite moments.

Aram Lee is pictured.

COURTESY ARAM LEE

“I remember this one brilliantly sunny day (similar to the one that made me choose Tufts) that I sprawled out on Prez Lawn, surrounded by my friends. There were groups playing music, and everywhere, people were laughing and smiling.

It felt a little endless,” Lee said.

Lee also reflected on why she loves Tufts.

“I love the spontaneous conversations that sprout between students and professors, classmates, and complete strangers in the middle of the street; I always appreciated that people were willing to share their interests with one another so easily and so frequently,” she said.

When it comes to what she will miss most, however, she returned to the familial aspect she loved about Tufts just four years ago.

“I will miss Idah’s greetings, the cliche view from Tisch roof, Carm’s panini press, the very unreliable Joey, the performances, and the little homes we made,” she said.

tuftsdaily.com

ARTS&LIVING

21 Sunday, May 17, 2020

Kota the Friend discusses ‘Everything’ and everything else

by Tuna Margalit and Geoff Tobia Jr. Arts Editors

“I’m good at introductions … I keep it sweet and simple.”

This was Kota the Friend’s confident response when asked what he would do if he met Jay-Z, his favorite artist and biggest hero.

Kota the Friend is a Brooklyn-based rapper who has so far maintained a fairly low profile in the hip-hop community, but is in the process of growing a sizable fanbase.

He has collaborated with the likes of Saba, Statik Selektah and Childish Major, and his list of collaborators grows each year. The Daily had the opportunity to talk with Kota on a Zoom call on May 10.

His aforementioned (and noticeable) self-confidence was mirrored in a response regarding hearing his own recorded voice.

When asked if it feels weird to hear his own voice in his music, Kota responded in the negative.

“I actually love my voice on record … I think it’s something that I’ve grown to love, though,” he said. “The first time I heard my voice on record, I was disgusted. You know what I mean? I was just like ‘yo, turn that off and never turn it on again … get it away from me.’”

Kota says his appreciation for his voice evolved over the years, working to improve it after each recording.

“After years and years of recording, you start getting used to it and then you start building it,” he said. “You’re like ‘alright, I want it to sound a little bit more like this … or I want to add a little bit more bass.’

It becomes an instrument that you like to hear more, so it’s just like development.”

At the same time, Kota leans toward introversion. As proclaimed on his Instagram, he is a “cat person.”

“I just like to stay to myself, you know?

I’m a very particular person, like a lot of people,” Kota said when asked about the significance of his Instagram bio.

On the topic of quarantine, Kota noted that he already “spends most of [his] time by [himself] anyway” and that “quarantine didn’t change [his] life drastically.”

Kota’s forthcoming album, “Everything” (2020), is expected to arrive May 22. Coming in at a concise runtime of under 40 minutes, the album will feature well-known artists such as Joey Bada$$, KYLE, Bas and tobi lou, as well as up-and-coming ones such as Kaiit, Alex Banin, Hello O’Shay and Braxton Cook. There are also two less-thana-minute-long interludes that will feature Academy Award-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o and rising star of “Atlanta” fame Lakeith Stanfield. On the title track and final song, “Everything,” Kota’s young son — credited as “Lil Kota” — is set to make a guest appearance.

Kota said the album as a whole is an experience, when asked if there is any song or moment on it that stands out to him the most. If he had to pick a favorite though, it would be the project’s second track, “Mi Casa” — a solo effort running almost threeand-a-half minutes long.

“It really sums up the whole album.

It really is the perfect focus track for the album,” Kota said. “If you didn’t hear the album and you could only hear one song to be able to describe what this album is gonna be, it would be ‘Mi Casa’ because it explains the whole project.”

When asked if “Mi Casa,” Spanish for “my house,” was titled after the shelterin-place and stay-at-home orders given in many places throughout the world (including his native Brooklyn), Kota denied an

intentional connection between the song and global circumstances. He did, however, offer a more philosophical take on the coincidence.

“Maybe it’s like a universe thing, you know what I mean? It just like comes together,” he said. “Honestly, what people need right now is really a good vibe, you know? I don’t think people necessarily need something about quarantine to make them feel bad about what’s going on … Before I started working on this, I wanted to make an album that was just 100% good vibes, 100% feel-good, no sad songs, no depressed songs, no songs about how bad the past was or anything like that … Just like ‘moving forward,’ you know? The world kinda needs that right now, a ‘moving forward.’”

This notion of “feel-good” is apparent in the stage name “Kota the Friend.” In the interview, Kota gave the origin story for the name.

“I was with my ex-girlfriend and I was tryna figure out my name, my stage name,” he said. “I say ‘Kota’ because it’s from one of my favorites movies, ‘Brother Bear’ (2003), and the kid’s name, the little bear’s name was ‘Koda’ and I like the name so I was like, ‘I wanna use that name, I like that.’

And I think it kinda goes with what I want to do with my brand. I looked it up and ‘Koda’ meant ‘the friend,’ so my girl at the time, she goes, ‘oh, how about “Kota the Friend?”’ We just kinda agreed on it, and it was just like, ‘wow, that’s it.’”

At the moment, Kota is on the come up.

Finding a place on Complex’s “25 Rappers to Watch in 2020” feature and having more than 2 million monthly listeners on Spotify, critics and fans alike are tuning in to the Brooklyn artist. But without a Wikipedia page, a Spotify “About” page or the backing of a major record label — as have rappers of lesser popularity — there remains a clear tendency toward carving out his own, more low-key path through the rap world.

“It’s kinda hard to find stuff about me online because I’m really independent,” he said. “What I want to do with my career is make music, but I want to put on other artists. I want to show other artists my way of being independent, and maneuvering through the game in a different way — not the typical ‘blow up a little bit, sign a distribution deal, sign a major label deal, get the advance.’ Not that. I want to start showing other artists that this music thing can be sustainable just like somebody who works at Google or somebody who works at Apple … and they get a higher job and they continue climbing the ranks of management and upper management. That’s how I look at music. ‘Just make the kinda music you want to make and level-up until you’re at a point where you can then put somebody else on and show somebody else the way.’

That’s really how I want to go about my future in the music industry — create my own industry within the industry.”

The next step on that path is the aforementioned album “Everything.” One of the few critiques listeners have offered for Kota’s music is that a lot of the songs “sound the same.” Kota assured us that “Everything” is different from his last fulllength album, “FOTO” (2019).

“I think it’s a completely different sound,” he said. “It’s way more up-tempo than ‘FOTO’ was; it has more energy, no down moments, just a whole bunch of good, vibey songs.”

The interview also sought to get to know Kota as a person, not just a blossoming artist.

During the societal shift caused by COVID-19, Kota has been working hard

The cover of Kota the Friend’s forthcoming album “Everything” (2020) is pictured. with his upcoming album, but he has plans for after “Everything” drops. He listed a couple hobbies he wants to take up.

“I definitely want to do gardening,” he said. “I want a greenhouse too, that would be the most fulfilling thing, just watching things grow day by day. I love seeing things grow, I think that’s amazing, it’s like raising children … it’s something I’m really looking forward to. Once the album’s out, that’s something I wanna get into right away. I want to start painting things, like, I have this rocking chair in my backyard, and it’s kinda stripped, so I wanna put a nice brown finish on this stripped rocking chair.

Just stuff like that, right? One more thing, too, is cooking.”

Although he has a handful of musical inspirations, Kota mentioned that life likely has the greatest influence on his work.

“For me it’s just, like, art. Life is its own influence,” he said. “It’s probably the biggest inspiration, other than music that one’s experiences — getting drunk, going to the party, climbing the gate, coming home at four in the morning — that influences you to do things, you know?”

In terms of musical artists, Kota’s influences stretch far beyond hip-hop and rap.

“The Beatles were a big influence for me,” he said. “When Limewire came out, I was just downloading a lot of different music, that’s the way I started listening to random stuff like Owl City [and] The Fray, but the Beatles was definitely the biggest one for me. I know their whole discography, I have a million favorite songs from them, and I know all the backstories behind their stories. They inspired me a lot, for sure.”

One specific verse has also left an impact on his life: Chance the Rapper’s verse on Kanye West’s “Ultralight Beam” (2016). Kota made it clear he admires the artistry of Chance’s verse in the song.

“It was just the most perfect thing I’ve ever heard,” he said. “Just hearing him come on, then the metaphors that he’s using, and by the time he said ‘My ex looking back like a pillar of salt’ I said ‘mmm’ and then he said ‘mmm’ at the same time. He was able to use who he was and mix it with lyricism to create a masterpiece of a verse.”

VIA GENIUS

Kota has also freestyled over the “Ultralight Beam” instrumental.

Beyond influences, Kota also has dream collaborations.

“Jay-Z, I think he’s at the top of the list, he’s my biggest hero, you know? Also, Quincy Jones, Nas, I wish Biggie was still alive,” he said.

The New York connection was clear here.

“That goes way back, you know what I mean?” Kota said about the hometown influence. “That goes back to stealing my big brother’s CDs and tapes. That’s why I think those are the people, ‘cause that hits home, close to me. Other than that, dudes that are doing stuff right now [like] Anderson .Paak, I think he’s super dope and he makes really good music. I want to work with Ari Lennox, and I actually wanted to get her on the album. SZA is also on my dream list, and J. Cole, for sure.”

Along with dream musical collaborations, if he had the chance to meet anyone in history, dead or alive, he gave three answers (besides Jay-Z, of course). The list includes Malcolm X, Eartha Kitt and his great-grandparents.

Throughout Kota’s catalog, locations have been a consistent theme for his music. For example, songs like “Colorado” and “Chicago Diner” off of “FOTO,” and the single “California” (2020), all have specific geographic locations as titles, while other abstract places like “Backyard” and “Church” off of “FOTO” also serve as song titles. Kota said the most special location on Earth to him is his neighborhood in Brooklyn.

“That’s where I get a lot of inspiration from,” he said. “There’s no place like home.

I’ve been all around the world, but there’s nothing like that drive from the airport, and stuff starts looking more and more familiar. Then you’re home, and I just love walking outside and seeing people I know, going to the corner store. It makes me feel like I’m home, and I love my home.”

Since we’re all stuck in our homes, now’s the perfect time to become a Kota fan.

Kota’s upcoming album “Everything” will be a necessary addition to your quarantine rotation. Look for it on major streaming services on Friday, May 22.

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THE TUFTS DAILY | Arts & Living | Sunday, May 17, 2020

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Senior Profile: Napoliello makes film unapologetically

by Stephanie Hoechst Executive Video Editor

Senior Rachel Napoliello didn’t start her Tufts career knowing she wanted to pursue filmmaking.

“I came in knowing I was definitely going to have a chemistry major, and I originally thought I was probably going to pursue studio arts as a minor or something, just because I wanted to keep that in my life,” she said. “I’ve always made films, ever since I was young — some of them were pretty hilarious — but I just never thought about it as a career path.”

After getting involved with Tufts University Television (TUTV) during her first year at Tufts, however, Napoliello learned that she could pursue her passion for filmmaking and storytelling alongside her chemistry major.

Over the course of her time at Tufts, Napoliello has come to understand what filmmaking and storytelling means for her from her time with the Film and Media Studies (FMS) program and with TUTV. “Over the four years I think what the film department really did was teach me what stories I wanted to tell,” Napoliello said.

“Especially because it’s a liberal arts school, a lot of the different film people are interested

in a lot of different areas of study, it really allows you to focus on your filmmaking as an individual art form.”

Specifically, Napoliello noted that her experience in filmmaking has shaped her personal form of storytelling in what she understands as “quiet films.”

“I think across the films that I felt have been closest to what I want to make, it’s definitely as pared-down as it needs to be. It’s like Hemingway — there’s nothing extraneous to the story. Just really intentional and conscious filmmaking,” Napoliello described.

This stylistic interest culminated in the production of her senior thesis film, “Young Adults,” during which Napoliello loved engaging in the collaborative aspect of filmmaking.

“I started defending my thesis, and people were there, and some of the crew members were there, and I just started crying because I just loved everyone so much … so the story itself was important to me, but it was really working with the people I worked with and seeing how incredible they were and talented and just feeling like a little community that we all created together. That was my favorite part of the process,” she said.

Over the course of her time in the FMS program, Napoliello reflected on some classes that were a major influence on her understanding

of film, including Film Directing with Jennifer Burton, Advanced Documentary Production with Natalie Minik and any of her classes with Khary Jones. However, Napoliello’s experience in TV in the Age of Change with Tasha Oren taught her another important lesson about not being afraid to love the things she did.

“In that class, the final paper I wrote was this ridiculous paper on how ‘Supernatural’ changed how TV treats Judeo-Christian mythology, and it was 20 pages. It was research, but while I was writing it, I was like, ‘This is hot nonsense’ … But I had so much fun writing it — I’ve never enjoyed academic writing … but that was the first time I really enjoyed it, and [Professor Oren] didn’t really put me down for liking those kinds of things. It was just like, ‘Your likes are valid,’” Napoliello said.

Napoliello learned to apply this validation of her essay to the things that she enjoyed more generally.

“Why am I apologizing for the stories I like?” she said. “I think it’s in society that women and female-identifying people say sorry all the time, and it just made me rethink that. Why am I saying sorry for if I call you out on your BS, or have different media tastes than you?”

Upon graduating, Napoliello wanted to thank everyone who was a part of her filmmaking experience at Tufts.

COURTESY RACHEL NAPOLIELLO

Rachel Napoliello is pictured.

“They really want you to make what you want to make and do what you set out to do, and they’re so supportive in that and helping along the way — and that goes for the community as well, in FMS and TUTV, really everywhere.

The art community is so cool at Tufts,” she said.

Senior Profile: Podniesinski reflects on time as musician at Tufts

by Megan Szostak Arts Editor

Graduating senior Matt Podniesinski is the epitome of a student of arts and sciences. As a double major in biology and biochemistry, Podniesinski certainly has a demonstrated passion for the sciences; but with his heavy involvement in Tufts Music, his musical passions and talents cannot be overlooked. Since his first year at Tufts, Podniesinski has taken part in myriad ensembles, where he has held the roles of clarinetist and pianist.

“I have been involved in several ensembles at Tufts, including Tufts Symphony Orchestra (TSO), Tufts Chamber Orchestra, the Klezmer Ensemble and I did Wind Ensemble. I also did a bunch of chamber groups,” Podniesinski said. Podniesinski emphasized his experience in TSO in particular, describing it as a “unique community of amateur musicians.”

Podniesinski traveled to Costa Rica in 2018 and Italy in 2020 with TSO and considers these trips to be some highlights of his

experience with music at Tufts. “The orchestra trips were incredibly fun, and that was where I got to meet a lot of people that I would become friends with later on,” he said.

This past January, Podniesinski won the Tufts Concerto Competition with a rendition of Claude Debussy’s “Premiere Rhapsodie for Clarinet and Orchestra” (1910), which he was to perform with TSO during its Spring Concert, which was canceled this year.

“I was honestly a bit surprised that I won, but it was really exciting — until it wasn’t, and I realized it wasn’t really going to happen … I was so excited to finally play some Debussy in orchestra,” Podniesinski, a Debussy aficionado, said.

Other than TSO, Podniesinski spent time reminiscing about his time as a musician in the Jumbo Knish Factory, a university ensemble that performs traditional Jewish and non-Jewish folk music, primarily from Eastern Europe and Russia.

“I was one of like three Jewish kids in my grade [in high school], so it was exciting to come to Tufts and be a part of the Klezmer

Ensemble and reconnect with that heritage a bit … it was interesting because I was able to expose myself to a really unique genre of music that I feel like is really hard to access, especially where I come from — Pennsylvania is not really a Jewish hotspot,” he said.

Podniesinski also commented on the community he found in Tufts Music.

“Being involved in music was a really important social scene for me,” Podniesinski said. “In terms of personal development, it was gaining that network of the music nerds, as much as I can actually call myself that. I think in terms of a more academic development, I had the opportunity to participate in some really cool and unique ensembles.”

Optimistic about his future, and looking forward to adopting a cat for his new apartment in Cambridge, Podniesinski does not see his graduation from Tufts as an end to his musical career.

“I have been trying to start looking into community ensembles that I can join.

I know that there is a Cambridge wind ensemble, and I am hoping that I can still

COURTESY MATT PODNIESINSKI

Matt Podniesinski is pictured.

take lessons,” Podniesinski said. “I am still practicing a bunch, and I am hoping that possibly in the fall, since I am living in the area and I am still practicing, that maybe I could actually play the Debussy in the upcoming school year … but we will see.”

Podniesinski hopes to eventually go to graduate school, but is undecided as to whether he will study science or music.

Senior Profile: Ehrlich grows into hardworking filmmaker

by Chris Panella Arts Editor

The day after screening his senior thesis short film, Jacob Ehrlich was sentimental about his journey through the Film and Media Studies (FMS) department.

“I came into the program with very little understanding of what it was like to make an indie film,” he said.

Ehrlich, a double major in film and media studies and computer science, spent his four years in production courses, theory classes and foreign film lectures. And he worked on plenty of short film projects, too.

“I think I learned a lot just by doing,” Ehrlich said.

He’s speaking to the mentalities of the production courses, which allow students to write their own scripts and produce their own projects. Ehrlich notes that he’s very grateful for that hands-on approach because it allowed him to make mistakes (and learn from them).

“I think that the Tufts FMS program did a really good job of giving us plenty of practice and plenty of opportunities to make mis-

takes,” he said. “I think that eventually led to my senior thesis, which I’m very proud of and I think is a culmination of all of the practice-based courses I’ve taken at Tufts.”

It’s certainly not the senior thesis showing he envisioned.

“I think that the worst part about it is not getting that sense of closure from your professors and friends,” Ehrlich said.

But his thesis film, “Rinse & Repeat,” was still a sign of his accomplishments as a filmmaker. He’s got plenty of other highlights from his time at Tufts; from being a teaching assistant to participating in Tufts University Television and working in classes like Advanced Filmmaking, Ehrlich has learned a lot and grown into a filmmaker his first-year self probably wouldn’t recognize.

While he certainly enjoyed learning about and making film — he mentioned “a happy accident” where he took a School of the Museum of Fine Arts course on Cinema 4D that proved to be one of his favorites — Ehrlich fell in love with the post-production process of film.

“I think that it’s a really interesting aspect of telling the story, with the rhythm of the cut and how you choose to order the shot,” he said.

There’s a clear love for the medium of film, too; Ehrlich notes that there’s something special about how film can do what no other art form can.

“I think it’s a really complete way to tell a story,” he said.

He recounts his favorite projects — including collaborations with friends and the Independent Filmmaking class production — and the professors who helped guide him along the way, like Howard Woolf. And while he talks about making these films, particularly “Rinse & Repeat,” there’s an impressive focus on detail.

“For me, part of the fun of it is the post-production. I’m more focused on editing, so I wanted to leave more time for that,” Ehrlich said, before adding that “the final draft of the film was scrutinized” as he asked himself if each and every frame of the film was what he wanted.

In past years, it’s been easier to ask seniors what their post-graduation looked like. Unprecedented and terrifying times make that question almost inappropriate, but Ehrlich’s answer is honest and hopeful.

Jacob Ehrlich is pictured.

COURTESY JACOB EHRLICH

“My ultimate goal would be to either be a film editor or edit television,” he said.

“But obviously for the next few months, production isn’t happening and that means post-production isn’t happening.”

Ehrlich’s plans will involve looking for work opportunities in Los Angeles and New York, but he sees plenty of time to continue working on his craft.

“I can certainly see myself continuing to write my own projects and work on my own short film ideas or feature film ideas, even if they’re not feasible,” he said. “I think it’s important to keep being creative, keep having ideas and keep moving forward.”

A&L Arts & Living

Sunday, May 17, 2020 | Arts & Living | THE TUFTS DAILY

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Senior Profile: Hong expresses identity through fashion

by Yas Salon Arts Editor

“Fashion isn’t as hugely represented, it’s whitewashed. There’s not a lot of interest in it at Tufts,” graduating senior Kaitlynn Hong said over Zoom.

“Before [The Lewkk] there weren’t a lot of events highlighting students of color and also people who were interested in fashion, together.”

The Lewkk, a student-run fashion show, was the brainchild of Hong and fellow graduating senior Amari Diaw, emerging from Diaw’s eponymous Instagram page. The collaborators and friends created the show to create a space for fashion-minded students, with a specific emphasis on students with marginalized identities.

Hong described the show as a source of great pride.

“I’m proud that I was able to cement a place for people that may not have felt like they belonged somewhere, for future Tufts students ... and I’m very proud that I was able to carve out a space for myself,” she said.

Hong also noted that she “definitely [wants] to come back and watch if Tufts is back in the fall ... or spring,” laughing as she playfully addressed the uncertainty of the current moment.

Beyond coordinating the fashion show (the torch of which she and Diaw are passing onto rising juniors Anya Tisdale and Melody Khounchanh), Hong also spent a great deal of her Tufts career as a budding makeup art-

ist slash “freshly delivered clown.” If you’ve ever spent time on her beauty Instagram, you’ve probably seen her abstract and vivid makeup looks, which she shares with an audience of over 7,000 followers. Her looks are expressive and at times surreal; one day, she’ll cover half her face in purple and green cartoon eyeballs. Another day she’ll paint clouds on in lieu of eyebrows coupled with bold brown lip liner. Regardless of what direction Hong takes when painting her face, she’s always serving something new and unique.

“When I was a senior in high school, I was only doing Instagram brows ... really intense Kardashian makeup,” Hong said.

She described her movement toward avant-garde and expressive makeup as stemming from her desire to feel more sure of herself after coming to Tufts and to express her identity.

She described that she never anticipated her makeup amassing such a following online. “[I thought] it would be fun to share some of my art with people,” she said.

“I didn’t really think people would be into it as much as it has happened now, which has been really cool.”

Through people being “into it,” Hong was able to participate in a variety of creative endeavors over the past few years, whether they were on or off campus. In addition to having two separate spreads in Currents Magazine, a Tufts visual arts magazine, Hong has also lent her makeup

wisdom to professional endeavors.

One of Hong’s favorite moments in her makeup journey was a photoshoot with Refinery29 for a piece highlighting women with “bold beauty routines.” She described the experience as “really surreal.”

“I got to go out there, shoot with a real professional photographer ... I got my hair and makeup done, which was crazy,” Hong said. “[It was] surreal, feeling like I was on the same level as them.”

By “them,” Hong referred to Reva Bhatt, a creative director and digital producer who has worked with the likes of Nylon Magazine and Puma, and Hannah Woldetsadik, a signed model.

Hong hopes to eventually move to New York by the end of the year (if a certain pandemic allows it) to continue both her professional and artistic careers.

“I think being in New York is really good for opportunities in makeup and photoshoots, so I really want to keep continuing with it,” she said.

However, Hong emphasized the balance of work and art, saying that she needed structure provided by consistent work. She intends to utilize both her computer science major and film and media studies minor as an associate analyst in Mastercard’s digital marketing department.

Considering herself to be a creative (and NOT a fan of STEM), Hong never anticipated studying computer science.

“When I got to Tufts I was totally undecided. I had no idea what I wanted to do and I definitely would not

Kaitlynn Hong is pictured.

COURTESY KAITLYNN HONG

have expected myself to pick [computer science] at all,” Hong said. “I took a bunch of different classes that were unrelated to each other ... and second semester [of my first] year, my friend Shannon recommended that I take Comp 11. I had never done comp sci in my life and I really doubted her ... and I took it and really liked it, which was weird.”

She continued with computer science, eventually choosing it as her major.

Reflecting upon her four years, Hong noted that the best part of her Tufts experience was the people she met and the close bonds she formed with those who eventually became her housemates (and, often, artistic collaborators).

Stories from a social distance: ‘The Moth’ podcast

by Rachel Carp

Contributing Writer

As we approach our collective second month quarantinaversary, many of us are craving human connection.

With everyone more-or-less trapped in their own spaces, we’re searching for those precious people-to-people bonds in places we never thought we’d look (if you didn’t have TikTok downloaded before, you certainly do now). Yes, we have Zoom and Houseparty and the unofficial revitalization of Club Penguin Online, but a date at the Pizza Parlor with PenguinPatty101 doesn’t feel quite as special as dinner at Oath with your housemates — even if your date does have the cutest puffle.

This is why “The Moth” (2009–) is such a spectacular light. “The Moth” is a storytelling podcast featuring storytellers from across the world, some amateur and some veteran.

The podcast includes short stories — around five to 10 minutes — and long stories — usually around 20 minutes.

The shorter stories generally come from the podcast’s story-slam events, where anyone in attendance can put their name in a hat and hope they’re chosen to take the mic. The longer stories are curated, and come from individuals — authors, celebrities, lawyers, teachers, etc. — who have worked to perfect their story with a member of “The Moth” team. These stories are told at “mainstage” events and recorded for listeners. The podcast can be found on Spotify, iTunes, NPR and the podcast’s own website.

The podcast’s stories are about anything and everything. Storytellers tell of life’s big events, the ones that you’d describe as “turning points”

while playing hot seat during a pre-orientation. But they also tell of life’s little moments, the ones that seem mundane and insignificant, little moments that stack on top of each other like Lego pieces and create the people that we are. The stories dig deep into the human experience to expose our strengths, our flaws, our fears, our senses of humor and just about any other human characteristic in the book. They are raw and relatable, and each story feels like the whisper of a human secret: how to deal with an embarrassing moment, the death of a family member or the feeling of being an outsider.

“The Moth” helps foster the human connection that being stuck in quarantine so painfully lacks. When we hear the story of a stranger, we see those same thoughts, feelings and emotions reflected within ourselves.

It’s a holding of hands that transcends the six-foot distance. The podcast’s stories induce empathy and understanding, making us feel close to each other across space and time.

I’ve listened to just about every “Moth” episode Spotify has to offer, and still it’s hard to pick favorites.

There’s Elizabeth Gilbert’s story — author of “Eat, Pray, Love” (2006) — about her partner’s terminal illness.

Told with her magically soft voice and covert sense of humor, she illustrates in bright colors her partner Rayya’s “Alpha Wolf ” personality and how she dealt with and found community in her passing. Then there’s Danusia Trevino’s story about her experience with jury duty, which is as funny as it is moving. As a rebellious 30-yearold, Trevino’s life is forever changed by the openness of her seemingly conservative fellow jurors. In another

The poster for the “The Moth” podcast is pictured. story, “Blue’s Clues” host Steve Burns hilariously reveals how his role on the show seeped into his romantic life when a date with a Playboy model went horribly wrong. And finally, there’s Jessi Klein’s story about her quest to find the wedding dress of her dreams. Her story is about a dress, but also about the pressure to conform, friendship and finding your way. Though these descriptions contain mild spoilers, each of these stories — and every other story on “The Moth” podcast — is worth a listen.

VIA APPLE PODCASTS

Of course, “The Moth” is no replacement for real-life relationships. But as our current reality elicits loneliness and fear, stories of humanity bring comfort. The podcast’s stories remind us that we’re never alone. So on your daily walk around the block or while you’re “being productive” and “cleaning your room,” fill your ears with stories. Let the laughter and the tears and the mistakes and the reconciliations remind you that we’re all in this together.

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THE TUFTS DAILY | PHOTOSPREAD | Sunday, May 17, 2020

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Top photos of the year

PHOTO CREDITS (CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT): NICOLE GARAY / THE TUFTS DAILY, CONNOR DALE / THE TUFTS DAILY, NICOLE GARAY / THE TUFTS DAILY, SOPHIE ELIA / THE TUFTS DAILY, ALEXIS SERINO / THE TUFTS DAILY, STEPHANIE RIFKIN / THE TUFTS DAILY

Arts & Living P

Sunday, May 17, 2020 | PHOTOSPREAD | THE TUFTS DAILY

PHOTO CREDITS (CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT): ALEXANDER THOMPSON / THE TUFTS DAILY, ALEXANDER THOMPSON / THE TUFTS DAILY, SOPHIE ELIA / THE TUFTS DAILY, AIDAN CHANG / THE TUFTS DAILY, MENGQI IRINA WANG / THE TUFTS DAILY, MENGQI IRINA WANG / THE TUFTS DAILY, NICOLE GARAY / THE TUFTS DAILY

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26 Sunday, May 17, 2020

Opinion

tuftsdaily.com

EDITORIAL

2019–20 in review As the 2019–20 academic year comes to a close, we recognize the change, passion and advocacy of our community’s responses. The Daily seeks to reflect this spirit throughout its pages and specifically within the Opinion section. We aim to capture the vibrant conversations and important issues on our campus, painting a comprehensive picture of how life on the Hill should be.

In pursuit of this goal, we addressed the disheartening events on and around the Tufts campus this year. After multiple discriminatory acts of white nationalism, antisemitism, homophobia and anti-black racism occurred in our community, we condemned this trend as discriminatory and ignorant, calling on the university to address and prevent this hate within our community. Similarly, we emphasized the importance of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and continued support for sexual assault survivors in the face of harmful Title IX amendments and threat to DACA. This pursuit of student safety transferred to other editorial points such as

those considering student health. We urged Tufts to designate more funding and resources to its SafeRide service, which provides those who feel unsafe walking alone at night with a reliable transportation option. We argued that Tufts must foster wellness by expanding the hours and resources of Health Service and Counseling and Mental Health Services, improving gym facilities and increasing options for fitness classes.

Ultimately, ensuring student safety means preserving community health.

A large part of preserving this wellness lies in fostering an equitable institution as a whole. The Editorial Board addressed the harmful financial inequities entrenched within the university, discussing unreasonable textbook fees, laundry costs and tiered housing. However, equity proves important for all community members, not only the student body. This ideal fueled our discussion of gender parity pay and respecting our Medford/Somerville community.

Issues of academic fairness span throughout our campus as well, lead-

ing to our coverage of the inequity within the Semester Hour Unit, drop deadline, distribution requirement and credit-transfer systems. Similar problems also lie within the very structures of our university; the juxtaposition of the crumbling Eaton Hall and stunning Science and Engineering Complex draws attention to the need for equity within all academic disciplines.

Editorial coverage also surrounded principal decisions made by the university. Given its action regarding environmental issues, we emphasized the need for the Joyce Cummings Center to be LEED certified, and we voiced our support for university action on fossil fuel divestment with the creation of the Responsible Investment Advisory Group. We gave additional praise to the university for its decision to cut ties with the Sackler family, given its link to the opioid crisis.

However, not all action of the Tufts administration warranted positive response. The lawsuit presented by Tufts University School of Medicine faculty highlighted the need for preserving

academic and financial freedom within the university’s compensation plan and research space allocation guidelines. The Editorial Board emphasized the need to restore the previous compensation plan to uphold values of trust, transparency and academic freedom.

This content reflects our goals listening to community voices, pursuing engaged citizenship and creating widespread discussion about the issues important to our campus. Even in the face of unprecedented adversity, we remained committed to drawing attention to the way the crisis affects all students and how our university can support us in the face of these issues.

Our coverage during these trying times acts as a testament to our everlasting commitment to the Tufts community, no matter the circumstances. Although the future remains uncertain, our content does not.

We are fully bound to the mission of lifting up voices and creating an atmosphere of hope, discussion and unfaltering dedication to our community — one of strength, advocacy and resilience that we have the honor of being a part of.

EDITORIAL

Four years of action Four years of university provide many opportunities for widespread change, both in the lives of students and the institution itself. The experiences of the Class of 2020 are no exception; throughout its time on campus, our university experienced drastic changes in favor of improving student life, preserving positive institutional values and the rights of all community members. The progress at Tufts during the Class of 2020’s college years and the class’ role in advocating for these changes is worthy of pride and recognition by our entire community.

The Class of 2020’s time on the Hill developed as one of moral integrity, seen through student activism and university decisions over the past four years — notably, the choice to cut ties with the Sackler family for its clear role in the U.S. opioid epidemic.

After years of student, alumni and community advocacy, Tufts made the ethical decision to remove the Sackler name from all buildings, symbolizing the university’s acknowledgment of the extensive harm the family caused to many in its promotion of OxyContin. This decision marked a point of progress, a signal of morality as well as the fire behind Tufts student voices.

The university held itself accountable to recognizing and acting upon the environmental implications of its actions as well. Buildings on Tufts’ campus, including Sophia Gordon Hall and the Science and Engineering Complex, earned LEED certification, meeting comprehensive sustainability standards about building materials, water savings, energy efficiency and waste management.

This environmental responsibility continues with the university’s recent plan to address the divestment from fossil fuels, honorably and tirelessly advocated for by Tufts student groups such as Tufts Climate

Action (TCA); in response to these efforts, the university created the Responsible Investment Advisory Group to assess its ties to the fossil fuel industry. These steps reflect both the efforts of the student body over many years and the opening of university ears to student voices demanding a more sustainable campus. These positive steps must continue in further divestment and the certification of all buildings on campus, such as the Joyce Cummings Center.

This community advocacy spans beyond the environment, headlined by the fight for fair contracts for Tufts Dining workers. In the 2018-19 academic year, Tufts students fought for equity by standing alongside dining hall workers in solidarity, conducting strikes to raise awareness for the need of a new contract. The university responded to these commendable efforts, signing the first collective bargaining agreement in June 2019 and marking the formal recognition of workers’ demands projected by dining hall workers. While the contract still needs to be further improved, this event marks a true example of the Tufts community, including both students and administration, coming together to support equity and justice — a moment to be remembered by our graduating class for years to come.

The Class of 2020 also witnessed significant administrative change to the Tufts on-campus housing system. In the last four years, Tufts addressed some of the pervasive student concerns about restricted on-campus housing capacity and outdated quality by constructing its Community Housing (CoHo) development as well as renovating Miller, Tilton and Houston Halls, among other dormitories. Complementing these efforts, the Office of Residential Life and Learning shifted the housing lottery from an averaging system to a “take-the-highest-

number” system, protecting student wellness, minimizing exclusion and promoting interconnectedness within the student body. Despite these strides made to ensure equitable housing, problems remain within the system; the recently implemented tiered housing presents a significant threat to inclusivity and financial accessibility on our campus.

However, the student body observed issues in fostering this interconnectedness, specifically within the Greek life system. As early as fall 2016, students fought admirably to highlight concerns with Greek life — and many saw these concerns as worthy of the system’s abolishment. Activism prompted an investigation and led to the remodeling of the Greek life system in an effort to promote inclusivity and safety. As a result of these efforts, Tufts joined the Hazing Prevention Consortium and decided to only allow students in their second year or above to rush in 2017. The Inter-Greek Council later created the Sexual Assault Prevention Task Force and the Diversity and Inclusion Task Force in an effort to hold Greek organizations accountable for their actions and prevent future misconduct. Although not complete and currently failing to implement sufficient sexual assault training, these changes made Tufts a safer and more inclusive environment for all students — and in the process, permanently changed a driving component of student life on the Hill.

Calls for inclusivity and defense of shared values also shine through the Tufts community response to policy changes put out by the Trump Administration, which immediately caused widespread student calls for action. In the face of threats to DACA, many students — including those in the Class of 2020 — voiced powerful concern, and in turn Tufts recognized the need to protect

undocumented students. This fall, Tufts, along with 164 other universities, signed onto an amicus brief against the DACA repeal, asserting the values affected community members bring onto campuses and standing up for fundamental human rights.

Complementing this action, University President Anthony Monaco released a statement detailing his support of DACA and Tufts’ duty to protect all students, documented or not.

Monaco also released a letter submitted to the Department of Education and similar statements reaffirming the university’s “shared interest in eradicating sexual misconduct at Tufts, supporting survivors and all others affected by sexual misconduct, and maintaining a process that is fundamentally just for all” under threat of the recent, horrifying Title IX regulations.

These messages from our student body and university leadership represent a positive response to changes within our country — prioritizing open communication, safety and moral responsibility.

The Class of 2020’s time on campus consisted largely of positive change and affirmation; however, while beneficial steps, these changes prove imperfect. We look forward to another four years of development, feeding on the activism, integrity and advancement of the last. We expect and encourage the university to follow this trend by divesting from fossil fuels, LEED certifying all buildings, addressing financial inaccessibility, reverting tiered housing and further supporting survivors and marginalized students. By doing so, the Tufts administration validates the efforts of the Class of 2020’s years on the Hill and shows its commitment to the moral evolution of our community and an equitable, secure college experience for all students.

The Tufts Daily is a nonprofit, independent newspaper, published Monday through Friday during the academic year, and distributed free to the Tufts community.

The content of letters, advertisements, signed columns, cartoons and graphics does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Tufts Daily editorial board.

EDITORIALS Editorials represent the position of The Tufts Daily. Individual editors are not necessarily responsible for, or in agreement with, the policies and editorials of The Tufts Daily.

OP-EDS The Op-Ed section of The Tufts Daily, an open forum for campus editorial commentary, is printed Monday through Thursday. The Daily welcomes submissions from all members of the Tufts community; the opinions expressed in the Op-Ed section do not necessarily represent the opinions of the Daily itself. Opinion articles on campus, national and international issues should be 600 to 1,200 words in length and submitted to opinion@tuftsdaily.com. The editors reserve the right to edit letters for clarity, space and length. All material is subject to editorial discretion and is not guaranteed to appear in the Daily. Authors must submit their telephone numbers and day-of availability for editing questions.

ADVERTISING All advertising copy is subject to the approval of the Editor-in-Chief, Executive Board and Executive Business Director.

Opinion

Sunday, May 17, 2020 | Opinion | THE TUFTS DAILY

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR IN CHIEF

Celebrating our community Dear Tufts community, Over the past few months, our “small town” has been dispersed across the globe.

Though we do not live on campus at the moment, we remain connected through our shared experiences and the family and friends we have found at Tufts.

Our community responded admirably to the difficult circumstances and inequities exposed by the pandemic. Students and alumni have risen to the occasion by engineering face masks for health care workers, volunteering at local service organizations and purchasing groceries for our neighbors and families. Our identity-based centers

provided meals, airline tickets, free storage, computers and other resources to those in need. With the launch of Tufts Mutual Aid, members of our community coalesced to assist these centers in responding to the swift changes on campus. These are the actions that define us as a selfless and civic-minded community.

This issue of the Daily celebrates the accomplishments of the Class of 2020.

Although Commencement cannot happen now as usual, it remains important to say farewell and to honor the successes of our seniors.

From the removal of the Sackler name from university buildings to men’s soccer’s

fourth national championship in six years, our community made great strides over the last four years. Women’s basketball secured its first undefeated regular season in team history, and the team showed its prowess in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

The Chronicle of Higher Education named Tufts a “top producer” of Fulbright Scholars for six consecutive years, due in no small part to the work of Tufts’ many civic-minded students and their drive to make the world a better place. We witnessed the anniversary celebrations of the Africana Center, the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life and the Tufts Daily while on cam-

pus. During the Class of 2020’s time here, the university has literally taken a different shape, with the addition of Community Housing and the renovations of Houston, Miller and Barnum Halls. These are just a few examples, but the point is that this class is part of many of our community’s greatest moments.

As you move on and start your careers, I hope you take the best of what you’ve learned at Tufts — the connections, experiences and friends.

Sincerely, Ryan Shaffer Editor in Chief, The Tufts Daily

EDITORIAL CARTOON

BY JULIA ZWEIFACH, VALERIA VELASQUEZ, ANNABEL NIED AND CARYS KONG

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THE TUFTS DAILY | Opinion | Sunday, May 17, 2020

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EDITORIAL

Tufts must address deficiencies within health system exposed by pandemic As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, it continues to highlight issues within the structures of our world, country and university. In particular, the crisis has placed increased stress on health care systems, in turn aggregating the health care disparities prevalent within American institutions.

Barriers to receiving quality health care in this time of international panic reveal much deeper, institutional flaws of the system, ranging from insufficient resources to deep-seated inequality. Tufts is not immune to these structural deficiencies, for issues in Tufts health care become increasingly apparent in this current state; Health Service only opens its doors for limited hours during the regular school year, and barriers to sufficient mental health care persist. As the virus elucidates these inefficiencies, the university must remain diligent in broadening student access to both physical and mental health services now and for years to come.

While Health Service hours are insufficient during normal circumstances, increased hours prove especially imperative given the current increase in contagion and need for testing, treatment and health resources. The university responded to this need by expanding hours to stay open from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., closing from noon to 1 p.m. and on holidays. While we commend Tufts for this act in favor of student wellness, it remains important that these hours continue and Tufts hires more health staff to allow students quick access to health resources in this time of crisis and after its end.

The health issues exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic extend beyond the physical. From the mental anxieties of lacking social interaction to financial insecurity to remaining inside for days, the pandemic has caused countless points of mental strife for Tufts students beyond the fear of falling ill. For

some students, these stressors will be life-changing. The crisis could lead to increased symptoms of pre-existing psychological disorders, emotionally dangerous situations for those with unsafe home environments and unbearable grief if faced with loss or the need to take care of sick loved ones.

The deficits of the current Counseling and Mental Health system prove harmful during this time of need; within Tufts’ current system, the availability of these services fully depend on one’s health insurance. The Tufts health insurance plan provides services such as free teletherapy accounts with BetterHelp and access to UnitedHealthcare StudentResources/ Optum in-network providers for $5 co-payments. However, students without the university’s insurance may not reap these same benefits, potentially facing higher co-payments and bills for counseling sessions depending on their insurance

plan. Given the mental hardship associated with the pandemic, these inequalities entrenched within the CMHS system must be addressed to allow for access to the same benefits regardless of insurance plan — a factor heavily influenced by privilege and family income.

Although inflamed by the COVID-19 crisis, Tufts’ health care systems undoubtedly held these deficits before the present crisis, leading to student distress and inequitable access to high-quality medical attention throughout Tufts’ history.

While unfortunate, this unprecedented situation provides the university an opportunity to see how its lacking health care systems can and will affect students in the years to come; Tufts must use the present situation as an indication of the intense necessity for improvements.

Only by doing so can Tufts prioritize the emotional and physical wellbeing of the community’s core — its students.

EDITORIAL

University financial support proves vital in response to COVID-19 economic crisis The COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented challenges for our world, university and peers. Against the backdrop of an emerging economic recession and widespread unemployment, many Tufts students and families will experience financial hardship. Students that did not qualify for financial aid prior to the crisis could have need in the near future, and those currently receiving aid may face holes in financial support while not on campus. Further, access to academic resources is extremely limited while confined to our homes, with cost-saving alternatives, such as selling back books to the Tufts Community Union Textbook Exchange, not available at the moment. Even after students can safely return to campus, the effects of the crisis will linger; some students may no longer be able to afford tuition, living, academic or travel costs.

The university has already taken commendable measures to provide financial support to students affected by the crisis. On March 26, the administration announced in an email that they would still pay students who receive work-study funding for regular hours until May 8, regardless of their ability to continue working remotely.

However, it’s not only students who face severe financial implications as a result of the pandemic: on April 16, University President Anthony Monaco told the Tufts community that the administration expects an estimated $15 million loss due to COVID-19. Nevertheless, despite these financial concerns and uncertainty surrounding academic plans for the future, Monaco assured students that the university’s commitment to “full financial need” will not waver. In fulfilling this pledge, Tufts must take into consideration the various ways in which students will experience financial vulnerability during this crisis, both on and off campus.

The ever-increasing cost of tuition will also provide one of the most pressing areas of concern for students entering precarious financial situations. If Tufts continues to increase cost of attendance in upcoming years, perhaps to account for decreases in the endowment and funding, many students with changed financial situations may no longer be able to afford tuition. As Tufts seeks a sustainable financial solution that balances institutional and student needs, it must avoid recuperating costs through tuition increases. To promote values of academic inclusivity and ensure

accessibility to a Tufts education, the university must position itself on a trajectory to freeze tuition costs for each class year as well as promptly readjust financial aid plans for those needing support coming out of the economic crisis.

Even for students covered by financial aid, unprecedented challenges may arise over the summer and beyond. Although the university continues to pay students work-study through the end of the spring term, those unable to work summer jobs will lose needed funds for college expenses. Beyond the summer, if classes resume online, students with financial aid may no longer receive support for dining or living costs, and work-study options will likely be limited. This loss of supplementary financial assistance would adversely affect families and could even jeopardize students’ abilities to engage with academics. In the coming months, the university must provide additional financial support for those facing this loss of income or financial assistance provided on campus.

In addition, Tufts must reduce barriers to academic resources and promote greater accessibility. For some students, the cost of acquiring textbooks and other academic resources in the upcoming semesters will

pose a significant financial burden. However, the existence of free, viable alternatives to textbooks, such as scanned versions of course readings, lessen the impact of these exorbitant fees. As such, even when we return to in-person classes, professors should continue to select and promote more cost-efficient course materials to prioritize students’ needs and alleviate financial strain.

For Tufts’ large international population, these challenges are further compounded by high travel costs and barriers to international travel. Further, as the university plans for future semesters in the midst of pervasive uncertainty, it is critical that it takes into account both the potential ethical and financial costs of travel that might arise for international students.

This action proves important given the immediate financial impacts of this global crisis and the inevitable complicated process of rebuilding our community. To uphold values of academic continuity and full financial need during this crisis, Tufts must adapt to these new financial challenges by implementing the financial and institutional measures necessary to support those most affected by this crisis. Only by doing so can the Tufts community come out of this crisis united through empathy and resilience.

LETTER FROM THE NEWS EDITOR

Why we report

I confess: This letter was difficult for me to write. It is extremely rare for the Daily to publish a letter from the executive news editor, especially so in our final issue of the year.

The turbulence of this semester, however, prompts me to break from this precedent.

Many developments followed University President Anthony Monaco’s evening announcement on March 10, which have undoubtedly forged themselves a place in my memory for years to come. I won’t recall these in detail; instead, I’d like to discuss the remarkable and persistent team of student-journalists who reported that news.

They did not pause when the Daily’s last regular issue of the semester printed on March 12, did not rest when students began to evacuate a shuttering campus and did not stop when they began online-only classes on March 25 amid a coronavirus pandemic. Instead, they reported the news.

Unclear about their academic standing as faculty weighed modifying pass/ fail policies, challenged by virtual exams and Zoom lectures and uncertain about when they might return to their friends and home on the Hill, they nevertheless reported the news.

Difficulties facing Jumbos everywhere, they too confronted layoffs of friends and family, loved ones in and out of the hospital and social isolation amplified by mandated physical distancing. Despite easier options, they reported the news.

I am not making a claim to heroism here — we may miss deadlines, make mistakes in editing and judgement or fail to rise to the demanding (and absolutely warranted) expectations the Tufts community has for us. We admit our mistakes when they happen and swiftly correct them in our unwavering pursuit of the truth. But we are not heroes and do not seek that praise.

What then motivated these journalists to continue on? Seeing one’s own byline printed on front-page, above-thefold news is usually quite gratifying, and these journalists have certainly grown in the process. Those are not sufficient reasons, however.

They carried on because they understood that the news is a public good from which our whole community is free to benefit and one which someone must provide. They recognized that fostering a strong community predicated on active citizenship — which Tufts rightly espouses as its ethos — demands timely and accurate reporting as a prerequisite.

They overcame pandemic-wrought turmoil to continue supplying an essential service to our community.

That is why they reported the news. I hope you understand why I find it to be so inspiring, whether you consider yourself a regular reader of the Daily or are just now

discovering your first issue. They will not ask much of you either, barring one notable exception.

If you believe that active citizenship is a virtue foundational to the Tufts community, as I do, these journalists will make only one request: read the news, which is your right as well as your responsibility.

Nothing can extinguish the vitality of a community that embraces this charge — not even a pandemic.

Leading the Daily’s news department these past six months has been as much a challenge as it was an honor — even more so since March 10. I estimate that in that time I’ve written and edited more than 100,000 words, and these are the last of them. May they prove as meaningful to you as they have been to me.

Sincerely, Robert Kaplan Executive News Editor, The Tufts Daily

Opinion

Sunday, May 17, 2020 | Opinion | THE TUFTS DAILY

29

OP-ED

University politics when it’s convenient TUFTS STUDENTS FOR JUSTICE IN PALESTINE On Wednesday, April 22, the Office for Campus Life (OCL) awarded Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) the Student Organization Collaboration Award in recognition of the multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-racial coalition of activists we built as part of our campaign to end the Deadly Exchange at Tufts. We are deeply disappointed that instead of celebrating SJP’s coalition building, activism and fight for social justice across cultural, racial, ethnic, religious, socioeconomic and international boundaries, the Tufts administration, in a statement by University President Anthony Monaco, Provost and Senior Vice President Nadine Aubry, Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences James Glaser, Dean of Student Affairs ad interim Nancy Thompson and Dean of the School of Engineering Jianmin Qu, launched a disparaging, shameful smear campaign. In their statement, they stated that they “strongly disapprove of this award in light of SJP’s concerning policy positions, including its association with the [Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS)] movement, elements of which [they] view as anti-semitic.” We embrace the call for BDS; therefore, by describing BDS as antisemitic, the university is also accusing SJP of antisemitism.

SJP’s policy positions and work are focused on raising awareness of the many injustices that Palestinians face in their daily lives, supporting the BDS movement and ending the Deadly Exchange. These are not “concerning policy positions”; they actively pursue peaceful pressure on Israel to protect and reclaim the human rights of Palestinians.

As Palestinians, Arabs and people of color (POC) from all different backgrounds and religions, we believe that we can speak for many of the marginalized students on campus when we say that we do not feel safe. The Tufts administration’s actions show that the identity of Palestinian students is not accepted on this campus, that activism and advocacy for some people goes unheard and can even be punished and that expressing Palestinian voices is antisemitic. In addition, the administration’s statements have caused us to suffer from racist and Islamophobic attacks from social media trolls and publications.

While the campaign to end the Deadly Exchange at Tufts affects many students, it affects black, indigenous and POC communities the most. With no transparency, former Tufts University Police Chief Kevin Maguire attended a military and law enforcement training trip in Israel. During these trips, police officials, such

as Maguire, have met with the Israeli Defense Forces, Israel National Police and other defense organizations which have harassed, incarcerated, tortured and discriminated against Palestinians, many of them children. These officials were also taught Israeli “counterterrorism” tactics, which historically include racial-profiling, state-sanctioned violence against civilians, expanding surveillance and forceful repression of public protests. Even worse, some of the fatal police shootings that have happened in America are through the departments that have sent their officers on this Deadly Exchange trip. While this does not mean these trips are the sole cause of harmful police forces, it is clear that police brutality and racial profiling should not be encouraged, taught or tolerated. Ending the Deadly Exchange is consistent with the goals of the BDS movement that seeks to ensure the safety and rights of the Palestinian people.

There is a bigger picture in which this trip affects all of us. This is not just about Israel — the referendum we are introducing into the Tufts Community Union (TCU) senate calls for the end of all foreign military training trips for the Tufts University Police Department (TUPD), not just trips to Israel. Allowing TUPD to be a military-trained police force is not going to combat terrorism or make us safer, nor is it the best use of Tufts’ time and money. Rather, this trip causes police officers to become desensitized to violence, arms discrimination and racial-profiling against POC students on campus. Police officers should be trained to protect communities. Militaries are trained to fight against an enemy. When our police are trained by the military, we have to ask ourselves: Who will they treat as the enemy?

At these “counterterrorism” seminars, police witness and learn harsh and discriminatory military tactics that have been practiced on Palestinians. Palestinians have constantly had Israeli police authorities unreasonably target them. Now they are treated like zoo animals as police authorities from around the world attend seminars to learn tactics that have been practiced on them. In addition, Israel is under investigation for its alleged war crimes against the Palestinian people. Would you feel safe under the protective gaze of a police force trained by military and security authorities that are being investigated for war crimes against your people? We know that we do not.

We are disappointed by the fact that Tufts has chosen to go out of its way to defend an ideology that is predicated on the erasure of Palestinian culture and identity. Zionism is a modern political ideology that advocates for the establishment

of a Jewish state in historic Palestine, with its leaders affirming from its inception that a Jewish state necessitates strategies of demographic engineering such as population transfer. Even today, the municipality of Jerusalem pursues a policy of demographic engineering that aims to prevent Palestinians from exceeding 40% of the city’s population. This broader strategy of demographic engineering manifests in a variety of ways — most notably, by making life for Palestinians as difficult as possible to encourage emigration. Since 1967, Israel has demolished over 25,000 Palestinian homes in Gaza and the West Bank, displacing over 160,000 residents, and has uprooted over 800,000 olive trees to disrupt the economic livelihoods of some 80,000 families who rely on the harvest for their income. The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, Aladah, hosts a database of over 65 laws in Israel that directly and indirectly discriminate against Palestinian citizens of the state. A more recent and egregious effort to further cement this reality of discrimination came in 2018 with Israel’s passage of the Nation-State Law, which denies non-Jewish people “the right to exercise national self-determination.” Palestinians have resisted the colonization of their homeland and the brutalization of their people for decades amidst imprisonment, massacre, land expropriation and so much more. President Monaco’s statement is another example of Palestinian struggles being dismissed and the voices of Palestinians and their allies who have been marginalized being ignored.

Now, more than ever, Palestinians need their allies to show up and resist alongside them.

The 2005 call for BDS was a reflection of that need for solidarity around the world. The BDS call is widely supported, including at Brown University where, after student outcry, the university has already begun the process of divesting from companies “identified as facilitating human rights violations in Palestine” by passing a recommendation in the university’s Advisory Committee on Corporate Responsibility in Investment Practices. The support spans many Palestinian civil society organizations and is even present at Tufts University where the TCU Senate overwhelmingly voted to pass a resolution in support of BDS at Tufts in 2017. It is an effort to pressure Israel to respect the basic human rights of the Palestinian people and comply with international law — nothing more, nothing less. It is a movement modeled after the rich mosaic of struggles for liberation throughout history, such as the Anti-Apartheid Movement in South Africa.

Amid Israel’s continued violation of human rights, with impunity, the BDS movement’s fundamental demands for freedom, justice and equality

have been recognized as such, drawing support from student governments, trade unions, labor unions, academic associations, churches and even celebrities around the world. People of conscience around the world are standing up to declare that BDS is a non-violent movement for justice. Today, Israel has violated the most United Nations Security Council resolutions of any country in the world.

Attempts to smear BDS as antisemitic rise from the fear that giving Palestinians equal rights would lead to the“destruction of the state of Israel” due to a large number of Palestinians who are currently being denied their rights. These smears attempt to delegitimize a legitimate human rights movement by undercutting its motivations and are a common tactic used to suppress the voice of marginalized and oppressed groups. For example, Colin Kaepernick and other NFL football players were slandered as unpatriotic and unamerican for kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality and to fight for gun control, women are smeared as bossy, stubborn and hormonal when pushing for women’s rights reforms and advocates against wars and interventionism are smeared as terrorist sympathizers.

Tufts SJP condemns any and all antisemitic and racist beliefs and actions. SJP seeks to give a voice to the Palestinian people as well as their basic human rights and freedoms. We not only advocate for the rights of the Palestinian people, but we support rights, justice and freedom for all. The administration’s statement distracts from the real issue of antisemitism on campus and absolves university leadership from its responsibility of addressing it. We reject the university’s false accusation of antisemitism that distracts from the actual fight against antisemitism, silences the voices of marginalized communities and erases the fight for Palestinian liberation.

We are truly grateful for all the support and solidarity SJP has received over the past few weeks. We encourage all who support freedom and rights for all people to send an email to the Tufts administrators and ask them to revoke their statement. This is an act of solidarity, not only with SJP but with all the student organizations supporting SJP and all marginalized communities on and off campus. Our Facebook statement has an email template as well as other ways to show support. We will continue this fight together to pressure the administration to retract its statement and issue a public apology.

Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) is a student group that aims to promote the Palestinian narrative on the Tufts campus. Members of SJP can be reached at sjptufts@gmail.com.

OP-ED

A thank you note to the administration BEN LEIKIND I was relieved when, in late April, University President Anthony Monaco, Provost and Senior Vice President Nadine Aubry, Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences James Glaser, Dean of Student Affairs ad interim Nancy Thompson and Dean of the School of Engineering Jianmin Qu released a statement expressing their strong disapproval of the Office for Campus Life Student Organization Collaboration Award going to Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).

“We strongly disapprove of this award in light of SJP’s concerning policy positions, including its association with the [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)] movement, elements of which we view as anti-Semitic,” they explained.

In a recent op-ed response in this publication, SJP claimed that BDS is not antisemitic and that any claim otherwise is merely “a common tactic used to suppress the voice of marginalized and oppressed groups.” Fighting for the rights of the Palestinian people is a legitimate cause. The BDS movement, however, is antisemitic.

When BDS co-founder Omar Barghouti was asked if he believes the Jewish people can have

their own state, his response was “not in Palestine.”

Mr. Barghouti is wrong, however, to deny the Jewish people’s right to a state in that land while affirming the Palestinian right for the same. First, the Jewish people are a nation in addition to a religion. The word “Jew” comes from the name Judah because we are the descendants of the Tribe of Judah. Second, we have an ancient and continuous connection to the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. The historical and archaeological evidence shows that the Jewish people resided there 2,000 years ago, if not more. Most were forcibly removed by the Romans, but some managed to stay. Because of those who were able to stay, there has been a nearly constant, albeit small, Jewish presence in the land over the centuries. Moreover, those who were exiled never forgot about the land of Israel. Jewish liturgy and literature for the last 15 centuries have been filled with lyrics dreaming of the Jewish return to the historic land of Israel. For example, every year for centuries at the end of the Passover seder, we have sung “L’shana Haba’ah B’yerushalayim,” which means “Next Year in Jerusalem.” The reality of a strong connection between Jewish people and the land of the modern state of Israel does not negate

the Palestinian people’s right to self-determine. It does mean, however, that anyone who wishes to equally apply the idea that every nation has a right to self-determine needs to support a two-state solution. BDS’ implicit denial of the Jewish people’s right to self-determine in their historic homeland, a right that is at least theoretically acknowledged for all other nations, is antisemitic.

The BDS movement is also home to people and groups that have crossed the line from subtle antisemitism into overt antisemitism.

Multiple groups of BDS activists have called for killing Jewish people (e.g., “shoot the Jew” chants

by BDS activists at Wits University in 2013 which were then defended by the local BDS coordinator). Even more disturbingly, supporters of the BDS movement have invoked a contemporary version of the blood libel, making the false claim that Israelis murder Palestinians to steal their organs. The language used by these proponents, such as in images shared by University of California Berkeley Lecturer Hatem Bazian, borrows closely from the language of classic, unambiguously antisemitic blood libel literature.

There is another problematic part of SJP’s statement. No non-Jewish organization at Tufts

should be deciding what is or is not antisemitic.

Just as it would be wrong for a non-Asian group to try to define racism against Asian students, or for a non-black group to try to define racism against black students, this is also problematic.

While SJP has Jewish members, it is not a Jewish organization, and should not be dismissing valid concerns about antisemitism as “smears.”

SJP has aligned itself with a movement that traffics in antisemitism through its steadfast support for BDS, even if this was never the intention.

The rights of Palestinians can and should be promoted, but the BDS movement is not the way to do it. I am not accusing any individual members of SJP of being antisemites. However, SJP is responsible for inviting a movement riddled with antisemitism onto our campus. I want to go to a school where Palestinian rights are advocated for without the involvement of antisemitic movements. I am proud to go to a school where the administration calls out associations with antisemitism and reaffirms the campus’ commitment to deny access to hatred.

Ben Leikind is a first-year who has not yet declared a major. Ben can be reached at benjamin.leikind@tufts.edu.

30 Sunday, May 17, 2020

Sports

tuftsdaily.com

Revisiting the top 10 moments in Jumboland

by Jake Freudberg

Executive Sports Editor

At this point it feels like a platitude to say, but the 2019–20 school year will forever be ingrained in history. It was the year that, out of seemingly nowhere, nearly everything came to a screeching halt within a matter of days.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic shut down athletics and much more across the world, the Jumbos were creating their own history — setting numerous records and winning both conference and national championships.

Here’s a look back at some of this year’s top moments in Tufts athletics.

Sept. 14: Football defeats NESCAC powerhouse Trinity On opening weekend, the football team took down three-time defending champion Trinity, 14–8, at home on Ellis Oval. The win was the first against Trinity for Tufts since 2007 — and the first for coach Jay Civetti, a Trinity alum.

Graduating senior linebacker and co-captain Greg Holt and rising junior defensive lineman Jovan Nenadovic led a Jumbos defense that limited the Bantams to 281 yards on offense. The Jumbos’ offense proved it could survive without quarterback Ryan McDonald (LA’19), as graduating senior Jacob Carroll got his first start at quarterback.

Despite a hot start, Tufts lost the next two weeks and ended the season just 4–5.

Oct. 19: Sorkin wins ITA Championship for second year in a row Rising senior and co-captain Boris Sorkin secured the Jumbos’ first championship victory of the year in his second straight national championship win at the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) Cup singles tournament in Rome, Ga. Sorkin defeated rising junior Stan Morris of Middlebury, 7–6 (5), 3–6, 6–1 in the final match of the tournament.

What’s more, amid a global pandemic, Sorkin also won the online ITA Top Moments Bracket Challenge for this victory, receiving the most votes over the course of the online three-week bracket competition.

Nov. 10: Volleyball wins second NESCAC Championship in program history The volleyball team made history in November, defeating Bowdoin 3–2 in a close match. The championship victory was the second ever for the program, the last one coming in 1996.

The Jumbos, who had beaten the Polar Bears 3–0 earlier in the season, went up in the first set 25–21, but the Polar Bears took the next two sets 25–18, 25–20. Tufts rallied in the fourth set and won 25–17 and sealed the deal in the final set 15–13.

The conference title gave the team an automatic bid into the NCAA tournament. Once again, the Jumbos found themselves squaring off against the Polar Bears in the second round, but the Polar Bears were victorious this time, 3–2.

Nov. 23: Page runs second-best NCAA 6k in Tufts history Rising junior Danielle Page has already accumulated a long list of impressive performances just two years into her collegiate career. At the NCAA Div. III Cross Country Championships in Louisville, Ky., Page posted the second-best finish at NCAAs in Tufts program history with a time of 21:25.50.

That finish gave her sixth place in the race — only the third top 10 finish in Tufts program history. Page was also the top runner from New England at the race, as the Jumbos placed eighth overall.

Dec. 7: Men’s soccer wins fourth national championship in six years At this point, you have to wonder if the men’s soccer team gets tired of winning.

The Jumbos took home their fourth NCAA title in six years, solidifying themselves as one of the nation’s top teams. After winning the NESCAC tournament, the team breezed through the first two rounds, before nearly losing to Washington and Lee College in an overtime thriller.

Wins over Connecticut College and Calvin University sent Tufts to the finals against NESCAC rival Amherst. A first half goal from graduating senior midfielder/forward and co-captain Gavin

Tasker and a second half goal from rising senior forward Max Jacobs after a questionable handball gave the Jumbos a 2–0 shutout victory — and yet another piece of hardware.

Jan. 13: Shapiro leaves Tufts for Harvard After winning his program to its fourth NCAA Championship in six years, men’s soccer coach Josh Shapiro announced that he accepted the head coaching position at Div. I Harvard University.

Shapiro built a dynasty in his 10 years as a Jumbo, winning national titles in 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2019, as well as NESCAC titles in 2017 and 2019. Tufts is one of the preeminent teams in Div. III, one of just three in the NCAA to have won four or more national championships.

Taking over for Shapiro will be Kyle Dezotell, who comes to Tufts from Ithaca College.

Jan. 31: Women’s basketball defeats rival Bowdoin to stay undefeated Coming off a NESCAC Championship and trip to the NCAA Elite Eight in the 2018–19 season, the women’s basketball team got off to an impressive 18–0 start in coach Jill Pace’s first season at Tufts.

As the regular season entered its final weeks, a big matchup stood out on the schedule between then No. 1 Tufts and No. 2 Bowdoin, perennial powerhouses and NESCAC rivals. The Jumbos emerged victorious, 97–88, behind 23 points from rising senior guard/forward Emily Briggs, 20 points from graduating senior guard Cailin Harrington, and 19 points each from graduating senior guard/forward and co-captain Erica DeCandido and rising junior guard Molly Ryan.

The Jumbos went on to secure their first undefeated regular season in history, before the Polar Bears got their revenge in the NESCAC Championship.

Feb. 1: New Tufts Squash Center opens The $6 million Tufts Squash Center opened on Feb. 1, as the men’s team and women’s team faced off against Connecticut College.

The project was funded fully by donors and took about eight months to complete.

The teams now have a state-of-the-art facility to call home, and now have the ability to host larger collegiate and high school tournaments, according to the Athletics Department.

Feb. 20–23: Gu dazzles at his final NESCAC Championship meet Graduating senior Roger Gu has been setting records and winning titles in his four years as a Jumbo, and his final year was no exception, despite the cancellation of the NCAA Championships meet.

At the NESCAC Championships, Gu earned his team 88 points, helping Tufts place second overall for the second year in a row. Gu won the 50-yard freestyle (19.78) and the 100-yard freestyle (43.87), bringing his total career NESCAC individual titles to five.

Gu was also a part of the 400-yard freestyle relay that set an all-time NESCAC record of 2:59.52.

Mar. 1: Men’s basketball wins first NESCAC Championship in program history In one of the most exciting games in any sport this past year — one that really shouldn’t be at the bottom of this list — the men’s basketball team took home its first NESCAC Championship in program history with a 102–94 double overtime win against Colby.

Graduating senior guard and co-captain Eric Savage drained a 35-foot shot in the final seconds of regulation to send the game to overtime, electrifying the crowd at Cousens Gymnasium.

Overtime remained close, and rising sophomore guard Dylan Thoerner calmly hit two free throws at the end of the first overtime to tie it up at 85. The Jumbos, led by coach Bob Sheldon in his 32nd year at the helm, held on through the next overtime period, draining their free throws when it mattered the most.

Sports

Sunday, May 17, 2020 | Sports | THE TUFTS DAILY

31

Fall Sports Recaps

by Tufts Daily Sports Staff Men’s cross country In the regular season, the Jumbos finished third at the Bates Invitational, eighth at the Purple Valley Classic, 17th at the Paul Short Run, and 16th at the Connecticut College Invitational. The team took a dip in form when they entered the NESCAC Championship, where they finished eighth out of the 11 competing teams.

However, the Jumbos bounced back and earned another 10th place finish at the NCAA Regional Championship, this time out of the 54 teams in competition. At NCAA Regionals, rising junior Neerav Gade finished first for the Jumbos in a time of 25:59.8 for 43rd overall. Behind Gade was rising sophomore Evan Ensslin and rising senior Patrick Nero, who finished 54th and 55th, respectively. Following behind them was rising junior Sam Gatti who ran a 26:36.8 to finish 85th, and rising junior Joseph Harmon who ran a 26:38.3 for 88th place. Rounding out the times for the Jumbos was rising junior Collin O’ Sullivan, who finished 97th in a time of 26:44.1 and rising sophomore Connor Giersch who placed 110th in a time of 26:52.7.

The Jumbos did not compete at the NCAA Championships, and will be graduating five seniors this year.

Women’s cross country The women’s cross country team had a successful fall 2019 season with numerous high-placing finishes.

In their regular season, the Jumbos didn’t drop below a third place finish. The Jumbos finished first at the Bates Invitational, third in the Bowdoin Invitational and first at the Purple Valley Classic. At championship meets, the Jumbos finished sixth at the NEICAAA Championship, second at the NESCAC Championship, third at the NCAA Regional Championship and eighth at the NCAA Championship to wrap up a very successful season.

Not only did the team perform well, but individuals excelled over the course of the season. Rising junior Danielle Page recorded the second-best finish at an NCAA tournament in the history of the Tufts women’s cross country program. Page recorded a 21:25.5 time to earn sixth place, and also took home All-American honors. Graduating senior Sabrina Gornisiewicz made her debut in collegiate cross-country this season, and managed to take home a slew of top-three finishes through-

out the season as well as a 27th place finish at the NCAA Championship, which earned her All-American honors. Finishing behind Gornisiewicz at the NCAA Championship was rising junior Anna Slager who came in 63rd, rising sophomore Lauren Pollak who finished 150th and graduating senior and co-captain Rhemi Toth who finished 186th.

Field hockey This season, the field hockey team aimed to compete in the NCAA tournament and hold on to the No. 4 ranked position in the country. The team held an overall record of 15–5, with only one loss at home on Ouinjian Field.

The Jumbos had some crucial wins during the season, including their regular season play against Middlebury, which marked the Panthers only loss this season. Despite numerous commanding performances throughout the season, the team fell short in the NESCAC Championship finals to Middlebury in a devastating overtime finish. The season concluded with another overtime loss in the NCAA quarterfinals against Johns Hopkins University, where Tufts lost by just one goal with a 2–1 final score.

Head coach Tina Mattera led the team to another winning season in her 17th year with the Jumbos, and tallied yet another NCAA appearance.

Graduating seniors and co-captains Rachel Hamilton and Shannon Yogerst supported the team this year, leading the team to impressive victories. Rising junior forward Gillian Roeca was integral to the team’s offense, and was one of the league’s highest scorers this season. At the end of the season, graduating senior midfielder Marguerite Salamone and Roeca along with rising junior midfielder Sophie Schoeni received All-Region honors from the National Field Hockey Coaches Association (NFHCA), and Salamone also received the first team All-American Honor from Longstreth and the NFHCA. The team’s dedication, grit, and tenacity allowed them to prosper. While the team will be graduating five seniors who have been crucial to their success on the field, the team looks to maintain their determination heading into the 2020 season.

Football The football team finished with a 4–5 record during the 2019 season, a step back from the 7–2 finish in 2018. After opening their season with a win over three-time defending NESCAC cham-

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Junior forward Liz Reed kicks the ball during a home game against Conn. College on Oct. 19.

Rising senior midfielder Mati Cano crosses the ball into the box during Tufts’ 4–0 win over Colby on Sept. 21. pion Trinity, Tufts appeared to be the team to beat in the NESCAC. Yet early losses to conference powerhouses Williams and Amherst, followed up by a soul crushing loss to Wesleyan in week five, was too much for Tufts to overcome. Middlebury eventually claimed the league title, finishing 9–0 following a season-ending win over Tufts in Medford.

At times, the Jumbo offense, led by graduating senior quarterback Jacob Carroll, showed signs of being among the most prolific in the NESCAC. Carroll developed a special connection with graduate student Frank Roche, who racked up 989 receiving yards to lead the league and set an all time Tufts record.

Roche was named to the All-Offense first team, an inspiring comeback for a player who missed much of his undergraduate years with recurring injuries.

Rising senior receiver O.J. Armstrong came alive with a three touchdown performance in a 49–0 homecoming win over Bowdoin.

Defensively, the Jumbos were once again led by graduating senior linebacker and co-captain Greg Holt, who received first team All-League defense honors for his fourth consecutive year.

This is an exceptional achievement by Holt, who was the only senior to earn first team honors every year of his college career. Rising sophomore Jovan Nenandovic also earned first team honors after finishing tied for first in the NESCAC in sacks. Graduating senior defensive back Michael Mughetto was named to the defensive All-Conference second team, too.

Men’s soccer Another year, another season’s worth of hardware for Tufts men’s soccer. The Jumbos repeated as national champions, securing their fourth national title in the past six years and were also crowned as the NESCAC champions.

Tufts finished the season with a 7–1–2 record in conference play and an overall record of 20–2–2.

After winning the NESCAC Championship, the Jumbos began their run in the NCAA tournament and advanced to the Final Four, in Greensboro, N.C. Beautiful long-range strikes from rising seniors Alex Ratzan and Mati Cano propelled Tufts to a 4–0 victory over Calvin University in the semifinal. The next day Tufts defeated conference rival Amherst behind goals from graduating senior co-captain Gavin Tasker and rising senior Max Jacobs, securing its second straight national championship.

After the conclusion of the season, graduating senior Joe Braun and Tasker were named to the United

Soccer Coaches Association’s Scholar All-Region, Scholar All-American, and All-American teams. The Jumbo coaching staff was also honored, earning the United Soccer Coaches National Staff of the Year award. Tasker and Braun along with rising seniors Biagio Paoletta and Calvin Aroh were named the NESCAC First-Team, junior Travis van Brewer earned Second-Team honors, and head coach Josh Shapiro was the Coach of the Year.

Despite the successful year, Tufts will have to move forward without seven seniors and coaches Josh Shapiro and Jordan Ciuffetelli, who took positions at Harvard. New head coach Kyle Dezotell, coming from Ithaca College, will be tasked with maintaining the excellence of the men’s soccer program in the 2020 season.

Women’s soccer Women’s soccer had a great season overall and made deep runs into the NESCAC Tournament as well as the NCAA Championship. On the season, the team finished 14–4–2 overall and 7–2–1 in the NESCAC conference, only losing out to Williams and Middlebury in the regular season. The team finished out their regular season by beating Bowdoin College 1–0 and earned the No. 1 seed heading into the NESCAC tournament.

Tufts knocked out Bowdoin in the quarterfinals of the NESCAC tournament with a 2–1, double overtime win.

Tufts advanced to the semifinals where they faced Amherst, losing 3–0.

The team then headed into the NCAA Championship where it played SUNY Cortland. Tufts defeated them in a 3–1 victory to move on to the second round of the NCAA tournament. In the second round, Tufts was matched up against The College of New Jersey, whom Tufts defeated in a 2–0 victory to advance to the NCAA Sweet Sixteen for the first time since 2005. In the NCAA Sweet Sixteen, Tufts was matched up against NESCAC rivals Williams, its second matchup of the season. Williams got an early 2–0 lead in the first half and while Tufts earned one goal shortly after to bring the score back to 2–1, they were unable to get the equalizer and fell to Williams 2–1, ending the team’s season.

Volleyball The 2019 volleyball team finished a successful season with an undefeated NESCAC conference record of 10–0 and an overall record of 28–2. The team rode this success to a NESCAC see FALL RECAPS, page 32

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continued from page 31 championship, defeating Bowdoin in five sets. This was the Jumbos’ second NESCAC title in team history, the previous coming in 1996. The Jumbos received an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament but were eliminated in the second round.

The Jumbos started off the season strong with 18 consecutive victories before a five set loss against Babson on Oct. 19. Following their 3–2 loss to Babson College, the Jumbos responded with a 3–1 victory over Massachusetts Institute of Technology Engineers later that day. The Jumbos kept their momentum after this second match, finishing the regular season with five consecutive victories.

Tufts entered the NESCAC tournament as the No. 1 seed. In the opening round against Hamilton, Tufts came out with a 3–0 victory thanks in part to graduating senior outside/opposite hitter and co-captain Maddie Stewart’s 13 kills. The Jumbos followed this victory with a 3–0 win against Middlebury in the NESCAC semifinal. The Jumbos then collected the NESCAC title with their five set victory against Polar Bears, winning the fifth set 15–13.

In their first match of the NCAA tournament Tufts defeated Eastern Nazarene College 3–0. However, the Jumbos season came to an end in a tight five set loss to Bowdoin in a second round rematch of the NESCAC championship.

Men’s crew The men’s crew team opened its season at the Head of the Riverfront Regatta in Hartford, Conn. The men competed in three eights, two quads and several doubles. Tufts boats finished first and third in the open quad event and secured a runner up finish in the open double event. The varsity eight boat finished seventh after an unfortunate collision.

At the biggest race of the Jumbos’ season, the 55th edition of the Head of the Charles Regatta in Boston, the men’s “1V,” or varsity eight boat, finished 21st place out of 37 boats.

The team included rising junior coxswain Tara Curran, rising sophomore Graeme McDonough, rising junior Alex Williams, rising senior and co-captain Harris Hardiman-Mostow, rising sophomore Ryan Hankins, graduating senior and co-captain Mats Edwards, graduating senior Mitchell Koganski, rising sophomore Liam Jenkins and rising sophomore Paul Fabrycky. The Tufts men’s sec-

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ond varsity eight boat competed in the Men’s Club Eight event and finished in 26th place.

To close the fall season the men’s rowing team traveled to Saratoga, N.Y. for the Head of the Fish regatta where the Jumbo boats crossed the finish line first in five races: the Novice Eight, the Collegiate Single, the Collegiate Quad, the Collegiate Double, and the Lightweight Quad.

Women’s crew The women’s crew team had a dominant fall season, with the first and second varsity boats finishing strongly in all of their races.

The kickoff of the season began in Hartford, Conn., at the Head of the Riverfront Regatta. In the 25-boat eight race, the first varsity boat, stroked by rising sophomore Ava Mendelsohn, took first place. In the same race, the second varsity eight placed eighth overall and second within the other 2V entries. Tufts’ third-string boat finished first out of the other 3V boats. Four Jumbo doubles participated in the doubles race, finishing first, ninth, 12th, and 13th out of 13 boats.

At the famed Head of the Charles Regatta in Boston, the team showed impressive strength. The Tufts first varsity eight placed sixth out of 27 boats, and the second eight, stroked by rising senior Lindsay Naber, finished 17th. Notably, in the Alumni Eight category, the Tufts women’s alumni eight, composed of rowers within seven years of graduation, finished in 26th place out of 44 boats.

The Jumbos’ season ended strongly at the Head of the Fish Regatta in Saratoga Springs, NY. In the first varsity eight race, the 1V boat placed third out of 17, with an impressive time of 11:35.76. The second varsity boat placed first in its race, and the novice eight placed second out of 17 crews. Graduating senior duo Madeleine Clarke and Camden Myles placed third in the doubles race, rounding out the Jumbos’ impressive performance.

Currently ranked at No. 6 in Div. III, the Jumbos have a bright future for next season, despite the spring being canceled.

Men’s tennis The No. 17 nationally ranked men’s tennis team had a brilliant ending to the fall season with rising sophomore Rishabh Sharda winning the A singles bracket at the Wesleyan Invitational.

Sharda defeated Middlebury’s Alex Vanezis in the final, edging out a close 3–6, 6–2, 10–3 victory.

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Rising senior wide receiver OJ Armstrong catches a touchdown pass in the Homecoming football game against Bowdoin at Zimman Field on Oct. 19.

EVAN SLACK/ THE TUFTS DAILY

Graduating senior running back Dom Borelli runs the ball forward in the Homecoming game against Bowdoin at Zimman Field on Oct. 19.

The team was led by graduating senior and co-captain Ethan Bershtein, and consisted of five seniors, three juniors, six sophomores and four first-years.

Rising senior co-captain Boris Sorkin won the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) cup men’s singles national championship for the second straight year at Berry College in Rome, Ga. In the final, Sorkin defeated Middlebury’s Stan Morris in a close 7–6 (5), 3–6, 6–1 battle. With this victory, Sorkin earned the ITA Div. III All-American honors for the 2019– 20 season. He was also awarded the James O’Hara Sargent Sportsmanship Award in the ITA Championships.

In the doubles bracket, Sorkin partnered rising sophomore Josh Belandres. The duo lost their opening match in a close contest to Johns Hopkins University. However, they ended up winning two consolation matches.

In one of the team’s most successful fall seasons, the Jumbos amassed seven tournament titles, with rising junior Isaac Gorelik winning the A Singles, Sharda winning the B Singles, the team of Sorkin and Belandres winning the A doubles, and the team of rising senior Owen Bartok and graduating senior Ben Biswas at the Middlebury Invitational, and Sorkin’s amazing run at the ITA Championships.

Women’s tennis The women’s tennis team began their 2019 fall season in September with the three-day MIT Invitational.

The Jumbos had eight players enter the singles bracket and four pairs in the doubles bracket.

Rising sophomore Tilly Rigby had a standout performance as the tournament’s runner up in the singles competition. Rigby won her first four matches of the tournament, sending her to the championship where she faced Wesleyan rising sophomore Caitlyn Ferrante. Although Rigby ultimately conceded the match 7–6, 6–4, her second-place finish was an impressive collegiate debut.

In the doubles competition, rising sophomore Casey Cummings and rising junior Caroline Garrido had a strong showing as they made a semi-final round appearance.

Two weeks later, the team traveled to Middlebury to compete in the ITA Regional tournament. In the singles competition, rising junior Maggie Dorr and Rigby each won their first two matches before falling to their opponents in the round of 16. In the doubles bracket, top-seeded pair Dorr and Garrido won their first two

matches before falling to their opponents in the quarterfinal round.

In the third and final tournament of the fall season, the Jumbos traveled to Smith College to compete in the New England Women’s Intercollegiate Tennis Tournament.

The tournament was formatted such that each player entered as a member of a team of two. The Jumbos entered three teams of two into the tournament, which served as a good way for players to face several different opponents over the course of the three days.

While the fall season tournaments do not feature team scoring, they provide opportunity for individual players to face opponents they are likely to see again during the spring season.

Sailing The Tufts sailing team is one of just a handful of Jumbo athletic teams that compete outside of the NCAA Div. III conference. As part of the Inter-Collegiate Sailing Association (ICSA), they face off among the likes of Stanford and the Ivy League. Time and time again, Tufts sailors have consistently thrived against the toughest competition in the country.

This fall was no different — after garnering a handful of top-five finishes across a myriad of trophy competitions, the Jumbos finished fifth out of 10 teams at the ICSA Match Racing Championship on Nov. 3.

The winning boat at the ICSA match racing championship was skippered by rising junior Ansgar Jordan, a San Diego, Calif. native who in just two years has emerged as a leader on the Tufts team. The crew consisted of rising sophomore Patrick Mulcahy, rising senior Lindsay Powers, and rising junior Connor Sheridan. Following the initial round-robin competition, the Jumbos held a fifth-place spot.

Initially, this would have given the Tufts boat a chance to compete for a top spot in a top-eight quarterfinal, but due to weather-induced time constraints, officials at the competition ruled that Tufts would compete for fifth place along with Tulane University, The University of Wisconsin and Eckerd College.

The boat placed fifth in the contest.

Jordan, Mulchay, Powers and Sheridan initially qualified for the race after a dominant first-place finish at the New England Match Race Championship on Oct. 13. In their first few races of the Spring season, the Jumbos garnered a third place finish at the Hap Moore Trophy and a second place finish at the Wood Trophy.

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Winter Sports Recaps

by Tufts Daily Sports Staff Men’s basketball The men’s basketball team finished a stellar 2019–20 season as NESCAC tournament champions en route to an automatic bid in the Div. III NCAA tournament.

The Jumbos went 12–4 in non-conference play before winning their first eight NESCAC games. Despite losing their final two NESCAC regular season games on the road against Middlebury and Williams, Tufts earned the No. 1 seed and a first round bye in the NESCAC tournament.

Tufts rolled to victories over Hamilton and Trinity in the NESCAC tournament quarterfinal and semifinal rounds, setting up a championship clash against Colby at Cousens Gym. Tufts went into the half up 12, but Colby got hot in the second half and led by three with six seconds remaining in regulation. Graduating senior guard and co-captain Eric Savage hit a 35-foot prayer with three seconds remaining in the second half to force overtime. The Jumbos went on to win the championship thriller in double overtime 102–94, giving the program its first NESCAC championship in school history.

In the first round of the NCAA tournament, Tufts overcame a 19-point halftime deficit to defeat Western Connecticut State University 74–72. Tufts then earned a spot in the Sweet 16 with a 75–66 second round victory over Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Unfortunately, that was the Jumbos’ last game of the season as the NCAA cancelled all tournament games due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Rising senior center Luke Rogers was named the NESCAC Player of the Year, Savage was named to the NESCAC All-Conference team and coach Bob Sheldon was named NESCAC Coach of the Year. The future is bright for the Jumbos as Savage is the squad’s only graduating player.

Women’s basketball The women’s basketball team defended its spot as the No. 1 ranked Div. III team in the nation throughout the 2019– 20 season. The Jumbos went undefeated in regular-season play for the first time in program history, entering NESCAC playoffs with an unprecedented 24–0 record.

With coach Jill Pace in her first season at the helm, Tufts continually proved itself with crucial wins over familiar foes like Bowdoin and Amherst. For her impact on the team and program, Pace was named NESCAC Coach of the Year, New England Women’s Basketball Association (NEWBA) Coach of the Year and D3Hoops.com Northeast Coach of the Year. Additionally, assistant coach

Rising senior Harry Steinberg competes in the Tufts National Qualifying Meet in the Gantcher Center on March 7.

Jamie Insel was named the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA) Div. III Assistant Coach of the Year.

The Jumbos entered the NESCAC playoffs as the No. 1 seed and hosted throughout the entire tournament. They faced their first setback in the finals, where they ultimately lost to Bowdoin 70–60.

After the NESCAC playoffs, Tufts received a bid into the NCAA tournament and was a top contender for a national championship. After beating SUNY Polytechnic Institute and SUNY Cortland 72–34 and 79–53, respectively, the Jumbos were set to host the Sweet 16 in Cousens Gym. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, playoffs were cut short, and Tufts was never given the chance to continue its quest for the championship.

Tufts was led by graduating senior co-captains Erica DeCandido and Lilly Paro, as well as graduating seniors Cailin Harrington and Sadie Otley, who all played crucial roles in the team’s success. At the end of the season, DeCandido was named NESCAC Player of the Year, NEWBA Player of the Year, WBCA All-American and D3Hoops. com 2020 Player of the Year. Alongside her, Paro was named to the NESCAC All-Sportsmanship team and received NESCAC All-Academic honors.

Hockey The hockey team finished with its best record since the 2016–17 season at 8–15– 1 overall but missed out on the NESCAC tournament in what was an extremely tight conference all season. This was the first season since 2013–14 that the team

did not qualify for the postseason.

Coming into the final weekend of the season, Tufts had matchups against Colby and Bowdoin, both at home at Valley Forum, as those three schools fought to qualify for the postseason. Tufts won Friday night’s matchup against Colby 3–1, but lost to Bowdoin the next day 4–2, leaving Tufts as the No. 9 seed and out of playoff contention.

The Jumbos started the season with a disappointing 0–5 record but slowly turned things around as the season went on. The team had a challenging schedule, too, against top ranked teams. Tufts upset No. 8 nationally-ranked Trinity 4–2, and played close games against No. 9 Williams, No. 12 Endicott and No. 13 Babson. Even in the losses with more lopsided scores, they were actually much closer matchups, often resulting from games that went down to the final minutes when the Jumbos pulled their goalie.

Seven seniors are graduating this year, but coach Pat Norton has a core group of rising juniors and seniors that will lead the program next year.

Fencing The fencing team had a successful season, winning the majority of matches at each multi-meet on the schedule.

At the first Northeast Fencing Conference (NFC) meet of the season on Jan. 25 at Boston College, the Jumbos took four of seven matches. On a busy weekend in February, the team won four of six matches at the FDU Invitational at Fairleigh Dickinson University, following up the next day with five

NICOLE GARAY / THE TUFTS DAILY

Graduating senior Erica DeCandido dribbles the ball at the NESCAC semifinal game against Williams in Cousens Gym on Feb. 29.

ANN MARIE BURKE / THE TUFTS DAILY

wins out of six matches at the second NFC meet of the season, hosted at the Gantcher Center. The team went on to place fifth out of 12 teams at the National Intercollegiate Women’s Fencing Association later in the month.

Eight members of the team qualified for NCAA Northeast Regionals at Cornell University: rising sophomores Kaitlyn Gill, Arianna Minassian and Unnathy Nelluta, and rising junior Hannah Fruitman in epee; rising junior Allison Cheng on foil; and rising senior Subin Jeong, rising junior Bella McKinney and rising sophomore Emily Valadez in sabre.

Gill was the most successful at the tournament, reaching the epee semifinals.

Men’s squash The No. 24 men’s squash team ended its 2019–20 campaign with a 7–14 record overall and placed sixth at the NESCAC Championships with impressive victories against No. 23 Amherst and No. 27 Connecticut College. The Jumbos also competed in the Summers Cup in the C division bracket, losing a close 5–4 match against Colby to finish in eighth place.

The team was led by graduating senior co-captain Raghav Kumar and consisted of three graduating seniors, three rising seniors, five rising juniors and five rising sophomores.

Kumar participated in the College Squash Association (CSA) Individual Championships for the second time, this time competing in the B division bracket. He was the first Tufts men’s player to win a match for the Jumbos at the CSA Championships since 2014, defeating Hobart and William Smith College’s rising senior Quinn Udy in the consolation round quarterfinals. Kumar, however, lost in the consolation round semi-finals to Williams rising junior Jacob Bassil 11–8, 11–9, 12–10, thus ending the Jumbos’ season and his tenure as captain of the team.

With five first-years added to the team roster and three of them in the top nine, the relatively young team performed exceedingly well. Rising sophomore Sanjeev Jeyabalan was honored with the title of NESCAC Player of the Week in February for his stellar performances, notching consecutive victories over Middlebury, Conn. College, Amherst and Williams. Rising sophomore Kunal Valia, playing at No. 1 position for the Jumbos, earned a spot on the NESCAC All-Conference second team. see WINTER RECAPS, page 23

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continued from page 22

Women’s squash Women’s squash finished the 2019–20 season with an overall record of 10–11, a sixth place finish in the NESCAC tournament and a third-place finish in the Walker Cup C division of the College Squash Association National Team Championship.

The team was led by graduating senior co-captains Claire Davidson and Catherine Shanahan, who played in the first and third positions on the Jumbos’ ladder, respectively. Davidson was a standout player for the team, facing some of the nation’s top individual players over the course of the season. Her consistent high level of play earned her a bid to the national individual championship for the third straight year. Davidson competed for the 2020 Holleran Cup in the B division east draw, splitting her four matches 2–2.

Rising sophomore Isa Schneider had a remarkable rookie season with the team.

Schneider recorded several impressive individual wins at the number two position for the Jumbos, including a fourgame win over her Wesleyan opponent during her collegiate debut on Nov. 16.

Tufts’ three matches against Wesleyan highlighted the team’s improvement over the course of the season. The Jumbos opened their season with a 6–3 victory over the Cardinals. The two teams met again in February during both the NESCAC and national tournaments, where Tufts came away with 8–1 victories both times.

Davidson and Shanahan were the team’s only seniors, and their leadership and talent will surely be missed. With plenty of exciting young talent seen this season, the 2020–21 season will be a promising one for the Jumbos.

Men’s swimming and diving The men’s swim and dive team enjoyed a successful year in the pool, with fast performances across the board. Though unable to make its mark on the national scene due to the pandemic, the team placed second overall at the NESCAC Championships for the second consecutive year.

With coach Adam Hoyt and the rest of the coaching staff leading the way, the Jumbos saw marked improvements throughout the team. Many of the swimmers ended the year with lifetime bests in their primary events, dropping time throughout the course of the season.

Swimmers that had stagnated the previous year bounced back in a major way, contributing heavily to the team’s success.

Graduating senior standout Roger Gu dominated in his final year of competition, defending his titles in the 50-yard and the 100-yard freestyles and becoming the only swimmer in the conference this season to swim under the 20-second and 44-second marks in the two events respectively. At the conclusion of NESCACs, the Jumbos captured seven conference titles while scoring 1797.5 points, outscoring their total from a season ago. Seven school records and 21 NCAA B cuts were also established by the team, while the Jumbos were able to qualify nine individuals to compete at the NCAA Div. III national championships.

All in all, the men’s team continues to cement itself as one of the top programs in the conference. Though unable to edge out Williams, the program led by Hoyt has now placed in the top three of the conference for the past five years, a great sign for the future prospects of the team moving forward.

Women’s swimming and diving The women’s swim and dive team enjoyed a remarkable year full of fast swimming and memorable perfor-

ALEXANDER THOMPSON / THE TUFTS DAILY

Rising Junior Bella McKinney faces off against an opponent in a sabre bout during the Northeast Fencing Conference Meet held in the Gantcher Center on Feb. 9. mances. Though its season was cut short, the team capped off the year in impressive fashion, finishing second at the NESCAC Championships for the second consecutive year.

Led by coach Adam Hoyt and the rest of the coaching staff, the Jumbos saw improvements across the board.

Many of the team’s swimmers swam to lifetime bests in their primary events, consistently dropping time as the season went by. The highly touted first-year athletes lived up to their hype and contributed admirably in their first year of competition. Meet after meet, race after race, the Jumbos built upon their momentum all season, culminating in the team’s statement performance at this year’s NESCAC Championships.

By competition’s end, the team captured 13 top-three finishes and AllConference honors, scoring 1593.5 points, which bettered their total from last year by 154 points. The Jumbos established 13 new school records and 35 total NCAA B cuts in both individual and relay events, with the second mark also improving upon last year’s total. Additionally, the Jumbos qualified 12 individuals to the NCAA Div. III National Championships, which were eventually cancelled, two more qualifiers than they had a season ago.

All in all, the future for the women’s swim and dive team looks incredibly bright. After settling in the middle of the pack for many years, the Jumbos have now emerged as the clear

runners-up in the conference behind Williams’ Ephs.

Men’s track and field The men’s indoor track and field finished off a successful season despite not being able to send athletes to the NCAA Div. III Championship due to the COVID19 pandemic. Many of the athletes, such as graduating senior Matt D’Anieri, qualified with stellar performances in the mid-distance races, while many others, such as those in the 4 x 400 meters and distance medley relay teams, significantly improved their bids at the Tufts National Qualifying Meet in the beginning of March.

However, the success of the season was not merely predicated on the athletes’ thrusting onto the national scene; it was also defined by great collective wins, personal bests and underclassmen overachieving. In the events that were scored, the Jumbos placed third at the Tufts Jumbo Invitational to start the season, placed second at the Branwen Smith-King Invitational at the beginning of February and placed third at the New England Div. III Championships just a few weeks later.

Meets such as the Cupid Challenge, as well as the invites at Boston University and MIT, saw the team take advantage of the optimal conditions and not only garner numerous personal bests, but also gain confidence as a team.

Improving on personal bests was a theme throughout the team all season, especially for the underclassmen. Athletes such as rising sophomore Hunter Farrell

and rising junior Nick Delaney have consistently improved all season, even thrusting themselves into the collegiate rankings, creating a season for Tufts to build on and a bright future for this team.

Women’s track and field For the second year in a row, the women’s track and field team placed third at the New England Div. III Championships at the end of February. The Jumbos had impressive performances at the meet from rising sophomore Lia Rotti, graduating senior Sabrina Gornisiewicz, rising juniors Hannah Neilon and Tara Lowensohn and graduating senior and co-captain Julia Gake.

Throughout the season, athletes set personal bests and Tufts records, even against tough competition across all NCAA divisions at meets such as the David Hemery Valentine Invite at Boston University.

Seven Jumbos qualified for the NCAA Div. III Indoor Track and Field Championships in Winston-Salem, N.C.: Gake, graduating senior and co-captain Rhemi Toth, Lowensohn, Neilon, rising junior Danielle Page, Rotti and rising sophomore Jaidyn Appel. The meet was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, although the team had already traveled to North Carolina when Tufts announced its campus closure and the NCAA subsequently canceled the meet.

Neilon, Page, Appel and Rotti also won All-Region honors from the U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association.

NICOLE GARAY / THE TUFTS DAILY

Graduating senior Catherine Shanahan prepares to return the ball during a match against Conn. College at the Tufts Squash Center on Feb. 1.

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A ‘Savage’ desire to win fulfilled

by Alex Sharp Staff Writer

Before graduating senior Eric Savage became a captain, eclipsed 1,000 career points and led the Tufts men’s basketball team to its first NESCAC championship in program history, he was a high school senior meeting with the Tufts coaching staff during an official visit.

During the meeting, coach Bob Sheldon asked Savage what he wanted out of the program.

“I told him I wanted to win at all costs,” Savage said.

Savage’s desire to win was partly a result of a career that up until then had lacked a first-place trophy — something he finally got at the end of four years as a Jumbo.

“I wanted to contribute as much as I could, but in terms of what my role was on the court, I didn’t care — I just wanted to win,” Savage said. “I had a career of almosts from a young age up to high school and Amateur Athletic Union. I was always finishing in these big tournaments close to a championship but I never actually won anything to call my own.”

After visiting campus and spending time with the team, Savage knew Tufts would be a good fit and officially committed in January of his senior year.

As soon as Savage arrived in Medford and practices began, Sheldon quickly became familiar with his competitive nature.

“He wanted to win. We butted heads, I even threw him out of practice as a first-year, but we grew to understand and respect each other,” Sheldon said.

Savage pointed to his relationship with Sheldon and the rest of the Jumbo coaching staff as a key reason for his successful development as a basketball player.

“They were extremely supportive and they believed in me from day one,” Savage said. “They always trusted me with the ball late in the game and trusted me to make the right choice to help the team win.”

Anyone who went to a Tufts men’s basketball game at Cousens Gym this past season saw that Savage, who has been a captain the last two seasons, was the team’s emotional and vocal leader on the court. He was always communicating with his teammates on defense, in timeouts and during dead ball situations. This year, he was the lone senior on the roster.

“I’m extremely thankful for the classes of seniors when I was a [first-

Matt Goguen Keeping up with the 617

Celtics winners and losers

R

egardless of the suspended season due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many positives can be taken, as the Boston Celtics currently sit at third place in the Eastern Conference with a clinched playoff spot.

Even with their slew of injuries to their starting five throughout the season, the “Hospital Celtics” continued to grind out close victories and stay in contention with the other Eastern Conference juggernauts.

Brad Stevens was able to receive contributions from all areas from the depth chart, and some players even improved from the

Tom Palleschi (A’17) sets a pick for then first-year Eric Savage in the game against Williams on Feb. 25, 2017.

ANGLEIE XIONG / THE TUFTS DAILY ARCHIVES

year] and sophomore,” Savage said.

“They were all really great leaders that showed me the importance of camaraderie and bonding off the court, and that really helped me blossom into the leader that I became.”

On a team this season with numerous key underclassmen contributors including rising sophomore guard Dylan Thoerner, rising junior guard Carson Cohen and rising junior guard Tyler Aronson, Savage became the elder statesman that the players he looked up to as a first-year and sophomore were for him.

In addition to his work on the basketball court, Savage provided some students with their introduction to Tufts through his work as a tour guide. Savage applied to become a tour guide the second semester of his first year and served as a full-time tour guide his sophomore, junior and senior years.

“I did the most growing as a person through the tour guide program,” Savage said. “It was great because it allowed me to work on my public speaking while talking about the school I love and helping out prospective students. I knew what it was like to be in their shoes so I felt like I could

help deliver the message that I would have wanted if I was them.”

In his final basketball season with the Jumbos this past winter, Savage saw much of his and his teammates’ hard work pay off. The men’s basketball team won its first eight NESCAC games, en-route to the No. 1 seed in the NESCAC tournament.

“We entered every game with a swagger because of Eric Savage,” Sheldon said.

That swagger was on full display throughout the postseason. Tufts dispatched Hamilton and Amherst in the quarterfinal and semifinal rounds, setting up a championship clash with Colby on March 1. With Tufts trailing by three and seconds remaining in the championship game, Savage put the madness in March by sinking a 35-foot prayer to force overtime. The Jumbos eventually won the thriller in double overtime behind Savage’s 27 points, 12 rebounds and six assists.

It was the first NESCAC championship in program history and marked an end to the “almosts” in Savage’s basketball career. In the three NESCAC tournament games, Savage shot 46.2% from the field, averaging 20.7 points

per game, 8.7 rebounds per game and 3.3 assists per game.

The NESCAC championship clinched the Jumbos an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic dashed the Jumbos’ chance to continue competing for a national title. Still, the postseason run at Cousens is one that Savage will always cherish.

“That five-game win streak we had in the playoffs was phenomenal. I created lifelong memories with my friends while winning extremely important games,” Savage said. “It was a culmination of a ton of hard work and time that we all put in. To be able to have that sort of elation and cut down the nets on our home court was awesome.”

Savage, an economics major with minors in finance and entrepreneurial studies, will soon begin working in Cambridge as a market access strategy consultant at IQVIA. As for basketball, Savage knows the sport will continue to play a role in his life but isn’t quite sure at what capacity.

And his advice to an up-and-coming first-year player? “Play your heart out, play to win and enjoy it while it lasts.”

increase in playing time. Without further ado, let’s get to the winners and losers of this Celtics season: Winner: Jayson Tatum, Power Forward Did anyone expect this out of Tatum?

Following a solid rookie season where he made the All-Rookie team, Tatum experienced a sophomore slump and created some doubt regarding his potential.

However, he exploded this past season by averaging 23.6 points per game, which is 7.9 points more than he averaged during his second season. Tatum seems more confident with the ball in his hands and has lessened his habit of taking contested jump shots. He has blossomed into a superstar this season and was the biggest contributor for the Celtics down the stretch.

Loser: Romeo Langford, Shooting Guard I personally believe that Langford gets more criticism than he deserves. Taken at the 14th overall pick during last year’s

draft, Langford raised some red flags during the preseason due to thumb and groin injuries and missed the first 24 games of the season. Following his handful of injuries during the early part of the season, Langford never gained his confidence on the floor and only scored double-digit points once in 26 games. It wasn’t an ideal start to his NBA career, but Langford still has plenty of time to prove his worth.

Winner: Jaylen Brown, Small Forward Brown has been one of the most consistent players for the Celtics over the past three seasons. On the court, he plays with poise and confidence as he is never afraid to attack the rim. Believe it or not, Brown actually had a higher effective field goal percentage than Tatum and had a .552 two-point field goal percentage, which was also higher than Tatum’s (.479). Brown is effective on both sides of the floor and will

continue to make an impact for the Celtics in the coming years.

Loser: Semi Ojeleye, Power Forward In my humble opinion, Ojeleye is lucky to still have a spot on the Celtics depth chart. I have grievances with Ojeleye due to his erratic shot selection and subpar defense. If not due to the handful of injuries that the Celtics roster suffered, there’s a good chance that Ojeleye wouldn’t have played as much as he did. Ojeleye posted the worst defensive rating on the team (111) and had a team-worst 8.8 usage percentage when on the offensive side of the ball. Ojeleye’s contract is up after next season, and there’s a good chance that he won’t be in a Celtics uniform.

Matt Goguen is a first-year who has not yet declared a major. Matt can be reached at matthew.goguen@tufts.edu.

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THE TUFTS DAILY | Sports | Sunday, May 17, 2020

tuftsdaily.com

Bershtein reflects on journey from walk-on to captain

by Henry Molot

Contributing Writer

Ethan Bershtein did not take the conventional route to becoming captain of the Tufts men’s tennis team.

At Amity Regional High School in Woodbridge, Conn., Bershtein was a standout singles player and a leader on one of the most dominant teams in the state — a team I played on with him.

But despite his tennis ability, academics remained his main focus.

Heading into his first year at Tufts, Bershtein had his sights set on making the team as a walk-on.

“The summer before my [first] year, I worked really hard on improving parts of my game I hadn’t been able to focus on in high school, like fitness and conditioning,” Bershtein said. “But going in, I was really loose on the court because I felt like I had nothing to lose. I would have been devastated if I hadn’t made the team, but I knew I did everything I could.”

That proved to be enough. Bershtein earned his way onto the team as a walkon and made three starts as a first-year, winning all three matches.

“I really took that year as a learning year and tried to take in as much college coaching as I could,” Bershtein said.

As a player who didn’t have a private coach growing up, as many NESCAC tennis recruits do, the exposure to college-level coaches and the development of a relationship with coach Karl Gregor was invaluable to his growth.

Bershtein made a major leap in his sophomore season, forming a dynamic pairing at doubles with then-first-year and current two-time ITA national champion Boris Sorkin. The duo played well in the fall season, racking up a number of wins as Bershtein continued to hone his skills and his approach to the game. “[Sorkin] and I meshed well,” Bershtein said. “I always felt like I was a stronger doubles player than singles player, and at the time [Sorkin] was relatively inexperienced at doubles.”

Bershtein, who played with Northwestern University standout Jason Seidmen during his time at Amity, was exposed to another elite-level player in Sorkin.

“He doesn’t blow you off the court, but he’s just so mentally tough and will never miss,” Bershtein said of Sorkin.

Henry Gorelik Off the Gridiron

Way too early NFL playoff predictions

NFC West: San Francisco 49ers Despite their Super Bowl loss, the 49ers have the infrastructure to win the division again. Despite losing DeForest Buckner and Emmanuel Sanders, the 49ers snagged University of South Carolina defensive tackle Javon Kinlaw and Arizona State University wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk in the first round, who will help the 49ers gear up for another deep playoff run.

NFC North: Detroit Lions This might be a little bit of a shocker, but before quarterback Matthew Stafford got injured last season, the Lions looked like one of the better teams in football. With an offense including Kenny Golladay, Marvin Jones Jr., TJ Hockensen, Kerryon Johnson and D’Andre Swift, the Lions could be a force to reckon with in the NFC North.

NFC South: New Orleans Saints I was tempted to go with the Bucs here, but the Saints’ core of Drew Brees, Alvin

Graduating senior Ethan Bershtein approaches a drop shot during Tufts’ 6–3 loss to Middlebury on April 8, 2018.

RAY BERNOFF / THE TUFTS DAILY ARCHIVES

“Being able to pick his brain was a big help for me.”

In the spring of his sophomore year, Bershtein kept up his momentum from the fall and solidified himself as a starting doubles player. What was more important to Bershtein, who has always placed the team above himself, was the culture change beginning to take shape.

“I always played team sports growing up,” Bershtein said, a unique trait for a college tennis player.

Bershtein’s team-first attitude, as well as his reputation as a hard worker — what tennis players call a “grinder” — was starting to rub off on teammates and coaches alike. By the time his junior year rolled around, this once-walk-on hopeful was elected co-captain. This was the same year I entered Tufts, and I remember how proud I felt knowing that my former captain was making such an impact at the school I was soon to enroll in.

“By my junior year, the team dynamic had changed so much,” Bershtein said.

“When the [first-year] class came in that year, that’s when [Gregor’s] vision was really complete.”

This was true not only on the court, where the Class of 2022 made an immediate impact, but also off the court where the team continued to gel. The spring 2019 season itself was a frustrating one, as the team fell in a number of tight matches against talented NESCAC competition.

Despite going 8–9, the groundwork was laid for the program’s future success; it dominated in all of its NESCAC wins, while its losses were often decided by only a match or two.

Going into his senior year, Bershtein felt the team was the best it had been in his four years. Bershtein himself had some strong singles results during the fall tournament season, and the team as a whole had the most nationally ranked players in all four years of Bershtein’s tenure. It even started the spring season undefeated with two wins over Conn. College and Babson College. Yet just as the team was gearing up to go on its annual spring break trip and embark on the final season of Bershtein’s journey, the world screeched to a halt.

Bershtein said the week leading up to school closing, and eventually hearing the fateful announcement, was something he would never forget.

“Before everything really broke, our worst case scenario was that our spring break trip would get cancelled and that there might be a break in the spring season,” Bershtein said.

When the email came signifying the beginning of the end, Bershtein and some teammates were out for food trying to take their mind off the situation.

“No one really said anything,” Bershtein said. “It felt like a punch in the gut.”

While he’s still processing the untimely end to his tennis career and his time at Tufts, the impact Bershtein has left on the program will stand the test of time. What started as a dream has culminated in a reshaping of team culture, a culture that speaks to Bershtein’s development as a tennis player and a person.

“The biggest thing I learned tennis wise, and this is something you can really apply to life, was the ability to respond to situations,” Bershtein said. “It’s all about taking a big point, a stressful situation, and asking yourself how you can respond to that tough situation in the best way possible. Sometimes it works out, and that feels great, and sometimes it doesn’t, which sucks. But if you put yourself in the best position you can, that’s really all you can do.”

To see my high school old captain speak with such maturity about his time, and to see that he’s had such a life-changing experience, was truly inspiring. Bershtein, who said he will go on to live with some teammates next year as he embarks on the next chapter of his journey, is an embodiment of all the good that can come out of college sports.

“These guys are gonna be my best friends for life,” Bershtein said. “When I came to college I didn’t even know I was gonna be on the team, and to have the bond we do now is the best part of it all.”

Kamara, Michael Thomas, Cameron Jordan and Marshon Lattimore is way too talented to pick against. This group is too talented to not win a Super Bowl, but this next season may be its last chance with Brees.

NFC East: Dallas Cowboys Despite losing Byron Jones in free agency, the Cowboys offense could be unstoppable after selecting CeeDee Lamb in the first round of the NFL Draft. An offense featuring Ezekiel Elliott, Amari Cooper, Michael Gallup and Lamb should terrify the rest of the NFC East.

Wild Card Tampa Bay Buccaneers Tom Brady will be throwing to Mike Evans, Chris Godwin and Rob Gronkowski.

Shaq Barrett, Jason Pierre-Paul and Vita Vea will be getting after opposing quarterbacks.

While it will likely take some time, the Bucs will be a menace in the NFC. Arizona Cardinals Now that Kliff Kingsbury is working with the Kyler Murray/Deandre Hopkins tandem, this offense could be unstoppable.

Linebacker Isaiah Simmons should give a huge boost to their defense, helping this team take the next step.

Minnesota Vikings Despite losing offensive coordinator Kevin Stefanski along with Xavier Rhodes,

Trae Waynes and Stefon Diggs, the Vikings will lean on Adam Thielen, Dalvin Cook and Kirk Cousins to have another solid season.

AFC West: Kansas City Chiefs The reigning Super Bowl champions have the NFL’s most explosive offense and have no plans of slowing down, as indicated by the Clyde EdwardsHelaire pick. With the talent on their offense, the Chiefs merely need their defense to be somewhere close to average if they want another shot at the Super Bowl.

AFC North: Baltimore Ravens Expect some regression from the Ravens as teams design better defense game plans for Lamar Jackson, but the Ravens are still the class of this division.

Leaning on their tireless running game and solid defense should be enough for them to take the division for the second year in a row.

AFC South: Indianapolis Colts Phillip Rivers finally has an incredible offensive line and an offensive maestro as a coach. With Rivers leading the offense and DeForest Buckner leading the defense, expect the Colts to make some noise in the AFC.

AFC East: Buffalo Bills After the addition of Stefon Diggs, the rebuilding plan in Buffalo is just about complete. Now that Josh Allen has a legitimate No. 1 option and that Tom Brady has left the Patriots, the AFC is there for Buffalo’s taking.

Wild Card Cleveland Browns Despite last year’s dysfunction, I think coach Kevin Stefanski will be a calming presence and help rein in the talent across the Browns’ roster.

Houston Texans Even though they traded Deandre Hopkins for aging running back David Johnson, I still believe in the talents of Deshaun Watson as quarterback and Bill O’Brien as a coach, if not as a general manager.

Denver Broncos I am very excited about the Broncos. An offense with Drew Lock, Phillip Lindsay, Melvin Gordon, Courtland Sutton, Jerry Jeudy and Noah Fant will be electric. On the defensive side, they have Von Miller, Bradley Chubb, AJ Bouye and Justin Simmons.

Henry Gorelik is a first-year who has not yet declared a major. Henry can be reached at henry.gorelik@tufts.edu.

Sports

Sunday, May 17, 2020 | Sports | THE TUFTS DAILY

37

Paro leads on and off the court

by Ananda Kao

Assistant Sports Editor

Playing in 78 games throughout her time at Tufts, graduating senior guard and co-captain Lilly Paro ended her career on the Tufts women’s basketball team with an impressive 63 3-pointers in just four seasons.

Hailing from Maryland, Paro red-shirted her first year on the team due to an ACL injury. However, she used that time not only to recover from this injury but also to build strong relationships within the team.

“A lot of the things that I learned about being a good teammate and leader happened my freshman year when I sat out for my ACL,” Paro said. “I learned how to support my teammates vocally and what it meant to be a good teammate. I had such great examples to look up to. Just being there for my teammates, doing the little things and supporting them, whether it was on the court or off the court.”

Paro’s leadership was apparent to both her teammates and her coaches, as she was elected co-captain for her senior year. “[Paro] was the energizer of our team,” rising senior guard/forward Emily Briggs said. “Her energy was unmatched in games and practices and she was always the loudest one. She set an amazing example of what it means to be a great teammate.”

In the four years that Paro was at Tufts, the women’s basketball team went 112–12, making deep runs into both the NESCAC playoffs as well as the NCAA tournament.

Reflecting on her seasons with Tufts, Paro highlighted two parts that were particularly special to her.

“Last year when we won NESCACs, it was the craziest weekend ever,” Paro said.

“Being the third seed and beating Amherst on Saturday and then beating Bowdoin on [its] home court in a packed gym in Maine, I think that was a highlight of my entire life.

It was just amazing.”

Aiden Herrod The Turf Monster

I

Favorite 2020 moments

’m gonna be blunt. 2020 has been awful for sports. Approximately two and a half months into the pandemic, every single league without exception closed its doors for the foreseeable future.

When they will resume is anyone’s guess.

If you’re a sports fan, you have very little to be excited about. But there has still been a lot to celebrate this year, from the NBA season heating up to just about everything NFL-related in the age of coronavirus.

So I figured it would be fitting to close out The Turf Monster’s short-lived run by celebrating the moments in sports that

Alex Sharp Game Day

U

The Shot

p three with less than 10 seconds to go in a basketball game and the other team has the ball — to foul or not to foul? An age-old question debated by coaches, players, commentators and fans alike.

By fouling you send the other team to the line for foul shots and the best they can do is come within one point, but you risk them getting an offensive rebound or another possession. By playing straight up defense you risk the other team tying the game on a 3-pointer but the worst case scenario is a tie.

With 11 seconds left in the NESCAC championship game on March 1, the Tufts

Graduating senior Lilly Paro dribbles the ball in a game against Bates in Cousens Gym on Jan. 19, 2019.

VIA SPORTSPIX

“This whole past season, it was just really special,” Paro said. “The team was great, our coaches were great and we really did think that we could do it all, win it all.”

Although she was part of a very successful program at Tufts, Paro appreciates her teammates and the team culture even more than winning titles.

“Our team has always been so close that no matter the result of the game or the competition, I just knew that I had won some sort of championship — I had won like the ‘friends championship’ — because I was going to leave Tufts with my best friends, such a great sense of community, and another family,” Paro said.

Not ready to leave the sport she has been playing since age five, Paro is planning on continuing her career at Smith College, where she will be getting her master’s degree and working as a graduate assistant coach. She credits this future path to her experience at Tufts.

“Going to Tufts, playing at Tufts, playing in the NESCAC, playing in Div. III, I think that’s one of the reasons why I am so excited and why I wanted to be a coach,” Paro said.

Paro was named to the NESCAC AllSportsmanship Team two years in a row, during her junior and senior years, respectively. This honor shows Paro’s dedication to sportsmanship through her actions as a player as well as a teammate, student and person. Additionally, Paro was named to the NESCAC All-Academic Team twice. She was one of just 39 individuals who were named to both the All-Sportsmanship and All-Academic teams this season. “[Paro] is a resilient and selfless leader whose commitment to the program and it’s success has earned the respect of her teammates, coaches and the Tufts athletics community as a whole,” rising senior forward Katie Butler said. “I’m going to miss her infectious positive energy the most.

She struck the perfect balance between fun

and professionalism as a captain and I’m confident she’ll do the same as a coach.”

Recently finishing her time as a student-athlete at Tufts, Paro reflected on her decision to first come to the school, crediting the people and the campus.

“I chose Tufts because when I went on my visit, it was like a feeling I had never had when I walked onto a campus [before],” Paro said. “I remember telling my mom, ‘I love this place, this is definitely the school for me.’ The coaches were awesome, the team members that I met were awesome, too, and I just knew that I could go here, meet some of my best friends and play the sport that I love.”

Leaving four years later, Paro’s views on the school have not changed and, if anything, her experiences have only solidified what she felt when she first visited Tufts.

“I’ve met so many awesome people that have greatly impacted my life,” Paro said, “so I’m definitely going to miss seeing their faces every day or every week.”

made 2020 more than just a year with an asterisk. In no particular order, here are some of my personal favorite moments from the past four months.

Mike Vrabel shows Bill Belichick who’s boss The 2020 AFC playoffs featured a beautiful moment for the NFL fandom: a fall from grace for the New England Patriots.

The specific moment I want to hone in on in the fateful matchup between Tennessee and New England is Tennessee’s coach Mike Vrabel absolutely schooling New England’s Bill Belichick strategically. Utilizing delay of game penalties to shave off a sizable chunk of the game clock in the fourth quarter as he clung to the lead, Vrabel threw a common Belichick trick right back in his face.

The Titans won the game, and with Tom Brady’s departure this offseason, New

England may never achieve the same level of dominance.

LeBron James channels the late Kobe Bryant Before the coronavirus was on anyone’s mind, the untimely passing of the legendary Kobe Bryant defined 2020 in all the wrong ways. But even in the darkest of times, the NBA’s brightest found a shred of light to illuminate the league.

Less than two weeks after his passing, Los Angeles Laker and basketball great LeBron James took a pass out of the fast break into an unguarded Houston Rockets frontcourt. The ensuing score felt like Kobe’s spirit coming down to the court for one final dunk. He performed an incredible reverse-windmill move and slammed the ball down with authority. Fans and analysts alike immediately recognized the move as something eerily similar to some-

thing Kobe had done years earlier in a 2002 match against the Kings. It was a beautiful tribute, and a fitting emotional send-off for one of basketball’s greatest.

The NFL pulls through with a draft for the ages I wrote about this with my most recent article, so I won’t go into as much detail here. But I loved every second of the NFL’s virtual draft. From Peyton Manning’s epic speech on hope in these dark times to Roger Goodell comically slumping in his easy chair, it was a televised event to remember.

It was a reminder that sports have a future, and it’s still as bright as ever even as our stadiums sit abandoned and empty.

men’s basketball team had the ball trailing Colby 74–71. Colby elected not to foul.

There is no greater or more entertaining form of theater than team sports. Each possession is a scene, and the players, coaches and referees are better actors than anyone on Broadway. Every momentum shift is a plot twist, and halftime provides the perfect intermission for audience members to relieve their bladders and get some popcorn. Every once in a while the show is so good that the sum of every player’s actions, every coaching decision and every foul call leads to one culminating moment where the entire audience rises from its seats and witnesses a moment of excellence that single-handedly alters the show’s conclusion.

That’s what happened during the men’s NESCAC Championship. Everyone

at Tufts knows about graduating senior and co-captain Eric Savage’s game-tying 3-point prayer, but they probably don’t know that Savage wasn’t supposed to take the shot.

In an interview with Savage after the game, he said that coach Bob Sheldon drew up a play to try to get rising senior guard and sharpshooter Brennan Morris open for a 3 in the corner. If the play went according to plan, Savage would have received a dribble hand-off from rising junior guard Tyler Aronson and made a cross-court pass to Morris in the corner.

Savage did receive the dribble hand-off from Aronson, but the timing with Morris was off.

“I wasn’t really ready to throw a pass when he was open,” Savage said. “I tried to make sort of a one-handed attempt at it, and the ball sort of

slipped out towards half court. I chased it down … just kind of turned and hoisted one up.”

You know the rest.

When a sporting event comes down to one moment, there are infinite “what ifs” to consider. What if Colby had fouled up three? What if Savage hadn’t lost control of the ball? What if Colby’s Matt Hanna had missed one of his free throws the possession before? If any of these events or any of the other hundreds of plays in the game had occurred even slightly differently, then we would never have seen the shot.

But everything did line up perfectly. And that’s what makes sports the greatest form of theater there is.

Aiden Herrod is a sophomore studying film and media studies and entrepreneurial leadership. Aiden can be reached at aiden.herrod@tufts.edu.

Alex Sharp is a first-year who has not yet declared a major. Alex can be reached at alex.sharp@tufts.edu.

38

THE TUFTS DAILY | Sports | Sunday, May 17, 2020

tuftsdaily.com

Baldwin leaves behind legacy of leadership despite canceled season

by Sruthi Kocherlakota Assistant Sports Editor

Graduating senior defender Lily Baldwin has left an incredible legacy of leadership and has had a profound impact on the women’s lacrosse team’s defensive unit during her time at Tufts. Baldwin’s success as a Jumbo stemmed from her commitment to the sport and to her teammates, which has allowed her to develop as a tremendous athlete.

Baldwin was a part of the unprecedented 2019 season — which was one of the team’s most decorated seasons in nearly a decade — and the 2018 season that ended with a loss in the second round of the NCAA championship bracket.

“Lily just has this ability to walk the line between completely enjoying herself and also taking herself and what we are doing really seriously in order to accomplish her goals,” coach Courtney Shute said. “I think my favorite memory wrapped into one thing, which would just be her laugh. She has a wonderful laugh and it is so genuine and used at exactly the right time.”

By the end of Baldwin’s senior season, which was canceled almost entirely due to

the COVID-19 pandemic, she amassed 171 draw controls, started every game during her junior and senior seasons and saw play time in nearly every game over her four years. Baldwin has had a tremendous impact on the Jumbos’ defense and leads with vigor and grit. “[Baldwin] is probably the best leader I have ever coached, part of that comes naturally and part of it is something that she puts constant time and attention into as any phenomenal leader does. To her, it is just a part of the way she lives her life,” Shute said. “She is constantly serving others, looking to do the right thing and be the best version of herself — not just for herself, but for the group.

That has led her to becoming an incredible lacrosse player and her work ethic is something that you dream about as a coach.”

Baldwin was the team liaison for Team IMPACT, part of the Student Athlete Advisory Committee, and has taken the team’s opening draw for nearly four years. Baldwin also received IWLCA All-Region honors for two consecutive years for her efforts during her sophomore and junior years, and recently received the Lewis F. Manly Memorial Prize, which is awarded yearly to a Tufts student who shows excellence in athletics

and academics, preferably in economics.

Baldwin will be graduating with a major in economics and a minor in finance and will be accepting a job in Chicago, Ill. When looking at colleges as a prospective first-year, Baldwin wanted to find the perfect balance between lacrosse and other ventures — she was ultimately drawn to the team’s tenacity and focus and Tufts’ multifaceted educational experience.

“The feeling of the program and the people in the program was something that was unmatched in other programs that I visited,” Baldwin said. “The team was super fun and silly while also having an immense drive. Tufts was just a great fit.”

With her senior season being cut short due to COVID-19, Baldwin reflected on her senior season, slashed to just three games.

“I think it is going to be one of those moments, as it is for everyone in the world, that will be an emotional time to look back at, because there was still so much we felt that we could have accomplished that we did not get to accomplish,” Baldwin said. “I am super proud of my team for what we achieved in the first four games, but definitely super sad that we did not get to finish out the season.”

“She has kept the standard high,” Mattera said. “I mean if the girl running next to you is giving a hundred percent and working her butt off, you are going to as well. She expected a lot of herself and her teammates too. She put pressure on herself to work hard and be the best player, and she also expected that from everyone around her.”

While Salamone has contributed to the team’s success, she shared that her favorite part of field hockey is the relationships she has created with her teammates and coaches.

“I am a really competitive person, and it is really nice to be with a group of girls that really wanted to dedicate their time to one common goal,” Salamone said.

“We all love to play field hockey and just be together, those are some of my best memories.”

Reflecting back on her college search process, Salamone wanted to continue playing the sport that she loves while also prioritizing academics. Her search began with looking at schools that offered a robust education and a competitive conference for athletics.

“I really wanted to play field hockey and have a team, but I was also really into science and math, so having a school that had a good engineering school

was important to me,” Salamone said. “[I] have a lot more opportunities to do more research and not spend all my time in field hockey, as academics come first.”

Outside of field hockey, Salamone has done work in the research lab of assistant professor Madeleine Oudin, which looks at cancer tumors and cancer metastasis. After the field hockey season ended in the fall, Salamone joined the club marathon team.

Salamone is among the class of 2020’s top athletes, and as her time at Tufts comes to a close, she reflects on the end of the year.

“For me it is mostly about closure, and it has been a bit hard to understand that this will all be over soon,” Salamone said. “It is just a bit sad because we don’t have those last couple of things with [our] friends — to go to Espresso one last time.”

Mattera describes how Salamone has developed as an athlete over the past four years.

“As an athlete, her overall game sense got better,” Mattera said. “She became smarter and smarter with the ball, understood our system and she took her game to another level in terms of her skill.”

She also commended her intensity.

“As a person I think [Salamone] is just so intense, and this past year she really

the club were electric, displaying their typical bubble-blowing persona and selling out practically every fixture. With a solid squad and a talented manager, Slaven Bilić, a period of resurgence seemed to be on the horizon.

However, West Ham was set to leave Boleyn after the season for the mammoth London Stadium. Fans worried that a stadium built more for Olympic sports and festivities would not be conducive to harboring a successful footballing atmosphere.

The Hammers lost only three out of 19 games at home during the 2015–16 season, and replicating the fortress-like atmosphere would be the only way to make ground on the top four.

The Hammers have not finished higher than 10th since their relocation. Why? Could a stadium possibly have a negative effect on the play of a club? It’s still West Ham fans, isn’t it?

I traveled to a late January FA Cup fixture to watch the Hammers play Championship side West Bromwich Albion, and I slowly began to understand how the new accom-

modations fit with the description that one long-time season ticket holder gave to me: “It sucks the bloody life out of the club.”

First of all, the walk from the tube to the stadium approaches a mile. On the way back, I actually got frantically lost in the masses all leaving London Stadium at the same time, and I was in desperate need of a bathroom. Granted, in building a multi-billion dollar stadium, bathroom-needy Americans surely fall far down the totem pole. I digress.

The entrance to the stadium was in absolute shambles. Fans were stuck clustered in a giant mass, only able to enter at the gentlest trickle I’ve ever seen. Despite being 20 minutes early, I missed the kickoff, and I missed the bubble-blowing (this is actually symbolic, I’m not taking the piss).

There’s no denying the grandeur of the place. The beautiful basket-like roof compliments the odd yet charming oval-esque shape, and it just beamed importance. But this is not the club West Ham is — it is a

Salamone ‘engineers’ with intensity on the field

by Sruthi Kocherlakota Assistant Sports Editor

As one of Tufts field hockey’s most prolific offensive and defensive players, graduating senior midfielder Marguerite Salamone has left an impressive impact. Salamone’s intensity and grit is unmatched, and her consistent efforts have earned her a spot on the All-American first team, the All-Region team and the All-Conference team in her final season.

Playing in every single game since she was a first-year and starting all but one game, Salamone has a commanding presence on the field. Her two-way value was clear in her senior campaign, as she led the team with seven assists and scored six goals, while also earning NESCAC Defensive Player of the Year.

Salamone has been on the forefront of the team’s success over the years. She helped the team win a NESCAC championship in the 2016 season and advance to the championship in 2018 and 2019.

She also played in two NCAA National Championship games in 2016 and 2018 and made an appearance in the Elite Eight this past season.

Coach Tina Mattera praised Salamone’s dedication to the team and to the sport.

Jeremy Goldstein The Little Londoner

West Ham’s hollow stadium

A

huge stadium was left in prime real estate after the 2012 London Olympics. As John Oliver will tell you, it’s all fun and games until you only use your multi-billion dollar stadium for three weeks.

Previously, West Ham had called the Boleyn Ground home for over a hundred years. Though it ebbed between periods of mild success and general mediocrity, West Ham had its best ever Premier League season in 2015–16.

Thanks to the splashy signing of Dimitri Payet, the Hammers finished seventh and were in contention for a Champions League spot for most of the season. The fans of

ALINA STRILECKIS / THE TUFTS DAILY ARCHIVES

Graduating senior Lily Baldwin runs the ball up the field in the game against Bates on April 17, 2018.

Baldwin looks forward to visiting campus in the future and cheering on the team and her senior teammates, who will use the extra year of eligibility that the NCAA is providing.

“I think the relationships that we made with each other is something that will be more memorable than some of the moments that we have had on the field, like wins and losses,” Baldwin said. “Being on the team for four years and having about 60 best friends that I can reach out to at any point, including the coaches, is something that will have a lasting impact on me.”

EVAN SAYLES FOR TUFTS UNIVERSITY

Graduating senior midfielder Marguerite Salamone confronts a Middlebury player in Tufts’ 3–2 loss on Oct. 7, 2017. knew how to balance it and channel it the right way. She is intense, but she wants to enjoy the experience and make it a positive intensity on the team. She was really cognizant of how she came across and what she was saying to people and how she was delivering it. I think that everyone respected her even more because she was always a ‘you got this’ kind of player, and became a great teammate.”

working-class team that’s supposed to be in the heart of East London.

Instead, it is far, far removed from local pubs, many of which lost a great deal of business due to the closing of the Boleyn.

One is stuck to overpriced stadium food and drink, items that could not be more processed if they tried.

Sitting in my nosebleed seat, I could not believe how far back from the action I was.

Regardless, what was most stunning was the sheer lack of noise from the crowd. I thought this was the team of bloody East Londoners?

It was unsurprising that they lost 1–0 to inferior opposition of the day — though a glorious stadium, it certainly sucked the life out of the club. I’m sure the West Ham ownership is fine with this, assuming it’s content with the fortune it’s reaping in.

Jeremy Goldstein is a junior studying political science and film and media studies.

Jeremy can be reached at jeremy.goldstein@tufts.edu.

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