uNC in supreme Court affirmative action case by Madeline Wilson Deputy News Editor see COURT, page 7 see HOUSING, page 2
In a statement to the Daily regarding Tufts’ decision to sign the brief, University President Anthony Monaco explained why the uni versity supports affirmative action policies.“One of the most distinctive attributes of a Tufts education is the multitude of backgrounds and per spectives that our students bring to campus that enrich the student experience,” Monaco wrote. “At Tufts, we embrace diversity and rec ognize its power to enlighten, teach, and bridge differences.” SFFA’s lawsuit accuses Harvard of discriminating against Asian American applicants and advo cates for “race-neutral” admissions processes. If successful, SFFA’s case against Harvard and UNC would shows support for Harvard,
Tufts
The amicus brief, signed by many selective colleges and univer sities with holistic admissions pro cesses, states that race-conscious admissions processes help to cre ate “the educational benefits of a diverse student body and the soci etal benefits of educating diverse future leaders.”
CHARLENE TSAI The Court at Professors Row is pictured on Sept. 5.
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UNIVERSITY In anticipation of welcoming students back to campus, Tufts announced its fall 2022 COVID19 protocols in an email on Aug. 10. According to the email, the updated measures include the end of surveillance testing as well as the removal of a mask mandate. Infected students will also be directed to isolate in their rooms as opposed to the tem porary housing on-campus stu dents were asked to isolate in last academic year. The university’s decision to implement the new COVID19 policies was driven by both national and local changes. “Our approach to COVID19 is data driven, incorporating national, state, local and universi ty trends into our decision-mak ing,” Michael Jordan, university infection control health director, wrote in an email to the Daily. “The most recent changes reflect what we know from the current data and current guidance from public health authorities.” The university’s decision also took into account the success of vaccines and other measures in preventing and spreading seri ous COVID-19 illness. “COVID vaccines, boosters, and treatments have been tre mendously effective in prevent ing widespread severe illness,” Jordan wrote. “For that to contin ue to be the case, the university continues to implement a series of measures designed to limit transmission of the virus within ourIfcommunity.”casesriseagain, the univer sity is leaving open the possibil ity of reinstating more stringent policies.“Aswe have throughout the pandemic, we will continually monitor local Tufts commu nity, neighboring town, state and national data and public
Tufts joined 32 other colleges and universities in signing an amic us curiae brief for the Supreme Court of the United States affirming the legality of race-conscious col lege admissions. The brief, filed by Amherst College on Aug. 1, express es support for Harvard College and the University of North Carolina in their ongoing legal battle to main tain students’ race as a factor in col lege admissions decisions. Both universities were sued in 2014 by Students for Fair Admissions, a group that argues affirmative action practices in college admissions — which aim to increase enrollment of Black, Latino and other underrepresent ed students — are discriminatory and unconstitutional under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. After losing in lower courts in 2019 and 2021, SFFA appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court, which is set to hear their cases this fall.
Tuesday, s ep T ember 6, 2022VOLUME LXXXIV, ISSUE 2 THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF TUFTS UNIVERSITY EST. 1980 MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, MASS. FEATURES Ayomide Oloyede interns for Congressional Black Caucus, trading one Hill for another page 4 OPINION Letter from the Managing Board: What to expect from us page 11 ARTS Listen up! According to Daily arts editor, Super Freaky songs rule the summer page 8 NEWS 1 FEATURES 4 ARTS & POP CULTURE 8 FUN & GAMES 10 OPINION 11 SPORTS 14 T HE T UFTS D AILY tuftsdaily thetuftsdailytuftsdaily The Tufts Daily The Tufts Daily daily@tuftsdaily.com
First-years housed at The Court live in the shadow of The mods
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Tufts updates fall COVId -19 protocol, ends mask mandate and surveillance testing Amelia Colafati Staff
ANN MARIE BURKE DAILY Ballou Hall is pictured on April 12, 2021.
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One hundred members of the Class of 2026 moved into their new dorms at The Court at Professors Row last week. Located on the Vouté Tennis Courts that formerly housed the modular COVID-19 isolation units known as The Mods, The Court is a com plex of three buildings that will house 150 first-years and nine resident assistants this fall. Although 93 and 95 Professors Row were completed on time for move-in, the opening of 91 Professors Row has been delayed until Sept. 17 due to supply chain issues that have slowed construc tion. The 50 first-years displaced by the delay will be temporarily housed in Mods E and F on the Vouté Courts until they can move into their Constructedrooms.over the summer to accommodate Tufts’ growing student body until the comple tion of a new permanent dorm, The Court buildings are tempo rary units like The Mods. However, they have common areas and expanded amenities that were missing from The Mods. Khin Thu Lwin, a first-year assigned to 91 Professors Row, was initially relieved to hear she would be living in a newly-constructed residence hall. She was disap pointed to learn her building was significantly smaller than a typical residence hall, having grown excit ed about “traditional dorm-style life in a hall with a lot of people.” “We’re paying $9,000 in living costs, but we’re not really getting the proper [experience],” Lwin said. The Office of Residential Life and Learning assured Lwin and her 49 peers living in The Mods until Sept. 17 that they have been “thoroughly cleaned.” ORLL will also compensate each resident of 91 Professors Row with a $250 gift card for the Tufts bookstore and a $250 UberEats voucher. Tim Jordan, associate direc tor of residential education, suggested there are some ben efits to living in The Court despite the buildings’ tempo rary“Thenature.Court will offer strong amenities such as air condition ing, study rooms, updated kitch ens, and brand new furniture,” Jordan wrote in an email to the Daily. “With the living space and amenities being either similar to or exceeding other first-year offerings, we see The Court as being a great option for students to live in.”
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Writer see COVID-19, page 3
“I’ve had a bunch of people who I thought were my friends be like, ‘I can’t believe you were put in these,’” Edelman said. “Even parents have started say ing things and being like, ‘Oh, you’re in this subpar housing.’”
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simultaneous Green and Orange Line closures frustrate commuters by Peri Barest News Editor
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“I’ve always been anxious about the move-in because it’s a new stage of life,” they said in an interview with the Daily prior to move-in. “I’m supposed to be anxious, but this is extra. It shouldn’t be so nerve-wracking.” Jordan acknowledged stu dents’ concerns and thanked them for their patience. “We know that being in a new space can be challenging and bring additional anxieties surrounding a transition to college, we just ask that you trust we have put the time and thought into making these spaces feel like home,” he wrote.
The MBTA announced on Aug. 5 that the Green Line Extension Medford branch — which was scheduled to be completed by the end of the summer — will not open until late November. This is the proj ect’s third delay from the planned completion date of December 2021. The MBTA simultaneous ly announced that the recently opened Union Square branch of the GLX will be closed from Aug. 22 to Sept. 18 for additional repairs. “The work has been very slow,” Laurel Ruma, the GLX community working group representative from College Avenue in Medford, said. “There have been massive prob lems with hiring folks. [The work] is done in piecemeal, so whatever contractor has the time will show up and do the work.” The GLX delay was announced two days after the MBTA’s decision to close the entire Orange Line from Aug. 19 to Sept. 18 for repairs. The MBTA is currently under review by the Federal Transportation Administration following multiple serious incidents, including deaths, derailments and a fire, over the past 14 months.Jennifer Dorsen, who represents the Somerville side of Ball Square in the community working group, said she is frustrated with delays and the lack of funding or care for public transportation.“TheTissuch a mess right now that you should have known that it was too good to be true that they were on schedule to open when they said,” Dorsen said. “[There is] incredible frustration and anger that our public transportation system is in such a mess that this [closure] wasRumanecessary.”said that the GLX delay would likely have occurred even without the larger problems occur ring within the MBTA. She cited pandemic supply chain issues and difficulty hiring contractors as fac tors for why construction has taken so long.“It’sno surprise to anyone who’s been watching the project closely,” Ruma said. “So for people who live in the neighborhood, it’s been very clear for a long time — throughout the summer [and] throughout the spring — that the MBTA was defi nitely not on schedule with com pleting the Green Line.” A spokesperson from the MBTA declined to comment for this article.
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“I’m glad [the MBTA is] trying to make the T safer and trying to replace tracks that are 40 years old,” she said. “[Medford has] worked with the T and given them the loca tions where we believe detail officers should be put in place. … We set up an emergency operation center … just to be prepared in case there was chaos in our streets and gridlock and any type of [issue] where you have more bikers and more pedes trians on the roads, and more cars.” Lungo-Koehn said that the first few days of the Orange and Green Line closures went rela tively smoothly, adding that the city is preparing for the back-toschool rush.
“It seems like people are listen ing, people are working from home if they can, they’re avoiding the areas if they can,” she said. “We’re getting ready for K-12 students going back to school on the 30th so we know there’ll be an uptick in traffic and shuttle bus use then.” She added that all public streets in Medford within a quarter mile of the GLX stops will switch to permit parking to ensure that residents still have parking access once the exten sionRoccoopens.DiRico, executive direc tor of government and community relations at Tufts, said that students on the Health Sciences Campus will be particularly impacted by the Orange and Green Line closures. “Many of our students, particu larly those on our Health Sciences Campus in Boston, rely on the Orange Line to get to and from cam pus,” DiRico wrote in an email to the Daily. “We have communicat ed with students, faculty and staff on the Health Sciences campus in Boston to inform them of alterna tiveDiRicooptions.”added that Tufts is part nering with Bluebikes to extend the 50% student discount to annual memberships and work ing to get more Bluebikes located nearDorsencampus.is disappointed that the MBTA is not a reliable mode of transit for many community mem bers right now, some of whom view access to public transportation as an issue of social justice and eco nomic necessity. “If you don’t use [public trans portation], you don’t notice it because you’re not using it,” Dorsen said. “But as soon as you start to need it, you realize what a critical component of urban life it is.”
Ruma also expressed frustration that the MBTA’s Better Bus Project will significantly limit bus services directly to GLX stations in the long term. “The MBTA is eliminating almost all bus service to and from Green Line Extension stops, and I have to say that is top of mind con cern for everyone,” she said. Ruma added that the MBTA’s crises have highlighted leadership from the mayors of Boston, Medford and“WatchingSomerville.Mayor Wu actually take different modes of transpor tation each day to try to see what everyone else is seeing on the ground and then reporting back to the team is exceedingly important,” Ruma said. “I’ve been very encour aged by the response of the may ors. I think we’re seeing excellent leadership from Mayors Wu, LungoKoehn and Ballantyne.” Ruma and DiRico agreed that, despite the delays, the GLX Medford branch’s opening is still a success for public transportation in the area.
While current sophomores housed in the Hyatt Place hotel last year were offered the most desirable lottery numbers for 2022–23 housing, Jordan said priority housing lottery numbers will not be offered to residents of The Court. While Hyatt residents were granted preferred lottery numbers due to challenges with transpor tation and Wi-Fi at the hotel, Jordan said, he does not expect the same issues to affect Court residents given the complex’s central location on campus. Certain first-years are still upset about their housing assignment. Nearly 200 stu dents have signed an online petition demanding 5% reim bursement of Court residents’ cost of living for the year. The petition describes The Court as “trailer park-like buildings on a tennis court” and claims that some who “will soon live at The Court have been bullied by our peers for living in ‘less er housing’ and ‘shacks’.” Max Edelman, a first-year who started the petition after speak ing to other students assigned to live in The Court, said the resi dence hall comes with unfortu nate social stigmas, particularly among older students.
“We understand that stu dents are apprehensive about these spaces given that they are new and that there is an image our students have of “mods”, but we cannot stress enough that The Court has all of the things our students want in a housing experience,” Jordan wrote. “We encourage students to live in these new buildings before making any judgments, and we think other students will recognize The Court’s advantages once stu dents experience the space.”
To compensate for lost Orange Line service, the MBTA has over 160 free shuttle buses running along the Orange Line route with additional bus-only lanes. The agency encour aged commuters to work from home if possible or find alternate methods of transportation, such as biking or taking the commuter rail. Boston also temporarily made 30-day Bluebikes passes free throughout the city, and has imple mented a shuttle bus in Chinatown running every 30 minutes from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. and 8 p.m. to 1 a.m. Medford Mayor Breanna LungoKoehn said the city has taken a pro active approach in response to these closures, since both the Orange Line and the GLX run through Medford.
Jordan responded to the grievances listed in the peti tion, expressing optimism that students will change their minds once they settle in.
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A sign promoting the MBTA Green Line Extension project is pictured on April 17, 2018.
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Lwin thinks Tufts has done its best to explain the need for The Court and its benefits, and agreed with Jordan that The Court has all the amenities of a traditional residence hall. Edelman still feels nervous about the transition.
Despite amenities, students have reservations about temporary dorms HOUSING continued from page 1
“While the GLX Medford/Tufts delay is disappointing, I am excit ed to hear that the station will be opening in November,” DiRico said. “[The GLX] will connect three of our campuses: Medford/Somerville, Chinatown and the Fenway, making it easier for our students to travel back and Lungo-Koehnforth.” says she is committed to opening the GLX Medford branch as soon as pos sible. “I can assure you that I’m trying to stay on top of it and push where I can … to make sure that the end-of-November timeframe is a go,” she said.
Infected students to in dorms per COVID-19 protocols
IAN LAU / THE TUFTS DAILY
by Aaron Gruen Deputy News Editor
“This may include schedul ing times to use shared spaces in order to avoid close con tact, wearing masks when in the same room unless sleeping with each person in their own bed, or temporarily moving into a room with friends or suitemates while the sick per son recovers,” Marie Caggiano, medical director of Health Service, wrote in an email to thePerDaily.the new university rules, masks are not required in any space on campus. While facul ty cannot mandate them in the classroom, they can encourage students to wear masks during theirEvenclass.with the rollback of mask requirements, the universi ty continues to strongly encour age masking and other preven tative measures as useful ways to combat the spread of infectious diseases like COVID-19.
The new policies have posed a concern for some faculty mem bers. Nick Seaver, an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology, points out that the limited institutional support for preventative measures will leave the burden of responding to COVID-19 on faculty members.
In order to limit that risk, the university recommends that roommates wear masks around each other and try to arrange their schedules to limit time together in the dorm.
The Tufts Health Service building is pictured on March 6, 2018. health guidance and put in place guidelines that we believe will most effectively protect and pro mote the continued health, safe ty and well-being of our univer sity community and neighbors,” JordanWithwrote.these new policies in place, students who test pos itive and live on campus are required to isolate themselves in their dorm rooms — a mea sure that potentially places roommates at risk for infection.
ALINA MURPHY / THE TUFTS DAILY ARCHIVES
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The former COVID-19 Testing Center at 62R Talbot Ave. is pictured on Oct. 3, 2021. As of this semester Tufts will no longer conduct regular surveillance testing for COVID-19.
Medical Director of Health Service Marie Caggiano wrote in an email to the Daily that stu dents who experience the afore mentioned symptoms should contact Tufts Health Service. “If residential students are exposed, they should notify Tufts Health Service at 617-6273350,” Caggiano wrote. “If they are experiencing symptoms, they should notify Tufts Health Service and also avoid close contact with others, until they are evaluated by a healthcare professional.”Ifdiagnosed with monkey pox, Caggiano advises a person should avoid close contact with others, wear a mask and com pletely cover the rash. “Residential students diag nosed with monkeypox will be assigned to temporary isolation housing and will receive meal delivery. Students living with in driving distance who can return home without using pub lic transportation will isolate at home.”Asof Sept. 2, 317 cases of monkeypox have been reported in Massachusetts, out of 19,962 cases nationally. Currently, data on individual cases per city in Massachusetts is unavailable. “The mode of spread for our 2022 monkeypox outbreak has largely been close intimate con tact with the rash or blisters of an individual with monkeypox,” Subbaraman said. “During our current outbreak, this means that monkeypox has largely been spread through sexual con tact or other forms of intimate contact.”According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, monkeypox can be spread by skin-to-skin contact, contact with respiratory secretions from an infected individual or contact with objects or fabrics that have been touched by an infected individual.Inanemail to the Daily, University Infection Control Health Director Michael Jordan wrote that an individual with monkeypox is “infectious to others from the time symptoms start until the rash has fully healed and a fresh layer of skin has formed. The illness typically lasts 2–4 Duringweeks.”the current mon keypox outbreak, patients have mainly been gay, bisexual or queer men and transgender and nonbinary people who have sex with men; however, Jordan dis pelled the misconception that only members of these groups can contract the disease. “Anyone can be infected with monkeypox regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation,” Jordan wrote. “Inaccurate media messaging that this is somehow a ‘gay illness’ is Subbaramanwrong.”alsomade clear that any individual can contract monkeypox.“Anyonewho has close per sonal contact with someone with possible monkeypox blisters could be at risk,” he said. “This includes people of any gender identity or sexual orientation, and indeed a small number of women and children have been affected.”Subbaraman suggested that like COVID-19, frequent testing and vaccination could curb the spread of monkey pox. Additionally, accord ing to CDC data, monkeypox cases are beginning to decline nationwide.“Testing widely and fre quently has the potential to curb transmission of any infec tious disease by identifying individuals who may be affect ed so that they can isolate,” Subbaraman said. “Testing can also enable contact tracing so that [exposed individuals] can be notified to avoid further contacts.”Amonkeypox vaccine, named JYNNEOS, was approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration in 2019. On Aug. 18, healthcare providers in Massachusetts began injecting JYNNEOS intradermally, or just under the skin, rather than intra muscularly, thus the number of available doses increased fivefold. Due to a limited supply of mon keypox vaccines, only those who have either had contact with an individual with the disease or had multiple sexual partners in the last 14 days in a jurisdiction with confirmed monkeypox cases are eligible to receive a monkeypox vaccine in “Ideally,Massachusetts.peoplewould get two doses, but right now the [Massachusetts Department of Public Health] is prioritizing get ting a first dose out to as many people as possible to provide some protection against infec tion,” Subbaraman said. Those who are eligible for vaccination can schedule an appointment at one of sever al medical centers and clinics around Boston. Additionally, Tufts will continue to update its monkeypox guidance page as university policy changes and more data on the disease becomes available.
“I hope that as conditions evolve, the university response evolves to match it, considering the actual risks facing members of the Tufts community and the community surrounding cam pus, rather than proceeding toward the kind of abandonment we’re seeing from so many other institutions at this point in the pandemic,” Seaver wrote.
News 3Tuesday, September 6, 2022 | News | THE TUFTS DAILY
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COVID-19 continued from page 1
“My main concern as an instructor is that the ongo ing pandemic will continue to require accommodations and that, without institutional sup port, the burden of flexibility will be borne by individual faculty members who have to treat each case as unique,” Seaver wrote in an email to the Daily. “Ensuring that students are able to learn effectively without posing an undue risk to their own health or the health of others is a cru cial task, and it will continue to require a lot of work from faculty and the administration alike.” Seaver also mentioned that he appreciated the university’s early response to the pandem ic, emphasizing the “flexibili ty afforded to faculty” by the administration, but noted his concerns upon returning to campus.“[Many] instructors, like myself, had young children at home who could not yet be vaccinated; there was no easy way to have that kind of risk accounted for under university policies, which only permitted exceptions for instructors who were themselves at increased risk,” he Seaverwrote.hopes the universi ty will approach the upcoming semester carefully and contin ue to respond in a conscien tious manner.
UNIVERSITY
Tufts medical professionals advise on monkeypox
As monkeypox continues to spread in the United States, Tufts health personnel have shared advice with the Daily on ways students can avoid contracting the disease. A rare disease that is endemic to several Central and West African countries, monkey pox was reported in Europe earlier this year. Since then, the disease has spread to the United States. Ramnath Subbaraman, an assistant professor in the Department of Public Health and Community Medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine and an attending phy sician at Tufts Medical Center, said that the current strain of monkeypox is similar to small pox, albeit much less severe. “[Smallpox] had a much higher case fatality rate,” Subbaraman said. “Out of the more than 30,000 individuals who’ve been documented to have experienced monkeypox in the current outbreak, only about a dozen people have died from theTheinfection.”current strain of mon keypox may have originated in Nigeria in 2017, where per son-to-person contact was the primary mode of transmission. Most people with monkey pox reported symptoms of rash, fatigue, fever and chills. The rash consists of blister-like lesions, which generally appear around the genitals or anus.
At its core, the CBCF is about uplifting and empow ering the next generation of Black leaders by exposing them to the legislative process on the ground, according to Oloyede. Oloyede added that his roommate for the program, Noah Harris, was the first Black male student body president in Harvard College’s 386-year his tory and also a Truman Scholar, who will attend Harvard Law School in 2024. As one of the youngest mem bers of the cohort, Oloyede ini tially felt as though he was some how undeserving and inadequate to be a part of the program.
“As a spoken word poet, I write to speak it, which is dif ferent [from] a written poem where you write so that some body who’s reading it will get everything that you mean from the words [alone],” Oloyede said. “I write with the purpose of people getting the meaning from inflection, body movement, facial expression. … You have to see me perform it, because that’s what it was made to do. So I wrote my statements as if [they were] a Oloyedespeech.”shared that three of his statements have been pub lished into the Congressional record, which helped translate his poetic language into his works on the Hill. “[Policy] memos were hard for me to write, but … I had a ball with the statements. … With the statements, I was able to use the descriptive nature of my art, and the metaphor is in the center [of my statements],” Oloyede said. “I wrote one for the Soul Children of Chicago, which I believe is the youngest Grammy Award-winning youth choir … and I had a really good time with it, because I just got to add so much energy into it. So that real ly influenced and made me — art made me write speeches better.”
see OLOYEDE, page 5
For Oloyede, politics is not sim ply about analyzing or dissecting the numbers as there is a story attached behind every number. “I often try to look at the issue as a citizen, as a person, because a tendency of the Hill is to forget what it’s like to be a person,” Oloyede said. “You get so into the legal jargon, you get into all these different things that you forget how this affects somebody. …
“There was one poem that … [made] me want to rip my hair out. And I could not continue with it. I had the idea, and I could not continue with it because I was at a loss for words,” Oloyede said. “While I was on the Hill, they had a gun reform hearing about the Uvalde shooting, and they had the parents of a girl who died during the shooting come testify. And they had a video tes timony of one of the girls who smeared the blood of her best friend on her body and pretend ed to be dead, to survive and not be shot by the shooter.” Oloyede shared that while he did not get to finish this partic ular poem, writing it helped him process one of the most difficult moments on the Hill. “The premise of the poem was, ‘I wonder if the parents of the students who got shot and died, I wonder if they knew that morning, when they dressed their child up for school in their fancy footwear and fancy out fits, that they would be dress ing them up for a funeral,’” he said. “I wonder if they knew, you know, I wonder … because obviously they could never have known. … You wear fancy stuff for an occasion, and they dressed their kids up [on] this day. I imagine these kids smil ing and the parents taking pic tures, and I wonder if they knew by Mark Choi Executive Features Editor when poetry meets politics: ayomide Oloyede reflects on his congressional internship in washington
The CBCF’s prestigious sum mer internship is open for ris ing college sophomores to recent graduates, Oloyede explained, and the program includes free housing on Capitol Hill with a $3,000 stipend and Metro credit. Oloyede first heard about the internship through one of his professors at Tufts, Kaitlin KellyThompson, who also wrote his letter of recommendation for the program.“[She] was a professor that I had [in the] first semester [of college] and I had really, real ly liked, and so I took another class of hers the next semes ter,” Oloyede said. “She had just thought of me while she was at a conference and [told me that] ‘I heard about this,’ and she sent it to me.”
“And we would be like, ‘Here’s how we deal with that, here’s how we navigate that, [and] you deserve to be Throughouthere.’”his internship, Oloyede discovered his voice and power as a writer, especially as he explored the interconnectedness of politics and poetry.
FeaT ures TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2022 4 tuftsdaily.com
COURTESY AYOMIDE OLOYEDE Ayomide Oloyede is pictured.
The tax is not just a tax — that’s money that a family that may be struggling might have to come up with, that might be coming out of their income. That is not just tax money, that’s groceries, that’s a home.” In this context, Oloyede’s view of politics has also shaped and influenced his poetry, further extending the scope of his writing. “[Politics] made me touch on harder topics [more often].” Oloyede said. “Because I was in the Capitol … and with all this stuff happening, I was like, ‘I need to find some time to write. Because I will never be in this moment, at this time, everIndeed,again.’”
Content warning: This article contains a graphic description of gun violence. The summer of 2022 might have been one of the most consequen tial and politically fraught times in recent American history. From the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which had protected women’s right to choose since 1973, to the Jan. 6 hearings and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, the American public wrestled with some of the most profound changes in the nation’s political landscape. The nation also mourned the loss of 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, which prompted the historic passage of bipartisan gun legisla tion in AyomideJune.
“I felt that I was wasting the gift that I had: The gift that I was given to be a part of this pro gram. I was wasting it because I was so young,” Oloyede said. “[I questioned,] ‘Am I really worthy to be in this space? Can I net work? Do I even know how to talk to people? Am I enough to be in this space?’ I really wrestled with that for a really long time.” Ultimately, it was a sense of solidarity — fostered by shared vulnerability within the group — that enabled Oloyede to be fully present in the moment, there by helping him to articulate his vision and ideas for the future. “We would sit in our apart ment, on the couches, and we would just talk. … One person would be like, ‘I feel inadequate in this space,’” Oloyede said.
poetry helped Oloyede grapple with some of the most challenging news and events as an individual, includ ing the Uvalde shooting and its aftermath.
Oloyede, a soph omore, was where it all hap pened this summer, witnessing history unfold before his eyes, in real time. As a Congressional Black Caucus Foundation intern in Washington, D.C., Oloyede worked for Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-IL), attending over 100 semi nars and meetings for the House Ways and Means Committee as well as the House Oversight and Reform Committee. Oloyede also drafted Dear Colleague Letters, policy memos and statements, working closely with his chief of staff and team throughout. One of the most memorable moments from his internship, Oloyede cited, was attending the Jan. 6 hearing in person. “I was like, ‘I watched this on TV. Now I’m in the room,’” Oloyede said. “Somebody just texted me and said that they saw me [on C-SPAN]. I am in this room. I am in the row next to the row that they reserve for members of Congress. I’m look ing at Sheila Jackson Lee, a rep resentative from Houston, right there. We walked out of the room together and took a selfie. I am 18 in D.C., and I literally was like, ‘Woah, this is not real. I have to pinch myself.’ … It was insane.”
Frenzer added that his class had the opportunity to attend the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, the largest interna tional animation festival in the world, and for their final, all 12 students shared their animated short films with the entire Tufts in Talloires program.
One of the courses offered this summer was The French Enlightenment: Art and Political Thought, co-taught by Vickie Sullivan, a professor in the Department of Political Science, and Andrew McClellan, a profes sor in the Department of History of Art and Architecture.
see TALLOIRES, page 6
Sullivan explained that while she focused on teaching Montesquieu’s and Rousseau’s thought through the course, McClellan taught the trajectory of art history in the 18th century. Sullivan reflected on her co-teaching experience with McClellan this summer. “I really enjoyed learning from [Professor McClellan]. I know him as a colleague, … but I didn’t know him as a teacher,” she said. “It was great because I felt like I was a student when he wasSullivanteaching.”also told the Daily about some of the precautions that students and faculty took, in light of the presence of COVID19. She said that they wore masks out of courtesy during the first week because people were trav eling from different places.
“That being said, people got COVID but the cases were mild,” Sullivan said. Once the students were acclimated to campus, Sullivan noticed that students were excit ed for intellectual and social engagement in Talloires.
Poetry was also with Oloyede through some of the happiest moments of his internship, including the time he found himself in Vogue, as he was ushering in the wed ding of Symone Sanders, the host of MSNBC’s “Symone.” In this way, Oloyede reflect ed that poetry has helped him “squeeze” the moments for his “authentic emotional repre sentation” along his journey. “I would [also] try to write poetry about something that made me happy, and there were lots of things that made me happy in D.C. … I met really, really cool people — I met Nancy Pelosi one time, I danced with Joyce Beatty, the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, and … I drove Joyce Beatty around in a golf cart at [a] golf tournament,” Oloyede said. “So many good things hap pened amidst all of the chaos, and so I wanted my poetry to reflect some of the good things that were happening.” As a first-generation stu dent and QuestBridge Scholar at Tufts, Oloyede emphasized that this summer’s opportunity would not have been possible without the help of his fami ly, friends, mentors and, most importantly to him, God. “I can only attribute [my success] to the people God has put in my life,” he said. In this regard, Oloyede added that his mom has often likened him to a seed, and that with the help of God and the people in his life, he is to bear fruits. Informed and inspired by this metaphor, Oloyede reflected on his personal jour ney thus far. “I am a seed and people watered me, people gave me soil, people labored over me in the sun, people pruned me — they cut off the bad parts, they trimmed all the things that needed to go, and when the soil was dry in one area, they picked me up and took me to fertile soil, and they replant ed me,” Oloyede said. “And if something bad was growing out and a dead leaf was grow ing out, they cut it off. I am a seed, and I want them to see that I am a product of all the things that [they] have done forQuiteme.” symbolically for Oloyede, the last day of his internship, July 30, was also his birthday, metaphorically open ing up a new chapter of his life.
COURTESY VICKIE SULLIVAN AND CAMILLE SMOKELIN
by Elizabeth Zacks Assistant Features Editor
“For somebody to come to me and be like, ‘Ayo, I’m really having this issue,’ and I can be like, ‘Don’t even worry. … I’ll take care of you.’ That’s what I want so bad,” Oloyede said. On such a view, Oloyede elab orated on his understanding of leadership, inspired and ani mated by the question, ‘How can I help you?’ that has guided his journey thus far, including his internship in Washington D.C. “[Leadership] is service. That was something that was hammered into me since high school, the concept of ser vant leadership, where you lead people by serving them,” Oloyede said. “And that ties back to gratitude. I don’t want to lead by telling you what to do, [and] I don’t want to lead by telling you what you need. I want to lead by hearing what you need and then trying to do that.”
OLOYEDE continued from page 4
Fea T ures 5Tuesday, September 6, 2022 | FeaTures | THE TUFTS DAILY that they were dressing them up for their funeral. And so that’s a way that politics influenced my art: It put me in the center and forced me to reckon with heart-wrenching things.”
The Tufts in Talloires sum mer study abroad program was back in full swing this summer after a two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic. From May 17 to July 1, various Tufts facul ty members and approximate ly 70 students returned to the beloved Tufts European Center in Talloires, France, and spent six weeks learning, collaborating and connecting with the local community.Inaninterview with the Daily, Tufts European Center Director Gabriella Goldstein explained the history and legacy of the program and campus. The main building on the Tufts European Center campus is the Priory, a monastery dating back to 1018, which was acquired by a Tufts alumnus, Donald MacJannet, who gifted it to the Tufts com munity in “Having1978.seen World War I and … World War II, [MacJannet wanted] a place where people are going to come together and have important conver sations, where they are going to exchange ideas … and feel a sense of global citizenship, so that there will be peace,” Goldstein said. “And so that’s kind of our legacy.” In Talloires, students can take two courses for college credit. The courses are taught by Tufts faculty, and the course options span across multiple different disciplines, according to the pro gram’s official website. In explaining the program’s curriculum, Goldstein highlight ed that all nine course options have a pedagogical connection to Talloires.“Allofthe classes that we offer here need to show a connection to this place. Not Talloires spe cifically, but there needs to be a reason that they’re going to be taught here,” Goldstein said.
The return of Tufts in Talloires: students, faculty share their memories from Talloires, France
The Tufts in Talloires campus and summer 2022 students are pictured.
“The students who were there this year were really sort of the COVID generation and they had been deprived so much. … They just threw themselves into everything and just had a blast,” Sullivan said. “This year, the room was packed, … you couldn’t keep the students away. It was anything, any sort of intel lectual engagement they were really excited for.” Another course offered in Talloires was Animation in the Alps, taught by Joel Frenzer, a professor of the practice in media arts at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. For his course, students documented their immersion experience in Talloires through the medium of animation, Frenzer explained.
“We [had] a screen and a projector and they hadn’t really seen their work with an audi ence like that before,” Frenzer said. “[A lot of the films were] personal, they get vulnerable, and real and honest. And there is an emotional transformation that happens by watching all their work that you can feel with the audience. … They got a standing ovation and they were just so proud.”
Embarking on his second year at Tufts, Oloyede is the Tufts Community Union FIRST Community Senator, a Tisch Scholar and he also plans to be involved with the university’s theaterOverall,department.Oloyede shared his excitement as he begins a new school year at Tufts. “I’m going to have a bet ter understanding when I go into these political science and international relations class es [this year], because I was there,” Oloyede said. “If I take an American politics class, I will be able to get so much more and contextualize it bet ter than I could if I had not had thisGoingexperience.”forward, Oloyede hopes to advocate for the peo ple and communities at Tufts and beyond, in light of his experiences and insights from the Hill.
Oloyede discusses the intersection of poetry and politics within his personal journey
THE TUFTS DAILY | FeaT ures | Tuesday, September 6, 20226 tuftsdaily.com
Frenzer further noted that the Tufts in Talloires program allowed him to get to know his students on a deeper level and befriend fellow Tufts faculty members from the Medford/Somerville campus that he wouldn’t have otherwise met at the SMFA. “The program is excellent because of the bonding with other faculty. … All these fac ulty that I would never come across, we are in the same small French village for six weeks together, and we go out to eat together, and we talk and we know each other’s families,” FrenzerOutsidesaid.of the classroom, stu dents and faculty had the oppor tunity to explore the local com munity and connect with each other, Goldstein added. “I think the community piece is important. So we have a field day of games that we do. …. We do hikes. We invite all the children from the com munity to come here. … We did a watercolor painting after noon,” Goldstein said. “So as much as possible, trying to … [have] facilitated activities that will help people connect with each other and feel more com fortable with us.” Tufts in Talloires students and faculty do not just inter act and explore the local com munities as outsiders, but they also live with them throughout the program. An integral part of the Tufts in Talloires program is that students are required to live with a host family in Talloires or Annecy, and they have the option to have a Tufts housemate.CamilleSmokelin, a sopho more who participated in Tufts in Talloires this summer, shared that she lived alone with an older French woman, which enabled her to practice her French skills and learn about French culture. She also told the Daily about her typical day in Talloires, which included spending an average of three hours in classes at the Priory and the rest of the day out and about. “I would go to class and … after that, you would just go to the beach and continue to spend time with people out side of the classroom setting,” Smokelin said. “I felt like that was the most special part of it, that you got to, number one, be in such a beautiful place that encouraged community in that way but also get to see your peers as students and also as friends, so continuously, seam lessly in one day.” If students are interested in participating in the Talloires program and, by extension, summer abroad programs through Tufts, they should apply early, look into scholar ship opportunities and reach out to the Tufts European Center, junior Lucy Millman explained.Reflecting on her time in Talloires, Millman noted that while the program has its dis tinctive advantages, accessibil ity and affordability remain to be an issue in her view. “Everyone I came across are some of the most lovely and won derful people I’ve ever met. The region is beautiful. Those are some of the happiest and most lovely six weeks of my entire life,” Millman said. “I just hope that it gets the funding it needs to continue to be more accessible, because I think the only thing that would make that program better is that if everyone on this campus has the opportunity to partake.” After two years of upheaval amid the pandemic, this summer’s return of students and faculty to Talloires reignited a flame of excite ment and appreciation, both in and outside the walls of the Priory, which will continue to spark and grow as the future unfolds.
Ahmadi, anoth er sophomore, used this year’s summer session to unlock courses for the upcoming fall semester.“Itwas not a matter of motiva tion, but because I’m an [econom ics] major, and [for] the courses that I was supposed to take for the fall semester, [Calculus] 1 was one of the prerequisites,” Ahmadi said. David Denby is a distinguished senior lecturer in the philosophy department who has been teach ing summer session courses since the mid-1990s. He noted how the composition and demographic of his summer students have changed over the “Thereyears.was a time when I had quite a few high school students. I think they have separate provision for them now … the basic makeup of the students apart from that is more or less the same. Most of them are Tufts students, perhaps two thirds, a third are from all over the place,” Denby said. “I do have more students now who are older, you know, people who work in admin istration, perhaps at Tufts, who are just doing a summer course, or peo ple who have gone back to school later in Beforelife.”committing to a summer session course, Wade had to evalu ate his options on how to spend his limited time. “I was kind of hesitant because … it was either I take a job or take a class online. And what kind of helped me make the decision was [speaking] to my mom. She was like, okay, well, if you like it, you should do it,” Wade said. In the end, Wade signed up to take a virtual intensive course that combined the Arabic 3 and Arabic 4 language classes. His resulting schedule during the summer ses sion was highly demanding, Wade explained.“You’re compressing two semes ters into six weeks. So you’re doing probably almost like a week of class every other day,” Wade said. For six weeks, Wade was in class from Mondays to Fridays for about 5–6 hours at a time, including a break for lunch during which stu dents could use to complete asyn chronous work. This was followed by several hours of homework after each lesson.
academic journeys continue through Tufts summer s essions
TALLOIRES continued from page 5 Each summer, Tufts students and visitors enroll in summer ses sion classes that occur for a number of weeks during the break between the two regular academic semesters. This year, the Tufts summer session included both virtual and in-person opportunities to study a selection of classes that may be offered during the academic year, as well as some special programs such as Access for Computer Equity. For Tufts sophomore Nole Wade, the summer session presented a way to accelerate his Arabic lan guage acquisition. “I wanted to increase my profi ciency as quickly as possible, and start working on the [Arabic] minor … in my sophomore year,” Wade said. “If I don’t start working on my minor with Arabic now, it’d be a lot more difficult to work on it in my junior year when I’m trying to com plete other studies.” Wade added that his plan to study abroad factored into his deci sion to take an intensive summer Arabic course this summer. “I also wanted to study abroad, as soon as possible, … I wanted to try and do it before junior year — maybe next sum mer. So I thought that building my proficiency would help a lot,” WadeMohammadsaid.
by Kaitlyn Wells Deputy Features Editor
Tufts in Talloires offers a range of in-person classes and cultural opportunities
NATALIE BROWNSELL / THE TUFTS DAILY A Tufts student studies outside near Tisch Library on Sept. 3. see SUMMER, page 7
While Ahmadi shared his posi tive view on summer courses as a way to continue learning in general, he still thinks that the cost of sum mer courses at Tufts is a hindrance.
In a statement to the Daily, Dean of Admissions J.T. Duck discussed how affirmative action practices fit into Tufts’ holistic application review“Ourprocess.process of building each entering class involves review ing thousands of applications in a holistic, contextual, and iterative admissions process that takes into consideration dozens, if not hun dreds, of factors for each applicant,” Duck wrote. “We care very much about each applicant’s voice and journey, what motivates them, and how what they have learned from their journey will contribute to our dynamic community.” Like many colleges, Tufts would have to change its admissions prac tices if the Supreme Court ruled in favor of SFFA. In a written statement to the Daily, Senior Vice President and General Counsel Mary Jeka noted that Tufts will remain com mitted to “ensuring that our com munity reflects students from all walks of life,” regardless of the Court’s decision.
“I kind of realized that the pro fessor is treating everyone [like they had] taken [calculus] before … and that was kind of annoying for me because I had not taken [calculus] before,” Ahmadi said. Denby taught Logic and Introduction to Philosophy this summer. Overall, he acknowl edged the inherent difficulty of the increased pace of summer session courses.“Itry to do exactly the same course in the summer as I did in the regular semester, because, you know, I don’t want to shortchange anyone,” Denby said. “[The sum mer session] is enormously com pressed. … Some of the topics we cover, it’s nice to have the stu dents allow them to percolate for a couple of days, and that’s just not available in the summer, you know. You’re right on to the next thing every day.” The summer session is also not as accessible or equitable for all Tufts students. Ahmadi, a first-gen eration and low-income student hailing from Afghanistan, detailed many obstacles he faced to take summer courses. “I’m an FGLI student and … the courses here are really expensive compared to other colleges, … espe cially the courses that you [take] for a letter grade. … Here at Tufts, you have to pay like around $4,000 for a course,” Ahmadi said. “For an FGLI student, that’s a lot of money. And you kind of have to take everything from everywhere, you know, to pay for the class. And because I was an international student there wasn’t any … financial [aid] or anything for thatAhmadiclass.” continued, “I know that domestic students receive a lot of funding for summer courses if they are an FGLI student. But for interna tional students, it’s not like that. You don’t get funding for classes, even if that class is required for your major or if [it’s] a prerequisite for other courses.”Inaddition to Calculus 1, Ahmadi took a one-credit course titled Sociology 99, which was con sidered part of an internship he was doing simultaneously. “For us international students, we have to go through a lot to work off campus. So … the administra tive process was very long, … but everybody was really supportive in the International Center, my pro fessor was really supportive. So I didn’t run into any serious prob lems,” Ahmadi said. “I think there is a policy that if an international student on financial aid takes a course for internship and if it’s less than two [semester-hour units] … the financial aid office pays for it.”
continued
Students might also enroll in the Tufts summer session for other reasons. Denby noted that many students like to “slip in an extra course or two” in the summer “if they want to graduate early” or when they’ve fallen behind on theirConsideringcoursework.that students’ cir cumstances are more variable during the summer, Denby pointed out that greater flexibility is required on the part of the course teacher. “There are unique challenges … to deal with [such as] fitting it in with work they might have, or they might be away, or … it turns out to be more time consuming than they imagined,” Denby said. “So I am much more lax in allow ing for things like incompletes … I try to make ad hoc adjustments.” Denby also highlighted some of the advantages of summer ses sions, citing a smaller average class size as an example. “Very often, not always, but often, the [summer] classes are smaller. And I think they find that that helps them as well: you get more discussion going sometimes … So there are some advantages but generally speak ing, the feedback’s good from the students,” Denby said.
“It’s important that you kind of weigh [taking a summer course] … with other potential experienc es that you might miss out on,” Wade said. It’s safe to say that members of the Tufts student body continue to seek knowledge and growth in all sorts of ways outside the fall and spring semesters. Some choose to do it through the Tufts summer session, which tends to offer smaller, more flexible and more age-diverse classes; howev er, this is not a possibility that is open to all.
“Taking the summer course is definitely a good choice; … you’re not away from academics [during the summer] … but I wouldn’t recommend [taking] it here necessarily at Tufts because it’s really expensive compared to other colleges,” Ahmadi said. Echoing Ahmadi’s sentiment, Wade advised to carefully weigh the pros and cons of taking a summer course, in light of other time commitments and consid erations over the summer.
Fea T ures 7Tuesday, September 6, 2022 | FeaTures | THE TUFTS DAILY
On top of the rigor and inten sity of summer courses, there are also unique logistical challenges to summer session classes, Ahmadi explained. In Calculus 1, Ahmadi encountered a last-minute change to his summer course timeline. “[The class] was supposed to end on [Aug.] 18, but our professor even shortened it, and I think he ended it on Aug. 4, instead of [Aug.] 18,” Ahmadi said. “[The professor] made a bunch of excuses, like, [that] we cover everything in the class.” “I feel really betrayed,” Ahmadi said with a laugh. However, he revealed that students who had taken the same course in the spring had access to an online resource that the summer session course did not“Weprovide.had six to eight questions per [homework] assignment, and that [wasn’t] enough to really master that topic,” Ahmadi said. This was especially challenging for students in the class who were learning calculus for the first time, Ahmadi added.
“Even if a particular admissions or recruiting practice were to be viewed critically or negatively by the court, that does not mean that universities – such as Tufts – cannot continue to advance their diversity, equity, and inclusion goals,” Jeka wrote. “There are many ways to help underrepresented people feel welcome at Tufts and to support theirWarikoosuccess.”commended the uni versity’s decision to join the amic us brief. “Tufts is talking about being or becoming an anti-racist institution, and I think this is a small but important symbolic ges ture to put our name on the line and say, ‘This is what we believe in,’” Warikoo said.
Tufts signs amicus brief supporting constitutionality of race-conscious admissions
SUMMER from page 6 disrupt the precedent set by the 2003 case Grutter v. Bollinger, in which the Supreme Court ruled that race-conscious college admissions wereNatashalawful.Warikoo, a Tufts sociol ogy professor whose research focuses on racial inequality in high er education, pointed out incon sistencies between SFFA Director Edward Blum’s claims of discrim ination and data surrounding the experiences of Asian and Asian American“[Blum]applicants.isnotinterested in discrimination toward Asian Americans, or anybody,” Warikoo said. “His goal is to end any racebased policy that is trying to actually remedy racial exclusion.” Warikoo disputed the notion that colleges have certain quotas based on race or ethnicity, noting that admissions officers prioritize a number of different applicant attributes. While not explicitly racialized, factors like extracur ricular participation, intended major and legacy status may be influenced by underlying variables that relate to systemic racism, she explained.Warikoo also expressed disap pointment that the Supreme Court — currently dominated by a super majority of six conservative justices — decided to take the case despite nearly 20 years of precedent sup porting the legality of affirmative action“Therepolicies.was kind of a shock that the U.S. Supreme Court took this case, because there have been mul tiple cases that have already been to the Supreme Court that have confirmed affirmative action legal ly, as long as it’s narrowly tailored,” Warikoo said. “This court is not afraid to overturn precedent.”
COURT continued from page 1 NEWS
Summer Sessions prove enriching for students, despite challenges
Every summer, over a hun dred artists are invited to Chicago’s Grant Park for a week end of music and entertainment. Lollapalooza is one of the big gest music festivals in the United States, made up of nine differ ent stages and lasting four days. Artists, both big and small, take the stage and perform for thou sands of local Chicagoans and visiting attendees. This year’s Lollapalooza included popular headliners like Dua Lipa and Metallica as well as a plethora of artists from every genre. Dua Lipa Dua Lipa was the last act to perform on the T-Mobile stage on July 29 and delivered an energetic, outstanding perfor mance. Dua is no stranger to Lollapalooza and has performed at the festival multiple times. However this year was her first time headlining. Coming off her Future Nostalgia Tour, Dua was well prepared to perform to a crowd of 120,000 people. Starting off strong, Dua began with “Physical” (2020), which was the perfect opportunity to showcase her vocal and dancing abilities as well as the skills of her incredible backup dancers. Dua’s setlist did not disappoint, with a majority of the songs from “Future Nostalgia” (2020) in addition to her older hits like “New Rules” (2017) and “One Kiss” (2018). It is not an exaggeration to say Dua Lipa was one of the best per formances at Lollapalooza this year. Dua is not just a singer but a true performer. Whether it be dancing with umbrellas during “New Rules” or having giant inflatable balls made to look like the moon bouncing around in the crowd during “Levitating” (2020) her songs always had something extra to grab your attention or make them more engaging for the crowd without being distracting. Gracie Abrams Gracie Abrams is a rising star. Fresh off her This Is What It Feels Like Tour and opening for the first leg of Olivia Rodrigo’s Sour Tour, Abrams seemed imbued with a new level of confidence that felt different from her previous con certs, opening with “This Is What It Feels Like” (2021) and instantly capturing all of the audience’s attention. With Abrams, there is no dancing, no intricate set or accessories, just her, her micro phone and a piano. The beauty behind the simplicity of Abrams’ performance is that even when she is on a large stage perform ing for hundreds of people at a festival like Lollapalooza, you can still feel that level of intima cy you would feel in a 150-per son venue. Abrams’ music is best described as heartbreak pop. The style might seem out of place at a high-energy summer festival, but she made it work. Abrams brought out all of her biggest hits and had the audience sing ing and screaming alongside her. Similar to her previous concerts, The CREATE pre-orientation program, formerly known as Arts @ Tufts, celebrated its fifth year this summer by introduc ing a new generation of Jumbos to the Tufts and Greater Boston arts scenes. CREATE stands for Cultivating Relationships by Engaging in the Arts at Tufts Experiences. Students from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, the School of Arts and Sciences and the School for Engineering all spent four days this August exploring different creative activities and settings. Elena Campos, a student of the SMFA and School of Arts and Sciences, was the coordinator for the 2022 program, and explained exactly what CREATE entails. “CREATE is one of the PreOrientation programs incom ing students can participate in. Heavily affiliated with the SMFA, the four-day program focuses on introducing participants to art experiences and opportunities at Tufts and in the greater Boston area,” Campos wrote in an email to the Daily. “We host workshops, visit museums, and create art on both the Medford and Fenway campuses. I started working with CREATE when I was a leader last year. After having fun in that position, I decided to apply to be the coordinator for this year’s program.”Thisyear, CREATE partici pants visited SoWa, the Institute of Contemporary Art and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in addition to participating in activities at the SMFA campus. “We held workshops at the SMFA with specialized stu dios and the SMFA library. Participants made zines, paint ed, wove, and explored the metal and painting studios,” Campos wrote. At the Medford/Somerville campus, the Department of Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies hosted workshops with professors and the Tufts University Art Gallery introduced the Class of 2026 to its newest exhibition.OliviaWhite, an SMFA com bined degree student graduat ing in 2023, spoke to the Daily about her own experiences as both a participant and leader of CREATE in an email. “I decided to be a leader because my own experience doing a Pre-Orientation program as a freshman was so impactful, and I wanted to be able to cre ate that kind of experience for other students,” White wrote in an email to the Daily. The program’s grand finale in Barnum Hall on Aug. 30, where stu dents modeled designs made out of recycled materials, was White’s favorite memory as a leader. “It’s so wonderful to see everyone work together and be so excited about what they cre ated, and the community that we’ve created in just four days becomes very apparent,” White wrote. “It’s also a lot of fun to see how creative people get with the materials they’re given!” First-year Eli Morton told the Daily about their experience with CREATE. Like White, they loved the fashion show at the end. “I think that was really when everyone was comfortable enough with each other to be silly and the things people came up with were entertaining, to say the least,” Morton said. “CREATE helped me adjust to the basic idea of college residential living while meeting people that had similar interests to me. I now have a lot more friendly faces going into the school year.”
RYAN FAIRFIELD / THE TUFTS DAILY Chelsea Cutler’s and Gracie Abrams’ Lollapalooza 2022 sets are pictured. see LOLLAPALOOZA
a r T s & pO p Cu LT ure TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2022 8 tuftsdaily.com ar & p O p C u
SEOHYUN SHIM SMFA’s main building, 230 Fenway, is pictured on March 24, 2017.
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Lollapalooza 2022 delivers memorable performances from iconic artists by Ryan Fairfield Assistant Arts Editor
by Alexis Enderle Assistant Arts Editor
CreaTe pre-orientation leaders, participants find community through art
/ THE TUFTS DAILY ARCHIVES
a r T s & pO p Cu LT ure 9Tuesday, September 6, 2022 | arTs & pOp CuLTure | THE TUFTS DAILY
The ultimate summer 2022 playlist
“Glimpse of Us” by Joji Megan Thee Stallion coined the term “Hot Girl Summer,” but Joji deconstructs this narrative with his reflective track “Glimpse of Us” (2022). Not the type of upbeat song one might expect on a summer playlist, but it was nearly impossible to avoid hear ing the gripping ballad at least once this season. “Vegas” by Doja Cat The new Princess of Rap, Doja Cat released her new track “Vegas” for the summer block buster feature film “Elvis” (2022) in early May to acclaim from both critics and fans. Easily one of the best tracks in her discogra phy, Doja Cat definitively stamps her mark both last summer with her most recent album “Planet Her” (2021), and now with her soundtrack hit. “Keep Driving” by Harry Styles With the release of his third studio album “Harry’s House” (2022), Harry Styles struck gold with one of the standard tracks. “Keep Driving” highlighted Styles’ growth as an exper imental musician and lyricist with the edgy-and-iconic lines, “Cocaine, side boob / Choke her with a sea view.” “Hot In It” by Tiësto and Charli XCX This year has been the year of Charli XCX. With the release of her latest record “CRASH” (2022), Charli XCX earned her first U.S. Top 10 hit, and only a few months later, she released the ultimate club hit of the summer. “Hot In It,” produced by Tiësto, is a testament to anthemsatirical-turned-empowermenttheaboutself-confidence.
The covers of “Super Freaky Girl,” “Dolls EP,” “Glimpse of Us” and “Harry’s House” are pictured.
Abrams found a healthy balance between her slower songs and her upbeat songs, which resulted in a lively, memorable set. One moment from Abrams’ set stands out from the rest — her cover of “Dancing On My Own” (2016) by Robyn, fre quently referred to as one of the best breakup songs of all time. Performing a song that is so iconic could have been intimidating, yet Abrams delivered a flawless cover. With crystal clear vocals, Abrams truly made the song her own and had the audience screaming every word alongside her. Abrams ended her Lollapalooza set the same way she finished her opening act for the SOUR Tour, with “I miss you, I’m sorry” (2020). Before begin ning, Abrams explained that the song was one of the first she ever released and described how she wrote it post-breakup. She said she had been feeling alone, but releasing the song connected her to those who took the time to listen to her music and helped her find community.
Abrams told the crowd, “I felt really close to you guys when I put this song out. Please sing it with me.” This endearing anecdote energized the crowd, who sang along the loudest they had the whole per formance. Chelsea Cutler Closing out the Coinbase stage on Saturday, Chelsea Cutler made sure to bring the spark and power to her performance. Cutler immediately took advantage of the stage layout and the large TV screens behind her, opening with “Under” (2021) and performing on an elevated part of the stage, while a field of sunflowers dis played behind her moved and pulsed with the music. Similar to Gracie Abrams, Cutler has an abundance of heartbreak-pop songs that she included in her set. Although Cutler just conclud ed the first leg of her When I Close My Eyes Tour and is about to begin the second leg this fall, the best performances in her Lollapalooza set were the ones from her 2020 album “How to Be Human.” Following “Under,” Cutler moved into “Sad Tonight,” the first track from “How to Be Human.” This high-energy song encouraged the crowd to sing along to the lyrics displayed on the screens behind Cutler — hundreds of attendees screamed the pre-chorus, arguably the best part of the song, every time. Later on in her set, Cutler performed an acoustic version of “Crazier Things” (2020), a song that rem inisces on a past relationship. Based on the number of people in the crowd recording on their phones, it was clear that this was an anticipated performance. Cutler’s live vocals are won drous. She is excellent at taking her songs and bringing the emo tions to a new level that you do not feel on the original, record ed tracks. The best example of Cutler’s vocal abilities would have been her performance of “nj” (2020), a breakup song about her ex-girlfriend that captures the desire to relive moments with someone you once loved. With a loud bass and a strong, echo ey backing track, Cutler gave an intense yet moving performance.
One of the first issues with Charli’s performance was the choreography, which felt random, unnecessary and ultimately a dis traction from the artist’s singing. Both the backup dancers and Charli herself seemed to be going through the motions as opposed to blending in the dancing and using them to bring the song to a new level. The performance over all lacked passion. It often felt as if Charli was performing for the sake of performing, rather than per forming because she wanted to.
Last summer, the Daily dove into how the music scene was resurrected after the COVID-19 pandemic struck in 2020, but this summer, there has been a continued flourish of new music and experimentation. Tracks that make people want to dance alongside tracks that make people want to cry were incorporated into this all-en compassing list. If the remain der of 2022 has the creative vision and prowess exercised by the tracks of this summer, music listeners will be appro priately satisfied. Below are the top 10 songs (with one bonus track) that defined summer 2022, in no particular order.
“29” by Demi Lovato Fresh off the release of their latest album “Dancing with the Devil…the Art of Starting Over” (2021), Demi Lovato returned this summer with a string of new singles for their August release “HOLY FVCK,” including standout track “29.” A track that centers on an inappropriate 12-year age-gapped relationship, the power track stands apart in Lovato’s discography. “ALIEN SUPERSTAR” and “BREAK MY SOUL” by Beyoncé Nothing was more monumen tal than the return of Beyoncé this year. Because her latest record “RENAISSANCE” (2022) was so impressive, not one but two tracks had to make the list. The infectious lead single “BREAK MY SOUL” and fan-fa vorite “ALIEN SUPERSTAR” pay testament to the queer, Black pioneers of house music. “In The Kitchen” by Reneé Rapp New artist Reneé Rapp, known for her role on HBO Max’s “The Sex Lives of College Girls” (2021–), released her debut single “Tattoos” (2022) shortly before releas ing her follow-up ballad “In The Kitchen.” The latter is an emotional reflection on a rela tionship past that mirrors the impact of “Glimpse of Us.” “Living Hell” by Bella Poarch Last summer, TikTokerturned-musician Bella Poarch released “Build a Bitch” (2021), an infectious track that chart ed on the Billboard Hot 100. This highlighted the power of TikTok as a music promotion al platform. Despite criticisms against influencers that all of them seemingly jump into a music career after they build a substantial following on social media, Poarch’s recent track “Living Hell” released this summer proves she can craft a strong summer pop track. “This Hell” by Rina Sawayama Three words: pride anthem 2022. That’s what “This Hell” by Rina Sawayama solidified this summer. A fusion track that combines a plethora of genres, “This Hell” is easily the best track by U.K. artist Sawayama off her upcoming studio album “Hold the Girl” (2022). “Super Freaky Girl” by Nicki Minaj As Doja Cat is the Princess of Rap, it’s only fitting that the Queen of Rap also makes her place known on this play list. “Super Freaky Girl” (2022) was meant to be a hit. After “Anaconda” (2014) sampled the ‘90s track “Baby Got Back,” when it was announced that Minaj’s new song would sam ple ’80s classic “Super Freak,” it was a recipe for success. This list would be incomplete without the incorporation of “Super Freaky Girl” — Minaj’s first solo track to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. by Jack Clohisy Executive Arts Editor
Charli XCX The Bud Light stage had a dis appointing start on the final day of Lollapalooza. Djo was the second artist to perform on the stage that day and delivered a good perfor mance. However, nothing about it was that memorable, so there was a bit of pressure on Charli XCX to bring life back to the stage. Sadly, her showing was subpar.
Some of the issues with Charli’s performance also fall on the crowd. At a concert, and especially at a music festival, the crowd has the power to create a lively atmosphere that makes everyone feel excited or they can set a tone that feels bland and unenthused. Charli’s crowd chose the latter. Of course, not every concert-goer will know every song and that is under standable. However, as an audi ence member, it is still possible to maintain a positive attitude even when the song is not known among the audience. It seemed that people at Charli XCX’s per formance were only excited for two songs: “Vroom Vroom” (2016) and “I Love It” (2012). While these songs, as well as “Good Ones” (2022), were great moments in Charli’s set, it was still hard to move past the overall low quality. Lollapalooza 2022 Lollapalooza was not lacking in talent this year. In addition to the artists mentioned above, there were countless talented individu als and groups that took the stage and delivered memorable per formances. From WILLOW’s live rendition of “t r a n s p a r e n t s o u l” (2021) to Wallows’ enjoy able “Are You Bored Yet?” (2019), it seems that — after a two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pan demic — Lollapalooza is back and reestablished as a summer staple for music lovers, both those in Chicago and those who travel from miles away to experience it.
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Pop icons and rising stars wow at Lollapalooza
LOLLAPALOOZA continued from page 8
THE TUFTS DAILY | Fu N & Games | Tuesday, September 6, 202210 tuftsdaily.com Fun & Games F&G Abi: “I forgot how to log into Wordpress and at this point I’m too afraid to ask.” LATE NIGHT AT THE DAILY CROSSWORD Last Week’s Solutions Difficulty Level: Getting Jimmy Evans to notice you. SUDOKU
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back to the Hill! We at the Daily have been hard at work all summer preparing to deliver intriguing, engrossing, revelatory journal ism to you this fall. Since a newspaper’s first responsibility is to the community it serves, we wanted to take this oppor tunity to let you know what you can expect from us this semes ter — both in terms of our day-to-day operations and our philosophy of how the Daily should function in the Tufts community.Inanadjustment to last semester’s schedule, we will be printing our paper once a week on Thursdays and publishing online-on ly on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Our audience has moved evermore online, in keeping with trends across collegiate and professional journalism, so we’re meeting you where you are with a robust social media presence and plenty of digi tal-first and multimedia con tent. Our (newly expanded) Science section will continue to publish online-only, show casing scientific innovations on Tufts’ campus and treating our readers to bite-size sci ence stories that help them see the world differently. We’ll continue to send out daily and weekly newsletters, which you can subscribe to here. You can also look forward to the con tinuation of popular Audio and Video projects such as The Daily Read and the Newsroom Concert Series. At the same time as we are embracing the digital age, we remain deeply attached to the printed newspaper and consider it an integral part of the Daily’s identity on cam pus. With that in mind, we’ve been working this summer to make our print product the best it can be and distribute it to as many of you as possi ble. Our weekly print papers, published each Thursday, will contain brand new arti cles plus a selection of the preceding week’s best, most essential stories. They will also feature a refreshed front page design, an update that embraces and builds upon the classic Daily layout style. In short, these papers will show case the Daily’s strongest work across its written content, lay out, photo and graphics sec tions. Grab a copy from one of our 20+ distribution locations — including many campus and local locations that we’re thrilled to be returning to for the first time since the onset of the pandemic — for time ly news, fun and games, and everything in between. We will also be increasing our focus on local coverage this fall across all of our writ ten content sections, but par ticularly in the news section. Make no mistake, the Daily is still first and foremost a cam pus publication — however, as the local journalism ecosystem in Medford and Somerville is progressively eroded by news paper mergers and closures, we see an opportunity to use our resources and skills in ser vice of our host communities. We hope these local stories will be informative and foster a sense of connection to your neighbors.We’reexcited to be bringing you five special, themed edi tions throughout the semester. The first was our Matriculation Issue for incoming first-years and all other newcomers to Tufts, which you can check out [here/online] if you missed it. You’re reading the second, our Welcome Back Issue, right now. We will publish our (com pletely unserious) Halloween Issue on Oct. 28, our Elections Issue on Nov. 8 and our Host Communities Issue on Dec. 8. Behind everything the Daily does is a dedication to high-quality, ethical journal ism. When we undertake a new project or adjust the way we operate, we ask ourselves, does this serve our audience? Does it align with our values and meet our standards? We hope that when you read, watch and listen to the Daily’s offerings, you see your experiences rep resented and are able to gain insight into the experiences of your peers. We also hope that engaging with our reporting will equip you to be active in the Tufts, Medford and Somerville communities — whatever that looks like for you. We’re excited to connect with you, our readers, this semester. As has been the case for the past 42 years, our goal with each new edition of the Daily is to earn — and main tain — your trust by ethically and accurately reporting on the issues that matter to you. Want to contribute to the con versation? You’re always wel come to contact us at daily@ tuftsdaily.com or submit a let ter to the editor to opinion@ tuftsdaily.com.Onbehalfof the entire Daily staff, best of luck for an excel lent semester. We can’t wait to getTheSincerely,started.86th
Op INION TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2022 11 tuftsdaily.com To our Welcomereaders,orwelcome
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Watching the news has been difficult this summer, from conflicts in Europe, Asia and the Middle East to the horror of American politics, where a Supreme Court decision stripped the American people of their right to make choices about their own bodies. On top of these regular violations of human rights across the globe, we are also still suffering from the COVID-19 pandemic while fearing the next global health emergency: monkeypox. Data displays how far from over the COVID-19 pandemic is, espe cially for the United States, as the U.S. remains in the top five countries for new COVID-19 cases and deaths. Tufts has loosened COVID19 restrictions and regulations on campus. Even though the vaccination protocols are the same — Tufts requires every one to be fully vaccinated and boosted — the isolation and testing policies trust students a little too much. In the begin
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THE TUFTS DAILY | Op INION | Tuesday, September 6, 202212 tuftsdaily.com
This type of infection is drastically different compared to COVID-19. Monkeypox spreads “through close, per sonal, skin-to-skin contact including direct contact or intimate contact with mon keypox rash, scabs, or body fluids from a person with monkeypox,” according to an email from the Tufts admin istration, instead of through breathing five feet away from a COVID-19-positive individu al. The lower risk of spreading monkeypox could, however, lead to higher cases as people start relaxing too much. Regardless of this, monkey pox poses a serious threat to college life and college stu dents. Both on-campus and off-campus students should be careful to not share their per sonal items with other friends, however much trust they may put in each other. Monkeypox spreads through “direct skin-toskin contact (sexual/intimate contact, including kissing) … or by contact with an infected individual’s clothing, bedding, towels, or other contaminat ed objects,” states Tufts. Thus, students are encouraged to be more cautious about who is invited to their rooms, or which parties they choose to go to. This outbreak, consequently, could limit the social and per sonal lives of Tufts students as well as college students around theTheseworld. health concerns and restrictions might seem unnecessary and exaggerated for students who want to be able to attend parties as well as classes, who want to be able to be in each other’s dorm rooms as well as seeing each other outside. It has been a tough couple of years since COVID-19 first started, but we can’t let ourselves fall into complacency and forget to protect ourselves and others.
A great, hopefully COVID19- and monkeypox-free year at Tufts is waiting for us, but only if we take the necessary precautions. Summer is now over; it is time for the world to begin to heal and for Tufts stu dents to be healthy and back on campus. by Idil Kolabas Staff Writer
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A new school year, a new global health emergency
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ning of last semester, Tufts required on-campus students to test every other day. On May 6, as finals began last semester, Tufts turned to vol untary testing. Now, however, Tufts is only offering symp tomatic testing, which means testing will not be accessible even when a student is con tact-traced if they have no symptoms.Thereduction in testing requirements may be logical, considering that many Tufts students got COVID-19 in the spring 2022 semester and will hopefully have immunity for some time. However, some health officials have advised that immunity from getting the most recent strains of the omicron COVID-19 variant may only last one month. Tufts is also expecting stu dents who test positive to iso late themselves in their own rooms, even if they have a roommate. Tufts first started having COVID-19-positive stu dents isolate in their own rooms after exceeding the capacity of The Mods and quarantine hotels last semester. Initially, they gave priority to those who lived in doubles and triples. Thus, this isolation policy could be reminiscent of last year’s flawed isolation proto cols. This decision could seem unfair to students who are still cautious about COVID19, as Tufts could maintain or improve the state of The Mods in order to ensure healthy isolation among friends and roommates. However, the majority of students might be too tired to care about the ongoing pandemic after years of taking precautions and still feeling its consequences. Tufts also published guide lines in response to the mon keypox outbreak, asking stu dents to be more responsible in isolating and consulting with their healthcare provid er. Monkeypox has not been taken as seriously as COVID-19 once was, probably because of the low rates of positive cases around the world and because it becomes infectious only when symptoms start, making the disease easier to contain.
GRAPHIC BY CAMILLA SAMUEL
Chung The end of the World Has Just Begun
While the United States did not make any formal promis es to restrict NATO expansion eastward, they could have taken a more cautious approach towards Russia. By expanding the Partnership for Peace and keeping NATO small, they could have eased Russian worries and potentially avoided the current wars in the Russian borderlands. Later, President Obama routinely blew off U.S. allies, including the strategically important Turkey. President Trump was, well, Trump, and even though defenders of the liberal international order have celebrated Biden’s elec tion, the new president has consolidated Trump’s anti-glo balization worldview.
The best example of this would be how the renewed NATO alliance has not come with a guns-for-butter trade to incentivize future cooperation against Russia after this current war. An example of a previous such arrangement was how the United States organized the Marshall Plan to support the economies of European nations through offshoring manufac turing jobs in exchange for total control of their security policies against the Soviet Union and globalExpertscommunism.havewarned about the United States allowing this liberal order to break down; another example is how President Biden’s IndoPacific Economic Framework critically neglects to offer U.S. market access to its members, thus failing to totally ensure cooperation on security issues in Asia against China. Since the liberal international order relies on all states within the system cooperating on securi ty issues under American aus pices, a failure by American policymakers to continue pro viding an economic incentive for cooperation does not por tend well for a continuation of the Long Peace.
Birthing Pains Daniel Chung is a sophomore who has not yet declared a major. Daniel can be reached at daniel.chung@tufts.edu.
All of this points to a world where the interconnectivity brought on by globalization, which fueled the rise of the global middle class, will also be its own downfall. The idea of ‘Eurasia’ — that Europe and Asia are concepts which mis guidedly divide up a single geo graphic space — has returned to the forefront of academ ic discourse in recent years. Experts realize that technology has enabled the two continents to meld, so that now an event happening in the Russian bor derlands can cause the break down of relations and states that are half the world away. As described by foreign affairs author Robert Kaplan, technology did not overcome geography but rather made it more claustrophobic. Now we are seeing the end result. When one piece moves, the whole house of cards comes crashing down, resulting in deglobalization and the end of a global industrial system as described at length by geo political analyst Peter Zeihan. My previous column, “Managing Multipolarity,” dealt with the prospects of the potential challengers to the current U.S.-centric world order — Russia, China, France, Japan, India and Turkey — including the challenges they faced and an evaluation of their chances to rise to great power status. This new col umn, “The End of the World Has Just Begun,” will continue to discuss the security chal lenges faced by the world and different regions in the com ing decades. However, its main focus will be on the underlying economic logic that is driving these changes. In other words, I will try to explain why it feels like decades can pass with nothing happening before days pass in which decades happen.
Op INION 13Tuesday, September 6, 2022 | OpINION | THE TUFTS DAILY F or at least the last half decade, it’s seemed like the world has been in a constant state of fail ure for most observers of the news. To liberals in the United States, much of this has been pinned on the unexpected and largely unprecedented rise of Donald Trump to the presi dency and the devolution of much of the Republican base into cult-of-personality MAGA politics.Meanwhile, on the American right, fingers have pointed at illegal immigration and a rise in crime — violent crime increased 5.2% from 2019 to 2020, echoing the rise between 1961 and 1962 which preceded decades of riots. Another com mon point of criticism, lobbed at the system by people from across the political spectrum, is the increasing noticeabili ty of a sprawling bureaucrat ic state which seems to get incompetently involved with the private lives of citizens at every possible turn, as exem plified by the CDC’s self-ad mittedly botched response to COVID-19.Outside of the American domestic system, regional great-power competition seems to be returning for good. Russia has initiated a war in Ukraine and seems set on reconstruct ing a traditional sphere of influ ence in the post-Soviet space, while China attempts to expand its influence into the Taiwan Strait yet again. But aside from those two oft-mentioned states, Turkish neo-Ottomanism is on the march again, with Ankara most recently re-hardening its stance towards Greece, Japan is rearming in a fashion eeri ly reminiscent of its posture before the Second World War, France is making a play for a soft zone of influence in North Africa, Iran is reconstructing a Persian sphere by taking advantage of American indif ference towards Iraq and India along with Israel have recently partnered with the United Arab Emirates to construct an exclu sive food corridor at a time of global agricultural instability. It seems like the entire inter national system is backslid ing with countries operating more by the realist principle of self help than the cooperative international norms and insti tutions that have ruled the last fewHowever,decades. while all these events are happening, and are significant in their own rights, they mostly serve as the symptoms of something else below the surface. To be exact, the entire structure of globalization that has served as the foundation of the last near-century since the end of the Second World War is fading away, and it’s not clear what, if anything, will be replacing it. On top of all of this, growing sentiment in the United States against being the world’s policeman has been driving American politicians since George H.W. Bush successive ly toward more isolationism. Bill Clinton entered the presi dency promising on ABC News to “focus like a laser beam on the economy” and domestic renewal — as became clear days into his term, when he slept through calls by inter national leaders to congratu late him, saying that foreign policy would come into play only “as it affects the econo my.” U.S. grand strategy under Clinton became increasingly haphazard, with the uncoor dinated expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe that did not take the opinions of the Russians into account being the best example of this.
Daniel
sp O r T s TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2022 14 tuftsdaily.com
“We took a lot more shots than we were able to finish in the back of the net, and I think this year converting the shots into goals will be really important. And especially now that there’s no overtime, we’re going to have to finish more early on,” senior mid fielder Maddie Pero said. This year, the overtime peri od will be eliminated from regu lar season play with the rationale being that many of the games that went to overtime in previous sea sons stayed tied through overtime.
Three of the Jumbos’ games last year went to single or double over time in order to be decided. One source of slight concern for the team is that the 2021 starting lineup was dominated by seniors who have now graduated. This won’t faze the Jumbos, as they are prepared to enter the season with a solid lineup. “I think that we have a very deep team and the freshmen coming in are very confident, and they’re very good at scoring. So I think that even though it’ll be a newer team, I think that the people coming in definite ly make up for the … matureness that we lost,” senior forward Claire Wilkinson said.
The Jumbos will open their 2022 campaign against Emerson at home on Wednesday, followed by their conference opener against Connecticut College this week end. They will then enter a tough stretch, playing five away games with four of them in conference, before returning home for the final stretch of NESCAC contests against Middlebury — the 2021 NESCAC champions — and Bowdoin. After not gaining a berth in the NCAA championship bracket last year, the Jumbos will look to earn a spot in the round of 64 either through the NESCAC tour nament or by obtaining a high enough seed to be selected. “I think finishing in the top three of the NESCAC is a big goal for us, so that we can hopeful ly make the NCAA tournament again,” Pero said.
“I don’t really think we expect much of a drop-off in terms of level at all. I think, if anything, it’s going to get better with the new guys. Each class that comes in and gets better, better and better every year,” DalyEnteringsaid. the season, the Jumbos are ranked No. 6 in the nation in the United Soccer Coaches preseason poll. Fellow NESCAC schools Conn. College and Amherst are ranked first and second, respectively. Like the women, the men will open their season in a noncon ference contest, traveling to MIT today. The men’s team’s con ference opener will be against Connecticut College at home on Sept. 10 in a game where the Jumbos will hope to avenge the Elite 8 loss from last season.
“They’re a good team and there’s a very fun rivalry we have going on with them. It’s great to see so much success in the NESCAC across the last couple of years. So we’re super excited for that game,” Daly said. They will then play four confer ence away games against Wesleyan, Amherst, Williams and Hamilton before returning home to play four out of five of the remaining confer ence matchups at home. The 2022 season is shaping up to be an entertaining one. From rivalry matchups to intense con ference contests, both teams of Jumbos are ready to face the test.
men’s and women’s soccer teams show promise for coming season by Arielle Weinstein Deputy Sports Editor EMMA BOERSMA TUFTS DAILY Last year’s women’s soccer team is pictured huddled before a game on Sept. 11, 2021.
After a successful scrimmage against Clark on Aug. 30, Tufts will look to build off of that momentum and start this season off on the right foot as regular season play begins.
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They will build off of this youth as the incoming class of first-years is large and made up of nine play ers, one of which is a goalkeeper.
The soccer program is one of the most successful and storied ath letic programs at Tufts. The wom en’s team consistently has winning records and places highly in the NESCAC, while the men’s team has won four national championships, two of which have been in the last five years. This year looks to be no different as both teams gear up for an exciting season ahead. After a solid 2021 campaign for the women, they are look ing to improve upon last year’s play. The Jumbos finished with an overall record of 8–7 and a conference record of 5–5, earning the No. 6 seed in the NESCAC tournament. At the beginning of the season, Tufts started out strong, winning four out of their first five games and romp ing New England College 11–0. However, toward the end of the season when conference play got tougher, the Jumbos’ play trend ed Nevertheless,downwards. throughout the year the team consistently showed a fighting spirit, as the majority of their games were decided by one goal. In many of the games, the Jumbos dominated possession of the ball but just couldn’t convert on scoring opportunities, which will be a focus point this coming season as they will lose their top scorer from 2021, Liz Reed. Tufts outshot their opponents on the season, 282 to 130, but less than half of those shots were on goal.
On the men’s side, the Jumbos will hope to build off of a very successful 2021 year where they made a deep run into the NCAA tournament. With an overall record of 15–2–4 and a confer ence record of 6–1–3, Tufts looked to be heading back to postseason success entering the playoffs. The Jumbos were able to get the No. 3 seed going into the NESCAC tournament. Tufts cruised through Bowdoin in the quarter finals 3–0 and narrowly edged out Middlebury in the semifinals 1–0. In the championship game how ever, the Jumbos faced a difficult test. Their opponents were the Connecticut College Camels — a team to which they lost in the regular season — and the Jumbos were looking to avenge that loss. They were able to pull off a 2–0 win to capture the NESCAC championship for the second year running and the third time in four years. The conference win also earned the men’s team an automatic spot and the top seed in the NCAA tournament. In the NCAA tournament, the Jumbos handily beat New England College 5–1, and then played a thriller in the round of 32 against Stevens. The game went to penalty kicks, which Tufts eventually won after 11 shots each. They made their way to the Elite 8, where once again they found them selves facing Connecticut College. Unfortunately for the Jumbos, their season would end in a 5–4 defeat, putting up a great fight in a heartbreaking loss. Connecticut College would eventually win the national championship.
The Jumbos graduated two AllAmericans in Biagio Paoletta and Calvin Aroh from their 2021 squad as well as top scorer Mati Cano. They will return defenseman Ian Daly, a 2021 All-American and the joint top scorer for the Jumbos. These losses might not affect the Jumbos too drastically, howev er. During the NESCAC playoff run Coach Kyle Dezotell utilized the entirety of his roster, playing younger players to reserve some of the experience for the NCAA tournament.“Ourteam identity has changed quite a bit because we lost so many big name players that our program had, you know. I think for us, every thing we do this year is going to be built upon how hard we work, and how hard we’re willing to work,” Coach Dezotell said.
s 15Tuesday, September 6, 2022 | spOrTs | THE TUFTS DAILY
New and
After a historic run last year, the Tufts volleyball team sets sights on its upcoming compet itive season with excitement. Despite graduating three pivotal seniors, the team maintains high hopes with the introduction of five new first-years and the return of the remaining roster mem bers. Newly elected captains, junior setter Maddie Yu, senior middle hitter Grace Legris and senior outside hitter and defen sive specialist Anna Nachmanoff shared their insights on the team and the season they are eagerly anticipating.Allthreecaptains were elected by their fellow teammates to lead the team on and off the court for the 2022–23 season. Yu, Legris and Nachmanoff all cited leading by example as a pivotal strate gy for their personal captainship style. Of the three, Legris is the only returning captain, as she served last season alongside two senior captains. She said return ing as a captain is something she is particularly excited about. “I’m excited to have a sec ond opportunity to lead the team and be more of a vocal pres ence in the gym and off the court as well,” Legris said. “I want to be someone my teammates can look toward both in a volleyball context or if a social thing comes up and just as a friend to go to.” The volleyball captain culture, as described by Nachmanoff, is about serving your team mates. Yu, the only junior cap tain, shared similar sentiments, in addition to her thoughts on being elected by her peers. “I feel honored to be cho sen by my teammates,” Yu said. “Like [Anna Nachmanoff] said, it’s definitely about servant hood and how we can better ourTheteam.”team started its presea son in late August, having all players arrive early to campus to prepare for the fall. Legris described the structure and shared how the practices have been going so far. “I think it’s been going well,” Legris said. “We started coach practices last Wednesday. We’ve been doing two-a-days since then. It started off at a fast pace, like everyone is picking it up and we’re running our whole offense. It’s going really well in my opinion. Everyone seems bought in and really focused at practice.” More specifically, Nachmanoff shared what the team has been honing in on during these past few“Ballweeks.control wins games,” Nachmanoff said. “That’s definite ly our big focus. Also integrating our freshmen into the team both on the court and off the court.” As many teams do, the vol leyball team likes to live by a season slogan. Something short, sweet and hopefully inspiration al dictates the direction of the players and team as a whole. The captains shared what this fall’s slogan is and what it means to them.“[The team motto is] ‘Right here, right now’,” Nachmanoff said. “It has a lot to do with being in the present moment and hav ing big goals but knowing all the smaller steps to get there. We talk a lot about focusing on the process over the result. So just putting in the work each day — right here, right now.” Legris expanded further on this season’s team motto. “Also, not focusing too much on the future and what games we have ahead of us, but what we’re working on right now. At the same time, not focusing too much on the past. If you make a mistake, it’s done with.” The team finished its season with an impressive 21–6 record. Despite losing in the NESCAC tournament to Wesleyan, the Tufts team received an at-large bid to compete in the NCAA tournament. The team advanced all the way to the Elite 8 after defeating the No. 1 seeded team in the country, Johns Hopkins University, in the Sweet 16. Tufts fell short of a national champi onship, losing to the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire to end the season. Coming off this suc cess story, Yu emphasized the excitement — rather than the pressure — generated by the season’s“Well,end.obviously it was really exciting to go that far in the tournament,” Yu said. “But, we lost a few players and we have some new ones so I think it’s definitely different and we have to work right here, right now to integrate and create that new team dynamic. So, [it is] obvi ously very exciting, but we need to focus on what we’re doing in the present moment.” Finally, with the departure of three seniors and addition of five first-years, the captains spoke on team chemistry and how they are working to unify the new group before their first game. “We’re doing double days, but in between practices and stuff we’re getting all our meals together,” Nachmanoff said. Yu highlighted the decrease of COVID-19 restrictions in creating more freedom for the team to engage in bonding activities.“Thisis my first season out of COVID, almost fully out of COVID, and my first preseason we’ve been able to go off cam pus and do bonding activities,” Yu said. “Yesterday we went to Honey Pot Hill Orchards and we went to Boone Lake and got to swim and do stuff out side of Tufts. Before, I hadn’t really [been] able to do that so it feels really good, the team dynamic, because we’re able to have more options and do more things together.”
by Ethan Grubelich Sports Editor returning volleyball captains talk team culture, upcoming season by Keila McCabe Executive Sports Editor
In America, summer means baseball. While players from the NFL, NBA and NHL enjoy their offseason, Major League Baseball is in full swing, with ballparks in major cities across the country hosting games every night. The same can be said for more than 100 Minor League Baseball teams across five dif ferent levels of play that take the field on an almost nightly basis from April to September.
The market for summer base ball is so big in the U.S. that it’s no surprise that there are opportunities for the best play ers in college baseball, includ ing those from the Tufts base ball program, to showcase their talents after the spring college baseball season is finished.
At the conclusion of the 2022 NCAA Division III baseball season, Tufts outfielder Jimmy Evans, pitcher Silas Reed and catcher Connor Bowman reunit ed in Burlington, Vt. to play for the Vermont Lake Monsters of the Futures Collegiate Baseball League. From 2011 to 2019, the Lake Monsters competed at the Single-A level of Minor League Baseball in the New York–Penn League. In 2020, the Minor League Baseball season was can celed in response to the COVID19 pandemic and the New York–Penn League was dissolved, prompting the Lake Monsters to join the FCBL in 2021 when play resumed. Evans, a senior, and Reed, a junior, joined the Lake Monsters in the second half of the 2021 season and helped them win the champion ship in their first season in the league, with Evans being named Championship Series MVP. After only playing for part of the 2021 FCBL season, the 2022 season gave Evans the opportu nity to display his dominance over the course of a complete 64-game regular season, and boy, did he ever. The First Team All-NESCAC outfielder led the 8-team league in runs batted in and was named to the FCBL AllStar team, the Lake Monsters’ MVP and a league MVP final ist, all while leading his team to a league-best 44–19 winloss record. The Lake Monsters cruised to a 2–0 series sweep of Westfield Starfires in the league semifinal but were upset 2–1 by the Nashua Silver Knights in the Championship Series. Evans doubled, walked and scored a run and Reed pitched 2 1/3 scoreless innings of relief in the decisive Game 3. Despite the ultimate heart break, Evans produced many unforgettable highlights and memories over the course of the 2022 season. One he described is the three-run pinch-hit home run that he demolished to right field in the 7th inning to help the Lake Monsters come back from a nine-run deficit to defeat the Worcester Bravehearts at home on Star Wars night on July 23. Evans and Reed also improved their games while with the Lake Monsters. “Learning from all the guys and the coaches, I came up with more of an approach at the plate. … When there’s guys throwing consistently in the 90s, you have to go up there with sort of a plan of attack in every at-bat of what you’re trying to do based on the situa tion,” Evans said. “It was a long summer. I played 55 games, so going through that daily grind and understanding what it’s like to be like a professional play er when you’re going out there every single day really helped me grow mentally and also physically.”“Thissummer I threw four pitches for the first time since I’ve been in college, so I think being able to control all four pitches and throw them all at the same time is one way that I’ve improved,” Reed reflected. Another area of growth, he said, was “being able to figure out when things aren’t going my way, like if I’m not controlling my pitches or something, fig uring out ways to get back to where I want to be, being able to throw all my pitches for strikes and where I want them to go.” Lastly, playing in front of the home crowd in Burlington was an exhilarating experience for Evans, and it gave him an exclu sive look at what it must be like to be a professional baseball player.“The atmosphere there is just unbelievable, like something I’ve never been a part of. We get [3,000–5,000] fans almost every game. The fans are unbeliev able there. Even on a Tuesday night we’ll get 1,500 people there,” Evans said. “All the guys there are celebrities to the city of Burlington because that’s like their major league team.” “It was cool being able to be there from day one, experienc ing a full season,” he added. “I think I played like 55 games this summer on top of 37 or so with Tufts, so I played around 90 games overall. So that was a lot of fun because it gives you a pro ball experience type thing, when you’re playing a lot of games.”Evans and Reed each have three years of NCAA eligibility remaining and will play for the Jumbos in 2023. Bowman will also return to the Jumbos in 2023 as a graduate student.
The Tufts women’s volleyball team celebrates their NCAA Regional Championship win on Nov. 14, 2021.
Tufts baseball stars lead Vermont Lake monsters to best record in Futures Collegiate baseball League
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