2009-11-23

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THE TUFTS DAILY

TUFTSDAILY.COM

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2009

VOLUME LVIII, NUMBER 51

Where You Read It First Est. 1980

Professional soccer in Somerville? Report: Higher profits Change in Green Line plans could free up space for stadium for student insurers BY

BEN GITTLESON

Daily Editorial Board

BY

ELLEN KAN

Daily Editorial Board

A report by state officials planning the Green Line extension into Somerville and Medford may have paved the way for a professional soccer stadium just four miles from Tufts’ campus.

In the October report, the Massachusetts Executive Office of Transportation (EOT) seemed to move away from plans to build a Green Line maintenance facility in Yard 8, a Somerville lot that the New England Revolution’s owner is considering as a site for a new stadium.

The EOT is considering two other locations for the facility after city officials and local business owners said a facility at Yard 8 would throw a wrench into plans for mixeduse development there.

The Kraft Group, which owns the Revolution and the National Football League’s New England Patriots, has been exploring the possibility of moving the Revolution into a smaller, soccer-specific stadium, a current trend among Major League Soccer (MLS) franchises. The Krafts have been considering Somerville as the potential home for a new stadium for around two years, and started looking at development opportunities in the Inner Belt and Brickbottom areas last year.

This article is the first in a two-part series examining student health insurance. This article focuses on a report revealing discrepancies between insurance programs for Massachusetts students and those offered to non-students. The second article, to appear in tomorrow’s Daily, will look at health insurance at Tufts.

HELAINA STEIN/TUFTS DAILY

The Revolution may find their new home in Somerville’s Yard 8.

Supporters of the move believe it would make the team more accessible to fans in the Boston area, since the Revolution currently plays more than 20 miles outside the city, at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass. The planned Green Line extension would serve the Inner Belt area, where Yard 8 is located, and the new stadium would sit only a mile from downtown Boston.

A smaller venue would also mean that soccer crowds would not be dwarfed in a huge stadium designed for football. Gillette Stadium seats 68,756; a new soccer stadium would reportedly host between

20,000 and 30,000 fans.

In its Draft Environmental Impact Report, published Oct. 15, the EOT said it would look into the possibility of two locations other than Yard 8 for construction of the maintenance facility: “Mirror H,” the City of Somerville’s preferred space, and “Option L.” The EOT had chosen Yard 8 in large part due to concerns over costs, but, from the city’s point of view, Mirror H would actually be cheaper, according to Michael Lambert, Somerville’s director of transportation and infrastructure.

Many have argued that a main-

State health care officials earlier this month issued a report revealing that health insurance providers are reaping more profits from students than from the average client.

A state-wide student group with Tufts roots, taking it upon itself to reform Massachusetts’ health care system, sees the report as evidence supporting its belief that students are not getting enough bang for their buck in medical care.

The Student Health Program

Baseline Report, released by the Massachusetts Division of Health Care Finance and Policy, found that in the three academic years between fall 2005 and spring 2008, the average medical expense ratio for all student health insurance plans — or the percentage of premiums going toward medical care — was 69 percent. This paled in comparison with an average medical expense ratio of 88 percent for private insurance in 2008.

This leaves a greater proportion of premiums on student health plans going toward administrative costs and company profits.

The Student Health Organizing Coalition (SHOC), which Aaron Marden (LA ’09) started at Tufts in 2008 to work on improving student health insurance in Massachusetts, is collaborating with legislators to reform student insurance programs in the wake of see INSURANCE, page 2

see STADIUM, page 2

New enforcement of prerequisites problematic for some students BY

KIRA HESSEKIEL

Contributing Writer

A new policy employed through Tufts’ Student Information Systems (SIS) to enforce prerequisites in biology, psychology and economics classes has raised a number of student concerns.

The system, implemented for the first time during this month’s registration cycle, allowed SIS to remove students from courses for which they do not meet the prerequisites.

All students removed from a class were notified by SIS via email so that they could find replacement courses.

The system is designed to help ensure that students are only registering for classes for which they are prepared, Dean of Undergraduate Education James Glaser said.

“It is not in a student’s best interests to take a class without the prerequisite,” he said.

In the past, professors would weed out students who were not qualified for high-level courses by looking at student transcripts, Glaser said. Since

the Federal Education Records Protection Act (FERPA) took away professors’ rights to look at the transcripts of their students two years ago, there has not been a viable method for screening students.

The university selected the three departments participating in the program because they have the most prerequisites, Glaser said.

Some students experienced difficulties with the pilot system during registration.

Sophomore Alice RosenthalErickson, an economics major, had trouble registering after SIS dropped her from a class even though she met the prerequisites with Advanced Placement (AP) credit.

“It was a big hassle,” she said. “I had to go down to Dowling [Hall] to get forms to add the class.”

Rosenthal-Erickson also took issue with the automated e-mail SIS sent her.

“The e-mail I received was automated, so I couldn’t even reply to it,” she said. “It told me to go talk to the professor, but it turned out the professor

doesn’t even start at Tufts until next semester. The next day I got an e-mail saying that it was a mistake.”

Economics Department Chair Enrico Spolaore believes that the pilot system will be beneficial. “It prevents students from registering [for classes] when they are not ready and it allows us to see problems in the system,” Spolaore said. Economics as a department “has a pretty clear sequence of classes you need to take,” he said, adding that he believed it was in students’ best interest to follow the outlined track.

In an e-mail sent to students on Nov. 6, SIS warned students to make sure that all AP, International Baccalaureate credit and other pre-matriculation credits were on their official transcripts.

Freshman Beau Brace said that he worked with his dean to ensure his AP credits met the prerequisites for the economics classes he wanted to take.

Inside this issue

see PREREQUISITES, page 2

ALEXANDRA LACAYO/TUFTS DAILY

MIT is planning to expand student enrollment by roughly 300 students.

MIT to increase undergraduate enrollment, denies financial motive BY

KATHRYN OLSON

Contributing Writer

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) intends to increase student enrollment by roughly 300 undergraduates with hopes of returning the size of its student body to what it was a decade ago.

Enrollment dropped when MIT began to require freshmen to live in on-campus dormitories roughly 10 years ago. Increasing the enrollment to its previous size, about 4,500 undergraduates, would allow MIT to educate more students, something that the school is eager to accomplish, according to Dean of Admissions Stuart Schmill.

“More students means more people studying, playing sports and music. The educational impact will be good,” Schmill told the Daily.

Administrators have considered an increase in enrollment for several years. They decided earlier this fall to go forward with plans, though they have yet to finalize the process.

There is “no current time table on this project,” Schmill said. “It will not take place this year or even next year.”

The push to increase enrollment will not only be directed at the incoming freshmen class, but will also include upperclassman transfer students. As the school searches see MIT, page 2

Today’s Sections

3P’s “No Exit” puts a physical spin on an intellectual play.

Suffering from a rash of injuries and illnesses, the field hockey team fell to Salisbury 1-0 in the NCAA semifinals.

see ARTS, page 5

see SPORTS, back page

News Features Arts & Living Comics

1 3 5 7

Editorial | Letters Op-Ed Classifieds Sports

8 9 10 Back

2

THE TUFTS DAILY

NEWS

Monday, November 23, 2009

Student insurance providers do not invest enough in care, SHOC says INSURANCE continued from page 1

the report’s findings.

“The report showed us that we could be getting a lot more coverage for what we’re paying,” said senior Elisabeth Rodman, SHOC organizer.

“We’re paying a lot more toward profits and administrative costs than the general public.”

Specifically, 20 percent of the premiums in student health insurance plans went to administrative expenses and 10 percent to profits, compared with 10 percent and 2 percent, respectively, in other insurance plans, according to this month’s baseline report.

Massachusetts established the Student Health Program (SHP) in 1989, when the state mandated that all students enrolled in institutes of higher education must have health insurance plans. The law additionally requires that all universities provide a health insurance program for students.

Massachusetts passed a health care reform law in 2006 that made health insurance obligatory for all state residents. The law included minimum coverage requirements for state insurance providers. Student policies within the SHP, however, were given an exemption from the minimum coverage standards.

“The state set out great regulations to protect residents to make sure they had good insurance plans, but categorically excluded students and young adults from these regulations,” said SHOC organizer Vivian Haime, a junior.

This month’s report is the first set of comprehensive data on the SHP that the state has gathered and released.

“Ratios cited in the report show that at least some of the carriers are devoting just more than half of the premium dollar to pay for medical expenses, and that’s woefully below the industry average,” Mark Rukavina, the executive director of the Access Project, a nonprofit that seeks to improve health care access, told the Daily.

This low level of medical expenditures can manifest itself in a lack of provisions for programs like preventive or mental health care, according to SHOC members.

“The report showed that there’s often a lack of services included,” Rodman said. “The major problem is that these limits in health insurance change the way that students seek health care.”

The report’s findings largely confirmed what people involved with the issue had suspected. “[The report’s] key finding is that students are paying more than they have to for really crappy insurance,”

Marden said. “This is not surprising; we knew this was happening. The insurance industry in the state is taking advantage of students.”

With the release of the report, SHOC is pushing for reform at the state level.

State Sen. Richard Moore (D-Uxbridge) filed a bill in January to start the reform process. According to Kimberly Haddad, Moore’s senior health policy advisor, the exact details of the reform are still under construction.

Brian St. Hilaire, the senior director of market relations for Aetna Student Health, one of the biggest student health insurance providers in the country and the carrier of Tufts’ insurance plan under the SHP, said that the data from the report was a useful resource, but cautioned against jumping to conclusions.

“It’s a good compendium of data and an excellent starting point as the commonwealth begins to analyze these programs on a more frequent basis, but it’s only data from a threeyear period,” St. Hilaire told the Daily, referring to the report.

St. Hilaire noted that there are significant differences between student health insurance plans and other private plans, and that these discrepancies can make it difficult to compare figures across the industry.

One of the differences he cited was the high degree of customization involved in formulating student health insurance plans in order to complement the health services available on campus. Aetna Student Health alone writes 200 different programs across the country, according to St. Hilaire.

Another factor is the higher costs involved in administering these plans on campuses. Additionally, the high turnover rate, with crops of students matriculating and graduating every year, makes it difficult for carriers to peg premiums at the right level, according to St. Hilaire.

SHOC organizers have been in correspondence with Sen. Moore’s office and have been invited to attend and testify at a hearing before the state legislature’s Joint Committee for Health Care on Dec. 3, according to Haime.

St. Hilaire indicated that no one had approached Aetna Student Health about the reforms, but that it supports reevaluating the SHP. “We fully support the state’s exploration of how best to serve its students,” St. Hilaire said. “I think institutions across Massachusetts are grappling with how to provide as robust an insurance product as we can at an affordable price so as not to increase students’ tuitions and fees significantly.”

Increase in enrollment not designed to battle drop in endowment MIT continued from page 1

for funds and space to build additional housing for the expanded student body, Schmill said MIT particularly hopes to attract transfers because the school is not responsible for housing them.

Although MIT has been considerably impacted by the poor economy and is reeling from a 17 percent drop in the school’s endowment, Schmill maintained that MIT is not expanding for financial purposes.

“The need for revenue is not the driver of this expansion,” he said.

In fact, Schmill said, expanding enrollment may cost the university more than it will bring in, because the expense of educating students exceeds tuition. “If you add more than 100 students, you also have to provide more housing and classes. The cost certainly goes up,” Schmill said.

Tufts Dean of Admissions and Enrollment Management Lee Coffin agreed that increasing the size of the student body is not a feasible way of upping revenue.

“As a rule, it’s a slippery slope to expand enrollment to combat finan-

cial troubles because additional students require additional resources.

Each campus has certain limits to its infrastructure, or capacity,” Coffin said in an e-mail.

Coffin said that Tufts’ stable enrollment over the years has not provided any reason for the university to consider expanding the size of its student body.

MIT administrators do not intend to let the expansion affect the school’s academics. MIT plans to add more sections to popular classes and ensure there is sufficient housing for the increased volume of students, Schmill said.

MIT freshman Sneha Kannan was unconcerned that the boost in students would compromise the school’s academic standards. She said that the admissions process for transfer students is already stringent.

“It sounds like a transfer program [is] already in place which is often more competitive than freshman admissions. I have faith in the admissions committee to accept students of a high caliber,” Kannan told the Daily.

COURTESY SIS ONLINE

Under a pilot program, SIS did not allow students who did not meet the prerequisites to register for certain courses.

Prerequisite enforcement can complicate AP credit transfer PREREQUISITES continued from page 1

“It makes it overly difficult for students who have a lot of AP credit because we have to go the extra lengths to make sure they’re on our transcript,” he said. “The system is unnecessarily penalizing us for doing well in high school.”

Not all students had difficulties with the system.

Economics major Chris Albano, a junior, did not find the system restrictive. “I don’t think [the new system] is so bad,” he said. “If you are going to register for a class that you don’t have the prerequisites [for], all this is going to do is make you talk to the professors. [It’s] not going to close the door.”

Spolaore acknowledged the potential administrative issues that could arise from the new system, including difficulties with transfer credits or outside experience that could not be entered into a computer system.

“That’s why the pilot program is

good; we can fix problems so that in the future that doesn’t happen,” he said.

Psychology Department Chair Robert Cook said the registrar’s offer to participate in the pilot program was in line with the department’s efforts to reorganize course offerings. “We have been trying to organize our curriculum to better serve the students over the last several years,” he said in an e-mail.

“This program seemed a natural step in this progression.”

To help prevent administrative problems, students can still go to the appropriate professor to plead their case. “If a faculty signs a student into a class with a paper form, then the student’s in the class,” Glaser said.

Phoebe Hanley, a freshman, saw the pilot program as the beginning of a fairer registration process. “Obviously [administrators] should trust the students, but there are going to be kids who cheat the system,” she said.

New England Revolution soccer team could move to Somerville STADIUM continued from page 1

tenance facility for subway trains in the center of Yard 8 would have made it difficult to develop the area.

“It’s good news,” Lambert told the Daily of the report’s recommendations. “We think Yard 8 would have serious negative ramifications” from economic, quality-of-life and access points of view.

Option L might serve as a good compromise location, Lambert said, especially since an old railroad facility already sits on that land. “Putting like uses next to each other is a very logical choice,” he said.

The EOT, which merged into the newly created Massachusetts Department of Transportation this month, is carrying out preliminary analyses of the possible maintenance-facility locations.

“We are working on it internally,” Kate Fichter, the Green Line extension project manager, told the Daily. “We are not yet ready to share information with the public.”

As for the stadium, Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone has not met with the Kraft Group in over two years, Lambert said. Lambert explained that the poor economic climate and uncertainty over the location of the maintenance facility have stunted plans.

Kraft Group spokesman Stacey James told the Daily that there was nothing new to report with respect to the possibility of building a soccer-specific stadium in Somerville.

But the city still believes a stadium would serve as a good centerpiece for a mixed-use development of the Inner Belt, including buildings, restaurants and offices. This is an approach the Krafts have indicated they would want

to take, according to Lambert. “We remain interested were it to become a possibility,” he said.

“If you have someone who’s not only going to put a stadium but also a mixed use development down there, that would go a long way to getting the large public-infrastructure investment you would need” from the state, local and federal governments, he added.

The stadium’s potential location in an urban area of Somerville, a city with large immigrant populations, could bring in soccer fans from those communities, as well as a younger fan base without easy access to Gillette Stadium.

“If you look across MLS, the teams that have had success are teams that are located in downtown areas and that have been able to successfully market to younger markets,” said Andrew Helms, a senior who calls himself an avid soccer fan.

A Washington, D.C. resident, Helms is a fan of D.C. United, Washington’s MLS team. Helms said the United has done a great job tapping into the local Hispanic population, an example he suggested the Revolution could draw on.

“In Somerville, you’ve got big soccerloving Brazilian and Portuguese populations,” he said. “They’re clearly soccer fans, but they’re not New England Revolution fans.”

Helms said he has never made it to a Revolution game, in part due to Gillette Stadium’s inaccessibility from Tufts.

“The Revs have done a horrendous job of having support in Boston,” he said. “There are tons of Tufts kids who are soccer fans, and I don’t think there are any who are Revolution fans.”

Features

3

tuftsdaily.com

JESSIE BORKAN | COLLEGE IS AS COLLEGE DOES

Thank God for Thanksgiving

I

TIEN TIEN/TUFTS DAILY

Say goodbye to kegs, pizza and bagels A diagnosis of Celiac disease in college changes eating and socializing

BY SARAH

KORNOES

Daily Editorial Board

Junior Eliza Walters didn’t waste much time deciding what she should and should not eat prior to this year. At the dining hall, Walters glided from station to station filling her plate with whatever looked appetizing that evening. At restaurants, she ordered the dish that most appealed to her, and during trips to the grocery store Walters filled her cart with items that were sure to satisfy her. This carefree approach to food selection came to an end in late August, however, when Walters was diagnosed with celiac disease, an inherited autoimmune disease in which the small intestine is damaged by eating gluten and other proteins found in wheat, barley and rye.

After learning that her body couldn’t absorb any of the nutrients in wheat prod-

ucts, Walters had to dramatically restructure the way she went about choosing her meals. She scrutinized food labels and ingredients, and going out to eat was only an option if the restaurant could ensure a gluten-free meal.

“I didn’t realize at first what a big change of lifestyle it required or how much that change would impact me,” Walters said.

“When I first made the switch to the gluten-free diet, it felt like I could eat almost nothing and it seemed impossible to stick to.”

Eliminating anything containing wheat from her diet turned out to be a more difficult challenge than Walters was prepared for. “I was really upset when I realized the huge change I’d have to make,” she said. “It seemed like all of my favorite foods were now off limits — pasta, bread, any baked good. It got pretty aggravating to keep dis-

covering each day more and more things that I couldn’t have — my favorite spinach and artichoke dip, anything with soy sauce, birthday cake.”

Walters is not alone in her battle against celiac disease. In a recent study released by the Mayo Clinic, researchers found that celiac disease is four and a half times more common today than it was 50 years ago and that as many as one in every 100 people are affected by it. Although awareness for the disease has undoubtedly increased in recent years, it frequently goes undiagnosed because of its wide array of symptoms which include everything from abdominal pain to headaches to mouth ulcers. Researchers are now urging increased awareness of the disease and are recommending that doctors test see CELIAC, page 4

School spirit evident even off the field

Mock Trial, Debate Soceity and Quiz Bowl compete in the classroom BY

ETHAN LANDY

Daily Editorial Board

There is plenty of athletic rivalry on the Hill with the winter sports season starting up and fall championships underway. But off the playing fields, there are a number of student groups that are also representing Tufts in competitions.

Three such groups are Tufts Mock Trial, the Debate Society and Tufts Quiz Bowl.

The clubs have all been competing in various tournaments throughout the semester. Like athletic teams, most of the groups hold practices throughout the week.

The Mock Trial team, for example, meets anywhere from two to seven days a week in order to prepare for a tournament. Each August, the American Mock Trial Association announces the highly complicated case that will serve as the basis for all tournaments throughout the year. This year’s case involves the murder of a founder of a major movie studio.

Because the documents for the cases are usually longer than 100 pages, team members often put in work outside standard meetings.

Tufts Mock Trial is comprised of four different teams that are each captained by two students. Junior Jon Lautin and senior Rebekah Sokol (who is also a photo editor for the Daily) are the co-presidents of Tufts Mock Trial and oversee the broader operations of the organization. According to Lautin, team members are encouraged

to pitch ideas as their teams formulate strategies and witnesses for tournaments.

“While the captains are in charge and have the final say, the practices are very collaborative and we always bounce ideas off each other,” Lautin said.

Members view mock trial as more than just an academic group. If Tufts teams do well in local tournaments, they have the opportunity to compete on the national level.

“Mock trial is a lot more like a sport than an academic group,” Lautin said.

“If we do well enough, we advance to the next tournament.”

Individual Tufst teams have come in third and fourth places at tournaments this year, and next semester the group will have the opportunity to compete in regionals and earn a trip to the national stage. Last year, three of the four Tufts teams made it to nationals.

“Everything this semester is like preseason,” Lautin said. “What happens this semester doesn’t matter too much in terms of if we go on because second semester we go to one tourney and the [top teams in] that move on.”

After months of planning on the part of Lautin, Sokol and others, the Mock Trial team recently hosted its second straight “Mumbo Jumbo” tournament on the weekend of Nov. 14 and 15.

According to Lautin, the event involved coordinating practicing attorneys to act as judges as well as organizing the

logistics of holding the tournament in Anderson Hall. Eleven schools and 18 teams competed for close to 12 hours over the two-day period.

The Debate Society also held its own tournament at Tufts this semester. Over Halloween weekend, 150 people from schools as far away as Stanford and the University of Chicago traveled to the Hill.

The Debate Society holds meetings twice a week, during which members practice debating issues and also brainstorm topics for events.

“The sort of practice we put in is pretty intensive,” said sophomore Daniel Rosenblum, the president of the Debate Society. “We meet two times a week and do a lot of practice rounds.”

The society competes in the parliamentary debate style, which features two sides: the Government, which proposes a topic, and the Opposition, which has to argue without knowing what the subject will be ahead of time. While teams can write cases on any topic they wish — ranging from academic subjects to movies or history — sometimes teams try to write cases for something that is essentially inarguable.

“There are teams that stretch the system — teams that run what is called tight cases or snug cases that are very difficult to argue against,” Rosenblum said.

“If you look at the percentages of rounds see TEAMS, page 4

n honor of Thanksgiving, I’d like to address the fundamental American value that is at the very core of this holiday: eating.

I mean, who are we kidding? Once you get past the genocidal history of the thing, Turkey Day is a pretty one-track celebration.

Sure, it’s a little about family and a little about thankfulness, but it is a lot about eating. Like, almost entirely.

Eating is something that has been a serious hobby of mine for as long as I can remember; I pretty much came out of the womb doing it, and even as I watch my second decade of life pass me by, I am still eating at least three times a day.

I start getting pumped for Thanksgiving around the beginning of October. Now that I don’t have a meal plan, there are no massfeeding situations available to me until that fateful day in late November. You must be asking yourself: Doesn’t this girl have a kitchen? Why yes, I do — I have an awesome kitchen, in fact, stocked with every appliance and apparatus one could ever imagine, thanks to my culinary-savvy roommates. Ironically, however, it is only by the grace of their cooking skills that I have managed to eat anything at all this semester outside of yogurt cups, Poptarts and Oreos.

Things used to be different. When I first moved off-campus, I was armed with a set of IKEA measuring cups and a stack of handwritten recipes, courtesy of my mother. I fed myself with a determined self-sufficiency, going to the grocery store weekly and doing grown-up things like actually touching raw meat and eating vegetables. Yuck! Then I went abroad and everything fell apart.

My kitchen in Australia consisted of a microwave with no number buttons, a shared mini-fridge and a sink. The apartment was “furnished” but did not include a garbage can or any pots or pans. And with restaurants like “Thai-riffic” and “Thai Space” on every corner and a 24-hour falafel place inside my building, my already-foundering cooking skills sank to the bottom, pulled by an anchor marked “Thai-tanic.”

I returned to the States assuming that cooking was like riding a bike, but things were more than a little shaky. My first week back on campus, I realized I had no idea how to cook salmon.

“Just broil it,” my dad instructed over the phone. Oh. Two minutes later, I called back.

“Dad? Where’s the broiler?”

My father helpfully explained that the broiler was that drawer under the oven where my Mom stored all the skillets. Relieved, I laid a few filets of raw salmon right on the bottom, turned the oven to “BROIL,” and waited. Ten minutes later I went to check on my culinary masterpieces. They looked exactly the same.

Kind of slimy. I touched them — cold.

My roommates came to the rescue, cutting me off in the middle of my story with shaking heads and pitying faces. Little did they know they would spend the rest of the semester watching me alternate between periods of sustaining myself on pizza bagels and orange juice and attempting to cook real food, which almost always ends up with me elbow deep in raw chicken breast, mangled vegetables and “Steak Magic” seasoning blend and them in the fetal position on our ample kitchen floor, crippled by hysterical laughter.

I don’t know what happened to me “down under” that gave me complete cooking amnesia, but the bottom line is that I can no longer feed myself. My skills are slowly returning and I hope that some day they will return to their former glory. In the meantime, I have to depend heavily on the handholding of my roommates, over-the-phone guidance from my parents (though I now take my dad’s advice with a grain of salt), and my favorite pre-made breakfast pastries. I will, however, always have Thanksgiving.

Jessie Borkan is a senior majoring in psychology. She can be reached at Jessie.

Borkan@tufts.edu.

THE TUFTS DAILY

4

Monday, November 23, 2009

FEATURES

Tournaments not just for sporty Jumbos TEAMS continued from page 3

won, the opposition has a statistical advantage even though they don’t know the topic going in,” he continued. “It is a lot easier to poke holes in something and say why it is problematic.”

With the possible reward of winning Team of the Year, Speaker of the Year or Novice of the Year as well as chances to go to Nationals, the team attempts to be as strategic as possible against tough competition.

“Obviously there is a lot of room to have fun, but truth be told, most of us are extremely competitive about this and we really go in to win,” Rosenblum said.

“Sometimes it is difficult because there is a lot of backstabbing strategy that goes into this. You sort of have to balance enjoyment of the activity because at the same time we want to be able to win.”

“I think the best teams are the ones that can run an open case and at the same time win those rounds because they are good

debaters,” he continued.

The Tufts Quiz Bowl team is another non-athletic Tufts team that competes in tournaments, though the group does not have a set roster. Anyone interested can attend meetings and compete in tournaments in teams of four.

According to Quiz Bowl president, sophomore Andrew Paseltiner, a consistent group of students attend tournaments. The group tends to select less prevalent, pop-culture tournaments because it is focused on winning individual tournaments rather than on succeeding on a national scale. More serious teams tend to compete in exclusively academic trivia.

“There are a couple of organizations that administer national tournaments that have qualifying tournaments throughout the year and culminate in a championship in the spring,” Paseltiner said. “We are trying to build up a solid foundation for the club before we go beyond individual tournaments.”

Though the team wants to win and do its best, members don’t set

COURTESY JOSHUA HALE

Tufts Mock Trial team practices every week, aiming to send members to national competitions. The group hosted its own tournament at Tufts on Nov. 14 and 15. lofty goals like some of their peers.

“We are really more about having fun,” Paseltiner said. “We meet every Wednesday and people come and relax for an hour with some trivia. Tournaments are more of a side note for most of us … The cur-

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rent members are more interested in having a good time.”

Eventually, the team would like to compete at higher levels, though this is easier said than done.

“One way that a lot of schools [become more competitive] is

they host a tournament, and that involves writing our own questions,” Paseltiner said. “It is difficult, but that is our goal and hopefully it will happen next year and get us some quiz bowl street cred.”

With diagnoses of celiac disease on the rise, more gluten free options offered CELIAC continued from page 3

for it more actively than they have in the past.

But with every cloud comes a silver lining. The apparent increase in cases of celiac disease has resulted in the creation of gluten-free product lines and a rise in the number of restaurants that offer specialized gluten-free menus. Traditional brands are even catching on to the trend: Betty Crocker now offers a line of gluten-free cake and brownie mixes and Annie’s provides a special gluten-free mac ‘n’ cheese.

Likewise, restaurants like P.F. Changs, Not Your Average Joes and Papa Razzi have even begun to offer gluten-free menus that provide an abundance of options for the celiac eater.

One establishment that provides particularly tasty treats for those who must stay gluten-free is Glutenus Minimus — a high-end bakery in Belmont, Mass. which sells cookies, cakes and muffins that are all safe for a celiac looking to indulge.

Glutenus Minimus’ owner Natalie McEachern came up with the idea for the business after dealing with her own frustrating diagnosis of celiac disease.

“When I was at school there really were very few options in terms of gluten-free foods that I could eat or I could buy at the grocery store, so my mom would bake things for me and experiment with all the gluten-free flours and try to make me all my favorite normal food,” she explained. “I realized that what we were able to make in our kitchen was much better than what you could buy in the grocery stores or the pre-packaged cookies and cupcakes and that sort of thing and I felt like there was definitely a demand for a more gourmet product on the market for celiacs to enjoy just like regular food.”

After testing her gluten-free goods at a few farmers markets around Boston, McEachern was overwhelmed with positive responses and decided to establish her own retail location for her products. She opened her bakery last October.

“It’s become sort of a destination place for people with celiac disease around the Boston area just because there really are no other gluten-free bakeries close to

Boston,” she said. “You get people in every day where the first words out of their mouths are ‘thank you for doing this.’”

McEachern recognizes the unique challenges that celiac disease creates for college students, as she herself was diagnosed when she was still in school.

“It can be really devastating in the beginning because it’s definitely socially isolating,” McEachern said. “In the college scene, you’re used to being able to go out to parties or a keg with your friends and all of a sudden you can’t drink the beer, you can’t go get late night pizza with your friends, you can’t go grab bagels in the morning. You just have to really think about it a lot more and plan ahead. It’s difficult in the beginning, but once you find your few favorite items that are good substitutes for the regular gluten filled ones, it gets a lot easier.”

Tufts Dining Services also does its part to make sure that students with a gluten allergy do not leave the dining halls hungry.

Tufts Nutrition and Marketing Specialist Julie Lampie points out that the ingredients of every food at the dining hall are carefully labeled and that gluten-free foods can easily be provided upon request.

“Anyone with celiac disease should make an appointment with me so I can highlight the accommodations for students in both Carmichael and Dewick,” Lampie said in an e-mail to The Daily.

“These accommodations include purchasing gluten-free breads, rolls, cookies, pasta, pizza crusts, cereals, etc. We even have a glutenfree toaster for students wishing not to have cross contamination when toasting bread. Since we label all of our foods, it is easy to read labels and avoid food containing gluten.”

The plethora of gluten-free options available has certainly helped Walters, who now considers herself very well adjusted to celiac style of eating.

“I’ve learned how to read labels grocery shopping, I’ve figured out what I can and can’t have and I’ve found some really good glutenfree options,” she said. “I think that most importantly, though, I’ve tried to focus on enjoying all of the delicious things that I still can have.”

Arts & Living

5

tuftsdaily.com

THEATER PREVIEW

Hellish housing situation leaves characters with ‘No Exit’ from each other

3P’s production of Sartre’s relies more on the physical than the intellectual BY

EMMA BUSHNELL

CHARLES LAUBACHER | EARS OPEN

Pop is a four-letter word

Daily Editorial Board

Tonight at 7 p.m. in the Balch Arena Theater, Pen, Paint and Pretzels presents the forced triple from Hell.

This semester’s workshop production “No Exit” by Jean Paul Sartre is a French existentialist play about a hell without the torture devices of modern horror films.

“What we have is the ultimate bad roommate situation,” explained director Meron Langsner, a doctoral candidate in the department of drama and dance. The play explores the trials of two women and one man who are locked together in a tolerably comfortable room with limited furniture, a puzzling piece of art and no exit for all eternity.

Instead of relying on external torture, this Hell depends on its inhabitants to mentally and emotionally torture themselves.

“The chemistry between the three people is so different that anything can happen,” said Langsner. “Stuck in the room, all they can do is emotionally flay each other. Anything one does will affect the other two.”

Langsner explained that he has want-

I

DANAI MACRIDI/TUFTSDAILY

Hell as portrayed in “No Exit” does not consist of the traditional fire and brimstone. ed to bring this play to the Tufts community for years. It is well suited to a college production, requiring few technical resources and a small cast.

In this performance, the only set pieces are black rehearsal cubes, a few hand see NO EXIT, page 6

ALBUM REVIEW

Wale successfully moves from the mixtape scene to the mainstream with album ‘Attention Deficit’ BY

CHARLES LAUBACHER Senior Staff Writer

Although “Attention Deficit” is his first major-label LP, Washington, D.C.’s Wale is no newcomer to the

Attention Defecit Wale Interscope Records/Allido Records

AMAZON.COM

‘Attention Deficit’ is Wale’s foray into mainstream hip-hop.

hip-hop world. Long a fixture on the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia (DMV ) hiphop and go-go scene with five strong mixtapes under his belt, Wale has

been hailed as one of hip hop’s rising stars.

Proving himself to be a veritable veteran, Wale delivers a well-rounded, sophisticated debut.

The first track, “Triumph,” sets the tone for the production of the record.

Noodling synths play against a heavy acoustic beat and horn samples. For the rest of the album, beats straddle the line between old-school and more recent production elements. On “Mirrors (feat. Bun B)” producer Mark Ronson lays down a characteristically stripped-down beat. A simple guitarbass line complements an aggressive, steady acoustic drum beat. As the see WALE, page 6

GALLERY REVIEW

’Without Out’ explores the distinction between art and architecture BY

ANNA MAJESKI

Daily Staff Writer

The boundaries between architecture and art are often unclear, and though architecture has a more prac-

Without Out At the MIT List Visual Arts Center Gallery, through January 3rd, 2010 20 Ames St Cambridge, MA 02142 (617) 253-4680 tical use, many buildings are akin to large-scale artwork. What actually distinguishes the two? Is it aesthetics? Is it function? Tobias Putrih explores the fine line between architecture and art in his current exhibit at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, “Without Out.” This dichotomous and mysterious title sets the tone for the rest of the exhibit. The first large gallery space LISTART.MIT.EDU

see PUTRIH, page 6

Tobias Putrih’s “Erosion” (2009).

have a confession to make: I have, on occasion, not infrequently, checked the Twitter.com page of one John C. Mayer.

Unhappy though I am with his most recent release, I remain a big John Mayer fan. Several years ago, I would never have admitted this. It started with the viewing of a few YouTube.com videos of his guitar solos and ended with a full-blown obsession. I think John is not only a brilliant guitar player but also a wise and gifted songwriter and musician.

I’m already getting too carried away. I could, and might someday, write a column on why John Mayer is a much more important musician than he gets credit for. But I should return to my original point. I check his Twitter not just in the hopes that he will post a picture of his latest guitar rig or an instructional video on beefing up your blues-licks, but because I happen to think he has a good attitude towards the music industry.

I can’t remember the exact quote, and Google.com and Twitter haven’t quite (thankfully) perfected their relationship, but it ran something like this: “[reference to enjoying a song by a pop star, perhaps Miley Cyrus]. There should be no guilt in pleasure.”

This phrase has stuck with me. I think he speaks to a problematic trend in our attitude toward music. It seems lately that “pop” is considered a dirty word.

For some of us, the idea that something belongs in the category of pop has become so objectionable that we must adopt an air of superior irony to admit that we appreciate it. By relegating pop to a guilty pleasure, we allow ourselves to enjoy it, while still maintaining our superiority complex. ` Let’s take a step back for a second. The term “pop” is derived (surprise!) from the word “popular” and was originally used to categorize something that was simply that: popular music. Of course now it has taken on new associations. Perhaps the objection to pop music seems mostly to derive from the idea that it is a lesser, more watered down version of some higher, more authentic genre of music.

Pop music is not simple music made by stupid people for stupid people. If it were as simple as people seem to think, anyone with a basic understanding of music theory and the English language could write a hit. It’s extremely well crafted to sound great and appeal to as many people as possible. So why do we resist it so much? Do we feel that by admitting we enjoy a pop record, we’re admitting that we’ve allowed ourselves to be taken in by the tricks of scheming record execs and producers?

I used to feel this way. I thought liking pop music was for sheep who would accept anything fed to them by the music industry. Then one happy day as I listened to the Backstreet Boys, I realized I’m not doing so because I enjoy the nostalgia and novelty, but because I enjoy the music.

I now try to give everything I hear a fair shot. I don’t think music has to represent anything more than the sounds it conveys. If someone worked hard to create a song that is infectious and sublime, I’ll gladly enjoy it. If you genuinely don’t like the sound of certain pop music, good for you, you deserve nothing but respect.

But if you truly enjoy it and simply refuse to admit it, you’re only fooling yourself.

You’re cutting yourself off from a world of guilt-free pleasure. As for me, I’ll continue to give the same heed to whatever my iTunes shuffle throws my way: Backstreet Boys to Bad Brains, Alicia Keys to the Allman Brothers. It’s all good.

Charles Laubacher is a sophomore who has not yet declared a major. He can be reached at Charles.Laubacher@Tufts.edu.

6

THE TUFTS DAILY

Monday, November 23, 2009

ARTS & LIVING

‘No Exit’ ditches glitz and glamour to highlight actors’ performances

Putrih provides no answers but encourages questioning

NO EXIT

PUTRIH

continued from page 5

continued from page 5

props and some choice sound and light cues. The de-emphasis on the objects surrounding the characters throws the full weight of the play onto the actors themselves.

Don’t expect to be confronted by some highfalutin, egg-headed drama, though. As a professional fight choreographer, Langsner decided to take the show in a different direction. “This is a very physical interpretation of an intellectual play,” Langsner said. “I see acting as being a very physical thing and I wanted to play to that.”

The script includes several knife fights as well as some surreal moments featuring song or dance. Paul Richards, a senior playing the role of Joseph Garcin, echoed Langsner’s ideas on the play’s interpretation. “This isn’t about French people in berets discussing intellectual ideas. We’re playing it for a modern audience, and specifically for college students,” he said.

In addition to the three characters locked in their chamber for eternity, there is another character known as “the bellhop” — he is only in the play for the first few minutes, but provides the audience with an important explanation for how the three characters find themselves stuck in this room together.

“The way I see it is I’m kind of the puppet master,” said Austin Bening, a freshman who plays the bellhop.

“Have you ever played the game ‘The Sims?’ These are my Sims — I put them together and see what happens.”

Though Joseph Garcin is the protagonist, he hardly has more stage time than his chamber-mates, Inez Serrano (freshman Maya Grodman) and Estelle Rigault (freshman Erica Goldstein). The three spend their time manipulating one another to achieve personal comfort — and to gain the upper hand in their lust triangle.

Several of the scuffles that erupt from this power struggle are shown through rep-

is darkened, drawing the eye immediately to the huge, white, Styrofoam form in the center of the grey-painted room. Lit by two spotlights, Styrofoam cubes make up something reminiscent of a multi-legged triumphal arch. This is Putrih’s creation, “Erosion”(2009).

Putrih is Slovenian but works out of Cambridge and Boston. Interested in utopian architecture and its degradation, he treads the line between architect and artist, focusing on the processes inherent in each.

Putrih created the piece “Erosion” with the help of MOS — a group of designers and architects spearheaded by Michael Meredith of Harvard University and Hillary Sample of Yale University. MOS writes software to produce plans for buildings that emphasize parametric design. The software, called “Processing,” was used to determine how many cubes could be removed from a starting block of material before the resulting structure would collapse.

“Erosion” is made up of Styrofoam blocks which have been glued together.

Putrih often does not glue together the pieces of his finished work, preferring the resulting building-like structures to always be on the brink of collapse.

With “Erosion,” he allows viewers to walk through and experience the piece like a more conventional building; gluing the piece was therefore necessary.

“Erosion” reaches almost up to the ceiling. From the outside, the surface looks smooth, except for the occasional missing cube, which results in a window-like recess that creates a play of light and dark along the front of the piece. On the inside, the surface forms a muqarnas-like pattern of staggered cubes. Six columns form the support, with a longitudinal space down the center not unlike a church nave. Large portions of the ceiling are gone, creating an uneven skylight in the roof of the structure. The structure is half-

DANAI MACRIDI/TUFTS DAILY

A forced triple? At least it’ll be in hell, not Lewis. resentative movement, true to Langsner’s vision of a physical production. But these moments are not jarring. In an already surreal setting, they fit right in.

If the intellectually interesting script and high energy aren’t tempting enough, the production also offers another draw — especially for those who can relate to the anxieties of an uncertain future. Right after being escorted into the chamber by the bellhop, before the arrival of his two chamber-mates, Richards is left on stage alone, contemplating the prospect of being in Hell for eternity. “I told him, you’re a graduating senior, on stage, alone,” said Langsner.

“What do you want to do?”

Tickets to this evening’s performance of “No Exit” are free.

art, half-architecture, challenging the viewers’ expectations. It seems to be on the brink of collapse, raising questions about how we construct art and buildings and their longevity.

A number of other complementary pieces explore similar themes. In a video composed by Purtih called “Overhang” (2009), a group of people construct a form out of Styrofoam blocks in the empty gallery space where the show now stands. The video is shown on four televisions, all of which present a different angle so the viewers’ perception of the shape is almost as 3D as “Erosion” itself. Workers stack long Styrofoam prisms on top of one another to create an organic, pyramid-like shape, exploring the point at which the architectural-like form will collapse.

The structure eventually does collapse; the picture fades in and out before the loop starts over again. This video is a representation of the potential for the collapse of “Erosion.”

The final portion of the show consists of a number of small models, also

by Putrih. The models are based on geometric toys designed by German educator Fredrick Froebel in the 19th century. Putrih bases his models on some of Froebel’s envisioned toys — or “Froebel gifts” — as part of a learning process focusing on geometric shapes and the different ways in which they combine. Some resemble building blocks, others K’NEX, but there is always a focus on addition and subtraction and the construction of architecturally-based art.

Putrih does not provide a clear answer regarding the difference between art and architecture, but his pieces suggest that the process of creation and the personal experience of the viewer may be the key to distinguishing one from the other. The definitions of art and architecture, as shown by “Without Out,” are based on the unique interpretations of the individuals who experience them.

Wale tackles serious subjects and succeeds in major-label debut WALE continued from page 5

track builds, the mix fattens up with funky wah-wah guitar, sparse horns and vocal harmonies. The end result sounds something like mutant ’60s soul and leaves plenty of room for his ample flow.

On the other end of the production spectrum is the synth-heavy Neptunesproduced track “Let it Loose (feat.

Pharrell).” Saturated and sample-less, with a straight ahead hook featuring a call-and-response between Pharell and a female vocalist, “Let it Loose” is the closest “Attention Deficit” gets to the club tracks that dominate the airwaves on today’s hip-hop stations; while the track doesn’t make the full trip to the dregs of Auto-Tune land, it is far from the most original or exciting track on the album.

The lyrical content of “Attention Deficit” is as varied as the production elements. On the first single from “Attention Deficit,” “Chillin (feat. Lady Gaga),” Walle leans toward some common themes of modern hip hop to create his most successful hit to date. The track centers on a sample of jock-jam “Na Na Hey Hey Goodbye” by Steam and an MIA-esque hook provided by Lady Gaga.

Wale’s rhymes about cars and sneakers would not appear out of place on any of Hot 97’s top 10, but his flow is at once smooth and aggressive, and his sharp wit and originality make “Chillin” a dynamic track.

Wale’s true strength comes out when he turns his sharp tongue to more serious matters. “Attention Deficit” hits its stride when Wale tackles difficult issues. In “90210,” an up-beat synth line establishes the mood of sunny but vapid L.A. life. Wale tells the tale of a girl who falls into the trap of celebrity obsession, cocaine and anorexia.

On “Shades (feat. Chrisette Michele),” a definite standout, Wale tackles the difficult issue of inter-racism. Opening

with the mighty line “chip on my shoulder, big enough to feed Cambodia,” Wale delivers a perfectly executed discourse both on his own struggles growing up darker than those around him and on the larger issues of societal perceptions of people of different shades.

Chrisette Michele’s ethereal vocals on the chorus help make this arguably the best track on the record.

Wale has revealed in interviews how strongly he laments the genrefixation of hip hop and how he avoids being forced into a compartment of mainstream or “conscious” hip hop.

Nonetheless, it can be difficult not to find tracks such like “Let it Loose” trite and unoriginal compared to his more explorative and serious efforts.

Despite sometimes conceding to contemporary hip-hop trends, Wale still delivers a very impressive debut effort.

The overall impression is of a confident but honest MC willing both to present a strong statement and to reveal a tender part of his character.

The final track on “Attention Deficit” is “Prescription.” It sits, along with “Shades,” among the best songs of the record.

Beginning with a simple drumbeat and building to a beautiful eruption of flutes, basses and beats, Wale structures a spectacle of rhyme around the theme of prescription drugs. At the end, the beat drops out and Wale kicks a loose verse, ending with the apparent boast, “I am hip hop past, present and future.” The line follows shout outs to some older influential MCs, making it more a declaration of purpose than the bravura common to most major MCs. His music is rich with the past, but he’s delivering some of the most relevant hip hop today. With a debut like “Attention Deficit,” he will certainly have his place in the future of hip hop, and what seems to separate Wale’s boast from that of most other MCs is the fact that it just might be true.

DODGERHIGHTOP.COM

Wale applies sharply-written verses to serious subjects.

Monday, November 23, 2009

DOONESBURY

THE TUFTS DAILY BY

GARRY TRUDEAU

NON SEQUITUR

BY

7

COMICS CROSSWORD

WILEY

FRIDAY’S SOLUTION

MARRIED TO THE SEA

www.marriedtothesea.com

SUDOKU Level: Skipping class tomorrow to go home early

LATE NIGHT AT THE DAILY Friday’s Solution

Naomi: “Just as long as Granddaddy doesn’t slaughter one of those feral pigs he’s got.”

Please recycle this Daily

THE TUFTS DAILY

8

THE TUFTS DAILY GIOVANNI J.B. RUSSONELLO Editor-in-Chief

EDITORIAL Naomi Bryant Managing Editors David Heck Alexandra Bogus Executive News Editor Nina Ford News Editors Tessa Gellerson Ben Gittleson Christy McCuaig Matt Repka Ellen Kan Assistant News Editors Harrison Jacobs Katherine Sawyer Saumya Vaishampayan

Robin Carol Executive Features Editor Marissa Carberry Features Editors Meredith Hassett Alison Lisnow Emily Maretsky Kerianne Okie Romy Oltuski Christina Pappas Charlotte Steinway Julia Zinberg Sarah Korones Assistant Features Editors Carter Rogers

Jessica Bal Executive Arts Editor Emma Bushnell Arts Editors Mitchell Geller Adam Kulewicz Catherine Scott Josh Zeidel Charissa Ng Assistant Arts Editors Benjamin Phelps

Michelle Hochberg Executive Op-Ed Editor Vittoria Elliott Editorialists Nina Grossman Opinion Editors Andrew Rohrberger Molly Rubin Erin Marshall Editorial Cartoonists Alex Miller

Monday, November 23, 2009

EDITORIAL | LETTERS

EDITORIAL

Crafting a new neighborhood There are plenty of soccer fans on campus, but very few follow the New England Revolution. The Revolution has been respectably successful. The team won the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup in 2007 and currently sits in third place in Major League Soccer’s Eastern Conference. But the team shares Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass. with the New England Patriots. Few Bostonians want to venture over 20 miles out of the city to watch a soccer game, especially considering the tepid interest in Major League Soccer in this country. And this is a fact that Robert Kraft (A ’53), the Revolution’s owner, recognizes. It is one of the main reasons behind his proposal to construct a soccer-specific stadium in Somerville’s Inner Belt district. Not only is the urban location more practical for Boston residents, but Kraft sees great potential for a fan base in the surrounding area, which is full of immigrants from countries such as Brazil and Italy that are known to be more fanatical about the sport than the United States.

This idea is still in its planning phase, and logistics concerning a prospective maintenance facility for a Green Line T stop set to be built nearby will have to be sorted out. No formal cost estimate

has been released, but, for example, a soccer stadium recently constructed in Utah cost around $110 million.

The new stadium has a lot in its favor, especially considering the Massachusetts Department of Transportation’s planned extension of the Green Line into Somerville. The new stadium would bring restaurants and retail to an area currently dominated by warehouses and light manufacturing and distribution facilities; this would help transform the Inner Belt, which is just one mile from Downtown Boston, into the “urban village” that Somerville hopes to work with developers to create there, according to the city’s Web site. The idea, according to the Somerville site, is to develop the Inner Belt into a “pedestrian oriented residential, office and retail” neighborhood. The stadium could provide a venue for large-scale concerts and other events. There is also great potential to create a source for significant new tax revenue.

To succeed, the project would need to be carefully evaluated and planned, with close interaction between the local government and the Kraft Group.

The Revolution would need a great deal of help in the public relations field, as it remains a relatively low-

profile enterprise. More importantly, the influx of capital that a new major sports venue would bring would be accompanied by more businesses and, ultimately, more housing. Somerville in the past 10-plus years has had the good and bad fortune of seeing housing prices skyrocket after the repeal of rent control in 1994. Many middleclass residents now struggle to afford housing in the city. The development of this unexploited area provides an opportunity to create less expensive housing in a blossoming urban center.

But the success of the stadium project is imperative because if it fails, Somerville is left with a full, inutile lot that does not produce significant tax revenue and has squandered its potential for development.

The Inner Belt is clearly an opportunity-rich district: the Green Line is on its way there, and telecommunication and biotech businesses are eyeing it because of its proximity to both Boston and Cambridge. Whatever decisions the Kraft Group, the city and the Department of Transportation make, it is clear that a new soccer-specific stadium in Somerville could do a great deal of good for an underdeveloped district and an underrepresented sport in New England.

interceptor missile against an incoming intercontinental ballistic missile that included the kind of inexpensive and realistic countermeasures that an attacker would be likely to employ. At $5 billion to $10 billion per year, the United States has spent roughly $200 billion on this non-functional system, without ever testing it realistically.

The last Bush administration actually scrapped the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, one that had many benefits for capping proliferation, to pursue this deceptive missile defense. It subsequently pressured the Polish and the Czech governments to accept U.S. emplacement of this unworkable system, in the face of their own public opposition. To claim that such a scheme would protect the United States or Europe from hypothetical Iranian long-range missiles is laugh-

able. Neither the anti-missile defense nor the Iranian threat exists. Even if such a threat develops in the distant future, and an actual defense system comes into existence, the placement of that system in those countries would be ineffective. It is well known to the Europeans and the Russians that this so-called “defensive system” is actually an offensive threat to the Russians.

It is naive, if not deceptive, to imply that nuclear security lies in deploying such a system. What are needed for a nuclear-secure world are sensible negotiations toward limits to proliferation and a lowering of the nuclear threat by arms reductions and enforcement of the non-proliferation treaty.

LOUIE ZONG

Ethan Landy Executive Sports Editor Sapna Bansil Sports Editors Evan Cooper Philip Dear Jeremy Greenhouse Alex Prewitt Michael Spera Alex Lach Assistant Sports Editors Daniel Rathman

Annie Wermiel Executive Photo Editor James Choca Photo Editors Aalok Kanani Danai Macridi Andrew Morgenthaler Josh Berlinger Assistant Photo Editors Kristen Collins Alex Dennett Emily Eisenberg Rebekah Sokol Tien Tien

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PRODUCTION Karen Blevins

Production Director Steven Smith Executive Layout Editor

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Executive Business Director

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LETTER TO THE EDITOR Dear Editor, In an op-ed printed on Nov.19, Emily Rector defends the missile defense system that the Bush administration had advocated for Poland and the Czech Republic, but that the Obama administration is scaling back. Unfortunately, her defense and the film produced for the right-wing Heritage Foundation that she advertised are riddled with falsehoods.

To begin with, she says, “In U.S. missile defense testing history, every test but one was a complete success (and in the exception the rate of success was 90 percent).” That is completely untrue. Missile defense testing began in the 1980s and was riddled with failures over its long, wasteful and unfortunate history. There has never been a successful test of an

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Monday, November 23, 2009

9

OP-ED

Urban legends and mass misconceptions BY

GREG BEACH

Hey folks. We’re almost there! I am super excited for Thanksgiving, a holiday I have often considered my favorite. Most likely, I will write a post on my blog next week about the Native Americans and the United States of Genocide and all that fun stuff. Right now, though, I would like to touch upon the topic of urban legends.

The more accurate subject name is mass misconceptions, but I think urban legends sounds cooler, don’t you?

Mmm, Thanksgiving. Memories of football and Charlie Brown and drunk relatives and, of course, turkey. After consuming a large quantity of turkey, it is natural to feel drowsy and ready for some nice shuteye. It has been said that the presence of tryptophan, an essential amino acid, in turkey accounts for this post-gorging siesta. This is actually false, as turkeys contain levels of tryptophan comparable to most other meats. Though L-tryptophan was used as a sleeping aid prior to its Food and Drug Administration recall from the market in 1990, its sleepinducing effects can be produced only either when the stomach is empty of protein or there is a significant quantity of the amino acid. The sleepy syndrome post-Thanksgiving dinner is most likely caused by drinking alcohol and eating large quantities of food. I do have to applaud the American public for buying into a scientific urban legend. It’s much more sophisticated than falling for another story about a midget clown in a closet. See? Now, you have a fun fact to tell the folks when they ask you what you learned in school.

I’m sure you’ve heard it said that black men are well-endowed. Well, according to a 2007 study compiling results from more than 50 international research projects about penis size, this just ain’t true.

The study, compiled by two British scientists, uses data from as far back as 1942 and is probably the most comprehensive penis size study known to man. If they say that we should stop associating race with penis size, well, I’d say we should believe them. It’ll do the world some good, as men can get quite touchy about their members. The study reports that 85 percent of women are satisfied with their partner’s penis size… but only 55 percent of men are satisfied with their own. Oh no! Come now, men. We’re better than this. Have confidence in your Johnsons!

Animals are the coolest. Seriously, dude.

As a kid raised on “Kratts’ Creatures” and “Bill Nye the Science Guy,” I often

DESIGN BY EMILY COHANE-MANN

bring up random zoological facts, such as the ocelot is a jungle cat from South America, just for fun. There are occasionally facts circulating animal-discussion circles that are not entirely accurate. An example of this is the widespread belief that granddaddy longlegs have extremely toxic venom yet human skin is pervious to this poison because of its thickness.

Well, your epidermis ain’t all that thick.

If the insect couldn’t penetrate human skin, it would be pretty pathetic. On what

would the daddy longlegs use this venom?

What kind of prey do you think they are hunting? If they are simply going after the small insects, dead animals or plant matter of which their diet consists, why would they need this powerful venom? It doesn’t make sense. This myth has been debunked by both the scientific community and “Mythbusters.” Case closed.

Now, I’ve gotten some weird looks in Dewick-MacPhie after eating stuff off of the floor. Sure, it probably isn’t the most

ideal condition I want my food in, but if I drop something and it’s clear the food isn’t covered in loads of dirt and chunks of crap, I don’t waste it. You shouldn’t either, according to a 2007 study conducted

by Connecticut College undergraduates.

The students placed apple slices (wet) and Skittles (dry) on the floor of a Conn.

College dining hall. It was found that the apple slices showed no signs of bacteria for at least the first 30 seconds of exposure to the floor; it took minutes for the Skittles to become infected. So, next time you hear someone plead the five second rule, let them know that there’s no rush.

Just let the food chill and soak in all the floor-y goodness.

Now onto the most ridiculous myth of them all: Wall Street is not an indicator of economic prosperity or health. Stock prices are rising because investors now have increased confidence in the system and in their own well-being. The rich are spending again, and why shouldn’t they be? Those who were responsible for the financial crisis continue to play their games with our money. Some could argue that increased confidence in the system is better than a complete lack of faith in the system. Yes, that’s true. As frustrating as the bailout was, it served its purpose of saving the globe from sinking into the Dark Ages again. However, one must remember that the Dow Jones Industrial Average was at an all-time high right before this recession began. I would argue that this financial crisis was precisely caused by America’s overconfidence in its clearly unsustainable economy. I can predict, with near certainty, that there will be another market crash in the near future. In October, 200,000 Americans lost their jobs. Sure, this is better than the nearly 700,000 we lost in February, but our economy is still slowly bleeding to death. The banks and the auto industry are saved. Hooray! Sucks to be one of those millions of Americans losing their jobs, their homes and their lives as a result of this financial collapse... but at least the guys who caused this crisis will be safe. Our economic foundations are in ruins, so why should we trust that these stocks are worth as much as speculators say they are?

Whoa, total downer, man.

Hey, that’s reality for ya.

Greg Beach is a junior majoring in political science. He posts regularly to his blog “Things That Are Cool” hosted by the Tufts Roundtable.

FROM THE PUBLIC EDITOR

A window into the newsroom: part one BY

DUNCAN PICKARD

Campus news outlets produce authoritative knowledge. They publish regularly, have an editing process and employ dozens of student journalists. Most readers believe they can learn and confirm facts by reading campus news.

But what is the process that creates authoritative knowledge? How do campus publications choose, report and edit news events?

I critiqued The Quad in my Nov. 2 op-ed, calling for a more deliberate editing process for news blogs.

This week, I interviewed Tufts Daily Editor-in-Chief Giovanni Russonello and Daniel Rosen, his counterpart at the Observer, about the editing process for written publications. (Michael Hawley, editor-in-chief of the Primary Source, did not respond to my e-mail.) I will outline the Observer’s process next week. I hope this series of op-ed will shed light on what is often considered a black box of authoritative knowledge.

The Daily is divided into several sections that appear in print, including News, Features, Arts, Op-Ed and Sports. Above this group is the managing board: two managing editors and the editor-in-chief. Each section has an executive editor who leads the process of choosing story ideas, assigning them to writers and editing the finished articles. The process varies slightly for each section, but I will focus on News.

Russonello said the News department has a number of editors and assistant editors, usually around 10 total.

Each has one or two beats, or topics they follow closely, including the police department, student government,

the diversity office and other higher educational institutions, to name a few.

The whole department meets on Sunday nights to discuss ideas from each beat and other events happening on campus. On Monday, the executive editor sends an e-mail assigning the stories for the week; the section has a plan for news coverage for each day of the week on Monday, although one to three articles each day could be different from that plan to reflect newsworthy stories that arise midweek. The executive editor leads this process, with help and advice from the managing board.

Articles for News come in when they have been finished, hopefully by noon the day before they are published but often later. The article then goes through six reads before it goes to print. An assistant editor makes grammatical changes and checks basic facts, followed by a full editor who makes similar changes and adjusts the article to the Daily’s style. Then the executive editor reads all the articles in his or her section, followed by a member of the managing board.

The layout team assembles the section around 10 or 11 p.m. A copy editor reads the entire section, and a managing board member enters the changes. A second, more senior, copy editor looks at the final pages before the whole issue is sent to the printer, usually around 2 a.m.

Russonello said this process has not changed significantly since he started working for the Daily in fall 2006, except for one improvement he implemented as executive news editor in spring 2008. He noticed that assistant editors would make major changes to articles

early in the process, changes that more senior editors would edit further. In effect, this would present a new article at each stage of the editing process, and so he limited assistant editors’ ability to make major changes to articles.

Russonello said the fact-checking process is rigorous. When he edits, he highlights and confirms every fact, either with a Tufts Web site or another publication, but never Wikipedia.com. In many cases, editors will contact sources quoted in articles to confirm facts.

The detailed editing process at the Daily impresses me. Getting more people involved in the process is challenging, but the Daily handles it well in a way that trains future editors and benefits from everyone’s contributions. It is a very professional process.

I was, however, surprised to hear the Daily considers another publication to be an appropriate source for fact checking. Without knowing the other publication’s process, how does the Daily know the report is accurate? What if two publications confirm reports by citing each other in a circular reference? If there is no other way to confirm a fact, a conventional way of citing it is to cite the news source it came from. I challenge the Daily to confirm facts as close to the source as possible.

Duncan Pickard is a senior majoring in history. He is the Public Editor of the Media Advocacy Board and his opinions are strictly his own. He can be reached at tuftspubliceditor@gmail.com or through his blog at www. tuftsroundtable.org/publiceditor.

OP-ED POLICY The Op-Ed section of the Tufts Daily, an open forum for campus editorial commentary, is printed Monday through Thursday. Op-Ed welcomes submissions from all members of the Tufts community. Opinion articles on campus, national and international issues should be 600 to 1,200 words in length. All material is subject to editorial discretion, and is not guaranteed to appear in The Tufts Daily. All material should be submitted by no later than 1 p.m. on the day prior to the desired day of publication. Material must be submitted via e-mail (oped@tuftsdaily.com) attached in .doc or .docx format. Questions and concerns should be directed to the Op-Ed editors. The opinions expressed in the Op-Ed section do not necessarily represent the opinions of the Tufts Daily itself.

THE TUFTS DAILY

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Final Four shutout ends another historic season for Jumbos FIELD HOCKEY continued from page 12

Tufts: junior and leading scorer Tamara Brown was severely hampered by a right hamstring injury she suffered on Nov. 14, while two senior starters — forward Michelle Kelly and defender Emma Kozumbo — were slowed by bouts of swine flu.

“My hamstring was definitely bothering me,” Brown said. “I spent all week trying to be in the best form that I could be in. There was never a question that I was going to play, but obviously, it didn’t feel perfect. It definitely affected my game, but I was just trying to do the best I could for the team.”

All in all, it was a near-impossible situation for the Jumbos to handle, particularly on college field hockey’s biggest stage against a powerhouse Sea Gulls team that ranked among the topfive offensive and defensive squads in the nation.

“We’re just really proud of how our girls played,” Ryder said. “They had a lot going against them this weekend, and they came out and just gave it their all and left everything on the field. We couldn’t be prouder of them.”

Despite everything working against them, the Jumbos were still very much in the game throughout; the two teams that posted the lowest goals-against average in the nation this season were, perhaps predictably, mired in a lowscoring, defensive struggle.

After playing to a scoreless first half, Salisbury broke through on a well-executed penalty corner 10:18 into the

STEVEN SMITH/TUFTS DAILY

Senior co-captain Amanda Russo and the Jumbos fell in their quest for a national title, losing Saturday 1-0 to eventual National Champion Salisbury in the NCAA semifinals in South Hadley, Mass. second. Sophomore forward Alison Bloodsworth tipped in a blast by classmate Tara McGovern for the game’s lone tally.

The Sea Gulls’ defense, second only to the Jumbos in goals-against average this year, took care of the rest.

Especially stifling in its defensive circle, Salisbury limited Tufts to just one second-half penalty corner opportunity and a season-low 10 shots.

“I always like games with as few shots as possible; that’s all I could ask for,” Salisbury sophomore goalkeeper

Anna Cooke said. “My defense definitely stepped up in the game and helped me get the shutout.”

The Jumbos had some good chances to get on the board in the first half, but their corner unit, which produced two goals in last weekend’s Elite Eight win over Skidmore, was 0-for-5 in the period. Tufts’ inability to capitalize on its numbers-up situations was one reason that it was shut out for the first time since the 2008 NESCAC championship game, a 1-0 loss to Bowdoin. “[The Sea Gulls] were really good, but

we had a lot of opportunities,” Ryder said. “I think maybe in a different game, at a different point in the season, it could have been a different outcome.”

“I think their defense is very strong — one of the strongest we’ve faced all season — but I don’t think it was impenetrable,” Brown added.

The loss to Salisbury — the team that went on to beat previously undefeated and national No. 1 Messiah in yesterday’s national title game — ended the Jumbos’ bid to become the first team in school history to win an NCAA team national championship. Tufts was appearing in the Final Four for the second consecutive season, having dropped a double-overtime heartbreaker to Bowdoin 3-2 in last year’s national title game.

But despite their disappointment at once again narrowly missing out on an NCAA crown, the Jumbos are cognizant of how far their program has come in a relatively short period of time. This year’s seniors entered the program off an 8-7 2005 season and now leave it following back-to-back berths in the Final Four.

“I think the program has improved tremendously,” senior co-captain Amanda Russo said. “It’s been great that I’ve been able to be a part of that, and I look forward to watching it improve even more in the future.”

“As a freshman coming in, I never thought about the NCAAs,” Scholtes added. “I’m really happy to be leaving with the team where it is. I think they’ll be back here next year and show Div. III that Tufts’ program is here to stay.”

Despite Elite Eight loss, Tufts’ future still bright VOLLEYBALL continued from page 12

JAMES CHOCA/TUFTS DAILY

Senior forward Julia Baily notched back-to-back double-doubles with a total of 41 points and 20 rebounds in two games over the weekend.

Bailey’s two double-doubles lead Jumbos to 1-1 record WOMEN’S BASKETBALL continued from page 12

to fight back into contention.

Tufts continued to play well, stretching the lead to as much as 22 points while never allowing it to fall under 14 until the waning minutes of the game.

An 8-1 run by the Lady Cardinals in the final two minutes brought the lead to a reasonable eight points, but the final score was not indicative of the dominance the Jumbos showed throughout.

Tufts shot 45 percent from the field, while holding York to 36.8 percent. Junior guard Lindsay Weiner and Kornegay each tallied seven points off the bench for Tufts.

But for all the efforts that the Jumbos’ reserves put together, Bailey stole the show. The five-foot-11 forward finished the game with 20 points and 10 rebounds, her second double-double in as many days.

“We know that she is going to be a huge contributor for us, and we need her to play like that,” Hart said. “It was

awesome for her to start off like that. She’s our most prominent presence down low, and we need teams to focus on her.”

For York, junior guard Maimouna Dabo finished with 23 points and seven rebounds.

However, her individual effort was not enough to lift the Lady Cardinals in the face of such a well-rounded performance from the Jumbos, who had five players finish with at least seven points.

The Jumbos will play another contest on the road this Tuesday at Endicott before taking a five-day break for Thanksgiving. With a young and relatively inexperienced roster, Tufts will undoubtedly look at its first two contests as a point of learning.

“It was tough to lose that first game,” said Hart, who was named to the All-Tournament team after averaging 23 points on the weekend. “But I think we did learn a lot from it. We have a brand new team, a lot of new faces, and I think the weekend was good for us.”

the match, thanks to two uncharacteristic attack errors by Hope’s starhitter sophomore Jacie Fiedler. The 60-point set was the longest of any of the matches played that day.

“During that third set we realized that we could compete with Hope,” senior co-captain Dena Feiger said.

“Our confidence increased a lot.

We wanted to prove that we can be there, and we knew we could definitely take a set off of them.”

“That 31-29 game was just [indicative of the] refuse-to-lose attitude that we’ve had all year, just like when we came back from behind to beat Amherst,” Thompson added, referring to her team’s comeback victory over Amherst in the NESCAC semifinals.

Tufts kept Hope within striking distance for much of the fourth frame and never fell behind by more than three points early on in the match.

But up 15-13, the Flying Dutch finally overpowered the Jumbos, rattling off eight of the next 10 points to build an insurmountable 23-15 lead and eventually claiming the set 25-18 and the match 3-1. Though the Jumbos fought off the first of three Flying Dutch match points, Fiedler notched her 18th kill to finally end the fairy tale.

“Hope played a really solid game — they passed very, very well and they served us aggressively,” Thompson said. “With teams like that you need to be aggressive and try to knock them out of their offense. They were really consistent and we couldn’t do the same on our side. We made a few too many unforced errors. You just can’t give those teams those points.”

The Jumbos’ attack committed 23 errors on the day and hit for just a .195 percentage — well below their season average of .220. But with 22 kills on the match — 10 of them in the grueling third set — and a cool .298 hitting percentage, Joyce-Mendive was no less effective than usual, leading both teams in

JAMES CHOCA/TUFTS DAILY

Though the Jumbos fell in their NCAA quarterfinals match, junior Dawson Joyce-Mendive dominated offensively, leading both teams with 22 kills. kills on the match. Though junior Caitlin Updike chipped in with 12 kills of her own and Feiger dished out 45 assists, their efforts simply weren’t enough to hold off the Flying Dutch.

Led by Fiedler’s 18 kills against just three errors, Hope hit at a .245 clip, with three separate players racking up double-digit kills.

Despite senior co-captain Brogie Helgeson’s gutsy performance with a team-leading 15 digs — as well as another 12 from Feiger — the offensive onslaught of the Flying Dutch was too much in the end.

“Dena and Brogie led this team mentally and physically on and off the court and they’re going to be a huge loss,” said Thompson of her seniors. “It’s just huge to have such leadership in a year when you have so much talent.”

Though Tufts was hoping to script a different ending to its season, the team is proud of its efforts.

“It takes a lot of focus to continue to play well for three and half months,” Thompson said. “You have to look at the whole body of work and it’s just so incredible —

from being ranked No. 1 in New England for eight weeks to winning two tournaments like MIT and the Hall of Fame.”

In addition to compiling a 31-5 record — the most wins in program history — the Jumbos earned the right to host both the NESCAC and NCAA Regional tournaments for the second year in a row. Moreover, they became the first New England team to claim a set in the NCAA quarterfinals since 2004.

“I think that playing Hope and the teams that make it to the Elite Eight made us realize that we can compete on that level and was a huge confidence booster,” Feiger said. “It was nothing we couldn’t handle for next year, and I think we have the confidence now to take that next step.”

“It’s amazing to see the consistency in this program over the last four years and it’s great to see the expectations of the program even higher,” Thompson added. “This team is raising the bar even higher than it’s even been before. We are champions, and we do belong in championship games.”

Monday, November 23, 2009

THE TUFTS DAILY

MEN’S BASKETBALL

Late rallies fall short as Jumbos start year 0-2 BY

CLAIRE KEMP

Daily Staff Writer

Last season, the men’s basketball team had a down year, compiling a disappointing 9-15 overall record and finishing last in the NESCAC. As they opened this year’s play over the weekend, the Jumbos again suffered some disappointment, leaving the Chuck Resler Classic Tournament in Rochester, New York without a victory despite two solid efforts.

Tufts fell just short against the State University of New York at Brockport Golden Eagles 60-55 on Friday and followed with a 67-61 loss to the University of Rochester Yellow Jackets on Saturday night. Although the Jumbos showcased strong defense — something that they rarely did last season — poor shooting dug the team into early holes that it could not climb out of.

“We’ve played decent-to-good defense all weekend, only giving up 60 and 67, and that was a goal we accomplished,” senior tri-captain Jon Pierce said. “We don’t want to be satisfied saying we played good defense all game, though. We want to be able to put 40 minutes of good basketball together and get the win.”

On Saturday, the game was even at 51-51 with 4:31 left following a layup and free throw from senior forward Dave Beyel. But Rochester junior guard Mike Labanowski hit a three-pointer to put the Yellow Jackets ahead for the remainder of play. Senior guard Colin Cubit and freshman Jon DiBartolomeo made four free throws apiece for Rochester in the last 53 seconds to wrap up the win.

Beyel led the way for Tufts and finished with 24 points and seven rebounds on the day, upping his numbers of nine and six from the previous night. The squad also got a boost from Pierce, who added 16 and seven, respectively. The Jumbos shook off a coldshooting first half, during which they shot just 27 percent from the field, to hit 14-of-27 in the second for a solid 52 percent.

“Personally, my improvement going into Saturday’s game was just the offense clicking better and not shooting well on Friday,” Beyel said. “The offense just worked better at times, and it wasn’t really that we didn’t play as well as the other team, but we couldn’t play well for the entire game. We need 40 minutes and not just 20 or 30.”

The first half of Friday’s game was also shaky for the Jumbos, who quickly found themselves in a 10-2 hole at the start.

However, a nine-point run gave Tufts a slim 11-10 lead after a basket from Beyel over 11 minutes into the game. Brockport answered with a 13-2 stretch of their own, including a three-pointer from senior guard Josh Zenkel to give the Golden Eagles a 23-13 margin five minutes before halftime.

“We went into the locker room at halftime and came out a little more focused and with a clearer game plan of what we wanted to do,” Pierce said. “It showed in the second half when we were able to execute.”

continued from page 12

going back and looking at the course and how competitive it was, that put things back into perspective. I would’ve had to have run a perfect race to reach those.

“Based on conditions, it was a race to whoever got to the mile mark first,” she continued. “I started out around 35th, and the course made it pretty tough to move up, so I was about in the same place the entire time. It came down to how well you got out and what your position was at the mile, and I had to work hard to move up a few spots.”

With his career-best finish at nationals, Faller becomes a three-time All American, the first in Tufts history, as he had previously finished 18th at NCAAs as a sophomore and last year placed 35th.

“Nationals is all about how you perform under pressure,” he said. “There is so much pressure to do well. It is just a very highstakes race, and a lot of people can’t handle it, so a lot of the guys fold under the pressure. I’ve had high pressure races where I don’t do well, but this weekend I think I was ready for the challenge mentally and that

DAVID HECK | THE SAUCE

Above the Law?

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ANDREW MORGENTHALER/TUFTS DAILY

Senior forward Dave Beyel put up a team-leading 24 points against Rochester on Saturday, but Tufts’ efforts fell short in a 67-61 loss.

With just under 11 minutes to play, the Golden Eagles’ 11-point lead evaporated, as a 15-2 run from the Jumbos put Tufts up 51-49 with 5:05 remaining in the game. Zenkel responded with a rallykilling three-pointer, and from there, the Jumbos went cold. Tufts did not make a single field goal in the final five minutes of play while committing multiple turnovers and missing two free throws.

“I think it just took us a little while to get comfortable in the first two games of the year,” Pierce said. “We have been focusing a lot on defense in practice and were just a little out of sync on offense. We didn’t come out executing like we should.”

Pierce was the game’s high scorer and rebounder with 21 points and was named to the All-Tournament team. Brockport’s senior guard Jermaine Johnson, the eventual tournament MVP, had 20 points to lead the Golden Eagles’ offense.

“Brockport really pressured us outside and didn’t let us into the spots that we wanted to be in,” Pierce explained. “We struggled with that.”

Execution was definitively better in the second half, with Tufts’ shooting percentage rising from 28.6 percent in the first half to 40 percent. The Jumbos did struggle with free throw shooting in the second half, though, and their five missed shots in 14 attempts may have cost them the game.

Although the Jumbos are happy with the defense they played all weekend, they feel a sense of urgency heading into their game at home tomorrow against the 2-0 Thomas College Terriers. If Tufts wants to earn its first win of the season, it will have to display more consistency than it did over the season’s opening weekend.

“As for the tournament on the whole, I think we showed a lot of good things that we can do offensively and defensively,” Beyel said. “And once we start playing our best offense, we’re going to be beating teams. We know how we need to play to win games, we know that we can play like that, and, as a player, it’s exciting to be starting to play at home now that we’re starting to click.”

Faller, Wilfert improve on last year’s finish at nationals CROSS COUNTRY

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SPORTS

was the big difference for me.”

Ironically, his 35th-place finish in 24:59:89 last year was the only time Faller broke the 25 minute milestone at NCAAs, and his 25:40 finish was his worst time in his three NCAA appearances. But it was Faller’s ability to handle the adverse conditions that allowed him to run the best race by a Jumbo at Nationals since Rod Hemingway finished sixth in 1997.

“I was happy to redeem myself after last year’s performance and I can’t think of a better meet to have as my last cross country meet,” Faller said. “It definitely reflects the hard work that I’ve put in this year, which I don’t think was really reflected in some of my earlier meets, and I was just proud to really compete at the level I’ve been wanting to compete at.”

Last year, Wilfert finished 48th at Nationals with a time of 22:01. Her performance gives the women’s cross country team its second straight AllAmerican, following then-sophomore Stephanie McNamara last year. Though the course challenged the competitors, Wilfert was able to improve her performance in her second go-around on Div.

III cross country’s biggest stage.

“The course was pretty muddy and harder than I anticipated,” Wilfert said. “It was a lot different than Nationals last year in terms of course conditions.

“It hadn’t rained since Thursday, but it must have rained a lot before we got there since the course was damp,” she continued.

“People had been running on it Thursday and Friday which made it muddy. I think running in the mud is a little challenging for me.”

The environment was not entirely negative for Faller and Wilfert, as approximately 50 teammates traveled from Tufts to support the duo.

“They really helped to pull us along in the race, and they were a huge part of the Nationals experience for me,” Faller said.

“I am grateful that they came out and supported us, especially for … my last cross country meet.”

“It made the race nicer because you have the familiarity of people cheering for you,” Wilfert added.

Lauren Flament contributed to reporting on this article.

t’s awards season in baseball, and that means it’s time for me to suffer my annual bout of overwhelming frustration. The voters are notorious for basing their ballots on irrelevant factors, and through the first wave of awards, that certainly appeared to be the case again: Gold Gloves and Rookie of the Year honors were both a joke (I could write a column on those travesties alone).

But then came the Cy Young awards.

The voters have always been partial to pitcher wins (ultimately a meaningless statistic, because it is so dependent on run support from the team and not necessarily how well someone pitches) and to players from winning teams. But this year, Zack Greinke — whose Royals went 65-97 on the year — and the San Francisco Giants’ Tim Lincecum — who amassed a “mere” 15 wins — took home the honors.

Some people have taken this as a sign that the voters are getting smarter and that the criteria for these awards are slowly shifting from conventional (read: stupid) ones to more advanced, statistically defensible ones.

Sadly, that’s far too much of an oversimplification. Because, of course, the voters couldn’t actually get it right without upsetting some of the old guard.

The real controversy has come from the NL Cy Young voting, in which two non-traditional baseball writers (i.e. they write for Web sites) took part in the balloting. And those two ended up having a big impact.

Leading up to the voting, there were three pitchers that most writers acknowledged had a chance at winning the award: Lincecum and the St. Louis Cardinals’ Adam Wainwright and Chris Carpenter.

Each ballot includes a place for a first-, second- and third-place vote, so many thought it was just a matter of ordering the above three in a specific manner.

But those two crazy Internet writers — Keith Law, who writes for ESPN.com and formerly worked in the front office of the Toronto Blue Jays, and Will Carroll of BaseballProspectus.com — didn’t agree.

Both of them left Carpenter off their ballots and left even more people up in arms about this supposed tragedy — which may have cost Carpenter the Cy Young.

Jon Heyman of Sports Illustrated seemed to be one of many that took exception to this. Among his “tweets” concerning the matter: “i dont mean to pick on the voters. but how do 2 of them leave chris carpenter off the ballot entirely?” and “a buck shot. nice. RT @miklasz Buck Martinez: ‘I worked with Keith Law in Toronto and he doesn’t have a grip on anything.’”

The thing is, Law does in fact have a grip on things — and it’s quite clear that he has a much better grip on the concept of “value” than do many of his peers.

Instead of Carpenter, Law put Javier Vazquez on his ballot in the No. 2 spot.

Comparing the two pitchers, it’s easy to see that such a move is quite justifiable, even if you don’t agree with it. Carpenter had a lower ERA this year (2.24 to 2.87), but Vazquez pitched more innings in a tougher division and was significantly better at striking batters out.

On his ballot, Carroll instead chose to put Dan Haren, who had similar advantages over Carpenter: more innings, significantly more strikeouts against the same number of walks.

This isn’t hard stuff to get. Pitchers can arguably control only three things: home runs, walks and strikeouts. The more batters a pitcher strikes out, the better he is, because he’s not leaving his outs in the hands of his defense and ultimately up to chance ( and even if inducing weak contact is a skill, a strikeout is still more valuable).

Further, the more innings a pitcher throws, the more valuable he is to his team, particularly if those innings are stellar.

I’m a guy that appreciates sabermetrics and I’m trying to learn more about them, but I’m far from being a real stathead. These concepts are not advanced ones; they’re very simple ones that a kid in elementary school would be able to understand. It’s just saddening that a lot of people who cover baseball for a living don’t.

David Heck is a senior majoring in philosophy. He can be reached at David.Heck@ tufts.edu.

Sports

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INSIDE Men’s Basketball 11 The Sauce 11

tuftsdaily.com

FIELD HOCKEY

VOLLEYBALL

Salis-buried: Minus head coach and star midfielder, Tufts falls in Final Four

BY SAPNA

Jumbos’ hopes dashed in NCAA Elite Eight

BANSIL

Daily Editorial Board

There were times this season, like when it was cruising past non-conference opponents or winning its conference championship, that the field hockey team seemed invincible. But not even the Jumbos could overcome the series of nightmarish scenarios they encountered over the weekend.

With no fewer than five core members of its team either missing or limited by injury and illness, nationally ranked No. 4 Tufts dropped a 1-0 decision to No. 2 and eventual national champion Salisbury in Final Four action Saturday afternoon in South Hadley, Mass. The loss ended the Jumbos’ banner 2009 season with a mark of 18-2.

The trouble began for Tufts on the eve of Saturday’s contest when sixth-year head coach Tina McDavitt was hospitalized with a sudden bout of appendicitis. Following an emergency appendectomy that confined McDavitt to a hospital bed, 23-year-old graduate assistant Dani Ryder was left to serve as the team’s acting head coach opposite Dawn Chamberlain of Salisbury, a recent inductee to the National Field Hockey Coaches Association Hall of Fame.

“It was a tough spot, and I certainly feel for them and for the coach,” said Chamberlain, whose Sea Gulls have now eliminated the Jumbos in NCAA Tournament play twice in the last three years. “It’s just a lousy situation to be in: bad timing and just unfortunate.”

Down one of their leaders heading into the semifinal showdown, the Jumbos would lose another in the waning min-

BY

the sidelines your senior year. I wasn’t allowed to come back on the field.”

“We still had [Scholtes] on the sideline, and she was coaching Rachel through the whole thing, but when you lose your starting senior center mid — the heart of your team — it’s rough to pick it up,” Ryder added. “I thought our girls did a really good job of stepping in and we’re happy with how they all played, but in a championship game, that void was big.”

Scholtes’ departure compounded an already dire personnel situation for

Tufts’ volleyball team has lived a Cinderella-like story all season long. But in the end, the slipper just didn’t fit.

After dominating the regional tournament on their home court, the Jumbos earned their first-ever NCAA Div. III quarterfinal berth, taking them to University Heights, Ohio to compete against nationally ranked No. 6 Hope College, another Elite Eight first-timer, last Thursday. But the Jumbos could not overcome the highpowered Flying Dutch offense, and their season came to an end with a 3-1 loss in the national quarterfinal. “[This season] was an uphill battle from the get-go, and I’m just so proud of all the little things we’ve done,” coach Cora Thompson said. “I’m so happy that [the girls] got to experience all the success that they did.”

Hope gained the upper hand early on in the match with a 25-17 win in the first set and then tightened its grip on the contest by edging out Tufts 25-23 in a closely contested second set. Tufts still had some fight left, however, before the season’s clock struck midnight.

Down 24-23 in the third set, the Jumbos dug in their heels and refused to concede defeat. Junior Dawson Joyce-Mendive earned kills on three match points as Tufts fought off five total. The Jumbos finally converted on their first set-point of

see FIELD HOCKEY, page 10

see VOLLEYBALL, page 10

STEVEN SMITH/TUFTS DAILY

Senior co-captains Amanda Russo and Margi Scholtes pose with the NCAA national semifinalist trophy after the Jumbos lost to Salisbury 1-0 Saturday. utes of the first half. While defending a Sea Gulls penalty corner, senior cocaptain Margi Scholtes, already playing with a broken right thumb, took a rocketed ball off her right pinky, forcing the New England West Region Player of the Year to the sidelines for the remainder of the game. Taking Scholtes’ place as the team’s center midfielder and virtual quarterback was talented but inexperienced first-year Rachel Gerhardt.

“I’ve played through a lot of injuries, but I had to come off the field because I couldn’t feel my finger,” Scholtes said.

“I trusted my team to get the job done, but it’s very frustrating standing on

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

Tufts shows grit in first action of year BY

ETHAN STURM

Daily Staff Writer

Oftentimes, athletic programs schedule games against weaker opponents to start off the year, hoping simply to get back into the flow of competition and not to face a true test of their abilities. The Tufts women’s basketball team is not one of those programs.

The Jumbos had their resiliency tested in the very first weekend of their season as they took part in the Rino’s Pizza Tip-Off Classic in New Paltz, New York. Tufts opened its season by falling in double overtime on a buzzer-beater to host SUNY New Paltz, but the team rebounded the very next day by comfortably cruising past York College 68-60 in the consolation game of the four-team tournament.

Tufts dominated much of the second half in its season opener against the New Paltz Hawks, but the Jumbos were never able to pull away — not even after establishing a at 59-52 advantage, their largest lead of the game, with 3:34 left to play.

New Paltz rallied in the final points of the game, putting together a run that tied the game at 61 with 57 seconds to go. A quick basket by senior forward Julia Bailey gave Tufts the lead again, but a foul by junior tri-captain guard Colleen Hart on the following possession sent Hawks senior guard Nicole Sarcone to the charity stripe with the game on the line.

“The refs were calling it pretty tight,” Hart said. “Honestly, it

EVAN COOPER

Daily Editorial Board

was a pretty touchy foul. They put her on the line, and they were a great free-throw-shooting team.”

Sarcone came through in the clutch, sinking both and sending the game into overtime.

“We definitely gave up a couple of chances to bury them,” Bailey said. “Three of our starters were also playing a little tentatively late with four fouls.”

In the first overtime, the Jumbos went up by five but again could not seal the deal.

Instead, a 7-0 run by New Paltz gave the Hawks a 70-68 lead and forced the Jumbos to call a timeout with 13 seconds left. Following the stoppage, Tufts sophomore guard Tiffany Kornegay hit a layup with five seconds left and sent the game into another extra period.

The second overtime was an even closer affair, as neither team was able to pull ahead of the other by more than two points. In the end, sloppy play cost the Jumbos, who coughed the ball up twice in the final minute with the score tied. On the final possession, Hawks senior Maggie Farrell penetrated the Jumbos’ defense and made a layup as time expired.

“They just wanted it more than us,” Bailey said. “We were tired, and it had been a long game.”

Despite having four senior starters, New Paltz had fallen behind 12-0 in the first 3:30 of the game thanks in large part to two three-pointers from Hart.

“We just wanted to come out strong and set the tone,”

said Hart, who finished with 31 points, the most by a Jumbo since 2001. “We started off aggressively and put the other team on their heels.”

But Tufts cooled down and only made one of its next 11 shots from the field, which allowed the Hawks to surge back and take a 23-18 lead.

The two teams spent the rest of the first half exchanging blows, ultimately entering the locker room knotted at 31 following a Hart three-pointer.

Hart led both teams in scoring, draining six out of nine attempts from three-point range, while sophomore forward Kate Barnosky (12 points, 10 rebounds) and Bailey (21 points, 10 rebounds) both finished with double-doubles.

The next day, the Jumbos again found themselves in trouble, as an early 9-2 deficit to York had them fearing a 0-2 start to the season.

“We missed a couple easy shots in the beginning,” Bailey said. “But I think once we found our rhythm, we were able to run our offense like we practiced.”

Tufts did indeed find its groove, outscoring the Lady Cardinals by 25 in the rest of the first half, including respective runs of 19-2 and 12-2.

Ultimately, the Jumbos took a comfortable 37-19 lead into the locker room after being led by Bailey’s 14 points and seven rebounds in the opening 20 minutes.

The rest of the game consisted of futile attempts by York see WOMEN’S BASKETBALL, page 10

CROSS COUNTRY

Faller, Wilfert earn AllAmericans honors

BY JEREMY

GREENHOUSE

Daily Editorial Board

With just one runner each from both the Tufts men’s and women’s cross country teams competing Saturday at the NCAA Div. III Championship, senior Jesse Faller and junior Amy Wilfert took full advantage of the chance to represent the Jumbos on the national stage. Both earned AllAmerican status after finishing in the top 35.

In his last cross country race as a Jumbo, Faller capped his distinguished collegiate career with an eighth-place finish at the 8k Highland Park Golf Course in Cleveland, Ohio.

“It was definitely my strongest race of the season and I was very happy with an eighth-place finish,” Faller said. “Finishing in the top 10 in the nation was one of my goals, and I think it was a bit of a reach goal, and that’s why I was happy to get it.”

Faller’s time of 25:40.0 separated him from second place by eight seconds, though senior Ricky Flynn of Lynchburg distanced himself from the pack with a time of 25:09.8, over 20 seconds ahead of North Central junior Michael Spain and Williams senior Edgar Kosgey, the NESCAC’s top runner.

“The first mile is always pretty hectic, but I was able to keep calm and keep up with the leaders,” Faller said. “By the mile and a half or two-mile mark the race had kind of strung out, so it felt a lot more comfortable and I was

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Senior Jesse Faller, shown here at regionals on Nov. 14, is now a three-time All-American. able to stick right behind the lead pack and I was never less than 20th for the whole race, so strategically I ran very smart.”

Faller noted that he ran in the top five toward the latter half of the race, but in the fifth mile he slowed and dropped out of the top 10. However, his finishing kick on an 800-meter hill was strong enough to pass several competitors.

Meanwhile, junior Amy Wilfert ran a time of 22:46.3 over six kilometers to place 31st.

“I’m really excited that I got top-35, All-American honors,” she said. “I had high expectations coming in. I was hoping for maybe the top 10 or top 15. But see CROSS COUNTRY, page 11