Galinsky, Nana present presidential platforms

PRESIDENT continued from page 1 and co-founder and leader of the Legacy Project at Tufts.

“I have experienced what it’s like to start a club at Tufts, and the amount of obstacles that students have had to face while doing that, and that is definitely translated into my platform,”

Galinsky said. “It’s been such a privilege to get to work with so many incredible individuals across the Tufts University plat- form and hear from them as to what matters most.”

After fielding questions from attendees of the forum, both candidates gave closing remarks. Nana said his experience building relationships and engaging with the Tufts community would help him as president.

“If I were to win the presidency, [I would] be stepping into a great system and structure full of great people that are very ambitious, very driven and very pas- sionate about the work that they do,” Nana said. “I would like to work alongside them while also bringing in other stakeholders to the table to help amplify the greater effect of [the] Senate on our campus.” Galinsky said she would draw from her three years of experience and continue to pursue more projects if elected as president.

“Experience in this role is extraordinarily important; you, as the president, have to serve and be the guide for the rest of the senate body, to let them know how to pursue projects and to show them how to actually make change,” she said. “The amount of obstacles I faced over these past three years have been immense, but because I’ve been able to work through them over the past years, I know how to overcome them and how to advise other senators.”

Solomont Speaker Series explores rap as a teaching tool

DEE-1 continued from page 1 ing the lyrics to their favorite rap songs way quicker than they are learning the long division and the multiplying of decimals and fractions that I’m trying to teach them,” Dee-1 said.

Dee-1 noted that rappers carry a lot of responsibility: if they spread falsehoods in their music, their fans might perceive their words as the truth.

“If you’re a teacher, and you got a class full of impressionable students, and you tell them that six times six is 43 … if they don’t know any better, they’re gonna be like, I just learned something …” he said. “If you make it sound good, it’s not only just something that’s being taught, but it’s something that has a rhythm to it. … Six times six is

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43. Six times six is 43 … Now, it’s really stuck in your head.”

Given how impressionable their audiences can be — especially younger ones — Dee-1 said that rappers must always reflect on the potential impact of their lyrics.

“What if inherently, underneath the rhythm … underneath the catchiness, what if … what you’re teaching is cap — it’s not a fact?” Dee-1 continued. “Even if it is something that you might say, ‘Well, this is my truth,’ you have to ask yourself, ‘Is it healthy that you’re teaching this?’”

Dee-1 emphasized that everyone involved in hip-hop — whether they be a commissioner, creator or consumer — has a responsibility to ensure that hip-hop makes a positive influence.

“People who play the role of commissioners … have to ask themselves, ‘What am I incentivizing creators to want to create?’” he said. “Many artists who are creators, they will simply go where the money is.”

Dee-1, whose real name is David Augustine, then talked about his infatuation with the biblical story of David and Goliath, the namesake for one of his first albums. He encouraged the audience to find and utilize their own gifts — or “slingshots” against their own metaphorical Goliaths, the same way Dee-1 did through rap.

“I said, ‘Oh, I’m David,’ the difference is my Goliath doesn’t look like a big nine-foot giant,” he said. “My Goliath might look like poverty growing up in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans … My Goliath looks like discrimination, being a Black man in America.”

Dee-1 expressed pride in his academic and career achievements, sharing that accomplishments like his own are often not publicized by others in the hiphop industry because they deviate from public perceptions of rappers.

“Y’all know how many rappers have [4.0 GPAs] in school, but they don’t tell you that?” Dee-1 said. “I had to learn that being my most authentic self is embracing all of the things that don’t typically fit into being a rapper that make me special. So, yes, I brag on being a college graduate … on being at Harvard … on being a middle school teacher … I learned to embrace those things, because that’s what makes me authentic.”