Sunday, May 21, 2017, Commencement

THE

INDEPENDENT

STUDENT

N E W S PA P E R

OF

TUFTS

UNIVERSITY

E S T. 1 9 8 0

T HE T UFTS DAILY

VOLUME LXXIII, NUMBER 60

MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, MASS.

Sunday, May 21, 2017

tuftsdaily.com

COMMENCEMENT 2017

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THE TUFTS DAILY | INSIDE THIS ISSUE | Sunday, May 21, 2017

tuftsdaily.com

NEWS Greek life has seen a tumultuous year. What can we expect in the future: abolition or reform?

NEWS, page 5

Campus activists see Trump presidency as a wake-up call and call to action.

see NEWS, page 6

University President Anthony Monaco looks back on a year of controversy over Greek life, student activism and national politics.

see NEWS, page 9

Peace and Justice Studies program, once facing elimination, looks to revitalize under philosophy department.

see NEWS, page 15

FEATURES After the departure of long-time director Sherman Teichman, IGL undergoes a period of changes and appoints a new director.

see FEATURES, page 16

Members of the Tufts community give their perspectives on the history of Boston Public School desegregation and its lasting impact.

With the Mellon Sawyer Grant, the Center for the Humanities at Tufts takes a new approach to presenting global cultures through a lecture series.

The Daily profiles six members of the Class of 2017 about their Tufts experiences and their lives looking forward.

see FEATURES, page 19

see FEATURES, page 18

see FEATURES, page 20

ARTS

OPINION Editor-in-chief Kathleen Schmidt writes a farewell letter from the editor, highlighting the dedication of Daily staffers and ongoing efforts to increase inclusivity of the paper’s coverage and newsroom.

Graduating senior Cinthia Chen’s senior thesis, a “live cinema theatre” performance about AsianAmerican actress Anna May Wong, draws a crowd of 170 people.

see ARTS, page 23

see OPINION, page 31

Three graduating seniors discuss their involvement in Tufts’ arts communities and their postgraduate plans in the Daily’s senior profiles.

Anonymous graduating senior pens op-ed about the need for more resources for undocumented students and their families at Tufts.

see ARTS, page 24

see OPINION, page 32

With a talented cast and nostalgic music, “Guardians of the Galaxy” is enjoyable to watch, even if it doesn’t quite re-capture the success of its prequel.

Part-time faculty union bargaining committee gives an update on negotiation process.

see ARTS, page 26

see OPINION, page 34

SPORTS Men’s Tennis: Tufts missed the NESCAC Championship as a result of the selection processes, but assembled a 9-7 record and will be returning many key contributors.

see SPORTS, page 39

Women’s Lacrosse: Amidst an up-and-down season, rising sophomore attacker Emily Games made a name for herself, leading the team in scoring and earning the title of NESCAC Rookie of the Year.

see SPORTS, page 42

Women’s basketball coach Carla Berube was selected by USA Basketball to coach its U16 basketball team. This follows four straight years of Tufts making the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament.

Four pairs of brothers make up close to a fifth of the men’s lacrosse roster and have played a large role in the team’s success.

see SPORTS, page 44

see SPORTS, page 43

Please recycle this newspaper

GRAPHIC BY PETER LAM

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

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Baseball: Tufts defeated Middlebury on May 14 in game seven of the NESCAC championship to claim the title for the second straight year.

NEWS..........................................4 FEATURES.............................16 ARTS & LIVING.................. 22

see SPORTS, page 48

4 YEARS IN REVIEW....... 28 OPINION................................ 30 SPORTS................................... 36

Front Photo by Ray Bernoff, Back Photo by Sofie Hecht

Sunday, May 21, 2017 | ADVERTISEMENT | THE TUFTS DAILY

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Mazal bueno/Congratulations and good luck ***To this year’s recipients of the Joseph and Sara Stone Prize in Judaic Studies, both my students and both speakers of Ladino: *Rayva Khanna, major in History and Judaic Studies, creator of extraordinary, exquisite projects, who plans to study medicine, as a worthy heir to two Sephardic physicians: the famous Maimonides, whose connections to her own Hindu tradition she explored, and – her discovery! -the CryptoJewish Garcia d’Orta, who settled in Goa, India, where there’s a statue of him. *Anna Linton, major in Judaic Studies, active, committed participant in various aspects of Jewish life at Tufts and beyond, who learned enough basic Ladino on her own to successfully complete the advanced continuation course with a creative project related to her major research on the Passover haggadah, and will be spending the coming year in Israel before working in New York.

-Gloria J. Ascher, Associate Professor, German, Scandinavian and Judaic Studies; Co-Director, Judaic Studies

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THE TUFTS DAILY | News | Sunday, May 21, 2017

tuftsdaily.com

Sunday, May 21, 2017

News

5 tuftsdaily.com

Greek life in review: Students, administration evaluate the system

by Elie Levine

Assistant News Editor

The past academic year has been a turbulent one for the fate of Greek life on campus.

Amidst reports of hazing and discrimination, many have called for the Greek life system to be disbanded, while others have defended its presence on campus and suggested internal reform.

In November 2016, rising senior Ben Kesslen detailed his experience with hazing and sexual assault at a fraternity in an article in the Tufts Observer. This article sparked a wide-ranging debate over whether Greek life should have a place on campus.

Members of Tufts’ Panhellenic Council (Panhel), which oversees the four Panhellenic sororities on campus, released a statement condemning toxic hyper-masculinity in fraternities, and the Interfraternity Council (IFC) issued a formal apology, placing a voluntary hold on all social events.

Additionally, in October 2016, half of the members of Tufts’ Alpha Omicron Pi (AOII) sorority chapter dropped to protest the national organization’s hesitancy to extend a bid to a transgender woman. Later that semester, several Chi Omega sisters also dropped out of their sorority, alleging in a Dec. 15, 2016 statement that they experienced varied forms of discrimination from the national organization and were administered unfair punishment for an alcohol infraction, among other complaints.

Investigations and Judicial Processes In response to concerns about the Greek system, spring recruitment was suspended for fraternities and Panhellenic sororities, but not for organizations in the Multicultural Greek Council. The university also issued cease-and-desist orders for nine Greek organizations, according to a Feb. 2 email to the Tufts community. These orders were due to allegations of hazing, sexual misconduct and alcohol policy violations, and they barred the organizations from holding social events through the spring semester.

According to Kevin Kraft, director of community standards, three investigations have concluded and have been brought to the Office of the Dean of Student Affairs. Kraft said that one of these three cases resulted in the dissolution of one Greek life organization on Feb. 3.

“In the other two cases, the chapter has accepted responsibility for violating Tufts’ policies, and we have had candid conversations with the leadership of each organization about what reforms are needed,” Kraft told the Daily in an email. “I expect final decisions in those cases will be made shortly. All other cases remain under investigation by the Office of Equal Opportunity (OEO) or the Tufts University Police Department (TUPD).”

According to the Feb. 2 email, two organizations were suspended for the spring semester and will be on probation in the fall because they are thought to have violated the ceaseand-desist order. One of those organizations chose to bring its case before the Committee on Student Life (CSL), a faculty-and-student committee.

Tafari Duncan, a graduating senior and one of four students on the CSL, explained that the CSL acts as a final arbiter of punishment for an organization. According to Duncan, the Inter-Greek Council (IGC) hears low-level cases, such as having a keg at a party.

RAY BERNOFF / THE TUFTS DAILY

Ben Kesslen (center) protests against sorority recruitment events on March 30.

However, IFC President Jack Friend said such cases related to fraternities will be heard by the IFC instead of the IGC starting next semester.

The Office of the Dean of Student Affairs hears more serious cases and administers punishment, which an organization can accept, or it can bring its case to the CSL. “If the fraternity or sorority decides they don’t want to go with those rules and they would rather go to a hearing where they have students and a panel to listen to what they said and hear the case, then it comes to the CSL,” Duncan said.

He added that the CSL has been relatively inactive in these cases this year, because many organizations are actively working with the Dean of Student Affairs Office to bring their cases to resolutions.

“We wait to receive those reports [from OEO and TUPD] and then work with organizations. We are actively working with three or four organizations right now,” Dean of Student Affairs Mary Pat McMahon said.

McMahon said they are trying to finish these cases before the end of the semester, as the CSL does not meet during the summer.

According to Kraft, if a case comes to a resolution over the summer, the fraternity or sorority may be allowed to recruit new members in the fall, depending on the outcome of the case.

McMahon said that communicating with the Tufts community about next steps was essential. She clarified, however, that she is not willing to sacrifice a thorough investigation in order to get to a fall recruitment deadline.

“I’m mindful of the fact that people are waiting for these outcomes,” she said. “But … I’m not going to move things forward at the expense of a sound investigation or a full follow-up.”

Student Life Review Committee In a Dec. 22, 2016 email to the Tufts community, University President Anthony Monaco announced the creation of the Student Life Review Committee to assess all aspects of student life on campus. The committee is chaired by Susan Murphy, former vice president of student and academic services at Cornell University. Its membership includes Tufts Community Union senators, Medford and Somerville city officials, professors, administrators and alumni.

Anna Rodriguez, a committee member and a Bridge to Liberal Arts Success at Tufts (BLAST) scholar affiliated with the multicultural Lambda Pi Chi sorority, said that an important facet of the committee is that it includes a representative from as many campus offices as possible.

“Everyone on the committee had equal opportunity, or what felt like equal opportunity … to speak, to make decisions [and] to challenge,” Rodriguez, a rising senior, said.

Rodriguez said that her association with multicultural Greek life meant that she did not serve on the committee as a representative of campus Greek life, since multicultural Greek sororities do not fit under the Panhellenic umbrella. She added that, despite their distance from the controversy, campus discussion has affected how all sororities are viewed.

According to McMahon, since its formation at the beginning of the spring semester, the committee has accepted input from hundreds, if not thousands, of individuals. Monaco told the Daily that the committee’s report will be issued in the fall, but a summary of the report’s main themes will be released soon.

Kesslen, the writer of the November 2016 Observer article, expressed frustration with Tufts officials’ lack of announcements surrounding Greek-life investigations.

“You would imagine there’d be a schoolwide email at least … discussing and addressing the events that have been happening, considering it’s been so central to campus discussion this year. And the silence is pretty remarkable and telling,” he said.

McMahon noted that, regardless of when the report is finally released to the campus community, her office will give the community an update.

“We’ll do what we can to let people know about where organizations are between now and the end of the semester,” she said.

Reforming Panhel and IFC According to Panhel President Meaghan Annett, a graduating senior, and IFC President Jack Friend, a rising senior, sororities and fraternities have worked hard this semester to make their organizations more inclusive. A newsletter that Panhel released publicly describes the various changes sororities have made,

including strengthening sexual assault awareness programming and creating a financial aid fund.

According to Annett, Panhel has also worked to reform the recruitment structure for the two sororities — Kappa Alpha Theta and AOII — that recruited new members in the spring. It allowed potential new members to move more freely from house to house and eliminated a recruitment dress code.

The newsletter also states that all sororities were required to instate a Diversity and Inclusion Chair position. These chairs sit in Anti-Racism Task Force meetings with the IGC’s Community Outreach Chair.

Annett said that Panhel believes it is important to have transgender inclusion policies. She added that she would like Tufts to serve as a model for other schools in that regard.

“All of the organizations have had conversations with their nationals about extending membership to transgender women, and they’ve all been very positive conversations,” she said.

According to Friend, the IFC has enacted comprehensive changes this semester, including drafting and implementing a new constitution. This constitution puts forth specific guidelines for leadership and creates a new Vice President of Judicial Affairs position, which will chair a judicial committee that will hear cases regarding alcohol infractions, a responsibility previously held by the IGC. “Many of the chapter presidents, in addition to myself, thought that it would make more sense for the IFC to preside over these cases as they are fraternity-related incidents,” he said. “But if it was only fraternities that were determining the consequences for other fraternities, that wouldn’t really be true peer governance.”

To diversify the committee, Friend would like to include representatives who are not involved in Greek life to participate in these judicial processes. He said a goal was to have a non-Greek-affiliated representative serve as a voting member in these judicial hearings.

Another new executive position will be see GREEK LIFE, page 6

Photos opposite, clockwise from top: Student activists protest sorority recruitment as a potential member of AOII walks up the stairs on March 30 (Ray Bernoff / The Tufts Daily). Students react to an election update during the Election Extravaganza at the Campus Center on Nov. 8, 2016 (Rachael Meyer / The Tufts Daily). Benya Kraus, the sole candidate in the 2017 Tufts Community Union Presidential election, talks to students during her event on the Academic Quad on April 20 (Seohyun Shim / The Tufts Daily). University President Anthony Monaco announces his support of undocumented students at Tufts after a campus-wide walkout on Nov. 16, 2016 (Evan Sayles / The Tufts Daily). An SMFA shuttle is pictured outside of Granoff Music Center on April 11 (Alexis Serino / The Tufts Daily).

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THE TUFTS DAILY | News | Sunday, May 21, 2017

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Tufts students diverge over Greek life in a tumultuous year GREEK LIFE

continued from page 5 responsible for chairing a Perspectives Committee that will evaluate Greek life’s inclusivity and implement changes.

“This position is key because it can’t be … looked upon as tokenizing but rather [be] a position that really makes a genuine impact,” Friend said.

He added that he hopes individuals who are involved in diversity and inclusion efforts, whether they are affiliated with Greek life or not, will aid in formulating the position and determining its responsibilities.

Friend also said that the IFC is continuing to work towards reducing risks at parties.

“I think that we can be doing a much better job of overseeing our parties in a safer and more professional way,” he said.

Those Who Oppose Greek Life While these investigations continue towards their conclusions and fraternity and sorority leaders push for reform within the system, many individuals have rallied against Greek life on this campus, attending protests and communicating their feelings through publications and posts.

Kesslen expressed frustration with the Greek system and the difficulty of speaking out as an opponent of Greek life. He said that framing the conflict as bilateral is problematic because the two sides are not on equal footing.

“Greek life has institutional support. It has full-time employees. It has money. It has social capital. It has physical space. It has power. And to say that that’s on equal footing as those who

oppose Greek life is just false,” he said. “Sitting down with the two sides doesn’t mean that they’re both equal, and one side can speak out without, from what I know, fearing physical or verbal harassment.”

Kesslen also referenced the instances of homophobic and transphobic violence and hate speech that were condemned in an April 24 email to the Tufts community. He said that those incidents were directed against individuals who oppose Greek life.

“People now are feeling even more reluctant to speak out because they fear for their safety on this campus,” he said.

He added that individuals who are involved in Greek life already hold power on campus due to the privileges that allow them to participate in Greek life in the first place.

Belinda Xian, a former AOII sorority sister, dropped out of AOII in the fall when the national organization held off on extending a bid to a transgender woman despite a unanimous vote to extend the bid within the Tufts chapter. Xian, a rising senior, also expressed discomfort with racist and classist treatment of sisters by the organization.

She said she was present at a protest of recruitment in March, but she concealed her identity for fear that her former sisters would target her for speaking out.

“I think purely by the fact that they are choosing to remain in an institution that is against people like me, they are invalidating my identity. They see me as less of a person,” she said.

Xian was also distrustful of the national

organization.

“I think any national institution will never be 100-percent safe, because it’s a huge institution that has no empathy for you as a human being,” she said.

Elise Sommers, a rising junior, is also resisting Greek life. The sign “Abolish Greek Life” is pasted over the windows of their room in Crafts House.

“That felt like a pretty useful tool as all the tours walked by, so the tour guides [would] have to talk to [prospective students] about what’s going on in Greek life,” they said.

Sommers said that, though the individuals who live in Crafts House all interpret the “Abolish Greek Life” ethos differently, the community as a whole does not support Greek life and is looking into co-ops and communal living as alternatives. According to Sommers, residents of Crafts House recently had the opportunity to visit a full income-sharing co-op in Virginia. Sommers hopes this can serve as a model for the Tufts community.

“There are so many people doing so much amazing community building work, building communities that center marginalized groups,” Sommers said.

Making Change, Moving Forward CSL member Tafari Duncan stressed that though there are many loud voices speaking on various campus issues, he faces difficulty in garnering student interest in the judicial policy that would have an effect on those issues. He said that last year, when he helped conduct a revision of the charters for IFC, IGC and Panhel, he asked for student input and

received very little feedback.

Duncan emphasized that students who want to make change should know that the CSL has jurisdiction over much of campus life. He added that getting angry over CSL’s decisions was unproductive.

“Get involved, understand that it’s the conversation that both sides need to have,” he said. “Because we’re all here together. No one’s going anywhere. And we can’t just keep yelling at each other.”

Friend also stressed that true change comes from interpersonal conversation.

“In actually sitting down with people that disagree with you, especially on this polarizing topic, you start to realize the humanity in the other side of the argument,” Friend said. “While protests and pushback are essential to change, I think where the real change is going to come is having face-toface conversations.”

Su McGlone, director of the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life, also emphasized the importance of dialogue between those involved in Greek life and those who oppose it.

“I … look forward to this continuing to be an opportunity for us to address the issues that exist in Fraternity and Sorority Life and to truly make this a safe and inclusive community,” McGlone said.

Kesslen dismissed calls for unity and conversation, calling them “a neoliberal tactic that ultimately obfuscates the problems that exist.”

“I can’t really envision what a conversation on campus looks like that doesn’t turn into a screaming match,” Kesslen said.

Tufts political groups across the spectrum energized by 2016 election

SEOHYUN SHIM / THE TUFTS DAILY

Tufts Climate Action members hold their signs during March for Science that took place in Boston Common on April 22.

by David Nickerson Staff Writer

Progressive political organizations and activist groups at Tufts have mobilized around resisting President Donald Trump’s agenda and have used his surprise electoral victory as a rallying cry, according to interviews with students in multiple groups.

Meanwhile, campus conservative groups are also noticing a spike in activity after the election because of statewide victories and growing approval for Trump among Republicans, according to Tufts Republicans President George Behrakis.

Members of left-leaning groups including Tufts Democrats, Tufts Progressive Alliance (TPA) and Tufts Climate Action (TCA) all say they have found new energy in the wake of the Trump presidency. Nate Krinsky, the president of TPA, said more people have attended the group’s events since Trump’s victory, which he attributed to a growing sense of urgency around progressive issues.

“People have realized: ‘In order to have a country that I’m proud of, a country that works and fights for what I believe in, I have

to personally get involved and join that fight,’” Krinsky, a rising junior, said. “One good thing that came out of this Trump presidency is that people are really inspired and are getting active.”

However, Behrakis said that Tufts Republicans feel more energetic now because people have decided that a Trump presidency is not as destructive as they once thought.

“I think a lot of us are happy and we’ve been re-energized, even those who didn’t really support him, because they’re realizing that even if they didn’t vote for him, … he’s not Darth Vader who’s going to come and destroy the world,” Behrakis, a rising sophomore, said.

TCA member Bianca Hutner said that Trump’s victory has encouraged the group to take a more aggressive stance in demanding that Tufts divest from direct investments in the fossil fuel industry, particularly because the federal government is less likely to prioritize climate change.

She said TCA has been encouraged by University President Anthony Monaco’s leadership in the sanctuary campus debate and that the group may try to appeal to him more directly.

“I think that [Monaco’s statements on sanctuary campuses] is something encouraging, and he says he does a lot to make Tufts sustainable,” Hutner, a rising senior, said. “I think now he’s in more of a position where he would be more likely to divest.”

Hutner said that framing climate issues around resisting Trump energized many who attended the TCA general interest meeting this semester and might have encouraged more people to join TCA. According to Krinsky, TPA has focused on framing local and state issues in terms of resistance to Trump’s federal policies to win support. Krinsky emphasized that it is important to pursue state-level activism alongside national issues, a tactic he views as more effective given Republican control of both houses of Congress.

“There’s a lot of work we could do at the state level that would arguably have a bigger impact on people’s lives,” he said.

Krinsky said that one of the major state bills that TPA has worked to support this semester is the Massachusetts Safe Communities Act, which would effectively make Massachusetts a sanctuary state. The bill prohibits law enforcement agencies in the state from working with federal officials to detain or deport undocumented immigrants.

Krinsky also said that TPA will join Raise Up Massachusetts, a coalition that includes hundreds of community, faith-based and activist groups to support a host of political and economic issues.

“Raise Up Massachusetts has a full slate of policy proposals that we are really interested in, including a $15 minimum wage, paid medical and family leave as well as a progressive income tax — and that progressive income tax is going to be on the 2018 ballot at this point,” he said.

Krinsky said that many progressive victories achieved as a result of grassroots organizing, including opposition to Trump’s travel ban and the American Health Care Act, have kept momentum up, even though Republicans have a majority at the federal level and in many states.

“Wins are really important to not have

people burn out and get discouraged,” he said. “If people just say. ‘Oh, I changed my ways, I got involved and nothing changed,’ that would be really sad.”

Misha Linnehan, president of Tufts Democrats, said the group will actively support the Massachusetts Safe Communities Act next year. This will be in addition to the group’s regular lobbying and phone banking sessions.

Linnehan explained that Tufts Democrats will adopt a two-pronged strategy to affect change under the Trump administration, the first of which will rely on state-level resistance to what Tufts Democrats considers harmful federal policies.

“There is legislation here [that Tufts Democrats support and] that tries to stop what the federal government is going to do that harms our platform,” he said. “Sanctuary cities are a great example of that, because [they] sort of resist these federal government policies that are intrusive and terrible for lots of people around the country.”

The second approach, Linnehan explained, will be applying pressure to members of Congress to vote more progressively on issues such as healthcare reform.

“From a political standpoint, you can work from both ways making sure that the legislation coming down from the federal level isn’t that harmful,” he said. “At the same time, with what things are cast by the federal government, we can try to create a cast of resistance at the state level, too.”

A top priority for Tufts Democrats and TPA will be preventing current Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, a Republican, from securing reelection in 2018, according to both Linnehan and Krinsky.

Linnehan also said that he hopes to continue participating in events with Tufts Republicans because those events could help address partisan tensions.

“I think it’s important to have a dialogue with the other side, especially when there’s so much partisanship going on,” Linnehan said.

Linnehan added that though many at Tufts see POLITICS, page 7

Sunday, May 21, 2017 | News | THE TUFTS DAILY

Ne w s

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‘TuftsLeaks’ releases documents containing sensitive financial information

DEEPANSHU UTKARSH / THE TUFTS DAILY

The source code for TuftsLeaks' website was captured before it was deactivated. A cryptic message seems to refer to the recent leaks as the “tip of the iceberg," and lists the dates of possible future leaks.

by Liam Knox News Editor

This week, a group calling itself TuftsLeaks published documents online that contain sensitive financial information from Tufts. The leak included department budgets, the salaries of thousands of staff and faculty and the ID numbers of student employees with salaries listed. Only student salaries from fiscal year 2015 were listed in the leaked documents.

These documents were released through a TuftsLeaks website, which was no longer accessible by Thursday evening. It was hosted on Dutch hosting service AbeloHost, which, according to its website, guarantees “total privacy and data security” through offshore hosting. The group’s domain name was purchased on April 29, according to the website’s WHOIS data.

No personal identifying information, such as social security numbers, was found in the leaked documents, according to a May 5 announcement from Executive Vice President Patricia Campbell and Senior Vice President for University Relations Mary Jeka. The leaked salary information was of employees in the School of Arts and Sciences, the School of Engineering and the University Advancement division, the email read.

According to Executive Director of Public Relations Patrick Collins, the TuftsLeaks website was deactivated at about 11 p.m. on May 4 following the issuance of take-down notices by the university, after administrators learned that confidential information had been released earlier that evening.

He added that police are working to dis-

cern who is responsible and that the Tufts community will be updated on any developments in the investigation. Collins said the university is taking steps to prevent a data breach like this in the future.

“The information was posted without university authorization,” Collins told the Daily in an email. “Tufts University Police Department is working with state and federal law enforcement officials to aggressively investigate this incident and determine how this information was obtained and posted.”

In an email sent to members of the Daily’s staff on May 3, TuftsLeaks stated its goal in releasing documents: “We deserve to know where our money is going.” The group has not responded to a request for comment.

However, the documents released so far only show salaries and budgeting information. Salaries of higher-level administrators are listed in the university’s filings with the Internal Revenue Service, and thus were already publicly available.

A similar incident occurred in April 2011, when a group called “Jumboleaks” released a list of university financial holdings that turned out to be mostly outdated, according to a 2011 Daily article. There is no evidence the two leaks are connected.

Throughout Thursday, sponsored content advertising the leaks began to populate many students’ social media feeds, suggesting the group invested money into making these leaks secure and increasing their visibility.

After the leaks were released, a small group of students, all taking a class titled Cyber Security and Cyber War this semester, attempted to find out how best to uncover the identity of the leakers and the source of

the information. Among them was sophomore Margaret Gorguissian, who said she felt that the release of this data violated the privacy of students and faculty, and was largely unnecessary.

“If TuftsLeaks wanted to jab at the administration, why throw students under the bus?” Gorguissian, who works on campus, told the Daily in an electronic message. “I feel like it was their own little ego trip.”

Sophomore Avi Block, who holds two on-campus jobs, shared this frustration, saying that if those behind the leaks wanted to expose spending practices in the wake of increasing tuition hikes, the data that was released seemed irrelevant to that goal.

“It seems to me like a stupid drive for attention but without anything of any actual value being shared,” Block told the Daily in an electronic message. “Nobody’s mad that school is too expensive because the teachers or students are getting paid too much.”

San Akdag, another student in the class, said the students came together out of an interest in the cyber security implications of the leak.

According to Akdag, Gorguissian and junior Noah Cutler, another student in the cyber security class, metadata about computer-to-computer interaction was scrubbed from the documents by the leakers, meaning that they were able to hide information about how they obtained the information or whether the documents were modified.

“The social media, the google analytics, the cryptic messages, shows that this was planned out,” Gorguissian said. “Yes, they’re leaking indiscriminately, but they’re also highlighting certain things. It’s strategic.”

Gorguissian suggested that the leakers are specifically using European hosting services and domains due to privacy concerns. AbeloHost’s website corroborates this claim, promising its clients legal security and privacy.

The website included links to four leaked folders, only one of which — labeled “Finances” — was accessible. The other three, labeled “Administration,” “Email” and “UIT,” were locked, suggesting the leakers have more information to be released in future dumps.

The source code for the website indicated the leakers intend to release more data. Underneath a statement built into the code that reads “every action has an equally expensive reaction,” two more “rounds” of leaks were scheduled for May 8 and May 10, but these never occured.

Akdag and Cutler said that this information indicates a possibility for future leaks.

“Anyone looking through this current dump for useful info is wasting their time,” Cutler told the Daily in an electronic message. “The attributes of the leaked information demonstrated the extent of the penetration … essentially, this was just to get our attention.”

In the May 5 email to the Tufts community, Campbell advised anyone affected by the leaks to take steps to enhance the security of their Tufts data, particularly by enrolling in the school’s two-factor identification program.

“Information contained in the data that was posted might be used to personalize ‘phishing’ attacks on members of the university community,” she said.

Daniel Caron and Deepanshu Utkarsh contributed reporting to this article.

Tufts Democrats, TPA include campaigning against Charlie Baker as major goal next year POLITICS

continued from page 6 feel energized in resistance, many also feel discouraged and alienated by Trump’s victory.

“There are definitely some people who are more energized by this, but at the same time I think there is a large group of people [for whom] this is a very discouraging result, and I think they felt alienated by the whole process.”

Tufts Republicans will focus on a variety of issues next year, including promoting free speech, Behrrakis said. Additionally, the

Tufts Republicans are preparing to campaign on behalf of candidates during the 2018 midterm elections.

“We’ve been in contact recently with the Baker campaign and also the Mass GOP as they decide who’s going to run against Elizabeth Warren,” he said. “Also, obviously some of us who live in Massachusetts will get involved in the local seats for the congressional districts.”

Tufts Republicans are also planning to invite conservative speakers to Tufts, perhaps including conservative Supreme Court jus-

tices. Behrakis explained that some of the potential speakers may spark controversy on campus, much like the controversy recently generated at the University of California, Berkeley in anticipation of Ann Coulter’s scheduled appearance.

“Nothing’s confirmed yet … but there’s some chance there might be some trouble around [inviting speakers], and I guess we’re going to have to deal with it when we come to it,” he said.

Behrakis said that nationally, Republicans are generally excited and ready to affect

change now that they have control of the White House for the first time in eight years.

“I think it’s exciting and sort of a sense of redemption for Republicans,” he said. “It’s sort of our time to shine now.”

Linnehan said that he is excited to work on behalf of Tufts Democrats to resist the Trump administration next year.

“We’re going to come back next year and we’re going to really get down and resist the administration as much as possible, and I’m looking forward to it,” he said.

8

THE TUFTS DAILY | News | Sunday, May 21, 2017

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A year of change at the SMFA as it integrates into Tufts

SEOHYUN SHIM / THE TUFTS DAILY

The SMFA’s main building, 230 the Fenway, is pictured on March 24.

by Daniel Nelson News Editor

Tufts acquired the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) last June, and since then it has initiated a number of changes to how the school operates with an eye toward drawing it closer into the larger Tufts community, according to Dean of the SMFA Nancy Bauer.

A Tufts-SMFA partnership has existed for more than 70 years, and both schools have offered a dual-degree program that allows students to pursue degrees in fine arts and arts and sciences at the same time. Tufts bought the SMFA after the Museum of Fine Arts decided to sell the school due to difficulties with enrollment, according to Dean of Arts and Sciences James Glaser.

“The school had suffered enrollment declines, and the museum decided to find an academic partner,” Glaser said. “After talking to universities around Boston, they settled on Tufts.”

Admissions and Financial Aid After the two schools’ admissions teams merged last summer, the four-person SMFA admissions team worked throughout the past year to familiarize themselves with Tufts’ processes. During that merger, the SMFA admissions team learned more about student life in the School of Arts and Sciences and the School of Engineering, Bauer said.

Graduating fifth-year dual-degree student Conor Ward said some students are fearful that streamlining the two previously unique communities into one admissions process may impact, or even dissuade, potential applicants from applying to the SMFA. According to Bauer, new SMFA students will pay the same tuition and fees as undergraduates at Tufts. Previously, when the SMFA was independent, its tuition rate was somewhat lower, according to a

March 29 Daily article.

Nonetheless, SMFA students who enrolled before the acquisition will not see as large of a tuition hike, Bauer clarified, saying that Tufts “didn’t want to do a bait-and-switch on those students.” Returning Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) students will instead pay the SMFA’s tuition with a 3.6 percent increase.

Some changes will also be made to the SMFA’s scholarship policies. The Daily reported in March that the SMFA was phasing out its merit scholarship programs, which previously were the bulk of the SMFA’s financial assistance, because Tufts does not award merit-based aid.

Despite the apparent loss of scholarships, the integration of SMFA students into Tufts’ undergraduate student body will also mean they are brought into Tufts’ financial aid pool.

Bauer indicated Tufts would meet all demonstrated need for SMFA students.

“If your financial situation changes while you’re here, your financial aid situation will change too so that no one will have to drop out of Tufts because of a change in their family’s financial situation,” she said.

Ward expressed concerns with the rate hike, noting that a BFA may not have as much of a return as a Bachelor’s Degree from Tufts.

“For a BFA to cost 60,000 — that’s a degree that can be difficult to market in a society that often views art as a hobby and not as an essential facet of the society itself,” Ward said.

Transportation and Facilities Moving students and staff between the two campuses has long been a challenge, even before the acquisition. Shuttle buses are not allowed to take Storrow Drive or Memorial Drive, the two main routes to the SMFA, Bauer said. This forces Tufts’ shuttle service to take alternate routes and adds as much as 20 minutes to the transit time, according to Ward.

Bauer said that improving travel between the Hill and SMFA has been a central goal of

the administration. She noted, however, that SMFA students have access to free Lyft rides within a 1.25-mile radius of the SMFA campus between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m.

“We did that so that people can get home or get at least to a T stop safely at night, and in a way, that’s extremely convenient,” she said.

Bauer and Ward agreed that once the Green Line Extension (GLX) is completed, travel between the two campuses will be much easier. The GLX project will give students a one-seat ride between the Medford/Somerville campus and the SMFA’s Fenway campus.

Additionally, renovations of the two main SMFA buildings occurred shortly after the school was acquired from the MFA, Bauer said. Changes also had to be made to update the SMFA’s dining services facilities, which she said had not been up to Boston Fire Department code regulations.

Ward said that the earliest change he saw was to the SMFA’s atrium.

“The first thing that Tufts changed that I’m aware of was they painted the ceiling of the atrium blue,” he said. “Its a perfect symbol for these times, in which the communication of a cohesive brand often seems to be a higher priority than the refinement of the brand’s actual products.”

Since the acquisition, Ward said that the SMFA appears to be getting new resources, including tools such as a new laser cutter recently purchased. But the SMFA facilities are still in need of repair, according to Damaris Swass, a rising senior at the SMFA. “On real rainy days you’ll see garbage receptacles catching water,” Swass said in an electronic message to the Daily. “I know that they will be embarking on construction over the summer, but we pay roughly 50,000 give or take and I should see more than just the ceiling [color] change.”

Academics Tufts has tried to ease into its new role with the SMFA, and Bauer told the Daily she has sought to address various concerns and simplify processes so that faculty and students can get needed resources.

“As a dean I removed some of the rules and regulations governing what happens academically and also how the faculty were treated that I thought were keeping the school down,” Bauer said.

Professor Ken Hruby, who teaches sculpture at the SMFA, told the Daily that he has seen a major shift in how the SMFA interacts with its educators under the new administration, particularly in their ready embrace of new ideas.

“Nancy Bauer’s been very clear about the fact that she’s willing to experiment,” he said.

“If you come up with a course offering and a syllabus, she would be more than willing to try it for a couple of years and see how it flies.

That’s exciting.”

Hruby said that he felt that under the MFA, the SMFA had been frugal to an extreme.

“It was harder to propose new courses

I think because they were concerned more about money. We had been a totally tuition-driven institution,” he said. “The result was we sort of became stagnant and static, and I don’t think an institution like an arts school can do that without sort of a continuous change to the palate offered to the student body for exciting courses.”

There have been some issues in communication that have come with the acquisition, though, according to both Swass and Mabel Albert, a rising senior at the SMFA. Swass described a situation in which she had to speak to multiple administrative offices to retrieve a tuition refund check, and Albert described a general shortfall in interdepartmental communication.

Albert said she has not seen much of a change in how professors taught their classes.

“If anything, professors are more strict about the two allotted absences now than they were before, which has been good for class participation,” she told the Daily in an electronic message.

Collaboration The acquisition has also renewed efforts to further strengthen the ties between both schools’ student bodies, Bauer said.

“We’ve been trying to work on every front you can imagine to make sure that the SMFA students not only are full-fledged Tufts students, but that they have the same opportunities on both campuses that all students do,” she said.

Bauer explained that Tufts has established a faculty ambassador program between the two schools to help inform SMFA students about the academic opportunities available to them on the Medford/Somerville campus.

“Instead of the students kind of wandering back and forth, we’re trying to make sure that they have human beings they can talk to who will help them,” she said.

Glaser said the two schools will be connecting and collaborating more as the relationship develops.

“We want students and faculty to be connected to folks on our campus,” he said.

“There’s so much on our campus that can enhance what goes on at the museum school and can provide the basis for research collaborations and pedagogical projects, and we’re very excited about those things happening.”

Albert said there has been a stronger push to integrate SMFA students into the Tufts community.

“Students on both the Medford and SMFA campuses have always had the opportunity to engage in one anothers’ activities,” she said.

“I think this year there has been a lot more of this, especially the first-years, as they were more introduced to the Tufts culture before they were accepted to the program.”

She added that there has been a shift in how the two student bodies interact as well.

“We have seen the clubs on the SMFA campus have more students from the Medford campus participate and vice versa, which has been really exciting,” Albert said.

TCU Senate hears five resolutions, passes four this semester

by Vibhav Prakasam Senate Correspondent

Over the past semester, the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate has discussed multiple contentious resolutions and implemented several senator-initiated projects, in addition to Senate’s ongoing budgetary responsibilities.

Next year’s TCU President will be Benya Kraus, a rising senior who won an uncontested election on April 26. Following that election, internal elections were held to select next year’s executive board.

The new TCU Senate vice president is Anna Del Castillo, the treasurer is Emily Sim, the historian is Jacqueline Chen, the

diversity and community affairs officer is Shannon Lee and the parliamentarian remains Adam Rapfogel.

Debate and Disagreement over Resolutions Senate heard five resolutions this semester, two of which saw significant attention in the wider Tufts community. At the final Senate meeting of the semester on April 9, a resolution was passed urging Tufts not to invest in four companies the resolution authors said are associated with the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Many students voiced opinions in support of and in opposition to the divestment resolution, and several students and senators expressed concerns that it was heard on

the night before the beginning of Passover. A statement by the Tufts Office of the President the next day announced that administrators would not support the proposal.

Many students also showed up to a March 12 Senate meeting and voiced opposition to Students Advocating for Students President Jake Goldberg’s second resolution of the academic year. The resolution suggested that Tufts should review its Title IX proceedings and not allow perpetrators or survivors of sexual misconduct to serve on decision-making panels for Title IX investigations. After a lengthy debate during which most speakers sharply condemned the resolution, it failed with no senators voting for it.

In February, Senate’s first resolution

of the semester called on Tufts administrators to support the Massachusetts Safe Communities Act, a bill that would essentially make Massachusetts a sanctuary state.

Senate passed the resolution, but University President Anthony Monaco has not yet taken a public stance on the bill, according to an April 12 Daily article.

Additionally, resolutions were passed calling on Tufts to create French and Spanish minors for students in the School of Arts and Sciences, and proposing an expansion in reproductive health services.

In April, several senators wrote a resolution calling for Greek life to be abolished and sug see SENATE, page 9

Sunday, May 21, 2017 | News | THE TUFTS DAILY

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President Monaco discusses Greek life crises, political activism

RAY BERNOFF / THE TUFTS DAILY

University President Anthony Monaco answers questions from Daily Editor-in-Chief Kathleen Schmidt and Executive News Editor Joe Walsh in his office in Ballou Hall on May 11.

by Kathleen Schmidt and Joe Walsh

Editor-in-chief and Executive News Editor

Toward the end of a complicated, eventful and occasionally tumultuous academic year, University President Anthony Monaco met with the Daily to share his thoughts on the year as a whole and discuss plans for next year.

The Tufts Daily (TD): What do you think were some of the most significant accomplishment of yours and at Tufts this year?

Anthony Monaco (AM): It was an interesting year, particularly with the presidential election. I thought that the campus tried to have a lot of discussion and debate and informed how to get students to register to vote. So JumboVote was a big deal.

And then of course, after the Trump administration took hold, we found ourselves in a position to make statements

around some of his executive orders that we thought were threatening to our community, particularly around the travel ban and immigration as well as undocumented and [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals] students. But in addition, we’ve been trying to support the research budget, which is also under threat. That’s unique to this year because of quite a contentious election.

On the academic front, I think two things were quite significant. One was the successful integration of the SMFA into the Arts and Sciences school, and that has gone well. Admissions for next year have gone well. There’s a lot of collaborations that are being set up between the SMFA faculty and various parts of the university, and they’ve integrated well into the governance structure of the Arts, Sciences and Engineering faculty meetings.

Also, we’ve extended our Bridge Professorship program, which is professors who have expertise in more than one discipline and in more than one school.

We hired Susan Landau as the first bridge professor in cybersecurity between [The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy] and computer science department.

The third area of focus, although it hasn’t been as evident to the community, is that we’ve been doing a lot of work with faculty on planning the data science initiative, both on the teaching side and the research side and also fundraising for that.

On the student life side, we launched the Mental Health Task Force. … They’ve done great work all year getting feedback from students [as well as] gathering data not only for our undergraduates but also our graduate and professional students.

And the Student Life Review Committee was a very important aspect of the spring in particular. Given what we learned about the Greek life issues and the broader issues in student co-curricular organizations, it was important for a group of faculty, students, alumni and a few trustees to come together to discuss those issues and make a report with recommendations.

TD: What would you say were some of the major challenges of the year?

AM: I think one challenge was trying to manage a very contentious election. In my role as president, I have to be apolitical when it comes to elections, trying to support people with different views, but then once Mr. Trump became president, speaking out when I thought his executive orders and other policies were affecting various aspects of our core mission as a university.

I think the second challenge was reacting to the knowledge about different hazings and other types of activities going on in Greek life and trying to do an assessment of that in a more holistic manner, where we could take into account all student organizations and try to refocus our attention on what we want to achieve

with student life.

TD: We’ve certainly seen a lot of student activism; that’s been definitely a focus of attention. What are your thoughts on that, and do you think that there’s a point at which the sort of student activism that we’ve seen goes too far?

AM: In my first 90 days [as president], there was a group who took over Ballou Hall, so student activism has been a part of my experience at Tufts almost every year on different issues. We certainly want our students to feel passionately about issues, to advocate for them as they see fit. We do support free speech on this campus as a major tenant of our community. But they have to advocate for their causes in a way which is not disrupting to the function of the campus and other students’ education.

When student activism goes to a point where it is disruptive or not allowing faculty, students or staff to do their jobs, then I think that’s where it goes too far. We want to listen carefully to what student activists have to say because obviously they’re advocating for a cause they firmly believe in. But at the same time … it doesn’t mean we agree with them all the time. We can’t run the university and think about where we want to take it based solely on a very vocal group. It shouldn’t be who shouts the loudest. It should be thoughtful about what is good for the entire community, and there’s a diversity of opinions in our community on every issue.

TD: Do you think that the protests when Governor Charlie Baker spoke would be an example of students being too disruptive?

AM: I thought that the disruption of his interview was a form of activism which got their point across, that they disagreed with Governor Baker, and it wasn’t disruptive in the sense of length of time. They made their banners and they shouted to voice their opinion.

But the sad part is they didn’t stay to listen see MONACO, page 13

Senate discusses several controversial resolutions, works on student-initiated projects SENATE

continued from page 8 gesting the creation of alternative social spaces. However, several hours before the Senate meeting during which it was scheduled to be heard, the resolution’s authors tabled it until further notice, citing the need for further dialogue on the controversial issue.

Rapfogel, who acts as Senate’s neutral overseer of resolutions, explained that senators have varying opinions on how political Senate should be, and that some of the most passionate senators tend to believe that the body should take strong stances.

“While people don’t usually have strong reactions to a resolution about meal plans or testing policy, they will about more personal issues like divestment or Greek life,” Rapfogel said.

Rapfogel added that he is pleased that there is strong interest in Senate resolutions. However, he expressed concern that if Senate passes too many resolutions with little chance of being implemented, Tufts administrators might discount resolutions that could have more tangible effects on Tufts students.

Senate Projects Amidst the resolutions this semester, senators also took on projects and sat on university committees. The first major developments included the upcoming changes to the Office of Residential Life and Learning (ResLife), a project that outgoing TCU President Gauri Seth helped to implement.

Among those changes, ResLife will phase out the Resident Assistant (RA) role,

instead creating First Year Advisor (FYA) and Community Development Advisor (CDA) positions for first-year and returning-student dorms, respectively. Additionally, almost all first-year students will now live in first-year exclusive dorms, some of which are different from the existing first-year exclusive dorms.

The housing lottery system was modified to make each class year’s housing number a random draw, instead of sophomore and senior year numbers being inverses. In the future, those numbers will be sent out one year at a time, instead of all numbers being sent out at once.

Another development was the Swipe it Forward initiative, which created a bank of meal swipes that can be accessed by students in need. That project was spearheaded

by TCU senators Chen, fellow rising junior Celeste Teng and rising sophomores Lee and Olive Baerde. The meal bank was supplied by student-donated swipes, which numbered more than 1,000 by the end of the donation period, according to a Two-Minute Thursday video released by Senate on March 2.

The Committee on Culture, Ethnicity, Community Affairs (CECA), previously led by Kraus, also worked on projects and programs. In particular, CECA members worked to sell shirts in opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline, the proceeds of which went to water protectors at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. The committee also worked to promote and encourage conversations about consent and attempted to clarify and make explicit the

SEOHYUN SHIM / THE TUFTS DAILY

Jake Goldberg, president of the Students Advocating for Students (SA4S), speaks in front of TCU Senate, about his second resolution this year, alleging Tufts’ Title IX investigations are unfair. reproductive health options offered by Health Service.

The current state and future of Greek life came into focus this semester, and the Student Life Review Committee was formed to address this campus-wide discussion.

Created by Monaco, this committee was composed of six student representatives and several trustees, faculty and Medford/ Somerville representatives who assessed various facets of undergraduate student life.

This included discussions on residential life, student groups, sports and Greek life.

Senate also heard a group of students looking to make Tufts’ Medford/Somerville campus tobacco-free. The students asked for Senators’ inputs on ways to promote and enforce the policy, and several senators raised concerns about whether the policy would have a disproportionate effect on LGBTQ and economically disadvantaged students.

In addition, senators worked on projects

to address club sports funding, JumboCash retail locations, improving the dining system and printing stipends. Culture clubs are now no longer required to hold three public events to be recognized by the TCU Judiciary, Chemistry Lecturer Diren Pamuk Turner was selected as Professor of the Year and a physical textbook exchange program is now offered.

The Senate has also undergone internal changes, such as the recent creation of the First-Generation Community Senator position, which the Senate anticipates will begin next semester. Additionally, outgoing Senate Vice President Shai Slotky prepared a Strategic Plan for TCU Senate. This plan lists several of the areas for improvement of Senate under four main categories and provides a set of recommendations and guidelines on how to start resolving these issues, according to Slotky. The plan will be presented to the next full Senate.

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THE TUFTS DAILY | News | Sunday, May 21, 2017

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Senate adds community senator for first-generation students

by Johanna O'Neil Staff Writer

The Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate will have a first-generation community senator for the first time in the upcoming fall semester. The process was spearheaded by Charlie Zhen, a rising junior senator, who will be the Asian American Community Senator and chair of the Student Outreach Committee next year.

This new position will join six existing community senator positions: the Asian American, Africana, Latino, International, Women’s and LGBTQ+ community senators. The elections for these positions are campus-wide, according to the TCU Senate constituVINTUS OKONKWO / THE TUFTS DAILY

see FIRST-GEN, page 15

TCU Senator and first-generation community senator proponent Charlie Zhen poses for a portrait outside Hodgdon Hall on April 24.

Tufts researchers discover way to improve eye implants in tadpoles

COURTESY ALLEN DISCOVERY CENTER AT TUFTS UNIVERSITY VIA PATRICK COLLINS

Blind tadpoles with eyes grafted onto their tails were able to process visual information after being treated with a small molecule neurotransmitter drug.

by Kat Grellman

Contributing Writer

A team of researchers at Tufts caused tadpoles to process information using eyes grafted onto their tails after the tadpoles were treated with a human-approved migraine drug, according to Michael Levin, a professor in the Department of Biology and director of Tufts’ Allen Discovery Center.

The original study, which Levin conducted alongside postdoctoral associate Douglas Blackiston and graduating senior Khanh Vien, was published online on March 30 in Nature Partner Journals’ Regenerative Medicine section.

According to Levin, the purpose of the study was to observe the plasticity of the brain and to make the transplanted organs on tadpoles more functional. After being treated with the drug, many of the tadpoles grew nerves connecting the eye implants to their spinal cords, Levin said.

The species used in the study was a large aquatic frog commonly known as the African clawed frog. According to Blackiston, their neural pathways and hormones are very similar to those of humans.

“A lot of what we learn about the brain and neural connections and these drugs behave almost exactly the same between the animals,” Blackiston said.

He explained that the blind tadpoles were created through surgical techniques in which their developing eye tissue was

removed while they were still embryos.

According to Levin, the eyes were then grafted onto the tails of the tadpoles through cut-and-paste surgical operations.

“When you add the eye, a very small percentage of them can see. What we wanted to do was to make it much more efficient — we wanted more of the animals to be able to see, and we wanted them to be able to see better,” Levin said. “That eye tissue puts out new nerves, and those nerves connect to the spinal cord of the animal. So we asked, ‘Could we increase the amount of innervation that comes out?’”

According to Blackiston, in the initial study, the eyes were grafted on the tadpoles’ heads but were moved farther and farther back on the animals as a test. He was surprised that some of the tadpoles were able to see with eyes so far away from their original location.

“That’s when we moved on to this study where we screened a huge amount of drugs … that are commonly available, and we zeroed in on this one that increased the amount of animals that can see with these eyes even on the tail,” Blackiston said.

According to Blackiston, the drug that they found the most success with in increasing the visual processing of the tadpoles’ eyes was Zolmitriptan, a common pharmaceutical taken for migraines.

Vien, the student who developed a test of the tadpoles’ eyesight, explained that it was important to test drugs that are

already known to be safe to humans.

“We wanted to focus on drugs that were human-approved because that was the human application. You want something that has the potential to be translational as soon as possible,” Vien said. “Otherwise, novel compounds would take three years to get through FDA certification, and then it would have to go through a clinical trial.”

For Levin, one of the most interesting parts of this treatment is that only the new nerves were affected by the drug.

“The normal innervation of the animal and all the other organs that are in their correct location … ignore the drug entirely and are perfectly normal,” he said.

He added that this study was significant because it gives more insight into the brain’s plasticity or its ability to change.

According to Levin, this could lead to human treatments in the future.

“If we understood how [the plasticity of the brain] works, we can make all kinds of cool technology for sensory motor augmentation,” Levin said. “Meaning if somebody lost an arm, they could have an electronic arm, or a new sensory organ, and we could connect it to all sorts of external devices because the brain is highly plastic and it can learn to use things that it was not normally evolved to use.”

Blackiston said that another takeaway of the study was the actual connection of the structures to their host, which shows that there could be ways to improve the function-

ality of human implants through less-invasive procedures than surgery.

Levin also noted that the study shows potential to use other pharmaceuticals beyond their original purposes.

“There are all kinds of drugs that humans already take,” he said. “All these drugs are a potentially rich toolkit of solutions for all kinds of problems and regenerative medicine.”

According to Blackiston, the next step in this line of research is figuring out how these eyes are connecting to the hosts. As of now, Blackiston explained that instead of connecting directly to the brain, they seem to be connecting to the spinal cord.

“We have a number of high-powered techniques that can trace neural connections, and we’re going to get down into the details of which ones are necessary, how those are formed and how those neurons talk to each other,” he said.

Levin said that the team plans to take this research beyond eyes to continue testing the plasticity of the brain on other sensory organs and limbs.

“We have a collaboration with a team that … is trying to do eye transplants in humans. So we’re going to be working with them to see if we can push this into a medical application,” he explained. “We’re going to work more on the basic question of how these cells figure out that they’re in the wrong place [and] how they know where they’re located in the body.”

Sunday, May 21, 2017 | News | THE TUFTS DAILY

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K. Martinez hired as new Women’s Center director

by Minna Trinh

Assistant News Editor

Tufts has hired K. Martinez, former associate director of the Diversity and First-Gen Office at Stanford University, to direct the Tufts Women’s Center. Martinez began their new role at Tufts on May 8.

The hiring concludes a semester-long, nationwide search to replace former Women’s Center Director Steph Gauchel, according to Dean of Student Affairs Mary Pat McMahon.

Gauchel left the center last February to become Assistant Dean for Student Affairs at the Harvard Divinity School.

Martinez explained that they see the Women’s Center as a campus space for people of all identities.

“This isn’t my center; it’s our center,” Martinez said. “I think my job is to listen as much as possible to what the folks on the campus and the surrounding community are looking for from the space.”

McMahon said that the search committee sought to hire an individual capable of strengthening the Women’s Center’s presence on campus.

“We [were] really looking for somebody who will be a leader, a presence and builder in the space, but also

connecting across the Group of Six and all the student s… and K. is totally going to be that person,” McMahon said. “K. demonstrated the ability to meet student leaders and students … regardless of where they are.”

The search committee considered student opinions in the decision-making and hiring process, according to McMahon. She noted that about 120 individuals applied for the position.

“We had student input along the way, including several rounds of … students that met with the candidates during lunch time,” McMahon said. “[ The] candidates gave presentations addressing issues relevant to the Women’s Center and to Tufts. … It was important to me that we partner with students all the way through.”

Nicholas Whitney, a graduate intern at the LGBT Center and graduate assistant at the Women’s Center, participated in the search process. Whitney expressed support for Martinez.

“I think that K. has the type of experiences and intellectual interests in order to center those in conversations and really move the center in the right direction,” Whitney said.

Made Bacchus, a junior who also participated in the search pro-

cess, said that she hopes Martinez will allow for the Women’s Center to have a more intersectional presence on campus. In particular, she believes that Martinez will improve the space for women of color and non-binary, genderqueer and transgender students.

Martinez said that they resonated with the hiring committee’s description of an ideal candidate, which was somebody interested in discussing topics relating to intersectional feminism and gender.

“When I was looking at the mission statement and the goals [for this position], I was particularly drawn to the language around talking about social justice and intersectional feminism and identity, and the harmful impact of the gender binary,” they said.

Martinez said they hoped to maintain the Women Center as a place for conversation, especially as a gender-nonconforming individual. “[I had] people question my womanhood or my relationship with womanhood,” Martinez said. “I really want to make sure we are pushing whatever notions we have of gender and stereotypes … [through] having discussions about the impact of gender-binary and intersectionality, and intersectional feminism, especially trans-in-

clusive feminism.”

Martinez also emphasized the belief that the Women’s Center should be a place that welcomes everyone.

“I want all people to feel comfortable based on their identity, to go in the Women’s Center,” they said.

“However you identify, the Women’s Center is a place where you can come in and talk to people and we can work together.”

McMahon recognized Martinez’s potential to build upon Gauchel’s seven-and-a-half year legacy as director.

“Steph Gauchel was such a strong presence in the Women’s Center,” McMahon said. “And we knew we needed someone who would bring [that] presence to the Women’s Center and K. is going to doing that.”

McMahon also thanked all candidates who were interested in serving as Director, and stressed that it was a difficult decision.

“The Women’s Center student leaders have been deeply invested and committed to supporting this process … and I’m appreciative of their energy, patience and commitment,” McMahon said. “We had phenomenal finalists, there were other people who were incredible, so it was a really hard choice.”

Monaco: Greek life abolition unlikely due to lack of alternatives MONACO

continued from page 9 to his answers. … If you’re going to complain or voice an opinion against someone, you should at least have the respect to listen to their answers. You may not agree with them, you may want to ask further difficult questions of that person, but what I see as a problem is that students are unwilling to listen.

I also felt that the chants outside were not aligned with what I know about Governor Baker’s policies. It just seemed they weren’t realistic about what they were shouting.

TD: Do you think it’s part of a larger sense of hostility around different points of view on campus, or was it more of an isolated incident?

AM: I don’t think it’s an isolated incident.

I think it’s a good example of how students, when they really are passionate about a particular view, sometimes are not willing to sit down and listen or have a dialogue with the other side because they feel that there’s nothing they can say that’s going to make them change their mind.

If we’re going to go ahead as a country or go ahead as a community here, we have to be willing to listen to the other side. If you go to the table with someone having an opinion but are at least open-minded enough to listen to their point of view, you may come away thinking differently. And that is part of an education and development of a person. And I think that’s something that students sometimes maybe don’t fully appreciate as one part of having strong opinions.

TD: What is the status of the Student Life Review Committee? If decisions have been made, when will we know?

AM: The group has finished their work for this semester. … We did get a lot of feedback; there was a range of views around the table. They worked hard to understand each other’s views and try to come to a consensus on what we wanted to express going forward about student life. That report has been made with its recommendations and I met with them to discuss it.

We decided not to release the report [this semester] because it’s quite detailed. We want to give a chance for the administration to thoughtfully make a set of responses and an implementation plan around the recommendations and bring that back in the fall when

students are back on campus. … One possible way forward is for us to release the major themes of the report soon.

I am very, very grateful to all the members who took part in this and the community at large for providing so much feedback.

I think they’ve put a very thoughtful report forward, which in particular deals with the cross section of not only safety and wellness of students when they’re involved in organizations but also thinking carefully about the diversity, inclusion and equity of all of our student organizations.

Particularly, [it addresses] how that relates to our current social geography: where space is allocated, where current groups are located and what we might be able to do about that. … [That] could offer a very pivotal point for us to think about how those different issues intersect in a planning sense. I think that’s where the committee got quite excited about the future and optimistic that we have a real opportunity here to do something unique for our community going forward.

TD: In terms of Greek life in particular, do you have any general thoughts on the system as it exists right now and about potential problems with it, points of reform and whether you believe that they’ve made a good faith effort?

AM: First, let me just say around the investigations, those are still ongoing and the Student Life Review Committee has not focused on that. Some have been completed, and one fraternity has decided to cease and not be on campus anymore.

Others will have decisions made over the next weeks to months.

I think that there’s a range of students on this campus who have different needs related to their social outlets on campus. Some want to be involved in Greek life, some want to be involved in other types of student organizations and there’s overlap between all of these. For me, the richness of a student community is to have many different types of organizations. … And 25 percent of our students are involved in Greek life, so obviously for many students, it’s an important part of their experience at Tufts.

That said, any organizations, and in particular Greek organizations, need to adhere to a code of conduct which fulfills our values and adheres to our policies. What we had reported

back to us from the investigations is that many of these organizations had behaviors which were not aligned with those and [were] in some cases downright criminal, and we cannot stand for that. If the Greek organizations want to stay on campus, they have to change.

They have to think about the way they’re inclusive of other members of our community and assure us that they’re going to look out for … safety and well-being.

TD: Is there a chance that the Greek life system as a whole will be phased out? Is that an option that’s being considered or is that not on the table?

AM: It was on the table in terms of the Student Life Review Committee. They certainly discussed whether that was an option.

I think the feeling around the table was that, if one was to make that decision, what is going to replace that? Would the Greek system go into off-campus housing and create issues with the community that we all don’t want?

Since there isn’t a viable alternative at this moment, it made more sense to work with the Greek community to reform and reflect on their future … [rather] than just abolishing them and then leaving a void, which would be difficult to fill.

Given that we’re implementing an on-campus residential strategy, which could change the social geography on campus, it was more of an opportunity to work with the Greek system in light of other organizations that want space allocation going forward than to think about abolishing them as a solution.

TD: Considering historical problems with Greek life, are you hopeful that they’ll be able to change? There have been problems and there are continuing cycles of reform. How do you think it will be different this time?

AM: One, we have to set very stringent expectations and criteria by which they can exist and have members on campus, and that’s going to be worked on this summer.

Second, I think it’s important that the student leaders of those organizations are accountable for their membership in terms of the criteria for inclusiveness, for the types of behaviors that are tolerated and not tolerated.

Given that this leadership and the student body changes every year, it’s also up to the administration to make sure that they’re getting the training and education on their roles

and responsibilities so that we don’t end up in this situation again.

I’m not saying it’s not going to happen again, but we have to make sure we have a system in place that minimizes that risk [so that] we’re sure that the student leaders and all the members of these organizations understand clearly what is acceptable behavior that is expected of them and how they have to align with the values of the entire community.

TD: Looking forward to next year, what are some of your priorities for the school?

AM: The biggest priority for next year is getting the Data-Intensive Studies Center going. This is [for] new courses in data analysis, big data, statistics and providing research training and opportunities across the university. … That will be the one of the biggest academic pushes next year, to get that all together and then launch it completely the following year.

The second thing that’s happening next year is that a number of new facilities will come online. The Science and Engineering Center will open, so it will be great to see that being used as a new complex. We are also planning a very exciting new academic building next to the Green Line Extension.

We’re bringing that to the Trustees to approve the next phase of design, and that will offer new classrooms as well as academic space for like-minded departments that would be in that area.

Lastly, we’ll be launching a fundraising campaign in November. It’s going to be called A Brighter World. It’s a very exciting opportunity for us to increase the amount of money coming into the university as gifts … that help support our very aspirational goals.

TD: Is there anything else you would like to add?

AM: It’s been a not-easy year in many respects, but I think overall, given the external circumstances, we’ve come through very, very, very well. There’s a lot of exciting momentum in the university at the moment in terms of our academic program, interest in the school, athletics. … We have opportunities to really make a once-in-a-generation change to our residential facilities and really think intently about what we want to achieve with the student experience.

Editor’s Note: This article has been edited for clarity and length.

14

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Sunday, May 21, 2017 | News | THE TUFTS DAILY

Ne w s

15

Peace and Justice Studies Program avoids cancellation, looks to revitalize

by Catherine Perloff News Editor

The Peace and Justice Studies (PJS) Program will continue for the upcoming academic year under the new leadership of Associate Professor of Philosophy Erin Kelly. The Office of the Dean of Arts and Sciences raised the possibility of ending the program at the beginning of the semester but has decided to continue the program as it redefines itself, Kelly said.

“A number of faculty met with the dean and communicated how and why we thought the program was important to the university and to the undergraduate curriculum,” Kelly said.

The Office of the Dean of Arts and Sciences questioned whether the program was sustainable, as faculty interest has declined in recent years.

“The program has had small but steady student interest, but faculty interest had drifted to other places,” Dean of Arts and Sciences James Glaser said. “This has led us to question whether it’s the right program at the right time.”

Professor of Sociology Paul Joseph, who helped found the PJS program and served as its director for more than 20 years, said that the challenges PJS faces with declining faculty interest are endemic to all interdisciplinary programs.

“Tufts is organized around departments, not interdisciplinary programs.

Everyone’s first home is their department,” Joseph said. “It’s always swimming against the tide to have faculty be invested in an interdisciplinary program.”

However, the problem became particularly pronounced in the PJS program, as other interdisciplinary majors attracted faculty interest away.

“The number of faculty participating in the program has dwindled,” Glaser said. “At the same time, we have very vibrant programs in [the Consortium of Race, Diaspora and Colonialism Studies], Africana studies, environmental studies and some areas that are contiguous in curriculum.”

The lack of faculty interest has manifested itself in many ways. For example, a PJS executive board composed of students and faculty used to meet every two weeks to govern and make decisions regarding the program, according to Joseph. However, current Director Bruce Hitchner said the board has not been active in five or six years.

Additionally, Hitchner said that Tufts administrators were not able to find a replacement director when he began a sabbatical last year, forcing him to act as director while on leave.

Another problem the PJS program faces is the lack of an accurate course list. According to Kelly, many of the courses that are supposed to count toward the major do not exist, and students often have trouble transferring credits from abroad.

“I would say that a third of the courses listed aren’t really offered,” Noah Weinberg, a graduating senior majoring in PJS, said.

Facing these challenges, Glaser and the deans of academic affairs reconsidered the program’s structure.

However, faculty interested in saving the program met with colleagues and were able to convince the dean that faculty interest was sufficient. The program will now be administered under the philosophy department, according to Kelly. In the past, the program had its own administrative coordinator in Assistant Director Dale Bryan, but his position will be cut in order to save costs, Kelly said.

“The only thing I can tell you about the unfolding context is that the program is being reorganized and my particular position (role) is being eliminated,” Bryan told the Daily in an email.

Glaser said that costs formerly going toward the PJS program can be diverted to more active, growing programs that have greater student demand, such as Community Health and Environmental Studies.

However, Weinberg argued that the lack of vitality in PJS is precisely because it is under-resourced. Weinberg added that the university always has money

for what it prioritizes.

“I think this is a moment politically in our country in which our university should be more deeply investing in a program of peace and justice studies,” Weinberg said. “One way they could do this is hiring faculty exclusively for peace and justice studies. All the faculty that are affiliated with PJS are in other departments, and they aren’t as invested.”

Glaser questioned whether PJS could still occupy a unique niche at the university given the growth of other programs that address themes of peace and justice.

“It’s not that we’re opposed to peace or justice,” Glaser said. “It’s a question of where it’s best to study peace and justice and where that’s going to resonate the most with students and faculty.”

Joseph said the field of peace and justice studies developed during the 1970s and 1980s as scholars became concerned with the prospect of peace in modern society, following the Vietnam War and the increase in nuclear proliferation. Hitchner questioned whether there was still a place for peace and justice studies in today’s academic landscape.

“New programs were started, around 2000 onward, which were niche areas within which had been traditionally peace and justice studies,” Hitchner said. “As they filled up with faculty involvement and student engagement, there was some natural draining of peace and justice.”

As a professor in the Department of Classics, Hitchner noted that his own field had to undergo a revitalization as it lost its prominence over time.

However, Joseph believes that PJS still occupies a unique niche, especially given the major’s active citizenship and internship component.

“I think one of the other distinctive aspects of PJS is you don’t only study peace, but you act to achieve peace,” Joseph said. “If you are a citizen on this planet, it’s important to act to achieve peace. It’s one of the reasons we require

an internship which engages social change.”

Kelly noted that the major’s focus on civic engagement and active citizenship aligns with Tufts’ mission.

“It’s a really important alternative to international relations,” Kelly said.

“It has more of a normative or ethical focus than international relations, which tends to be a more empirical approach to thinking about politics.”

Kelly said that the next academic year will be a time for students and faculty to work together on revitalizing the major, including updating the course list and exploring partnerships with the Institute for Global Leadership and Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life.

“I’m open to hear what students have to say about where they would like to see the major get stronger or move in new directions,” Kelly said.

Weinberg said it is important that the faculty consider the student perspective, as he and other PJS majors felt excluded from the conversations that happened between faculty and the deans earlier in the semester about the future of the program. He said students did not know the program had ever been in jeopardy until the end of the semester.

“I really wish that the faculty would have come to the students at that point [in the winter] to allow us to help them advocate for the program,” he said.

Weinberg believes the program can improve by working to create a stronger community among the students, offering more courses sponsored directly

by PJS instead of by other departments and reinstating the student-faculty executive board.

Ultimately, Glaser sees the upcoming year as a chance for supporters of PJS to demonstrate that the program can gain new vitality.

“What we heard from the faculty was that they saw potential for peace and justice studies to evolve and change and we’re happy to give them the opportunity to do that,” Glaser said. “If they don’t, I think the resources will flow in other directions.”

Creation of first-gen community senator could be precursor for more student support services FIRST-GEN

continued from page 12 tion. TCU Senate Parliamentarian Adam Rapfogel explained that Zhen began the project to create the position by gathering about 250 signatures from students in all class years.

“Charlie has been working on this project for months and decided to bring it up for a vote in Senate,” Rapfogel, a rising junior, told the Daily in an email.

According to Zhen, community senators provide important and oftentimes left out perspectives to the conversations in TCU Senate.

“The First-Gen Community Senator will be tasked with representing first-generation student voices in Senate,” he said. “I personally see it as working towards a Community Center, adding more resources and working in areas that affect first-generation students, like with financial aid or the Career Center.”

Zhen explained that the new community senator will sit on committees and vote like regular senators, but also support the first-generation student community by working with and advocating for them.

Although this will be the first community senator position that is not tied to a Group of Six center, neither Zhen nor Benya Kraus, next year’s TCU President and rising senior, believe this will present obstacles to representation or a lack of resources.

“There will be some unique challenges, but what is really exciting is that there are also a lot of areas for growth,” Kraus said. “They have a very established community already and I think that’s a huge benefit. They have the institutional support of [Dean of Student Success and Advising Robert Mack], and the student-initiated project of the First-Gen Council … has grown in terms of size and engagement.”

Both Kraus and Zhen agreed that the formation of a First-Generation Community Center is a future goal for both TCU Senate and likely for next year’s first-generation community senator.

“We can do more by creating spaces for first-gen students to think and reflect and come together to find solidarity about their identity,” Kraus said.

“A community center could help be this space.”

According to Zhen, many people have expressed interest in running for this position in the fall, and he expects the election to be contested. Zhen has no specific plans in mind for the person who would fill this position, and Kraus agreed that it should be left up to the incoming senator to do whatever they feel is best for the first-generation community.

“Whoever runs should do whatever they see fit,” Zhen said. “I hope they do a lot of reaching out to the community and presenting themselves as a resource.”

According to Zhen, this position has sparked interest and discussion about creating other community senators as well to improve representation and diversity in TCU Senate. Kraus agreed that Senate could do more to include a wider variety of voices, and that the creation of community senator positions is a strong first step.

“The idea of having community senators is to look at what identities historically and currently have not been present in the Senate, and what identities need to be there in order to say that we are trying to be a repre-

sentative body,” Kraus said. “If we are systematically and historically excluding voices, then that’s what the community senator is there for. And even for communities that there aren’t and won’t be centers for, I hope that we can still work to get the representation for liaison positions like community senators.”

Gregory Chin, the chair of the First-Generation Student Council and a Board of Trustees Representative, explained that it is valuable to have a voice for the more than 500 first-generation students on campus, particularly because the first-generation identity is not always visible. He said it is especially important to support first-generation students because their success in college impacts their families and communities as well.

“Navigating college for the first time in your family line is a unique experience like no other,” Chin, a rising senior, told the Daily in an email. “It’s an opportunity, [a] responsibility and I would argue even a privilege of both the TCU Senate and the Tufts Administration to make that trailblazing less hard.”

16 tuftsdaily.com

Features

The Institute for Global Leadership: A year in transition

Rainbow House 2016-2017 On Queer

On protest, on police

by Jessie Newman

Assistant Features Editor

Last year, the Institute for Global Leadership (IGL) celebrated its 30th anniversary and the retirement of Sherman Teichman, the founding director of the IGL. The IGL, which encompasses several different programs, research opportunities and courses, is most known for its year-long colloquium, Education for Public Inquiry and International Citizenship (EPIIC).

EPIIC is constructed in an unconventional manner with a focus on current geopolitical issues, and it has traditionally been run by the director of the IGL. However, with Teichman’s absence, the IGL has been in transition for the past year.

Ulrich Schlie served as the interim IGL director last semester, teaching the 2016-2017 EPIIC course, but he ended up leaving before the end of last semester.

Rising junior Paulina Jedrzejowski, who took EPIIC during the 2015-2016 school year, spoke to some of the confusion that took place when this occurred. “[Schlie] left because he was not totally intertwined with the Institute, and he wanted to direct it in the way that he wanted to direct it and not [the] way that it has been run for 30 years,” Jedrzejowski said.

Jedrzejowski explained that as a result of Schlie’s abrupt departure, the bulk of the weight of the program fell on the shoulders of Associate Director Heather Barry and Program Coordinator Jacob Throwe.

“Because only two people were in charge of what in previous years had been [run by] five people, we, the people who had taken the class the year before, felt bad because we could see that these people were overworked,” Jedrzejowski said.

Manuel Muñiz, professor of the practice at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, said that he was contacted in November by Provost and Senior Vice President David Harris about teaching the spring semester of EPIIC. After a series of conversations between Muñiz, Harris and the search committee, Muñiz was then brought on as the EPIIC instructor for the spring to replace Schlie.

Muñiz ended up changing the original topic of the course from the previous semester.

“I built my own syllabus for the spring term based on the coursework from the fall but shifted and narrowed down the topic to populism,” Muñiz said. “[We focused on] the rise of populism: Brexit, Trump and the erosion of the liberal order.”

Muñiz’s course was heavily supplemented by guest lecturers.

“We are constantly bringing in guest speakers because these topics are so expansive and diverse,” he said. “It is impossible to cover all of this from one perspective, so you need philosophers, anthropologists, economists, political scientists and international relations specialists. I think that is what makes the course so experimental and interdisciplinary.”

Muñiz spoke to the complexity and relevance of the reformed course topic.

Sunday, May 21, 2017

M

SEOHYUN SHIM / THE TUFTS DAILY

EPIIC keynote speakers, Ambassador Nicholas Burns and New York Times Senior Correspondent David Sanger, discuss the future of American politics on Feb. 25 in Cabot ASEAN Auditorium.

“If you look out at the world, we have this puzzle,” he said. “On the one hand, we have never been so prosperous, from income per capita to GDP and literacy.

And on the other hand, we have fractures emerging, and we are electing these leaders that come with an agenda to break the systems. The big question is why this is occurring.”

Throughout the semester, Muñiz and his students analyzed the growing prevalence of identity politics, the role of social media and heated debates about media and communications. They also explored how the world economic system and globalization have shaped populism, as well as the impact of technology on the American middle class.

The second half of the semester, however, looked at populism in different regions of the world.

“One of our lecturers, Juan Corvalán, came from Paris and [discussed] comparative perspectives on populism in Latin America: what happened in Argentina and Venezuela, and how can we compare this with what is happening in the United States and Europe,” he said.

In his time with the IGL, Muñiz has been struck by its uniqueness as an institution.

“It was a real discovery to find a place where these topical issues are chosen and deeply studied each year from a very interdisciplinary perspective,” he said.

Jedrzejowski said that the appointment of Muñiz as an interim professor for EPIIC improved the quality of the course in the spring.

“This year’s class said that they did not get out of it what the previous classes had gotten out of it, but the addition of Muñiz made things much better,” she said. “The EPIIC symposium ran really well, so it all worked out in the end.”

On April 20, Harris announced the appointment of Abi Williams (F ’86, F ’87) as the new director of the IGL and professor of the practice at Fletcher. An alumnus of EPIIC, Williams is current-

ly finishing his four-year term as the first President of The Hague Institute for Global Justice.

After graduating from Fletcher in 1987, Williams maintained close ties with Tufts and the IGL, speaking at the EPIIC symposium in 2012. He began serving on the IGL advisory board that same year.

In addition, Williams said he has helped provide internship opportunities for IGL students at the different organizations where he has worked.

“I think it is very important for IGL students to complement what they are learning at Tufts,” he said. “As president of the Hague Institute for Global Justice, I established a special internship program which provided an opportunity for an IGL student to intern at the Institute.”

Williams believes that his experience working at the United Nations, in academia and at think tanks will be invaluable in his work running the IGL and its various programs and initiatives.

“One thing that I had to do with The Hague Institute was to come up with a very bold vision on areas such as conflict prevention, law and global governance, which will be very important for IGL,” Williams said. “I also think that my experience … in strategic planning will be relevant in developing and executing strategic plans for IGL.” While no final decisions have been made regarding the topic of the course for the 2017-2018 school year, Williams emphasized the importance of addressing a topic that will engage a wide variety of students. He added that he would like to talk to students and faculty on campus before announcing the subject.

However, Williams is considering three particular subjects: another topic related to the rise of populism, international migration or the prevention of genocide and other mass atrocities.

“Any of those three will engage students, engage faculty and engage Tufts,” Williams said.

Photos opposite, clockwhise from top-right: Camille Jackson poses for a photo at the Memorial Steps on April 18 (Ray Bernoff / The Tufts Daily). Students practice mental mindfulness by taking a break from studying to do yoga in Hill Hall on Feb. 7 (Rachael Meyer / The Tufts Daily). Tufts Director of Community Standards Kevin Kraft poses in Tisch Library on March 3 (Vintus Okonkwo / The Tufts Daily). Lucy the dog watches the regatta hosted by Boston University on April 16 (Ray Bernoff / The Tufts Daily). Rising junior Cody Eaton adjusts the soundboard during the 10 p.m. radio show he co-hosts with classmate Noah Adler in the WMFO studio in Curtis Hall on April 4 (Rachael Meyer, The Tufts Daily). Rising junior Abigail Schmidt poses for a portrait on the stairs outside Tisch Library on April 17 (Ray Bernoff / The Tufts Daily). A student builds a snowman on the President’s Lawn during the snow day on March 14 (Seohyun Shim / The Tufts Daily).

onday, May 1 marked May Day 2017. May Day has for a long time played a strange, dual role in Western society. Some people view it as a celebration of spring, with maypoles and flower festivals. For others, it is International Workers’ Day. This day of dedication and protest has existed since 1886, when Chicago factory workers joined an ongoing strike en masse. This strike continued peacefully until the infamous Haymarket Massacre of May 4, 1886. Since then, workers, socialists, communists and other leftist workers’ rights groups have organized and marched yearly to defend the rights of the working class.

So what does this have to do with queer issues, let alone Queer Issues (big Q, big I)?

The answer is: a lot. Perhaps everything.

Let’s start with the entanglement of queer identity and working class status. Being queer presents barriers to economic mobility. Pay gaps exist, hiring is discriminatory (even in cases when it is not legally allowed to be) and constant social messaging tells us that we are not supposed to be in positions of power. As a result, many queer and trans people exist in the working class, both in traditional and alternative industries. Securing rights for the working class means securing rights for LGBTQ+ people.

This year, I was lucky enough to be able to attend a May Day workers’ march in downtown Boston. As we marched from the gazebo on Boston Common to Copley Square, many protesters carried signs highlighting police violence against people — mostly of color and mostly working class — that has plagued the United States for decades and has recently received a national spotlight. Chants at the march included, “One, two, three, four, America was never great! Five, six, seven, eight, organize and smash the state!” A variety of chants also highlighted the abuses of power by police forces against vulnerable populations.

The catch? The march was escorted by a Boston Police Department unit. The organizers of the march had, as most organizers of dedicated events do, contacted local police ahead of time to notify them of the planned route of the march. This allowed the BPD to effectively shut down streets, redirect traffic and ensure minimal disruption to the normal operation of the city. This escort also served as a security force. Had there been any perceived threat of violence from marchers or outside perpetrators, I have no doubt that the police would have reacted swiftly to quell a riot, whatever the cost.

Queer people, trans people, poor people, people of color and people of all other marginalized identities know that the police are not our friends. We know that the police are a force of white supremacy, of oppression and bigotry. At the same time, we invite them to monitor our protests, for to not do so would be to incur their violence more directly than we already do by existing. If protest is meant to be disruptive, can we be truly disruptive and make our voices heard while always operating under the watchful eye of a militarized police force? I don’t have answers. I can only remind everyone to ask the right questions.

This article was written by an anonymous member of the Rainbow House. They can be reached at rhousecolumn@gmail.com.

F e a t u res

Sunday, May 21, 2017 | Features | THE TUFTS DAILY

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THE TUFTS DAILY | Features | Sunday, May 21, 2017

tuftsdaily.com

Rebecca Redelmeier Tufts by Numbers

METCO and the desegregation of Boston public schools through the years

What data knows

by Jessie Newman

D

igging through data this semester, I tried to expose stories that can usually only be found buried under covers of complex databases and meaningless numbers. By parsing data on topics like college tuition cost, class waiting lists and the illusive Tufts snow day, I hope that I provided an opportunity for readers to parse through a greater understanding of their own world. But, over the course of the semester, I have overlooked perhaps the most important data mine of them all: ourselves.

In our modern technology-driven environment, each command that we make on our phones and computers is tracked in databases around the globe. And, more importantly, this data doesn’t then just sit in the databases. Instead, it is used to fuel the content, interfaces and advertisements that we see on our screens and push computing capability even further.

Didn’t realize the huge role you play in data science? See how you feel after asking Google to tell you a little bit about yourself. Feeding google.com/ads/preferences into your search bar will return what Google believes to be your age, gender and interests. These qualifiers come from Google’s machine learning algorithm – a complicated data science term used to indicate a system that develops as it is fed more information, such as search queries – that tracks your Google searches and visits to sites that are part of Google’s ad network.

You can even find Google’s stash of all your past queries if you look hard enough. When signed into a Google account, accessing google. com/myactivity returns all of your past Google searches. Search for too many cat memes at home? The public might never know, but Google sure does. Computers and data algorithms also learn how to mimic human behavior and skills from human-provided data. In a recent project by Quartz, a computer algorithm was fed thousands of pages of human-written love stories to see if it could write its own. After being fed the prompt, “I loved him…,” the computer experienced a few hiccups, but managed to spit out the semi-coherent sentence, “I loved him for the weekend as well, and I drank apple martini ingredients like hummingbird saliva or snake testicles.” Sure, it’s not a completely articulate love story, but it’s eerily closer to the love that we expect our computers to be able to understand.

The massive amount of data on each and every one of us that is collected and used daily shows how significant understanding data really is. When companies and algorithms are using our every key stroke to learn and grow, shouldn’t we able to easily use data for the same purposes as well? Each week in this column, I have tried to help fulfill exactly that human need – to learn, grow and develop from intricate sets of numbers.

Rebecca Redelmeier is a rising junior majoring in English. Rebecca can be reached at rebecca.redelmeier@tufts. edu.

Assistant Features Editor

Disclaimer: Caleb Symons is a sports staff writer for the Daily. He was not involved in the writing of this article.

While the Jim Crow era will forever be etched into American history of the South, the racial segregation prevalent in Boston public schools has received far less attention on the national and international scale. Though Massachusetts prohibited school segregation in 1855 — nearly a century before the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling that ended de jure segregation in public schools nationwide — ‘racial imbalances’ in Boston public schools were a matter of contention in the postwar decades and continue to persist to this day.

Senior Lecturer in the Department of Education Steven Cohen grew up in Boston and has been a teacher and professor in the Boston area for over 35 years. He reflected on the Boston area’s many responses to rampant segregation in schools, one of which was the Racial Imbalance Act (RIA) of 1965.

“By 1965, [Boston] had more than 45 schools that were considered racially imbalanced,” Cohen said. “A school is considered racially imbalanced when more than 50 percent of the population are students of color.”

The RIA once again outlawed segregation in Massachusetts public schools, but little action was taken to reverse the racial imbalances in public schools, largely due to racial segregation within neighborhoods and housing districts. By 1970, there were actually more racially imbalanced schools in Boston than there were before the passing of the RIA — around 70, according to Cohen.

In order to actualize the goals of the RIA, the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO) was founded in 1966.

This voluntary program provides opportunities for Boston-area children in racially imbalanced school districts or children in isolated suburban schools to attend integrated public schools in the region.

When METCO was first established, it served 300 Boston students, according to Cohen. Today, it works with more than 3,300 students from Boston and Springfield, Mass., but it is difficult to get into due to its limited size and resources.

Nakia Keizer (G ’02) is a METCO alumnus who now teaches at Mission Hill School in Boston. He participated in METCO from ninth through 12th grade at Concord-Carlisle High School. Living in the South Boston/ Roxbury area, Keizer would have gone to Cathedral High School or Charlestown High School in Boston if not for his involvement in METCO. Keizer said that his experience participating in METCO was positive overall, partly because of his status as a student athlete.

“I was at the school two weeks before any other freshmen, because I had hell week for football,” Keizer, who played both basketball and football while at Concord-Carlisle High, said. “So I had an automatic builtin infrastructure of peers, centered around something that I loved, and that gave me an advantage over some of my METCO peers.”

He explained that attending school in a neighborhood far from where he lived created some difficulties for him. “[There were] internal difficulties of not having a base at home in the Boston area and not establishing friends [there] because I spent so much time in Concord,” Keizer said.

Despite feeling close to his teammates in Concord, Keizer said he still felt like he was a visitor there. In some ways, he felt like a visitor in his own home as well. However, spending time away from his home made him appreciate where he came from.

RAY BERNOFF / THE TUFTS DAILY

After dropping off students, Boston Public Schools buses park in the school bus lot in Dorchester on May 9 to await the next school day.

“I grew up in a diverse community of black, white and brown people of many different cultures who were … connected by their socio-economic class,” he said. “I would not want to [have traded] having grown up in Roxbury and South End, even during a time period where there was high gang violence, for Concord-Carlisle.”

Cohen noted that many students from Boston see METCO as an opportunity to move beyond their local public schools and neighborhoods.

“METCO is very popular in Boston because [students] think it is their chance,” he said. “Many said that even though it was hard, it was worth it because the education was good. They often said that they learned how to code-switch and how to make it in a white world.”

The most valuable aspect of the METCO program for Keizer was the “social learning” it provided.

“For me, learning and talking with white men, learning the ways of wealthy white men and seeing what those conversations looked like really gave me an inside view of who runs the country,” he said. “The social capital that I was able to pick up really helped me more than any specific program within METCO.” However, Cohen believes the program is lacking in scale and effectiveness. For example, he explained that METCO can have negative impacts on lower-performing schools that lose some of their most motivated students to the program.

“METCO is bigger symbolically than in reality, because 3,300 kids is really not that many,” he said. “For many Boston teachers, METCO is something that they are sad about because it takes 3,300 kids who would be model students … If you had those 3,300 kids spread out among Boston schools, they would probably make a difference.”

First-year Caleb Symons and his family currently host a METCO student in their home in Concord, Mass. The student commutes to Concord-Carlisle but lives elsewhere, with Symons’ family’s home serving as a base for the student when he is in Concord.

While METCO has been a positive experience for both Symons’ family and their host student, Symons said that METCO students often have to deal with an intense daily commute. “[Our host student] talks about how long the commutes are and how he has to get up at 4, 4:30 a.m. to catch the bus or the train and he does not get home until 8, 9, 10 at night,” he said. “While METCO opens up a lot of opportunities, it’s a lot of sacrifice as well.”

Cohen emphasized that for some, the METCO program is not entirely positive, as they sometimes face prejudices at the schools they attend.

“I have had students who were in METCO, came to Tufts and still felt like outcasts in some way,” he said. “I had a student who I taught in Boston 25 years ago, and I showed [to her] class a film on the Little Rock Nine … She said that watching that video [reminded her of her] experiences at Lexington High School. That comment made

a big impression on the people in that room, and it was not what we expected to hear.”

Keizer now has a daughter in fifth grade.

Though he has considered whether METCO would be a good program for her, he also recognizes its limitations and the fact that it does not work well for every student.

“I always wonder about kids losing aspects of their culture by going into METCO so young,” Keizer said. “For lack of better words, [METCO students] need to be able to play the game, express themselves and advocate for themselves.”

History and legacy of busing While METCO is a tool of voluntary desegregation, the 1974 district court decision Morgan v. Hennigan created a mandatory “busing” system in Boston within the area’s public schools. This decision forced students to attend schools outside of their neighborhoods to reduce racial imbalances in schools.

Cohen explained that Judge Wendell Arthur Garrity, Jr.’s 1974 ruling was met with a lot of resistance, some of which turned violent in the years following the court decision, especially in historically white, working-class communities.

“When the busing came around, Charlestown and South Boston did not react well,” Cohen said. “It was violent, it was ugly and it was mean. It had huge ramifications. It was a very ugly time in the city.”

Cohen explained that some white South Boston residents directly threatened the lives of black students who began attending their schools.

“There were times that black children were not allowed out for recess because it was not safe for them in the school yard and people would throw rocks at them,” he said.

Garrity’s desegregation plan was also met with resistance from government leaders in Boston, according to Cohen.

“Most leaders [in] Boston turned away from desegregation,” Cohen said. “Politicians had to deal with it, and the poor [of South Boston and Roxbury] had to deal with it.”

Despite the resistance, Cohen believed that Garrity’s decision was sound, even if the implementation of busing was controversial.

“The Boston School Committee in their own records made it very clear … They wanted to keep black and white children separate as much as possible, and when Judge Garrity made the decision in 1974, no one could say that the decision was wrong,” he said. “The Boston School Committee had cheated, and they had failed to do anything to take care of the [RIA].”

However, most schools in Boston remain racially imbalanced, largely because the decision did not target all of the schools and neighborhoods it needed to and because the ruling was not supported or assisted by affluent and powerful people in Boston.

Cohen added that white flight — the moving of white residents to the suburbs — also contributed to the mixed results of the forced busing effort in Boston.

Cohen said that even today, most schools in Boston are still racially imbalanced, and much of the legacy of desegregation lives on.

F e a t u res MJ Griego Mind the Gap

Community as sustainability

Sunday, May 21, 2017 | Features | THE TUFTS DAILY

Mellon Sawyer Seminars push new way of thinking about the humanities

MJ Griego is a rising senior majoring in sociology. MJ can be reached at madeline. griego@tufts.edu.

Alec Whipple Red, White and True

What does the future hold?

“N

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his spring break, I was incredibly fortunate to visit Twin Oaks Intentional Community as well as other local intentional communities, for the week. Twin Oaks is an income and resource-sharing community in Virginia of 100 people that has existed since 1967. Residents each work 42 hours per week. Unlike capitalist work systems, domestic labor and more count toward this total: cleaning, cooking, shopping, laundry, etc. Labor that you would do yourself in addition to a traditional job is internalized, meaning you can just show up to lunch or dinner and have food waiting for you, or just drop your laundry off for the assigned person to wash.

We were then invited to come tour Acorn and Cambia (offshoot communities of Twin Oaks) as well as Living Energy Farm (another small community committed to engineering comfortable living conditions without the use of fossil fuels). Over the course of five days, we were told about the functions of all these communities and learned about the systems they employ to solve problems. A charismatic resident, Paxus, gave us the tour of Twin Oaks. He explained that to know that a system is working, you must look at the troublemakers (he admitted he was one). An example was the car-sharing system: 17 vehicles for 100 residents’ transportation needs. He said that, even when he went to request a vehicle last-minute, in his many years living at Twin Oaks he had only not been able to receive one a few times. This means that the system works for the whole community to provide resources even last-minute. The community shares cars, buildings (everyone gets a personal room in a shared space), clothing and more. As a result, Twin Oaks residents use 65 percent less gasoline, 73 percent less electricity and 76 percent less natural gas than the average American consumer.

Through our trip, we learned a lot about how sharing resources both maximizes energy efficiency and fosters healthy communities. This kind of resource-sharing is hard given our society’s standard ideologies: Having private property and large amounts of private space is valued.

Sharing resources in our society is framed as a loss of property. Letting people borrow a valuable item is tinged with stress; we feel as a society that we need access to possessions at all times when we rarely or never use most of our possessions. There is a general sense of wariness and distrust when it comes to letting people borrow things. We treat lending as a huge favor, when most of the time we wouldn’t be using the given item in the first place.

Sharing space and possessions, a tenet of communal living, functions in many ways to create healthy and sustainable communities. It encourages reevaluating what possessions mean to us and why, and in that process, it heavily reduces our carbon footprints by pooling resources. It also deepens our sense of trust with others and our sense of community. When we acclimate ourselves to using physical items as means to an end as opposed to an end within itself, we ensure the practical value of them. When we share responsibilities and possessions, we can create economically and ecologically sustainable communities in which trust is reinforced.

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NICHOLAS PFOSI / THE TUFTS DAILY

Director of the Center for the Humanties at Tufts Lisa Lowe, middle, organized the Mellon Sawyer Seminars in Comparative Humanities with Kris Manjapra, associate professor of history, right, and Kamran Rastegar, associate professor of Arabic and comparative literature, left.

by Yaa Kankam-Nantwi Contributing writer

Starting in September 2016, the Center for the Humanities at Tufts began to host a series of Mellon Sawyer Seminars in Comparative Humanities. These twice-monthly seminars brought visiting scholars to campus to give lectures and lead discussions among faculty, postdoctoral fellows and graduate students about the scholars’ works.

Lisa Lowe, directior of the Center for the Humanities and distinguished professor of English, organized these seminars with the help of Kris Manjapra, associate professor of history, and Kamran Rastegar, associate professor of Arabic and comparative literature.

Funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the seminars hosted speakers on topics ranging from ‘The Social Life of DNA’ to ‘Plantation Dispossession and the Futures of Black Embodiment.’ Most famously, the acclaimed theorist Judith Butler delivered a lecture on ‘The Politics of Human Rights.’

According to Manjapra, the seminar series hopes to look critically at the very foundation of the humanities by questioning categories of comparison and the concept of humanity itself.

“We unsettled this category through the study of colonialism, of race and racialization, gender, feminist and post-colonial perspectives; those are ways in which the study of the human has been destabilized in the humanities. To study the humanities means to think critically about the category of the human, it means to unsettle and re-imagine how we think of human,” he said.

The seminars seek to create a space within the study of humanities for new questions to be unpacked, according to Manjapra.

“Tufts University is a very exciting center and hub in the area of Boston and New England for this kind of inquiry,” Manjapra said. “Not only was it bringing new questions about the humanities, but it was also a project of exposing the innovative and interdisciplinary scholarship already here on campus.”

Manjapra said that the seminar series presents an opportunity for collaboration within the humanities at Tufts in the same way that interdisciplinary departments on campus such as Consortium of Studies in Race, Colonialism and Diaspora already do.

Speaking to this, Lowe cited the nature of humanities to focus on a single region or conceptual tradition as opposed to considering intersections or ideas of exchanges and encounters.

“Cultures are not separate or boundless or autonomous but are interconnected over the years,” Lowe said. “We need interdisciplinary study to frame these new ways of thinking so that we’re not simply thinking of history or another discipline but doing it together.”

She added that this allows for the individual person, society or culture to be studied using global frameworks that elucidate long-standing connections which can be built upon or learnt from in turn.

Also central to the project’s aims of rethinking the course of the study of humanities was reconsidering archives as parameters of knowledge production.

“The archive is reading traditional sources in a new way or constituting new archives that haven’t been recorded before, like family archives, sub-cultural archives and even dance, performance, music, artwork … or how the body might be an archive,” Lowe said.

Echoing this sentiment, rising junior and frequent seminar attendee Ria Mazumdar said the seminars taught her about the continued relevance of history in the present day.

“This series has indicated the contemporary relevance of many issues that are seen as ‘historical,’ such as slavery. This is tremendously important because we ought [to] situate ourselves in a historical context without losing sight of the fact that oppressive forces and historical structures have not vanished. We must grapple with them, and must not shy away from very difficult questions,” Mazumdar said.

According to Mazumdar, the interdisciplinary nature of the seminars also helped draw in all kinds of students.

“During the Judith Butler talk, I saw several students majoring in subjects ranging from philosophy to political science to psychology,” she said. “The humanities, and the critical questions that accompany such studies, apply directly to our lives and our academics, regardless of who we are. I hope that the series can spark more discussion and dialogue on the Tufts campus, and bring together the ‘non-humanities people’ to talk about hugely relevant topics.”

In the future, the seminars will no longer be funded by the previous grant and will happen less frequently.

Lowe said she hopes that in the upcoming year, the series can continue with a bimonthly discussion group and with additional visiting scholars under the direction of the Center for Humanities.

“What we really hope to do following this year is to continue the conversation and bring in additional visitors and using the same format,” Lowe said.

ever make predictions, especially about the future.”

– Casey Stengel It has certainly been a crazy year in the political world. Those who study political science theories were perplexed as Donald Trump flipped the world on its head with his successful presidential campaign. So much has changed, and yet so much is still the same. Washington, D.C. still does not run efficiently or effectively. The candidate who captured the hearts and minds of the voters beat the candidate who could not run an effective messaging campaign. Although President Trump’s rhetoric is incendiary, he has been brought down to size by the scope of his office. We are only a little more than 100 days into his administration, but it has felt a lot longer than that. In the spirit of a sports column, let’s make some predictions for the next few years in this final edition of Red, White and True. Thank you all for reading and have a great summer!

1. President Trump will not be impeached.

This is something that has been bandied around quite a bit by opponents of the administration, but the logistics of impeachment are a lot more difficult than people realize. A supermajority of the Senate would have to vote on impeachment after the vote goes through the House. Getting a simple majority, much less a supermajority, of senators to do anything is a challenge. Trump’s impeachment is more likely if Democrats take back the House in 2018, but finding a constitutional reason to impeach and then successfully doing so is an extremely tall task.

2. Democrats will amass significant gains in the House but still fail to hold a majority after the 2018 midterms.

This one is a numbers game. In the Senate, there just aren’t enough seats for the Democrats to win in order to take back control of the body, as they will be trying to hold onto many of their own seats rather than go on the offensive. In the House, Democrats need a gain of 24 seats for control. A sitting president’s party always does worse in midterm elections, but Democrats just don’t have a coherent message or fundraising operation to pick up 24 seats. The special elections in Kansas and Georgia illustrated exactly that.

3. Despite being the sitting president, Trump will not escape the 2020 election season without a primary challenge.

This is an extremely bold prediction, but so much of this man’s political career has broken orthodoxy that it would not be a surprise to see a Republican primary challenger to an incumbent president, especially if Trump cannot unite the party in any way. Someone like Ted Cruz might see an opportunity to strike instead of waiting down the line when there might not be a chance to run again.

4. An independent candidate will have an extremely successful 2020 election season.

I’m not talking about Gary Johnson or Jill Stein. I’m talking about a completely independent candidate with no political party backing whatsoever. Two names come to mind: Mark Zuckerberg and Mark Cuban. Both are wealthy men with high ambitions and a common interest in taking down Trump. Maybe they will team up and create a superpower independent ticket. After this election, nothing can be counted out!

Alec Whipple is a rising junior majoring in political science. Alec can be reached at alec.whipple@tufts.edu.

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THE TUFTS DAILY | Features | Sunday, May 21, 2017

Class of 2017 Senior Profiles

COURTESY KOFI ASANTE

Kofi Asante In four short years, graduating senior Kofi Asante has launched a branch of a startup in Boston, organized the recent Voices of the Hill event and even started his own company out of his first-year dorm room.

The company came out of Asante and his friends’ desires to know about social events happening on campus and in the surrounding area.

“When I was a freshman, a group of students and I were trying to solve a problem,” Asante said. “We were trying to figure out what’s happening tonight, trying to figure out where the parties, shows, concerts were.”

To remedy this, they created an app, Evoqe, that allowed students to both find local events and get exclusive deals from local businesses on one platform. However, creating a successful app proved to be quite a time commitment.

Drew Latimer Graduating senior Drew Latimer may be a Greek and Latin major, but he has also been taking many different courses outside of the Department of Classics. Having been a member of the Tufts Debate Society since his first year at, Latimer has worked to broaden his knowledge base while in college through both the wide variety of courses he has taken and his participation in debates.

Most college students don’t do readings for classes they aren’t enrolled in. But Latimer knew that his friends’ political science and economics readings contained material that could help him in his next debate.

“I would do a lot of the readings that my friends were doing to try to keep up and really just suck out the things that would be useful for debate,” he said.

Latimer, who grew up on a former pickle farm in rural North Carolina, has participated in 78 debates over his four years at Tufts. He helped Tufts win the United States Universities Debate Association Championship last year for the first time in history, which he points to as one of his proudest accomplishments.

Another one of Latimer’s debate highlights happened earlier this year, when he got the chance to debate alongside his younger brother at a tournament at Northeastern University.

“My brother goes to [the University of North Carolina at] Chapel Hill and there’s a tournament where one partner

“That experience changed me a lot,” Asante said.

“We just weren’t sleeping. We were missing classes and meeting with different business partners and building this thing out of our dorm in Bush Hall.”

While Asante said he loved the work he put into Evoqe, he noted that it wasn’t easy balancing the life of a college student with the full-time job of running a business.

“It’s hard, it’s very hard,” he said. “If it doesn’t keep you up at night, I don’t think that you can do it.”

After moving on from Evoqe, Asante began work with a company called Tabbed Out, which runs a mobile app that allows users to pay their restaurant or bar checks from their phone.

“I worked with the CEO [of Tabbed Out] over the summer and they asked me to launch a branch in Boston, so I spent part of my sophomore and junior year launching it here,” Asante said.

Asante also spent time working with JP Morgan Chase and will move to San Francisco to work with Uber after he graduates.

However, he stressed that his successes were not without their own share of failures along the road.

“I’ve been rejected from 30 different companies, I’ve been rejected by over 100 different businesses when I was trying to pitch our startup,” Asante said. “It looks good on the surface, these names or when you go to these companies or do these things, but there’s so much failure in between.”

This spring, Asante organized Voices of the Hill, an

event that showcased personal student monologues. He explained that the political polarization on campus following the presidential election inspired him to create this type of event.

“I was talking with my good friends Cyrus [Mahini] and Khuyen [Bui] around the time of the election, and we were frustrated with how polarizing a lot of things have become,” Asante said.

The event was meant to foster listening across the Tufts community, with its theme of “The Gap” reflecting Asante’s desire to help students better understand each other.

“Really, the goal was not to have this just be two hours for people to talk about different perspectives and validate each other but for that to spark and be a catalyst for dialogue in the future,” he said.

Citing the success of Voices of the Hill, Asante expressed optimism for the future of Tufts as a place that will continue to support diverse opinions, beliefs and experiences.

“I believe that this campus is positioned to where we can be a model for a lot of other communities for how we take care of each other and validate each other,” he said.

Looking back on his college career, Asante stressed that the people he met at Tufts greatly shaped the experience.

“I’m going to miss being in an environment that just takes care of you,” he said. “I’ve felt so loved here.”

—by Fina Short

on the team has to be a freshman and one partner is older, and he and I won that tournament together this year,” he said. “That was really cool.”

Latimer also serves as chair of the Equal Opportunity Facilitator Committee for the American Parliamentary Debate Association and served as an equity officer for the Association last year. In these roles, Latimer has worked to make debate more accessible for people of all backgrounds.

“We made it a norm [in] the league for people to put their gender pronouns up next to their name … giving briefings before tournaments, reminding people to be sensitive when they talk about touchy issues … [and] giving people anonymous complaint forms to fill out if they’ve experienced a bias incident,” he said.

Latimer said that one of his favorite parts of the debate team is training new debaters each year.

“It’s kind of like Pokémon a little bit, where you meet them, try to see what they’re good at and what they need help with and then … train them to get good at certain things,” he said. “You make really great friendships with some of the younger people on the team doing that.”

Latimer is thankful for the people he has met through debate, both at Tufts and at other schools in the area.

“The debate community, especially among the schools in Boston … has became really important for me,” he said.

Upon graduation, Latimer will enroll in UCLA’s Ph.D. program for classics, where he will be living with a fellow

debater who is graduating from Brandeis. A member of the honorary society for classical studies Eta Sigma Phi, Latimer said that he was drawn to UCLA’s classics program because of its emphasis on digital humanities, which he sees as a major component of the field’s future.

He cited computational linguistics, which looks at languages from a computational perspective, as one of the new directions that the field is taking.

“I think that the future of classics is … answering questions that can’t be answered by people poring over books, because that’s pretty much been done by this point. The books haven’t changed,” Latimer said. “And UCLA is a really forward-looking place.”

—by Becca Leibowitz

Neli Tsereteli When Neli Tsereteli was applying to colleges as a student in the Republic of Georgia, she knew she wanted to attend school abroad. After a Google search and some online research, she found her way to Tufts.

Tsereteli said that, although there is now another Georgian student at Tufts, she was the first student from Georgia to attend the university for some years.

“I think I was the first student since the 1990s,” Tsereteli said. “They still had an old government flag when I came in and I remember being very sad about that.”

As the only Georgian student at Tufts, Tsereteli initially experienced homesickness and culture shock.

“I felt very homesick, and I really wanted to talk to someone in Georgian, and I think that’s what I really missed the most,” she said. “Freshman year, every other weekend, I actually went to New York City to visit my best friend.”

This was one of the ways that she tried to mentally adjust to such a different setting from her home.

“I came here all alone. I had never seen the campus before,” Tsereteli said. “I came here at night; I had to go to TUPD to pick up my keys, so everything was so surreal looking back.”

Over time, Tsereteli felt more comfortable at Tufts and began to identify with groups outside of her Georgian identity.

“When I came here, Georgia was such a big part of my identity,” Tsereteli said. “[For pre-orientation], we had to

tuftsdaily.com

SEOHYUN SHIM / THE TUFTS DAILY

make this chart, and basically it was a circle, and you had to divide your identities. And then they gave the chart back to us several months after, and I was shocked to look at it. It was like 50 percent of the whole circle was Georgian.”

Her identity and view of herself has since changed radically.

“I wouldn’t divide the circle like that anymore,” she said.

As she tried to find a home at Tufts, Tsereteli became involved with the international community. She believes that this helped fill the gap she initially felt after leaving home.

As a first-year, she participated in International Orientation, and then served as a host advisor for the program, now known as Global Orientation, for two years.

Additionally, Tsereteli has worked at the International Center since the end of her first year at Tufts, formerly lived in the International House and is on the executive board of International Club. “[The international community] kind of kept me ground-

SOFIE HECHT / THE TUFTS DAILY

ed, I think, and that’s why I’ve decided to give it back,” she said. “I feel very comfortable in the community, and I wanted to use that position of mine to make others feel comfortable in it, too.”

Tsereteli is double-majoring in cognitive and brain sciences and community health and minoring in child study and human development. Over the course of her Tufts career, Tsereteli has taken a total of 40 courses.

“I think [my degrees] kind of compliment each other, even though you wouldn’t think so,” she said. “I also enjoyed it because … both of my majors are very interdisciplinary, so I ended up taking a lot of classes through a lot of different departments and got to know a lot of departments, a lot of professors.”

Next year, Tsereteli will be enrolled at Lund University in Sweden to pursue a Master’s of Public Health degree.

Though she is moving on from Tufts, she will retain many fond memories, especially of the international community, which she described as the highlight of her Tufts experience.

“I think in general, the [international] community is an inseparable part of me,” she said. “[In] every person, every little conversation, every little hug, or every little remark, you find a common thing. Even something like, ‘You think in Celsius too,’ something like that. Every little dinner, discussion, … all of it makes me smile now too, because it’s associated with so much positivity for me.”

—by Constantinos Angelakis

Sunday, May 21, 2017 | Features | THE TUFTS DAILY

F e a t u res Conor Ward As a dual-degree student at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) and the School of Arts and Sciences, graduating senior Conor Ward has spent much of his time at Tufts traveling between the Medford/Somerville and Fenway campuses. Out of everyone who Ward has known during his college experience, the person who has impacted him the most is the driver of the SMFA shuttle.

“I spent a lot of time [on] the SMFA shuttle, and the guy who drives every weekday morning is Darryl Walker,” Ward said. “He is the most positive light, and every morning he greets me with a fist bump and he is just beaming. A lot of people despise the shuttle, but he makes it as enjoyable as he can.”

Ward is graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering psychology and a bachelor of arts degree in studio art, with a concentration in sculpture, graphic design and installation. The San Francisco native is glad to have been a part of multiple communities during his undergraduate career, and spoke about the differences between the SMFA and the Medford/Somerville campus.

“The friends that I have made at the SMFA are quite different than your average Tufts student,” he said.

“They really do have a different way of interacting with the world, and to be a part of two student bodies has been very interesting.”

Attending the SMFA has provided Ward with a unique outlet to express himself. “[The SMFA] has given me perspective on my own

ways of operating,” he said. “I love the facilities, and there are some really awesome professors. It is a refuge where I am largely undistracted, and it is very healthy for me to be alone for periods of time where I do not have to worry about being interrupted.”

Due to his background in studio art, sculpture and graphic design, Ward has been able to contribute extensively to the Crafts Center, a student-run art studio and maker space. He served as one of the student managers of the center for the past two years.

Ward said that one of his greatest accomplishments at Tufts was his role in increasing the collaborative efforts and accessibility of the Crafts Center.

“I’ve been able to transform Crafts Center into a more functional and open space for the Tufts community, as well as bring several local artists in to teach workshops to students,” he said.

Ward is also proud to have been able to put on several successful art shows for the Tufts community. One show, organized in collaboration with Active Minds at Tufts, focused around the role that art plays in wellness.

Another was the Craft Center’s themeless spring 2017 art show, which showcased the work of both students and staff.

Throughout his five years at Tufts, Ward believes that he has changed and grown significantly.

“I am a lot more confident, and I’ve definitely had a lot of successes,” he said. “I’ve also been able to contribute to many different communities at Tufts, and I am much more aware of my position in society. I feel a lot more in-tune with issues, within our country and our world.”

As for the future, Ward is planning on taking a

Isha Patnaik Whether writing and performing sketch and stand-up comedy for Tufts comedy groups or working to make the community a better place through service work, graduating senior Isha Patnaik works toward fostering inclusivity and engagement.

Patnaik grew up in the Bay Area as the daughter of Indian immigrants. She was surrounded by a primarily Asian community and attended a high school where 80 percent of students were Asian. Patnaik described her high school education as a stressful, “toxic” environment in which the curriculum focused primarily on math and science.

During high school, she struck a balance between STEM fields and the arts, working on her writing and photography while indulging her mother’s hopes for her to become an engineer. At Tufts, she confronted her Indian-American identity head on, she said.

“I came to Tufts, and I was … shocked by how many white people there are here, [and] was really hesitant to join cultural groups because that’s something that I thought would make me feel different. Retrospectively, I wish I had been more involved with Asian-American activism and community building throughout my time here,” Patnaik said.

Despite her initial worries about being different, Patnaik channeled her Indian-American identity through comedy. Early in her comedy career, Patnaik made jokes about topics that were broadly relatable, but more recently, she has started writing about being a minority.

“Especially after the election, it felt imperative,” she said.

“I know there’s so much I don’t have control over in this world, and I think being able to do stand-up about oppression … helps me reclaim power.”

RAY BERNOFF / THE TUFTS DAILY

Tafari Duncan Tafari Duncan, an engineering student majoring in Computer Science from Hartford, Conn., has always been putting put a lot on his plate.

“I’ve involved myself in everything I could juggle,” he said.

“When I was graduating high school … I remember multiple teachers came up to me and said, ‘Tafari, you can’t be this involved in college or else you just won’t be able to get anything done,’ and I assume I’ve done my best to prove them wrong.”

Having moved often while growing up (he says he felt like a “third-culture” kid of the Tri-State area), Duncan says that his time at Tufts has been the longest he’s spent at a single

BEN KIM / THE TUFTS DAILY

Last year, Patnaik co-founded TFL — a campus space meant to honor and uplift women’s voices in comedy — which she says is her favorite accomplishment at Tufts. Together with Jehan Madhani (LA ‘16), and drawing from a Facebook page started by Aliza Small (LA ‘15), Patnaik formed the group in an effort to bring together women who performed stand-up and provide a network of support in an area traditionally dominated by white men.

Formerly known as Tufts Funny Ladies, the group’s name was changed to TFL to include femme-identifying and gender non-conforming individuals, according to Patnaik.

Patnaik said there is still work to be done — TFL is predominantly made up of white and affluent members. Still, she is confident in the group’s ability to stay diverse, inclusive and intentional.

As a coordinator of the FOCUS pre-orientation program in 2015 and a tutor for three years with the Leonard Carmichael Society, Patnik has also devoted herself to supporting students’ social and academic well-being. She said that FOCUS allowed her to immerse herself in meaningful volunteering. school, and he has done his best to make the most of that time here. In addition to working as a teaching assistant for the computer science department and leading campus tours, he rows with the crew team and is the head projectionist for Tufts University Social Collective Film Series.

Since his first semester, he’s also served on the Committee on Student Life (CSL), a panel made up of students and faculty whose duties include hearing appeals on disciplinary decisions like plagarism charges and working with the administration on forming policy.

“I knew, coming into Tufts, I wanted to do student government,” he said. “I actually emailed the TCU president over the summer to try to pry information from him about how student government worked at Tufts.”

Duncan said he came onto the CSL just as it was struggling to come to a consensus on overhauling its “justified departure” policy, a decision that had allowed campus religious groups to apply for an exemption from the Tufts Community Union Judiciary’s non-discrimination guidelines under certain circumstances. Though he was new to the community, he knew he wanted to be a part of the CSL’s response to the controversy.

“Everyone was angry about this specific policy and I knew nothing about it beforehand, but at the same point, I felt like as a first-year, it was important for me to [add my voice],” he said. “Sometimes it meant that I would literally be sitting opposite a faculty member who I had just met a week ago,

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RAY BERNOFF / THE TUFTS DAILY

road trip across the country to his hometown of San Francisco. He wants to continue using his artistic skills in all of his endeavors, and has many different ideas as to where he will apply his unique background.

For the incoming class of 2021, Ward had a few words of wisdom.

“Learn how and when to say no,” he said. “There is this plague at Tufts of overcommitment. Everyone I know succumbs to [a] socially motivated, peer pressured driven impulse to fill every single moment of our Google calendars. It really makes it so that the important things are the first to fall. If all your time is being given to extracurriculars, and none of it is going toward yourself, then you will regret it.”

Ward also encouraged Tufts students to find their inner child.

“Remember how to have fun, and ask your younger self how to have fun, because this school makes it difficult to have fun,” he said.

—by Hermes Suen “I think I spent most of my life on this path toward technology and spent a lot of time feeling like I’m going to work in tech someday, and I was like, ‘You know what? Let’s take a summer and explore something different,’” she said.

Patnik is grateful for the value of FOCUS in increasing her confidence on campus and, agency as a student who helps first-years acclimate and comfort with community building.

However, she has taken time to think critically about the potential ineffectiveness of Tufts students doing one day of volunteering during FOCUS and not maintaining that connection with the community long-term.

She has also been involved in various technological pursuits, from researching child development with Tufts’ Developmental Technologies (DevTech) Research Group to spending the summer as a user research intern at Airbnb.

After enjoying working with children through the DevTech Research Group, this summer she will channel her lab skills to work with social robotics company Jibo. The company is based in Boston, but Patnaik stressed her desire to return to the Bay Area someday and work in technology accessibility or with children.

“I wholly believe in the power of technology to bring good to people’s lives,” she said.

Patnaik also wants to continue writing and performing comedy, and she expressed gratitude to the Tufts community for encouraging her to cultivate this passion.

“I think it’s really incredible to have loved something like I loved comedy. To have loved [comedy] gives me faith that I will be able to do that in the future,” she said. “And I think I wouldn’t have been able to do that in another place. Tufts gave me the opportunity to appreciate and engage and care, which is something I’ll always carry with me.”

—by Elie Levine and I’d be like, ‘Well respectfully, sir, that’s not what students think.’”

Through working on the CSL, he ended up on the President’s Council for Diversity, and subsequently the search committee for the new Chief Diversity Officer, which hopes to make its decision soon.

Duncan says that whenever he sees an opportunity to have a seat at the table and effect change, he has a hard time not taking it.

“There are so many times when — not to say that I’m the person — but someone saying something different or someone pushing the conversation that has a different experience can just alter the way that something will go,” he said. “I really enjoy when… I know that because of something I said, a group or something was changed for the better. Whenever I see there’s an issue or something, I’m always just like, ‘if only I’d been involved.’”

Duncan has a passion for cybersecurity, a field growing in importance in which he thinks he can have a lot of impact. After graduation, he’s working at Capital One as a software engineer.

He has also decided to serve on the Tufts Alumni Council to stay involved in a community that he has found engaging, exciting and welcoming.

“Tufts has not been perfect, but for me the thing that has honestly just kept me going through and is why I really love being here is just the people,” Duncan said.

—by Jake Taber

22

THE TUFTS DAILY | Arts & Living | Sunday, May 21, 2017

tuftsdaily.com

Sunday, May 21, 2017

Arts & Living

Tufts senior produces show bringing forgotten Asian-American actress to life

23 tuftsdaily.com

Tommy Gillespie On Location

France Content warning: This column mentions sexual violence.

I COURTESY SAURAV ACHARYA VIA CINTHIA CHEN

Rising sophomore Noah Brown films actors in ‘Anna May Wong: The Actress Who Died a Thousand Deaths,’ written and directed by graduating senior Cinthia Chen, at Balch Arena Theater on April 27.

by Seohyun Shim

Assistant News Editor

Written and directed by graduating senior Cinthia Chen, “Anna May Wong: The Actress Who Died a Thousand Deaths” comments on racial issues in Hollywood and tells the story of Asian-American actress Anna May Wong. The show was produced as an International Literary and Visual Studies senior thesis, in collaboration with Film and Media Studies and the Department of Drama and Dance.

The first and only performance of the production, attended by 170 people, took place on the evening of April 28 in Balch Arena Theater of Aidekman Arts Center and was sponsored by Diversity Fund, Undergraduate Thesis Fund and the Talamas Study Film Sponsorship Program.

The play was an example of “live cinema theater,” which incorporates traditional filmmaking techniques with those of drama to create unique cinematic and theatrical effects. The performance was filmed live onstage and simultaneously projected onto a screen in the theater, featuring the audience in the background. Opening and closing sequences from “Daughter of the Dragon” (1931), in which Wong starred as Princess Ling Moy, were also projected onto the screen.

The performance’s story begins with older Anna May Wong, played by Harvard University graduating senior Karoline Xu, returning from her trip to China and realizing that she is unhappy with the stereotypical roles offered to Asian women in Hollywood, which limit and confine her as an actor and person who is ambitious and independent.

Soon after, Wong drinks herself to sleep on her couch and is transported back in time to when she starred in “Daughter of the Dragon.” She plays the stereotypical role of Princess Ling Moy, an Asian woman who is left dead by the film’s end and whose father is played by a white man. In the dream, older Anna May Wong watches her younger self, played by rising sophomore Natalie Hwang.

Although Wong tells her peers about her inner conflicts as an actress who is not allowed to play roles outside of her racial boundaries, she finds herself even more frustrated by their responses. Warner Oland, a white male actor who plays Princess Ling Moy’s father in the 1931 movie and who is played by Boston-area actor Arthur Barlas, tells her, “You are too Chinese to play Chinese.” Even her sister, Maria Wong, advises her to star in Hollywood movies instead of flicks she refers to as “B movies,” which would allow her to play roles she wanted, such as a surgeon.

The production also highlights the traditional values held by many Asian immigrant parents at the time, who favored sons over daughters and did not appreciate art as a career path. In a dialogue between Anna May Wong and her father Wong Sam Sing, played by Boston-area actor Anthony Eng, he says, “I always wanted a son” and “I never liked you going into acting.” However, the dialogue comes to an endearing conclusion in which Wong’s father shows his deep affection for his daughter. “I might disagree with your life choices, but you are my daughter,” he says, to which she replies with a smile, “You are proud of me.”

At the show’s climax, older Anna May Wong begins to direct “Daughter of the Dragon” in the way she wants, altering the plot of the movie. As Wong takes the camera, the black and white projection on the screen transforms into color, revealing her sense of freedom and independence from the stereotypical roles she used to have to play.

“Anna May Wong: The Actress Who Died a Thousand Deaths” concludes with older Anna May Wong waking up from her dream and deciding to take roles that would allow her to express herself.

Chen’s production succeeds in creating a unique theatrical experience. With the audience included in the background of the scenes projected onto the screen, they are immediate witnesses to Wong’s inner conflicts. This thematically alludes to Wong’s role as an actress, whose job was to be seen and watched.

The production’s use of live cinema theater makes the show visually inter-

esting while giving the events a unique setting. Members of the film crew — who move around on stage during the performance as they film the actors — are more than technicians and engineers; they become participants in the performance.

The performance, which lasted approximately 45 minutes, was followed by a question-and-answer session between the cast and crew and the audience, moderated by Associate Professor in the Department of Drama and Dance Monica Ndounou.

Ndounou applauded the show for its success in integrating two different artistic mediums and telling the story of an actress of color.

“It is an important production … in terms of form in merging live cinema and theater. [Chen] is merging forms in a way that is conducive to the story she is telling, so it allows her to tell the story that is taking place on the screen and film that Anna May Wong appeared in,” Ndounou said. “It tells us a lot about the inner life of an Asian-American woman who was not often … perceived in more in-depth ways. This form allows [Chen] to demonstrate the humanity of the character and juxtapose it against the stereotype of what [Wong] played.”

Chen said storytelling can have effects that other forms of expression cannot, including a profound emotional change on the viewer. “[A story] can speak to your mind, but even more importantly, at times, to your heart as well. It can cut into a very [visceral] and not always easily verbalized sensation that is hard to rationalize or make into logic,” Chen said.

Chen hopes her production will provide the stepping stone for herself and other artists to create works that would actively touch on the issue of the past, instead of just passively looking back on them.

“I hope that this work, and work I hope to make in the future, joins the work that many artists try to do in exhuming the stories of the past,” Chen said. “Not just for remembrance but remembrance in order to help people envision [an] alternate, brighter future and possibilities.”

Photos opposite, clockwise from top: Velma Kelly, played by rising senior Nathalie Andrade, sings during the first act of ‘Chicago’ on March 29 (Courtesy Ray Bernoff for Torn Ticket II). Amine performs at Spring Fling on the President’s Lawn on April 29 (Vintus Okonkwo / The Tufts Daily). Dance group Pulse performs a Persephone-themed dance at the Tufts Association for South Asians’ annual culture show on Feb. 25 (Courtesy Sofie Hecht for TASA). Students work on their art projects in Lane Hall art studio on March 9 (Seohyun Shim / The Tufts Daily).

‘Femme Fatale’ by Oona Taper is on display at ‘NASTY WOMAN x TUFTS’ (Courtesy Connor Bourke via Cecily Lo). Graduating senior Max Ribbans performs magic tricks with graduating senior Ben Taylor while students watch during the ‘Arts Flash’ event in Dewick-MacPhie Dining Center on Feb. 28 (Seohyun Shim / The Tufts Daily).

n the first scene in “Elle” (2016) following her violent sexual assault, Michelle Lèblanc (Isabelle Huppert) walks into her living room, cleans up the scene and picks up her cat. Looking at her cat with scrutinizing, measuring eyes, she holds him in a position reminiscent of a police interrogation. “Not even a meow,” she says and puts him down disappointedly. Soon after, at a dinner outing with her closest friends, Michelle announces that she has been raped. Her friends, shocked, ask her if she is okay. Seemingly taken aback, she nods glibly.

Dutch director Paul Verhoeven’s first project in French details the various conflicts that arise following Michelle’s assault and the subsequent cat-and-mouse revenge plot she concocts. The film has attracted numerous headlines for its violent content and generated controversy over the events that follow Michelle’s rape. Some trauma experts have argued that Michelle’s actions in the film are atypical of people who have experienced sexual violence. However, if a concrete argument can be drawn out of the film’s convoluted storyline, it seems to be a determination to show that there is no ‘right’ way to be a victim.

As for Michelle, it can be argued that her case is far more unique than most.

She is the daughter of one of France’s most infamous mass murderers. As the head of a video game company mostly staffed by men, many of whom despise her, she must navigate anonymous threats from her employees. In one of the film’s red herring subplots, a video is circulated throughout the company in which her head is photoshopped onto the body of a video game character who is violently attacked by a monster. In short, Michelle is a woman well-versed in violence. Huppert gives a masterclass, Golden Globe-winning performance in which each glance, each reaction and each furrow of the brow tells an intricate story of her lifelong struggle with violence, resilience and psychosis.

In fact, Michelle seems to feel that monsters are what she knows best. At one point, she argues that her actions toward her rapist are very much within her repertoire, saying, “I know how to deal with nutjobs.

They’re my specialty.” Indeed, Michelle seems to relish in her dangerous cat-andmouse pursuit of her rapist. Her triumph takes place when she undoes this history of monstrosity to forge a new identity for herself, at least for a time. The question Verhoeven ominously asks, however, is whether she will be able to fully escape the violence, considering the fact that it dominated so much of her adult life.

In light of that question, “Elle” feels like a daring statement, challenging conceptions of female empowerment despite our society’s long history of female victimhood, which has historically been especially prevalent in wealthy, powerful nations like France. To call “Elle” strictly an empowering film may feel somewhat dangerous because of the film’s extremely violent content.

However, “Elle” certainly makes a choice to explore what happens when Michelle delves further into danger.

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

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THE TUFTS DAILY | Arts & Living | Sunday, May 21, 2017

tuftsdaily.com

SENIOR PROFILE

Parker Heyl merges technology and nature through art

by Libby Langsner Assistant Arts Editor

Parker Heyl is a senior majoring in mechanical engineering and minoring in musical engineering who will attend the Royal College of Art’s Information Experience Design program in London next year. The North Haven, Conn. native’s unique interests involve the intersection of fine arts, kinetic sculpture, mechanical engineering, robotics and musical technology.

Heyl’s artistic work ranges from kinetic sculptures to music events to site-specific art installations. He described the creative process that goes into his visual art.

“The art usually starts as an observation of nature, or something I see in class,” he said. “I study how something looks and moves and then try to recreate it in sculpture.”

Heyl’s work rejects the notion that technology and art are separate disciplines, ultimately illustrating how technology can represent nature in interesting ways.

“When I see something in nature, I’m aware of what man-made methods I can use to recreate it: the ‘it’ being anything that is especially pleasing to the eye,” Heyl said. “The inspiration from nature is often physics – oscillation, vibration, analog sound, mechanical linkages … With live music events, the natural part is location.

Inspiration for parties comes from found spaces, or converting an unused space – adding lighting, sound and artwork.”

Heyl feels that the objectives and themes of his artwork vary from those

of many of his peers at Tufts, as his art deals with nature more than political or social commentary.

“The art at Tufts is mostly politically charged,” Heyl said. “People often try to take away more things from my work than was intended.”

In contrast, Heyl believes that the beauty of artwork can “stand for itself.”

“I think we too often intellectualize the art. People are meant to find their own meaning … The more room you leave for other people to feel things out, the better, and the more universal it is,” he said. “You want art to be transcendent and universally touch people.”

Although Heyl has had many professors who supported his work at Tufts, he found the structure of the engineering program to be limiting. The notion that art and technology are totally separate and cannot comment on one another is part of the reason why the integration of these two disciplines has been difficult for him to pursue in an academic setting.

“Tufts can be a stifling environment.

Most of the spaces I have found to be experimental are outside the university, both in funding and in location,” he said.

Heyl mentioned a couple exceptional professors who do allow their students to pursue more independent projects: Chris Rodgers, department chair of mechanical engineering, and Paul Lehrman, lecturer of music and multimedia arts.

“We learn best when we choose the work and care about it,” Heyl said. “The

mechanical engineering curriculum is too structured. The Department Chair Chris Rodgers knows this, and I give him my full support in changing that culture.”

One of his works, “Anatomic Puppet” (2016), is a puppet that models the human hand’s anatomy. While this work is highly

technical, it also exudes a playfulness, balancing aesthetics and technicality.

Much of Heyl’s work seem to excel in that it is able to take these engineering concepts and explain them through art, but it also uses these concepts to create something beautiful.

ROXANNE ZHANG / THE TUFTS DAILY

Graduating senior Parker Heyl poses for a portrait in the basement of his off-campus house on May 13.

SENIOR PROFILE

Cecily Lo explores discomfort in performance, film

by Paige Spangenthal Assistant Arts Editor

Graduating senior Cecily Lo made her first film, a stop-motion animation of clay figurines, at the age of 15 with her cousin. Years later, as a student at Tufts, she continues to explore her passion for film, dance and performance art in short videos that she posts on her personal Vimeo channel.

“I’ve always been pretty interested in video art, but I never really took it seriously until two years ago. It kind of stemmed from when I became more serious about dance and choreographing in high school,” Lo, a computer science major, said.

Lo jokes that she is a “bad” computer science major because of her extensive involvement with artistic organizations on campus. The Rockville, Md. native is a co-producer of Sarabande Dance Ensemble and a dancer for Spirit of Color. In addition, she creates freelance art and designs for different organizations and publications on campus, such as the Tufts Observer and the Tufts Public Journal. Most recently, she showcased her work at “Polykhroma presents: Utopia/Dystopia” and created visuals and an installation for Tufts Applejam’s 2017 Spring Thing concert.

At the beginning of the semester, Lo organized “NASTY WOMEN x TUFTS,” a feminist art show and fundraiser for Planned Parenthood in response to the presidential inauguration. Nasty Women, a global art movement that began in January in Queens, N.Y., inspired Lo to host a sister exhibition at Tufts.

Femininity and gender are prominent concepts in Lo’s work. On her Vimeo channel, she describes her film “Nothing can hurt you if you just close your eyes!” (2016)

as “a performative exploration of personal insecurity and the male gaze.” In the film, she smears blue lipstick all over her face, an action inspired by a fear that she frequently experiences in her daily life.

“I wear a lot of lipstick,” she explained.

“Sometimes I have this fear that it’s smeared on my face and I’ll be really paranoid.”

By intentionally smudging her lipstick, Lo turns anxiety into empowerment.

“What if I put that into my own hands and purposefully smear it? It became this performance of putting on makeup in a way that you’re not supposed to … This makeup is mine, this is how I want it to look on my face right now, and I think I look great,” Lo added.

“Nothing can hurt you if you just close your eyes!” is a component of a larger performance art piece that Lo showcased at a student art show last November put on by Polykhroma. The video played behind Lo as she danced and repeatedly asked the audience variations of the question, “Do you think I’m pretty?”

Having danced since the age of twelve, Lo has overcome stage fright from years of performing. However, she described experiencing discomfort while performing this piece at the Polykhroma show.

“It was the first moment in which I was performing with my body and actually did feel uncomfortable,” she said.

Lo believes that discomfort and awkwardness can be great artistic tools.

“When I was younger and I first started choreographing, I was only interested in aesthetic and technicality, but as I’ve matured and gotten more comfortable with choreography, I’ve tried to embrace the awkward moments,” she said. “If the audience feels uncomfortable, maybe that’s a good thing.”

Lo employs discomfort in her film “A / WAKE,” which was created as a midterm

SOFIE HECHT / THE TUFTS DAILY

Graduating senior Cecily Lo poses at Sophia Gordon Hall on May 5. project for a class she took this semester, DNC 77: Dance on Camera. The film is a single shot of Lo dancing through her house overlaid with a voiceover of a poem about her struggle with depression. “‘A / WAKE’ is about dealing with depression and feeling trapped in this cyclical, oppressive state of being depressed,” she said. “Those are themes that I deal with a lot in my art.”

Lo reflected on the ways that life struggles can strengthen one as a person

and an artist and even lead to beautiful moments in one’s life.

“I think that sadness, pain and darkness are vital to being a more emotionally fulfilled person,” she said. “I think it broadens your emotional spectrum, and having experienced those lows informs how you experience the highs in your life …

Who I am today and where I am today would be so different had I not experienced these low points.”

Sunday, May 21, 2017 | Arts & Living | THE TUFTS DAILY

Arts & L ivi n g Fury Sheron E is for Everyone

Left 4 Dead

SENIOR PROFILE

Sam Gordon blends comedy, film

W

hy should you play “Left 4 Dead” (2008) and its sequel, “Left 4 Dead 2” (2009)? Because they were engineered to be the perfect replayable shared narrative experience for up to four players. And before you scoff and say, “Fury, isn’t ‘Left 4 Dead’ a zombie game? Aren’t those mindless and really banal at this point?” I need to pre-emptively state how misinformed you are, reader friend. Let’s talk about it.

“Left 4 Dead” is essentially a game for four players (or fewer, since you can play with friendly bots, or more, in the mode where additional friends can play as the Special Infected) in which you must fight your way through the zombie-ridden husk of society. In addition to its reputation for possessing an incredibly advanced blood/gore system and remarkable AI, it has a rich story in a fascinating, ruthless world supplemented by a comic and thousands of excellently written voice lines.

Simply put, you play carriers of the disease who don’t display any symptoms but infect normal people just by being around them. You’re a pariah everywhere.

Like most Valve games, “Left 4 Dead” started out as a mod of something else.

In this case, it was a “Counter Strike” (2000) mod in which waves upon waves of knife-wielding terrorists would attempt to overwhelm a team of four.

Valve thought, “This would work really well if these were zombies.” At the time, Valve was also working on an AI for “Half-Life 2” (2004) that would distribute resources like items and weapons based on the player’s performance.

Valve decided to use this system in its new game, but it added another reactive element: enemies. In “Left 4 Dead,” the AI called the AI Director spawns enemies based on the rise and fall of tension to make a compelling experience that isn’t just hack and slash all the time.

Independently of the AI Director, which is server-side so as to create an environment shared by all four players, there’s the Music Director, a client-side AI, which plays brilliant music themed by each level that is unique to what you are experiencing individually as a player. For example, if you’re pinned by a Hunter, one of the Special Infected, you hear the Hunter’s attack theme music, but others don’t.

Additionally, it would be unfair not to mention that even for folks who don’t play FPSs or don’t like zombie media, this game is also just so, so fun.

There’s a reason why “Left 4 Dead” is still relevant almost 10 years later. I highly recommend you snag yourself a copy if you don’t have one already and give it a chance. Besides, even if you’re not good with blood, modding is encouraged by Valve and built right into the game! I have a vomiting phobia, so I have a mod installed that replaces all of the zombies who puke on you with the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man! What more could you want from a game?

“Left 4 Dead 2” comes with all “Left 4 Dead” campaigns built in. It is available for purchase for $19.99 and frequently on sale for $4.99 on Steam. Available platforms are Windows OS X, Linux and Xbox 360.

Fury Sheron is a rising senior majoring in Japanese. Fury can be reached at lahna. sheron@tufts.edu.

Antonio Bertolino Art-á-Porter

I

BEN KIM / THE TUFTS DAILY

Graduating senior Sam Gordon poses for a portrait in the Mayer Campus Center on May 7.

by Cassidy Olsen Arts Editor

One would be hard-pressed to find someone juggling as many things in the Tufts comedy scene as graduating senior Sam Gordon. Since coming to Tufts in 2013, the Westchester, N.Y. native has been writing, filming, editing and performing sketches and stand-up for groups across campus, combining his love of comedy with the writing and filmmaking skills he’s developed as an English and film and media studies double major.

Gordon began exploring comedy in high school, where he saw talent shows as opportunities to set himself apart from the crowd.

“I think because most people were trying to sing the whole time, and some people were really good, and some of them… weren’t,” he laughed. “People [saw me] and were like, ‘Oh, this person is doing something that isn’t singing, we’ll cheer him on and laugh.’ It was fun to get that early, immediate feedback.”

At Tufts, Gordon quickly became involved with both all-sketch groups — Major: Undecided and The Institute — as well as the Stand-Up Comedy Collective.

These groups have provided him not only with a creative outlet, but also with a strong community and support system.

“When I got to Tufts, I was amazed to find that there’s such an engaged community of people who are so excited about comedy,” he said. “It’s been great having a group of people that I can talk about [my interests], a group of people who are really caring and nice. It’s really where I’ve made all of my best friends.”

Gordon believes that there is significant overlap in membership between the comedy and art scenes on campus.

“Many people in the comedy community are artistically and creatively minded, and I think they have other artistic endeavors beyond writing sketches — but I think the communities are orbiting bodies, not so much one core unit,” he said.

In addition to membership overlap, both comedy groups and performing arts groups on campus face many similar issues,

according to Gordon. For example, both comedy and performing arts groups contend with limited access to performance spaces and lack of representation by and for women and people of color.

But Gordon cited TFL, an all-femme comedy group founded in 2016, as an example of a group that has made a concerted effort to center the voices of women and people of color in comedy. Gordon hopes that more groups will continue to work to address these issues.

“The comedy spaces [at Tufts] are still predominantly white spaces,” he said. “I don’t presume to understand what it’s like to walk into a room and not see a space you belong in, but we’re trying to take steps to encourage everyone to join comedy and make people feel more comfortable and heard in those spaces.”

Throughout his time at Tufts, Gordon is particularly proud of his role as Artistic Director of Major: Undecided, which he’s held since his junior year. Working one-onone with writers and watching them grow, he explained, has been the most rewarding part of this experience.

“Being able to sit down with someone and pore over a sketch is a lot of fun,” he said. “I’ve been doing it for two years, so I’ve [been able] to see people who are two years in who have gotten so much better.”

Last spring, Gordon was able to take on another mentorship role when he co-taught a course through the Experimental College called “Dark Topics in Modern TV Comedies.”

After graduation, Gordon plans to move to New York City and pursue comedy, film production and editing opportunities.

“My eggs are currently in that basket, so I’m trying to make it work,” he said. “I have some freelance work as an editor lined up.

I’ve just come to learn that this is what I really love doing.”

He encouraged everyone to try out comedy at some point in their lives.

“I joined comedy because it was full of people who fostered creative growth,” he said. “The creative voices on this campus never cease to amaze me.”

25

Yet another tribute to Rei Kawakubo

n light of the recent gala at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, I thought that it would be great to end this semester with a celebration of designer Rei Kawakubo. After all, “dulcis in fundo.” The Japanese designer started one of the most recognizable brands in the industry to this day, Comme des Garcons.

Her unique and inimitable style has elevated her to the status of fashion goddess and has allowed her to dictate and anticipate trends in the business, redefining beauty standards along the way.

The one show that any piece of any length on Kawakubo has to imperatively include is her “Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body” from the Spring 1997 Ready-toWear collection. The clothes she displayed on the runway were like nothing anyone had seen before, as they glorified a new silhouette formed by odd bumps in different parts of the models’ bodies. Her choice to include these lumps in her clothing line for women as a way to reject standards of beauty and the male gaze reminded me of Yayoi Kusama’s “Walking Piece” (1966).

For this performance, the Japanese woman walked around New York dressed in traditional Japanese attire as a way to comment on the oppressive expectations Western society had of her behavior as an Asian woman.

Kawakubo, who is a very private person who does not often release interviews, asserted on the occasion, “If [fashion designers] don’t take risks, then who will?” She also collaborated with Merce Cunningham on a very avant-garde performance art piece in which Cunningham’s dancers danced in Kawakubo’s Spring-Summer 1997 collection.

Something else that is typical of Kawakubo’s designing genius is the way she has constantly drawn inspiration from the art world during her long career. For her Spring 2001 Comme des Garcons Ready-to Wear collection, for instance, she showcased looks that notably resembled op-art paintings, such as those by Bridget Riley. While some clothes featured optically illusionary prints, some others featured red polka dots on a white background. This was also a clear reference to the sculptural work of Yayoi Kusama. Polka dots were also juxtaposed to camouflage motifs, creating an apparent visual cacophony. This actually had quite the opposite effect, asserting Kawakubo as a designer who is truly a visionary, above what the rest of the fashion world might think about what looks good with what.

The spirit of innovation and cutting-edge fashion that characterizes Kawakubo’s work, unfortunately, was definitely not reflected in many of the gowns at the Met Gala.

Ironically, while trying to celebrate the Japanese designer, many celebrities — maybe with the exception of Rihanna and Cara Delevigne — failed to deliver a ‘wow’ moment on the red carpet. Kim Kardashian’s white gown, for instance, was nothing more than a celebration of commercial fashion and an ode to boredom, as were many of her sisters’ outfits. It is probably sufficient to say that the Met’s tribute gala to Alexander McQueen delivered many more noteworthy looks, which is probably the reason why expectations were so high this year. Maybe Kawakubo will release a cryptic comment about her disappointment in the near future? If I were her, I would.

Antonio Bertolino is a rising junior majoring in art history. Antonio can be reached at antonio.bertolino@tufts.edu.

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THE TUFTS DAILY | Arts & Living | Sunday, May 21, 2017

Abigail McFee Advice from Dead Poets (And Some Living)

FILM REVIEW

‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2’ is harmless fun

W.H. Auden on making the leap

T

his morning, a friend showed me a video of myself that was taken almost two years ago on my 20th birthday. In the 90-second clip, I am holding court over a living room of our friends, unable to finish a sentence without laughing, my hair bleached from two months of tour guiding. I look blissfully bewildered.

That summer was the halfway point of my time at Tufts. I was embedded in Somerville, had an emotional attachment to Packard Avenue and felt more at home with my friends than I’d ever expected to feel with anyone — but I was getting ready to leave. I would spend the next semester studying in Spain, a transition that I handled without grace or courage, in spite of my intentions. I clung ruthlessly to the familiar, afraid that what I loved most about Tufts would vanish while I was gone.

“The sense of danger must not disappear,” the poet W.H. Auden writes at the beginning of his famous poem, “Leap Before You Look” (1940). “The way is certainly both short and steep, / However gradual it looks from here; / Look if you like, but you will have to leap.”

Auden inverts a famous proverb, “Look before you leap,” in order to counsel action, rather than caution.

His poem’s structure — four-line stanzas written in iambic pentameter with an abab rhyme scheme — creates a feeling of inevitable forward motion, ushering the reader toward that imminent leap. “You cannot prepare for what comes next,” Auden seems to say.

“Your plans, expectations and wellthought-out concerns will not cushion your fall.”

Lately, I have been in the business of looking backward, not forward. I think of the summer after my sophomore year in particular, maybe out of some belief that there is meaning contained in the middle. At the halfway point of my time at Tufts, captured in that 90-second video, I had elaborate expectations for what the next two years would hold. I was wrong about almost all of them.

The camera shutter closed, the summer ended and I embarked on a long, reluctant fall forward. What came next was beautiful: I had experiences that forced me to grow, some of my closest friendships developed with people I’d met on a whim and there were nights even more joyful than my bewildered 20th birthday. But, as I approach graduation, I feel some grief, too: for the plans that didn’t come into being.

What I appreciate most about Auden’s poem is that the leap is not made to seem wholly joyful or without fear. It’s not exempt from difficulty or regret. The leap is only promised as something necessary.

This is the last month of my college career and the last column that I’ll write about dead poets (and some living). If I’ve learned anything over the past three months, from reading and re-reading their words, it’s that meaning is created in the place where things appear to go wrong. So is life.

Abigail McFee is a graudating senior majoring in English. Abigail can be reached at abigail.mcfee@tufts.edu.

MARVEL STUDIOS

Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) and Ego (Kurt Russell) talk around a campfire in ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.’

by John Fedak Arts Editor

With commencement just around the corner and families gathering together for celebration, it seems fitting that Marvel’s newest film also features another gathering of celebrated characters. Following on the heels of the much-lauded first entry, “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” (2017) attempts to re capture the magic that made the original movie so successful. Ultimately, while it falls short of reaching this level of success, the film is still incredibly enjoyable and the perfect destination for families of all kinds.

The movie picks up a few years after the first film left off, and this time around, Peter ‘Star-Lord’ Quill (Chris Pratt), Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Drax (Dave Bautista), Rocket (Bradley Cooper) and Baby Groot (Vin Diesel) are renowned as the Guardians of the Galaxy. However, after getting attacked by drones, the Guardians are rescued by a mysterious figure, who turns out to be Star-Lord’s long-lost father. Unfortunately, the Guardians soon face challenges on all sides as they attempt to rescue Star-Lord from his father’s nefarious plans.

Following on the heels of the first entry in the series, “Guardians of the

Layout editor

Galaxy Vol. 2” manages to succeed in some of the same ways that the first film did, especially with regards to its soundtrack. Like the first movie, it is composed of a variety of hits, although this time around features some more obscure music as well. Everything from Glen Campbell’s “Southern Nights” (1975) to George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” (1970) are featured on the track and they create waves of feel-good nostalgia. Additionally, the inclusion of lesser-known songs like “Flash Light” (1978) by Parliament also fit well into the movie and all of the music works well to create the perfect ambience for a return to the franchise.

The cast is another relatively high point of the film, with veritable talent that manages to come through at just the right times. Pratt fits with ease back into his role as Star-Lord, and his attempts to reconcile and understand his relationship with his father provide some moments of real tenderness in the film. The other guardians are equally as fun to watch, whether it’s Gamora’s unapologetic level-headedness, Drax’s unrestrained bluntness or Baby Groot’s undeniable cuteness. There are moments that miss the mark, but with performanc-

es from the cast that range from mildly humorous to laugh-out-loud hilarious, “Vol. 2’s” dynamic is generally a positive experience.

Indeed, one would not be remiss for thinking of the first film as they watch this entry — and that’s where the film’s problems lie. While certainly enjoyable, the movie feels stale, and it panders to what people loved about the first movie.

There is nothing here the audience did not get from the original “Guardians of the Galaxy” (2014). Besides the plot, there really isn’t that much that is truly different from the first movie, and this sequel feels a bit too strained to be considered a true hit.

That being said, taken at face value, the film is by no means unsuccessful.

It does everything right; the effects, soundtrack and cast all work together to draw audiences back into the world of the Guardians. And for the most part, this works, even if it feels a bit rehashed at times.

For those who are celebrating the end of an era of Tufts students, this is the perfect film to bond over as many begin their final farewells to campus.

Everyone will love the hilarity of the characters, the smart music choices and most of all another adventure featuring the galaxy’s favorite gang of misfits.

Writer EDITOR

DESIGNER COPY EDITOR

COLLEGE STUDENT

The Daily thrives with the help of about 175 student contributors. To increase the inclusiveness of the paper, we offer The Tufts Daily Support Fund, and the Tufts Daily Work Study Program. By supporting us, you support student journalism, and diversity in the newsroom.

Support us: crowdfund.tufts.edu/project/6193

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CONGRATS TUFTS 2017 GRADUATES

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At the Russell Lecture on Spiritual Life 2017 (clockwise from left): Africana Community Associate The Reverend Lambert Rahming; Protestant Chaplain Dan Bell; University Chaplain The Reverend Greg McGonigle; Jewish Chaplain Rabbi Jeffrey Summit G88, G95; Muslim Chaplain Celene Ibrahim; Humanist in Residence Walker Bristol A14; Program and Outreach Specialist Zachary Cole; Catholic Chaplain Lynn Cooper A02; Africana Center Director Katrina Moore; 2017 Russell Lecturer The Reverend Osagyefo Sekou; and Chaplaincy Coordinator Linda Karpowich. Not pictured: Muslim Associate Abukakr Abou-Elala; Music Director and Organist Christian Lane; and Buddhist in Residence Priya Sraman.

We hope you will stay connected with us as alumni.

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You can join the Interfaith Alumni Association by emailing chaplaincy@tufts.edu or visiting http://chaplaincy.tufts.edu/alumni.

This network offers opportunities for: staying in touch, networking, alumni gatherings and communications, supporting current students, and fostering your spiritual and ethical life.

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THE TUFTS DAILY | FOUR YEARS IN REVIEW | Sunday, May 21, 2017

ANNIE LEVINE / THE TUFTS DAILY ARCHIVES

2013–2014 The Class of 2013’s first year on the Hill saw changes to Tufts’ social and dining scenes as well as student activism over the university’s sexual assault policies and practices.

Fall Gala and Winter Ball, rebranded in an effort to address alcohol-related issues at previous years’ events, had earlier start times and fewer available tickets.

Meanwhile, Tufts University Police Department (TUPD) cut short the fall show of Tufts Dance Collective (TDC) due to multiple alcohol-related medical calls and unsafe and unsanitary conditions within Cohen Auditorium. Although many feared that this would mark the end of TDC, the spring show went ahead after TDC also implemented changes.

While several Tufts social traditions were restructured, Tufts welcomed a fourth sorority, Kappa Alpha Theta, onto campus. Kappa Alpha Theta initiated 77 charter members in September.

Tufts Dining also saw several exciting additions. Former Tufts Community Union (TCU)

Senators Isabella Kahhalé, currently a graduating senior, and Christie Maciejewski (LA ’14) spearheaded the introduction of late night dining at the Commons Deli and Grill.

Starting in January, the Commons began accepting meal swipes from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, until rowdy and disrespectful behavior prompted the closing time to be shifted forward to 1 a.m.

Tufts also opened a kosher deli, later named Pax et Lox Glatt Kosher Deli. However, the Class of 2013 was the last class to take advantage of a practice known as ‘trick turning,’ in which students on unlimited meal plans could swipe into a dining hall and then swipe into Hodgdon Good-to-Go in the same meal period.

The Tufts community bid farewell to a number of staff members. Associate Provost Mary Lee left Tufts after 27 years to assume the prestigious Kimitaka Kaga Professorship at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Medicine and Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences Joanne BergerSweeney left in June to become president of Trinity College. The

NICHOLAS PFOSI / THE TUFTS DAILY ARCHIVES

2014–2015 Between a “Snowpocalypse,” two student sit-ins and unstoppable sports teams, 2014– 2015 was a year of firsts and record-breaking events.

Tufts football won its home opener against Bates, breaking the team’s infamous 31-game losing streak. Attendees at the homecoming festivities crowded the field in celebration of the historic win.

Also in the fall, men’s soccer beat all-comers and saw an unlikely run for the NCAA Div. III National Championship title. After making it through the quarterfinals and semifinals, Tufts clinched the championship against Wheaton College in a 4-2 win.

Student activism reached new heights this year, with many students joining protests in Boston in response to several deaths of black Americans at the hands of police officers nationwide. A student group, Indict Tufts, also led protests

against racial oppression of black Americans, including a march from campus to the Harvard Bridge over the Charles River.

Meanwhile, Tufts Labor Coalition (TLC) responded to Tufts’ proposed changes to and downsizing of the janitorial services staff with a 33-hour sit-in at Ballou Hall and a five-day hunger strike that made local and regional headlines. TLC also

EVAN SAYLES / THE TUFTS DAILY

university also mourned the deaths of Fletcher Professor of English Emeritus Jesper Rosenmeier and Assistant Director of Career Services Donna Milmore.

In November, the Board of Trustees approved the T10 Strategic Plan, which created a framework for the university’s goals over the next 10 years. The 45-page document focused on increasing diversity initiatives through funding gap years and financial aid as well as encouraging interdisciplinary learning with programs like Bridge Professorships.

In February, the Committee on Student Life announced the reversal of its December 2012 “justified departure” policy. All organizations, including Religious and Philosophical Student Organizations, would now be required to adhere to the TCU Judiciary’s non-discrimination policy.

Additionally, issues surrounding sexual assault on campus were prevalent throughout the year.

In the fall, University President Anthony Monaco announced the formation of a university-wide task force on sexual misconduct prevention. In the spring, students organized the first annual It Happens Here event, which provides a space for survivors of sexual assault to share narratives.

Later in April, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced that Tufts was in violation of Title IX as it inadequately supported students who reported campus sexual assault. Tufts then revoked its agreement to comply with OCR recommendations on how protested a new 5,000-pound bronze Jumbo statue, which was donated by alumni and unveiled in April. In addition to labor issues, the debate over fossil fuel divestment was invigorated when 33 students, mostly from Tufts Climate Action (TCA), held a sit-in at Ballou Hall to protest Tufts’ investments in the fossil fuel industry.

The spring semester was significantly affected by heavy snow, which led to a record-breaking five snow days.

To make up for lost class time, professors rescheduled classes on Patriot’s Day and during the first two days of reading period. This spring also saw computer science become the most popular major at Tufts, surpassing international relations as the program with the most declared majors. Professor Sol Gittleman also retired after more than 50 years at Tufts.

Several student initiatives began this year, including the production “Not Your Mother’s Monologues,” a non-ciscentric, more inclusive version of “The Vagina Monologues” (1996). TED Talk-style lectures also came to campus through the student-led launch of TEDxTufts, which gives students an opportunity to share their ideas and passions. In April, Kesha headlined Tufts’ first Spring Fling that featured exclusively female-led groups, including MisterWives and Lauren Lane.

Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate saw a major first and a major controversy, with the first uncontested Senate

tuftsdaily.com to improve the university’s sexual assault policies and practices.

This triggered the largest student protest since the late 1980s, as more than 100 students marched around Ballou Hall for several hours. After discussions between administrators and student orga-

Kagame and the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia both sparked controversy with their visits — about 20 students protested Scalia’s speech, the final of the Richard E. Snyder President’s Lecture series.

Within Tufts’ student politics,

NICHOLAS PFOSI / THE TUFTS DAILY ARCHIVES

nizers, the university promised to make changes that Monaco said would put Tufts back in compliance with Title IX. A number of high-profile speakers visited the Hill this year. Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington spoke about modern media at the annual Edward R. Murrow Forum, while Kenan Thompson of “Saturday Night Live” headlined the Tufts Entertainment Board’s spring comedy event. On the political front, Rwandan President Paul

the TCU presidential election saw a heated contest between Andrew Núñez (LA ’15) and Robert Joseph (LA ’15). However, a website and Facebook page for “Generic Candidate” were anonymously created by Ben Kurland (LA ’15) to draw attention to what he noted were many similarities between the two platforms. After a 12-hour delay due to technical problems with TCU Election Commission’s new online voting system, Joseph was announced as the next TCU president.

Four Years presidential election in recent history leading to the election of Brian Tesser (LA ’16). Earlier in the year, Senate’s budgeting and club-funding decisions came under fire when some student groups, particularly Tufts Mock Trial, learned of new limitations on travel funding from Senate’s budget.

While Greek life grew in popularity, the brothers of Pi Delta, formerly known as Alpha Epsilon Pi, disaffiliated from their national chapter in response to differing interests and values between the Tufts and national chapters.

In late May, a stabbing took place inside the house of Delta Tau Delta, leading to a temporary lockdown of the Medford/ Somerville campus. The stabbing incident is still under investigation.

Students saw their housing affected by Somerville’s passing of the University Accountability Ordinance. This ordinance mandates that universities in Somerville — particularly Tufts — submit a report providing

students’ addresses to limit overcrowding in off-campus housing in accordance with an existing zoning ordinance. The ordinance came at a time when Tufts saw more applicants and more students choosing to attend the university, straining on-campus housing and forcing more upperclassmen to live off campus in increasingly expensive Medford and Somerville.

Several notable speakers, including the parents of Trayvon Martin, came to campus. Some student groups, especially the Pan-African Alliance and Black Student Union, criticized Hillel’s choice to invite Martin’s parents due to Hillel’s stance on Israel, among other concerns.

Additionally, ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos spoke at the Edward P. Murrow Forum and Senator Elizabeth Warren delivered the Alan D. Solomont Lecture on Citizenship and Public Service, where about a dozen students protested Warren’s previous pro-Israeli statements.

ETHAN CHAN / THE TUFTS DAILY

Sunday, May 21, 2017 | FOUR YEARS IN REVIEW | THE TUFTS DAILY

NICHOLAS PFOSI / THE TUFTS DAILYARCHIVES

2015–2016 The 2015–2016 academic year saw notable changes and additions to the programs and majors offered at Tufts, lively student activism and progress made on several significant building projects.

Perhaps the biggest academic news was Tufts’ announcement of the acquisition of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) at the end of the year. Meanwhile, the School of Arts and Sciences began to offer a Portuguese minor in the spring. It also announced a film and media studies major; an environmental studies minor focusing on food systems and nutrition; and a science, technology and society co-major and minor, which all debuted in fall 2016. On the other hand, minors in linguistics and cognitive and brain sciences were terminated in fall 2015, although

they returned in spring 2017.

Tufts saw the reopening of the Collaborative Learning and Innovation Complex at 574 Boston Ave., the completion of the renovated Memorial Steps, the start of construction work on a new Central Energy Plant (CEP) and significant work completed on the Science and Engineering Complex (SEC).

Construction workers, however, protested Tufts’ use of non-union workers for these projects, with the Boston Building Trades Council using billboard trucks to communicate this message.

Tufts Labor Coalition (TLC) also supported union-only hiring efforts on campus and continued to push for better labor practices for Tufts janitors. Student organizers from TLC protested outside Gifford House, at town-hall meetings and during Jumbos Days.

Other student activists contin-

in Review

— KATHLEEN SCHMIDT, JEI-JEI TAN AND MIRANDA WILLSON

2016–2017 This year saw a rise in tension on campus in the aftermath of President Trump’s election, which had unmistakable parallels to the atmosphere nationwide. The effects of this reverberated throughout the rest of the school year.

One effect was a walkout and rally calling for Tufts to become a sanctuary campus in an effort to protect its undocumented students. Though never explicitly naming Tufts a sanctuary campus, Monaco pledged to support and protect undocumented students by keeping their information private from law enforcement officials and providing access to legal counsel.

Simultaneously, the Tufts Observer published an explosive article detailing hazing and sexual assault at a fraternity in November.

The piece sparked calls for the abolition of Greek life at Tufts, the suspension of spring recruitment

of fraternities and sororities and the issuance of nine cease-anddesist orders. One Greek organization was dissolved and two more were suspended. Earlier in the fall, half of Alpha Omicron Pi sorority’s members dropped out after the national organization hesitated to admit a transgender woman, and several members of Chi Omega sorority quit, citing discrimination by their own national organization.

In light of this tumult, Monaco commissioned the Student Life Review Committee to assess all aspects of student life on campus.

In the second uncontested election in three years, rising senior Benya Kraus was elected Tufts Community Union (TCU) president. TCU Senate also debated controversial resolutions that called for changes to Tufts’ Sexual Misconduct Policy and Title IX policies as well as divestment from four companies involved in the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories.

RAY BERNOFF / THE TUFTS DAILY

ued to rally behind divestment from the fossil fuel industry. Tufts Climate Action (TCA) hosted a two-day symposium on climate change in April and demonstrated outside a Board of Trustees meeting that month.

Many faculty also showed support for fossil fuel divestment through a faculty resolution passed in May. Other activist efforts included a march organized by #TheThreePercent in conjunction with nationwide protests against racism on campus. #TheThreePercent also released a list of demands to Tufts administrators, asking for better black student and faculty representation, increases to the Africana Center’s budget and more mental health resources for black students.

Students for Justice in Palestine also staged several protests and actions, including the disruption of Friends of Israel’s annual Taste of Israel event, sparking a debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, cultural appropriation in food and the nature of campus protests.

The university hired its first chief diversity officer, Mark BrimhallVargas, who had begun working as associate provost in May 2015.

In the fall, Brimhall-Vargas chaired the Diversity and Inclusion Working Group and later helped start a “Diversity Dashboard” to increase transparency in diversity issues.

Several notable speakers came to campus last year, such as economist Lawrence Summers, television journalist David Gregory and activist and scholar Noam Chomsky. At the Edward P. Murrow Forum, television journalist Anderson Cooper Labor issues continued this year, as janitors threatened to strike in the run-up to the deadline of their contract renegotiations, workers in Facilities Services filed a complaint against Tufts with the National Labor Review Board, part-time faculty rallied support for their contract renegotiation with Tufts and graduate students authorized a vote to unionize.

Tufts continued its integration of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) after its acquisition last summer. SMFA students went through Tufts orientation, the admissions of both schools were combined and SMFA students switched to a need-based, rather than merit-based, financial aid system.

In September, South Hall was renamed Harleston Hall in honor of Bernard Harleston, former dean of the faculty of arts and sciences and the first African-American tenure-track professor at Tufts.

Construction on the Central Energy Plant and the Science and Engineering Complex (SEC) continued while it was announced the Boston Avenue/College Avenue intersection would be redesigned for pedestrian safety. Brown and Brew Coffee House will be closing in August, to be replaced by a cafe in the SEC. The Residential Strategies Working Group finished its work and recommended converting Tufts-owned wood-framed houses, currently used as office space and faculty housing, into student housing to ease tensions with Tufts’ neighbors.

This year, Tufts saw a slew of interesting and sometimes con-

spoke about his career and the 2016 presidential election. Congressman and civil rights activist John Lewis and political strategists David Axelrod and Beth Myers (J ’79) also came to speak on the Hill.

The Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service was renamed the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life to focus on civic engagement, after a donation from Jonathan (A ’76) and Lizzie Tisch to the college.

Several longstanding admin-

29

Greek life organizations became increasingly popular this year, with 200 students accepting sorority bids and a potential new sorority, Alpha Gamma Delta, which ultimately did not form a chapter on campus. The fraternity Pi Rho Omega, formerly known as Sigma Phi Epsilon, disaffiliated from its national organization in January, citing differing values between the Tufts and national chapters.

Several campus safety issues

EVAN SAYLES / THE TUFTS DAILY

istrative, admissions and student life positions were revised throughout the year. Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Lee Coffin ended his 13-year Tufts career at the end of the year to head admissions at Dartmouth College. Director of the Institute of Global Leadership Sherman Teichman also left his role after more than three decades.

In December, Director of the Experimental College Robyn Gittleman retired after 40 years.

Finally, Steph Gauchel left her position as director of the Women’s Center to work at the Harvard Divinity School.

came up throughout the year, including the ongoing investigation surrounding the stabbing at Delta Tau Delta’s house in May 2015. Multiple sexual assaults and acts of misconduct were reported in Tufts dorms, prompting a public university response. Finally, spring semester final exams were postponed due to bomb threats and a car fire behind Health Service.

Throughout the year, students also prepared for the 2016 presidential election, canvassing in New Hampshire, attending rallies and demonstrating at a rally held by then-presidential candidate Donald Trump in Massachusetts.

ALEXIS SERINO / THE TUFTS DAILY

troversial visitors, including former Secretary of State John Kerry, “NBC Nightly News” anchor Lester Holt, Senator Tim Kaine, former advisor to President Barack Obama David Axelrod, former host of “Meet the Press” David Gregory, who also taught a class through the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life in the fall, academic Judith Butler, NPR’s Mara Liasson, former Governor of New Mexico Bill Richardson, Chief of Staff to President George W. Bush Andrew Card, President of CBS News David Rhodes and Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, whose presence provoked a protest and walkout. In March, actor and Cambridge native Matt Damon made two surprise appearances at the Steve Tisch Sports and Fitness Center.

Tufts also said goodbye to several members of the faculty and staff, including Mark Brimhall Vargas, who left his post as chief diversity officer to become vice president for diversity, equity and inclusion at Brandeis University.

LGBT Center Director Nino Testa and Latino Center Director

Rubén Stern both left Tufts, as did Vice President of Operations Lynda Snyder, who retired.

The year rounded out with Spring Fling performances from an all-black lineup of artists. The show was successful despite a last-minute cancellation from headliner T-Pain.

Another end-of-year upset took the form of a leak of confidential information by a group called TuftsLeaks. The information included salary data for faculty, staff and students, and the investigation is ongoing.

The leaks were done in the name of transparency in university spending. This was a common theme of this year as tuition, fees and other expenses topped $70,000.

Yearly tuition increases prompted the creation of a #HaltTheHike campaign by Tufts Student Action, who demanded transparency and a freeze on increases.

In more cheerful news, Tufts celebrated its first Indigenous People’s Day in October, and the men’s soccer team closed its season with its second NCAA Championship win in three years.

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THE TUFTS DAILY | Opinion | Sunday, May 21, 2017

tuftsdaily.com

Opinion

Sunday, May 21, 2017

Letter from the editor Dear members of the Tufts community, Today, as we celebrate the graduation of the Class of 2017, we look both to what lies ahead and what we’ve left behind.

As a graduating senior who has devoted her last year of school to this publication, reflecting on the Daily’s work is a personal experience. This is simultaneously the beauty and the challenge of the newspaper. It’s not easy to criticize the thing into which you’ve poured so much of your time, energy and thoughts; the thing that makes you so proud, so frustrated, so tired and, ultimately, so happy.

But if there was a lesson for someone at the helm of a media organization — no matter how small — to draw from the events of the past year, it’s that reflection, self-criticism and honesty must be constantly practiced and deeply valued.

This semester, that work was headed up by the Daily’s Intentionality and Inclusivity (I&I) Committee, which held weekly meetings dissecting how our coverage and approach has failed in the past, and how

we can improve. Through this process and with input from the Daily’s executive board, I&I wrote a statement on objectivity in journalism, which was endorsed by myself and the rest of the Daily’s managing board.

This statement points out the fact that pure objectivity in journalism is impossible and describes how that practice has led to the exclusion of certain communities and voices on campus. While the statement was a step toward more inclusivity in our coverage, we continued to address inclusivity in our newsroom as well. This semester, the Daily expanded our Support Fund Program, which gives stipends to students on the Daily with financial need. We are also now an on-campus employer for students who qualify for federal work study.

Both of these initiatives are major advances in creating a more diverse newsroom, but there are always more efforts to be made.

These are overarching goals and challenges of the paper, but we are, of course, a daily operation, meaning they were addressed alongside the work we had to

31 tuftsdaily.com

Khuyen Bui Dear Jumbo

do to put out a paper every morning. Each paper takes about 200 hours of cumulative labor to produce — a fact that paradoxically fills me with pride and humility. When reporters drop everything to rush to cover a protest and turn out a piece on a 45-minute deadline, I am amazed. When photographers wake up before the sun rises to get a picture, I am awed. When copy editors stay hours after their shift ends to help manage the workload on particularly late and busy nights, I am filled with gratitude. This kind of devotion, which prompts such hard work and initiative, gives me confidence for the future. My wonderful managing editors, Jei-Jei Tan and Miranda Willson, and I are graduating today, but we are leaving the Daily in the capable and committed hands of those who love this work as much as we do. I can’t wait to see where they take the Daily next.

Yours with gratitude, Kathleen Schmidt Editor-in-chief

GOOD LUCK, CLASS OF 2017

NOAH KULAK 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.

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Photos clockwise from top-left: Metropolitan Police Department officers in riot gear deploy tear gas and pepper spray in clashes with violent protestors in the hours following Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20 in Washington DC (Max Lalanne / The Tufts Daily). A speaker at a rally organized by 32BJ SEIU, the labor union demanding a fairer contract for its members, on the Boston Common on Saturday, Sept. 10, 2016 (Max Lalanne / The Tufts Daily). Protesters participate in the Boston Women’s March on Jan. 21 (Zach Sebek / The Tufts Daily). Tufts students joined hundreds of Americans and members of the international community in a protest against the newly-inaugurated President Donald Trump on Jan. 20 (Evan Sayles / The Tufts Daily). TCA members hold their signs during March for Science that took place in Boston Common on April 22 (Seohyun Shim / The Tufts Daily). Elizabeth Warren came to speak at the protest against Trump’s anti-immigration act at Logan Airport’s international arrivals terminal on Jan. 28 (Ray Bernoff / The Tufts Daily).

The importance of living importantly

T

oday is an important day. I hope you feel that way, for a good education should help one develop a sense of importance in the work one does.

I don’t mean it in an egocentric way. The ego has a bad rep for a good reason: The world has indeed borne countless wrecks due to some egocentric people. Yet a world where people don’t believe in their work and have little to zero sense of importance in life is just as bad. Combine both and you have a surefire recipe for our troubled world: Relatively few people believe too much in an ideology they take to be their whole identity, while the majority take a fatalistic view that their lives don’t matter.

Thinking either too highly or lowly of oneself is self-centered.

No school can teach that sense of importance. As such, many young people are left confused and turn to popular ideologies, internalizing values without properly examining them. Consider the common parlance: “Love is good, fear is bad.” True for some parts, but definitely not enough.

Have you ever listened to someone breaking into tears because she, in the name of love, did not speak up about sexual abuse? How about witnessed someone trying with his every fiber to display bravado while masking his Fear of Being Fearful? If so, you might have, like me, wondered if many social issues come from that simplistic morality that young people ingest but never fully digest.

I’m critical, but I have a lot of hope.

I’ve seen and become good friends with beautiful young people, many of whom are with me today. You are both critical and receptive. You dare to embrace your messy sides and act out of a genuine appreciation of your whole, fuller self. You feel a sense of importance in your work and treat it with great respect, while paradoxically don’t take the self too seriously. The latter is a tough line to walk, but it’s possible.

From my experiences and observations, a sense of importance comes gradually when we open up, allow ourselves to be touched by life and then honestly witness our inner responses. Remember when people tell you “Don’t feel bad?” I’d say, “Feel first, and see if it’s really that bad.”

Another way to develop this sense is to be with people who feel that their work is important. I often ask people I work with, “What makes you care?” not just once but many times. If we don’t sense from each other a satisfying answer or at least an honest attempt, chances are we will not work well together. Slowly, we will get frustrated, lose interest, grow cynical… Please, don’t let yourself get that way. Offer the world meaningful possibilities, not endless cynicism.

In a sense, my Dear Jumbo column this semester has been an auto-ethnography, a study with a sample size of one. I hope it has brought clarity into the most fuzzy process of how a person develops a sense of importance in their life and work. The root word of important means “being of consequence.”

It is the awareness that the work we do has a consequence, that our life matters. It may not seem apparent at first, and it may matter for a different reason, but it does. So please, my friends, live importantly.

Khuyen Bui is a graduating senior majoring in computer science. Khuyen can be reached at g.khuyen@gmail.com.

32

THE TUFTS DAILY | Opinion | Sunday, May 21, 2017

T HE T UFTS D AILY Kathleen Schmidt Editor-in-Chief

EDITORIAL

Jei-Jei Tan Miranda Willson Managing Editors Joe Walsh Executive News Editor Ariel Barbieri-Aghib News Editors Zachary Hertz Gil Jacobson Robert Katz Liam Knox Daniel Nelson Catherine Perloff Emma Steiner Hannah Uebele Charles Bunnell Assistant News Editors Emily Burke Daniel Caron Aneurin Canham-Clyne Juliana Furgala Elie Levine Natasha Mayor Jesse Najarro Minna Trinh Costa Angelakis Executive Features Editor Becca Leibowitz Features Editors Jake Taber Emma Rosenthal Emma Damokosh Assistant Features Editors Zach Essig Elie Levine Jessie Newman Sean Ong Hermes Suen Grace Yuh Eran Sabaner Executive Arts Editor John Gallagher Arts Editors Cassidy Olsen John Fedak Assistant Arts Editors Libby Langsner Setenay Mufti Paige Spangenthal Anita Ramaswamy Executive Opinion Editor Stephen Dennison Cartoonists Shannon Geary Noah Kulak Lydia Ra Miranda Chavez Editorialists Julia Faxon Hannah Kahn Lena Novins-Montague Madeleine Schwartz Daniel Weinstein Eddie Samuels Executive Sports Editor Yuan Jun Chee Sports Editors Maddie Payne Maclyn Senear Liam Finnegan Assistant Sports Editors Savannah Mastrangelo Brad Schussel Sam Weidner Sam Weitzman Ray Bernoff Executive Photo Editor Margot Day Staff Photographers Scott Fitchen Lilia Kang Max Lalanne Rachael Meyer Vintus Okwonko Zachary Sebek Alexis Serino Seohyun Shim Angelie Xiong Sitong Zhang Ezgi Yazici Executive Video Editor Olivia Ireland Executive Video Admin.

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tuftsdaily.com

EDITORIAL

Supporting all university workers Most students on campus know Idah Duche, a cashier at Hodgdon Food-onthe-Run who always makes an effort to greet students warmly and even seems to have learned hundreds of students’ names. She was rightly acknowledged by University President Anthony Monaco at Senior Dinner this year for her friendliness and was even featured in a Facebook post

by Monaco last spring.

Earlier this semester, students came together to support another well-known Tufts Dining employee, Linda Furgala of Carmichael Dining Center. Furgala, a welcome and familiar face for many students who eat at Carmichael Dining Center, was abruptly let go for unclear reasons. In response to her firing, many students rushed to support her by emailing a pre-written message to Tufts Dining,

Carmichael’s unit manager Peter Soucy and Associate Director of Residential Dining John Beaulac. Two days later, Furgala was reinstated at Carmichael, to much student enthusiasm.

Students’ consistent support for Duche and Furgala is well-deserved, but it also raises an important question: Would students be as eager to support a dining hall worker, janitor or other employee whom they did not know as well? Though many Tufts students know and love Duche and Furgala, it is important to recognize that all members of the Tufts community deserve our support and recognition, simply for being a part of this campus and working hard to improve our lives as students.

In May 2015, when Tufts announced that it was planning to lay off 35 janitors,

not all students outside of Tufts Labor Coalition members rushed to their support. Nor have students come together en masse as they did when Furgala was laid off around the issue of Tufts’ continued refusal to hire non-unionized construction workers.

Of course, it is easier to care about someone when you know them. However, all workers on this campus deserve to have their rights as employees respected.

Moreover, though the details of Furgala’s rapid reinstatement are not entirely clear, it seems likely that students’ widespread outrage and support for Furgala may have contributed to Tufts Dining’s quick reversal of its decision. If more students rallied around the rights of all Tufts employees, we might see fewer unjust hiring and firing policies on campus.

OP-ED

University should support all graduation attendees

by Anonymous Senior When I was a little girl, my father would constantly remind me how it important it was to continue my education. That ultimately, it was the one thing no one could ever take away from me because I earned it. I never really understood the power of his words until today, just weeks away from walking across the stage and becoming the second in my family to earn a Bachelor’s Degree.

Now imagine how I feel knowing that my graduation could put my parents’ lives in jeopardy. I am writing this not knowing whether or not my parents are safe flying from California to Massachusetts as undocumented immigrants. Not knowing whether they will be detained or make it on time to my graduation ceremony. May 21, a day of celebration, is also a day of stress and worry.

Oftentimes, many students on this campus fail to realize and acknowledge that not all families have the privilege or financial means to attend graduation.

Unfortunately, not all family members of students on this campus have the ‘appropriate’ documentation to travel without fear. Given all the racist and harmful rhetoric being said about immigrants today, the fear many undocumented immigrants feel is valid, and the worries of their children who are being affected by this must not go unrecognized.

When meeting with administrators to discuss what the university could do to support families in these circumstances, I was told nothing could be done. That the university’s priority at the moment is to protect students, both citizens and non-citizens, documented and undocumented. While it is reassuring knowing the university (supposedly) prioritizes protecting students, what about their families?

What about parents and siblings risking their lives to celebrate the accomplishments of their loved ones? What about protecting families traveling internationally, especially from countries targeted by the Muslim ban? In the end, what happens to our families affects us as students. There is no feeling of safety or reassurance knowing I am protected while my parents are at risk of being removed from this country.

Tufts University and universities across the country can no longer dismiss this issue. The university’s complacent stance with regards to how it supports undocumented families is unacceptable. As an institution, Tufts has the tools to connect undocumented families with resources to

facilitate with traveling. As an institution, Tufts must do a better job addressing the concerns of their students (granted, we are their priority). I am one of few students with undocumented family members who has reached out to administrators, and none of us have received the assistance or information needed to feel safe with our parents traveling.

I truly hope students and administrators become more cognizant of this issue as it is alive and present on our campus.

I also hope the university becomes more equipped to support students and their families for the graduation ceremonies to

come. No student should have to deal with this fear on their own.

As for my family, who has done everything to ensure I have access to the opportunities they did not have growing up, they should not be excluded from this milestone in my life. My parents have sacrificed everything — their physical and mental health, their education and their homeland — to ensure that I receive a higher education. They are the reason I am here today. Graduation day, my diploma, my Tufts education, it is all for my parents. Los quiero mucho mami y papi, espero verlos pronto.

Sunday, May 21, 2017 | Opinion | THE TUFTS DAILY

O pi n io n EDITORIAL

Social houses could provide alternatives to Greek life Over the course of one academic year, the social scene at Tufts has changed dramatically. Though the future of Greek life remains unclear, there is no question that changes are going to be made to the system. As part of these changes, Tufts should consider implementing a system of social houses to foster a new type of social life on a campus where Greek life plays a smaller role.

Other schools in the NESCAC have made successful transitions away from Greek life.

Bowdoin College had a thriving fraternity scene, though no sororities, through most of the 1990s. This changed when concerns about binge drinking and sexual harassment led the Bowdoin Commission on Residential Life to release a report in 1997 recommending all fraternities be phased out over the span of four years. A social house system was suggested as a replacement. The Board of Trustees approved the

report unanimously and eight “College Houses” were established in 1998.

Now, every Bowdoin first-year is affiliated with one of the houses based on the dorm floor they live on, and they have full access to and privileges of the house.

Houses sponsor special meals, study breaks, parties, lectures, film screenings and other activities. Upperclassmen can apply to live in the house. Much of the Bowdoin party scene revolves around the social houses, which are inclusive (every student is affiliated with one) and co-ed.

Middlebury College took a similar path.

In 1989, the Middlebury Report of the Task Force on Student Social Life stated that ”the narrowly defined, fraternity-dominated social life on campus is incompatible with our vision of the future.” In 1991, fraternities at Middlebury were abolished and four social houses replaced them.

Tufts already has special interest houses such as Crafts House and the International House. But the only way to be truly affiliated with these houses is to live in them, and space is limited. Each house has it own specific niche, and these niches do not encompass all student interests. In order for a system of social houses to be effective at creating an inclusive campus, all students should be given the option to participate in one.

The events of this year have shown that the future of the Tufts party scene is subject to change. Social houses have been successful at peer institutions and can provide a sense of community to students without being exclusionary. As the role of Greek life on campus continues to be debated and discussed, Tufts should evaluate the option of an inclusive social house system.

EDITORIAL

Expanding mental health services Most students on campus know Idah Duche, a cashier at Hodgdon Food-onthe-Run who always makes an effort to greet students warmly and even seems to have learned hundreds of students’ names. She was rightly acknowledged by University President Anthony Monaco at Senior Dinner this year for her friendliness and was even featured in a Facebook post

by Monaco last spring.

Earlier this semester, students came together to support another well-known Tufts Dining employee, Linda Furgala of Carmichael Dining Center. Furgala, a welcome and familiar face for many students who eat at Carmichael Dining Center, was abruptly let go for unclear reasons. In response to her firing, many students rushed to support her by emailing a pre-written message to Tufts Dining,

Carmichael’s unit manager Peter Soucy and Associate Director of Residential Dining John Beaulac. Two days later, Furgala was reinstated at Carmichael, to much student enthusiasm.

Students’ consistent support for Duche and Furgala is well-deserved, but it also raises an important question: Would students be as eager to support a dining hall worker, janitor or other employee whom they did not know as well? Though many Tufts students know and love Duche and Furgala, it is important to recognize that all members of the Tufts community deserve our support and recognition, simply for being a part of this campus and working hard to improve our lives as students.

In May 2015, when Tufts announced that it was planning to lay off 35 janitors,

UP, UP AND AWAY

SHANNON GEARY

not all students outside of Tufts Labor Coalition members rushed to their support. Nor have students come together en masse as they did when Furgala was laid off around the issue of Tufts’ continued refusal to hire non-unionized construction workers.

Of course, it is easier to care about someone when you know them. However, all workers on this campus deserve to have their rights as employees respected.

Moreover, though the details of Furgala’s rapid reinstatement are not entirely clear, it seems likely that students’ widespread outrage and support for Furgala may have contributed to Tufts Dining’s quick reversal of its decision. If more students rallied around the rights of all Tufts employees, we might see fewer unjust hiring and firing policies on campus.

33

Anna Tolette The Elephant in the Room

Woah, we’re halfway there!

I

am afraid of change and the passing of time scares me. The end of the school year always means change isn’t far away.

Whether it’s taking all the posters down off your walls or moving into your house for the summer (and probably the next two years), no matter what it is, change is scary as heck. Seniors graduate, everyone becomes a ‘rising junior’ or whatever like we’re some bread dough and new first-years will arrive in the fall.

As an underclassman, I was in this nice bubble where I knew I still had the majority of college ahead of me.

I could mess up if I needed to and it would be okay if I didn’t have a plan for the next five years already lined up. There’s something about being a junior that makes it all seem so much more real. I’ll be a real person living in an actual house with an actual job for the summer. I’m going to be living in France for a semester, away from all my family, but luckily I’ve got some good friends coming with me. As the resident queen of anxiety, I am terrified, but while I could let the train of thought run off the rails, I’ve been keeping it under control by remembering that it is a privilege to be a college student with all the opportunities I have been given.

Although my last final paper wasn’t due until 5 p.m. on Monday, I spent a total of nine or 10 hours in the basement of Tisch on Sunday because I had an overwhelming desire to just be done. As much as I love school and all it is going to give me, I feel that I am certainly not the only one who will say that it is utterly exhausting. After this year, I am burnt out. I submitted my final paper for sociology, which was mostly me going on a feminist rant, and the weight that lifted off my chest was indescribable. Sometimes, when you’ve been in the Tisch basement for nine hours straight, you aren’t thinking so clearly anymore. I asked myself many times why I even really cared about what I was writing about. But now that I have finally seen the light of summer, I remember why it is a privilege to keep being wrung out through this system semester after semester.

In the end, when I looked at my finished product, I remembered why I cared. I care because I have an insatiable hunger for learning, I like to write about my opinions and I like to think that my life is going somewhere. While it’s terrifying to think that college is halfway over, I’d like to think of it more as a motivation to make next semester the best one yet.

The same goes for the one after that.

Reflecting on the year as a whole, the people I have met, the knowledge I have gained and the experiences that I have had have been remarkable.

Here’s to you, Tufts.

Anna D. Tolette is a rising junior majoring in film & media studies. Anna can be reached at anna.tolette@tufts.edu.

34

THE TUFTS DAILY | Opinion | Sunday, May 21, 2017

Nesi Altaras Looking In

T

Order

his year has been a challenge to order. Whether you like the current order or not, at least it exists.

We live in order, not in chaos. The existence of an order is not pre-ordained and there are places without it.

A challenge to order can be a force for good when it is constructive and represents a coherent alternative future.

The challenges seen this year have not been that. These were “burn it down” type attempts that would bring uncertainty to our lives.

Donald Trump’s presidency is the most important example, but Brexit and its looming uncertainty, Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon of France, Geert Wilders of the Netherlands, Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rigged referendum in Turkey and other developments have posed challenges to the world order this year.

But the order held strong, mostly.

Trump’s challenge to the established order in the United States has been paralyzed because the American order is strong and well-established. Love them or hate them, the one absolute truth is that American institutions like the parties, federal agencies and most importantly, the courts, are strong. The Republican Party, an institution I have no love for, absorbed Trump almost completely and swallowed his “challenge the order” rhetoric whole. The past 100 days are a testament to the power of the American judiciary and separation of powers. America’s order, though damaged, goes on.

The European order also survived with wounds. The European Union (EU) has brought, above all, peace and prosperity to its members. It is lacking in many ways, but it is an order that strives for positive change. The EU is young, so it is not yet as strong as American institutions and needs time to develop.

Brexit was a hard blow, but the European project will live. Thanks to Emmanuel Macron’s victory and Wilders’ loss, the EU will not have to face the specter of Dutch or French exits. The EU will have to adapt itself.

Turkey is moving from parliamentary democracy to presidential autocracy.

Though Erdogan’s autocracy is fear-inducing, the death of the parliamentary system is just as depressing. It took decades and several coups for the democratic culture to form and that culture was formed around the parliamentary system. Looking at the list of prime ministers, the uncertainty worries me.

Thinking of the post-parliamentary order in Turkey is scary. Order is hard to create and easy to sustain. When it gets damaged, it is hard to rebuild. Once Erdogan breaks the back of Turkey’s political system, it will be extremely difficult for the new order to be strong and durable.

Every change to the Turkish constitution, every comprise given to the United Kingdom in its exit, every vote won by Marine Le Pen, every bizarre policy and jab at the free press Trump makes will hurt the order, and it will take many years for these institutions to recover, but they will persevere. We need to be ready to repair them when the time comes.

Nesi Altaras is a sophomore majoring in international relations and economics.

Nesi can be reached at nesi.altaras@ tufts.edu.

tuftsdaily.com

OP-ED

Part-time faculty union contract negotiation update The Part-time Faculty Union Bargaining Committee We want to congratulate this year’s graduating seniors on their significant accomplishment. As part-time faculty who teach many of the foundational writing and language courses at Tufts, as well as many other courses across all disciplines, we are proud to have been part of the educational experience of the Class of 2017.

The Tufts Part-time Faculty Union has met several times this semester with the university to negotiate a follow-up to our first contract, signed in 2014. The union hopes that we will be able to reach an agreement before our current contract expires on June 30. Any new understanding will necessarily result from a willingness on the part of both parties to work together for our mutual benefit and to fulfill Tufts’ educational mission.

We are faced with difficult circumstances.

Until about 30 years ago, those teaching at our colleges and universities held solid middle-class positions with good pay and job security. Things have changed dramatically since that time, though. Like many others in our country today, most people who teach at the college level fill “contingent” positions with low pay and little job stability or security.

That’s why the mission of our union is to regain lost ground on some basic employment standards. We propose that seasoned faculty members who have demonstrated a commitment to Tufts should be able to expect a transparent and reasonable reappointment process that includes standard protections against arbitrary or biased treatment. We also believe that we should be able to predict our course loads from one semester to the next, as fluctuations in our assigned courses can dramatically reduce our salaries, wreaking havoc on our already precarious financial situations. To us, these items represent the fundamental fairness that should be extended to all faculty irrespective of their part-time or full-time status.

Our working conditions are student learning conditions. Just as we should not be expected to teach in a climate of instability and unpredictability, Tufts students should not have to wonder whether a faculty member will still be working at Tufts when, in a few years, it comes time to ask them for a letter of recommendation for a job or graduate school.

We part-time faculty teach about a third of the courses at the university and we uphold the idea of One Faculty, with a goal of equitable compensation and equal treatment across all faculty ranks, and a sala-

ry scale over the life of our contract that exceeds increases in the cost of living in this extraordinarily expensive urban area where we live and work.

Tufts has been a model for forward motion on relations with contingent faculty, and we made significant progress in our first contract. We hope to continue that progress toward shifting the paradigm for academic employment back to a model where ours are good paying jobs with reasonable expectations for stability, security and improvement over the years.

We appreciate that in recent negotiating sessions, the university has begun to acknowledge our concerns and take them more seriously. We applaud them and hope that our positive negotiating experiences can translate into action. We are sure that the university can find ways to work with us toward mutually beneficial solutions to some of the non-economic issues on the table. We also hope that the new, positive atmosphere will carry over to our discussions regarding economic issues, including compensation.

If you find yourself with a representative of the university over commencement weekend, please don’t hesitate to express your support for the faculty who have contributed so much to the success of graduating seniors and other students here at Tufts.

OP-ED

On Dialogue

by Students for Justice in Palestine We, the members of Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), write to update the Tufts community on our campaign to divest from companies complicit in the Israeli occupation. After successfully passing our resolution through the Tufts Community Union Senate on a 17-6-8 vote, we continue to pressure the Board of Trustees into action, namely divestment from G4S, Elbit Systems, Northrop Grumman and HP, all involved in a variety of human rights violations in Palestine and around the world.

SJP has reached out to the board multiple times over the past semester requesting information about Tufts’ investments, and following the resolution’s passing, we requested a meeting with the board to discuss the potential of divestment. We were met with the following response from Paul Triangle, Secretary of the Corporation: “The Chairman does not believe that meetings such as you have requested would prove to be productive.”

This came only minutes after the Board’s Chairman, Peter Dolan, sent out a campus-wide email claiming that, “In accordance with its founding principles, Tufts encourages and welcomes respectful expression and debate of all viewpoints from every member of our community in an environment free from discrimination.

Such dialogue is essential to how we learn from one another and strengthens our role in society.”

We are extremely disappointed in the inherent contradiction the University has presented. The Board of Trustees calls for expression and debate, yet simultaneously refuses to engage with us. Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine wants to engage in dialogue. That’s why we host Tea with SJP weekly in the Campus Center to talk with the student body about the occupation and our work, in addition to the myriad of speakers, workshops and other events we host year-round. But this dialogue is actively denied by an administration consistently failing to guarantee students’ rights to free speech and safety. If Tufts has true interest in fostering a campus climate of free dialogue, it must commit

to this rhetoric with actions such as the following: 1. Agree to a meeting between the Board of Trustees and members of SJP. 2. Guarantee the safety of SJP students, allies and senators from intimidation and threats.

We must also remember that these discussions don’t occur in a vacuum.

Pro-Israel groups like Friends of Israel, Tufts American Israel Alliance and Tufts Students for Two States are barred by their umbrella group Tufts Hillel from co-hosting or co-sponsoring events or discussions with groups like SJP and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) that support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement.

Hillel International’s Standards of Partnership effectively shut down any chance at cooperation.

Instead, campus organizations often falsely accuse pro-Palestinian groups of antisemitism. Though SJP does not take these accusations lightly, we stand with Tufts JVP in condemning false claims of antisemitism designed to silence criticism of Israel. Smearing SJP with accusations of antisemitism is a defined strategy employed across the United States to shut down campus organizing in solidarity with Palestinians. Pro-Israel organizations attempt to rewrite the definition of antisemitism to include any and all critique of Israel, then use this new strategy to silence calls for Palestinian human rights.

It matters to us when people in positions of power like President Monaco, Dean Solomont and the leaders of Tufts Hillel bring up questions of antisemitism. As Jewish and non-Jewish students alike fighting for collective liberation, we are committed to ending the occupation, ending Islamophobia, anti-Arab racism, antisemitism and all other forms of oppression. But when people in positions of power misuse the charge of antisemitism, conflating it with criticism of the state of Israel, they discount the very real problem of antisemitism on this campus, in this country and around the world halting dialogue on the occupation and the liberation of Palestine.

With this resolution, we hope to push our University and our senators to act on

their values. As a university committed to protecting all members of the community, Tufts must protect the senators who were filmed during the resolution, or whose names were plastered on Facebook alongside their votes on the resolution.

These breaches of privacy directly threaten students’ safety and their ability to enter the state of Israel. They increase the likelihood of being placed on McCarthyite websites that falsely accuse pro-Palestine activists or those who support BDS of antisemitism to attempt to tar their reputations.

President Monaco claims we ought to “enhance our efforts to support and protect our DACA and undocumented students.” If so, then Tufts should actively ensure that through funding or profit, it has no dealings with the companies noted in the resolution, which are violently involved in the racialized profiling, deportation and violence against undocumented communities in this country.

Changing Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day was a huge step for the University, fueled by the resilient work of many student activists, but it was a minor one in supporting indigenous populations. Committing to supporting indigenous communities — beyond a name change in a calendar, that is — necessitates that Tufts cut ties with companies such as G4S, whose use of militarized violence against Water Protectors in Standing Rock and other indigenous communities, contributing to the oppression of students on this campus. Currently, Tufts is inconsistent and contradictory with its values, words and actions. Our resolution reflects SJP and JVP’s demands for the university to demonstrate a true dedication to its students and to people all over the world suffering from the violence enacted by these companies, which uphold intimately connected systems of oppression.

Through this letter, we call for a dialogue, one that doesn’t silence marginalized voices, one that guarantees the safety of students and one that truly addresses the power dynamics at play at this University. We are calling on President Monaco, the Tufts Administration and members of the Tufts Community to act upon their “unwavering” values.

Sunday, May 21, 2017 | Opinion | THE TUFTS DAILY

O pi n io n OP-ED

Tufts can be a haven for free speech

by Gus Gleason As a soon-to-be-graduate of Tufts University School of Medicine and member of the Tufts community, I wanted to offer some thoughts about free speech.

First, I want to clarify that I understand Tufts is a private institution and can make rules about speech/expression that do not have to align with our constitutional rights. However, the rules the university establishes in regards to speech and expression are done so per the will of the student body. Therefore, you the students have incredible power in influencing the way your institution is to be governed. It is with this power that I ask you to become the champion of those who wish to say and do as they please regardless of their background, political views or philosophies. Diversity of thought is equally as important as diversity of sex, origin, culture, ethnicity, sexual preference and gender identity. Furthermore, your campus should be a breeding ground for contentious ideas and differing opinions that can be debated civilly in which the only factors that determine good ideas over bad ones are reason and logic.

I will be the first to admit that I have said and done things in my life that have offended others; everyone has. It’s impossible to go through life without instances in which your free will clashes with someone else’s.

Offending someone or being offended is an inevitable fact of life that no one should shy away from. These interactions can help us learn how to better treat one another and go about discussing controversial topics in a cordial manner. Furthermore, your subjective offense to what someone says, wears or does neither warrants nor allows you to silence them. Obviously, this does not include the threat of violence or inciting violence, in which cases intervention is necessary. But how someone’s shirt makes you feel is not grounds to have them punished for wearing it. Even if the act in question is grossly offensive, that person should be allowed to do it and suffer the consequences of trying to explain their

actions to a society wholly adept at public shaming. The point I am encouraging is that regardless of your subjective reality, freedom of expression protects the rights of the offender as much as it protects your rights to say that you are offended. This is a principle that we should defend at all costs and that Tufts students should advocate for on their campuses.

The common rebuttal to my argument thus far is the following: Subjectively offensive statements/actions can make people on campus feel unsafe and therefore, by restricting, regulating and punishing people for subjective offenses, you are making your campus safer. First of all, feeling safe and being safe are two very different things. Obviously, you want students to feel safe on your campus, but again, this returns to an individual’s subjective reality about a situation. I feel safe on an airplane while others may not.

Some students may not feel safe smoking pot or drinking alcohol while others have no hesitancy. The question students should really be asking themselves is the following: Is Tufts University a safe place?

The answer is overwhelming yes.

Just glancing at the campus safety statistics, in 2015, there were 29 reported cases of rape, aggravated assault and burglary on the Medford/Somerville campus, which means that over 99 percent of students did not report such crimes that year. While it is tragic for those who fall victims to these crimes and we should continue to work toward eradicating these numbers entirely, it seems unfounded that inhibiting free speech will lower these numbers. Furthermore, my efforts to find evidence that campus speech codes reduce the amount of physical violence on campus did not yield any significant results. (However, if anyone knows of such studies I would be more than interested to read them.) Therefore, speech codes on campus for the sole purpose of preventing violence appear to be irrelevant at this point in time.

Finally, we need to make the important distinction that being offended by

MAY AT TUFTS

STEPHEN DENNISON

something is radically different than being in physical danger. Physical danger includes instances in which someone has threatened violence against you personally, incited violence or has violated your physical person without your consent. In any situation in which you are in physical danger due to the actions of another individual, intervention is necessary to keep you safe and to punish the perpetrators for their actions. Unless you are in physical danger, you do not have the right to silence or punish others for whatever way they are expressing themselves. In any new environment we enter, we must always assess how comfortable we as individuals feel with the situation around us.

If someone says something we do not like, we can ask them not to say it or to explain why they said it. You would hope that the person is decent and will comply with your requests or engage you in discussion, but they still have the freedom to do as they please as long as it’s not harming you.

Someone wearing an offensive Halloween costume near you does not all of the sudden put you in danger. You can voice your opinion about their costume, but you do not have the right to punish them for wearing it.

The supposed famous line often attributed to Voltaire goes, “I don’t agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” This is a principle that all participating in higher education should hold close to their heart.

I am optimistic that the Tufts community can become a haven for free speech and expression. As students, you have power to influence what happens on campus and what intellectual dialogue you will engage in. I implore you to invite those with differing views from your own and to entertain them with debate and civil discussion about their views. You defeat bad ideas by letting them defeat themselves, not by silencing them.

Gus Gleason is a student at the Tufts Univeristy School of Medicine. Gus can be reached at augustus.gleason@gmail.com.

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MJ Griego, Evelyn Bellew and Jessica O'Flanagan Food for Thought

Are you what you eat?

B

oth in our world and at our university, we have been thrown a lot of political and social challenges in the last eight months.

As a result, many of us leave this school year with a unique sense of political angst. We’ve had to question and criticize our communities, mobilize opinions and ask important questions with no easy answers. Despite all this, there are still arguments left unresolved and problems that refuse to budge. In the wake of such political frustration, many of us have turned to conscious consumerism to live out our ideals. The question becomes, is being mindful enough?

Working for change in our systems of production requires time and energy, and thus political and social movements are often viewed as long, drawn out battles. We crave change, but want quick solutions. Consumption is often the perfect compromise, because we have been taught to see our financial choices as having instant political value.

Vegetarians are one of the most visible examples — many vigilantly avoid meat as a statement against animal rights abuses and ecological destruction. While vegetarianism has important social and ecological impacts, the ethics behind it quickly unravel when one refuses to eat meat that would then go uneaten in order to hold their moral stance. Conscious consumerism loses value when it evolves from a political statement to an identity. Brands marketed as “eco-friendly” lead consumers to identify with the products they buy, and create moral borders between themselves and people who don’t buy “green.”

Capitalism’s ideology of consumption leads us to believe that the types of things we buy have big stakes in who we are. Therefore, we invest our time and money finding products that we feel represent us and convey this representation to society. But the power of investment is largely an illusion. While vegetarianism is undoubtedly environmentally friendly, it doesn’t necessarily weaken commercial farming or go against immoral markets. It is important to recognize that buying and consuming “green” products doesn’t necessarily subvert the malpractices we wish to defeat.

This is not to say that vegetarianism or conscious consumerism in general is not a useful practice. Mindfulness, if nothing else, is valuable because it challenges us to think and act differently. There is no test of strength quite like being vegetarian at a barbecue — experiences such as these can show us how strong we are in the face of temptation and remind us how important discomfort can be. Living in accordance with our values is thought-provoking and satisfying, but we should ask for more of ourselves. To enact effective change, it isn’t enough to abstain from problematic power structures. This requires moving against them.

Evelyn Bellew is a sophomore majoring in environmental studies and political science. Evelyn can be reached at evelyn. bellew@icloud.com. Jessica O'Flanagan is a sophomore majoring in computer science and English. Jessica can be reached at jessica.o_flanagan@tufts.edu.

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THE TUFTS DAILY | Sports | Sunday, May 21, 2017

tuftsdaily.com

Sunday, May 21, 2017

Sports

37 tuftsdaily.com

TOP 10 MOMENTS

Tufts sports top-10 moments of 2016-17

by Eddie Samuels

Executive Sports Editor

The 2016–2017 season was a dominant year for Jumbo athletics. Following a strong fall campaign, Tufts was No. 2 in Div. III in the Learfield Director’s Cup standings. Following an equally impressive winter campaign, Tufts athletics remained a top-three force nationally. These dominant seasons were made up of hundreds of victories, big and small — but here are the Daily’s picks for the top-10 Tufts sports moments of the year.

10. Men’s ice hockey beats Trinity in first game of season After their comeback against Trinity in the semifinals of the NESCAC tournament fell just short last year, Tufts got even by defeating the defending conference champions 3-1 in the team’s season opener. Trinity was the first to strike with a goal in the first period, and it wasn’t until 6:01 remaining in the second period that Tufts’ rising sophomore defender Cooper Stahl tied the game with his first collegiate goal. With three minutes left in the third period, rising senior forward Brian Brown scored on a power-play to give the Jumbos a 2-1 lead. At 19:02, Brown tacked on an empty-netter to ice the victory. In a testament to how big the win was, Trinity went on to win its second consecutive NESCAC title against Hamilton later in the season and lost in the NCAA finals against Norwich.

9. Women’s volleyball makes deep NCAA run For just the second time in program history the Tufts women’s volleyball team advanced all the way to the Elite Eight of the NCAA tournament. The team fell in its quarterfinal matchup to Southwestern (Texas) in a thrilling five-set match on Nov. 17, 2016 as their comeback effort fell just short. After getting an at-large bid to the tournament following an impressive 22-2 regular season (10-0 NESCAC), the Jumbos easily got through the first round to earn NCAA Regionals hosting rights.

Tufts took down both UMass-Boston and Springfield College 3-1 at Cousens Gym to earn its Elite Eight spot in Oshkosh, Wis. 8. Women’s crew sweeps races in season opener Tufts kicked off its spring season on April 8 with a dominant showing on the Malden River, winning all five races in which the team participated. Against a field made up of Coast Guard, Trinity and Simmons College, Tufts’ three boats were undefeated. The first varsity eight beat Coast Guard by a 29-second margin in the semi-finals and then Trinity by a dominant 37-second margin in the finals to win in the four-team format. The second varsity eight and third varsity eight also claimed wins in their races. Each defeated Simmons, and the second boat also took down Trinity in its second race.

7. Men’s lacrosse breaks program record for number of wins to start season For the first time in program history, the Jumbos opened the season with 11 consecutive wins. Previously, Tufts’ best start

RAY BERNOFF / THE TUFTS DAILY

Men’s soccer coach Josh Shapiro poses for a portrait on Bello Field on May 8. was 10-0, which the team achieved in 2011 and 2015, both years in which they won NCAA titles. In that 11-0 run, the Jumbos took down six NESCAC teams and five non-conference teams while outscoring their opponents 199-107, including four games in which they scored more than 20 points and six games in which they allowed fewer than 10 goals. The strong start was an impressive debut performance for new head coach Casey D’Annolfo, who took over the program this season.

6. Men’s swimming and diving sends nine to Nationals The men’s swimming and diving squad capped off its best season in over a decade with impressive representation at this year’s NCAA Championships in Shenandoah, Texas. The team had nine Jumbos qualify for the championship meet in mid-March, marking the program’s largest NCAA squad since the 2009–2010 season. Those swimmers collected six All-American honors (top eight in the nation) and six AllAmerican honorable mentions (top 16).

Graduating senior tri-captain Matt Rohrer, who came into his fourth consecutive NCAA meet with four All-American honors and two honorable mention honors already, was the lone senior and the lone diver in a squad that featured seven Jumbos making their NCAA debuts. In a promising sign for the future of the program, the nine-man squad featured two sophomores and three first-years. Rohrer earned AllAmerican honors in both the one- and three-meter events while rising sophomore Kingsley Bowen, the other NCAA returner, racked up three All-American awards. The team totaled 126 points over the four-day event to place 10th overall, marking the program’s best NCAA performance since the 2005–2006 season.

5. Women’s basketball reaches NCAA finals with comeback against St. Thomas in semifinals In a comeback reminiscent of the Patriots’ Super Bowl LI victory — the Patriots’ official twitter account actually tweeted about Tufts’ come-from-behind victory — Tufts

dug deep in its Final Four contest against St. Thomas to earn a remarkable 60-57 win that sent the team to its second consecutive national championship game appearance.

The Jumbos trailed 53-41 with 5:30 to play but ended the game on a 19-4 run to claim the win. Rising sophomore Erica DeCandido started the comeback with an old-fashioned three-point play, rising senior Melissa Baptista hit a free throw, classmate and tri-captain Lauren Dillon hit a clutch three before graduating senior tri-captain Michela North’s two free throws made the contest a one-possession game.

After a St. Thomas score, Baptista sunk a three and then made a layup to tie it up before rising junior guard Jacqueline Knapp drained a three-point jumper of her own to give Tufts a 58-55 lead with 32 seconds to play. Dillon then hit two free throws in the waning seconds to seal the win.

4. Field Hockey wins NESCAC Championship Tufts field hockey (19-3) quickly raced out to a 2-0 lead in the first 10:30 of play against Middlebury (15-5) in the NESCAC Championship game on Nov. 6 and appeared in control for most of the game, but Middlebury managed to sneak in a second-half goal to cut the deficit in half.

Instead of riding out their narrow lead, the Jumbos responded by putting the pressure on and, with under 10 minutes to play, rising senior forward Mary Travers single-handedly cut through the defense to get off a shot. Graduating senior forward Annie Artz knocked home the deflection to ice the 3-1 Tufts victory and secure the program’s second NESCAC title, the first on Ounjian Field in its inaugural season.

3. Chance Brady ties (and then breaks) Tufts’ rushing touchdown record Graduating senior tri-captain running back Chance Brady’s final season was one for the ages, as the Haverhill, Mass. native set multiple Tufts single-game, single-season and career records for yards and touchdowns. Perhaps no play was more representative of Brady’s outstanding body of work, however, than his run to tie Tufts’

rushing career touchdown record. In the Oct. 22, 2016 game against Williams (0-8), with the Jumbos up 14-9 in the third quarter, Brady took a handoff from rising junior quarterback Ryan McDonald and shook off three different tacklers on a thrilling 31-yard touchdown run. While Brady’s two-yard dive into the end zone later that same quarter was the run that broke the record, his earlier score best embodied his hard-running style.

2. Tim Nichols wins 5k NCAA title at Nationals Graduating senior Tim Nichols, who has had an impressive career as a Jumbo, capped off the indoor season by claiming a national title in the 5,000 meters on March 10. His regular season school record time of 14:19.45 granted him the top seed in the race, and he put up an equally impressive performance on the national stage.

He ran the event in 14:25.08, which was a track record at the NCAA Championships venue, North Central College. Nichols continued his success into the outdoor season, shattering multiple Tufts distance running records as well as claiming his first ever NESCAC title in the 10,000 meters.

1. Men’s soccer wins National Championship with double overtime goal After starting the season 0-2-1, no one would have believed that the Jumbos could turn their season around and finish 15-5-2 with their second NCAA title in the last three years. The Jumbos were fortunate to receive an at-large bid to the tournament after bowing out of the NESCAC tournament in the quarterfinals, and, with one of the lowest win totals heading into the tournament, they faced an uphill road to the finals against opponents that mostly had 20 or more wins. After the team reached the finals through a series of one-goal wins, rising senior midfielder Tyler Kulcsar got a foot on a strong corner kick service from classmate Kevin Halliday in the 103rd minute of double overtime to give Tufts a 1-0 victory over Calvin College in the championship game, just seven minutes before the game would have gone to penalty kicks.

Photos opposite, clockwise from top: Rising senior epee Grace Tellado competes in a match against BU at the Tufts Multi-Meet in Cousens Gym on Feb. 11 (Ray Bernoff / The Tufts Daily).

Rising senior forward Brian Brown takes a swing at the puck during the men’s ice hockey game against Amherst at the Malden Forum on Feb. 11 (Ray Bernoff / The Tufts Daily). Rising senior Lauren Banner returns the ball in a match against Dickinson at Harvard’s Murr Center on Jan. 20, 2016 (Ray Bernoff / The Tufts Daily). Tufts and Husson players struggle for the ball during Tufts’ second round championship in Cousens Gym on March 4 (Ray Bernoff / The Tufts Daily). Rising senior Lauren Louks prepares to make a return during Tufts’ 6-3 win against Wesleyan on April 15 (Seohyun Shim / The Tufts Daily).

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THE TUFTS DAILY | Sports | Sunday, May 21, 2017

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MEN'S CREW

Jumbos see success from all boats in spring regattas

by Bradley Schussel

Assistant Sports Editor

According to the rowers on Tufts’ men’s crew team, this year has been one of growth for the Jumbos.

“I can’t think of a single athlete who didn’t grow as a rower and as a person this year,” graduating senior tri-captain Zach Merchant said. “The team is primed for even bigger things in the coming years.”

Tufts took part in four regular season regattas during the spring season. The squad saw plenty of wins from each of their boats and added on a second-place finish as well.

Graduating senior tri-captain Doug Burt said the team is faster and more competitive than in previous years.

“We attribute that to a shift in team culture that was made several years ago by former Tufts rowers,” Burt said. “They laid the foundation for us to continue building a deep, successful team. We have more rowers than we’ve had in recent memory and the team is more competitive as a result.”

The team’s most recent regular season regatta was the Baker Cup, which took place in Worcester, Mass. on April 23.

The Jumbos faced off against Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), Skidmore and Washington College, winning three races and losing two.

Among the winning boats for Tufts at the Baker Cup was the novice boat, which topped WPI by 24 seconds. Burt acknowledged that the novice eight has improved considerably over the course of the season.

“I continue to be impressed by the freshman boat,” Burt said. “They’ve continued to get faster each day and have had great results all season. We’re all proud of

the work that they’ve done and the base they’ve laid for future generations of Tufts rowers.”

Prior to the Baker Cup, the Jumbos hosted three regattas on the Malden River.

On April 15, they raced against Bates, Wesleyan and the University of New Hampshire. In that regatta, the Jumbos went 5-3, as each of their boats earned at least a win, with the novice eight defeating the third varsity eight for its second win of the day.

On April 8, Tufts’ three varsity eight boats took on the Coast Guard Academy.

The Bears’ first boat managed to defeat the Jumbos’ first eight by eight seconds.

But the second and third varsity eights for Tufts won their races, giving their team a 2-1 record against Coast Guard Academy.

The next day, Tufts faced UMass, Middlebury and Amherst on the Malden and came in second out of the four teams.

The second varsity eight for the Jumbos won twice on the day, giving them a perfect 3-0 weekend after defeating Coast Guard Academy.

The Jumbos participated in two postseason regattas. They concluded the season with a first-place finish at the National Invitational Rowing Championship (NIRC), topping 17 other schools. Prior to that regatta, Tufts raced at the New England Rowing Championships (NERC), with the first varsity eight placing sixth and the second boat placing fourth.

“The journey to this point over the course of the season — and over the course of four years for our seniors — was a challenging one,” Merchant said.

“I couldn’t be more proud of our guys for the character they’ve shown this year. I’ll remember our races at NERCs and NIRCs for the rest of my life.”

COURTESY KATE SIENKO

Tufts men’s crew raced a varsity four boat at the Head of the Charles Regatta, placing 11th.

WOMEN'S CREW

Tufts sweeps MIT in last regular season regatta

by Bradley Schussel

Assistant Sports Editor

The Jumbos saw a great deal of success in the spring racing season. In its final regular season regatta, Tufts traveled to Cambridge, Mass. for the MIT Lightweights. There, the Jumbos swept the Engineers, going 3-0 in their races on the day, finishing up a successful regular season.

Prior to the MIT regatta, Tufts went 6-4

during the Brown Cup on Lake Quinsigamond in Worcester, Mass. where the team raced against Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Clark University, William Smith College and Skidmore College. Perhaps the highlight of the regatta was the first varsity eight winning their only race of the day, thus retaining the Brown Cup. The first three regattas of the spring season were hosted by the women’s team on the Malden River. The most recent of the three

was on April 15 where Tufts went 1-5 against Bates, Wesleyan and Wellesley.

The first two spring races saw the Jumbos take home first-place finishes. First, the team beat out Trinity, Coast Guard and Simmons, and then saw another first-place finish against NESCAC rivals Middlebury and Amherst.

Graduating senior tri-captain Haley Cohen attributed the team’s success to its drive to succeed.

SOFIE HECHT / THE TUFTS DAILY

The Tufts crew team rows against Middlebury College on Malden River on April 16, 2016.

“Something our coaches tell us is, ‘There’s always another level,’ meaning there’s always something we can do to get better,” Cohen told the Daily in an email. “This year, we’ve really taken this to heart and have dedicated ourselves to reaching those next levels.”

She also praised the hard work of the coaches.

“Coach Brian [Dawe], Coach Rachel [Schlosser] and Coach Ryan [Flood] have pushed us past our comfort zones and made us the best we can be,” Cohen said.

As a graduating senior, she is proud of how herself and her teammates have grown throughout her time as a rower.

“I think I have made incremental progress and look forward to continuing to row after college,” Cohen said.

The Jumbos participated in the New England Championships, which concluded on May 6. The first eight finished fifth in the event, after taking second in their initial heat. Ultimately, the team fell behind Bates, Wesleyan, Williams and Wellesley, and defeated UNH in the six-team final.

The Jumbos’ second boat took sixth in the final race, finishing 11 seconds behind the Ephs’ fifth-place boat.

The team still has the NCAA Championships to close out the season.

According to graduating senior tri-captain Natalia Kastenberg, the Jumbos are excited and ready to compete on the national stage.

“Team morale is high,” Kastenberg said.

“The team is encouraged by our results this spring and is excited to see how we can build off of them in the future.”

The NCAA Championships will take place in West Windsor, N.J. on May 26.

Sunday, May 21, 2017 | Sports | THE TUFTS DAILY

S ports

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WOMEN'S TENNIS

Tufts falls to Johns Hopkins in NCAA play

by Yuan Jun Chee Sports Editor

Tufts improved its regular season record to 15-7 this year, making 2016–2017 one of the program’s best seasons under coach Kate Bayard. This year’s roster of 14 players is also one of the deepest that Bayard has had in her 12-year tenure at Tufts.

The team started the spring season off strong during its annual spring break trip to California, racking up victories against Oberlin, Carleton, Wisconsin-Whitewater and then-No. 6 University of Chicago, before Pomona-Pitzer handed Tufts its first loss of the season to close out the trip.

Despite the setback, Tufts put together a series of four victories upon its return to the East Coast, starting with a 6-3 win over Brandeis in the team’s home opener. The Jumbos suffered their first loss in New England when they were routed 9-0 by the then-No. 9 Middlebury Panthers, and they struggled against top-ranked teams all season. Tufts also lost to then-No. 1 Emory and then-No. 7 Bowdoin later in April, but despite the team’s tough schedule, it was always able to recover and never lost back-to-back matches. After losing to Emory, Tufts bounced back to beat Wesleyan 6-3 the next day, and it similarly recorded an emphatic 9-0 victory against Hamilton the day after its defeat by Bowdoin.

Playing another top-ranked team in thenNo. 4 Williams in the regular season finale, Tufts suffered another tough loss and headed into the postseason NESCAC tournament as the third seed with a 6-3 record in conference play, trailing only Middlebury (8-0) and Williams (7-1). In the first round, Tufts saw off Amherst 5-1, avenging its loss in the quarter-

SEOHYUN SHIM / THE TUFTS DAILY

Graduating senior Conner Calabro slams the ball during Tufts’ 6-3 win against Wesleyan on April 15. finals last year. The Jumbos stormed into the lead after doubles play as they swept all three matches, albeit by very tight margins. Rising sophomore Katherine Wiley then won Tufts’ first singles match 6-3, 6-1. Amherst got on the board with a win in the next singles slot, but the victory was sealed when Tufts’ rising senior Lauren Louks defeated rising junior Kelsey Chen in an epic three-setter that ended 6-1, 1-6, 7-5 to clinch a 5-1 win.

With that win and Tufts’ regular season win against Amherst on April 19, the team claimed the program’s first two victories against Amherst since 1992 after a 32-game losing streak to the conference rivals. The quarterfinal win also marked the Jumbos’ first trip to the NESCAC semifinals since 2011.

“Not only was it awesome to beat Amherst again at such a clutch moment, it was also the first time in my four years that we advanced to

the semis of NESCACs, which was amazing as the team really played with heart and owned the court,” graduating senior Chelsea Hayashi told the Daily in an email.

The tournament run was short-lived, however, as Tufts fell to the eventual conference champions Williams 5-0 in the next round.

Unlike in the regular season match between the two teams, when rising juniors Tomo Iwasaki and Otilia Popa were able to claim a win in doubles, they fell to the same opponents in the semifinal match as the Jumbos were unable to capitalize on their potential doubles strength.

The team has frequently been able to jump out to early leads in doubles and has gone 12-0 this spring when leading after doubles action.

“In terms of Williams, I think going down 3-0 after doubles really hurt us,” Hayashi told the Daily in an email. “Especially when playing to decision, every point really counts,

and we weren’t able to recover from that in the singles.”

Despite the defeat, the Jumbos earned a bid to the NCAA tournament for the 16th time in the last 17 years, and they hosted first-round regional action on the weekend of May 13-14.

After a 5-0 victory over Nichols College in the NCAA second round, Tufts fell in a tightly-contested 5-4 defeat at the hands of Johns Hopkins University in the next round. While the team’s season is over, Karamercan will be representing Tufts at the national singles and doubles championship running May 25-27.

“We’ve truly been going one match at a time and trying to learn from each match,” Bayard told the Daily in an email. “The highs and the lows are what have gotten us to where [we] are today heading into NCAAs. We have come up against the toughest competition day after day, and regardless of who we’ve beaten or lost to, I feel every match this year has helped us get to this point.”

The program is graduating five seniors: co-captains Alexa Meltzer and Conner Calabro as well as Hayashi, Jacqueline Baum and Hannah Conroy. Meltzer also graduates having been named as the conference’s Sportswoman of the Year. Other accolades for the team’s players include Louks and Karamercan being named to the All-NESCAC team.

“All five of them have been such great teammates, mentors and friends, and have always been there for us on and off the court,” Iwasaki told the Daily in an email. “They are all such a source of positivity and each bring their own unique energy to the team. It is going to be really hard to say goodbye to them, and the team is not going to be the same without them. We hope to end their college tennis careers on a great note.”

MEN'S TENNIS

Promising season for men’s tennis ends prematurely

by Caleb Symons Staff Writer

The No. 16 Jumbos flashed plenty of potential throughout the 2017 season, but a few missed opportunities proved costly with a schedule that had little margin for error. In splitting its final two matches against No. 19 Brandeis (a 6-3 victory) and No. 7 Bowdoin (a 5-4 loss), the team solidified a 9-7 record while displaying many of the same tendencies that defined its season.

On April 29, the Jumbos traveled to Brunswick, Maine to take on the defending national champion Bowdoin Polar Bears (184). Tufts’ rising seniors Rohan Gupte and Zain Ali were victorious in first doubles, as was the second doubles duo of graduating senior tri-captain Ben Battle and rising sophomore Zach Shaff. Battle and Shaff began playing together at the beginning of the spring season, and their partnership was a revelation for the Jumbos with a final record of 9-3.

“It was great playing with Zach,” Battle said.

“I was pleasantly surprised at how he adapted … because doubles is the type of thing where experience really matters. He learned quickly.”

Despite their early advantage, the Jumbos couldn’t hang on, winning just two of six singles matches. Of the six matches, four lasted a full three sets. Gupte and Shaff each registered their second victories of the day in first and fourth singles, respectively, but Bowdoin’s rising senior Kyle Wolfe defeated rising senior Dan Coran (5-7, 7-5, 6-1) to clinch the win for the hosts.

“We played just about as well as we could’ve,”coach Karl Gregor said. “We were probably a game away from winning the match.”

The previous day, Tufts recorded a 6-3 victory over a red hot Brandeis Judges (12-8) squad that had lost just once since April 1. With wins from the second and third doubles pairings, the Jumbos jumped out to a quick 2-1 lead. Ali (2-6, 6-1, 6-4) and Coran (6-4, 7-5) defeated their Judges opponents in second and third singles,

respectively, while rising sophomore Nathan Niemiec (7-5, 6-2) and rising junior Ethan Chen (6-3, 6-2) added victories to seal the team’s win.

“Even though they’re not in our conference, [Brandeis] is a match that we get up for every year,” Gregor said. “We came out and played strong. We were the tougher, more competitive team.”

With the victory, the Jumbos finished the season undefeated (9-0) against teams outside the top 14 in the country. Highlights included a win over No. 37 Colby during the team’s annual trip to Southern California and a key victory over No. 28 Bates in mid April. The flip side of the coin was the Jumbos’ 0-7 record against top-14 ranked teams, a mark that included losses to No. 6 University of Chicago, No. 12 Pomona-Pitzer and a quintet of NESCAC rivals. Of those seven defeats, four came in 5-4 decisions.

“If we want to be top 10 ourselves, we’ve got to win one or two of those,” Gregor said. “We have to [bring] our A game every day if we expect to win those matches, and that’s very difficult.”

Due to the selection process, which prioritizes regular season match-ups over records, the Jumbos’ 4-5 record in the highly competitive NESCAC did not qualify them for the conference tournament. It was the first time in five years — and first in Gregor’s tenure — that the team failed to qualify for the postseason.

“We were playing our best tennis down the stretch,” Gregor said. “That’s what hurts most about not making NESCACs. We were starting to peak … and would’ve been in a good place to make a run.”

The silver lining is that the team will return nearly its entire starting lineup next season, and the postseason snub should provide plenty of motivation.

“It left a bitter taste in our mouths,” Gregor said. “I’m excited about the prospects for next year. Everybody seems poised to come back stronger because they don’t want to let something like this happen again.”

ANGELIE XIONG / THE TUFTS DAILY

Rising senior Jack Friend hits the ball during a men’s tennis game against Bates on April 20.

However, the Jumbos will be without the leadership of its graduating senior tri-captains — Battle, Kevin Kelly and Austin Bendetson — which is a loss that cannot be underestimated.

“The two of them complemented each other,” Gregor said. “This was by far the smoothest season we’ve had in my years as coach, and a big part of that is due to Bendy and Kevin.”

Battle explained that his fellow captains have had a massive impact on the program in their shared four years.

“Austin is the ultimate team player … and really embodies his role [as a leader] the last few years,” Battle said. “Kevin has the biggest heart.

His defining quality is his ability to always put others before himself. I’m lucky to know both him and Austin, and have learned so much from them.”

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THE TUFTS DAILY | Sports | Sunday, May 21, 2017

tuftsdaily.com

WOMEN'S AND CO-ED SAILING

Jumbos gearing up for ICSA Championships

by Eddie Samuels

Executive Sports Editor

Tufts sailing had an up-and-down year throughout the fall and the spring seasons.

Both the women’s and co-ed teams still have the Inter-Collegiate Sailing Association (ICSA) Championships to come, events for which they’ve been preparing since the end of the regular season in April.

For the co-ed sailors, the team’s fall season culminated in a win at the New England Men’s Single-handed Championship as graduating seniors Alp Rodopman and James Beatty finished in first and ninth, respectively. Rising junior Jack Bitney also raced for the Jumbos, finishing 17th.

The women’s team was a consistent force and finished in the top half of five of the eight scored team regattas in which Tufts participated. But the team really hit its stride in the spring and put up consistently strong finishes, most notably at the President’s Trophy Regatta hosted by Boston University. After finishing day one in fourth place, Tufts battled through a windy day two to win the event with 80 points, 18 less than second-place University of Rhode Island.

With the majority of the women’s schedule finished in April, there is only one event left for the team, held Tuesday through Thursday at the ICSA National Championship.

The co-ed squad had an equally successful spring semester, as the Jumbos claimed trophies at Northeastern’s Oberg Trophy Regatta and the Admiral’s Cup Regatta at Kings Point. These wins came just weeks

RAY BERNOFF / THE TUFTS DAILY

Rising senior Molly Pleskus and rising junior Sabrina Van Mell sail in a regatta hosted by Boston University on Easter Sunday, April 16. after the Jumbos finished second of 12 teams at the New England Team Racing Championships.

“I attribute the success to our assistant coach, Rachel Silverstein,” graduating senior Griffin Rolander said. “She taught us how to get the deck sweeper well positioned and develop the wind in front of us.”

In addition to the ICSA Team Racing Championships Saturday through Monday, the team will also participate in the ICSA National Dinghy Championship to end the season.

“[We’ve been] lifting a bunch, and trying to get as big and cut as possible to intimidate the competition and handle the big breeze,” Rolander said.

Senior tri-captain Julia Fuller attributed the teams’ success this season to a variety of factors.

“I think that we rose to the challenge [this season],” Fuller said. “We qualified for women’s, co-ed fleet race and co-ed team race and both our women’s team and co-ed team are nationally ranked again. I think

that a combination of luck, good team chemistry and really hard work paid off for a successful season.”

Fuller is one of 12 seniors graduating this year from both teams, and noted that qualifying for Nationals was a big goal for the Jumbos.

“My proudest moment this year was qualifying for women’s nationals,” Fuller said. “It was really satisfying to have hard work pay off and to perform in a high pressure environment.”

GOLF

Jumbos graduate one after narrowly missing NESCAC Championship

by Liam Finnegan

Assistant Sports Editor

The 2016–2017 season was an overall success for the Jumbos. The team performed well on several different occasions and new players developed their skills to fill tournament positions.

The Jumbos played a bit inconsistently in the fall season, finishing well in tournaments like the Williams Fall Invitational, where they earned third place out of 18, but middle-of-the-pack in tournaments like the Duke Nelson Invitational, where they finished 13th out of 22 teams. Tufts unfortunately missed out on the NESCAC Championship by just one spot and finished fifth at the NESCAC qualifiers, as the

Jumbos were beaten out of the tournament by Middlebury.

Associate head coach Brian Golden explained that not qualifying for the NESCAC Championship came as a disappointment for the team, as this is a major goal for them every fall. However, players continued to post lower scores throughout the season.

“I see this team qualifying for the NESCAC Championship this fall and contending to close out the season with a win at the New England Intercollegiate Championship,” Golden said.

Despite being knocked out of the NESCAC tournament, graduating senior tri-captain Owen Elliott was nominated to the NESCAC all-conference second team, the third consecutive NESCAC honor of his

career. The Jumbos then went on to tie for fourth at the New England Championship to finish out the fall season.

Tufts hit the ground running in the spring, finishing first out of 17 teams at the Hampton Inn Invitational. To round out the 2016–2017 season, the team finished fourth out of six teams at the Bentley Newport Classic and third of 17 at the Wildcat Spring Invitational.

The spring season was also when the younger players on the roster started to develop as players. For example, rising sophomore Ethan Sorkin finished 26th individually at the Hampton Inn Invite.

Classmate Sanjay Mukhurjee, in just his second tournament for the Jumbos, led the team for strokes and carded a 76 at the

COURTESY BRIAN GOLDEN

Justin Feldman takes a tee shot on the third hole, Final Round on April 12.

Bentley Newport Classic.

In all, Golden was happy with the team’s performance this season.

“Of the two-day tournaments, the team finished in the top five, six out of seven times, improving their finishes this spring with a team victory and a third-place finish,” Golden said. “Coach Pendergast and I have been impressed with the multiple freshmen who, when given the playing opportunity, have stepped up and contributed to the team’s success.”

The team is losing just one graduating senior: Elliott. A core member of the team throughout the fall and spring seasons, Elliott was one of the team’s most consistent players. He has shot within the 70s in every tournament dating back to the Williams Fall Invitational on Sept. 24-25.

Elliott said that he is sad to be leaving the team, but the feeling has not yet fully sunk in.

“I think the saddest part for me is that my days as a teammate are over,” he said.

“I am going to play competitive golf after school, but that is an individual endeavor.

There is something special about being on a team, committing to each other and pursuing a collective goal that I am sincerely going to miss.”

Golden acknowledged Elliott’s contributions to the team, while adding that the team is preparing to fill his shoes.

“I am confident that the team will continue to contend this fall season, knowing that the current players are already planning on practice plans and tournament participation this summer, and knowing that the incoming freshman golfers may make this fall’s team the deepest team we have had in a very long time,” he said.

“Coach Pendergast and I are very excited to see what this fall season may bring and how far this team can go.”

Sunday, May 21, 2017 | Sports | THE TUFTS DAILY

S ports

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WOMEN'S TRACK AND FIELD

Jumbos to face final challenge at NCAA Championships ing on the ‘heavy-hitters’ was a huge motivation for our team,” graduating senior co-captain Rita Donohoe said.

Indeed, athletes from all classes and events stepped up to fill the gaps left by the previous year’s seniors, and the results showed.

“The juniors and seniors this year showed a lot of growth,” Donohoe said. “It was the first season where we really couldn’t rely so heavily on just a few members of the team.”

After last semester’s successful indoor season, the Jumbos began the spring season with several runners attending qualifying meets like All-New Englands.

Throughout the spring, several Jumbos pushed themselves to higher levels. Personal records were broken at almost every meet.

Rising senior Annalisa BEN KIM / THE TUFTS DAILY DeBari continued to Rising junior Kelsey Tierney jumps over a hurdle in a steeplechase dominate in the 100event during the women’s track and field meet on April 15. meter hurdle, relentlessly

by Mackenzie Bright moving up in the national rankings with her Staff Writer speedy splits. Rising senior Jennifer Sherwill gave consistently strong performances in The Tufts Women’s track team came in the discus, hammer throw and shot put, and with one goal this year — to learn how to be currently ranks at No. 43 in the nation for a successful team together after graduating the discus. Rising senior Brittany Bowman several key runners. was a force in the long distance events all “I think that wanting to prove we could season long, garnering several first-place be as good a team as before without rely- finishes and national rankings.

For their outdoor preseason, the Jumbos headed to Las Vegas, where they raced against Div. I and II teams in the blistering heat. Although Tufts had a 12th place finish out of 14, numerous Jumbo runners gave their higher-division competitors a run for their money.

Coming back home, the Jumbos started their outdoor season off spectacularly with a second-place finish out of 22 teams at the Snowflake Classic, hosted by Tufts.

A couple of weeks later, the Jumbos finished first out of six at the Sunshine Classic, a home invitational that also serves as their alumni meet.

These performances continued throughout the season, and the Jumbos proved their competitiveness in almost every event.

“One of the best things about this past season was seeing so many people improve as a result of hard work and determination,” Donohoe said. “Watching Annalisa become a nationally competitive athlete was really rewarding and I think it motivated others on the team to push themselves too. [Graduating senior] Sam Cox has also shown incredible improvement in the 1,500, beating her PR from last year by almost eight seconds with a new PR of 4:42.”

Despite a strong regular season, the NESCAC championships did not turn out the way the Jumbos wanted it to. Tufts finished sixth out of eleven, which didn’t sit well with many high-aiming team members.

“Our NESCAC performance was disappointing this year,” Donohoe said. “Mainly because our placement at the end of the meet didn’t really accurately reflect the caliber of our team.”

Despite a less-than-ideal finish, several Jumbos still had a stellar day in their respective events.

Bowman has consistently dominated long-distance events all season, and at the NESCAC Championships, she won the 10,000-

meter with a blistering time of 35:37.17, a full minute faster than her closest competitor. The run ranked Bowman seventh nationally.

Rising junior Brita Dawson came in third in the long-jump with a jump of 17 feet 4.5 inches, which earned her all-conference honors.

“The jumpers had a great day at NESCACS,” rising junior Paige Fielding said. “[Rising junior] Trish Blumeris had a huge triple jump that ended up being called a foul by the slimmest of margins. It would have been a big PR for her.”

Fellow rising junior Sydney Ladner placed fourth in the pole vault at 10 feet 2 inches, graduating senior Lindsay Atkeson took third in the 3,000-meter steeplechase with a time of 11:33.45 and Sherwill placed third in the discus with a throw of 127 feet 11 inches, earning all-conference honors.

Sherwill also placed fifth in the shot put with a throw of 38 feet 6.25 inches.

The Jumbos then participated in the New England Div. III Championships, claiming tenth place in the event. The Jumbos failed to win an event at the tournament, but improved on their 14th-place standing after day one, thanks to third-place performances from Sherwill in the discus and the foursome of Cox and rising sophomores Lauren Diaz, Julia Gake and Nicole Kerrigan in the 4×800-meter relay.

The Jumbos have just one event left in the regular season, NCAA championships, taking place Thursday through Saturday in Ohio. After putting up two All-American performances in the indoor season, Tufts is looking to add to its accomplishments this year.

“As a team, we’re now focused on the rest of the postseason and have a strong desire to bounce back from NESCACs,” Donohoe said. “I think there are a lot of good performances to come in the next few weeks, and I have no doubt that our team will prove we are better than a sixth-place finish.”

MEN'S TRACK AND FIELD

Jumbos look to claim more titles at nationals

by Eddie Samuels

Executive Sports Editor

With nationals still to come starting Thursday, expectations are as high as ever for the Jumbos, who’ve put together an impressive spring following a dominant showing in the indoor season.

During the indoor season, the Jumbos battled in a number of meets leading up to the New England Div. III Championships.

The Jumbos handily won the event with 127 points, more than 40 points ahead of second-place MIT. “The biggest accomplishment of the year was winning Division III New Englands indoors,” graduating senior Tim Nichols said. “It was the first time in a really long time that we had, and it was really exciting to be a part of a historic team in that way.

But, I also think the biggest accomplishment might still be yet to come.”

The event saw strong performances from a number of Jumbos, as rising senior Peter Clark set a school record, winning the 60-meter dash in 6.99 seconds. His classmate Andrew DiMaiti also took home a trophy in the 600-meter. Rising junior Hiroto Watanabe broke onto the scene in the winter season, ultimately capping it off by winning the 800-meter. In Tufts’ final win, rising senior Stefan Duvivier dominated the high jump, cruising over the 6-foot-8-inch mark.

The Jumbos followed up their win by sending four athletes to the NCAA Indoor Championships. Watanabe earned AllAmerican honors with an eighth-place fin-

ish in the 800-meter, while Nichols earned a national title in the 5,000-meter.

In the outdoor season, the Jumbos hit the ground running, winning the first two meets of the spring: the Point Loma Nazarene University (PLNU) Invitational in San Diego, Calif. and the Snowflake Classic at home.

The Jumbos added several strong showings throughout their spring meets, including winning the Sunshine Classic at home.

The focus for the outdoor season was on the NESCAC Championship, however, and the Jumbos went in eager to compete for the title. Ultimately, the Jumbos finished second for the second straight season, but six claimed NESCAC titles at the meet.

Rising junior Anthony Kardonsky started the scoring for the Jumbos, claiming first in the 100-meter dash with a time of 10.85 seconds. Nichols finished first in the 10,000meter with a time of 30:47.31. Fellow graduating senior and co-captain Luke O’Connor also won a title, running a new personal record with a time of 8:58:46 in the 3,000meter steeple.

The Jumbos dominated the hurdles, as rising junior Josh Etkind won the 110-meter hurdles and DiMaiti won the 400-meter hurdles. Duvivier maintained the same skill he’d shown all year in the high jump, clearing 6 feet 6 inches and claiming a NESCAC title.

The Jumbos also finished second in their next event, the NCAA Regional Championships. Several Jumbos surpassed school records. Duvivier cleared 6 feet 11 inches in the high jump, breaking the Tufts record, which was previously 6 feet 8 inches. Kardonsky shattered the 100- and 200-

meter records, running the events in 10.77 and 21.71 seconds respectively.

Coach Joel Williams explained that the season has been one of constant improvement for Kardonsky, who also holds a record in the 4×100-meter relay.

“Anthony [Kardonsky] has [made a personal record] every week and has a NESCAC title and two Div. III New England titles to match his three school records,” Williams told the Daily in an email.

The Jumbos finished the meet with 96 points, behind MIT with 123.

Tufts participated most recently in the All-New England Championships May BEN KIM / THE TUFTS DAILY 12 and 13 at Williams.

Nichols set a school-re- Rising senior Shant Mahrokhian competes in the long jump for the men’s track and field home meet on April 15. cord time in the 5,000meter with a 14:12.63. His new time is fourth the future of the team despite such a large nationally, and breaks a record that has senior class. stood since 2010. O’Connor also won an “We will miss [the seniors], but they have event, again taking first in the 3,000-meter done an amazing job laying the foundation for steeplechase with a time of 8:59:57, and was the returning guys,” Williams said. “It’s hard to just over a second short of the No. 1 time in even think about next year when this season isn’t the nation, which O’Connor himself holds. even over. We have a young and very talented The Jumbos graduate 11 seniors this squad. Over half of the guys competing in the spring, but Williams is not concerned about last three meets are freshmen or sophomores.”

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THE TUFTS DAILY | Sports | Sunday, May 21, 2017

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MEN'S LACROSSE

Jumbos miss National Championship game for first time in five years

by Maddie Payne Sports Editor

For the third time this season, the Jumbos fell to the Wesleyan Cardinals in the third round of the NCAA tournament, 17-8. The first quarter saw Tufts quickly fall behind 4-0, and the lead ballooned to six points at the half.

The Jumbo offense never got off the ground, unable to score more than three points in any quarter to catch up. As a result, for the first time in five years, the Jumbos will not be playing in the NCAA Championship Game as the team finished 13-6 on the season The Jumbos had a tumultuous season, opening with a new head coach, Casey D’Annolfo (LA ’06), and a historic 11-game win streak. They went on to lose the remaining four games of the regular season.

The Jumbos assembled a decisive win in the second round of the NCAA tournament.

Tufts hosted Keene State in a 26-14 victory, which matched the program record for most goals scored in a game and ended Keene State’s 11-game win streak.

The Jumbos looked like their old selves, going up 7-1 in the first quarter. By the final quarter, the Jumbos held a 21-6 advantage, so a lot of players who don’t usually see playing time were able to come onto the field and make an impact.

In late April, Tufts entered the NESCAC tournament — which they have won for the last seven years — as the No. 5 seed in the hopes of claiming an eighth title. But that opportunity came to an end on May 6 as the Jumbos crashed out of the NESCAC tournament in the semifinals against the Wesleyan Cardinals. In under 10 minutes, Tufts accrued a six-goal deficit. This grew to 12 in the second quarter, and despite an 8-3 second half for the Jumbos including a seven-goal run, the game ended 17-12.

In the quarterfinals on April 29, the Jumbos overcame the Bowdoin Polar Bears

12-11 in a game that came down to the final seconds. The Jumbos were up 12-9 until the Polar Bears scored with 3:48 and 3:22 remaining to outlast the Jumbos for the win. Graduating senior attackmen Zach Richman and Michael Mattson and rising senior attackman Frank Hattler each scored a hat-trick to secure the win.

It was a tense match-up, as Bowdoin had claimed a 19-15 victory over Tufts only three days earlier. On April 26, the Jumbos trailed for more than three quarters despite an early lead and could not make up the lost ground.

The three other losses on the season all came against conference opponents. On April 15, Tufts lost 21-15 to Amherst, followed by a 19-18 loss to Bates on April 18 and a 17-16 loss to Wesleyan on April 22. Two of the losses were frustratingly close, with Wesleyan’s winning goal coming with only 19 seconds remaining.

Despite the losses, the Jumbos boasted a spotless record for the first six weeks of the season, including six conference wins. In these 11 victories, the team recorded four games and scored more than 20 goals, and Tufts was the highest scoring team in the NESCAC for a good portion of the regular season.

Rising junior attackman Danny Murphy was named to the NESCAC All-Conference First Team after recording 51 goals and 38 assists. He was also awarded NESCAC Player of the Week and Div. III North Offensive Player of the Week honors after registering 17 points in a pair of wins against Williams and Hamilton.

Fellow rising juniors, defenseman Arend Broekmate and attackman Ben Connelly, were both named to the NESCAC second team. Connelly has tallied 30 goals and 17 assists for the Jumbos this season, including three fourth-quarter goals against the Bates Bobcats in their hard-fought 19-18 loss. Broekmate has started all 18 games for Tufts this season, has grabbed the third-most ground balls on the team after sophomore face-off spe-

SEOHYUN SHIM / THE TUFTS DAILY

Graduating senior defenseman Tlyer Olney leads offense during a game against Williams at Bello Field on April 5. cialist Henry Hollen and leads the team in with long poles. Tyler Carbone and Olney both most caused turnovers at 27. played in all 23 games in their sophomore and Connelly attributed some of these success- junior seasons, and started all games their es to the entire team. senior season.

“Especially with Tufts, we play such a fast On the offensive end, Richman has 46 paced offense that you can’t be on the offen- goals and three assists. He had a breakout sive end and not have a part in the play,” season his junior year, tying the record for Connelly said. “I wouldn’t say that it was any- most goals in a game with eight against thing individual that [Broekmate, Murphy and Williams and going on to score 58 total on I] did. It was more of a recognition of the the season. Mattson has emerged in his own team’s effort.” right this season, scoring only six his junior In the net, rising junior goalkeeper Ben year but 51 this year. Graduating senior attackShmerler has split the time with rising senior man Lucas Johnson has scored 22 goals and goalkeeper Robert Treiber. The two were com- recorded 17 assists for a total of 36 points. peting with each other for the highest save Graduating senior attackman Austin Carbone percentage in the conference for the majority looked ready to dominate the NESCAC with of the regular season. Shmerler is now second six goals and five assists in the first two games in the NESCAC with a 57.2-percent save rate of the season but has remained sidelined with and Robert Treiber has dropped down the an injury since then. rankings due to the difficult second-halves “From day one, [the seniors] were very that the Jumbos had in their four regular sea- welcoming to our class. They stood out as son losses; he sits at 52.5 percent. leaders,” Broekmate said. “I think this class did Hollen has taken the vast majority of face- a really good job of embodying what it meant offs for the Jumbos this year, and is ranked to be on Tufts Lacrosse. They had been waiting third in the NESCAC with a record of 248-457. their turn and did a very good job of leading This season, the program is graduating us this year.”

10 seniors including an especially strong The year’s graduating class were on the team defensive unit. Graduating senior co-captain for the back-to-back national championship defensemen Tucker Mathers and Tyler Olney wins and worked hard to lead the team to an and senior defenseman Tyler Carbone all play NCAA tournament run in their senior campaign.

WOMEN'S LACROSSE

Four Jumbos graduate after mixed season

by Sam Weidner

Assistant Sports Editor

Unless they are granted an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament, the Jumbos will have finished the 2017 season with an overall record of 10-6, 5-5 in the conference. At the beginning of the season, graduating senior quad-captain Olivia Veillette noted that this was a transition year for the team after graduating both top scorers and a key defender the year before.

“We did lose some very valuable players, but we also gained a ton of freshmen,” Veillette told the Daily in an email. “And the freshmen definitely seem very confident out there on the field and I know that the rest of the girls are very confident and comfortable playing with them too. It doesn’t feel like they’re freshmen out there.”

As the rest of the season showed, those first-year players and other underclassmen stepped up big for the team this year providing big impact throughout the year. Rising sophomore attacker Emily Games led the team in scoring with 49 goals on the season and rising junior attacker Dakota Adamec was second in goals scored with 35. After not only leading Tufts in scoring but leading the NESCAC in scoring, Games was selected for the All-NESCAC first team and was also named NESCAC Rookie of the Year. With 11 first-years, all of whom saw game time this year and six that scored at least once, the team appears to be set up with an influx of talent for the coming seasons.

Their potential shone through in a few big moments this year. A 21-0 win over Castleton University at home on a chilly day in March marked the Jumbos’ first shutout win since

RAY BERNOFF / THE TUFTS DAILY

Rising senior midfielder Caroline Nowak defends during Tufts’ 16-8 win against ClaremontM-S on March 15.

1996. It also demonstrated the offensive power across the roster as 14 different players scored en route to their victory.

Five games later, Tufts had another key moment in its season, as the team defeated SUNY Cortland 13-11, ending Cortland’s 83-game home winning streak. Though Cortland was ranked No. 9 at the time, on the back of five goals from graduating senior attacker Kate Mackin, Tufts built and maintained a lead early on, leading to a major out-of-conference win for the Jumbos.

Heading into the NESCAC tournament over the weekend of April 29 as the No. 6 seed, the Jumbos had a locked-in mindset, hoping to make some noise despite their 5-5 conference record during the regular season.

Adamec described how the players’ practice regimen shifts slightly during preparation for the postseason.

“Not that game plans change immensely, but it’s really more of a focus on what can each individual player do to make the team better,” Adamec said. “Instead of having a group focus [in practice for NESCACs], it’s an individual focus.”

However, in their last game — a NESCAC championship quarterfinal match-up against Trinity — the Jumbos were defeated 19-10. Trinity’s offense appeared to be too much for Tufts during many parts of the game, as Trinity jumped out to a 6-0 lead just over 10 minutes into the first half and scored 12 goals on just 17 shots in the second.

Veillette explained that despite the Jumbos’ strong push toward the end of the first half, they could never recover from their early deficit.

“We let them come out strong and get a run on us in the first 10 minutes of the game.

In the remaining [19] minutes they didn’t score a single goal so we were able to bring the score back to 7-4 at halftime, but unfortunately, we just didn’t convert in the second half,” Veillette told the Daily in an email.

“They beat us in ground balls and draw controls, which forced us to play significantly more defense.”

Veillette also noted the particular strength of the NESCAC conference this year as an important factor in the growth of the team.

“The NESCAC competition this season compared to past years is the strongest it’s ever been,” she said. “It used to be that Middlebury and Trinity were the top two strongest teams that not many other NESCAC schools could keep up with, but this year there was a solid group of 5-6 teams with solid talent and representation in the national rankings.”

The team graduates four seniors this year, all of whom were the captains this season: attackers Mackin and Caroline Kingsley and defenders Veillette and Casey Briody.

All four were key players for the Jumbos this season, playing in and starting in most of the games.

Veillette said that her time on the team has been invaluable, with some of her teammates now her best friends.

“Everyone also loves the sport so much and it’s awesome to see how hard we all work for each other everyday,” she said. “I still stay in touch with the alumni, and I know I’ll be following this team for years to come. After an entire year of being a senior and captain, I’m so excited to see what else this team will do and be able watch them throughout their lacrosse careers.”

Sunday, May 21, 2017 | Sports | THE TUFTS DAILY

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Carla Berube named USA Basketball Women’s U16 head coach

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Sam Nowicki Teeing Off

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RAY BERNOFF / THE TUFTS DAILY

Women’s basketball head coach Carla Berube poses for a portrait outside her office at Cousens Gym on May 12.

by Sam Weidner

Assistant Sports Editor

Tufts women’s basketball head coach Carla Berube has yet another accolade to add to her already impressive resume in the basketball world. She has been named the head coach of next year’s USA Basketball Women’s U16 National Team. She will be assisted by Steve Gomez of Lubbock Christian University based in Lubbock, Texas and Vanessa Nygaard of Windward School in Los Angeles, Calif.

Berube has some prior experience coaching with USA Basketball, but this will be her first time as a head coach.

“Last year, I was involved with USA Basketball as a court coach. [USA Basketball Women’s National Team Director] Carol Callan had called me and asked if I would help out with the trials for the U17 team last year,” Berube said. “So I was out in Colorado Springs for five days, and then this spring I found out that the committee had selected me for the head coaching position. So it changes every year with a new head coach. It’s a two-year commitment — I’ll be the head coach of the U16 team this year and the U17 team next year. So I found out right around the beginning of April and I was really, really honored and really excited about this opportunity.”

In addition, Berube also has experience as a player for USA Basketball.

In 1994, Berube was a member of the U.S. Olympic Festival East Team, where she and her team captured the bronze medal.

“This was something they did back then that they don’t do anymore, but I was mostly just with other freshmen and sophomores in college playing against each other,” Berube said of

the experience. “It was pretty cool to have USA on your chest and to represent your country. That was a great experience playing against some of the best players in the country.”

This summer, the women’s U16 team will travel to Buenos Aires, Argentina to compete in the 2017 FIBA (International Basketball Federation) Americas U16 Championship from June 7 to 11. There, the team hopes to capture the gold medal as well as secure a bid for the 2018 FIBA U17 World Cup, which requires finishing among the top-four teams.

Berube expressed her gratitude for this opportunity and what it means to her to be involved with the USA basketball youth program.

“USA Basketball is kind of the pinnacle of coaching, and you’re representing your country in the world and being able to coach some of the best 15, 16 and 17-year-olds in the world.”

Berube said. “So it’s humbling, but also I am just really really looking forward to coaching. I’ve got a great staff with Steve Gomez … [whose team] won a Div. II national championship in 2016, and then Vanessa Nygaard … was a tremendous college player at Stanford and is a really successful high school coach in California.”

Coaching USA Basketball often presents roadblocks to coaches because of the very different style of coaching it requires. With rule differences with the international game and much less time to develop team chemistry, coaches must adjust their styles to succeed. Berube described how she has reached out to past mentors for help with this new endeavor.

“I’ve just reached out to a lot of coaches that I know who have been USA Basketball coaches just to get some input on what it’s like,” Berube

said. “It’s a different game — there’s a 24-second shot clock, the lane is different, on an offensive rebound the shot clock goes only to 14 seconds, so there are a lot of differences.”

Tufts’ all-time leading scorer and rebounder, graduating senior Michela North, said that she could not think of anyone better to lead the team than her head coach for her four years at Tufts.

“I really enjoyed the past four years with [Berube] as head coach, and it’s pretty good that she’s been here for so long, understands how student athletes work with our schedules and everything like that. That definitely helps as a coach,” North said. “She’s also very knowledgeable about the sport. She can answer any questions about different scenarios and just apply knowledge in a very confident way that makes you trust her and believe her and want to play for her.”

North also said she was excited at the prospect of Berube garnering national recognition for her years of success at the helm of the Tufts team. “[Now] other people get to see how great a coach we have and how lucky we are to have her, especially at a Div. III program where she could definitely go [Div. I] or [Div. II],” North said. “I think she’d be able to use her knowledge to provide that to younger players, for them to learn various skills earlier on.”

Since the U16 Championship was created by the FIBA Americas in 2009, the United States has had tremendous success, winning gold in 2009, 2011 and 2013. The women’s U16 team will look to replicate that success this summer under the new leadership, and if Berube’s accomplishments as a college coach is any indicator, it has a great chance.

ell, so this a little awkward … but this is actually my final column of the semester.

Since I talked last time about some big picture ideas including a list of the remaining majors and dates, I will stick with that theme.

The next major on the schedule is the U.S. Open. This year the tournament will be hosted at Erin Hills, Wis. The U.S. Open is always a fun tournament to watch.

First, it is an open. This means that literally anyone can attempt to qualify for the Open. The process goes that you play in local, section and regional qualifiers, with outstanding play earning you a spot in the next event, until finally a select few qualify for the actual Open. The top players in the world and many PGA Tour members will have exemptions into the tournament, however others won’t, and they will have to qualify just like Joe Six Pack would if he wanted to get in.

Probably the most famous player who will go through the qualifying legs is Ian Poulter.

Second, the U.S. Open is notoriously the toughest test in golf. The winning score is usually very close to even par, which in this day and age is some 15 shots harder than normal. Erin Hills will have deep rough and wicked fast greens that would make the weekend golfer cry with despair.

Next, in July there is the Open Championship, or the British Open as it is colloquially known in the United States. Another open, this tournament is the oldest major in golf. The Open Championship has even more ways to qualify than the U.S. Open and therefore boasts the largest field in major golf.

The British Open is the ultimate test of the golfer’s ability to adapt. Given the volatile weather in the British Isles, the players must be able to navigate 30-mph winds, hail, rain and even … balmy sunshine, sometimes all in the same round.

This year’s British Open is at Royal Birkdale, just north of Liverpool. Though it is not all the way in the north of Scotland, it isn’t quite next to London and therefore could still be chilly. I expect weather to play a major role in the tournament as it always does.

Last comes “Glory’s Last Shot,” the PGA Championship. This year the PGA Championship will be hosted at Quail Hollow in North Carolina. The track is familiar to most PGA Tour players as it normally hosts a regular event.

So who should we watch for the rest of the season? Well, you can’t go wrong with Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas and Thomas Pieters. The three young studs have all the game in the world and maybe even represent the next big three, but I am afraid that’s a flaming hot take so don’t fixate on it too much. Also, look out for Ian Poulter. Poulter apparently lost his tour card after the Valero Texas Open for failing to make enough money, however the Tour simply did the math wrong, and it turns out Poulter kept his card after apparent heartbreak.

And as always, keep an eye on my man Wes Bryan. You heard it here first folks.

No one else saw that win coming, except for good ol’ Wicks. God bless. And thanks again for reading!

Sam Nowicki is a junior majoring in biochemistry. Sam can be reached at samuel. nowicki@tufts.edu.

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THE TUFTS DAILY | Sports | Sunday, May 21, 2017

tuftsdaily.com

Tufts lacrosse: Brothers on and off the field

Bradley Schussel The Coin Toss

The final toss

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RAY BERNOFF / THE TUFTS DAILY

Rising senior goalkeeper Robert Trieber, left, and rising sophomore attackman Matt Trieber, right, pose for a portrait in the Cousens Gym press room on May 10.

by Maddie Payne Sports Editor

It’s a familiar, eye-roll-inducing cliché: Athletes regularly describe themselves and their teammates as members of a “family.” The explanation lies in the fact that players commonly live together, eat together, study together and more, despite already seeing hours of each other at daily practices.

For No. 10 Tufts men’s lacrosse, however, the metaphor of family crosses over into reality. On the team of 51 players, there are four pairs of brothers. There are also other players whose older brothers have graduated, or whose younger brothers might come to play at Tufts once they graduate high school.

Graduating senior defenseman Tyler Carbone and graduating senior attackman Austin Carbone are fraternal twins from Summit, N.J. who have played lacrosse together since grade school. In high school, both earned U.S. Lacrosse All-American Honors. They were also both named to the All-State First Team, and Austin received the award for New Jersey Attackman of the Year.

Because one is a defenseman and the other is an attackman, the two have been pitted against one another in practices and scrimmages throughout their lives.

Now, after successful four-year careers, the Carbones are graduating — Tyler with a degree in history and Austin with a degree in sociology.

Also graduating this May is midfielder and computer science major Lucas Johnson, whose younger brother Griffin Johnson is a rising senior attackman on the team. The Syracuse, N.Y. natives are actually two years apart in age, but after Lucas took a year off between sophomore and junior year in high school to study abroad in Sweden, the gap in class years was reduced to one. This peculiarity offered the brothers the opportunity to play on the same team for two years in high school, when previously they would not have overlapped because of how the teams were organized.

Two other pairs of brothers — rising senior goalkeeper Robert Treiber and rising sophomore attackman Matt Treiber, and rising senior attackman Nico Pollack and rising sophomore goalkeeper Mason Pollack — are also separated in age by two years, but their respective grade gaps

meant that they played on the same team relatively infrequently before coming to Tufts.

All four of the Treibers and Pollacks are in the School of Engineering, and both younger siblings (Matt and Mason) are computer science majors. A consistently echoed sentiment among the four was that they chose Tufts because it gave them the uncommon opportunity to pursue engineering while playing NCAA lacrosse.

“I knew that I wanted to go somewhere that had engineering,” Robert said. “[Tufts] is a good balance between sports and academics that’s hard to find. A lot of places told me that I couldn’t do engineering and play lacrosse, so that’s something I was really looking forward to doing.”

Coincidentally, in both pairs, one brother is a goalkeeper while the other is an attackman. As with the Carbones, the direct opposition in positions foments a unique dynamic when the brothers face off against each other in practice almost every day.

The team often channels these sibling rivalries toward productive ends.

In fall semester captain’s practices, the team uses the natural competitiveness between brothers to generate scrimmage teams that encourage a high level of competitiveness. Once a year, each pair of brothers has their turn to draft teams against each other in what the Johnsons referred to as the “Johnsons Battle.”

According to Mason, who plays goalkeeper, he can always tell when it’s Nico who is shooting on him.

“I would say that us knowing each other makes it even harder to play,” Mason said. “It’s almost like we’ve been scouting each other for our whole lives so we really have to think about what we’re going to do on the field before we do it.”

Because the goalie-shooter interaction on the team is such a head-to-head encounter, both the Treibers and Pollacks benefit from being able to ask their sibling for advice or feedback on a regular basis.

“If Mason saves one of my shots, I always ask him whether he saved it because it was a bad shot or because he knew where it was going,” Nico said.

“The answer is usually that I knew where it was going,” Mason answered.

Robert Treiber has played between the pipes in every game for the Jumbos this season, recording a 52.4 save percentage on the season.

“I thing [what’s] great when we play is that if I have something wrong, [Matt will] notice it because he’s trying to score against me,” Robert said. “Or if he has a question, he’ll always ask me ‘How did you know what I was doing there?’ It really helps for both of us to feed off each other and grow and learn from each other.”

As the brothers’ own stories revealed, the impact of an older sibling’s attendance at Tufts on a younger sibling’s decision about college is far more complicated than it appears. Indubitably, having an older sibling at Tufts provided a level of exposure to the Tufts lacrosse program that the younger sibling wouldn’t necessarily have had. However, most players interviewed shared the general sentiment that the younger brother independently decided on Tufts for a variety of factors unrelated to having an existing family connection.

“Initially I was hesitant to look at Tufts because [Lucas] was here,” Griffin Johnson said. “But I was looking to use lacrosse as a way to get into a good academic institution, so I was looking at NESCAC schools and other similar places. It came down to the great coaching staff, a great lacrosse program, 5,000 undergrads and Boston — you couldn’t beat it.”

“I told him, ‘Just make your choice,’” Lucas recounted. “‘Don’t not come to Tufts just because I’m here. Do whatever you want, and if we end up at the same place that’s cool.’”

This is not the first season that brothers have taken the field together for the Jumbos. Rising senior midfielder Auric Enchill and his older brother, midfielder AJ Enchill (LA ’16), spent two years on the team together. One of the most successful players in program history, Beau Wood (LA ’14), also played alongside his younger brother Blake Wood (LA ’16) for two seasons, including the Jumbos’ 2014 national title-winning season.

According to Matt Treiber, having so many pairs of brothers facilitates the development of a cohesive and supportive culture that extends to include the entire team.

“One of the great things about Tufts lacrosse and having so many brothers on the team is that we stress having our team be a family,” he said. “When you actually have pairs of brothers that are legitimate family members, it helps build that bond and create that family environment.”

elcome to The Coin Toss, where I make some bold, unlikely predictions about your favorite professional sports.

In my last column, I made some NFL draft predictions. I correctly predicted four of the top 10 picks: Myles Garrett to the Browns, Solomon Thomas to the Niners, Leonard Fournette to the Jaguars and Christian McCaffrey to the Panthers.

In a tumultuous draft with trades everywhere, I think four-for-10 is pretty good.

For this ever-so-special commencement issue, I thought I’d do a smattering of predictions across a couple of sports.

If you’ve read my column before, I hope you’ve enjoyed my rambling for the past two semesters. If you’re reading for the first time, enjoy! Here’s the biggest, boldest edition of The Coin Toss yet…

NBA: Who will win the MVP award?

Russell Westbrook, Oklahoma City Thunder Not bold enough, you say? Vegas odds have James Harden winning the award. Harden is -175 as the favorite, with Westbrook at +125, followed by Kawhi Leonard at +650. If I had a vote, I would pick Harden to win. He’s carried his team to a dominant season, while Westbrook has had remarkable stats, but largely helped himself over his team. My opinion doesn’t matter however, as the media votes for the award. The media narrative is that Westbrook had the better season than Harden. The coverage has emphasized his triple double stats as the reason he has the edge in the MVP race. Maybe Harden should win, but Westbrook will take home the award.

MLB: Who will win the AL East?

Boston Red Sox I’m a die-hard New York Yankees fan, so it pains me to make this prediction.

As I write this, the Yankees and Orioles are off to hot starts and are fighting atop the division. The Yankees are riding the power of Aaron Judge, and the Orioles are led by Manny Machado and their surprisingly good pitching staff. The Red Sox, meanwhile, are sitting behind them just waiting to explode. They have what is probably the most talented roster in the American League. Chris Sale is on fire to begin the season, Mookie Betts simply refuses to strike out and Andrew Benintendi is showing he’s no fluke in his rookie year. But the Sox haven’t been as successful as we all thought. I think the best is yet to come for them, and they’ll eventually take control of the most competitive division in baseball.

NFL: Who will be the best QB out of the year’s draft?

Deshaun Watson, Houston Texans To me, the answer right now is fairly obvious. Watson had easily the best body of work from college, but he was still passed on by both the Bears and Chiefs, who reached for Mitch Trubisky and Patrick Mahomes, respectively. Watson fell to 12 where he was drafted by the Houston Texans, which should be an ideal situation for the young QB. The Texans have a talented defense and a great receiving corps, led by Deandre Hopkins. Again, we might not know for a while, but I would bet that Watson will eventually be considered the best quarterback from the 2017 draft.

Bradley Schussel is a sophomore majoring in biomedical engineering. Bradley can be reached at bradley.schussel@tufts. edu.

Sunday, May 21, 2017 | Sports | THE TUFTS DAILY

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Best of Tufts athletics

Vinny Donofrio Vinny's Variety Pack

by Eddie Samuels

Executive Sports Editor

Tufts athletics owes its existence to hundreds of athletes and coaches, each of whom leaves a mark on the school. Each year, however, the Daily recognizes a number of these athletes who exceeded every expectation and made their presence known to opposing teams week after week. These athletes represent some of the very best Tufts has ever seen.

Co-Men’s Athlete of the Year: Chance Brady, Football, Running Back Graduating senior tri-captain running back Chance Brady broke just about every record he could in his final season in the brown and blue. No player in program history has ever scored more touchdowns (35) or rushed for more yards (2,692). The Haverhill, Mass. native also set conference-wide single-season highs for rushing touchdowns (17) and points scored (114). On account of his monumental successes, Brady was unanimously named the New England Football Writers Association’s Division II-III Gold Helmet Award winner. He was also awarded NESCAC Offensive Player of the Year honors for the second consecutive season.

Co-Men’s Athlete of the Year: Tim Nichols, Men’s Track and Men’s Cross Country Graduating senior Tim Nichols is just one in a long line of dominant runners for Tufts men’s cross country and track teams. He has put up a myriad of impressive performances

The Big Finale

T ANGELIE XIONG / THE TUFTS DAILY

Graduating senior running back Chance Brady poses for a portrait on May 4.

NESCAC. Despite not even starting the first two games of the season, the rising sophomore from Temecula, Calif. led the conference in total tackles (98) and ranked third in solo tackles (48). For his important role in helping the Jumbos rank second in the conference with a 7-1 record, Holt was named to the All-NESCAC First-Team Defense and earned NESCAC Rookie of the Year honors.

Women’s Rookie of the Year: Kelly Klimo, Volleyball, Libero Rising sophomore libero Kelly Klimo burst

RAY BERNOFF / THE TUFTS DAILY

Graduating senior forward/center Michela North poses for a portrait in Cousens Gym on May 10. in his time on the hill, including four AllAmerican performances, two of which were added this year. Nichols finished third at Nationals during the cross country season and claimed the title in the 5,000-meters at the Track and Field Indoor Championships with a time of 14:25.08, an event for which he also holds the Tufts record.

Women’s Athlete of the Year: Michela North, Women’s Basketball, Forward/Center Not much has been left unsaid about graduating senior Michela North’s stellar career as a Jumbo. One of those finer moments came with 4:34 to play in the first half against Bates on Jan. 28, as she stepped up to the free throw line to break Colleen Hart’s (E ’11) scoring record. North also graduates as the program’s leading rebounder with 1,071. She finishes her Tufts career as one of the winningest Tufts players with a record of 118-13, having made the All-NESCAC First Team in her final two years as a Jumbo.

This year, North led the NESCAC with 186 defensive rebounds and was fourth with 67 offensive rebounds for a total of conference-leading 253 rebounds. She was second in blocks (53) and third in points scored (370) for the Jumbos. Her 49.0 percentage for field goals ranks first on the team and fifth in the NESCAC. Men’s Rookie of the Year: Greg Holt, Football, Linebacker In his first season at Tufts, linebacker Greg Holt wasted no time establishing himself as one of the elite players at his position in the

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onto the scene in her first year on the Tufts volleyball team, quickly earning herself a spot in the starting rotation. Klimo, who hails from North Canton, Ohio, established herself right off the bat by leading the team in digs and aces in her first match, a win against Clark University (24-9). Klimo continued to impress

players on the Tufts team to receive an all-conference honor and one of just three first-years in the entire conference to be named to an all-conference team.

Men’s Coach of the Year: Josh Shapiro, Men’s Soccer In his seventh year at the helm of the men’s soccer team, Josh Shapiro has taken the team to the greatest stage not once, but twice. His 2014 team claimed the first national title in program history after going undefeated (7-03) in the NESCAC, and setting a program record for wins with 16. While the Jumbos could not defend their title in 2015, the 2016 season brought new challenges. The Jumbos failed to dominate the regular season but proved in the postseason that they were a force to be reckoned with. As one of the dark horses entering the NCAA tournament, Tufts won six straight tournament games, culminating in a double-overtime 1-0 win over Calvin to claim the title of National Champions for the second time in three years.

Women’s Coach of the Year: Tina McDavitt Mattera, Field Hockey Tina McDavitt Mattera is no stranger to success. Her 2012 field hockey team was the first women’s team in Tufts history to be crowned national champions. In her 13th season as head coach of the program, Mattera narrowly missed earning her second NCAA title back in November after leading the program to its third national championship game appearance under her tenure. Despite the tough final loss, under Mattera’s leadership, the team still put together an impressive 19-3 season and earned the program’s second NESCAC title to bring their coach’s overall record to 18153. Mattera was also named the Front Rush/ National Field Hockey Coaches Association (NFHCA) Collegiate Regional Coach of the Year for the New England West Region. The

RAY BERNOFF / THE TUFTS DAILY

Graduating senior cross country runner Tim Nichols poses for a photo at Ellis Oval on May 11. all season, leading the team in digs (508) by a wide margin to go along with the third-most service aces (36). Her strong play throughout the season culminated in a selection to the All-NESCAC Second Team, just one of two

impressive tournament run in November marked the seventh NCAA Tournament appearance for the Jumbos under Mattera, and Tufts appears poised to remain a top-10 team this fall.

his is my last column ever for The Tufts Daily *cue sad music.* I’ve been informed that it won’t print until Commencement where “hundreds of parents will read it, so you better not be inappropriate again.”

Oops, wasn’t supposed to include that last bit.

I’ve had an awesome time writing for this paper and I hope that all of my readers enjoyed my stuff. By “all of my readers,” I mean my mom and the editors at the Daily. If there’s anyone else who reads these columns then I just want to say: Don’t you have anything better to do with your time than to read my boring column? I mean seriously, get a life! I joke, I joke (kinda).

In all seriousness, thank you readers, thank you editors and thank you friends for telling me when my ideas are “stupid and not even remotely funny.” Without further ado, I present: Five 2017 NFL headlines that will totally happen and are definitely not fake.

Philip Rivers has 27th kid, names him ‘Twenty-Seven’ because he ‘ran out of ideas for names’ “You know, life is an absolute blessing. There is nothing more important to me than ‘SEVENTEEN YOU GET OFF THE GODD–N CABINETS RIGHT NOW OR NO TV TONIGHT,’” Rivers said, as he dodged a barrage of M&Ms coming from overhead.

Entire Patriot roster suspended for something stupid, coach Bill Belichick forced to create team from the Medford U12 Flag Football League, wins sixth superbowl “It’s really nothing special,” Belichick explained during an exclusive ESPN interview. “These boys know how to play football. I know how to coach football. I love football. Football football football football,” Belichick said as he slowly drifted off to a deep slumber.

Former NFL QB Tim Tebow terminates his barely promising MLB career after meeting with spiritual advisor, decides to move on to the PPPLFORT, the Professional Ping Pong League for Overly Religious Teens “I’m really looking forward to going down this new path that God has opened up for me. Make sure y’all tune into ESPN 8 the Ocho and watch me smoke the competition,” Tebow said. In other, unrelated, news, the Ping Pong Network has shown a sudden spike in the “Girls aged 12-24” demographic.

Cleveland Browns sign tackling dummy as new quarterback, go 5-11 “I sat around for hours watching game film and I couldn’t believe how many interceptions our QBs were throwing,” head coach Hue Jackson said. “After a lot of in-depth analysis we realized that the key to winning is to not throw interceptions. You know who doesn’t throw interceptions? That tackling dummy we use during practice. You know who can take a hit from a lineman? That same f–king tackling dummy. I feel stupid for not thinking about it earlier.”

ESPN fires all NFL analysts worth anything — notable exception in Stephen A. Smith who is ‘too stupid to be fired’ This one isn’t fake. I’M SERIOUS, THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED. HOW IS THIS MAN STILL EMPLOYED? Vinny Donofrio is a senior majoring in clinical psychology. Vinny can be reached at vincent.donofrio@tufts.edu.

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THE TUFTS DAILY | Sports | Sunday, May 21, 2017

tuftsdaily.com

Class of 2017 Senior Profiles Speros Varinos

by Eddie Samuels

Executive Sports Editor

Speros Varinos grew up on baseball. The graduating senior pitcher and Middleton, Mass. native played a variety of sports in high school, but baseball was always his focus.

Growing up just a half hour outside of Boston, Varinos was attracted to the prospect of playing for Tufts.

“I chose to play at Tufts because it was the best fit for me, both in my athletic and academic pursuits,” Varinos said. “Tufts baseball has always had a winning tradition, and I knew I wanted to be on the pre-health track, so Tufts was the best balance of sports and academics.”

Varinos saw limited action his first year, recording two wins, two saves and fanning 26 batters in 14 appearances for the Jumbos in 2014. Reflecting on his rookie season, Varinos explained that a large part of that first year was about adjusting to the rigors of a college program and learning from the older members of the team.

“The first year on the team is a bit of a learning curve,” he said. “It is an extremely demanding program, and there are very high expectations. As a freshman, you’re simply trying to learn the way, and I was fortunate enough to have great upperclassmen leaders and get some playing time as a freshman.”

His role remained limited in his sophomore season, as he tossed 20 innings for the Jumbos, with 10 of his 11 appearances coming in relief.

Despite getting relatively few oppor-

RAY BERNOFF / THE TUFTS DAILY

Graduating senior pitcher Speros Varinos poses for a portrait in the dugout at Spicer Field on May 10. tunities to play, Varinos showed signs of promise with an impressive 11.25 strikeouts per nine innings pitched and an ERA of 3.60.

Varinos came into his own during his junior year. Having developed into a full-time member of the starting rotation, Varinos led the NESCAC in wins (7) and strikeouts (79), ranked second in the conference in ERA (2.15), and finished third in innings pitched (67.0). Remarkably, Varinos only lost a single game, in March during his second start of the year. In recognition of his efforts,

Varinos was named the NESCAC Pitcher of the Year and received third-team All-American honors from D3baseball.com.

Varinos’ accolades were not merely individual souvenirs, however. His massive successes on the mound were instrumental to the entire baseball team’s successes during the 2016 season. As a core member of a dominant Tufts pitching staff that also featured Andrew David (LA ’16) and graduating senior Tim Superko, Varinos helped the team achieve a 35-8 record and secure the fourth conference title

in program history.

“My biggest accomplishment as a Jumbo is definitely winning the NESCAC championship last year,” Varinos said. “It was a great team effort, and I am proud to have just been a part of the team.”

This season, Varinos has managed to outdo his junior year performance. In nine starts, he has assembled an 8-1 record, pitching two complete games in the process. Once more, Varinos leads the NESCAC in a large number of categories, including wins (8), innings pitched (62.0), strikeouts (68) and ERA (1.60). Due in large part to Varinos’ contributions on the mound, the Jumbos won the NESCAC East Division and earned the top seed in the NESCAC tournament.

With the postseason still ahead, there remains plenty of baseball to be played. Varinos is looking forward to one last opportunity at glory.

“We still have the biggest part of our season ahead, so there are definitely things to be accomplished,” he said. “We would first like to compete in the playoffs and win another NESCAC championship. From there, hopefully, we can compete for a regional championship and play in the College World Series.”

Varinos reflected on his personal growth since his first year as a Jumbo.

“I think my comfort level within the program and my experience is what has changed the most,” he said.

“I now understand what Tufts baseball is all about, and my hope is to try to teach that to our underclassmen, so they are better in position to lead the team when their time comes.”

Scott Greenwood and Daniel Sullivan

by Maddie Payne Sports Editor

In 2013, graduating seniors goalkeeper Scott Greenwood and defender Daniel Sullivan joined a program that had only seen NCAA gameplay three times in history. Since then, the two graduating seniors have helped the program win two national titles in three years in an unprecedented rise to the top of Div. III soccer.

In their season as first-years, the Jumbos went 8-5-2 and bowed out in the NESCAC quarterfinals in penalties against the Bowdoin Polar Bears.

Just one year later, Tufts was again defeated in the NESCAC quarterfinals, but was fortunate to receive an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament.

The team followed this opportunity with six consecutive wins, in which they scored 14 goals and conceded three to triumphantly take the crown.

Two years later as seniors, Greenwood and Sullivan anchored the defense in a 15-5-2 season. As though it was fate, the Jumbos lost to the Polar Bears in the NESCAC quarterfinals and received an NCAA at-large bid. They went on to win six straight games, conceding only one goal, to claim a second national title as a brilliant capstone to a successful four years at Tufts.

RAY BERNOFF / THE TUFTS DAILY

Graduating senior goalkeeper Scott Greenwood and graduating senior defender Daniel Sullivan pose for a portrait on Bello Field on May 8.

Following the win, Greenwood was named to D3soccer.com’s first team All-American. A four-year starter, Greenwood has recorded the most shutouts in Tufts soccer history, a

total of 39, 12 of which came this season. His 0.888 save percentage is ranked third in the nation, and in 2016 he led the NESCAC in save percentage and goals against average.

“My most memorable moments as a Jumbo were being able to step on the field with my brothers on the biggest stage twice and bring two national championship trophies back to Tufts,” Greenwood said.

Sullivan was named to the D3Soccer.com second team, the AllNESCAC first team and the NCAA All-New England second team. He started every game in his junior and senior seasons, and was often cited by his teammates as one of the key defensive anchors in driving communication between the back line. In 2016, the Jumbos recorded the lowest goals against average in the NESCAC, and an average of under four shots on target per game, a testament to the strength of the defense.

Sullivan offered some advice for the non-graduating players on the team.

“To the juniors, I would say: as soon as you step on the field for what could potentially be your last game, you’re going to want to leave everything out there,” Sullivan said.

“When we made it to the tournament, by some miracle, every senior would look around and realize, ‘This could be our last one, so let’s go.’ Just grasping that opportunity to do something awesome has been the highlight of my life so far.”

S ports

Sunday, May 21, 2017 | Sports | THE TUFTS DAILY

Elizabeth Ahrens

by Sam Weidner

Assistant Sports Editor

Rounding out her career in impressive fashion, Elizabeth Ahrens, the four-year starting middle hitter from Richmond, Va. earned an All-NESCAC first team selection and an All-American honorable mention in her final season as a Jumbo. Ahrens posted 1.96 kills per set during her senior season while hitting at a solid .310 percentage.

Coming in as a first-year player, Ahrens was a major contributor right away as she played in all 28 matches for the team. She led the team in blocks with 120, and was among the team leaders with 160 kills for the whole season. She was also a key contributor in the Jumbos’ NCAA tournament run.

Her strong play continued into her sophomore season as she finished second on the team in blocks with 118 and fourth on the team in kills with 146. The team as a whole was succeeding as well, finishing Ahrens’ sophomore campaign with a 22-9 record and advancing to the second round of the NCAA tournament before they were eliminated by Clarkson.

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RAY BERNOFF / THE TUFTS DAILY

Graduating senior middle hitter Elizabeth Ahrens poses for a portrait in Cousens Gym on May 10.

Ahrens had a successful junior season, playing in all 25 of the Jumbos’ matches. She once again anchored the team’s offense and

defense and her efforts culminated in an AllNESCAC second team selection.

Ahrens said being a student athlete at

Tufts gave her skills that would stay with her after she left school and Tufts volleyball.

“One incredible thing about the team environment is that you are constantly around a group of people who want you to be better and at least my team experience with the volleyball girls is that we all push each other to be better not just on the court, but we care really deeply about how our teammates are doing in school, how we’re doing socially, how our freshmen are adjusting to college,” she said. “So it’s a really well rounded experience.”

Ahrens also expressed her gratitude for the support she has received from coaches over her four years. Coach Cora Thompson has been the head coach for the Jumbos team for all four years that Ahrens has been a player.

“I think it’s really rare to have an adult that’s really that consistent in your life and that knows you at that level like a coach does.

Our coach is really supportive of us on and off the court so I feel really lucky for that and for her,” Ahrens said.

Ahrens will be moving to Washington D.C. after graduation to pursue a career in politics.

Mason Pulde

by Savannah Mastrangelo Assistant Sports Editor

Tufts hockey will be losing a fantastic goal-tender this year in graduating senior Mason Pulde. In 2016, the Lexington, Mass. native was awarded the Academic AllAmerica At-Large Honors, an award that recognizes student athletes for peak athletic and academic performance. In order to qualify, athletes must have above a 3.30 GPA out of a 4.0 scale, and be an important contributor to the team. In his 2016 season alone, Pulde led the division with a .947 save percentage, and was ranked No. 15 in the nation with his 1.91 goals against average.

After transferring to Tufts from Middlebury his sophomore year, Pulde was awarded NESCAC player of the week twice, and had a .914 save percentage for the 2014-15 season.

At Middlebury, Pulde split time with three other goalies on the JV team playing just one period a game and taking video stats for the varsity team. When he transferred to Tufts, his career took off after he was immediately welcomed by his new teammates.

“The guys were super receptive and they were really welcoming. They made my transition really easy, I didn’t even feel

by Bradley Schussel

ANGELIE XIONG / THE TUFTS DAILY

Graduating senior ice hockey goalie Mason Pulde poses for a portrait on May 4. though I was at a new school,” Pulde said.

“I felt super comfortable the moment I stepped on campus because of [what] great chemistry the team had.”

At the end of Pulde’s sophomore year, the team upset the No. 1-ranked Trinity in the

NESCAC quarterfinals, launching an ongoing rivalry with Trinity. Tufts clinched the program’s first NESCAC quarterfinal win in history. Trinity outshot Tufts 43-25, with Pulde pulling off the incredible feat of 42 saves on the game. This game was the highlight of Pulde’s Tufts career.

Matt Rohrer

Assistant Sports Editor

“Four years really flies by,” graduating senior tri-captain and standout diver Matt Rohrer said. “I couldn’t be happier with the team this year. I wouldn’t have wanted to go out with any other group.”

Rohrer is perhaps one of the most accomplished Jumbo athletes in the class of 2017. He has been competing for the men’s swimming and diving team for his entire four-year career at Tufts. During his time as a Jumbo, he has earned honors in the NESCAC and on the national level.

He helped lead his team to four topfour finishes in the NESCAC. The Jumbos finished fourth in the NESCAC in his first two years, second in his junior year and third in 2017. Rohrer was named to the NESCAC all-conference team every year of his four-year career.

Rohrer believes his consistency across his career can be attributed to his experiences as a first-year diver.

“Everything kind of started my freshman year, and from there I couldn’t let

“It was just super special because it proved to everyone in our program and all of the alumni and ourselves that we were capable of doing great things,” he said. “I think it provided our program with the confidence to move forward and try to win a championship because I don’t think we believed it quite yet.”

In his final season at Tufts, Pulde had a .934 total save percentage and a 2.37 goals against average. In the season opener, the team defeated Trinity 3-1 while Pulde had 38 saves on the game. After Pulde suffered a devastating ACL tear late in the season to cut his Tufts career short, the team would go on to lose to Trinity in the NESCAC quarterfinals.

Despite the injury, this may not be the end of Pulde’s hockey career as he is considering another year of hockey abroad depending on his rehabilitation process post-graduation.

“Just being a student athlete at Tufts has been an unbelievable experience and has taught me so much about what it takes to be successful in multiple areas of your life and the commitment that it takes to strive to be the best that you can be,” Pulde said.

I think that the Tufts hockey program and Tufts University really stress that pursuit for perfection and improvement and I think that has made me a better person because of it.”

RAY BERNOFF / THE TUFTS DAILY

Graduating senior diver Matt Rohrer poses for a portrait at the Tufts pool on May 10. myself do anything but [get] better,” he said. “Having Johann [Schmidt (LA ’14)] to look up to helped push me and set the foundation for my success in later years.”

Rohrer also qualified for and participated in the NCAA championship meet, or ‘nationals,’ in each of his four years as a Jumbo. He participated in the one-meter

dive and the three-meter dive every year.

In those competitions, Rohrer earned All-American honors six times to go along with two All-American honorable mentions.

“Coming into college, I didn’t have a real understanding of what it meant to go to nationals,” Rohrer said. “Just making it to that competition four years in a row is beyond what I had imagined I’d be able to accomplish. I had also never dove the three-meter before I got to Tufts. To then be a three-time All-American on that board is just mind-blowing to me.”

As his career comes to a close, Rohrer believes that he’ll remember his time with his fellow divers for years to come.

“Diving at Tufts is a unique experience,” he said. “We don’t have a pool [to dive in] here so we have this added time together traveling to and from MIT every day. We are our own little subset of the swim team.

Those guys are my best friends.”

After graduation, Rohrer plans to teach diving over the summer in his hometown of Katonah, N.Y. He then hopes to take the LSAT and eventually attend law school.

48

THE TUFTS DAILY | Sports | Sunday, May 21, 2017

tuftsdaily.com

BASEBALL

Tufts defends NESCAC title, looks forward to NCAA berth

by Sam Weitzman

Assistant Sports Editor

Despite losing to Middlebury 5-1 in the preliminaries, No. 11 Tufts (30-8-1) came back and defeated Middlebury twice in a row, clinching its second consecutive NESCAC championship. The team entered the postseason as the top-seeded team in the NESCAC Championship tournament.

Having won last year’s conference tournament and advancing to the finals of the NCAA New England Baseball Region, the Jumbos are looking to build on their successes and make another deep run in the tournament this time around.

Tufts began the season on a tear, triumphing in all but one of their nine spring break games. The Jumbos stayed hot after returning to Medford to win their fourth consecutive NESCAC East Division title. The team’s consistency was remarkable, as Tufts posted winning streaks of four games or more on four different occasions and only once lost two games in a row.

The Jumbos’ offense has been uniformly outstanding, with 10 players hitting .300 or better and the squad collectively posting the eighth-highest on-base percentage in Div. III (.428). Rising junior shortstop Will Shackelford has led the team with a .380 batting average, good for third in the NESCAC. The Jumbos have hit not only for average but also for power, as Tufts leads all NESCAC teams in doubles (79), home runs (18) and RBIs (282).

“We had a really big team effort this year and our statistics tell the story,” tri-captain pitcher Tim Superko said. “We don’t have that many guys having crazy years, it’s more of

a contribution from every guy and the bullpen has been awesome this year picking up starters when they don’t have a good game.

Hopefully this will pay off in the postseason.”

An indispensable part of the heart of Tufts’ order has been rising senior third baseman Tommy O’Hara. The Glenview, Ill. native has slugged four balls out of the park, tied for second-most in the NESCAC. O’Hara has also earned a conference-high 33 walks, leads the NESCAC in runs scored (42) and leads Tufts in RBIs (44). Graduating senior outfielder/ pitcher Oscar Kutch has been another consistently solid contributor, ranking second on the team in both extra-base hits (15) and in hits (45).

Any conversation about the Jumbos’ pitching staff begins with graduating senior tri-captain Speros Varinos. In eleven starts (8-1), the Middleton, Mass. native has struck out 78 batters in 70.1 innings while boasting an ERA of just 1.92. In turn, Varinos’ win, strikeout, inning and ERA totals are all conference-bests. Varinos was also selected for the 2016–2017 College Sports Information Directors of America team for Academic and Athletic Excellence and was the 2016 NESCAC Pitcher of the Year. In addition, he was selected by D3baseball.com as both preseason second team All-American this spring and third team All-American in 2016.

Superko, a graduating senior, and pitcher R.J. Hall, a rising junior, have also thrown major innings for the Jumbos, with both players hurling over 42 innings and striking out at least 30 batters.

“The program has meant so much to me and developed my mentality on and off field,” Varinos said. “We really stress being competitive and giving everything you have

RAY BERNOFF / THE TUFTS DAILY

Graduating senior pitcher Matt Rothstein pitches during the game against the Roger Williams Hawks at Huskins Field on April 11. and this [also] translates to school and life.

We compete regardless of the situation, and we always find a way to get better and reach a higher standard. Coach [John] Casey stresses being the best person you can be and holds us all to a higher standard, and I learned to try to develop that in everyday life as well.”

Eight Tufts baseball players graduate this year: Varinos, Superko, Kutch, tri-captain outfielder Harry Brown, pitcher Charlie McQuinn, infielder Tom Petry, pitcher Matt Rothstein and pitcher Rory Ziomek. Several of them leave with their names etched in the record books. Superko currently has 235 career strikeouts, which places him second

on the program’s all-time list. Meanwhile, Varinos’ eight wins in a single season ties him for the third-best mark in Tufts history, with the playoffs presenting the chance for him to tie or break Bud Niles’ (A ’50) 68-year-old record of ten wins in a single season.

“It would be awesome to go out winning another NESCAC championship, as that is a goal we set every year, and leading the legacy for years to come of winning back-to-back championships would be amazing,” Superko said. “As long as we play our best baseball ahead of us, regardless of what happens, I want everyone to look back and know that we maxed out on our potential.”

SOFTBALL

Jumbos miss NESCAC tournament for first time in 17 years

by Sam Weitzman

Assistant Sports Editor

For the first time since 2000, the Jumbos (22-14) failed to qualify for the NESCAC conference playoffs. Nevertheless, the strong performances of multiple firstyear players demonstrate that the team’s rebuilding efforts should pay dividends for years to come.

Coach Cheryl Milligan explained that while she was disappointed with the team’s underperformance, there were still many positive takeaways from the season.

“I think we accomplished some things, but certainly from a talent standpoint, [we] underachieved. [We] just really couldn’t get our feet under us this year. [It was] disappointing to say the least,” she said. “But we’ve

[had] a good run of things, so, you know, this happens to all teams. I think the battle is fighting against this really, really hard and I’m sure that we’ll be back to do that next year.”

After amassing a 9-5 record during the annual Spring Break trip to Clermont, Fla., the Jumbos won five of their first six games in April. Five straight losses, however — particularly a three-game sweep at the hands of NESCAC East Division rivals Trinity (1914) — depressed Tufts’ chances at a playoff berth. Despite later winning two out of three games against eventual NESCAC East winner Bowdoin (27-8), Tufts failed to put together a run that matched previous years’ successes.

“I think we just didn’t really get off the ground, between the weather and the way that our schedule bounced around,” Milligan said. “With our first real series being against

SOFIE HECHT / THE TUFTS DAILY

Graduating senior first baseman/outfielder Summer Horowitz hits a grounder in Tufts’ win against Bowdoin on April 1, 2016.

Trinity and [us] not quite being ready with our very rookie staff on the mound, it felt like we’d fight back, and then we’d give up another run, and we’d fight back, and we’d give up another run … What’s unfortunate is we kind of ran out of fight.”

Rising senior catcher/outfielder Sarah Finnigan stressed that while the frequent rain-enforced cancellations were a source of annoyance, natural causes alone were not to blame for the team’s shortcomings.

“I don’t think the weather really had any effect on our performance,” she said. “It’s obviously a little frustrating when games get moved and there’s rain and you have to go back inside, but in terms of how it affected our play, I don’t think it did that much.”

Statistically, graduating senior tri-captain first baseman Cassie Ruscz was the team’s most dominant hitter. The Wolcott, Conn. native led the NESCAC in home runs (11) for the third consecutive season, and she had more hits (44), walks (19) and RBIs (36) than any other Jumbo. Ruscz finishes her Tufts career with 220 hits in 534 at-bats. The hits total is the second-best sum in program history, while her cumulative batting average (.412) places Ruscz fourth on the Tufts leaderboard. Her 55 career home runs also rank second on the Jumbos’ all-time list.

Two other Jumbos also posted batting averages above .400. Rising senior catcher/ outfielder Raven Fournier had the NESCAC’s best batting average (.440) and led Tufts in runs. Additionally, the Springfield, Mass. native ranked 15th in all of Div. III with a .567 on-base percentage. Graduating senior outfielder Maggie Hoffman also contributed to the team’s offensive success, slashing .422/.440/.529 with career highs in hits (43), RBIs (23) and runs scored (24).

“Raven Fournier, for sure, led our team in so many places. [She was] just really evenkeeled and had a great year at the plate,”

Milligan said. “[Hoffman] had a phenomenal year, [the] best year in her career, which is always great to see as a senior… [She] did a really good job in the outfield [and] did a great job at the plate — hit for power, hit for average, kind of did the whole nine yards.”

A number of rookies played important roles for the Jumbos. Rising sophomore infielder Jamie Stevens slashed .397/.437/.564 with three home runs and 20 RBIs as Tufts’ everyday third baseman. Meanwhile, rising sophomore pitcher/first baseman Gillian O’Connor led the Jumbos’ pitching staff in appearances (18), games started (14), wins (10), complete games (8) and ERA (2.32).

“Jamie had a fantastic year. I thought she kind of got hot in Florida. [She] maybe had some moments of cooling off and had some games where she struggled — as did we all — but I thought she played a fantastic freshman year for sure,” Milligan said. “Gillian started a little bit slower but came around and ended up being what we would consider probably our most successful [and] our number one pitcher this year.”

Six players graduate from the program this spring: Ruscz, Hoffman, tri-captain catcher/ outfielder Marly Becker, tri-captain outfielder Carrie Copacino, first baseman Summer Horowitz and utility player Shelby Lipson.

Four Jumbos received end-of-season recognition. Ruscz and Fournier were named to the All-NESCAC First Team, while Hoffman and Stevens earned All-NESCAC Second Team honors. Ruscz was also named to the 2016-17 College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) Academic AllDistrict Team.

Reflecting on the year as a whole, Finnigan struck a hopeful note.

“We’re a group of very talented players.

Our season didn’t go as long as [we] had hoped it would, but I have a lot of optimism for the future with this group,” she said.

Sunday, May 21, 2017 | Sports | THE TUFTS DAILY

S ports

Spotlight on international student athletes at Tufts

Max Goder-Reiser Out of Left Field

I

L-R: ALEX KNAPP / TUFTS DAILY ARCHIVE, RAY BERNOFF / THE TUFTS DAILY, COURTESY KEN LEGLER, SEOHYUN SHIM / THE TUFTS DAILY

L-R: Rising junior squash player Sahana Karthik, rising junior tennis player Julia Keller, rising sophomore sailing team member Nihal Pai and rising junior tennis player Mina Karamercan each compete for their various sports.

by Yuan Jun Chee Sports Editor

While the Tufts athletics program sees hundreds of students pass through its doors every year, the handful of international students that represent the Brown and Blue across the country in various sports can go unnoticed.

Two of those individuals are rising juniors Mina Karamercan and Julia Keller, both of whom play for the women’s tennis team. The two share similar athletic backgrounds, having played tennis from young ages.

Though Keller, a native of Lidingoe, Sweden, had played tennis throughout her life, she was enamored by the prospect of playing in a completely different environment.

“In Sweden, universities are very different and there are no college sports, nor high school sports — it’s very individual,” Keller said. “So coming to the States playing on a team was a dream for me because it’s just so different. You’re playing for the university and for the team, not just yourself.”

Both said part of their decision-making processes were influenced by their passion for the sport.

“For me, tennis is such an individual sport and you have to start so early; I played 16 years of tennis,” Keller said. “And to just quit after high school felt like giving [up] a part of myself, which I wasn’t ready to do, so this was a great way to continue it and four more years of highly competitive sports is worth it.”

Karamercan, who started playing tennis at seven in her native Istanbul, added that her family also influenced her decision.

“In Turkey, you can’t do school and tennis together, so there comes a point where you choose to play professional tennis or to just go to school,” Karamercan said. “That was difficult because I loved playing tennis but I wasn’t going to quit school to play tennis. My dad went to UVA and also played tennis, so he was a big influence on me … and I just knew that I was going to come here to play tennis because it felt like the right thing to do.”

Both said the decision to play for Tufts was based on a combination of academic rigor and a connection with the program “Tufts was such a great fit for me because it’s near a city, the tennis is really great, we’ve such a good program and the coach is really good.”

Keller said.

For other athletes, their decision to join a Tufts team was also largely based on their passion for their sport, despite not being recruited. Sahana Karthik, a member of the Tufts women’s squash team, is a rising junior from Singapore. In the past she participated in tournaments, including an international event in Malaysia. She was also part of a club in Singapore which played league matches every week. Upon earning admission to Tufts, Karthik had a conversation with the coaching staff to get involved to continue her love for the sport. “[Playing for Tufts has] been good because when I came in as a [firstyear] it was a nice community to build as well, because we’re very bonded as a team,” Karthik said. “And it’s also nice to be playing a sport and feel good representing Tufts in some way. It’s a proud feeling competing for a university in a sport that you like playing and something that you’re good at.”

Tufts also represented an opportunity for rising sophomore Singaporean, Nihal Pai, a member of the sailing team, to pursue one of his passions, though Pai had never competed for his high school.

“My family has sailed in the past casually, so I thought it might be a good experience just to try out and see what I could do with the little skills I had,” Pai said. “It seemed like a very popular sport over here, and I just wanted to get involved in an athletics team in some way.”

However, making that transition from playing sports in their local scenes to a collegiate setting can be challenging for international students. “[ When I first joined I was] obviously very intimidated, because the people who were recruited, they were amazing at what they do,” Pai said.

“But the people on the team are very

encouraging, they help you develop your skills and that feeling gradually faded over time.”

Karamercan had a similar experience with the tennis team.

“I really did feel [the difficult transition] last year, but I think being an international student in an athlete community, you assimilate a lot faster into the culture than non-athletes just because it’s a tighter community,” Karamercan said.

The recruitment process for international athletes for women’s tennis and sailing are similar. Prospective recruits often send their athletic experience and information to coaching staff to get noticed. For women’s tennis, showcases occur around the country for international students to demonstrate their abilities in front of coaching staff. Coach Kate Bayard of the women’s tennis team said that the showcases provide opportunities for coaching staff to get a sense of the way players compete.

The athletics program leaders also assist international students in making the transition process. This process, coach Ken Legler of the sailing team suggested, could be easier at Tufts because of a more significant international population on campus as compared to other schools. Bayard shared that she and her coaching staff constantly check in with the firstyears, especially the international students, to ensure that their transition is smooth.

The responsibility of helping newer members, especially of the international community, to settle in also becomes a team project. Legler said the team does a lot to help welcome newer members, such as providing a welcome package, taping signs to their doors, or providing useful items such as chapstick to make them feel included and help them settle in.

“They’re part of a team right away, they are not only here to study, but here to take part in something as a group with common goals, and it’s pretty fun being on a team,” Legler said. “When you go to weekend competition and you put on your gear … with a big T on it, like everyone else on the team is wearing, and away you go.”

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A day in the life

n February I was hired part-time

by MLB Advanced Media (MLBAM) as a stats stringer. I’m one month into the job and I wanted to share my experience.

We’re responsible for entering data into MLB’s software following the outcome of every pitch. MLBAM then posts that data real-time on MLB Gameday and sells it to their clients.

We’re essentially glorified stats keepers, but stringer sounds a little sexier than ‘keeper,’ so here we are. After my Spring Training, I started stringing an actual, real-life game.

My first solo game was on April 30 for the Red Sox vs. Cubs on Sunday Night Baseball — no pressure. I arrived at Fenway 90 minutes before first pitch and got ready to go. Our dayto-day schedule starts with checking the 25-man roster and making sure what we have in our system matches the official lineup cards. Then we go through and enter the lineups, umpires and weather conditions. All of this takes about 30 minutes, after which we are free until the first warm up pitches in the bullpen.

During this time I’ll usually head to the cafeteria (where they have a sundae bar better than Sundae Sunday at Carm) and wander the halls. I recently got to meet John Smotlz, Dennis Eckersley and Dave O’Brien in the press box. I’m also pretty sure I peed next to Joe Castiglione once. Very cool stuff. I get to chat with the Boston press during this pregame free time.

Evan Drellich and Alex Speier are awesome, as expected.

Once the game starts, I head back to my seat in the third row of the press box and get ready to work. One thing I didn’t realize about this job going in was just how much you have to focus. You literally can’t miss anything.

When a pitch comes in, it’s tracked by TrackMan, which then shows us the pitch location on our screen. We enter in the outcome of the pitch, whether it was a ball, strike or hit into play with multiple subcategories of each. For the most part, the job isn’t too crazy, but there’s always one half inning where things get a little hairy.

Most recently it was the Sox-Orioles game on May 2 in the bottom of the eighth. Jackie Bradley Jr. grounded into the strangest (and only) 6-4-4-3 triple play I’ve ever seen. This caused me so much trouble trying to enter it into our software that the support guy in New York had to take over and enter it.

Welcome to the Majors.

Post-game, the official scorer checks what he has with what we entered to confirm we’ve got the same results.

After that I pack up our laptop, grab one final cup of free popcorn and head down Yawkey to Kenmore. I love this job. So far I’ve seen 23 Chris Sale strikeouts, three Hanley Ramirez home runs and a Kris Bryant and a Manny Machado home run each. As stressful as it can be, I’m still getting paid to sit in the press box with everyone I follow on Twitter, meet baseball legends and watch Red Sox games.

Max Goder-Reiser is a senior majoring in biology. He can be reached at max.goder_ reiser@tufts.edu.

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THE TUFTS DAILY | Sports | Sunday, May 21, 2017

tuftsdaily.com

Fall Recaps

by Eddie Samuels

Executive Sports Editor

Football With a 7-1 record – their best performance as a program since 1998 – the Jumbos finished as the NESCAC runners up.

In doing so, the members of the senior class completed a remarkable turnaround from their 0-8 mark during their first season here.

Tufts was undefeated at the Ellis Oval, with their only away defeat coming in an overtime loss to eventual NESCAC champions Trinity (8-0). Notably, Tufts beat Amherst (4-4) for the first time since 2007. All told, the Jumbos scored 40 points three times, the first time the program has accomplished such a feat in at least three decades.

Graduating senior tri-captain running back Chance Brady led the way for the men from Medford. The two-time NESCAC Offensive Player of the Year set new NESCAC single-season records for touchdowns (17) and points scored (114), as well as Tufts records for single-game touchdowns (5), single-season rushing yards (1,099), career rushing yards (2,692), and career touchdowns (35). Including Brady, six Jumbos were named to the All-NESCAC First Team, including two other graduating seniors: offensive lineman Jack Price and punter Willie Holmquist.

Rising sophomore linebacker Greg Holt also earned Rookie of the Year honors.

19 seniors will graduate this May, 11 of whom started in the 48-35 victory over Middlebury (6-2) in the season finale.

Women’s Cross Country The Jumbos kicked off their 2016 season with an impressive win at the four-team Bates Invitational. Tufts showed its speed, beating Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Wellesley in addition to the hosts, Bates.

Tufts put five runners in the top 10 of the race, led by rising senior Brittany Bowman.

Bowman and rising junior Natalie Bettez were among the Jumbos to put up strong showings at the NESCAC Championships.

Bettez finished second in the race, followed closely by Bowman in seventh.

Bowman continued her dominance throughout the outdoor season, finishing as Tufts’ top runner in numerous events.

She capped off her strong performance in the season with an 18th-place finish at the NCAA Championships.

Bowman was one of seven runners from Tufts participating alongside graduating seniors Kelly Fahey, Samantha Cox, Alice Wasserman and Lindsey Atkeson and Bettez and rising junior Kelsey Tierney. Tufts finished eighth in the Div. III Championships, its third-best finish since the 2006 season.

Men’s Cross Country

EVAN SAYLES / THE TUFTS DAILY

A Tufts player is brought down by a crowd of Colby players in the game against the Colby College Mules on Nov. 5, 2016.

The Jumbos put up a number of impressive performances during the cross country season. Graduating senior co-captains Tim

events, finishing 14th and 25th at the Purple Valley Classic and the Paul Short Invitationals, respectively. The team bounced back at the

EVAN SAYLES / THE TUFTS DAILY

Rising senior Sara Stokesbury, sprints to the finish line at the Connecticut College Cross Country Invitational at Harkness Memorial State Park on Oct. 15, 2016.

Nichols and Luke O’Connor led the way, as the team claimed second place in its first event of the year at the Bates Invitational.

The Jumbos struggled in their next two

James Earley Invitational, claiming second of 41 participating teams.

The Jumbos finished in the top-five of every other event in which they participat-

MAX LALANNE / THE TUFTS DAILY

Players race after the ball in the NESCAC Championship game against Middlebury on Nov. 6, 2016.

ed, culminating in a third-place finish at the NESCAC Championships, ahead of a fifth place showing at New England Regionals.

Though the team did not place at nationals, Nichols finished third in the event with a time of 24:09.7. The only other Jumbo in attendance, O’Connor, finished 20th with a time of 24:42.4. Along with the captains, the Jumbos graduate Michael Caughron and Chris Warren from their four-man senior class.

Women’s Soccer Tufts bettered marginally its 6-8-2 record from the previous year, moving to 7-6-3 this year. The team also had a stronger NESCAC campaign, improving to 5-4-1 (compared to last year’s 4-5-1). Part of the team’s superior record can be attributed to the change in formation to 3-5-2 by coach Martha Whiting, allowing the Jumbos to play with two strikers to give them more offensive threat.

The statistics prove the change was effective: Tufts scored 24 goals this year in its 16 games, up from 14 last year. The team also remained solid at the back, conceding just 17 goals and allowing 14.4 shots per game, down from 18 goals conceded and 15.7 shots per game last year. Particular highlights for the team include three thumping victories, all of which occurred on Kraft Field: 5-2 over Bates (5-9-1), 4-0 over Endicott (13-4-2) and 3-0 over Emerson (10-10). However, the team fell at the same stage of the NESCAC Tournament as it had the year before, losing 1-0 to Trinity (11-5-4) in the quarterfinals.

The team graduates six seniors: co-captain defender Alexa Pius, co-captain midfielder Robin Estus, midfielder Brooke Fortin, defender Stefanie Brunswick, forward Jess Capone and midfielder Sarah Pykkonen. Due to her strong performances, Estus was named to the All-NESCAC Second Team.

In 2017, Tufts will look to build on the rookie seasons of defender Tally Clark and midfielders Ashley Latona and Jenna Troccoli, all of whom impressed with their performances on the field.

Men’s Soccer Against all odds, the Jumbos won the National Championship for the second time in three years. Despite a 0-2-1 record at the beginning of the season, the Jumbos then went on to generate a 15-5-2 record and closed out the season with six straight NCAA wins to secure the championship.

In the NCAA tournament, five of six wins were shutouts, including the final, which went to double overtime after neither team scored. The deadlock in the Championship was eventually broken by rising senior midfielder Tyler Kulcsar in the 103rd minute to win the title for the Jumbos.

Sunday, May 21, 2017 | Sports | THE TUFTS DAILY

S ports In the NESCAC, Tufts finished the regular season with a 6-2-2 record, tying Colby and Hamilton and losing to Bowdoin and Wesleyan. Unfortunately, after being seeded second in the NESCAC, they bowed out in the quarterfinals of the tournament in backto-back regular and postseason games to Bowdoin.

Other highlights of the season include beating Amherst — defending national champions at the time — at home 3-0 on Oct. 1. Only a week later, the Jumbos defeated the Middlebury Panthers 2-0, ending their 16-game unbeaten streak. Both teams were ranked in the national top 20 at the time.

The senior class gave outstanding performances throughout the season. Co-captain midfielder Zach Halliday, defender Daniel Sullivan, and forward Gaston Becherano all earned 2016 All-New England Region honors. Goalkeeper Scott Greenwood was named D3Soccer.com Goalkeeper of the Year and first-team All American, while Sullivan was named to the All-American second team. Tufts is the only team in the nation with two players named to the top two All-American squads.

Field Hockey No. 3 Tufts field hockey (19-3 overall, 8-2 NESCAC) came as close as a team can get to a national title, falling 2-1 in pen-

EVAN SAYLES FOR TUFTS ATHLETICS

Rising senior midfielder Dexter Eichhorst attempts to move the ball around two Kenyon players in the quarterfinal round of the NCAA DIII men's soccer tournament on Nov. 20, 2016.

Though the team is losing just three graduating seniors — Annie Artz and co-captains Dominique Zarrella and Nicole Arata —

led the team in scoring this season. Still, with a strong core of the team returning, Tufts is poised to remain a top-five team this fall.

EVAN SAYLES / THE TUFTS DAILY

Rising sophomore outside/opposite hitter Maddie Stewart spikes in the NESCAC championship game against the Middlebury Panthers on Nov. 6, 2016. alty shootouts to Messiah College — the nation’s top-ranked team — in the NCAA Championship game on Nov. 20. The Jumbo defense, which ranked second in Div. III averaging 0.57 goals against per game, carried the team for most of the season and especially throughout its postseason run.

Tufts shut out Messiah’s No. 1-ranked offense, which averaged 4.61 goals per game, through 70 minutes of regular time and two 15-minute overtime periods. This feat followed shutouts against the University of New England’s No. 3-ranked scoring offense in the second round of the NCAA tournament and against Salisbury’s No. 4-ranked scoring offense in the semifinals.

Despite the tough loss in the national championships, the Jumbos still finished the regular season seeded first in the NESCAC and claimed the program’s second conference title on Nov. 6 on Ounjian Field, which finished construction in early September in time for the team’s home opener. Practicing and playing home games on Astroturf instead of on regular turf as in years past seems to have made a big difference for the Jumbos, as they went 11-1 on Ounjian and recorded nine of their 14 shutouts at home.

51

those losses are critical. Arata anchored the team’s dominant defense, Zarrella led the team in scoring in 2014 and 2015 and Artz

Volleyball The Tufts Women’s Volleyball team went 27-4 (10-0 in conference) on the season,

advancing to the elite eight of the NCAA Div. III national championships before they were eliminated by Southwestern (Texas) in a thrilling five set match. This was just the second time in program history that the Jumbos have advanced that far in postseason play.

Despite the 10-0 record in regular season conference play, the Jumbos were unable to capture the elusive conference title, falling to Middlebury in the NESCAC final.

The team was powered by a few senior stars accompanied by a wealth of talented underclassmen. Senior middle hitter tri-captain Elizabeth Ahrens and senior middle hitter McKenzie Humann at the end of the season were awarded All-American honorable mention and AVCA All-Region honorable mention respectively. Ahrens was second on the team in kills for the season, behind starting first-year outside hitter Brigid Bell.

Bell, along with libero Kelly Klimo, were two first-year players who started and starred for the Jumbos all season long, along with right side hitter Christian Nwankpa, right side hitter Maddie Stewart and setter Rachel Furash. Nwankpa, Stewart and Furash all also saw consistent time throughout the season, form a strong base for the team going forward. The sophomore class was strong as well, with starting setter Angela Yu leading the team in assists with 680 on the season and starting outside hitter Mackenzie Bright coming in third on the team for kills.

The team graduates three players this season. Along with their middle tandem of Ahrens and Humann, senior outside hitter Mary Maccabee graduates as well.

MATTHEW SCHREIBER / THE TUFTS DAILY

Rising sophomore back Tally Clark, looks to send the ball upfield during Tufts women's soccer's 2-1 loss to Williams on a very wet Kraft Field.

52

THE TUFTS DAILY | Sports | Sunday, May 21, 2017

by Eddie Samuels

Executive Sports Editor

Men’s Basketball The men’s basketball team (22-7) had a superb season, ranking tenth overall in Div. III. An 8-2 in-conference record earned the team the NESCAC regular season title.

Tufts won its first game in the NESCAC tournament against Hamilton before falling to No. 5 Williams in the semi-finals.

After qualifying with an at-large bid, Tufts made it to the second weekend of the Div. III NCAA Tournament with victories over Salem State (17-11) and No. 25 St. John Fisher (23-6). In the Sweet Sixteen, however, the Jumbos fell to eventual national champions Babson (31-2), 87-80. In doing so, the team matched the 2005-06 squad’s tournament run for the second-best showing in program history.

Despite missing part of the season after dislocating his kneecap, graduating senior tri-captain center Tom Palleschi completed his career with numerous entries in the program’s record book, including the most blocks (270), eighthmost rebounds (682) and thirteenth-most career points (1,218). Graduating senior tri-captain guard Tarik Smith earned All-NESCAC Second Team honors and finished his Tufts career with the eighth-most assists (363) and the seventeenth-most points (1,115).

Graduating senior tri-captain center Drew Madsen also contributed important minutes and rebounds to the team’s success. Rising senior guard Vincent Pace responded well from last season’s knee injury, while rising senior guard KJ Garrett shone in a sixth man role. Among the rookies, rising sophomore guard Eric Savage showed significant promise as a scorer and a passer.

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Winter Recaps Women’s Basketball In her 15th season in charge of the Jumbos, coach Carla Berube had much to be proud of. The team made its second consecutive appearance in the national championship game on the back of a 30-3 season, an improvement from last year’s 28-4 record. The Jumbos were also more prolific this year – putting up 61.8 points per game, up from 59.9 – with rising senior forward Melissa Baptista leading the way with 12.5 points per game.

The run to the championship game was marked by an outstanding comeback against previously undefeated St. Thomas (31-1) in the Final Four match-up. With 5:30 to go in the fourth quarter, trailing by 12, Baptista and fellow rising senior guard Lauren Dillon led the way to an incredible 60-57 victory. However, Tufts was denied a first women’s basketball national championship by Amherst (33-0) in a 52-29 defeat in Grand Rapids, Mich. Amherst was the only team to have defeated Tufts this season.

Senior tri-captain Michela North graduates from the program as its all-time leading scorer with 1,568 points, a healthy 146 points more than the previous top scorer, guard Colleen Hart (E ’11). Graduating alongside North are forward Katy Hicks and fellow tri-captain Josie Lee. Dillon capped off an outstanding year by being named the NESCAC Defensive Player of the Year, while Baptista joined North on the All-NESCAC First Team and the AllAmerican Third Team.

Ice Hockey After a tumultuous battle to qualify for a playoff seed, the team clinched sixth and advanced to the NESCAC quarterfinals, falling to long-time rival Trinity in a 4-1 loss. The Jumbos finished the regular season with a 11-11-3 overall record and a 9-8-1 conference record. Tufts hockey

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Rising sophomore guard/forward Erica DeCandido lunges for the ball during Tufts' 64-44 second round championship win against Husson at Cousens Gymnasium on March 4.

ANGELIE XIONG / THE TUFTS DAILY

Graduating senior Tarik Smith dribbles up the court during the game against Williams on Feb. 25. will graduate six seniors this year including tri-captains Mike Leary and Sean Kavanagh, goaltender Mason Pulde, forwards Patrick Lackey and Conal Lynch and forward/defender Matt Pugh. Lynch scored the team’s lone goal in the Trinity contest in his final career game.

The team had many upsets this season, most notably the 3-1 win over Trinity — last year’s conference champions — in the season opener. Later in the season, the team retaliated after a 4-0 loss to Bowdoin to defeat then highly-ranked Colby 3-1 the next day. In the fourth-to-last regular season game, the team defeated Amherst to end a winless 18 game streak in the series; the last Tufts victory against Amherst came in Feb. 2005.

In his final season, Kavanagh broke the program record for most games played at 101 games. Pulde had an outstanding season as well with a .934 save percentage totaling 340 saves and 24 goals against.

After Pulde’s last collegiate season was cut short due to an ACL tear, rising senior goaltender Nik Nugnes took over the net with similar success, averaging a .936 save percentage and totaling 442 saves.

Rising senior forward Brian Brown lead the team in scoring with nine goals, followed closely by rising sophomore Anthony Farinacci, who totaled seven goals. While the team will lose six players who were crucial to the hockey program, the performances from the rising sophomores over the course of the season show promise for next year.

Fencing It was a tale of two halves for the Jumbos during the 2017 season. The Jumbos opened the season facing a brutal stretch of top-notch opponents, falling to 0-8 in the process, but they rebounded to win five of their last six regular season matches. What’s more, the team rode its

momentum to a fourth place finish at the New England Intercollegiate Fencing Conference (NEIFC) Championships in early March, and eight Tufts fencers qualified for NCAA Regionals later that month.

A key to the Jumbos’ success was their well-balanced lineup, as they routinely received strong contributions from all three weapons. The épée squad was buoyed by rising senior Grace Tellado and graduating senior co-captains Chandler Coble and Anna Gooch, all of whom qualified for NCAA Regionals.

The sabre squad was led by rising seniors Bridget Marturano and Nayab Ajaz. Marturano led all Jumbos in winning percentage (.767) during the regular season. Finally, the foil squad received strong seasons from graduating senior Juliet Hewes and sophomore Zoe Howard. After winning four of five pool play bouts, Hewes advanced to the knockout round at NEIFC Championships where she finished fourth overall.

Coble, Gooch, Hewes and senior foilist Rebecca Lachs depart a program that has grown immensely over the past four years.

While their contributions will be sorely missed, they leave behind a young team that is in a good position to continue to improve.

Men’s Squash The Jumbos dominated the first portion of their season, winning all but one of their first eight matches. The Jumbos struggled, however, in January, going 4-5 in their matches during the month.

The Jumbos season culminated in the Collegiate Squash Association (CSA) Championships, hosted by MIT. The Jumbos defeated Hamilton 5-4 in their first match of the weekend, behind wins from rising juniors Alan Litman, Imran Trehan and Aiden Porges and rising soph-

Sunday, May 21, 2017 | Sports | THE TUFTS DAILY

S ports omores Raghav Kumar and Connor Wind.

Wind, Kumar and Litman all claimed their matches decisively after three games.

In the next match of the CSA tournament, five Jumbos fell in three-game matches. While Trehan pushed his match with rising sophomore Christian Escalona to four games, he ultimately fell (11-5, 8-11, 12-10, 11-1).

Tufts then faced Bowdoin in the final match of the tournament for the Jumbos.

The team then fell 6-3 in the most lopsided match of the weekend. Kumar, Trehan and rising sophomore Amun Sahrawat won their matches, but could not bouy the Jumbos past the Polar Bears.

Women’s Squash This winter, the Jumbos earned the No. 19 ranking at the College Squash Association (CSA) Team Championships, improving on their previous year’s ranking of No. 23 and earning one of their most successful seasons in program history.

In competition for the Walker Cup, Tufts secured its top-20 ranking, then finished the season 17-7 overall and dropped no home matches. The Jumbos entered the NESCAC Championship seeded sixth, but fell 7-2 to the ninth-seeded Colby Mules in the consolation round.

The team was led by rising senior captain Claudia Udolf and comprised of four rising seniors, seven rising juniors and four rising sophomores.

The rising sophomores proved to be crucial to the Jumbos’ overall success this season, as two of them were named to the all-NESCAC team — the most players in program history. Rising sophomore Claire Davidson was named to the first team after holding the first position for Tufts throughout much of the season and was named the Harrow Sports Player of the Week in December. Fellow rising sophomore Catherine Shanahan was named to the second All-NESCAC team and held down the third position for Tufts nearly all year.

Rising junior Sahana Karthik earned a spot on the winter NESCAC AllSportsmanship team and was another key contributor to the Jumbos’ successful season. Rising seniors Lauren Banner and Gabi Salomon as well as rising junior Olivia Ladd-Luthringshauser were named to the NESCAC winter all-academic team, proving their success in the classroom and on the team.

With such a young team composition and no graduating seniors, the Jumbos have an excellent shot of repeating and improving on their success next season.

Women’s Swimming and Diving The women’s swimming and diving team finished the season tied for 46th in Div. III, anchored by performances from graduating senior captain Amanda Gottschalk and rising junior Colleen Doolan.

Both Doolan and Gottschalk have

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Rising senior forward Blake McIntyre passes the puck to a teammate during the game against Amherst at the Malden Forum on Feb 11. been team leaders throughout the season, and this is the second consecutive season where the two have represented the Jumbos at the NCAA competition.

The Jumbos placed 20th over-

Championships. Over the course of her career, Reiman competed in four NESCAC Championships, and three NCAA Regional Championships.

The Jumbos ended their regular season

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Rising sophomore Frank Yandrisevits swings at the ball in a match against Dickinson at Harvard's Murr Center on Jan. 20, 2016. all in the 3-meter diving, with senior diver Kylie Reiman earning 17th overall in the 1-meter diving at the NCAA diving Regional Championship, and fell just short of qualifying for NCAA Div. III

with a winning 4-3 dual-meet record — a goal they had focused on from the beginning of the season. Notable meets included a third place finish at an MIT Invitational in December and wins against

Middlebury in December and Wheaton in January.

The team finished eighth out of 11 at NESCAC championships, trailing seventh-place Wesleyan by only 50.5 points and leading ninth place Hamilton by over 300. Four seniors are graduating: Reiman and tri-captains Gottschalk, Sophia Lin and Sarah Elghor.

Men’s Swimming and Diving The Jumbos finished the season as the 14th best team in Div. III, according to the Div. III rankings. The team was partly led by senior tri-captain and star diver Matt Rohrer.

Rohrer finished his collegiate career with a strong performance at the NCAA Championships, or ‘nationals’ as the players often refer to the tournament. Rohrer earned All-American honors in both the one meter dive and the three meter dive events, which makes him a six-time AllAmerican in four appearances at nationals.

Another Jumbo to earn All-American honors was sophomore Kingsley Bowen.

The swimmer was recognized as an AllAmerican in the 200 yard backstroke, the 100 backstroke and the 100 butterfly.

Other Jumbos earning All-American honors included junior Zach Wallace, junior James McElduff, junior Lorenzo Lau and first-year Roger Gu. All of these athletes helped the Jumbos to a 10th-place finish at Nationals. Tufts scored 126 points at the four-day event. At the NESCAC Championships, the Jumbos finished behind only the first-place Ephs and the second-place Mammoths and finished third in the NESCAC out of eleven competing teams.

COURTESY DAVID DECORTIN

Rising senior Anna Kimura swims during a practice on Jan 21.

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THE TUFTS DAILY | PROSPECTIVE PERSPECTIVE | Sunday, May 21, 2017

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“I like the emphasis on other people around you.” -DJ, Vermont

I heard about the meme page and I’d say I’m a meme god myself, so I’d add a lot of value to this school.” -Joseph, New York

“I was really amazed by how much everyone around me was doing and how multi-faceted everyone was.” -Caroline, Washington D.C. (left)

PRO PER

SPECTIVE

“I’m excited about how everybody’s really passionate about what they’re doing and learning.”

-Rachel, New York

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“I haven’t committed yet … but now I’m officially going to commit. Everyone here seems so nice…” -Sonia, Philadelphia (left)

Sunday, May 21, 2017 | PROSPECTIVE PERSPECTIVE | THE TUFTS DAILY

“I loved the community and everything about it, and how I don’t have to know what I want to do.” -Olivia, New Jersey (left)

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“I’d also have a chance to play varsity squash here, so I’m excited about that." -Elisa, New York

“I just felt like it was a really inclusive environment with a nice, friendly vibe.” -Julia, California (right)

"I like the clubs here aimed towards sustainability. They're really interesting." -Brianna, North Carolina (left) "I'm not sure what I want to do [at the SMFA] yet, but maybe film photography." -Kelsey , North Carolina (right)

"I think the whole atmosphere of being in Boston, being surrounded by the city with all these other colleges, would really enhance my college experience." -Harris, Illinois

"I live in a very, very small town, so I'm very excited [because] I never actually realized how close Tufts was to Boston.” -Niku, Massachussets

“There is a crack in everything.

That’s how the light gets in.”

— Leonard Cohen