The Tufts Daily - Thursday, April 25, 2019

WOMEN’S LACROSSE

New group supports women in international relations see FEATURES / PAGE 3

Jumbos bounce back in overtime after 1st loss of season

Women’s tennis wins 2 home games in a row see SPORTS / BACK PAGE

SEE SPORTS / BACK PAGE

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T HE T UFTS DAILY

VOLUME LXXVII, ISSUE 58

Thursday, April 25, 2019

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Dean of Admissions Karen Richardson announces departure from Tufts

by Austin Clementi News Editor

Karen Richardson, the dean of Admissions since 2016, will leave Tufts to pursue a career as dean of Admission at Princeton University, her alma mater, according to an announcement on Princeton’s website.

Richardson has worked at Princeton before as the assistant dean of Undergraduate Admission from 2002 to 2004, according to the website. The website also states that Richardson focused her time at Princeton on diversity recruitment.

She came to Tufts in 2008 as the director of Diversity Recruitment and moved on to become the director of Graduate Admissions in 2014, according to TuftsNow. Richardson first came to Tufts after working in the Boston Public Schools, saying that she enjoyed working with Tufts’ Admissions team. Richardson said she appreciated how Tufts thought about admitting students and building a community.

Richardson, who said she is among the first generation in her family to go to college, has worked in education for a number of years, including for Jumpstart and Boston Public Schools. She emphasized how her experience as a first-generation student informed her career.

“Access to education was something that was important to my parents, and they instilled that in us. And I realized that college [was] a transformational experience for me,” she said. “The opportunities that were given to me [in college] … lent [themselves] to the work I decided to do after I got out of college.”

Richardson said her experience in college and her later career paths led her to her becoming passionate about access to education.

“I think it is important to [expose] students to opportunities that they might not know they had,” she said.

Speaking about her career before Tufts, Richardson highlighted her experience as deputy superintendent of family and community engagement for Boston Public Schools. Richardson worked with families throughout the school district to encourage involvement with school councils and parent councils.

“That was an important role for me in that we were trying to encourage more family involvement in the schools,” she said.

“I think it’s been very helpful in a career in Admissions, because applying to college and going to college is not just about the individual student; it’s about the family making the decision.”

According to TuftsNow, Richardson developed the Voices of Tufts Diversity Experiences program as director of Diversity Recruitment.

“We wanted the program to be … more academically focused and to be not just a program but an experience where students could get an opportunity to really see if there could be a fit at the university for them,” Richardson said.

In particular, Richardson noted that small groups that are part of Voices allow admissions counselors to meet students, and students who may not have the opportunity to participate in alumni interviews can make an impression on admissions officers.

Richardson applauded that her office has expanded recruitment capabilities during

DOGACAN COLAK / THE TUFTS DAILY

Karen Richardson, dean of Admissions, poses for a portrait in Bendetson Hall on April 4. her time at Tufts, becoming a QuestBridge partner school and attending different fairs in locations where students might not know about Tufts.

“One of the important pieces at Tufts … is that recruitment of all students is the responsibility of everyone in our office, because diversity means a lot of different things,” Richardson said. “It’s not just racial and ethnic diversity … it’s also socioeconomic diversity and geographic diversity.”

However, Richardson admitted that Tufts does not always succeed in recruiting students from different socioeconomic backgrounds.

“I’m proud of the fact that we’re a school that meets 100% of demonstrated need … but we are one of the most selective schools that are need-aware,” Richardson said.

She added that Tufts first reads applications on a need-blind basis, but the final

see RICHARDSON, page 2

Tufts to offer Native American and Indigenous Studies minor in fall 2019

by Abbie Gruskin News Editor

Tufts faculty voted in favor of the creation of a Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) minor, to be offered next fall within the Consortium of Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora (RCD), at a meeting last Wednesday, according to a press release provided to the Daily provided by Parker Breza, a student central to creating the minor.

The vote comes after three years of planning and organization by students and faculty, Associate Professor of Anthropology

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and Director of Colonialism Studies Amahl Bishara told the Daily in an email.

The press release credited a student movement for spearheading the initiative for a NAIS minor at Tufts after the name change from Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day in fall 2017.

Students petitioned for the minor during the 2017–2018 academic year with a survey to measure student interest, which showed that 244 students would take a class in NAIS, and 73 would pursue a minor in NAIS if given the opportunity, according to the press release.

A separate petition supporting the initiative circulated in November 2018 was signed by For breaking news, our content archive and exclusive content, visit tuftsdaily.com @tuftsdaily

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30 student groups, demonstrating continued student interest in NAIS courses, according to the press release.

This persistent push for a NAIS minor on campus confirms the passion of both faculty and students for the program, according to Darren Lone Fight, lecturer in RCD and a member of the Three Affiliated Tribes.

“The demand for a NAIS minor has paralleled and been part of a larger awareness campaign that included recognition of Indigenous Peoples Day at Tufts in 2016,” Lone Fight wrote in an email to the Daily.

“While there has been faculty support, this demand has been largely a student-led and stu-

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dent-run initiative. The effort and energy discussing, advocating, and planning the minor has indeed been shared across students and faculty over many years,” he said.

The RCD compiled appropriate courses already offered on campus and looked to other universities for guidance in crafting the curriculum for the new minor, according to Lone Fight.

“Beyond looking at the structure of the NAIS minor across disciplinary formations, we also looked to other national programs and peer institutions offering NAIS programming as a

NEWS............................................1 FEATURES.................................3 ARTS & LIVING.......................4

see NAIS, page 2

FUN & GAMES.........................5 OPINION.....................................6 SPORTS............................ BACK

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THE TUFTS DAILY | News | Thursday, April 25, 2019

THE TUFTS DAILY Elie Levine Editor in Chief

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New minor to facilitate connections between indigenous community, university NAIS

continued from page 1 way to calibrate and compare our own proposed structure,” he said.

Students interested in pursuing the new minor must complete five courses: one focused on methods and theory, one with a regional focus in the Indigenous Americas, one course on global indigeneity or settler colonialism, one related course with a focus on NAIS or colonialism and one capstone project, together making up a minimum of 15 semester hour units, according to the bulletin description provided

by Bishara.

Anne Hall, a senior studying biology and interdisciplinary studies of culture, spirituality and female adolescent health, said in the press release that the minor will provide a sense of community for interested students and faculty on campus.

“As a Southeast Asian Indigenous woman committed to addressing health disparities among Native communities, I would’ve greatly appreciated the opportunity to pursue a NAIS minor,” Hall said.

“More than an academic program, this minor provides an invaluable experience for students to not only learn about Indigenous epistemologies, knowledges, and worldviews but also be in meaningful community with faculty and fellow students,” she added.

The new NAIS minor will also facilitate and encourage dialogue between the Tufts community and Indigenous communities in an attempt to forge lasting relationships, according to Lone Fight.

“I am particularly happy with the emphasis on working with regional Indigenous communities and organizations as a formal part of the minor programming,” he said.

“I think this will begin to establish and sustain meaningful [relationships] between Tufts and the Indigenous communities in the area.”

MEREDITH LONG / THE TUFTS DAILY

The main office for the Consortium of Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora in the Eaton Hall basement is pictured on Oct. 29, 2018.

The new minor will provide an interdisciplinary lens through which to view American history, focusing on often overlooked populations, Lone Fight wrote.

“Native American and Indigenous Studies programs are a crucial foundational approach for the critical study of the Americas and American history and culture,” Lone Fight said.

Lone Fight explained that the new minor provides institutional support for students who are interested in Indigenous studies.

“In addition, providing an institutional anchor for studies of tribal sovereignty, cultural resistance, and Indigenous community allows for a NAIS minor to provide reinforcement for those tracks of study within the RCD and beyond already seeking to diversify their program content,” Lone Fight said.

According to Bishara, the perspectives on American history and culture within the minor are intended to spark activism and community engagement beyond the NAIS minor itself.

“I hope it will spur stronger scholarly and activist connections between local Native American communities and organizations and

Tufts University,” she said. “Critical [Indigenous] studies is one of the most fertile intellectual spaces today for envisioning and historicizing other ways of doing politics — and that is a truly urgent project today.”

Bishara hopes that the new minor will attract a range of students interested in Native American history, politics and culture who want to take a critical look at settler-colonial countries.

Kris Manjapra, an associate professor of history and inaugural chair of the future Department of RCD, says the new minor has been long awaited at Tufts.

“Native American and Indigenous Studies is a well-established scholarly field at universities, especially in settler-colonial countries such as the USA, Canada, Australia, and others,” he said in an email.

Manjapra emphasized that the creation of the NAIS minor is long overdue.

“We are so pleased that collaboration between faculty members and large groups of students demanding curricular transformation has finally addressed this need at our university,” Manjapra added.

Richardson leaves behind legacy of diversity recruitment RICHARDSON

continued from page 1 decisions in shaping a class are need-aware.

Richardson explained that Tufts is not needblind due to a lack of money put into financial aid.

“We don’t have a need-blind policy because, honestly, need-blind policies require a lot of money,” she said.

She went on to note the financial difficulties that similar schools which are need-blind face.

“Tufts has not wanted to … be that place, because you see so many schools that are need-blind, and then they have to pull back because they don’t have the funding.”

According to Richardson, prior to her appointment as director of Graduate Admissions in 2014, Tufts did not have an office that dealt specifically with admitting graduate students.

“Basically, we redid a totally different application, and we made the application processing more efficient. So we standardized a lot of things across the departments [and] made the turnaround time a lot quicker from application to decision-making to the applicant finding out,” she said.

Richardson also noted that she and her team participated in recruitment programs for Tufts’ graduate schools at other colleges.

Becoming dean of Undergraduate Admissions was a welcome change for Richardson, although she said she did enjoy directing Graduate Admissions.

“I missed the culture of Undergraduate Admissions — the fact that, in Undergraduate Admissions, you interact with students and families and college counselors,” Richardson said. “I think it took me back to this idea [of]

access to education and the fact that I believe in the power of education and the power of this college admissions process.”

Richardson explained that she enjoyed how transparent Tufts is to parents and students with regard to the university’s application process, highlighting programs such as admissions panels, where students can participate.

Richardson also expressed appreciation for her team — a third of whom, she says, are Tufts alumni.

“I think one of the things I like most about the Admissions team is that everyone works hard and everyone is always willing to pitch in,” she said. “I feel like our staff embodies what Tufts hopes the student body will be like — collaborative, engaged, wicked smart [and] never arrogant.”

Remarking on specific people who were important to her, Richardson said Susan Ardizzoni, director of Undergraduate Admissions, provided her with the professional knowledge of Tufts needed to be a good partner.

According to Richardson, Tufts acquired the School for the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) as one of its schools on the first day of her job as dean of Undergraduate Admissions. She expressed gratitude for the SMFA admissions team, saying that, although changes to their reading process have been challenging, the two campuses are working together.

Richardson noted that the accepted Class of 2023 is the most racially diverse in Tufts’ history.

In an email to the Daily, Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences James Glaser celebrated Richardson’s achievements during her time at Tufts.

“Karen has been instrumental in enhancing our admissions processes, building and

leading an accomplished team of admissions professionals, integrating the SMFA at Tufts into the recruitment plan, and — very importantly — increasing diversity at Tufts,” Glaser said.

Jianmin Qu, dean of the School of Engineering, echoed Glaser’s sentiments, noting in particular the increased enrollment of women in the School of Engineering.

“Karen has had a substantial impact on Tufts and has overseen some truly remarkable accomplishments, such as attracting a record number of applications and enrolling first-year engineering classes recently that are near gender parity,” he said.

Richardson said she looks forward to her new position at Princeton.

“It’s not great timing, honestly, [but] the opportunity at Princeton was one I could not pass up,” Richardson said.

According to Richardson, her work-study job at Princeton was in their Admission department.

Richardson emphasized that she appreciated the opportunity to give back to her alma mater and give students access to education at a prestigious university.

“The fact that it was offered to me, I’m humbled and thrilled to be able to take this on as my next adventure,” she said.

Glaser added in the email that he expects to find a new dean by the beginning of the next school year.

“The search process is already underway for a replacement. We’ve secured a search firm to assist us and are putting together a broad-based search committee that will include staff, faculty, alumni and an undergraduate student,” he said.

Thursday, April 25, 2019

Features

Women in international relations discuss experience, share advice

by Amelia Becker

Assistant Features Editor

In recent years, women have gained a more prominent role in international relations (IR). While gender disparities have been known to exist within the field, the extent of such disparities varies within different IR concentrations. Meg Guliford, a doctoral candidate at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, mentioned that, while women may now be better represented in certain sectors of IR, women are still the minority across the board. “[I’m] not saying it’s great, and there’s room for improvement, but the attention that women receive now as both practitioners and scholars has increased [to] where the idea that we will not have all male panels [is more common],” Guliford said.

When Eileen Babbitt, professor at The Fletcher School, started working in IR, there were very few women. During a seminar for a dissertation fellowship she received from the MacArthur Foundation, Babbitt was the only woman present.

Babbitt spoke further to her early experiences as a woman in IR. “I had to learn to speak up, and it was not easy to do,” Babbitt said.

Yet Babbitt feels the balances are shifting, with more women going into this kind of work.

“I think it’s much better now for women.

First of all, our numbers in this field are much greater, so you can actually find … mentors who are women,” Babbitt said.

Along with finding mentors, women have more opportunities now. Babbitt highlighted Foreign Policy Interrupted, an organization dedicated to publishing articles by women scholars in IR, and the International Studies Association, an international network of scholars which provided a whole day of networking for women before the conference.

Tufts undergraduates have noticed these gender imbalances as well. Senior Eva Kahan saw the gender disparity playing out while working at the Pentagon through a fellowship. Kahan oftentimes stood as the only woman in the room during her time in the nation’s capital and, even at Tufts, Kahan has seen these gendered differences.

Case in point: She found herself as the only woman in a Middle East to World War I history recitation.

Despite these experiences, Kahan values the strong community here at Tufts. “[It has] helped me develop a set of skills and a set of ways of talking about gender that help me navigate this … weird, biased space,” Kahan Said.

Kelly Greenhill, associate professor and director of the IR program at Tufts, spoke about her view on being a woman in IR in an email to the Daily.

“I don’t think of myself as a woman in IR, but rather as a person in IR. So, for instance, if asked, as I occasionally am, what the woman’s perspective is on a particular issue, I always answer that I cannot and would not venture to speak for women.

Rather I can only speak for myself, about my own views and my own knowledge,” Greenhill said.

Sophomore Haruka Noishiki observed gender dynamics during Education for Public Inquiry and International Citizenship (EPIIC), an Experimental College class run by the Institute for Global

Leadership that covers a different topic in IR each year. Prompted partially by these experiences, Noishiki has been part of a group of students who started the Women in IR (WIIR) student group at Tufts.

“The general idea of Women in IR is to create a space for … undergraduate students interested in working in or studying IR … [and] building a space where students can find other women who are interested in related fields,” Noishiki said.

The group organized a speaker panel, complete with brunch and networking opportunities, as its first event. Three Ph.D. students from The Fletcher School, each with a different area of expertise, shared their experience as women in IR. Noishiki reported a positive response from attendees.

“A lot of the people there were really supportive of starting a group like this on campus and having events catered towards understanding how women can build careers in IR, but the event was open to anyone who was interested,” Noishiki said.

When asked about goals for WIIR, Noishiki hoped the group would remain accessible to all, as well as eventually becoming a Tufts Community Unionrecognized club.

“I hope that it stays an open group that’s welcoming to women of different backgrounds and also [women] with different goals who are interested in IR as an academic field or IR as career path, because I think those things can mean different things,” Noishiki said. “I think my biggest goal for this group in the long run is for people to be able to build connections that last beyond Tufts and that are actually fruitful.”

Kahan, who has been heavily involved in the Tufts IR community, feels the environment here at Tufts has had a positive impact on her experience studying IR. “I felt really lucky because at Tufts I feel like I was exposed to a lot of different international communities and international opportunities,” Kahan said.

In Alliance Linking Leaders in Education and the Services (ALLIES), Kahan noticed a significant gender bias, particularly in the area of security. At Tufts, ALLIES has worked to provide a space for women working in security to talk to and support each other.

Through ALLIES, Kahan has hosted a variety of extracurricular events to discuss what it means to be a woman in IR. This included a workshop on elevator pitches and a long conversation about mental health. Kahan wants to provide underclassmen with the support that empowered her when she first started out in the field.

“A lot of what I’ve done, and a lot of what I’m excited to keep doing as I move on out of Tufts, is just working [one-on-one] with other women and figuring out where they’re at and how I can help them,” Kahan said.

Student groups like ALLIES and WIIR are working to foster a space on campus for students interested in IR. Greenhill also shared her advice for those who are just entering the field of IR. “You’ll produce better, far more interesting work if you study things about which you are passionate and care deeply … Go where your interests lead you, rather than [try] to game the system, follow fads or fit yourself into someone else’s model of what you ‘should’ study,” Greenhill said.

Guliford advised students not to be discouraged by Introduction to International Relations (PS 61). She said the class provides students with a broad swath of what

IR is; each professor who teaches the course often has a slightly different focus, allowing students to take any direction within IR moving forward.

“Find the thing along the way in [PS 61] that you’re like, ‘I want to know more about that,’ and take your next class in that,” Guliford said.

She went on to emphasize the importance of having tangible skills. For Guliford, this means learning how to code, even if just at a base level.

“It’s becoming increasingly important to understand how to be both a good consumer of quantitative analysis as well as, in some cases, [a producer] … of it yourself,” Guliford said.

Specific skills such as coding, Geographic Information Systems and econometrics set Tufts students apart once they graduate, Guliford added. Babbitt echoed Guliford’s point about having skills and experience. Demonstrating proficiency in a second language stood out as a particularly crucial skill for Babbitt, with a corresponding experience being time spent in another country, whether through travel, internships or study abroad.

Kahan spoke about the importance of reaching out to people. As a first-year, she didn’t realize how willing to help people in the same position or field would be.

“Not just women, but [for] pretty much everyone whose office you can go to here [or] at think tanks, at other universities, at organizations or companies that work in your desired field, if you can go to them and say, ‘I’m interested in what you do and want to do it as well or better,’ they’re often really excited to see someone who actually cares,” Kahan said.

Finding allies and mentors in this field is something Babbitt believes to be essential.

Tufts is a great place for this because the people ahead open doors for those who come after them.

“This is where mentorship is really important, because people can call someone to help you get an internship or suggest a topic that you might not have thought about or a whole set of readings that hadn’t occurred to you. That itself starts to open doors that continue to follow you throughout your career,” Babbitt said.

Guliford was adamant about her last piece of advice.

“Never in an academic capacity, in a professional capacity, or often in a personal capacity, preface [a question] with ‘This might be a dumb question,’” Guliford said.

Guliford has had many students in her classes ask her questions individually that they had not asked in the class which may have sparked further discussion. This happens particularly with the women in the classes she has taught or TA’d for. She believes that this deprives “classmates of seeing you in your most excellent state.”

“You’ve still got to step up. You’ve got to practice courage at low levels when the cost is so low. For you to raise your hand and ask a question, the cost is so low,” Guliford said.

Just because women are there, it doesn’t mean they’re automatically included in the conversation.

“People aren’t going to wait on you, and they’re going to stop looking for you if you don’t step up. If there’s a space open, you have to step in it because, much like power vacuums in the world, somebody will get it. Vacuums don’t remain vacuums for long,” Guliford said.

3 tuftsdaily.com

Douglas Berger Ripple Effect

How many languages are there?

N

obody knows exactly how many languages there are, and we probably never will. The best we can do is estimate. Most counts put the number somewhere between 6,500 and 7,000.

It’s a bit like trying to measure a coastline — another task which seems simple at first but is in fact quite complicated. Coasts are not straight lines. They have bays and inlets and peninsulas and river deltas. The more one tries to measure the shore accurately — quantifying every divot, curve, rock or grain of sand — the longer the measurement becomes, all the way up to infinity. So, we have to estimate.

Languages are like this, too. The more we try to quantify their exact boundaries, the more our tools for making these measurements break down. Part of the difficulty is that linguists have no consensus on what makes a language distinct. When is a way of talking a language and not a dialect? The most famous answer to this question is that of Yiddish scholar Max Weinreich: “A language is a dialect with an army and navy.”

It’s not very scientific, but it is accurate. The distinction between a language and a dialect is inherently arbitrary. The distinction between different languages, even, is often arbitrary.

The way languages are classified is an expression of political power.

Take, for example, African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) in the United States. AAVE is often mischaracterized as bad grammar, when it actually follows its own unique rules and stems from a cultural tradition just a rich as that which spawned today’s “standard” English. AAVE’s characterization as, at best, a dialect, and at worst, uneducated speech is an expression of the dominant group’s power.

Looking abroad, the line between language and dialect breaks down further. In northern India, many local languages are classified in the census under Hindi. Some, like Bhojpuri, are linguistically distinct. Take the phrase “What is your name?” In Hindi it’s tumhara naam kyaa hai, while in Bhojpuri it would be tohar naav kaa ha. They are different, but not so different that one could draw a clear boundary between them. They are mutually intelligible, after all.

Yet in other political contexts, mutually intelligible languages are considered distinct.

Norwegian, Swedish and Danish are so similar that speakers of one can converse comfortably with speakers of the others. You could call them dialects, then, but dialects of what? They are not necessarily separate languages, but they do belong to separate nation-states — hence the classification.

The way we think about such national languages is quite new. Just a few centuries ago, French was just one of many local languages spoken across a language continuum. At the time of the Revolution, only a small minority actually spoke French. It was only in the construction of republican national identity that the language became universal.

Language resists classification. It’s too ambiguous. When we classify the ambiguous, we are attempting to exert power over it. Perhaps we would be better off accepting ambiguity, rather than suppressing it — acknowledging that the lines we draw between us are nothing more than that. They are neither natural nor permanent.

Douglas is a senior studying international relations. Douglas can be reached at douglas.berger@tufts.edu.

4 Thursday, April 25, 2019

Arts & Living

tuftsdaily.com

‘Rilakkuma and Kaoru’ is ‘beary’ delightful

VIA NETFLIX

A promotional image for ‘Rilakkuma and Kaoru’ (2019) is pictured.

by Yas Salon

Assistant Arts Editor

Last Friday, Netflix dropped yet another original series, “Rilakkuma and Kaoru.”

However, this one bears little resemblance some of the streaming service’s other original programs. The show, created by Japanese stationery company San-X, is a delightfully whimsical program centered around the company’s much beloved character Rilakkuma. The bear, who has long been featured on cutesy backpacks, stationery

and appeared in stuffed animal form, finally made his TV debut.

The show’s premise is a somewhat strange one. At the center of the show is the well-meaning but incredibly awkward Kaoru, a human woman living in an apartment in Japan. Living alongside her is the giant, anthropomorphic bear Rilakkuma, a smaller, equally adorable bear named Korilakkuma and a chick named Kiirotori, who has a penchant for dusting.

This premise raises a few questions. Are the bears pets, roommate or friends? They can’t talk, but can communicate through,

well, bear noises. Also, where did they come from? Are the bears dangerous and wild? One episode shows that bears in the show’s universe live at the zoo, so are these a different, more human-like type of bear? The show’s answers to all these questions are, essentially, “Don’t worry about it.”

The show also treks even further into the bizarre and occasionally even absurd. In the fifth episode, the ghost of a spiteful teenage girl with a hatred of bears appears in the apartment, and it’s just accepted. However, the fantastic animation style and inherent strangeness of the girl’s presence gives the show leeway for such plot lines, and they don’t shake the diegesis of the world in the slightest.

Like the characters in the show when the ghost appeared, the audience just accepts it.

On the topic of the animation style, it’s worth mentioning that one of the strongest features of the show is its character design.

Rilakkuma, Korilakkuma, Kiirotori and all the other animals in the show’s universe, are, for lack of better explanation, shaped like friends. The two bear characters are shaped like teddy bears, evoking childhood nostalgia. Their plumpness gives them a childlike cuteness, and the felt-like material that the character figurines are crafted out of make the viewer feel like you can reach into the screen and hug their soft fur. The sets are equally impressive — the amount of effort put into small details, like the individual petals of cherry blossom trees, are astounding, especially when one takes into account that

the stop-motion style requires an extreme degree of attention.

Narratively, the show doesn’t go for elaborate story arcs or shocking plot twists — the show is focused on more simple, feel-good content. Each episode is a 10-minute vignette about the daily trials and tribulations of managing a full-time job and satisfying the needs of two childlike bears and a chicken. Every episode, Kaoru goes through some sort of existential crisis, but the show negotiates the crises in simplistic ways. For example, Kaoru’s inability to pick between edamame and takoyaki is a thinly veiled metaphor for her feeling unable to make bigger choices in life, and her sense of aimlessness. Each episode ends with a written-out message summarizing the moral of the episode; the final shot of the aforementioned edamame-vs.-takoyaki episode is the sentence “THEY ARE ALL DELICIOUS,” inscribed in Japanese on a shaved ice stand.

While this may setup may be less actionpacked or intricate than “Game of Thrones” (2011–) or “Black Mirror” (2011–), it has a unique worth in its pure wholesomeness. It is happiness and coziness boiled down into a show, and it’s almost impossible not to feel warm and fuzzy watching it. The shortness of the episodes (each clocks in between 11 and 14 minutes) makes the show a perfect study break for the upcoming finals season. When you need a breather from the mountain of papers and exams you have coming up, all you need to do is pull up Netflix and just sit back, relax and enjoy the cuteness.

‘High Life’ serves eerie chills, asks higher questions

by Tommy Gillespie Arts Editor

Discord reigns in Claire Denis’ “High Life” (2018), an intergalactic psycho-thriller starring Robert Pattinson. An infant’s wails pierce the dim halls of a space station, above the industrious hum of life support systems. Childhood memories flicker across the screen and pass in the space of an exhale. Stuart A. Staples’ dread-inducing score creeps upward.

The squeamishness induced by Denis’ first English-language project have earned it its scifi/horror labels, and “High Life” uses them to ask incisive questions about the messy ethics of human progress. What’s really earned this film labels of “fascinating, disturbing, sensual, hypnotic and provocative all at the same time,” however, is Denis’ retention of that classic wideeyed wonder at the enormity of space. “High Life” never lets us forget that Pattinson and Co. truly will go where no man has gone before, even if Juliette Binoche collects their sperm along the way.

Since its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, “High Life” has delighted many critics but divided audiences with its futuristic, gothic vision of outer space. Rolled out across the U.S. this month, the film unfurls itself in nonlinear fits and starts. It introduces us to Pattinson’s Monte and infant Willow (Scarlette Lindsey), ostensibly the only survivors onboard a spacecraft.

Monte’s assumed the role of Space Dad, but it’s a harrowing one — when Willow cries too vociferously into an improvised baby monitor, Monte, masterfully captured by cinematographer Yorick le Saux, drops his repair wrench as he’s conducting repairs outside the craft, only able to linger as it drifts into nothingness.

Longtime co-writers Denis and Jean-Pol Fargeau are patient in revealing the purpose and identity of these wanderers. Gradually, though, as we trod with Monte through the lonely monotony of his existence, we meet the

people behind the bodies he dumps to save weight in a sobering opening sequence. Monte and his doomed crew-mates, we learn, were death-row inmates on Earth, offered their freedom to go on a suicide mission to the center of a black hole. Even that, however, has a catch, and the astro-prisoners soon find themselves baited with drugs and experimented upon by the cultish Dr. Dibs (Juliette Binoche).

That title shot, fixated on their bodies falling through the void, makes one thing immediately clear: This is not the sleek, metallic space of “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968), nor is it the cyberpunk underbelly of “Blade Runner” (1982). “High Life” production designer François-Renaud Labarthe confines us to the utilitarian, office-park banality of the spaceship, only identified by a stark number seven emblazoned on the exterior. This windowless picture of space, steeped in a darkly pedestrian sense of corporate chintz, recalls the oft-forgotten capitalism of classics like “Alien” (1979). This future is driven by cutting costs and maximizing profit; it sends its astronauts in crafts that resemble shipping containers, not swashbuckling star cruisers.

And, like “Alien,” “High Life” gives us a world whose forward march of progress often supersedes human lives in the pecking order. As Monte and his fellow inmates soar toward their final destination, their bodies and cells become prized scientific commodities, subject to medical and psychosexual experiments. Binoche’s spectral performance as the brilliant, sadistic, broken doctor is transfixing; the austere script affords her deference that she uses to shine, with an utterly spent serenity.

“High Life” does reveal some narrative elements rather clumsily, and some of its characters are as empty as the space they travel in.

But when we see the phantasmagorically-shot Binoche writhe around the frame in an almost religious euphoria, it is hard to fault this film for truly swinging for the fences. That’s what earns “High Life” descriptors like ‘orgasmic brilliance.’

VIA IMBD

A promotional poster for Claire Denis’ ‘High Life’ (2018) is pictured.

Denis’ brazen film is not afraid to explore the intense seductiveness of the knowledge its humanity seeks, the truth for which they deem these inmates expendable. The film shares in its characters’ awe as they watch stars recede from

view, as they hurtle toward them faster than the speed of light. It ventures to the farthest unknown and then decides to go still further.

It is bold enough to stare into the light and ask how far we’d go to get there.

Thursday, April 25, 2019 | FUN & GAMES | THE TUFTS DAILY

tuftsdaily.com

F &G FUN & GAMES

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Opinion

Ria Mazumdar Peripheries

The phenomenon of ‘crisis philanthropy’

T

he wealthy donor community has come together in the wake of the destructive fire that wrecked the Notre Dame cathedral last week. Three of France’s richest families vowed to donate over $500 million. The CEOs of fashion giants, oil companies and banks have pledged equally impressive sums of money toward the rebuilding effort. The reaction on social media was mixed. Amid the outpouring of grief and slew of photos by students who visited the cathedral while studying abroad was a resounding critique, one that has been leveled after many other recent tragedies that have occurred in the West: Why do we react so strongly to sudden crises in the West while normalizing similar crises and structural problems in the rest of the world? Why don’t the same billionaires getting down on their knees to help with the Notre Dame reconstruction efforts also give massive donations in the name of combating structural poverty, or helping disaster relief in the Global South?

First, it’s important to acknowledge that crisis mobilizes us to act. Notre Dame’s senior fundraising adviser expressed frustration that the donations were just coming now. Global media attention is often needed to alert us to problems in the first place. The role of publicity has not been all bad, though. Indeed, the Notre Dame fire actually drew attention to the underfunded historically black churches in the South, which had raised less than 100,000 before international attention caused them to surpass $2 million. The crisis in France drew attention to a parallel crisis in the American south, informing previously unaware citizens that their fundraising dollars were needed to support the churches in Louisiana, arguably more urgently. However, this seems to be an anomaly. Too often, we mourn the lives lost in terrorist attacks on Western soil while the deaths wreaked by militant groups in Syria and Afghanistan barely make headlines.

Perhaps violence is more frequent in certain parts of the world. However, that certainly does not mean that we should consider it more ‘normal.’ We have relaxed our outrage and reserved our moral condemnation for tragedies that affect parts of the world we deem to be ‘civilized,’ ‘peaceful’ and ‘liberal.’

This is both problematic and misplaced: As populism and xenophobia sweep the globe, no one is immune to emerging threats, even Western liberal democracies.

Peter Singer famously argued that, although we intuitively feel the impulse to help a child drowning before our eyes and do nothing for one starving thousands of miles away, we have an equivalent moral obligation to both because distance is not morally relevant. Certainly, we are hardwired to care more for those who are close to us and similar to us. Systematically caring for poor families on the other side of the world may be an extreme demand; however, that does not mean we should normalize large-scale injustices with such selectivity. Our capacity to react to the Notre Dame fire shows that we are capable of caring for those who live oceans away from us. Our task is to broaden the reach of our compassion to include all of humanity, not just those with light skin who reside in the West.

Ria Mazumdar is a senior studying quantitative economics and international relations. Ria can be reached at ria.mazumdar@tufts.edu.

Thursday, April 25, 2019

OP-ED

Phil Miller for TCU President

by Lexi Walker I was catching up with Phil Miller earlier this year when I asked how things were going at the University of Oxford. He told me that parties are called “bops” at Oxford; I laughed out loud, and insisted that he bring them back to Tufts. He also mentioned that he had been elected to represent Pembroke College, the college where he was studying at Oxford, in the greater Oxford Student Senate. Part of me was amazed at how easily he integrated into his new community, but another part of me wasn’t surprised at all — from high school, to Tufts and now to Oxford, Phil always finds a way to connect with whatever community he is a part of, and works as hard as he can to make it a better place.

I met Phil my first day on campus — I was lucky to live down the hall from him in Hill Hall — and I remember his infectious warmth from my first interactions with him. Throughout the start of our first semester he always seemed to be making our floor laugh — helping us all to forget the nervousness and homesickness that comes with being in a completely new place. Even as the inevitable drift began in our first-year friend group, which once took

up two long Carm tables pushed together, Phil never lost touch with us. He makes an effort to keep up with people no matter what, whether that’s hollering at them across the Mayer Campus Center or cooking dinner together with them, and he prioritizes the people and activities he cares about above all else (especially sleep!).

Phil’s tenacity and perseverance toward the things he feels passionate about has amazed me since day one. I’ve seen it in a million different situations, ranging from the Textbook Exchange, an idea that he ran with for his first-year Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate election, to his efforts teaching classmates about complex computer science concepts. The Textbook Exchange has grown far beyond what I ever thought it could be; three years later, the organization is flourishing and has expanded to four universities and counting. It has tangibly saved students hundreds of thousands of dollars, relieving some of the stress around the affordability of learning materials that impacts many of us at Tufts. It’s been pretty remarkable to see his vision from his first week at Tufts thrive the way it has.

Within the computer science community, Phil has also shown his dedication in

multiple ways. As a teaching assistant and lab leader for COMP 11, his leadership, compassion for his students and passion for the subject shine through. He enjoys sharing his love of computer science with new students, patiently helping them through the most frustrating bugs. He brings positive energy to Halligan Hall, a notoriously high-stress environment.

He’s often the person I turn to for help in dealing with the stress of some of the more grueling classes as well as tackling tougher problems. I’ve also seen him go up to random students struggling with a concept and offer to work through it with them. He’s always there for the people around him, whether they happen to be close friends or complete strangers.

I’ve been lucky to know Phil and see him fight for the things he believes in.

I’ve seen how passionate he is about Tufts and how avidly he advocates for his fellow students. I know that he can have a great impact as TCU president, so vote Phil for the Future!

Lexi Walker is a junior studying computer science. Lexi can be reached at alexis. walker@tufts.edu.

Additional Open Forum: Identity-Based Resources at Tufts, May 1 The Division of Student Affairs is hosting an additional Open Forum to discuss current and future identity-based resources at Tufts! Please join us on Wednesday, May 1 from 12 - 1 p.m. in the Sophia Gordon Multipurpose Room to learn more about the current searches for Tufts’ new Directors of the Asian American, Latino, and Women’s Centers. You’ll also find out more about interim staffing and participate in an open discuss on enhancing identity-based resources across the University. The three concurrent Director vacancies, as well as the founding this academic year of the FIRST Resource Center, provide our community with an opportunity to step back and evaluate the structures of all our identity-based Centers. Please consider providing us with your input on May 1 as we reaffirm and build on the legacy of the Centers while finding new ways to enhance resources and supports at Tufts.

Thanks to everyone who attend our first Open Forum on March 27, and special thanks to the Asian American Center leaders who helped promote and facilitate that initial conversation. The March 27 forum led to a partnership with student leaders that resulted in a new webform on the Student Affairs website that any Tufts student can use to volunteer to be part of search processes for Division of Student Affairs. Please consider signing up to help us search for the Directors of the Asian American, Latino, and Women’s Centers and/or to join our general pool!

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OP-EDS The Op-Ed section of The Tufts Daily, an open forum for campus editorial commentary, is printed Monday through Thursday. The Daily welcomes submissions from all members of the Tufts community; the opinions expressed in the Op-Ed section do not necessarily represent the opinions of the Daily itself. Opinion articles on campus, national and international issues should be 600 to 1,200 words in length and submitted to opinion@tuftsdaily.com. The editors reserve the right to edit letters for clarity, space and length. All material is subject to editorial discretion and is not guaranteed to appear in the Daily. Authors must submit their telephone numbers and day-of availability for editing questions.

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Sports

Thursday, April 25, 2019 | Sports | THE TUFTS DAILY

Women's tennis goes undefeated over Easter weekend WOMEN'S TENNIS

continued from back page Families and friends were abound on the sunny Friday afternoon of Easter weekend.

“I saw a lot of families there [in the stands] since it was Easter weekend,” Frankel added. “Everyone was at the outside courts cheering us on.”

Tufts extended its 2–1 lead in doubles in singles play. Wiley played a perfect game, and first-year star Caroline Garrido dominated her opponent 6–0, 6–3. Standout first-year Maggie Dorr fought hard against Wellesley senior Justine Huang, but ultimately lost the match 4–6, 6–3, 12–10.

Frankel once again clinched the win for the Jumbos, winning her match 6–2, 6–3.

Iwasaki, who also played singles, capped off her match in tiebreakers 6–2, 7–6, tallying in the seventh and last point to the Jumbos’ 7–2 final score.

The Wellesley match was senior Otilia Popa’s first match in nearly two months; she sustained a concussion in February and had not competed since. Considered a great leader and a stellar player by her teammates, Popa returned at the right time as the postseason looms.

Like many other spring sports, finals coincide with postseason play, notably the NESCACs. But Frankel points out that finals should not affect their game.

“I do not think it should affect it in a negative way. We only have two more matches left, and we can study for our finals then.

NESCACs happen after finals are over, and by then our focus will be on that.”

As a result of the back-to-back wins, the Jumbos are now 3–3 at home, 5–1 in the NESCAC and 8–6 overall. The Jumbos

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Arjun Balaraman Off the Crossbar

PFA Player of the Year

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BEN KIM / THE TUFTS DAILY ARCHIVES

Senior Otilia Popa prepares for a serve during a doubles match in the women’s tennis home game against Williams at Voute Tennis Courts on April 28, 2018. will have an away face-off against their in-conference rivals No. 7 Amherst at 3:30 p.m. this afternoon. The team will

then host the No. 16 MIT Engineers at 3 p.m. on Friday, April 26 for their final match of the regular season.

ffense always grabs the headlines in sports, and soccer is no exception. The Ballon d’Or is the world’s most prestigious individual award for a soccer player. But since its first edition in 1956, only three defenders have won the award — and none since 2006. Defenders are often the unsung heroes in soccer, but Liverpool’s Virgil van Dijk might be about to change that.

The Professional Footballers Association (PFA) released its shortlist for Player of the Year in the English Premier League on Saturday. The list included three players from Manchester City (Bernardo Silva, Sergio Aguero and Raheem Sterling), two from Liverpool (Sadio Mané and van Dijk) and Chelsea’s Eden Hazard. Sterling and Van Dijk are spearheading fierce title pushes for City and Liverpool, respectively, and are widely considered frontrunners for this award.

Raheem Sterling, over the past two seasons, has added a previously missing final product to his game. The former Liverpool product was always pacy and skillful, but he never seemed to manage to play that killer ball or finish with composure. That has changed under coach Pep Guardiola.

After scoring just 13 goals during his first two seasons for City, Sterling is up to 35 and counting over his last two campaigns.

He gives City a different dimension going forward, and has led Guardiola’s men to the best attacking record in the league, even without star Belgian playmaker Kevin de Bruyne for most of the year.

The England international also had a solid World Cup for the Three Lions. At just 24, he still has room to grow and is likely to feature regularly on the shortlist list for years to come. For the second time in a row, though, he might be outdone by a member of his former team.

Liverpool was widely chastised for bringing in van Dijk last winter. It wasn’t necessarily a knock on the Dutchman’s skill, rather a jab at the £75 million fee Liverpool forked over to Southampton for his services. Looking back on that deal makes it seem like a bargain. In the 22 Premier League games last season before van Dijk’s arrival, the Reds conceded 25 goals, an average of 1.14 per game. In the 16 remaining fixtures after he joined, that number dropped to 0.81 per game. In the 35 matches so far this campaign, Liverpool has only conceded 0.57 goals per match, the lowest in the league.

The Reds went from an exciting, attacking outfit with an inconsistent backline to one of the most complete teams in Europe. While van Dijk doesn’t deserve all of the credit for that, he is the undisputed leader at the back. Perhaps the most astonishing stat of van Dijk’s campaign is zero times dribbled past. That’s right. Not a single player has managed to dribble past the Dutchman in the 35 games and 3,115 minutes he has played this season.

There’s an old adage in team sports: “Offense sells tickets; defense wins championships.” For all of Sterling’s heroics, van Dijk deserves this award for the work he’s done, in a very short time, to make Liverpool legitimate Premier League title contenders.

Arjun Balaraman is a sophomore studying quantitative economics. Arjun can be reached at arjun.balaraman@tufts.edu.

8 tuftsdaily.com

Sports

Thursday, April 25, 2019

No. 5 women’s lacrosse suffers 1st defeat, bounces back in overtime win against Bowdoin

by Maddie Payne Sports Editor

Tufts suffered its first defeat of the season at the hands of No. 3 Middlebury on Saturday (14–1, 9–1 NESCAC) in a tense 10–9 showdown. Despite the loss, the Jumbos bounced back with a 14–13 overtime win over Bowdoin (9–6, 5–5 NESCAC) on Wednesday night.

The Jumbos played their last home game of the regular season on Bello Field on Wednesday, and it took them less than 30 seconds to find the back of the net when senior midfielder Annie Sullivan fired an unassisted shot from distance. The teams went goal-for-goal for the first 15 minutes, and every loose ball was a physical battle.

The Jumbos figured out early that they were more effective on scoring from feeds, and senior attacker Dakota Adamec scored twice consecutively. Meanwhile, the Polar Bears scored all three of their first goals from right-handed drives from the outside, as the Jumbo defender was outpaced.

Bowdoin took a 5–3 lead after two quick goals on the back of several turnovers and interceptions. Junior attacker Emily Games answered with a low shot while being pursued in the middle of the eight by a trio of defenders. With 9:52 remaining in the first half, the Jumbos evened the score at 6–6 after senior midfielder Cecily Freliech fired home on a fast break.

Adamec made it 7–6 with an unassisted left-handed drive as the momentum for Tufts started to set in. However, the Polar Bears managed to stay neck-and-neck, leveling the score at 8–8. The Polar Bears had 20 fouls compared to the Jumbos’ six by the end of the first half.

The Polar Bears dominated early in the second half, winning the first three draws and capitalizing on their possessions to put up two goals. After more than 10 scoreless minutes for the home side, the Jumbos got one back through Games on a free position goal, but the Polar Bears answered with two more to stretch the lead out to 12–9.

Two quick goals by Adamec and firstyear attacker Mae Briody brought the difference to one with 6:09 remaining. A free position shot by Sullivan ricocheted off the post, and seconds later Games beat her defender to even the score with only 4:28 remaining. Bowdoin regained the lead at 13–12, only to receive a yellow card with two minutes left in the game. Adamec capitalized immediately, beating a double team in an already-man-down Bowdoin defense for an easy run to goal, tying the game at 13 apiece.

With 58 seconds remaining, winning the draw was absolutely pivotal, and Bowdoin

EVAN SLACK / THE TUFTS DAILY ARCHIVES

Senior attacker Dakota Adamec launches the ball downfield during a game against Middlebury on April 21, 2018. came away with it. With 10 seconds left, Bowdoin fired point blank at first-year keeper Molly Laliberty, and she made the most important save of the game to send it to overtime.

Adamec grabbed the first draw of overtime and immediately gave Tufts the possession it needed to end the game. Games was fouled en route to goal and went on to score her free position shot, ending a physically exhausting game. The Polar Bears committed 43 fouls over the course of the hour, close to three times as many as Tufts, but ultimately the Jumbos’ skill shone through.

Earlier in the week, Tufts traveled to Middlebury, Vt. to face a team it had only beaten twice in the last decade: the Middlebury Panthers. Though the Jumbos fell by an excruciatingly close 10–9 scoreline, the team’s postseason is unlikely to suffer as a result of the single loss, and the Jumbos will still boast a record-breaking 2019 season that will grant them a postseason berth.

“The biggest message after the game was that Middlebury didn’t beat us, we beat ourselves,” junior midfielder Margaret Chase said. “It sucks because it means we made tons of mistakes. But it also means that if we have an opportunity to play them again in the postseason, it’s not that it’s out of our control. It’s not that the other team was better than us; it was that we made mistakes and didn’t play our best.”

Games opened the scoring, netting a free position shot just over a minute into the game. Though the Panthers answered with a pair of goals, Briody provided two consecutive assists to Adamec and first-year midfielder Kathryn Delaney to regain a narrow Jumbo lead. Senior attacker Courtney Grygiel then added a third goal to put the Jumbos up 4–2, but the Panthers went on a three-goal run of their own to close out the half.

The Tufts offense struggled with Middlebury’s constant high-pressure defense. Normally, teams are only able to sustain a high-pressure set for a short amount of time because it is incredibly tiring. However, the Panthers enacted this highly pressurized style of defense for the entire game, forcing the Jumbos to respond accordingly.

“Having the defense play high pressure the whole time made us a little panicky, and we started to throw the ball away and make mistakes,” Delaney said. “The few times that we found the back of the net were when we were patient and found our space and the open man on the back side. It was when we didn’t try to make plays too quickly and let the shot clock run down that we executed on our goals.”

Tufts spent the second half of the game playing catch-up and came extremely close to closing the gap, tying the game at 9–9 with under five minutes remaining.

With 2:29 remaining, though, Panthers first-year midfielder Jane Earley tallied

her fourth goal of the game to give her team the win. Earley was subsequently named NESCAC Player of the Week for her game-winning performance.

The Panthers’ high-pressure defense forced the Jumbos into poor clearances, demonstrated by Middlebury preventing six of Tufts’ clears (17–23). Tufts also recorded 19 turnovers, far higher than its average of 13.4. Time and time again, the well-disciplined Tufts defense recovered the ball only to turn it over seconds later, forcing the team to defend again.

“The clear was definitely an area that we struggled with the most and is something that we’ve looked back at a lot on film,” Delaney said. “Middlebury did something different that we hadn’t seen before, and we didn’t adjust in the game as well as we should have. Now that we’ve talked about it as a team and with our coaches, if we do see it again it will be a different story.”

Despite the loss, there were several positive takeaways for the Jumbos. It was one of the defensive unit’s most impressive showings. First-year midfielder Madison Lehan face-guarded Middlebury’s top scorer, senior attacker Emma McDonagh, and limited her to one shot the entire game.

With the regular season behind them, the Jumbos look to the first round of the NESCAC tournament. As the No. 2 seed, they will host Trinity this Saturday at 12 p.m.

Women’s tennis wins back-to-back home matches, inches closer to end of regular season

by Jason Schwartz Staff Writer

No. 8 Tufts hosted unranked Connecticut College at Gantcher Center on Saturday, claiming an 8–1 victory over the Camels. The Jumbos won three of three doubles matches, taking an early 3–0 lead. First-year Anna Lowy and junior Kat Wiley and No.

1 doubles sophomore Patricia Obeid and senior Tomo Iwasaki both shut out out their opponents 8–0. First-year Nicole Frankel clinched the win for the Jumbos, winning her singles match 6–1, 6–1.

The Jumbos had a clear advantage for the match against the Camels, as the team practices at Gantcher regularly. Obeid spoke about the confi-

dence the Jumbos had heading into their game against the Camels.

“Conn. College is known as the notas-strong team in our conference,” said Obeid. “We had more confidence going into that game and we had an advantage since we had been training in Gantcher for a while.”

A day earlier, the Jumbos trounced unranked Wellesley 7–2 at Voute Courts

on Friday afternoon. The Jumbos gained momentum early in the match, winning two out of three of their doubles matches. Contributing to the Jumbos’ success were No. 2 doubles member Iwasaki and senior Otilia Popa (8–4) and from No. 3 doubles Lowy and Wiley (8–2).

see WOMEN'S TENNIS, page 7