The Tufts Daily - Tuesday, April 24, 2018

TUFTS MEN’S LACROSSE

Tufts evolves in reputation, finances see INVESTIGATIVE / PAGE 3

Tufts rallies to defeat Middlebury

International students on financial aid work toward improving resources for their peers see FEATURES / PAGE 5

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Tuesday, April 24, 2018

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Following faculty divestment vote, university confirms Tufts has no direct investments in gun manufacturers

by Ethan Isenman and Kunal Kapur Contributing Writers

Following the recent shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning Professor Sheldon Krimsky wrote a petition to urge the administration to divest from companies that produce, distribute or sell military-style weapons to the public. Arts, Sciences and Engineering faculty members voted 50-0-4 in support of the petition, which has received 61 signatures, at the March 28 Arts, Sciences and Engineering faculty meeting.

Following the faculty meeting, the university examined its portfolio and found that the university does not directly hold shares in gun-manufacturing companies, according to Patrick Collins, Executive Director of Public Relations at Tufts.

“As of March 29, 2018, the university does not directly hold shares in any individual companies that produce, distribute or sell guns,” Collins told the Daily in an email.

“While we cannot dictate the investment policies of the commingled funds in which the university funds are invested, we do review the investments of any new fund we are considering.”

An April 2017 statement, released by the Office of the President on the heels of a TCU Senate resolution urging divestment from certain corporations that work with the Israeli government, confirms that Tufts can-

not easily divest from commingled funds.

In an initial interview, Krimsky laid out the response that he wanted to hear from the university regarding the petition.

“If Tufts does not invest in [gun manufacturers], I think Tufts should say we do not and we will not, and that in it of itself would be a statement that the rest of the world could understand and listen to,” he said.

Later, while Krimsky said he was gratified that Tufts had confirmed that it had no investments in gun manufacturers, he expressed disappointment that they had yet to make a full public statement clarifying that Tufts would halt all future investments.

“If [Tufts] had said ‘We do review the investments of any new funds we are considering and will make every reasonable effort to keep our funds from companies that manufacture, distribute or sell military-style assault weapons to the public,’ the administration would show a full commitment to the faculty petition,” Krimsky told the Daily in an email.

Krimsky also spoke about his reasons for starting the petition, citing the call to action he felt following the Parkland shooting.

“When I heard the results of that massacre, my first reaction was practically tears to see these kids slaughtered like that … my next reaction was what can I do, what influences do I have,” he said. “It came to me that … Tufts can exercise its moral authority and speak out … [and] maybe others will follow.”

Sociology Professor Paul Joseph explained why he signed the petition.

“It’s an insanity, really, that we know that the presence of assault weapons means that so many more lives will be lost,” he said. “To do nothing in the face of that is terrible, and I do think that universities over the years have demonstrated that when they take a stance on divestment, it can really make a difference.”

Joseph said University President Anthony Monaco was supportive of the goals of the faculty petition.

“President Monaco was [at the vote], and he said that he would work with the university in order to enact this,” he said. “I took it as him taking a sympathetic stance.”

When Krimsky initially presented the petition at a Feb. 28 faculty meeting, Monaco expressed his support, but stressed that getting out of commingled funds is difficult.

“It’s hard to excuse ourselves from this conversation and I’m sympathetic to this petition … It’s hard to get out of commingled funds, hard and expensive,” Monaco said. “We can urge the managers to get out of these companies … I’ll try to advocate this to the Trustees as best I can.”

Monaco further expressed his concerns in a statement sent to the Daily, mentioning that the faculty of the School of Medicine submitted a similar petition, and saying that he had brought these concerns to the attention of the Board of Trustees.

“We appreciate the concerns raised by faculty members in Arts, Science & Engineering in their vote and in a previously submitted petition from faculty in the School of Medicine. We are deeply disturbed by the gun violence that afflicts our nation and, in particular, our schools, and we are committed to promoting solutions and positive change,” Monaco said.

The success of the petition has gone unnoticed by many, Krimsky noted.

“I’m pretty sure this is the first time a university has voted on a petition regarding such a divestment,” he said. “If MIT or Harvard had voted on it, [news of their petition] would have been in the Boston Globe.”

Despite this lack of recognition, Krimsky said he had reached out to colleagues at other universities to gauge their opinions of the petition, reporting that he had received very positive feedback from them.

Krimsky concluded by summarizing what he hoped that universities could do for the Never Again movement.

“The high school kids are the best chance right now, the way they’ve organized themselves, if they continue,” he said. “I don’t think an individual can operate successfully in this arena. You have to be part of a movement to do it. When they come to the universities, it would be good for them to know that the universities are on their side.”

Junior Anne Hall selected as Truman Scholar

by Madeleine Schwartz Contributing Writer

The Truman Foundation announced on April 12 that junior Anne Hall had been selected as one of the 59 Truman Scholars for 2018, according to the Truman Foundation’s website. Juniors Eva Kahan and Wylie Chang were finalists. According to the Truman Foundation website, Hall’s application was chosen out of 756 applications from 312 institutions.

Founded in 1975 by Congress, the Truman Foundation and its scholarship are dedicated to supporting the next generation of public service leaders, according to Deputy Executive Secretary Tara Yglesias, who oversees the selection process of Truman Scholars.

While Yglesias did not interview with Hall, she did review Hall’s application, noting that not only did Hall have an out-

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standing academic record but she also has demonstrated through her work promoting women’s health in rural South Dakota that she is a “change agent.” Hall’s commitment to her home state of South Dakota made her stand out, Yglesias said.

“We see a lot of students who want to work on the international stage,” Yglesias said. “It was really compelling that she wanted to return home to South Dakota and work there.”

Hall said she had once been looking to leave the Midwest and the conservative Christian community she grew up in to be a doctor that traveled the world, potentially working in Laos, where her family is from.

She said she became reunited with her faith while working with the native people of South Dakota.

“I was really infuriated by the hypocrisy I saw within my church. They were so eager to go to Haiti, go to Latin America, go to Africa

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COURTESY ANNE HALL

Anne Hall poses for a portrait on the Tisch Library roof. on missions to help people while neglecting the situation on native reservations or even poverty in our own city,” Hall said. “That was also my break from the Church and my break from Christianity, but eventually

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I came back to my faith and to God through working with native women. Being reunited in my faith really inspired me to continue see TRUMAN FOUNDATION, page 2

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THE TUFTS DAILY | News | Tuesday, April 24, 2018

THE TUFTS DAILY Catherine Perloff Editor-in-Chief

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Tufts Robotics wins international competition at Trinity College

by Alexander Davis Contributing Writer

On April 7 and 8, the Tufts Robotics Club attended the Trinity College Fire Fighting Robot Contest, hosted by Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., where they won the Olympiad tournament in both the team and individual categories.

According to club president Ryan Stocking, a senior, this year’s success in the Olympiad marks the team’s fourth win since 2014. Stocking said he believes the win demonstrates the competence and effectiveness of Tufts Robotics as a whole.

“I think it’s something that shows our success, because we have students who were on the Olympiad team who had never done robotics before,” Stocking said. “To have them be part of team that can win at an international competition is pretty impressive. It’s an indication of our effectiveness at teaching people robotics.”

This particular contest has both a mechanical robot competition and a trivia-based olympiad. Tufts Robotics competed in both.

Sophomore Amel Hassan explained that preparation for the physical robot portion of the competition began as early as September.

“We started designing the robot at the beginning of the year,” Hassan said. “The first thing we did was look at what the competition expected from us and then we created our own maze for testing.”

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working in these rural populations when everybody else has neglected them.”

Hall started working with rural and native women the summer after her first year at Tufts through Tapestry Ministry, where she helped women find resources for jobs, childcare and healthcare, she explained.

“My faith is deeply rooted in a biblical understanding of justice and love and not remaining silent or indifferent about various expressions of oppression or human rights violations,” Hall said.

In her second year at Tufts, Hall took a Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies class, “Rape Crisis and Recovery,” which certified her to provide rape counseling in Massachusetts. Hall then transferred that certification to South Dakota and volunteered as a rape crisis advocate in a hospital through a nonprofit in Sioux

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Faizan Muhammad poses with a robot outside of Tisch Library on April 23.

“Tufts has historically been really good with theoretical stuff,” Muhammad said.

“It’s simply due to the way we are taught here.”

Muhammad hopes that Tufts’ success at this tournament will attract new recruits to the club.

“We are really trying to reach out to the community because robotics is one of the most interdisciplinary engineering clubs on campus,” Muhammad said. “If you are a computer science person, there is something you can do. If you are are electrical engineer, there is something you can do.

Even for environmental engineers, there is something you can do. There is lots of cool potential here.”

Falls the following summer, according to Hall.

“I would receive calls in the middle of the night and I would either work at a hotline talking with victims about their experience with sexual violence or I would meet them at the hospital to be there with them as they got evidence collected on their sexual assault,” Hall said.

That summer, Hall also shadowed an obstetrician-gynecologist and was able to observe doctor-patient relationships.

Faith has been not only important to Hall personally but also to her work, as she looks to pursue Doctor of Medicine and Master of Divinity degrees with the scholarship she has been awarded from the Truman Foundation.

“There’s so much more to your health than physical health — your emotional health, your mental health, your spiritual health,” Hall said. “And by only focusing on one, you’re not focusing on the whole person.”

Hall is also a first-generation student who, despite facing economic insecurity, is thankful for the sacrifices her family has made for her.

Associate Dean for Student Success and Advising Robert Mack, who knows Hall from her leadership as co-president of the FirstGeneration College Student Council, said he wrote Hall’s recommendation letter for the Truman Scholarship.

“I was really happy when she asked me to write her a letter to support her,” Mack said.

“She is real to her truth. In every encounter I’ve had with her, she is sincere and honest and a wonderful human being. Her work at the First-Gen Council is only a small example of her passion to help others.”

Hall said she is humbled by her award from the Truman Foundation.

“I didn’t receive it. I mean I did, but it was because of all the women who shaped me, inspired me, shared their stories with me … especially my mom,” Hall said.

be careful with their online activity and report suspicious emails.

On the Vend On April 19 at 2:33 p.m., TUPD received a report from a student that their JumboCash had been accessed and used without their knowledge. The JumboCash was used at a vending machine in Bush Hall. After further investigation, TUPD discovered that the student had been in Bush Hall over the summer and had used the vending machine repeatedly, but the machine had not been posting a record of the transactions that took place until a technician recently brought the machine back online and then updated with previous JumboCash purchases.

Crash and don’t return Later that day at 3:16 p.m., TUPD responded to a motor vehicle crash on College Avenue. A person in a vehicle hit a parked pick-up truck,

which in turn hit another parked vehicle. The vehicle that instigated the accident remained on the scene, but the driver was not there when TUPD arrived on the scene. After a quick search, TUPD and the Somerville Police Department successfully located the individual responsible for the crash.

Sleep is for (every day of) the week On April 22 at 12:15 a.m., TUPD found a student passed out on College Avenue. TUPD was able to awaken the student, who then reported they had not slept in 40 hours and thus must have fallen asleep on the sidewalk.

Tufts Emergency Medical Services performed a medical evaluation on the student and suggested they be taken to the hospital, but the student refused to seek further treatment.

TUPD reminds students not to neglect their physical needs during the upcoming exam period.

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According to the contest website, every participating team had to submit a robot that could navigate a maze and extinguish a lighted candle, meant to model a house fire, placed at the center. Prizes were awarded based on which robot managed this task the fastest and in the most cost-effective way possible.

In order to navigate the maze, Tufts Robotics engineered a robot that followed the right wall of whatever corridor it was in. A fire extinguisher was attached to the robot to put out the flame.

“The basic algorithm behind the robot tried to make it hug the right wall so that it would continuously go around the maze to find the candle,” Hassan said.

Hassan and her teammates said they engineered the robot to turn on and off remotely.

“We needed something called a ‘kill switch’ that turns the robot off completely with one plug. Then we had a sensor that could start the robot in response to a really high-pitched noise,” Hassan said.

The Olympiad portion of the contest required contestants to respond to an array of engineering questions pertinent to robotics. The questions drew from a variety of engineering disciplines, including mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and computer science.

This year’s individual Olympiad winner Faizan Muhammad, a sophomore, said that members of the Tufts team are well-equipped to succeed in the Olympiad due to the way engineering is taught here.

Junior Anne Hall discusses plans for future as Truman Scholar continued from page 1

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You got Google Played On April 17 at 5:16 p.m., Tufts University Police Department (TUPD) received a report from the International Center that an individual posing as the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had scammed a graduate student. An email sent to the student claimed they were staying longer than their visa allowed and thus they would have to pay $5,000 to the IRS to remain in the United States. The student withdrew $5,000 from their account, purchased a Google Play gift card worth $2,000 and provided the scammer with the access code. After the student sent the code they realized it was likely a scam and went to the International Center for further information. TUPD advises all students and Tufts community members to

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

INVESTIGATIVE

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Affordability and the Budget, Part 1: Expansion, investment and the making of an elite institution

by Kenia French

Assistant Features Editor

Tufts may not have the university name recognition of its world-renowned neighbors in Cambridge, but it is widely considered an elite institution, well-known for providing a high quality undergraduate education and for conducting world-class research amongst its students and faculty. In 2018, Tufts was ranked the 29th best university in the country according to U.S. News & World Report, and the university currently has a 14.8 percent acceptance rate, making it one of the most selective colleges in the country.

But before 1996, Tufts had never even ranked in the top 50 on the U.S. News annual ranking chart. According to Sol Gittleman, former Tufts Provost from 1981–2002 and former Chair of the then-combined Department of German and Russian, the Tufts of today was an entirely different place when he began teaching here in 1964. At that time, the university was struggling financially, fighting to keep its professors and mend its crumbling buildings all while attempting to entice students to attend the university.

“We were taking over half our applicants, but look at where we are now: There are probably 20, 30 schools in the country that take as few of our applicants as we do. And there are probably 200 in the country that take less than half,” Gittleman said.

Gittleman said that if Tufts had not found a way to make money and embark on this path to prestige, the university may have closed. He argued that raising money changed Tufts and allowed it to become competitive with its peer institutions, ensuring the university’s survival.

“Tufts was not a viable institution, we might not have made it. But then we got a new president, and all of the sudden, it all started … He started raising money, and once he found out how to do it it never stopped, and it never will.

That’s what universities are all about,” Gittleman said.

However, the university’s growing prestige comes at a high cost: Tuition and fees were announced in a March 29 email to the university community for 2018–2019, amounting to a record high of $70,941. According to Business Insider, Tufts is the 21st most expensive college in the United States. This high sticker price has sparked student concern that as tuition rises, the university is not prioritizing making the school accessible to low income students.

As the cost of attendance has increased over the years, student frustrations have manifested in action. #HaltTheHike is a campaign lead by Tufts Student Action (TSA), a student group calling for the university to stop increasing tuition at what TSA sees as an unsustainable rate. TSA member Amira al-Subaey spoke to the Daily about her concerns that increasing tuition hikes will continue to ostracize the already small number of low-income students on campus.

“I think that a lot of students can attest to … feeling like the only person in the room that can’t go out to dinner on the weekend or is literally worried about if they’re going to school next semester because of their financial aid package”

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Tufts is consistently ranked poorly in comparison to its peer institutions, both in terms of cost and in terms of financial aid.

Al-Subaey, a junior, said. “I am extremely concerned about how that will continue as Tufts tuition increases.”

TSA and other campus activist groups are calling for greater transparency on the part of the Board of Trustees, the governing body responsible for approving Tufts tuition price every year.

“We need more transparency in the administration when it comes to tuition hikes, we need justification for tuition hikes,” al-Subaey said. “We need to address the extremely low levels of socioeconomic diversity on this campus.”

When asked about the the university’s accessibility, Board of Trustees Chairman Peter Dolan said that the Board is committed to making Tufts as affordable as possible.

“We remain committed to keeping costs to students as low as possible and to minimizing any necessary increases in the future, while providing an excellent educational experience for all students,” Dolan wrote in an email to the Daily.

There is no simple explanation for the rapidly increasing cost of attendance, but one factor is that the cost of higher education in general in the United States is rising at a rate much higher than the national rate of inflation. Tufts’ tuition increases, then, are reflective of the phenomenon of exorbitant tuition prices afflicting universities across the nation. “[The cost of ] everything’s gone up, the stock market’s off the wall, and they are looking at these universities as if they were corporations on the stock market. Which of the colleges produces the biggest bang for their buck — that’s America,” Gittleman said.

However, according to various sources, Tufts is even less affordable than its peer institutions, in part because of its ambitious and maintained rate of expan-

sion. According to Trustee Representative Nathan Foster, Tufts’ quest to compete with elite schools has caused affordability goals to become secondary.

“I think there’s a big push from Tufts to be prestigious and to compete with schools like Harvard, Yale or MIT or what have you, and so I think there’s a big push from Tufts to be prestigious. Often times goals like affordability can get thrown by the wayside in pursuit of that,” Foster, a senior, said.

Tufts’ ambitious growth: A decadeslong project with entrepreneurial designs Tufts tuition increases are rooted in the history of the university’s transformation from a largely commuter college in the 1950s to what it’s known as today: an elite undergraduate research university, with a hint of its liberal arts college charm intact.

According to Gittleman, who published a book on Tufts’ history titled “An Entrepreneurial University: The Transformation of Tufts, 1976–2002,” when he first started teaching at Tufts, it was unrecognizable.

“We were not doing great in the 60s …

As a result, buildings were burning down because we didn’t have enough money — we deferred maintenance. Jumbo burned down in ‘75, other buildings burned down, the electrical system’s upkeep wasn’t possible and we had no financial aid, nothing. This was not a good time,” Gittleman said.

However, according to Gittleman, Jean Mayer’s presidency from 1976 to 1993 changed everything. He understood that in order to compete with other Boston universities, Tufts had to raise money quickly.

“The president himself was an entrepreneurial type. He set the standard …

There’s never been anybody quite like

him, but the thing that he did was that he told everybody that comes after him, you gotta do this, you’ve got to raise money,” Gittleman said. “In that sense, they’ve all become part of his legacy.”

According to Assistant Professor of Sociology Freeden Blume Oeur, who taught a class called “The Sociology of Higher Education” in fall 2017, this focus on fundraising set Tufts on the path to become a prestigious university at a time when prestige and a university’s market value began to become more and more intertwined.

“Tufts hadn’t always been a university and certainly not one with aspirations to be a top research institution. This has a really recent history dating back to the presidency of Jean Mayer, sort of in the 70s,” Blume Oeur said. “This just in the years leading up to the U.S. News and World Report releasing its first ranking, Tufts sort of joined this aggressive push to be an elite university just as things were becoming standardized.”

On the one hand, this financial expansion enabled the university to improve its resources, resulting in better professors, buildings and research, as well as more comprehensive financial aid. According to the 1980–1981 Tufts University Factbook, in 1950, financial aid on average reduced the cost of tuition by $63: from $1,450 to $1,393. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the average financial aid award for the 2015–2016 school year was $36,578 in grant or scholarship aid, reducing cost from $65,900 to $29,322. “[The benefits of financial expansion are] financial aid, it’s more research space, more classroom space, technology, computational power, faculty,” Gittleman said. see AFFORDABILITY, page 4

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THE TUFTS DAILY | INVESTIGATIVE | Tuesday, April 24, 2018

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Ambitious expansion and persistent deficits among causes of tuition hikes

NICHOLAS PFOSI / THE TUFTS DAILY

Alice and Nathan Gantcher University Professor of Judaic Studies and former University Provost Sol Gittleman poses for a photograph in Ballou Hall on February 6th, 2015. This is his last semester teaching An Introduction to Yiddish Culture, which he has taught since 1971.

AFFORDABILITY

continued from page 3 However, there’s a negative side to this drive for financial stability and prestige.

Rather than focusing solely on providing quality education, Tufts then had to figure out how they were going to acquire funding to maintain this rate of growth, and thus, their increasingly elite status and higher value of attendance.

Gittleman said the primary way Tufts and other universities accomplished this was by adopting the Yale Model of investment, an endowment growth strategy adopted by many universities in the 1980s after Yale University used it to quickly increase its own endowment.

The Yale Model is an endowment investment strategy popularized by David Swensen, who has served as Yale’s chief investment officer since 1985. According to the International Banker, the strategy involves taking the university’s endowment and investing it in a combination of hedge funds, private equity and other non-traditional assets. The Yale Model was responsible for making universities run more like private corporations: To execute this strategy, universities hire professionals to manage their investment portfolios.

According to Blume Oeur, the Yale Model changed the face of higher education by introducing a conflict for universities that chose to adopt it. While universities were meant to provide education to as many students as possible, they now had to follow capitalistic principles and compete with each other in order to stay afloat.

“These are private, non-profit universities, you have a lot of people working behind the scenes. You have people who won’t necessarily ever interface with the student body running things,” Blume Oeur said. “One of the most important things you’ll learn in [Blume Oeur’s Sociology of Higher Education] course is that higher education has been charac-

terized by this often pretty volatile tension between its democratic goals and its market impulses.”

Is Tufts’ high tuition merely a symptom of the American higher education system?

According to Gittleman, this tension between democratic goals and market impulses is plaguing universities across the country. It’s what drives tuition prices up: Since tuition is Tufts’ main source of revenue, the increased costs that came with ambitious expansion meant that tuition must also increase. Thus, he says, Tufts’ high tuition hikes are a natural product of the competition created by the higher education market in the United States. But Gittleman said he doesn’t have much of a problem with this system.

“We have non-profits who take care of people and they compete for dollars in this country. Competition is in the American DNA, prestige has gotten into the American DNA. Show me a school that’s doing better than we are,” Gittleman said. “If they don’t want to be in a capitalist environment, go somewhere else.”

In the 2010–2011 Tufts Factbook, Tufts tuition cost is compared to 11 other elite, medium sized universities.

Amongst these 11 are Boston College, Brown, Northwestern, Dartmouth and Georgetown.

When asked, Executive Vice President Patricia Campbell and Vice President for Finance and Treasurer Tom McGurty responded that they believed Tufts tuition and affordability is on par with its peer institutions.

“Each of Tufts’ schools reviews a comparable group of schools to look at a variety of metrics, including cost. Our review shows that while not exact, this group of comparable schools has similar costs, with some being somewhat higher and some being somewhat lower,” McGurty and Campbell wrote in a joint email to the Daily.

Assuming that these peer institutions are the same as the comparable group of schools found in the Factbook, this is

ASHA IYER / THE TUFTS DAILY

The bust of Jean Mayer, former president of Tufts University, is pictured on Monday, April 23,. not entirely true. According to the chart “Undergraduate Charges Relative to Comparison Group,” since 2001, Tufts has consistently ranked in the top three out of its stated peer institutions in terms of tuition cost.

According to Foster, Tufts may be even less affordable when compared to its peer institutions than the Factbook data make it seem. He explained that Tufts’ metrics for evaluating comparative affordability are flawed. The metric for comparison should not solely be the tuition price tag — it should be the average total cost of attendance. This metric calculates the average price each student pays by subtracting the average financial aid package from tuition cost.

The concept of an average total cost metric was originally used in old Tufts Factbooks, according to Foster.

Evidence of such use can be found in the 1980–1981 Tufts Factbook, which chronicles the average cost of attendance since 1951. The statistic stopped being used in the 1980s, just as Tufts was making its push to achieve elite status.

When Tufts’ average total cost is compared to this group of peer institutions, Tufts is the least affordable. Tufts average total cost is $52,283, while the next most expensive is the University of Pennsylvania, at $50,233. The private peer institution with the lowest average total cost is Columbia, at $44,645.

According to Gittleman, Georgetown and Dartmouth should be considered Tufts’ main peer institutions, as all three are medium-sized undergraduate teaching colleges where research is also conducted.

“Tufts is unique … it’s also a teaching university where everybody does research. So we’ve got to find the right balance. And each president will make his own thing. But the DNA of the institution is exactly the same. We’re like three peas in a pod: Dartmouth, Georgetown and Tufts,” he said.

According to calculations made by Foster based on data from the NCES, in the 2015–2016 school year, Tufts’ average total cost amounted to $52,283, while Georgetown’s was $50,025 and Dartmouth’s was $45,486. This means that even amongst its principle peer institutions, Tufts is significantly more expensive — $2,258 more than Georgetown and $6,797 more than Dartmouth.

While the $2,258 dollar difference between the average total cost of Georgetown and Tufts may seem small, for many students, a few thousand dollars is nothing to be trivialized. Alumna and former Trustee Representative Sylvia Ofoma (LA ’17) described how a $4,000 dollar tuition increase is a big deal to a student making minimum wage. “$4,000, that doesn’t seem like much but I had a part time job in Kansas where I made $7.50 an hour, that’s me working two summers and making that,” Ofoma told the Daily.

Differences of two, three or four thousand dollars are also very meaningful for families from the bottom 20 percent.

The Office of Institutional Research and Evaluation (OIRE) recently published data on the average price paid by students from each income quintile. According to the data, students from the bottom 20 percent face huge fluctuation in tuition cost: students who entered in 2011 paid an average of $13,075, while students who entered in 2014 paid an average of $1,282, and students who entered in 2017 paid an average of $7,067.

Al-Subaey explained that this kind of unpredictability can place undue burden on low-income students. When your expected contribution shifts each year, your financial future is always up in the air.

“If you’re on financial aid, your package shifts every year, and it could increase your loans, it could increase your family contribution. For students to be expected to pay $10,000 more by the time it comes to their senior year is really outrageous,” Al-Subaey said.

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

Features

5 tuftsdaily.com

Busting the rich, international myth: International students on aid tackle burdens, display resilience

by Yanelle Cruz Staff Writer

Editor’s note: This is the second part of a two-part series that centers on the stories of international students on financial aid. The first part can be found online.

Though there is a stereotype that all international students in the United States are wealthy and paying for their education out-of-pocket, this is not the reality for more than 100 Tufts students. After featuring the stories of sophomore Carol Rossell and firstyear Manish Aryal, today, we feature two more students who share the experience of being low-income and international.

Maureen Kalimba Isimbi, sophomore Kalimba Isimbi is majoring in engineering psychology and minoring in engineering management. She calls Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda, her home. She spends approximately 10 hours a week working as a student assistant at the International Center (I-Center) and as an on-call math tutor. She finds that having a job is challenging on her schedule and can sometimes impact her academics or the time she needs to take care of herself.

“If I had to come here and just study without working that would be great,” she said.

However, she recognizes that having to balance school and work is giving her valuable skills.

“It’s good that I have a job because it’s giving me a lot of experience for the future,” she said.

While Kalimba Isimbi has a good financial aid package that meets most of her financial need, she expressed that Tufts could do a better job with their financial aid packages for international students, such as covering summer school tuition.

“There are some things other schools include in their financial aid that I wish Tufts included in their packages especially for low-income international students,” Kalimba Isimbi said. “For example, if you are an engineer, you need so many credits, and if you can’t study in the summer then you end up having to take six classes each semester, which is mentally and emotionally exhausting.”

Moreover, Kalimba Isimbi believes that future financial aid packages should also cover Curricular Practical Training (CPT ), a program allowing international students to participate in off-campus work opportunities related to their field of study, which will nearly double in cost to $966 this summer.

The cost of CPT will be waived for students with the highest need, but I-Center staff have expressed concern about the ability of others who do not qualify for the waiver to take on summer internships, according to an April 17 article in the Daily.

As the International Community Senator, Kalimba Isimbi has been advocating to set up funding for essential things that international students do not always have the funds for, such as being able to visit their family at some point during the school year.

CHRISTINE LEE / THE TUFTS DAILY

Maureen Kalimba Isimbi, ’20, poses for a portrait outside of Mayer Campus Center on Apr. 17.

“This past year, I was working on getting tickets for international students to go home, because it is really hard to spend four years without going home,” she said.

While Kalimba Isimbi is thankful for her generous aid package, she noted that the amount of aid an international student receives can impact how challenging their experience at Tufts might be.

“It depends on the financial aid you’re getting; if you get a good package, it relieves you in some way. When your package misses essential things, then there is pressure to work more hours and find other resources to have access to opportunities,” she said.

For instance, Kalimba Isimbi expressed that financial aid can severely impact what opportunities one has access to.

“You can’t pursue unpaid internships, because even though you are so interested in them, your financial [situation] will be suffering from that, so you have to always consider the financial aspect of an opportunity,” Kalimba Isimbi said. “All the spring

break trips I’ve had have all been associated with organizations, which is the only way I can travel. When friends suggest going on a trip, I can’t go because it’s a lot of money to spend.”

Kalimba Isimbi also stressed that being low-income doesn’t just impact the social experience, but can also keep a student from attending an event beneficial to their professional growth, such as conferences and career fairs.

Being on financial aid has forced Kalimba Isimbi to always be aware of her situation. She stressed that she must always make sure she’s working so that she is financially stable in the future because expenses that come after graduation also worry her.

“You need to really save and you are always thinking about the future, which can be stressful and make you allocate more time for work when you should be studying, resting or taking care of yourself,” she said.

Overall, Kalimba Isimbi believes that Tufts does a good job at giving out generous packages, but there is always room for improvement, especially in helping students have access to the

full college experience outside of just tuition, room and board.

“Financial aid does a good job for some individuals who could not attend Tufts without the aid. However, the tuition rises and some essential things should be put into consideration to give all students a better experience when attending Tufts,” she said.

Raimy Shin, senior Shin is a child study and human development and clinical psychology double major. She was born in South Korea but grew up in Thailand, so both places have become her home in different ways. Since her first year at Tufts, work has been one of Shin’s constant activities.

“In my first two years, work was my priority so I would change my class schedule in order to fit my work schedule,” she said.

Currently she works as a sound technician at Cohen Auditorium and front desk staff assistant at the Eliot-Pearson Children’s School.

Additionally, she is completing an see INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS, page 6

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THE TUFTS DAILY | Features | Tuesday, April 24, 2018

Hayato Miyajima Jumbo Exchange

tuftsdaily.com

Low-income, international students advocate for more comprehensive resources, financial aid

Appreciating diversity

T

he fact that this week is the final week of classes makes me realize that it’s really the end of the semester, which also means the end of my exchange program. The next three weeks are likely to pass quickly because I’m going to be busy writing essays and studying for exams. Besides that, I’m currently working for a summer camp designed for Japanese high schoolers as an executive committee member to organize some programs.

Recently, I quite often have had the opportunity to think about diversity.

As everyone knows, there are a lot of characteristics that play into diversity, including race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, political beliefs, and so forth. For me at least, some of these factors are hard to immediately appreciate just by studying or learning about them. In my opinion, first-hand experiences lead to a better understanding of diversity.

For example, it was not until I came here to Boston that I saw a gender-neutral bathroom. I knew of gender-neutral bathrooms and the debates that have occurred with regards to the necessity and legitimacy of that type of bathroom for the past several years.

However, when I saw it for the first time, it still kind of shocked me — a person who has lived, for more than 20 years since I was born, in a country where gender distinctions are pervasive in much of society.

At first, I felt a little awkward to use the bathroom because I was anxious that my presence in the bathroom would make other users feel uncomfortable or endangered in any way.

However, seeing people use the bathroom in a regular fashion regardless of their gender identity made me realize that I was the only one who was worrying about things like that, and then quickly got used to it. From such moments, I have learned not only how the advocacy of diversity can be put into practice, but also how important first-hand experience is in this regard.

Of course, knowledge is also really important. It’s sort of embarrassing, but I didn’t know the concept of “body positivity” until I came to Tufts. That is why when I first heard about the Tufts Burlesque Troupe, I was again kind of shocked, but then came to find it interesting and cool. Luckily, I was given a ticket for the burlesque show by a friend, and I could go watch it. The event itself was so much fun and one of the most unique experiences during my stay in the States. Crucially, I think I was able to enjoy it a lot because I took the initiative to learn about body positivity before going.

There are so many other examples that I can’t describe them all here.

When it comes to diversity, living in the States is fundamentally different than in Japan, whose population primarily consists of one single ethnicity. Firsthand experiences I had here sure have helped me view the world differently than I used to.

Hayato Miyajima is an exchange student from Japan majoring in international relations. Hayato can be reached at Hayato.

Miyajima@tufts.edu.

CHRISTINE LEE / THE TUFTS DAILY

Raimy Shin, ’18, poses for a portrait outside of Mayer Campus Center on Apr. 18.

INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS

continued from page 5 unpaid internship at Massachusetts General Hospital, which she would not be doing if not for her clinical psychology major requirements, because she does not have the time to do any unpaid work.

For Shin, balancing work and academics is nothing new, since she has been doing it even before she got to Tufts.

“I’ve worked since I was in middle school, so I think it’s natural to me and not having a job would feel weird,” she said.

Shin has always been aware of the fact that participating in certain social activities means spending money, therefore she’s always worked hard and saved enough money, which gives her a sense of pride.

“I make sure that I am not missing out socially, even if it means having to work a little harder for it, but I’ve always done that,” she said.

Despite it being challenging at times, Shin enjoys being able to have a job while she goes to school because of everything she has gained from her work experiences.

“It is a positive actor in my life instead of something that is difficult,” she said.

Even though she’s found a lot of growth through working, Shin must be selective when it comes to choosing what opportunities to pursue.

“I think that the fact that I am not even thinking about unpaid internships limits me because there are a lot of great opportunities in college that are unpaid but I can’t do them. Sometimes I have to do opportunities not as related to my major simply because they are paid,” she said.

Despite having to pay for books and other essential things herself, Shin feels grateful and lucky for the financial support Tufts has given her.

“I have felt really supported and I feel like I have had individual attention. The financial aid office has seen me as a person,” she said.

However, the support does not stop her from frequently feeling anxious about her financial insecurity. “[One challenge is] never having security and knowing if I’m able to come back next year,” Shin said. “I think more than the logistical challenges, it’s that feeling that I don’t have control over my own education, and no matter what I do, it can be pulled from under me if someone decides not to fund me anymore.”

Something else that Shin has to deal with is the dominant, stereotypical narrative associated with being an international student.

“The dominant narrative is that we bring the money to the school and are wealthy and travel all the time. My narrative is that I am filing taxes and financial aid, with [my] documents that aren’t in English, my parents don’t speak English, and I have to do it all alone,” she said.

Additionally, Shin finds that it can be difficult dealing with her multiple and intersecting identities on an institutional level.

“I think being international is one layer of my identity and being low income is another part of my identity, and people don’t understand the intersection between those identities,” Shin said. “Sometimes I call one office and they send me to another office and

vice-versa, and I wonder where are the resources that can coordinate this for me instead of doing it all by myself, and it’s a lot of work that goes unrecognized.”

Aside from identifying as an international and low-income student, Shin is also a first-generation student, and this has impacted her experience as well.

“The more educated I become, the less connected I feel to my family, because they are not educated. The way that they see me is so distant. It’s great that I am gaining more opportunities, but if it means leaving my family behind, it’s not a sacrifice I want to take. I don’t think people who have parents and family who are educated face that kind of dilemma,” she said.

During her time at Tufts, Shin has been able to find a support system that has made going through challenges easier.

“I don’t know about everyone, but my friends are very accommodating and I’ve been so grateful for that,” she said.

As vice-president of the International Club, Shin has also been working all year to ensure that information about additional financial resources available to international students is easy to access. She believes that more could be done to ensure that low-income international students have a better college experience.

“I think being international is a big part of who you are when you are in the United States, so the other identities you relate to can be forgotten.

Being low-income and international is a very specific experience and more could be done to cater to that experience,” she said.

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

ARTS&LIVING

7 tuftsdaily.com

TV REVIEW

‘Lost in Space’ can’t find itself

by John Fedak Arts Editor

Netflix’s re-imagining of the 1965 series of the same name, “Lost in Space” (2018), has all the hallmarks of a Netflix production.

The series is based on a cult favorite, the new cast is talented and the premise is interesting.

However, there is something about the show that falls flat, and while it is certainly a good show, “Lost in Space” is decidedly not a great show, though it does have its fair share of strong moments.

The first episode, titled “Impact,” introduces viewers to the Robinson family, who are the main characters of the series. (The original show was itself a re-imagining of the 1812 novel, “The Swiss Family Robinson.”) After a mysterious object crashes into Earth and threatens the world in the year 2046, humanity decides to build and launch a colonization ship named the Resolute to stave off extinction.

The Robinson family is selected as part of the 24th colonization mission, but en route to their destination of Alpha Centauri the convoy is attacked. While the Robinsons are able to make it into their craft, Jupiter 2, they are thrown into a wormhole and crash land on an unknown, but habitable, planet. The family must fight for survival as they try to repair the Jupiter 2, find other survivors and get along with one another.

The story itself is interesting enough, but it doesn’t really do anything to stand out. At this

COURTESY NETFLIX

Molly Parker and Toby Stephens are pictured in Lost in Space (2018). point in time, plenty of other science fiction shows have tackled the idea of space travel, so one would expect a new or at least more nuanced take on the concept of traveling through space, but “Lost in Space” plays it a bit too safe. The dramatic tension is high throughout the episode, but it feels drawn out in many scenes. For example, when the youngest member of the Robinson family, 11-year-old Will (Maxwell Jenkins), is trapped by a forest fire, the scene drags on much longer than needed, and the tension becomes a crutch rather than a strength.

Much like the story itself, episode one features characters that are neither weak nor strong. The

acting is solid, with Molly Parker’s performance as Maureen Robinson, the mother of the family, being a cut above the rest. Solid, however, does not equal great. The cast is well-chosen in that their family dynamic is believable, but the characters all fall into certain tropes. Oldest daughter Judy Robinson (Taylor Russell) is the rebellious teenager; father John Robinson (Toby Stephens) is strict but caring; Will is the younger child who connects with a killer robot that is actually caring, and so on. The show feels familiar in an unwelcome way, and the actors themselves don’t deliver a strong enough performance to make up for the tired tropes.

One more positive aspect of the show is the visual effects. The Jupiter 2 is a beautiful-looking spacecraft, and the environment of the alien planet is both stunning and vibrant. The alien robot feels real, and the effects around it are breathtaking and will leave viewers mesmerized. While the visuals are great, the soundtrack, like the rest of the show, is average at best. There is nothing inherently problematic with it, but it is forgettable, and besides punctuating moments of tension, adds nothing of note to the plot.

Of course, as the first episode in the series, there is the chance that the expository opening will lead to better episodes, and the entire series is currently available for streaming on Netflix. However, this reviewer was not impressed enough to continue watching, which speaks to the quality of the show as a whole.

Overall, there is nothing glaringly wrong with “Lost in Space,” but it doesn’t do anything to distinguish itself from other, more celebrated sci-fi shows. It is accessible to audiences of most ages due to the diversity of the cast and the fact that family is at the heart of the series, but the plot is boring and the acting is mediocre. Even the beautiful effects and landscape can’t make up for it. Watch this show if you have nothing better to do, but it simply does not fall into the vein of super-successful Netflix originals.

Boston student band Squitch releases its new album ‘Uncle Steve in Spirit’

by Christopher Panella Staff Writer

At a recording studio at Northeastern University on a recent Saturday morning, student band Squitch was finishing up recording songs for their simply brilliant second album, “Uncle Steve in Spirit” (2018). For over an hour, Emma Unterseher, Emma Spooner (who prefers to go by Spooner) and Denzil Leach recorded melodic vocals and bass lines, planned their upcoming tour and discussed picking classes for the fall semester. It’s this balance, being in college and recording music, that may seem incredibly stressful, but Squitch works very well with it.

Spooner, a New Hampshire native, created Squitch in high school, but the band found its current lineup after Spooner and Unterseher became roommates through a Facebook group for accepted students at Emerson College in the fall 2017 semester.

“I remember just seeing [Unterseher] posted a picture of her in a cowboy hat with the caption, ‘I am a city cowboy,’ and I was like, ‘I want to be this person’s friend!’” Spooner said.

Originally, the two did not have plans to be in a band together, but throughout the fall semester, jam sessions between the two transformed. Later, Spooner brought her longtime friend Leach, a junior at Northeastern, onto Squitch. The rest is history.

Squitch’s dynamic is fluid, especially in the different roles the trio plays in writing, recording and releasing the music.

“It’s not like one of us, like, just plays bass.

It’s really collaborative,” Spooner said.

The band describes its initial music as “fruit punk,” a genre that combines punk rock sounds with bedroom pop melodies.

Now, with “Uncle Steve in Spirit,” the band explores a darker sound. At Northeastern, the trio finished recording vocals for “Electricity,” a song off the album while discussing their

upcoming tour, which created an excited buzz in the studio.

As of now, the band performs across the greater Boston area at college shows and private house venues. In May, Squitch will travel across the northeastern and midwestern United States, from Providence to New York City to Chicago.

Throughout their previous performances, they have met other Boston-based student bands, sharing music and making friends.

“There is a really good DIY community here of networking and student bands,” Spooner said.

This comes as no surprise; greater Boston has many music programs across its colleges, fostering many student bands. The difference for Squitch, however, is that this is a passion project.

Unterseher emphasized this passion when speaking about her experience with the group.

“Being a member of Squitch is magical,” Unterseher told the Daily in an electronic message. “It’s hard work, but getting to create something with two of my closest friends, and bring it into the world and have it heard, is unbelievably validating. I love Spooner and Denzil intensely, and playing together feels, well, natural.”

At Emerson, Spooner studies business of creative enterprises, while Unterseher studies visual and media aarts. Leach studies bioengineering at Northeastern.

Spooner explained that being in Squitch was not about finding fame, but rather about being a part of something that she is proud of.

“I don’t really have any expectations for it; it’s not super important to me that a bunch of people like it,” Spooner said. “I’m proud of it, and I love being a part of it. Like, if anything happened to it, that’d be great. I think it’s more just like, expectations will lead to disappointment.”

Squitch is on both Spotify and Apple Music, streaming platforms where listeners

COURTESY EMMA SPOONER

The album art for Squitch’s “Uncle Steve in Spirit” (2018) is pictured. can explore their previous music, like their first album, “Caterpillar Killer,” which was released in September 2016 and made by Leach and Spooner in high school. The band thrives on Bandcamp, a website that allows emerging bands like Squitch to post their music for free and fans to name their price to buy their albums. Squitch’s music relies heavily on themes of queerness, relationships and individuality, but these are also mixed with fresh sounds, especially on “Uncle Steve in Spirit.”

There are deep moments of anger, like opening track “Dogfight,” in which Spooner sings, “I’m not all right, when I’m sleeping at night.” There are also moments of almost nostalgic emptiness, like “Candle Wax,” and harder jams, like “Eat Yrself Alive.”

The album flows through ideas and themes, developing each in maturity beyond the band’s years. If “Uncle Steve in Spirit” is any indication of the future of Boston’s student music scene, then it seems that Boston is in the very safe hands of Squitch.

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THE TUFTS DAILY | Comics | Tuesday, April 24, 2018

Comics

LATE NIGHT AT THE DAILY Amanda: “Why do we need recap of every [Riverdale] episode.”

Comics

Puzzle 1 (Medium, difficulty rating 0.55)

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Difficulty Level: Waking up earlier than you have all semester just for a pregame.

Generated by http://www.opensky.ca/sudoku on Mon Apr 23 00:21:09 2018 GMT. Enjoy!

Monday’s Solution

CROSSWORD

OP-ED

Why I rely on Rapfogel

by Shreya Marathe Adam’s friends, myself included, have urged Adam to quit Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate many times. It’s sometimes done as a joke to see how he’ll react. Other times, it’s out of selfishness because we want to spend more time with him. The demand is typically made in awe after watching him devote immense amounts of time to this organization. Over the past three years, I’ve watched Adam devote countless hours of his time and effort to TCU Senate.

When he first told me that he was running for president, I was not the slightest bit surprised. For Adam, the position seems to be the natural culmination of three years of devoted service, both as Senator and Parliamentarian, to the student body.

I met Adam during my first week of college. The first thing I noticed was his endless compassion. During my first weekend on campus, my friend from high school decided to visit me. Naturally, she got lost in Boston while trying to make her way to Tufts.

Despite not knowing me for more than a couple of days, Adam came with me into Boston on a Friday night to help me find my friend. Since that first week of meeting him, Adam has always gone out of his way to help his friends in need. Whether it’s assisting me in setting up IKEA furniture or consoling me after the Seahawks didn’t make the NFL playoffs, Adam has always been there for me.

The same can be said for his work on TCU Senate. Adam puts his heart and soul into every project that he has been a part of. His love for Late Night Carm Study is admirable; he goes out of his way to make sure there are as many snacks as possible for stressed-out students during finals week. Adam even worked tirelessly to put something as basic as a water fountain in Tilton Hall after hearing complaints from others in his dorm. As the Parliamentarian for the past two years, Adam has been put in some difficult positions as controversial resolutions have been proposed.

Regardless of all of the stress and confrontation he’s faced, Adam’s devotion to TCU Senate and helping to improve our school have always held steadfast.

Being friends with Adam is such a gift. He is kind, considerate and compassionate. Above all, he will always make time for what his friends and peers need from him. He has done it for me as a friend and the Tufts student body as a representative for the past three years. He wants nothing more than to be able to help improve Tufts and everyone’s experience here, and I hope for the benefit of our university that he gets the opportunity to do that as TCU President.

tuftsdaily.com

OP-ED

Jacqueline Chen for TCU President

by Amanda Borquaye

I have about five weeks left of my Tufts career before I will move on to greener and hopefully significantly flatter pastures, but before I go, I want to express why the Tufts student body should elect Jacqueline Chen as their next Tufts Community Union (TCU) President on April 26.

I will be the first to admit that over the past four years, I have felt far removed from TCU Senate’s impact in shaping my undergraduate experience. I know many of the people on Senate to be conscientious and passionate individuals, but I have remained skeptical of why they chose Senate as a means to advocate for change on campus given the important student organizing work that happens through other mediums. Jacqueline Chen has caused me to reconsider my skepticism and bias toward TCU Senate, and I believe she is the solution to our increasingly fragmented and disillusioned student body.

Jacqueline has exhibited a diligence and determination to improve student life that has paid off in ways we can all enjoy, specifically through her insistence that this university invests in its students.

She was able to secure a $10 printing stipend for every student. Though free printing is available at some locations across campus, these stipends are a convenient alternative and remove the financial burden of printing assignments, which certainly adds up. Additionally, Jacqueline helped establish the Swipe it Forward meal bank to combat food insecurity on campus. She is not one to pat herself on the back for her strides in improving student life. Her platform identifies the need to think even further about food insecurity at Tufts as she advocates for the opening of a food pantry for students living off-campus who may also experience food insecurity but are located farther away from the dining halls. Her demonstrated ability to allocate resources to students gives me bright hope for what’s to come.

I’m voting for Jacqueline because I want to elect change, especially for students with marginalized identities. As a woman of color, Jacqueline inherently understands the ways in which improvements to student life that cater to marginalized identities are instrumental in student performance and mental health.

According to the Tufts Observer, Tufts is losing at least 11 faculty of color at the end of this academic year, a tragic reminder of the lack of support for scholars of color

at our university. Jacqueline is eager to advocate for the hiring of underrepresented identities in higher education at Tufts.

Furthermore, she hopes to advance the academic environment for students of all identities through implementing cultural competency training for professors, focusing on confronting implicit biases.

No one deserves to feel uncomfortable or unwelcome in the classroom environment as they pursue their education, and Jacqueline wants to take extra steps to make this much less of a likelihood.

A vote for Jacqueline is a vote for academic opportunity. Her platform suggests policies that I wish were implemented during my time as a student. For example, Jacqueline wants to create a policy for re-scheduling exams, which currently does not exist. She recognizes that when a student is faced with three exams in a 24-hour period, that student does not feel positioned for academic success.

Additionally, Jacqueline hopes to make changes to the course evaluation process, giving students who dropped or withdrew from a course the opportunity to anonymously provide feedback as to why they chose not to continue the course and provide feedback for departments.

I believe these changes will enrich every Tufts student’s opportunities for academic achievement.

Lastly, Jacqueline supports the work of student organizers and leaders beyond Senate. Her willingness to form partnerships with student groups to advance their agendas and grant them visibility in their efforts to improve campus life is an act of humility in recognizing that Senate does not hold a monopoly on creating change at Tufts.

Through partnerships with student leaders, Senate can do a better job at supporting other student groups and centralize advocacy efforts. So as my final word to the Tufts student body, I would like to encourage you to elect a bold, brilliant and resilient woman of color with a proven track record of success as your next TCU Senate president. I’m hopeful that Tufts will be a much better place than I am leaving it because of her efforts and dedication to the student body and her insistence that the university allocates resources to its students so that we may all have opportunities to thrive, not just survive.

Amanda Borquaye is a senior majoring in international relations and sociology.

Amanda can be reached at amanda.borquaye@tufts.edu.

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Shreya Marathe is a junior majoring in political science. Shreya can be reached at shreya.h.marathe@gmail.com.

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Tuesday, April 24, 2018

Opinion

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Nesi Altaras Looking Out

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ll of a sudden, the rug is pulled out from underneath us. Turkey is once again headed to the ballot box in exactly two months.

Erdoğgan made the decision to call snap elections to get ahead of the strengthening center-right and worsening economy.

What is Turkey facing?

The usual numbers: Erdoğgan’s party in the mid-40s, the center-left at 23, the new and old nationalists struggling to split 20, and the pro-Kurdish left with ten percent of the vote.

The opposition is once again in disarray.

Without a vision or a presidential candidate, let alone a coherent strategy. Nothing has changed since the elections of 2014, 2015 and the 2017 referendum.

Will the nationalist Akşener get enough Kurds to go out and vote for her, granted she qualifies for the second round? Unlikely.

Will any center-left candidate, likely to qualify for the second round, beat Erdogğan in the second round? Even more unlikely.

Will Erdogğan lose the parliamentary majority? One can only hope without raising expectations.

Even if anyone were to win against him in earnest, will it be big enough to beat the rigging that will doubtlessly happen?

Unfortunately, that is not in the realm of possibility.

Even if Erdoğgan loses, he will win. The excitement of snap elections and campaign speeches obscures the truth of the June 24 election: it’s already been decided. We live in a sham democracy, certified “not free” by Freedom House.

Yet we vote anyway, only for our ballot to be shredded or go uncounted.

We must continue, while knowing the game is rigged, to vigorously contest every election.

Push forward in the face of ‘electoral irregularities.’ To say that we have not given up on democracy in Turkey, regardless of the state it is in today.

Because Turkey is not Russia or Egypt: Popular will can still manifest itself, however muffled by rigging. As a recent Washington Post article explained, “The ultimate outcome of the election is no less predetermined, but the costs of obvious, large-scale ballot rigging are much higher and a fabricated outcome like that in Egypt would be counterproductive in Turkey.”

This seems especially clear as 86 percent of voters in Turkey support “democratic values” to some extent.

Despite this, Eissenstat’s conclusion that the rigged election is simply a tool for Erdoğan’s continued rule is misplaced. If all opposition parties were organized and willing to call a general boycott of the election, that would be a powerful message. However, as the large parties commanding loyal electorates would never abandon electoral politics and take such a risk, the elections still matter.

Every citizen of Turkey should still vote. To attempt to deny Erdogğan the parliamentary majority, if not the presidency. Or simply to be counted as having said no to continued autocracy under the façade of democracy.

Nesi Altaras is a junior majoring in international relations and economics. Nesi can be reached at nesi.altaras@tufts.edu.

The Tufts Daily is a nonprofit, independent newspaper, published Monday through Friday during the academic year, and distributed free to the Tufts community.

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THE TUFTS DAILY | Opinion | Tuesday, April 24, 2018

CARTOON

What’s he doing?

BY MARIA FONG

tuftsdaily.com

Sports

Tuesday, April 24, 2018 | Sports | THE TUFTS DAILY

Pollack's 23 saves spur comeback victory

11

Sam Weidner Weidner's Words

The problem with max contracts

T EVAN SAYLES / THE TUFTS DAILY

Players warm up before the game against Middlebury on April 21.

MEN'S LACROSSE

continued from back remaining in the fourth, the Jumbos took over. Pollack stood on his head in net, recording eight of his career-high 23 saves during Tufts’ 10–0 run.

“As a whole, the offense has been starting slowly lately,” Connelly said.

“Luckily, our defense has been able to keep us in it. Adjusting a couple fundamentals at halftime and refocusing on what we want to do as an offense has helped us be able to get those runs.

Obviously, when the defense gets stops, it’s easier to make those runs.”

Seiter, Connelly and first-year midfielder Garrett Samuelson led the Jumbos’ second-half offensive explosion with two scores apiece. The visitors also received goals from junior attacker Danny Murphy, senior midfielder Holden Rosen Grupp, senior attacker Griffin Johnson and senior midfielder and co-captain Frank Hattler to open up a 13–7 advantage. Middlebury senior midfielder and co-captain Henry Riehl scored three straight in a late

rally attempt, but the damage was already too severe, as Tufts ultimately triumphed 13–10.

Despite the Panthers’ superiority in shots (55–31), the Jumbos converted more of their chances. Tufts’ team-based approach on offense was also clear from the stat line, scoring 10 of its 13 goals off assists, compared to Middlebury’s four assisted goals. Finally, the Jumbos converted all three of their chances with an extra man on the field after a penalty, while Middlebury took advantage of just one of its seven opportunities.

“Credit to Mason Pollack — he played like a stud,” Connelly said.

“He was able to weather their storm of shots. The defense was giving him shots that he could see. The defense gives us a chance to be in these games.

If we only get 31 shots [on offense], well, I’m happy we were able to can enough to get a win.”

The win improves the Jumbos’ overall record to 12–1, with an 8–1 mark in the NESCAC. Currently tied with

Amherst and Wesleyan atop the conference standings, Tufts will host Bowdoin (8–5, 4–5 NESCAC) on Wednesday in a regular-season finale with postseason implications.

“We’re continuing to try to play a full 60 minutes,” Seiter said of the matchup. “I don’t think we’ve played a full 60 minutes yet as a team, and we’re still working on that. We’re just focused on playing our brand of lacrosse.”

As the team heads into the winding moments of their regular season and beyond, they have one more chance to improve on their game and prepare for the NESCAC tournament. They feel confident that they can continue their impressive season.

“It’s been a fun season with these guys,” Connelly said. “We’ve got one game left.

Bowdoin beat us in the regular season last year, so we definitely want to finish the regular season and our NESCAC conference schedule strong. Moving forward, this game is big as far as the NESCAC tournament, so we want to keep up our pace with wins.”

Jumbos win 13 different events, set multiple PRs WOMEN'S TRACK AND FIELD

continued from back Kissel wasn’t the only record-breaker on Saturday, as a number of other Jumbos met or set personal-best marks in their respective events. In the other field events, juniors Kylene DeSmith and Sharon Kelmar matched or beat their personal records. DeSmith posted a careerhigh 10.57 meters in the triple jump, while Kelmar reached 3.10 meters in the pole vault. Kelmar’s mark matched her performance at last week’s Silfen Invitational, which tied her for fifth in program history.

Meanwhile on the track, Tierney won the 1,500 meters in a time of 4:46.20. Her time not only beat firstyear Jumbo Sara Mitchell, who finished second, by more than four seconds, but also improved on her previous best — set at the Tufts Quad Meet earlier this month — by over six seconds.

“This was the second race I’ve won this season and in college, and I think focusing on being competitive this year, rather than concentrating on times, has been really fun and helped me run faster,” Tierney said.

“The 1,500 isn’t my main event, but because it’s really harsh on our bodies to run an all-out 5k or 10k every weekend, we usually switch off doing an ‘off ’ event every other weekend. It has been fun to run the 1,500, focusing on mentality without any real pressure to get my time down, but it’s

also been nice to see my time drop this season.”

Gake also set a personal record in the 400-meter dash, finishing in 58.91 seconds. Sophomores Lauren Diaz and Ann Roberts also established new outdoor highs. Diaz finished the 800 meters in 2:18.40, while Roberts ran the 5,000 meters in 18:49.88. Meanwhile, senior co-captain Annalisa DeBari posted a mark of 14.75 seconds in the 100-meter hurdles to tie her career-best time. The Melrose, Mass. native’s time is tied for 12th across Div. III in the 2018 outdoor season.

Tufts was also successful in the relay events, recording two victories. The quartet of sophomore Raquel Whiting, DeBari, junior co-captain Brita Dawson and first-year Olivia Schwern took first place in the 4×100-meter relay with a time of 49.51 seconds.

Likewise, the foursome of first-year Sydney McKiernan, Gake, sophomore Nehalem Kunkle-Read and DeBari won the 4×400-meter relay in 4:00.30. The latter group’s time is currently 28th in the nation.

Overall, Gake was satisfied with her and her teammates’ results.

“It was really nice to PR in the 400,” she said. “In the [4×400 relay], we really wanted a better time to get in a better heat at NESCACs.” Tufts graduate Kelly Allen (LA ’13) also competed in the meet as part of a one-woman “Jumbo Alumni” team. Allen — whose personal-best

discus throw of 49.83 meters remains the school record and whose performance at the 2013 NCAA Div. III Outdoor National Championships included a second-place finish in discus — competed in three different events on Saturday. She won two of them: the discus (42.96 meters) and the hammer throw (45.86 meters).

The meet had a certain bittersweet flavor for 10 members of the Tufts team, for whom the Sunshine Classic was their final meet in Medford. Fortunately, the dectet of Jumbo seniors finished their careers at the Ellis Oval on the highest possible note. Tufts finished the meet with 373 points, more than the other six schools combined.

The team will compete in the NESCAC Championships at Trinity on Saturday. The women from Medford have won the event just once in 30 years, with the 2013 squad taking home the trophy. According to Tierney, this year’s team is primed for what comes next.

“I think our team is much more well prepared for NESCACs this year compared to last,” Tierney said. “For the first time since I have been at Tufts, we have different people in each distance event with potential to score. I think having a lot of different people doing well in different events, rather than relying on one or two people to get points, will help us to perform well as a team at NESCACs, in other postseason meets and next year.”

he NBA playoffs are in full swing, and the fans of the 16 teams still in the mix get to hope and pray that somehow this could be their year. For the rest of us fans from teams on the outside looking in, we get to read a million articles about mock drafts and NBA free agency and hope and pray that next year will be Paul Zipser’s breakout season.

While we are still a while out from this time, most NBA front offices are already looking at the list of potential free agents and keying in on their targets. Full-fledged stars like LeBron, Paul George and DeMarcus Cousins are headed for unrestricted free agency this offseason — assuming that LeBron and George choose to decline their player options — and all should be highly sought after. They will all garner large max-salary contracts. Another player likely to hit free agency this offseason will be Zach LaVine, who will be a restricted free agent with the Bulls this summer. There has also been talk that he could potentially garner a max contract, depending on what teams offer him and what, if any, offers the Bulls will match.

There seems to be a fundamental flaw in the salary system, when you have a situation where LeBron’s name is being mentioned in the same category as Zach LaVine’s. The value brought to a team by LeBron James is immensely higher than the value brought by LaVine. That is the biggest and most unavoidable problem that the NBA has run into with max contracts.

Harrison Barnes and Chandler Parsons should not be making an amount similar to Chris Paul and Anthony Davis. Carmelo Anthony and Andrew Wiggins should not be making an amount similar to James Harden or Russell Westbrook.

Since the league sets a salary cap, currently sitting at about $99 million, the max contract has created a problem where players of extremely different value are eating up the same amount of salary cap on their respective teams. This leaves the teams who don’t employ top stars at an immense disadvantage. They are either forced to commit too much of their cap to a lower-level star while sacrificing their capability to sign other good players for years to come, or they must choose to not sign that player at all and blow up a team they spent years building.

If the league instead chose to move to a system in which max contracts didn’t exist and players were instead paid solely based on their value, the competitiveness of the league would increase immediately.

“Superteams” like the current Warriors and LeBron’s Miami Heat teams would not exist. Team success would start to favor the teams that are well coached and have the best chemistry, rather than accumulating multiple stars on below-value max contracts.

Removing the max contract is the best way to ensure that the league maximizes parity and fan interest, and that every player earns their true value.

Sam Weidner is a sophomore majoring in mathematics. Sam can be reached at samuel.weidner@tufts.edu.

12 tuftsdaily.com

Sports

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

MEN'S LACROSSE

Jumbos score 10 unanswered goals to stun Panthers

EVAN SAYLES / THE TUFTS DAILY

Tufts attacker Ben Connelly, a junior, runs around the back of the net in the game against Middlebury on April 21.

by Ryan Eggers

Assistant Sports Editor

The No. 5 Tufts men’s lacrosse team continued its excellent 2018 campaign with another conference win on Saturday, defeating Middlebury (8–6, 4–5 NESCAC) on the road, 13–10. Like in their victory

over the Bates Bobcats earlier in the week, the Jumbos relied on an impressive comeback to triumph in Vermont.

The first quarter passed by with backand-forth action, as senior attacker Andrew Seiter put two shots in the back of the net for the visiting Jumbos. Despite the Panthers’ prolific offensive efforts,

firing 19 shots in the opening quarter compared to the Jumbos’ five, they only managed to score two goals. The NESCAC foes found themselves knotted at two after the first frame.

Middlebury’s offensive blitz cooled off a bit in the second quarter, though the hosts still managed to get off 13 shots. Tufts was

able to turn up the heat, though it still lagged behind with nine shots. However, the Panthers held the advantage in the statistic that matters most, scoring three goals to the Jumbos’ one in the quarter. Tufts junior attacker Ben Connelly, the team’s leading scorer with 36 goals, was able to sneak a shot past Middlebury junior goalie Charles Midgley with 3:36 left in the half, yet that was all the visitors could muster. Meanwhile, the Panthers put three shots past sophomore goalie Mason Pollack, with the third putting the hosts up 5–3 with less than a minute left.

After mounting a first-half comeback against Bates to tie the score at 10 by halftime, Tufts was forced to overcome its deficit in the second half on Saturday. A pair of Middlebury goals in the opening minutes of the third quarter, which extended its lead to 7–3, didn’t help the team’s chances. It was familiar territory for the Jumbos, however, who faced an 8–4 deficit against the Bobcats earlier in the week.

“There are times where we try to do a little bit too much,” Seiter said of the laggard start. “That generally results in us not getting great looks on offense. What really allows us to make runs is when we keep things simple.”

Tufts’ response against Bates was to score eight unanswered goals to take the lead and the game. The group’s a nswer against Middlebury? Ten unanswered goals.

From the 11:38 mark of the third quarter until there were less than eight minutes see MEN'S LACROSSE, page 11

WOMEN'S TRACK AND FIELD

Tufts outshines competition at last meet before NESCACs

by Sam Weitzman Sports Editor

Under an appropriately bright blue sky, the Tufts women’s track and field team took first place at the third annual Tufts Sunshine Classic on Saturday. The Jumbos won 13 events on Clarence “Ding” Dussault Track in their final tuneup before this weekend’s NESCAC Championships.

Junior Kelsey Tierney explained that the warmer weather was a boon for the team.

“The perfect weather was really key for a lot of people focused on improving their times and marks,” Tierney told the Daily in an email. “Everyone on the team knows I’m the biggest wimp when it comes to the cold, so I really appreciated the conditions this weekend. The warmer weather definitely helps everyone get properly warmed up.”

Sophomore Julia Gake concurred on the value of favorable conditions.

“It’s really nice to have heat [and] to have warmer weather so that everybody’s loose and ready to go,” Gake said.

The Jumbos’ most notable performance came in the javelin competition, as sophomore Julia Kissel’s 39.81-meter heave surpassed her own school record of 39.64 meters. For context, no other Tufts athlete in history has thrown a javelin more than 38.04 meters. Now, Kissel has done it twice in her first two years in Medford.

Her program-best distance currently ranks 25th in the country.

MADELEINE OLIVER / TUFTS TRACK AND FIELD

First-year Emma Dzwierzynski and senior Danielle Skufca compete in the steeplechase at the Sunshine Classic on April 21.

Kissel related how she managed to overcome less-than-favorable wind conditions to win the event.

“A headwind can slow down the javelin significantly, while a tailwind can push it a few extra feet,” Kissel told the Daily in an email. “There was a bit [of] a headwind

Saturday, which is always nerve-racking, but the secret is to throw the javelin at the perfect angle so that it cuts through the wind currents and minimizes its air resistance.”

Kissel explained that another key to her success was maintaining mental acuity and focus.

“It’s really hard to get yourself into a headspace where you’re not trying to read into every movement and possible mistake,” Kissel said. “[But] when I was throwing then, my mind felt completely clear, and I was calm.” see WOMEN'S TRACK AND FIELD, page 11