14 minute read
OPINION
tuftsdaily.com TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2022
Letter from the Managing Board: What you can expect from the Daily this fall
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To our readers,
Welcome or welcome back to the Hill! We at the Daily have been hard at work all summer preparing to deliver intriguing, engrossing, revelatory journalism to you this fall. Since a newspaper’s first responsibility is to the community it serves, we wanted to take this opportunity to let you know what you can expect from us this semester — both in terms of our day-to-day operations and our philosophy of how the Daily should function in the Tufts community.
In an adjustment to last semester’s schedule, we will be printing our paper once a week on Thursdays and publishing online-only 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 digital-first and multimedia content. Our (newly expanded) Science section will continue to publish online-only, showcasing scientific innovations on Tufts’ campus and treating our readers to bite-size science 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 continuation 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 campus. 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 possible. Our weekly print papers, published each Thursday, will contain brand new articles 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 showcase the Daily’s strongest work across its written content, layout, photo and graphics sections. 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 timely news, fun and games, and everything in between.
We will also be increasing our focus on local coverage this fall across all of our written content sections, but particularly in the news section. Make no mistake, the Daily is still first and foremost a campus publication — however, as the local journalism ecosystem in Medford and Somerville is progressively eroded by newspaper mergers and closures, we see an opportunity to use our resources and skills in service of our host communities. We hope these local stories will be informative and foster a sense of connection to your neighbors.
We’re excited to be bringing you five special, themed editions 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 (completely 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 journalism. 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 represented 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 maintain — your trust by ethically and accurately reporting on the issues that matter to you. Want to contribute to the conversation? You’re always welcome to contact us at daily@ tuftsdaily.com or submit a letter to the editor to opinion@ tuftsdaily.com.
On behalf of the entire Daily staff, best of luck for an excellent semester. We can’t wait to get started.
Sincerely,
The 86th Managing Board of
The Tufts Daily
Chloe Courtney Bohl
Delaney Clarke
Julia Shannon-Grillo
Ty Blitstein
Abigail Vixama
Charlene Tsai
Sam Berman
GRAPHIC BY CAMILLA SAMUEL
by Idil Kolabas
Staff Writer
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, especially 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 everyone to be fully vaccinated and boosted — the isolation and testing policies trust students a little too much. In the beginning of last semester, Tufts required on-campus students to test every other day. On May 6, as finals began last semester, Tufts turned to voluntary testing. Now, however, Tufts is only offering symptomatic testing, which means testing will not be accessible even when a student is contact-traced if they have no symptoms.
The reduction 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 students who test positive to isolate themselves in their own rooms, even if they have a roommate. Tufts first started having COVID-19-positive students 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 protocols. 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 guidelines in response to the monkeypox outbreak, asking students to be more responsible in isolating and consulting with their healthcare provider. 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.
This type of infection is drastically different compared to COVID-19. Monkeypox spreads “through close, personal, skin-to-skin contact including direct contact or intimate contact with monkeypox rash, scabs, or body fluids from a person with monkeypox,” according to an email from the Tufts administration, instead of through breathing five feet away from a COVID-19-positive individual. The lower risk of spreading monkeypox could, however, lead to higher cases as people start relaxing too much.
Regardless of this, monkeypox poses a serious threat to college life and college students. Both on-campus and off-campus students should be careful to not share their personal 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 contaminated 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 personal lives of Tufts students as well as college students around the world.
These 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 students to be healthy and back on campus.
The Tufts Daily is a nonprofit, independent newspaper, published Monday through Friday during the academic year, and distributed free of charge to the Tufts community. The content of letters, advertisements, signed columns, cartoons and graphics does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Tufts Daily editorial board. EDITORIALS Editorials represent the position of The Tufts Daily. Individual editors are not necessarily responsible for, or in agreement with, the policies and editorials of The Tufts Daily. VIEWPOINTS AND COLUMNS Viewpoints and columns represent the opinions of individual Opinion editors, staff writers, contributing writers and columnists for the Daily’s Opinion section. Positions published in Viewpoints and columns are the opinions of the writers who penned them alone, and do not necessarily represent the opinions of the Daily itself. All material is subject to editorial discretion. OP-EDS Op-Eds provide an open forum for campus editorial commentary and are printed Monday through Thursday. The Daily welcomes submissions from all members of the Tufts community; the opinions expressed in the Op-Ed section do not necessarily represent the opinions of the Daily itself. Opinion articles on campus, national and international issues should be 600 to 1,200 words in length and submitted to opinion@tuftsdaily.com. The editors reserve the right to edit letters for clarity, space and length. All material is subject to editorial discretion and is not guaranteed to appear in the Daily. Authors must submit their telephone numbers and day-of availability for editing questions. ADVERTISEMENTS All advertising copy is subject to the approval of the editor in chief, executive board and business director.
Daniel Chung
For at least the last half decade, it’s seemed like the world has been in a constant state of failure 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 presidency 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 common point of criticism, lobbed at the system by people from across the political spectrum, is the increasing noticeability of a sprawling bureaucratic state which seems to get incompetently involved with the private lives of citizens at every possible turn, as exemplified by the CDC’s self-admittedly 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 reconstructing a traditional sphere of influence 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 eerily 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 indifference towards Iraq and India along with Israel have recently partnered with the United Arab Emirates to construct an exclusive food corridor at a time of global agricultural instability. It seems like the entire international system is backsliding with countries operating more by the realist principle of self help than the cooperative international norms and institutions that have ruled the last few decades.
However, 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 successively toward more isolationism. Bill Clinton entered the presidency 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 international leaders to congratulate him, saying that foreign policy would come into play only “as it affects the economy.” U.S. grand strategy under Clinton became increasingly haphazard, with the uncoordinated expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe that did not take the opinions of the Russians into account being the best example of this.
While the United States did not make any formal promises 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 election, the new president has consolidated Trump’s anti-globalization 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 manufacturing jobs in exchange for total control of their security policies against the Soviet Union and global communism.
Experts have warned 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 security issues under American auspices, a failure by American policymakers to continue providing an economic incentive for cooperation does not portend well for a continuation of the Long Peace.
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 misguidedly divide up a single geographic space — has returned to the forefront of academic discourse in recent years. Experts realize that technology has enabled the two continents to meld, so that now an event happening in the Russian borderlands can cause the breakdown 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 geopolitical 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 column, “The End of the World Has Just Begun,” will continue to discuss the security challenges faced by the world and different regions in the coming 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.
Daniel Chung is a sophomore who has not yet declared a major. Daniel can be reached at daniel.chung@tufts.edu.
