The Tufts Daily - Tuesday, May 4, 2021

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T HE T UFTS DAILY

VOLUME LXXXI, ISSUE 52

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Tuesday, May 4, 2021

MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, MASS.

Racial, ethnic inequities apparent in Medford and Somerville vaccine administration

by Alex Viveros News Editor

The cities of Medford and Somerville reported that 37.01% and 33.36% of their residents, respectively, have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data released by both cities last week. In Medford, 57.37% of the population has received at least one shot, while Somerville reports that 58.17% have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

When broken down by race/ ethnicity, both cities show that white residents are the most vaccinated group per capita.

In Medford, 38% of white residents, 20% of Black residents, 23% of Asian residents and 24%

of Hispanic residents have been fully vaccinated against COVID19 as of April 29. When counted by those who have received at least one dose, 56% of white residents, 30% of Black residents, 46% of Asian residents and 43% of Hispanic residents have received at least an initial vaccine.

In Somerville, 37% of white residents are fully vaccinated, while 28% of Black residents, 23% of Asian residents and 16% of Hispanic residents have been completely immunized as of April 29. When accounting for those who have received at least one dose, 64% of white residents, 43% of Black residents, 47% of Asian residents and 29% of Hispanic residents have been given at least one shot.

Tufts Action Group publishes response to anti-racism workstream reports

SOPHIE DOLAN / THE TUFTS DAILY

Ballou Hall is pictured.

by Peri Barest

Assistant News Editor

Members of the Tufts Action Group, a collective of faculty, staff and students committed to grassroots anti-racism efforts within the university, met in April to discuss and respond to the five recently published anti-racism workstream reports.

TAG’s response acknowledged the progress made by the “Tufts as an Anti-Racist Institution” effort and called for increased transparency, accountability and community presence in its implementation.

“We carry out this audit and share this feedback with a view to contributing grassroots insight, and to the restorative justice principle of lifting up voices and

perspectives from communities most harmed by the structures of racism at Tufts,” the group’s statement said.

Associate Professor of History and Chair of the Department of Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora Kris Manjapra, who is a member of TAG’s steering committee, said that the group formed last summer in response to police brutality and the killing of Black people around the country. The group has about 100 members.

“Approximately 35 [members] gathered via Zoom for meetings in April, in which we reviewed, together, the workstream … with a view [of ] both wanting to recognize progress made as well as see TAG, page 3

NICOLE GARAY / THE TUFTS DAILY

CVS Pharmacy in Davis Square, which administers COVID-19 vaccines, is pictured on Oct. 25, 2020.

It remains unclear what the effect of age may currently have on the vaccine rollout among different racial/ethnic groups in Medford and Somerville.

By the end of Phase 2 of the Commonwealth’s vaccine distribution plan — which lasted from Feb. 1 to April 18 — all individuals older than 55, along

with those with one or more medical conditions, K-12 educators and workers in certain see VACCINATIONS, page 2

Tufts students evicted from ZBT house after Walnut Hill repeatedly failed to make repairs

by Chloe Courtney Bohl Assistant News Editor

In April, the three residents of the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity house were told to move out due to maintenance issues that began in September 2020 and that Walnut Hill, a Tufts real estate subsidiary, repeatedly failed to resolve.

Omar Badr, the RA for the ZBT house, explained that the maintenance problems began early in the fall semester. Each time a resident would take a shower, water droplets would leak down from the ceiling of the house’s common area.

After the leak began, the residents noticed that area of the ceiling turning yellow in color and developing cracks in the sheetrock.

Badr contacted Walnut Hill, the Tufts subsidiary responsible for maintaining the ZBT house, shortly after he noticed the leaks and discoloration in the ceiling. According to Badr, they said they would send someone to look at the ceiling that week, but no one came.

Weeks later, the leak had not gone away and the ceiling had begun to bulge. Badr explained that he was first able to successfully make contact with Walnut Hill in early November, when he reached them through the Tufts University Police Department.

“On Sunday, the bulge [was] just hanging from the ceiling, and it [was] about to fall probably within the next hour or so,” Badr, a senior, said. “And I …

SOPHIE DOLAN / THE TUFTS DAILY

Mold is pictured growing on the ceiling of the ZBT fraternity’s common room on April 25. tried calling [Walnut Hill], that didn’t work. I called TUPD, and they managed to get me on the phone with someone. And when I finally did get on the phone, they’re like, ‘Yes, we’re aware. It should hold, it’ll be fine. We’ll get it first thing Monday morning.’

And then as soon as I hung up that call, maybe 10 minutes later, the ceiling crashed.”

The residents of the ZBT house temporarily relocated to Lewis

OPINION / back

ARTS / page 6

FEATURES / page 4

Students call on ORLL for greater transparency after this year’s complicated housing selection process

Author Nimmi Gowrinathan talks female fighters with Harvard professor Jocelyn Viterna

Local sororities work toward inclusivity, accessibility

Hall so that Walnut Hill could assess and repair the damage.

Robert Chihade, Tufts director of real estate, said that during that time, a contractor identified the shower as the source of the leak and restored the sheetrock and paint on the ceiling.

“The plumber did not find any damage to or leaks in the see ZBT, page 3 NEWS

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FEATURES

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ARTS & POP CULTURE

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FUN & GAMES

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OPINION

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THE TUFTS DAILY | News | Tuesday, May 4, 2021

THE TUFTS DAILY Megan Szostak Editor in Chief

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White residents most vaccinated group per capita in both Medford and Somerville VACCINATIONS

continued from page 1 categories, were eligible for vaccination.

Because the median age of white residents (42.8 years) is higher than that of Black residents (32.7 years), Asian residents (33.9 years) and Hispanic residents (28.1 years) in Massachusetts, some have questioned whether a portion of the racial and ethnic disparities in vaccine distribution may be attributable to older populations receiving the vaccine first.

Boston Indicators, a research association affiliated with the Boston Foundation, published a data brief in early April that estimated the age-adjusted vaccination rates among different racial/ ethnic groups.

The brief found that in Massachusetts, when adjusted for age, 35% of white residents, 31% of Black residents, 33% of Asian residents and 26% of Latino residents had received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine as of April 9.

Meghann Ackerman, the deputy director of communications for the City of Somerville, acknowledged the apparent disparities in vaccine distribution in an email to the Daily.

“Black and Latinx populations have a shorter life expectancy than the white population, and Black and Latinx immigrant populations skew younger,” Ackerman wrote on April 27.

“Because the early groups eligible were [age-based] there were fewer Black and Latinx residents in those early phases … In the

age-adjusted data, Somerville has very close vaccination rates for our white, Black, and Asian populations, but still lower rates for the Latinx population.”

Ackerman also cited language barriers, difficulty in access, vaccine hesitancy and misinformation surrounding the process — such as false information that one must pay, provide insurance or show ID to receive a vaccine — as contributing factors toward vaccine disparities.

Jackie Piques, the director of communications for the City of Medford, also included vaccine hesitancy and access as potential reasons for vaccine disparity, among other factors.

Across Massachusetts, the racial/ethnic disparities in vaccine distribution among the states’ most vulnerable communities have been well documented. A team of researchers conducted an analysis in mid-April that found that by and large, the distribution of vaccines in Massachusetts was not going to communities most affected by COVID-19.

Specifically, the April 14 analysis compared the proportion of COVID-19 infection to the proportion of COVID-19 vaccination by race/ethnicity. The authors noted that although non-white residents made up 62% of confirmed COVID-19 infections in Massachusetts, they represented only 26% of fully vaccinated individuals in the state.

“It’s a stark reminder that we have a lot of work to do to address the inequities in vaccine distribution such that it better aligns

with COVID infection risks, and that it addresses long-standing inequities across racial and ethnic groups,” Thomas Stopka, co-author of the study and associate professor of public health and community medicine at the Tufts University School of Medicine, said.

Gabriela Andujar Vazquez, an attending physician at the Tufts Medical Center who focuses on infectious disease, said outreach, access and education surrounding vaccination could work to undo disparities among communities of color.

“There are also other socio-economic insights and social issues that might prevent someone from getting [vaccinated] in these communities,” Andujar Vazquez said. “Not every 95-year-old that is not an English speaker can go onto the internet and do a vaccine appointment.

So there’s a lot of different examples of how difficult it can be for certain communities, patients and individuals to be able to get an appointment, because we know that getting health care in general for these communities is difficult.”

Both Piques and Ackerman indicated that the cities of Medford and Somerville have taken steps to combat vaccination disparities among racial/ ethnic groups. Included among these are multilingual resource lines, targeted outreach to communities of color and collaboration with local faith leaders and community partners.

Piques mentioned that the City of Medford is also co-opting

COVID-19 AT TUFTS

the Commonwealth’s “Trust the Facts, Get the Vax” campaign, an effort intended to educate the public about the safety of the COVID-19 vaccine.

There are currently no cityrun vaccine clinics operating on a regular basis in either Medford or Somerville, according to Piques and Ackerman. The Medford Board of Health was able to partner with the Medford Housing Authority to provide on-property vaccinations through April 30, and the City of Somerville collaborated with the state to provide vaccinations to those in state-authorized affordable housing senior buildings.

Although there has been widespread debate among public health officials regarding when, and even if, the world may reach herd immunity, it was originally estimated that approximately 60–70% of the population would need to be vaccinated in order to do so, according to Nature.

Stopka said that in order to reach a sense of normalcy in Massachusetts, prioritization should be given toward vaccine equity in communities with a high risk of infection, many of which are home to communities of color.

“If we’re vaccinating well in one community but not in a neighboring community, we will have struggles in reaching herd immunity,” Stopka said. “If we want to achieve success in combating the pandemic, we do need to do it in a more equitable way across the entire community to have the best chance of success.”

News

Tuesday, May 4, 2021 | News | THE TUFTS DAILY

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TAG members acknowledge importance of workstreams, emphasize equity in future work TAG

continued from page 1 to look at where progress still needs to be made,” he said.

Manjapra said that the university’s first major breakthrough was creating the space within the institution to have these conversations. TAG also commended the commitment of $25 million in investments over five years toward these anti-racism efforts.

TAG’s response included a list of concerns and demands for the university as it moves forward in implementing the workstream recommendations.

“The key themes of the room for improvement are the need for accountability, the need for transparency, the need for coordination, the need for more equitable consultation with community members, especially targeted and harmed community members around issues of equity and the need for Tufts students, staff, faculty who are amongst the underrepresented, marginalized and targeted groups to be included at the decision-making table for how these anti-racist institution endeavors are going to unfold,” Manjapra said.

Erin Seaton, senior lecturer in the department of education and a member of TAG, agreed that there should have been more community input

in developing the recommendations.

“Tufts had Accenture, which is a problematic company, come in and do some of the initial investigative work in thinking about what it would need to become an anti-racist university when there was already this grassroots work happening on campus, so the audit felt like in some ways it ought to have come from the community rather than an outside company,” she said.

Manjapra added that restorative justice is essential to the success of this work.

“Restorative justice insists that when remedy work is being done, remedy for inequities, remedy for injustice, the communities that have been harmed, must be consulted in the process,” Manjapra said. “There’s even a stronger formulation, which is affected communities should own the process of remedy.”

Mala Ghosh, associate dean of Tufts Global Education and a member of TAG, said that the anti-racism efforts must also be addressed through a global lens because racism is not only a domestic issue.

“From the reports and group sessions it was not evident that there was an exploration of the experiences and needs of international students, scholars, faculty, and staff here in the U.S.,” Ghosh

wrote in an email to the Daily. “I think it is also vital to look at the experiences of community members who study, work, teach, or conduct research abroad.”

She expanded further on her concerns in this area.

“Oftentimes we think of Tufts as being only in the US and anti-racism discussions are often from a US domestic point of view,” Ghosh said.

One of TAG’s demands is the establishment of a staff senate to ensure that staff members are represented in university governance, like faculty are with the Faculty Senate.

“Staff play a critical role in the University and should have a voice beyond their own department and supervisor,” Ghosh said. “We talk about recruiting a diverse staff, but we need to also focus on retention. In my opinion, a staff senate would create a stronger and more inclusive community across divisions and schools.”

Seaton said that a holistic curriculum review, another of TAG’s demands, is fundamental for working towards being an anti-racist institution. This includes rethinking AP credits and grading for the first two years of undergraduate education.

“I think we have to radically rethink the whole way in which students come into the university,” she said. “For example, one of

the things I think about a lot are AP courses. Who takes AP courses, who brings those credits to the university and then how do those create a two-tiered system, in which primarily white, privileged students come into Tufts already ahead of their peers?”

Ghosh added that educational workshops must be customized to meet the varying needs in the community.

“I am also concerned that people who are from historically marginalized communities are often further traumatized in various ways in these trainings or workshops,” she said. “We are often put on the spot because we are one of the few in the room that has experienced the type of discrimination being addressed.”

Manjapra said that, as a historian, he views change as a dialectic. Moving forward, he hopes to see more community-led change at Tufts.

“When we look at how institutions change, there are two models,” he said. “One model is top-down change, and that tends to replicate the existing structures and maintain the established interests. Another model is community-led change, and it’s community-led change that we have not had enough of at Tufts University, which is why we don’t see structures change.”

Despite this, Manjapra said he is confident in university leadership’s commitment to making these structural changes.

“I think, whenever an institution needs to make giant steps, not small steps, it always comes down to visionary leadership,” Manjapra said. “I think we are in a very good place, given that President Monaco is a big thinker and has a track record of making big steps at Tufts.”

Seaton said that, for her, TAG’s work is about giving students the knowledge and agency to confront and dismantle systems of oppression.

“If we think about Tufts as a leader in the world, I can’t think of something better to give students than the ability to have tools to dismantle oppression, and to be thinking about this in terms of their own identities, and the communities and workplaces that they are going out beyond,” Seaton said.

Manjapra emphasized each member of TAG’s role in the Tufts community and desire to be represented at an institutional level.

“A really important insight that’s coming out of the TAG work is the importance of feeling represented in your home,” he said.

“That’s the difference between inclusion and equity … equity is about feeling that you belong in a place because you’re represented in structures.”

RA forced to drop class due to stress of housing issue ZBT

continued from page 1 pipes above, and the contractor did not identify any structural damage,” Chihade wrote in an email to the Daily.

The leaking resumed just days after Badr and the other residents returned to the ZBT house.

According to Badr, the deterioration of the ceiling progressed more quickly this time, to the point where he called Walnut Hill and told them he thought it was about to fall again.

“This is just a cycle of them ignoring me and not being responsive and then things escalating, and [then] they look at it,” Badr said. “The second time, it [didn’t] fall but it [was] very close … they [came to] fix it at the very last second. And it [happened] a third time, after they fixed it again. So I was told that the plan was that they were going to do renovations … over winter break, and that … there should be no more issues.”

Chihade said that over winter break, Walnut Hill came to the ZBT house to “caulk, tile and secure the areas around the shower and install a sliding shower door in order to prevent water escaping into the walls or onto the bathroom floor.”

He added that since the November repairs to the common room ceiling, further damage occurred to the area.

However, Walnut Hill deliberately did not repair it.

“Additional water collected in the ceiling, causing additional

damage to the ceiling in the living room — some small amounts of water came through as well as paint and sheetrock,” Chihade said. “This area was deliberately not repaired in January 2021 so that the contractor could monitor the activity and determine if any additional water was coming through after the bathroom repairs were made.”

At the time, Badr was not aware that Walnut Hill had deliberately not repaired the common room ceiling.

In a follow-up email to the Daily, Badr explained his understanding of the situation.

“I was told by my boss and the head of ResLife that they would be ‘completing renovations’ over winter break and that the issue should be fully fixed when we [came] back in February,” Badr said. “I was not aware nor do I think my boss was that they deliberately didn’t make repairs.”

After winter break, the ceiling was still leaking when the residents took showers. The sheetrock began cracking again, and mold began to grow on the exposed wood planks where the sheetrock had peeled away.

Over the course of the fall and spring semesters, Josh Hartman, director of the Office of Residential Life and Learning, said he reached out to the residents multiple times, offering to move them out of the ZBT house.

Despite the continued problems, Badr did not want to move out because the house offered him a level of safety as an immu-

nocompromised student. In the house, he could minimize his close contacts and cook his own food rather than going to the dining halls.

“I chose to live in this house to avoid as [many] people as possible,” Badr said. “It’s very easy to do that because I only have two residents, and they’ve both already had COVID so they aren’t able to catch it again for the rest of the semester.”

Ultimately, the ORLL contacted the three residents of the ZBT house and gave them two weeks’ notice to move out by April 25.

Badr emphasized that he did not want to leave the ZBT house and was surprised when he received the move-out notice from the ORLL. He had understood that the ORLL’s lack of communication had signaled their willingness to remain in the house until the end of the semester.

“They were cool with that until they weren’t,” Badr said.

Dan Gizzo, another resident of the ZBT house, agreed with Badr that he would have preferred to stay in the house for the remaining weeks of the semester.

“I was hoping that we could just stick it out,” Gizzo, a junior, said. “I mean, this has been going on literally since the first shower this semester … so yeah, if it had been up to me, [we would have stayed] there for two more weeks.”

Badr described the moving process as rushed and stressful.

“I was very focused on getting my residents out … and organizing our house items because I didn’t know if we’d have access to the house or not again,” Badr said. “And if we don’t pack all of the house items like the projector, TV, gaming console, composites, kitchen appliances, things like that, they can get thrown away by Walnut Hill when they do renovation this summer, so [I was] just scrambling to make sure our residents are moved out, that everything’s put away, and we don’t lose anything valuable.”

The residents ended up moving to their new housing — an off-campus apartment — without university assistance because the ORLL was unable to offer them moving assistance on days that worked for them.

“The students asked for moving assistance on the weekend.

We could not accommodate the request for weekend assistance due to unavailability of movers during those times,” Hartman said. “The students were told that they would have access to the house to retrieve any items that were left behind, and that access could be easily coordinated through the Office of Residential Life and Learning.”

According to Badr, this was not clearly communicated to him at the time.

“When I asked, initially, if we were going to have access in the house, I was told by the head of ResLife that they don’t know; it’s up to Walnut Hill if they changed the locks or not,” Badr said.

Badr says Walnut Hill repeatedly failed to communicate with him over the past two semesters.

They were unresponsive when Badr first reached out about the leak. Chihade told the Daily that a Walnut Hill contractor checked in weekly this semester to monitor the leak, but Badr disputes this.

“The contractor has investigated weekly since January, and no additional water has collected in the ceiling assembly, indicating that the bathroom repairs were successful,” Chihade said.

Badr said this was untrue.

“Some guy came in once in a while … I study in our common area where the leaking happens, and barely leave the house as-is.

I can tell you I’ve seen that man roughly 3 times this semester,” Badr said. “If he was coming in weekly … I would be aware of it.”

Badr reflected on the stress and responsibility placed on him as an RA during this process.

“Some of the issues that we’ve had at this house this year, I feel like, are … out of my jurisdiction and [outside] the qualifications for this job,” he said. “I’m just a college student … I don’t know how to deal with continuous housing issues and unresponsive landlords.”

He also commented on how it affected him in a larger sense.

“It really affected me academically as well,” Badr said. “I had to withdraw from a class because I just couldn’t keep up with figuring out all these housing issues and focusing on my classes at the same time — it just became way too much.”

4 Tuesday, May 4, 2021

Features

tuftsdaily.com

Local sororities disaffiliate from national organizations, hope to build more inclusive communities

by Sarah Crawford and Olivia Tan Executive Features Editor and Contributing Writer

The Ivy and Thalia, two newly established local sororities, started accepting members this spring.

Last fall, members of these new organizations disaffiliated from the national chapters of Alpha Phi and Chi Omega, respectively, partly in response to the criticism of Greek life on campus. Zoe Reid, a director of the membership application process for The Ivy, as well as Kelly Bernatchez and Ryen Delaney, co-executive directors of Thalia, hope that the local organizations will be more equitable and inclusive spaces for female-identifying and nonbinary students.

For the past several years, Greek life has been a contentious topic on campus. In 2016, Tufts suspended new recruitment for Greek organizations in the wake of allegations of hazing and sexual misconduct. Since then, there have been many calls to reform or abolish Greek life. In the summer of 2020, an Abolish Greek Life at Tufts Instagram account was formed, and it has since gained more than 1,500 followers.

According to the Abolish Greek Life at Tufts movement, Greek life historically has been an exclusive community that often perpetuates problematic and discriminatory practices.

“Greek life – and specifically fraternities -were built to propel only [cisgender-heterosexual], white, wealthy men to positions of power, and they still function as a way to help those in positions of privilege retain their power. Although at Tufts, Greek life is far smaller and less intense than at other, bigger schools, it still operates in the same way that Greek life was intended, and makes a lot of communities on this campus – most notably survivors of sexual assault – feel unsafe and unwelcomed,” the leaders of Abolish Greek Life at Tufts said in an email to the Daily.

Reid, Bernatchez and Delaney were aware of the Abolish Greek Life movement and the questions it raised about what many said were exclusive and problematic aspects of Greek life.

“We decided that we did not want to be part of a nationally affiliated Greek organization because there is a history of racism, sexism, classism [and] heteronormativity in Greek life, and [we wanted] to create a space that [upheld] our values,” Bernatchez, a junior, said.

Reid, who was previously a member of Alpha Phi, echoed this sentiment.

“We didn’t feel like the national organization was putting their best foot forward in the way that we wanted … and we decided we want to be able to create an organization from scratch,” Reid, a senior, said.

GRACE LABER AND JEREMY CALDWELL / THE TUFTS DAILY

Most members of Chi Omega and all members of Alpha Phi disaffiliated from their national chapters.

After consideration of disaffiliation over the summer, the movement to form local sororities began in earnest during the fall semester. All 103 members of Alpha Phi chose to disaffiliate from the national organization, as did the vast majority of Chi Omega’s 120 members. “[It] was a very personal decision for people who decided to stay or … to leave Chi Omega,” Bernatchez said.

There were some challenges to the disaffiliation process because it involved creating entirely separate organizations from scratch, according to Reid and Delaney.

“It was definitely a learning process, mainly because we were kind of making it up as we went,” Reid said.

Delaney, a junior, said Thalia faced similar difficulties, but ultimately, disaffiliation gave the local sorority more freedom.

“I think it was difficult creating Thalia just because we didn’t have as much of a foundation or leadership structure to go off of, but in the long run I am thankful for it because we don’t want there to be any link with us and a national organization,” Delaney said.

After separating from their national organizations, The Ivy and Thalia redesigned the traditional Panhellenic recruitment process used by Alpha Phi and Chi Omega in previous years.

According to Reid, Panhellenic recruitment typically involves many rounds of short, “surface-level” conversations, and new members are chosen based on initial first impressions.

“All you’re going to repeat over and over is your name, your hometown, your major, what you do on campus,” Reid said. “That doesn’t necessarily tell you if somebody is going to care about our community service, which is something that’s a big part of our organization.”

Both organizations hoped disaffiliation would be an opportunity to reach more potential new members and emphasize the organizations’ values of inclusivity and service.

The Ivy and Thalia rebranded “recruitment” as the “membership application process.” For The Ivy, this process involved holding general interest meetings and “open days” so potential

new members could get a better idea of whether or not they wanted to commit to the application process. Reid thought this made The Ivy more approachable to people who may not have considered joining Greek life in previous years.

According to Reid, The Ivy also altered the actual application process with the intention of making it more welcoming. Reid knew how daunting Panhellenic recruitment could be from her own experience and recognized that this style did not reflect the values that The Ivy wanted to promote. “[The National organization was] telling [us] to … assess a potential new member … in a way that just didn’t align with the way that Tufts does recruitment,” Reid said. “I think we also just have a very different community … The advice that’s applicable to us is not the same as to [The University of Alabama], who pick people out of a lineup.”

This year’s membership application process centered on a 15 minute interview that gave potential new members the chance to discuss their values and community service experiences. Reid said the interviews allowed The Ivy’s leadership to get to know new recruits on a deeper level than Panhellenic recruitment would have allowed.

Prior to the application process, members of The Ivy also participated in diversity and inclusion training to better prepare them to interview applicants.

“I remember when I was going through recruitment, people would ask you, ‘How was your summer? What did you do?’

In our trainings, [we] unpacked that some people had a job all summer, and some people were on vacation,” Reid said. “Making that a question that … is not something that we wanted to continue.”

Thalia’s redesigned membership application process followed a similar structure. “[Our recruitment process] was really more just a chance for potential members and current Thalia members to get to know each other without any of the rating, point system or stressfulness that comes along with recruitment,” Delaney said.

Thalia’s application also included a written component in hopes of increasing accessibility.

“We had our potential new members fill out a written application, because not everyone is comfortable speaking in a group environment, especially on Zoom,” Bernatchez said. “We just asked them about themselves, their activities, some of our values and why they’re important to them personally.”

Disaffiliating also gave Thalia’s leadership more local control over the organization.

“We are … completely student run — we don’t have other people that are involved,” Bernatchez said. “If we ever want to change the rules, that’s very easy for us, where in a national organization, you really can’t because [national organizations have] certain rules that you have to follow.”

According to Bernatchez, this freedom was particularly important because it allowed Thalia’s leadership to have more authority over the organization’s membership fees.

“We want to know where our money is going, and to have more control over what we did and what we stood for,” Bernatchez said. “In a national sorority … a lot of your dues [go] toward Nationals to fund everything that Nationals does … We don’t have any of that, so our fees are a lot lower … It’s a lot more accessible to students here.”

As a local sorority, Thalia is also better able to help members pay for the fees.

“Something that was really important to us that we couldn’t do in Chi Omega was fundraise for our members to be a part of our organization,” Delaney said.

“If you couldn’t afford the fees [in Chi Omega] … you couldn’t really be in the organization because there were not many scholarships, and you weren’t allowed to fundraise.”

According to Reid, members could apply anonymously for a scholarship fund under Alpha Phi, and The Ivy is currently working to build this fund to make the local sorority as accessible as possible.

After disaffiliating, Thalia restructured its leadership. “[Delaney] and I hold the title of executive director, but we’re

not above anyone else. We all work together on the E-board, so no one really reports to anyone else. We’re all just on the same team,” Bernatchez said.

Delaney added that Thalia also switched to an election-based approach to selecting leadership.

“In [Chi Omega], you had to be picked by your fellow members; you couldn’t run for it …

So, we switched to democratic elections.”

Generally speaking, the local sororities’ first rounds of new membership applications were successful, with The Ivy gaining 52 members and Thalia gaining about 60.

Although the leaders of Abolish Greek Life at Tufts think disaffiliation is a step in the right direction, they are still concerned that the development of local sororities does not solve the problems that many associate with Greek life.

“We are wary of replacing the current system of Greek life with social organizations or social spaces that will have many of the same features of Greek life under a new name … A lot of people in sororities were talking about creating a women’s club in replacement of their sorority.

While I recognize that that may be a need for a lot of women on this campus, I’m also thinking that a) replacing [Greek life] with a space that is filled with the same people is not replacing [Greek life] at all, and b) don’t we have a women’s center?” the leaders said.

Reid recognized that disaffiliation is only one step but hoped that the local organizations will continue to become more accessible.

“There are obviously some people who [are] skeptical and [feel] like this wasn’t enough of a change, but I’m hoping … [that] the local sororities can be a more inclusive space going forward,” Reid said.

Bernatchez, too, emphasized the importance of upholding Thalia’s original goals in the coming years.

“We are an extremely values-based organization, and we plan on proving ourselves to the Tufts community in everything that we have promised … that we were going to do,” Bernatchez said.

F e at u r e s

Tuesday, May 4, 2021 | Features | THE TUFTS DAILY

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Tufts Mock Trial finishes 2nd at nationals in most successful season yet

by Delaney Clarke Staff Writer

Editor’s note: Alexander Thompson is an assistant news editor at The Tufts Daily.

Alexander was not involved in the writing or editing of this article.

Tufts Mock Trial’s A team placed second in their division at the American Mock Trial Association (AMTA) National Championship Tournament.

The tournament took place over Zoom from April 16 to April 18.

This second-place win finished off a season that Tufts Mock Trial co-president and A team co-captain Bennett Demksy described as one of the strongest seasons in Tufts Mock Trial history. According to Demsky, the team placed better in tournaments than it had in previous seasons and achieved a higher number of individual awards than ever before.

Tufts Mock Trial co-president and co-captain of the B team, Celina Vidal, explained how the success of this season is a testament to the strength of Tufts Mock Trial overall.

“We really pride ourselves on being a program [that’s] really good across the board. Our C team qualified out of regionals … and our B team got so close [to the National Championship Tournament],” Vidal, a senior, said. “We’re just a super strong program and I’m excited that we have four really competitive teams.”

In February, three of the four Tufts Mock Trial teams qualified out of AMTA’s Regional Tournament, though only two teams per school are allowed to advance to the next round. Out of regionals, Tufts Mock Trial’s A and B teams competed in AMTA’s Opening Round Championship Series Tournament (ORCS) — the qualifying tournament for the National Championship Tournament. The B team placed first at its Regionals tournament and nearly qualified for the National Championship at ORCS, placing seventh, just below the sixth place finish that would’ve allowed the team to advance to the next round. The A team was undefeated at both the Regional Tournament and ORCS, according to Demsky and Vidal.

At the National Championship Tournament,

Casey Cummings Coffee Talk

Uncommon Grounds

F

ollowing a 7 a.m. practice, nothing sounds better than a fat stack of pancakes. Luckily, Uncommon Grounds (which is on the way back from Tufts’ indoor practice tennis courts) in Watertown offers a fun selection of pancakes, waffles and french toast on their menu. I mean, what’s not to love about a

the A team collected two individual awards. Demsky won a 29-rank All-American Attorney award as a defense attorney and Alexander Thompson, a junior, received a 35-rank All-American Witness award.

The tournament was not only Tufts Mock Trial’s most successful finish at Nationals, but also the most difficult. The dif-

the activity can still run completely on Zoom.”

Throughout the academic year, collegiate mock trial teams had to remain flexible, as the legal world tried to figure out how to adapt both mock trials and reallife trials to a virtual format.

Oliver Marsden, a fifth-year combined degree student and co-captain of Tufts Mock Trial’s

Despite the setbacks and confusion spurred by conducting trials virtually, the new format allowed collegiate mock trial teams to utilize backgrounds and costumes that could reflect characters’ unique personality traits and skill sets, which wouldn’t normally be allowed in an in-person courtroom setup.

COURTESY BENNETT DEMSKY

Tufts Mock Trial’s A Team is pictured. ficulty of a collegiate mock trial team’s National Championship Tournament schedule is determined by its Combined Strength score, which illustrates how strong a specific team’s opponents were throughout the tournament. According to their Twitter, Tufts Mock Trial ended with a CS score of 43 — the highest at the tournament and the highest of any team at the National Championship Tournament in the past decade. Tufts Mock Trial competed against the 12th-place team, the eighth-place team, the third-place team and the tournament’s National Champions, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Demsky noted that having both a strong season and a successful run at Nationals was particularly rewarding given the uncertainty of the past year due to COVID-19.

“In a year where basically everything got canceled, and a lot of things people care about went away, we were able to build a community,” Demsky, a junior, said. “And enormous credit to the folks of the American Mock Trial Association and the entire mock trial community for making sure

A team, explained that much of the fall season was spent testing out new methods of presentation over Zoom, before the American Mock Trial Association eventually solidified guidelines about what teams could, or couldn’t, do during the spring season.

“Everything was evolving in the fall, really fast, faster than you could keep tabs on because everyone was trying out different things to try to get an edge,” Marsden said. “And then the rules started coming in the spring with ‘Okay, you can’t use any other presentation format than PowerPoint because it might give you a little bit more of an advantage.’”

Vidal explained that Tufts Mock Trial found it challenging at first to figure out how to position themselves on Zoom.

“We normally stand in front of the witness when we’re talking to them, so we had to figure out, ‘Should we sit down in front of the camera, should we stand up,’ but also for our whole witness piece, because that’s acting … you just don’t get the same effect as having someone walk into the courtroom with a certain persona,” Vidal said.

“Something that was actually really helpful with Zoom was we were able to use PowerPoint visual aids during the trial that we wouldn’t have been able to use otherwise,” Vidal said.

Tufts Mock Trial capitalized on these new creative formats, using engaging props, furnishings, PowerPoints and outfits to bring the National Championship tournament case — a landlord-tenant dispute over a bed bug infestation — to life.

For this case, two of Tufts Mock Trial’s witnesses were Blaine Crawford, an exterminator with a Boston accent, who was portrayed by Thompson as well as a fastidious German building manager portrayed by Will Porter, a senior.

Marsden explained that during the trial, Porter spoke in front of a set adorned with modern, minimalistic decor, to show that this witness wanted “everything set up in a really particular way.”

In order to bring expert witness Blaine Crawford to life, Thompson dressed in an exterminator outfit and used an actual bed to show the courtroom how to properly inspect a bed for bed bugs.

menu packed with options like coconut stuffed french toast, cinnamon bun french toast and lemon ricotta pancakes? What made this even better was the fact that the menu offers gluten-free substitutes for all of these options; my gluten-free friend could actually enjoy something other than Dewick’s gluten-free french toast! Of course, Uncommon Grounds has other breakfast classics like avocado toast, eggs benedict and breakfast burritos.

Being the great students that we are, we placed our breakfast orders the night before so we would have enough time to eat our pancakes and make

it back in time for our morning classes. Yet, choosing what to order off a menu where everything made my mouth water resulted in my scrolling through Uncommon Grounds’ menu for almost an hour.

After studying the menu for way too much time, here are our thoughts: What I ordered: I ended up getting a short stack of the lemon ricotta pancakes, which came with two huge, fluffy pancakes. I ordered these with blueberries and strawberries on top which was the right decision; the berries were so fresh! To save a dollar, I added my own sliced banana instead

of paying extra for banana toppings. What my gluten-free friend ordered: Even with all these gluten-free options, she opted for a yogurt parfait and declared it, “The best parfait I’ve had in my life.” She was in agreement with me that the berries were especially fresh.

Drinks: My friend and I are suckers for Dewick’s hazelnut coffee with chocolate almond milk, so we were obviously excited to see hazelnut coffee on the menu. My friend ordered an iced hazelnut coffee with almond milk and also declared that it was “the best coffee of my life.” I promise we weren’t being dramatic.

Marsden described some of the factors that play into developing effective performances.

“In practice, it is a lot about trying to maximize your witnesses to make sure that they are [as] engaging as possible, and then on the attorney’s side it’s about trying to complement your witnesses as best as you can, and trying to be engaging as well, so … in a lot of ways it’s your inflection … how articulate can you sound and how much can you really drive home your point,” Marsden said.

One of the A team’s attorneys was Margaret Veglahn, a firstyear. Veglahn explained that joining the team during such an unprecedented year was a unique experience for her.

“It was almost easier to come in as a freshman because everybody else sort of had to reprogram their mock trial brains from in person to Zoom,” Veglahn said.

Looking back over the year, Veglahn feels that Tufts Mock Trial has been a great outlet both academically and socially.

“I really love it and I feel really grateful that this team is so willing to help the new people,” Veglahn said. “I’ve met a bunch of my best friends and it’s really fun to compete with people that you love and it’s also fun to win, and we get to do both of those things.”

Marsden, who is also the education director of Tufts Mock Trial, noted how well the firstyears adjusted to the program.

“Education Director really took on a whole different meaning [this year] because we were trying to figure out how to do mock trial over Zoom,” Marsden said. “I was really impressed with how well the first-years were just so dedicated to diving into everything.”

Adding to the challenge of training first-years during such a unique year, Tufts Mock Trial is completely student-run, differing from other collegiate mock trial teams who have the aid of a mock trial coach.

“A lot of people have lawyers and teams of law students coaching the program,” Marsden said.

“But we’re student-run and that’s been a really awesome experience to feel like, ‘Wow, even though these other teams have all the resources, and all the coaching staff in the world, sometimes a couple of Jumbos’ creativity can do better.’”

What I want to try next: I am sure that next time we go to Uncommon Grounds, I will still be stuck staring at the menu for hours, but, as of now, I am left wanting to try the California eggs benedict which is two poached eggs, avocado, spinach and tomatoes on an English muffin with their homemade hollandaise sauce or their caprese egg white breakfast sandwich (egg whites, spinach, tomato, bacon, smoked gouda cheese and pesto mayo or chipotle mayo on a ciabatta roll).

Casey Cummings is a sophomore studying international relations. Casey can be reached at casey.cummings@tufts.edu

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Tuesday, May 4, 2021

‘Radicalizing Her: Why Women Choose Violence’ celebrates female fighters

by Sadie Leite and Ellie Lester

Assistant Arts Editor and Staff Writer

Content warning: This article discusses political and sexual violence, extreme restrictions on reproductive rights and incarceration.

On April 30, Harvard Book Store hosted a conversation between Jocelyn Viterna, professor of sociology at Harvard University and the author of “Women in War: The Microprocesses of Mobilization in El Salvador” (2013), and Nimmi Gowrinathan, discussing Gowrinathan’s new book, “Radicalizing Her: Why Women Choose Violence” (2021). Working largely with women in Sri Lanka, Eritrea, Pakistan and Colombia, Gowrinathan covers over two decades’ worth of narratives; her work provides a nuanced look at female oppression and gendered violence.

Gowrinathan is a prolific writer on the “female fighter.” These women — trudging through “layers” of systematic oppression and state violence — are, Gowrinathan said, “at best, deeply misunderstood, and worst, misjudged.” She acknowledged how years of marginalization and abuse have driven women to seek resistance through violence, saying that “the book asks, how does the violence that permeates her life radicalize her?”

“Radicalizing Her” adds to the emerging and long-overdue conversation on these women’s state-sanctioned subjugation.

For Gowrinathan, her research does more than simply probe an abusive system from the outside.

Her book tells the harrowing perspective of women in militant groups such as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka, with whom Gowrinathan herself has familial ties. These women, she explained, “seek a type of power through violence; the power to control the experiences of their everyday existence.”

The female fighter, Gowrinathan lamented, must face “layered circles of captivity,” as well as the expectation that women should only resist oppression with nonviolence. She explained that

COURTESY @NIMMIDEVIARCHY ON TWITTER

The cover of “Radicalizing Her: Why Women Choose Violence” by Nimmi Gowrinathan is pictured. society deems women who do become violent as “a threat to be destroyed.” Her book ushers readers toward a “request to recalibrate,” she says, “to reverse our view of the target.”

Gowrinathan’s prose works to complicate the notion of gendered violence as “an active action happening to a powerless her.” According to her, it is “the captivity of our consciousness on gender, a kind of siloed focus on patriarchy and sexual liberation and the racialized extension of this that circumscribe the third world woman” that traps and silences the female fighter.

Viterna commended Gowrinathan’s portrayal of the

female fighter as a powerful individual, utilizing her power to better her community.

Viterna emphasized that this accumulation of power through violence, though mobilized to secure female rights, positions women as “needing to be disciplined.” This, Viterna commented, is because the gendering of violence that positions men as more likely to engage in violence conditions society to dismiss a woman’s same acts as “perverse.” She also described how “more than [the gendered division within acts of violence], violence is gendered in how we talk about it,” and she observed that definitions of which violence is or

is not condonable are adapted by those in power whenever it suits their interests.

Viterna gave examples of gendered violence within her work in El Salvador. She recounted how the stories of women being raped from the 1980s were grossly used by the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front to urge women to join its side. Other instances, such as other military soldiers cutting babies out of pregnant women, were used and exaggerated by the FMLN, again for its own political benefit. In these cases, men assumed they could manipulate ideas of violence against women, using the female body as a political landscape to elevate power.

Yet, when a woman’s body proved politically destructive, such as supporting pro-abortion laws, the FMLN abandoned support for women’s rights. The FMLN contended that it was protecting “the moral fabric of Salvadorian society” by putting in place stricter abortion laws, even though it was deserting the women it had recently used for other agendas.

Viterna further described how anti-abortion laws in El Salvador promoted by the FMLN led to the unjust incarcerations of many women. Poor women would go into labor unexpectedly and without proper medical care and they would have to deliver their babies alone, leading to the death of the child.They would then be found, brought to hospitals and reported by doctors as suspected abortion cases because the doctors feared being arrested as accomplices. In the course of one court case around suspected abortion, Viterna continued, the cause of death was even upgraded to aggravated homicide.

Adding hope to these issues, Viterna explained how in recent times these wrongly incarcerated women, who discovered each other’s similar stories in jail, are now gathering, attempting to tell their stories for the first time in a manner that does not just aid a man’s political desires. Instead, just as Gowrinathan’s book explains the female fighter using violence to attain agency, these women are taking control of their trauma to help others.

To end, Gowrinathan and Viterna discussed what Western, white feminist movements must do to help women in the Global South. They said it begins by “moving beyond moral binaries” so the female fighter is accepted as a form of resistance. According to them, the issue with attaining women’s rights is ignoring complex female trauma. Sexism and misogyny are layered, yet Gowrinathan and Viterna are hopeful that first listening and engaging in difficult conversation can still lead to mass change.

“Radicalizing Her: Why Women Choose Violence” is available now.

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Tuesday, May 4, 2021 | Arts & Pop Culture | THE TUFTS DAILY

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Girl in Red fills the silence with debut ‘If I Could Make It Go Quiet’

by Maeve Hagerty Assistant Arts Editor

Playful, sexual, loving and sad — the debut album from Norwegian singer-songwriter Girl in Red is all of these things.

Girl in Red, or Marie Ulven, first rose to fame from past singles like “I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend” (2017) and “We Fell In Love In October” (2018), and has since become a popular icon of queer pride. But her album, “If I Could Make It Go Quiet” (2021) proves that she has the artistry to back up her symbolic status.

“If I Could Make It Go Quiet” returns to the familiar low-fi guitar riffs and catchy hooks that have characterized Girl in Red’s music since she started producing it in her bedroom in 2016, but the tracklist elaborates on the previous themes and styles of her music, twisting them into something fresh.

The opening song, “Serotonin,” is different from anything she has made before.

With indie/alternative singer-songwriter Finneas as one of the song’s main producers, the track deviates from her normal style. There is an edge to the music as Ulven sings, “I get intrusive thoughts like cutting my hands off/ Like jumping in front of a bus/ Like how do I make this stop,” and wonders if her therapist hates her, blaming her chemical imbalance of serotonin for “twisting things.”

The track is one of the best she has ever made, and the rest of the album features an impressive collection of songs to go with it.

Drew Weisberg A Fantastic Voyage

The End

A

nother semester draws to a close, and with it, this fantastic voyage must come to an end.

With that in mind, I wanted to use my space for this week to ruminate a bit on the impact of Jonathan Hickman’s run from a more personal angle.

Hickman’s “Fantastic Four” run contains some of my favorite superhero fiction ever, with the last plot covered by this column, “Three” (2011), occupying a slot

Upbeat, spirited rock songs like the sexually charged “Did You Come?” and the guitar-heavy “You Stupid Bitch” are comedic, but also biting as Ulven sings lyrics like “You stupid bitch, can’t you see?/ The perfect one for you is me.” But as “You Stupid Bitch” comes to a close, the following track, “Rue,” opens and clarifies that Ulven’s use of guitar has evolved. The guitar in “Rue” adds an edge to sobering lyrics like “I hate the way my brain is wired/ Can’t trust my mind, it’s such a liar/ Believe me when I say/ I can’t carry the weight.”

Similarly, “Body And Mind” covers more of Ulven’s struggle with mental illness over an instrumentation style previously unheard in her music. “Body And Mind” sticks out from the rest of the album because of this and the intense angst that shapes its lyrics.

But there is another side to the album: a softer side tinted with sadness and romance. The epitome of this is “Midnight Love.” Ulven sings, “I can’t be your second best/ Close but not your favorite/ I keep going back for more/ Where there’s nothing from before” from the perspective of a girl she believes she mistreated in the past.

“Apartment 402” might be the true masterpiece of the album.

From a production standpoint, the track builds powerfully as Ulven sings, “There’s a dissonance in all that I do/ Yeah, nothing feels right or true.” It combines the two sides of the album: energetic instrumentation underneath somber lyrics.

In “Apartment 402,” Ulven seems to have matured. The quality of her voice is so different from her previous songs, and though the familiar disassociation and existentialism still haunt her lyrics, the way the song progresses is a departure from some of her past styles.

When the album finally concludes in the brief, word-

less “It Would Feel Like This,” the album seems to be just the beginning of Ulven’s musical journey. Ulven has so much to say beyond the symbolic association of her stage name, and “If I Could Make It Go Quiet” hints at the breadth of her creative capabilities.

It’s a wonderful album, one of the most noteworthy of 2021

so far. Despite its brevity, the album develops a clear sense of the changing vision of Girl in Red and establishes Ulven’s true dedication to introspection. “If I Could Make It Go Quiet” fills the silence with an edge and a level of intimacy that could make it the best project of Girl in Red’s discography to date.

on my top five comic storylines of all time. This much can probably be gleaned from the fact that I chose to write five hundred words a week on the subject, but that’s neither here nor there.

This pandemic has made for grim times, to say the least, and from an entertainment standpoint, I found myself getting drawn into darker and darker corners. Summarily, I think it speaks volumes that the Netflix true-crime series “Tiger King” (2020) drew in so many of us. Personally, this summer I undertook the arduous task of rewatching “House of Cards” (2013-2018), in a year where the political fiction seemed a bit too close to reality for anyone’s liking.

I found myself escaping to darker and darker places in my media, perhaps a subconscious attempt to have ‘art imitate life,’ but that changed when I started reading Hickman’s run. Now, I’m not saying that this one comic series saved my summer, but it did provide a different escape, and it did remind me of something I had missed from my comics: fun.

Gone were the grim and grimy streets of Gotham or the gleeful malice of a Garth Ennis comic; instead I experienced a little bit of soaring, cosmic wish fulfillment in the old style of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Hickman didn’t add faux complexity with cheap shock or hokey cliffhangers, he took his time, eased readers in

and only when the time was right would the bombs really drop. Hickman’s “Fantastic Four” didn’t throttle the reader with gratuitous violence or meaningless sexuality, it didn’t demand you accept its maturity nor did it beg to be counted amongst the great sci-fi stories of years past; it earned it all with tact and the even-keeled confidence of a battleship.

I have noticed a common notion that fantasy and science fiction are easy genres to write for, simply because it comes down to making things up as you go. I would argue, though, that it carries the unique challenge of not just rounding out a character, but finding them a place in the strange world

you create. Hickman’s interpretation of the famous foursome delivers on this idea by taking his powerfully written characters and going to parts unknown, engrossing the readers in the ongoing mystery of “what’s out there?” and allowing us to discover the strange new world with him. What makes Hickman’s run so special is that he shows us how to make extraordinary characters feel staggeringly real, pulling the reader in and never letting go.

Hickman’s run is pure, perfect escapism.

COURTESY WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

The cover of Girl in Red’s album “If I Could Make It Go Quiet” is pictured.

Drew Weisberg is a junior studying film and media studies. Drew can be reached at mitchell.weisberg@tufts.edu.

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Tufts, ORLL must increase transparency, communication and support to improve housing process

by Faye Thijssen, Reya Kumar and Sara Kessel

Opinion Editor, Staff Writer and Contributing Writer

The beginning of the spring semester marks not only the start of classes and a return to campus life, but also the culmination of one of the most stressful aspects of student life at Tufts: the housing process.

The housing system on campus and its various issues have long been a source of frustration for students. However, the effects of COVID-19 have only exacerbated the problems students have experienced with the system. The pandemic introduced barriers to building friendships and expanding social connections, placing unique pressures on the housing process for rising sophomores. Sudden changes to the housing system and a breakdown in communication on the Office of Residential Life and Learning’s part further compounded these pressures.

The switch of West Hall from a sophomore dorm to a first-year dorm along with the placement of more students into general selection were products of the ORLL having to accommodate a larger incoming class. While these changes may have been unavoidable, in order to help address the needs and concerns of the student body, Tufts and the ORLL must improve their communication with students and make a concentrated effort to prioritize the housing issues that reemerge each year.

On March 30, ORLL explained in an email that “West Hall will not be available for sophomores as part of the housing selection process for the upcoming 20212022 academic year.” West Hall,

a building historically offered as sophomore housing and one of the only housing options with quads, was part of many rising sophomores’ housing plans for the following year.

In the Tufts housing selection process, students first apply for the number of students in their group, requesting either a single, double, triple, quad or suites of six or 10 people. The news regarding the change made to West Hall was upsetting to many students not only because it disrupted their housing plans, but also because it was announced last minute. The email announcing the elimination of sophomore quad options in West Hall was sent at 5:12 p.m. on March 30. The intended time for sophomore quad registration was scheduled for 8 p.m. on March 30, leaving just under three hours for students to rearrange housing plans. Additionally, ORLL’s hours of operation end at 5 p.m., meaning that by the time the announcement was made, it was outside of the official hours during which students could receive a timely response to their questions and concerns.

Additionally, issues arose with the housing lottery number system, as reported by the Daily in February. Many students received lottery numbers that did not correspond to their class year. Even a number of graduating seniors, who won’t need housing next year, received lottery numbers. This issue arose due to incorrect information in the Student Information System.

Though the ORLL assigned new numbers to all the students affected on a case-by-case basis, this issue created even more confusion amidst an already difficult process, especially

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because the ORLL did not send any centralized communication clarifying whether or not lottery numbers would be reassigned to all students.

Furthermore, many rising sophomores, who are required to live on campus, were left at the mercy of general selection. Many students with higher — meaning worse — lottery numbers were unable to form the groups they had planned on. In general selection, many were placed in suites — some not entirely full — with people they don’t know. Other students found that there were no rooms left when their sign-up time came.

Rising sophomore Sophia Nunez expressed her frustration with the process.

“I’m so confused on how Tufts is making it mandatory for us to live on campus sophomore year but they don’t have enough housing for us,” Nunez wrote in an email to the Daily. “It’s honestly just so overwhelming to not know

where I am going to be living next year on top of everything else.”

Nunez still hasn’t been told where she will be housed.

While some of these problems seemed inevitable given the complexities of housing larger class sizes during a pandemic, the real issue lies with the ORLL’s lack of communication with the student body.

Releasing the West Hall news just hours before students were about to go through the group formation process was deeply irresponsible and caused students needless stress. Many scrambled to adjust their groups accordingly, creating a ripple effect through the student body. While the lottery number situation was not the direct fault of Residential Life, their subsequent communication on the matter was sorely lacking. Furthermore, it is frustrating that little to no clarity was provided on the process itself and in response to stu-

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dents’ questions once problems arose.

In order to help ease the process for the student body, the ORLL needs to be more clear and understanding in their communication. By providing accessible information on how the housing process works while remaining upfront and timely about changes made, the ORLL can make the process far less stressful for students. Furthermore, Tufts must financially prioritize on-campus housing more than it has in the past. Some of the issues within the housing process this year directly resulted from shortages in on-campus housing, with the school only being able to house around 62% of the student population.

On April 29, Tufts announced that it will invest in new on-campus development projects, which includes the construction of a high-density, on-campus residential hall for undergraduates. While this is a necessary step in addressing the shortage of on-campus housing, Tufts must continue to come up with solutions that make the housing process more manageable for its students.

We do not expect the housing process to be a perfect system. However, the level of anxiety and frustration students have toward the system will not change unless Tufts actively makes strides to improve the housing process.

Faye Thijssen is a first-year studying international relations. Faye can be reached at faye.thijssen@tufts.edu. Reya Kumar is a first-year studying psychology and history. Reya can be reached at reya.kumar@ tufts.edu. Sara Kessel is a firstyear who has not yet declared a major. Sara can be reached at sara.kessel@tufts.edu.