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THE TUFTS DAILY
TUFTSDAILY.COM
Monday, march 9, 2015
VOLUME LXVIV, NUMBER 32
Where You Read It First Est. 1980
TCUJ to hold info sessions after rewriting bylaws by Alexander Spring Contributing Writer
Sofie Hecht / The Tufts Daily
Tufts alumna Shuba Satyaprasad (LA ’96) talks to students interested in law professions as part of the 2015 Law Day on the Hill program hosted by the Tufts Lawyers Association on March 5.
In its 12th year, Tufts Law Day on the Hill connects students alumni by Patrick McGrath News Editor
The Tufts Lawyers Association (TLA) hosted its 12th annual Law Day on the Hill event on Thursday, March 5 in Alumnae Lounge, with the goal of teaching interested students about law school and the legal profession and providing an opportunity for networking, according to Associate Director for Preprofessional Advising Stephanie Ripley. The event kicked off at 6:00 p.m., featuring a simulated law school classroom session led by Michael Simon (LA ’89), followed by an alumni panel on “Engineering, Science and the Law” and a networking event for students and alumni. Tom Dunn (LA ’00), who currently serves as TLA’s treasurer and was co-chair of this year’s event along with Dan Valentine (E ’93, G ’95), explained that the event provides an opportunity for students to learn more about a potential career in law. “The idea of it is to give an introduction to Tufts students about what to expect in law school, what to expect as a practicing lawyer — whether in government or in private practice, whatever field that they may do,” he said. “It’s an opportunity to have the students ask questions to alumni that attend, and also in recent years we’ve done a simulated classroom exercise to give attendees a sense of what it’s like to attend a law school class.” Ripley explained that she communicated with TLA in advance of the event to convey what Tufts students are hoping to get out of it.
“I’m bringing more of the student perspective — what I think students are kind of looking for, more of the networking part of it — just things that I hear from students in what they’re looking [for],” she said. President of Tufts Pre-Law Society Demetra HatzisSchoch emphasized the value of the simulated law classroom session. “It’s really great,” she said. “You kind of get to see a mock law classroom, and you get to participate … It’s a really interesting case usually.” According to Dunn, this year’s panel’s topic of engineering, science and the law was in part inspired by an engineering student’s question at last year’s event about what it would be like for an engineering student to go to law school. “The panel discussion this year has Tufts grads that have an engineering or science background, all of which also attended law school and [are] serving in different ways using their law degree in their professional careers right now,” he said. Ripley added that the panel’s emphasis may serve as an attraction for both liberal arts and engineering students at Tufts. “So we’re doing a little bit more of the partnership between engineering students and the students going on to law school,” she said. “We try and set it up so that it will be a great program for both engineers and liberal arts students.” The networking event after the panel helps encourage students to connect with alumni and ask questions, but
it also serves as a good opportunity for alumni to give back to current students, according to Ripley. “I think it’s great too for the alumni to be able to come back to campus for such a great and large event, so I think it’s wonderful for them to be able to network with the students and really to be able to tell them about their careers and their professions,” she said. Gaining a more nuanced understanding about law school and careers in law is important before going directly to law school, Hatzis-Schoch, a senior, explained. “I think law school is a very serious thing to undertake, and people should really learn as much as possible about it before they commit to it, and they shouldn’t just go because they don’t know what else to do,” she said. “It should be a genuine interest in the law or something to do with a legal degree.” Dunn underscored that both alumni and current students stand to gain from the event. “It’s been a great experience for each Law Day I have attended for the students and for the alumni,” he said. “The alumni obviously get out of it an ability to reconnect with people who are deciding to go to law school, give some of the lessons learned, maybe things that worked for them or didn’t work for them, share that with the undergrads. For Tufts students, they get to ask the question that’s on their mind, they get to hear about what law school and practicing law is like.”
Inside this issue
see LAW DAY, page 2
The newly-rewritten Tufts Community Union ( TCU) Judiciary bylaws, which are meant to hold student groups more accountable and which were recently approved by the Committee on Student Life (CSL), are now going into effect. The Judiciary is holding two question-and-answer sessions to further clarify any misconceptions about the new bylaws, which will be held in the Mayer Campus Center today, Monday March 9, in room 203 and on Thursday, March 12 at 7 p.m. in room 112. “The reason we changed the bylaws was because they were not stringent at all,” TCU Judiciary Advocacy Chair Sophia Gomez, a first-year, said. “What was happening was that a lot of the student groups that were poorly run, or that weren’t following the rules, were starting to fall through the cracks.” Seniors Becky Goldberg and Jonathan Zfira, chair and vice chair of the TCU Judiciary respectively, spoke to Director of the Office for Campus Life Joe Golia about the big issues that were facing student groups, according to Zfira. “The amount of groups on campus was one of the big issues,” he said. “We want an as inclusive and vibrant community of student groups as possible, but there are some constraints [such as space and funding], so we have to ensure that the groups
we have are actually contributing something.” “We’re moving away from just the group of friends who have a shared interest and more towards an organization that is doing something for the campus,” Goldberg said of the function of student groups. At a school of roughly 5,000 undergraduate students, Zfira and Goldberg stressed that having 300 recognized student groups with 60 new groups applying for recognition every year is concerning. “The ratio is off,” Goldberg said. Although this was the first time in recent memory that the bylaws have been completely rewritten, with the last update being in 2012, Goldberg said the changes are relatively minor. “To be perfectly honest, we’re just changing language,” she said. The changes to the bylaws impact three facets of how groups on campus function: their membership requirement, proof of events and funding. Every semester, each student group must organize three events, although publication groups, performance groups such as S-Factor and traveling groups such as Tufts Mock Trial need only one event or publication each semester, Goldberg noted. “We’ve always required ‘three proofs of activity,’ but we did change the language to ‘three proofs of events,’” she said, adding that events such as panel see BYLAWS, page 2
Read by the River promotes literacy by Kathleen Schmidt News Editor
Hundreds of participants turned out for Read by the River, Tufts’ annual literacy carnival, which took place yesterday in the Gantcher Center from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. The goal of the carnival, an initiative of Tufts Hillel, is to get kids from kindergarten to fifth grade excited about reading, according to senior Alexandra Zeitouni, the event’s co-chair. According to Zeitouni, in the week leading up to Read by the River, organizers visited several schools in the area to give short assemblies to kids about the carnival. The organizers handed out short book reports for kids to complete and turn in at the beginning of the carnival, she explained. “At the carnival, different volunteers will talk with them about the books that they’ve read and go over the book reports with them,” she said. “Then they get a free movie pass in exchange for that, so it’s kind of to incentivize them to keep reading.”
After the children discussed their book reports with student volunteers, they each received a free welcome book, Read by the River Co-chair Steven Hefter said. Hefter, a junior, is also a sports editor at the Daily. Lauren Bloom, faculty advisor for Read by the River, explained that the event included 20 to 25 booths, each managed by different Tufts organizations and institutions in the community such as Medford and Somerville’s police and fire departments and the libraries of Medford, Somerville and Tufts. Zeitouni said that student organizations with booths included Greek life organizations, several Hillel initiatives and the Leonard Carmichael Society (LCS) Kid’s Day. Each booth is staffed by about six volunteers and has a different activity such as making bookmarks, doing word searches and face painting, she said. “Most of them are literacy related, but some of them, like face see READ, page 2
Today’s sections
The Hill sees first installment of “A Taste of Tufts” lecture series.
Women’s basketball survives overtime battle with St. John Fisher to advance to Sweet 16.
see FEATURES, page 3
see SPORTS, back
News 1 Features 3 Arts & Living 5 Editorial | Op-Ed 8
Op-Ed 9 Comics 10 Sports Back