The Tufts Daily - Tuesday, August 29, 2023 (Matriculation)

T he T uf T s D aily

MATRICULATION 2023: DEFINING MOMENTS FROM THE PAST YEAR

Rachel Kyte steps down as Fletcher School dean

Daniel Vos Executive News Editor

Originally published June 22, 2023.

Rachel Kyte, dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, will step down from her role effective June 30. University President Anthony Monaco and Caroline Genco, provost and senior vice president ad interim, announced the leadership change in an email to Tufts faculty and staff on June 22. Professor Kelly Sims Gallagher will take over as dean ad interim of the Fletcher School.

Kyte will become a dean emeritus of the Fletcher School and will continue her work addressing the impact of climate change and energy scarcity.

“Throughout her tenure, she worked tirelessly to expand the school’s resources, including leading the school during its Brighter World Campaign resulting in more than $120 million in funding,” Monaco and Genco wrote in their email.

In an email to Fletcher staff, Kyte announced she would rededicate herself full time to climate change and nature finance work, citing the current times as an “existential inflection point.”

“For some time, I have felt a growing pull between the work I love of leading Fletcher and working with all of you and the opportunities to contribute to the vital and increasingly urgent work I feel compelled to be part of about our collective future,” she wrote.

Monaco and Genco highlighted Kyte’s achievements throughout her four-year tenure.

“Rachel strengthened Fletcher’s faculty by recruiting globally renowned practitioners, scholars, and researchers and expanding the school’s curricular fields of study. She also leveraged her personal platform to expand Fletcher’s global impact, reach, and influence, reinforcing its position as a world-class school of global affairs,” they wrote.

Kyte called on future Fletcher leadership to continue accessibility and academic reforms.

“Fletcher’s academic offerings will need to be more flexible, more financially accessible, and more responsive to remain attractive and compelling for students who want programs that can more imme-

Tufts admits 9.5% to undergraduate Class of 2027

Originally published March 28, 2023.

Tufts admitted 9.5% of students to the Class of 2027 from roughly 34,000 applicants, it announced on March 22. Acceptances were granted to the most diverse applicant pool the university has ever seen. This year’s class is one of the most selective in the university’s history, following last year’s record-low 9.7% acceptance rate.

Women comprise 56% of the admitted class, an increase from last year’s 55%, while men comprise 41%. Another 4% identified as genderqueer, non-binary or opted not to specify a gender identity. Women also make up 52% of students accepted to the School of Engineering, down from last year’s 55%.

Tufts’ admissions process remains test-optional for the next three years; around 40% of students chose not to submit ACT or SAT scores with their application this year, compared to last year’s 44%.

Students affiliated with college access organizations like QuestBridge comprise 11% of the

class, and students who will be the first in their family to graduate from a four-year college also comprise 11%.

Students who attended public high schools or public charter schools comprise 55% of the class; of students from schools where class rank is measured, 91% are in the top 10% of their class.

Students of color account for 57% of the admitted class, up from last year’s 56%. Black students comprise 12% of the class, Hispanic and Latinx students 14%, Asian American students 21% and multiracial students 11%. White students make up 39% of the class, and 3% of students did not provide race or ethnicity information.

Ninety-five students have Native or Indigenous heritage, including 62 American Indian or Alaska Native students and 33 Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander students.

Ninety-six students come from Medford, Somerville, Boston and Grafton, Tufts’ host communities.

International students comprise 11% of accepted students, representing 75 countries, with the majority hailing from China, India, Canada, South Korea, Turkey, Brazil, the United Kingdom and Singapore.

This year, the admissions department will host three in-person ’Bo Days for accepted students on March 31, April 14 and April 24.

Accepted students have until May 1 to accept their offer to enroll at Tufts.

diately impact their professional growth,” she wrote. “The reforms we have made in our academic offerings are having an impact, but we know that there is more to do.”

Incoming Dean Gallagher will start on July 1 while the University launches a nationwide search for

a permanent dean. Gallagher has served as academic dean of Fletcher since 2020 and is a professor of energy and environmental policy. She is also the director of the Climate Policy Lab at Fletcher and a former senior policy advisor in the Obama administration.

Originally published May 18, 2023.

From hosting a farmers market to placing first aid kits around campus, the Tufts Community Union Senate launched a variety of pilot projects this academic year, making it what some senators say is one of the most productive years in recent history.

The TCU Senate has organized dozens of projects, with nearly every senator spearheading their own pilot project. Among other initiatives, senators have distributed menstrual products around campus, begun creating a Wellness Center in Stratton Hall, organized shuttles to drive students to grocery stores and hired female-identifying strength and conditioning staff to lead classes on Monday nights.

TCU President Jaden Pena feels that his approach of having each senator lead their own

passion project while also supporting each other has been a driving factor of the Senate’s overall success.

“I’m most proud of the TCU Senate as a whole,” Pena, a senior, said. “We were by far the most productive Senate that there has ever been at Tufts.”

The process of completing a pilot project takes an enormous amount of time, effort and funds. This year alone, the senate has spent $650,000 in supplemental funding and budgeted nearly $3,000,000. All of the supplemental funds went toward enhancing student life and the student experience.

“I’ve been genuinely astounded by the level of productivity because everyone is working on projects, which was not the case [before]. … Everyone is very involved,” Senator Avani Kabra, who chairs the Administration and Policy Committee, said.

Senator Anand Patil, who led an initiative to install emergency

see TCU page 4

Aaron Gruen Editor in Chief

TCU Senate reflects on one of its most productive years yet

Joey Montalto Staff Writer

AARON GRUEN / THE TUFTS DAILY

Rachel Kyte speaks at a climate rally at the Mayer Campus Center on March 3.

ALEX VO-TA / THE TUFTS DAILY

The Tufts admissions office, Bendetson Hall, is pictured on Jan. 28.

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The Tufts Daily is the entirely student-run newspaper of record at Tufts University in Medford, Mass. An editorially and financially independent organization, the Daily’s staff of more than 100 covers news, features, arts and sports on Tufts’ four campuses and in its host communities.

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Incoming TCU Senate President Arielle Galinsky talks accomplishments, goals

Matthew Sage Deputy News Editor

Originally published May 20, 2023.

Arielle Galinsky was named the winner of the Tufts Community Union Senate presidential election by the TCU Elections Commission on April 28. Galinsky, the current TCU Senate vice president, will serve as the TCU Senate president for the 2023–24 academic year.

Presidential voting began at noon on April 27, ending at noon on April 28 with ECOM’s announcement of Galinsky’s victory. Both Galinsky and her opponent, Wanci Nana, won Class of 2024 TCU Senate seats which were announced by ECOM on April 19. Galinsky then launched her presidential campaign via Instagram on April 20, followed by Nana on April 21.

According to ECOM’s Instagram post announcing the win, she won 69.96% of the 1,781 votes cast.

Galinsky, born in Canton, Mass., is a double major in biopsychology and community health with a minor in political science. Within the Tufts community, she is a co-president of Tufts Best Buddies,

a co-president of NeuroNetwork, the curator of TEDxTufts and a co-founder and president of Tufts Legacy Project. Professionally, she works as a U.S. congressional intern for Mass. Senator Ed Markey and as a legal services volunteer at the Suffolk Probate and Family Court in Boston.

Galinsky has been a Class of 2024 senator since her freshman year, when she ran during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It was very isolating. There was very much a lack of community,” Galinsky said. “When I came to Tufts, I really had no desire to run for student government. That wasn’t even on the horizon. But after a few weeks of being there … there were just so many issues that arose because of the pandemic. … Students were so unhappy. … Ultimately, what drove me to run for Senate was the conditions that we were in, and what kept me to

stay was just my love for the projects and for the opportunity to get to be that bridge between administration and students.”

Galinsky has been a part of many initiatives over her three years in the Senate. She is proud of her previous work combating menstrual product inequality through a project that places free menstrual products in several buildings across

see GALINSKY page 4

Somerville releases final plan for new citywide bike network

Originally published May 17, 2023.

Somerville released its first-ever Bicycle Network Plan on April 11 to build an 88-mile system of connected bike lanes throughout the city. The network, which will be completed within the next few decades, would make Somerville the only municipality in Massachusetts besides Cambridge to establish a citywide bicycle network.

“There’s quite a lot to be excited about here,” Tom Lamar, chair of the Somerville Bicycle Advisory Committee, said. “There’s a lot of detail that went into this plan after some pretty thorough outreach. … I’m really excited that this network plan lays out a pretty thorough network of streets and has … put a lot of thought into what routes make the most sense everywhere.”

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As early as 2014, Somerville ranked No. 1 in the Northeast and No. 5 in the nation for bike commuting, according to the League of American Cyclists. Despite the popularity of biking, however, Somerville’s current 30.1 miles of bike lanes is a fragmented network deemed by many locals to be unsafe. When asked in a city survey how comfortable they felt biking on a scale of 1–10, the average response from Somerville residents was 5.5.

“I’d say maybe half of [the current bike network is] very pleasant,” Lamar said. “But there are also a lot of very stressful sections

along busier roads or roads without any dedicated bike infrastructure and dangerous intersections. … Biking is pretty great, it’s pretty useful, … but it’s clear that it could be so much better than it currently is.”

According to George Schneeloch, co-founder of Somerville Bike Safety, an improved bike network could play a significant role in reducing these safety concerns.

“People who may not be super comfortable riding on many of the roads in Somerville today may choose to do so if there’s infrastructure in place which either slows down traffic … or provides protected bike lanes in order to separate … bikes and motor vehicles,” Schneeloch added.

Previously, Lamar said, Somerville’s efforts to build new bicycling infrastructure were largely opportunistic, with city planners adding new bike lanes if a street was due for regular repaving, for example. According to Lamar, the inefficiency of this approach prevented a complete network from coming together.

“[Street by street] is not the most productive way to fight this out,” he said. “You need to be looking at this more holistically and be [thinking], ‘We need a safe route to get from this neighborhood to this school or to this square. What streets are the possible options for that? What are the most direct routes or the flattest routes?’”

The city’s new Bicycle Network Plan was developed with these questions in mind. A combination of one-way protected bike

lanes, off-street paths and walkand-bike-friendly streets called neighborways, the network includes some form of bikeway on 54% of Somerville streets. It aims to make biking a safer, less stressful endeavor for residents by connecting places of interest across the city and reducing levels of traffic stress.

“The goals are primarily to increase biking as a main mode [of transportation]; to provide infrastructure that is safe and comfortable for people biking of all ages, abilities, genders and backgrounds; and to ensure that every resident in Somerville has access to bicycling,” Viola Augustin, a senior planner in Somerville’s Mobility Division, said.

The current Bicycle Network Plan is the result of an extensive public process that included community meetings, online surveys and group bike rides. After releasing a draft of the plan in November 2022, the city received feedback about its construction timeline, which was longer than many residents and advocates hoped for. In response, the new plan includes roughly 40 miles of a “priority network” to be completed by 2030.

“[The priority network] is reasonable, but there are a couple of omissions on there,” Lamar said, pointing to Beacon Street as an example of a vital area that was excluded from the priority plan. The street is the city’s most heavily trafficked corridor for biking, used by an estimated 500 cyclists during peak hours.

Schneeloch echoed this sentiment.

“Unfortunately, [regarding] the southern part of Beacon Street between Washington Street and Inman Square … they’re not going to do any work on that in the next seven years according to their plan,” he said. “I hope that they reconsider that.”

Some Somerville residents have also raised concerns about the new bike network’s impact on parking spaces. Lamar said that creating bike lanes often requires reclaiming new parking spaces and repurposing existing ones, a challenge that the city is prepared to take on.

“We’re committed to — if at all possible — keeping parking on one side, but even that will be challenging for some people,” Augustin said. “We are very aware of people that are older and also … accessible parking needs to be maintained. … Streets are complicated public spaces, and a lot of programming has to be accommodated. So, we will have to make compromises, and those compromises are always challenging.”

Construction on the network is slated to begin within the next year, according to Augustin. To accelerate the process, the city plans to use a method called Quick-Build, which uses lowcost, short-term materials that can be designed and installed relatively quickly.

“The community is very, very excited about this,” Lamar said. “It’s a solid plan overall. It’s definitely improved from graphs we looked at before. The community is really happy with it as is. … The main question now is: How do we get this done?”

Arielle Galinsky, the incoming Tufts Community Union Senate president, is pictured.

Estelle Anderson Deputy News Editor

Siya Bhanshali

Somerville starts ‘consolidated rental waitlist’ for affordable housing

Tessa Moore Staff Writer

Originally published February 6, 2023.

The City of Somerville plans to launch a new consolidated rental waitlist in late 2023 to simplify the application process for reduced-cost housing opportunities as part of the city’s expanding inclusionary housing program.

Amid Somerville’s housing crisis, Ashley Tienken, the director of the Housing Advocacy Program at the Community Action Agency of Somerville, argues that “in our community, the biggest threat is gentrification.”

Tienken says the construction of luxury apartments and increasing rent costs are forcing out low-income tenants.

“Their families have been in the community for decades. This is their home,” she said. “What gentrification is doing to the city is raising rent costs … which are making it almost completely unattainable to be able to afford a market-rate apartment in Somerville.”

On top of the shortage of affordable housing, several barriers make the application process more difficult. Inclusionary rental units are apartments created through requirements under the Somerville Zoning Ordinance, which requires that 20% of all new housing in projects with four or more units be affordable. Currently, people must individually apply for each rental opportunity that interests them in the inclusionary housing program.

Ben Wyner, an inclusionary housing specialist for

Somerville’s Housing Division, seeks to solve these problems.

“We’ve heard that running up against deadlines, not having sufficient time to fill out applications … [or] not hearing about a particular opportunity in time are all issues for households,” he said.

Tienken notes that contacting clients in a timely fashion is also a challenge.

“The other barrier to applying for affordable housing … is clients move, information changes and you are responsible for updating all of that,” she said. “If you don’t update that information, then [clients] don’t get alerts when [their] time may come to … do the final steps to be able to move into an apartment.”

Shomon Shamsuddin, a professor of urban studies at Tufts, is working with a group to study administrative burdens in conjunction with Housing Navigator Massachusetts.

He explained that because government programs have limited resources, in theory, paperwork ensures that services are going to people who need them and that money isn’t being wasted. The reality can be different.

“If and when programs are intentionally administratively burdensome … they’re creating all this work and making it more difficult for people to access [them] as a way to help limit service and also reduce the spending on services,” he added.

The new measure aims to directly address this issue by streamlining this process so that only one application is required for all upcoming rental opportunities.

Alanna Gaffny, the inclusionary housing program manager for Somerville’s Housing Division, told the Daily that “there’s a ton of intention around making sure that we’re doing things in an equitable way … truly just trying to make sure that it’s not an administrative burden for people.”

The new application is meant to be much more straightforward and won’t require any backup documentation.

“We’re hoping that it’s going to be a no-brainer for households that would qualify for the program to fill [the application] out,” Wyner said.

The project, which has been in conception for almost a decade, will roll out in three phases.

“The first phase was creating a waitlist manual for our staff to refer to that includes all of the guidelines for the program, as well as coming up with an application,” Wyner said. “The second stage, what we’re doing right now … is community education. And then the third phase is the implementation.”

As part of this process, applicants will be grouped into three tiers that give preferential placement in the waitlist. Those in the first tier are people who currently live in Somerville, have at least one child in Somerville Public Schools or are homeless at the time of applying.

The second tier includes those who have been displaced from Somerville in the last two years and who work 20 or more hours in Somerville. The third tier has no preference.

There are also several additional, co-equal priorities that

include experiencing domestic violence, having accessibility needs, being at risk of imminent displacement or living in a unit determined uninhabitable by the Inspectional Services Department. Within each of the three tiers, applicants who have a priority will be listed ahead of those who don’t.

“In the past, Somerville had an … anti-displacement methodology to our tenant selection,” Wyner told the Daily. “Now, we’re really looking at at-risk households on top of that.”

Professor Shamsuddin noted the limitations of this measure: it is proposed to only apply to inclusionary housing units that are built after the waitlist is implemented and does not include the many other forms of affordable housing in Somerville, such as public housing.

“I think right now it’s a good first step,” Shamsuddin said.

“It would be great if you can expand to some of those other programs, but they’re administered by different groups [which presents] a coordination issue.”

Tienken echoed Shamsuddin’s hope for a more expansive solution.

“It’s not a solution to the lack of housing in Somerville by any means but it does remove the barrier from … trying to access [housing],” she said. “So it’s more of an access issue, not an inventory issue.”

Gaffny is hopeful for the impact of this project in the future.

“I’m very optimistic and excited that there’s going to be some continuity between so many different projects that are all over Somerville,” she said. “We’re working with folks all the time … connecting people with units … and making sure that, as quickly as possible, that they’re being settled somewhere they can call home in Somerville.”

UN representative of Myanmar discusses recent military coup, international response during Fletcher event

remains in his role at the U.N. He was recently shortlisted for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Originally published April 5, 2023.

Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun, the permanent representative of Myanmar to the United Nations, spoke at Tufts on March 31 about Myanmar’s ongoing crisis. During the event, called the “International Responsibility in Responding to Myanmar’s Crisis,” Tun discussed his country’s recent military coup — and the ensuing international response — with David Muehlke, Fletcher’s state department fellow.

The event was organized by student leaders from the Fletcher ASEAN Society and by Tufts’ Myanmar Students Union. It was co-sponsored by the Center for South Asian and Indian Ocean Studies, the Fletcher Dean’s office.

Following the National League for Democracy’s victo -

ry in Myanmar in November 2020, the country’s military rejected the results of the election and staged a coup d’etât in February 2021, arresting the

members of the elected civilian government and its leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.

Tun, who remains loyal to Myanmar’s elected govern -

ment, was the country’s U.N. ambassador at the time of the coup. Since the U.N. has not acknowledged the military government as legitimate, Tun

“What we see is very clear: that the coup itself is [a] gross violation of the rule of law and amounting to high treason,” Tun said at the opening of the event. “The people have rejected the military coup in every possible way. They never accepted the subversion of their democratic rights and freedoms.”

Tun said more than 3,000 people have been killed by the military junta and that the military has engaged in “indiscriminate aerial bombing” against its own citizens.

“These crimes are not mere human rights abuses: They are deliberate, systematic, widespread and coordinated attacks against the civilian population,” he said.

Tun ended his introduction by urging international institu-

NICOLE GARAY / THE TUFTS DAILY

Somerville City Hall is pictured on March 12, 2021.

Aaron Gruen Editor in Chief

AARON GRUEN / THE TUFTS DAILY

The speakers are pictured at the “International Responsibility in Responding to Myanmar’s Crisis” event.

TCU Senate tackles food insecurity, distributes first aid kits Ambassador discusses coup, fight for Justice

first aid kits in buildings across campus, discovered his project when he needed a Band-Aid but realized there were no formally maintained kits on campus.

“[First aid kits] seem like something that’s very simple that we should have at the school,” Patil, who represents the Class of 2026, said.

Patil reached out to administrators across several departments and was told that he had to put together a sustainability plan detailing every penny of funding. Left with little guidance on how to write one, his first plan was rejected. Ultimately, his hard work paid off: Tufts listened to his concerns and installed first aid kits in seven public buildings.

Another successful pilot project was the TCU’s first Food Security Week, hosted in March by the newly formed Food Insecurity Subcommittee. Throughout the week, students could use meal swipes to purchase items from food drives and pantries across campus.

Emily Childs, a Class of 2024 senator and member of the subcommittee, spearheaded the project alongside Vice President Arielle Galinsky and Caroline Spahr, a Class of 2026 senator.

“There is a food desert at Tufts that kind of goes unacknowledged in a lot of ways,” Childs said. “There’s limited dining resources on Tufts’ campus and limited outside restaurants, especially ones that take JumboCash. … Both [BeFresh and Stop & Shop] are minimum 20 minute walks from the [Campus Center].”

In collaboration with Tufts Eco Reps, Childs also organized a campus-wide clothing swap called “Jumbo Exchange” on April 19. The event was an opportunity for students to exchange clothes in a lively setting complete with live music and artisan stands.

“I really wanted to lean into making it a social experience, while also prioritizing this sustainable consumption and conscious consumerism that I think is so vital,” Childs said.

Because senators need to communicate with administrators on top of handling funding, the emails and papers can stack up. Patil, for example, had to communicate with dozens of administrators and seek funding from 10 different sources before his idea for first aid kits could become a reality.

“No matter how good of any idea you have, it takes a ton of time at Tufts to get anything done,” Patil said.

TCU senators have already begun planning for next year. Notable future projects include allowing students to have a certain number of wellness day absences; making laundry machines cheaper and, ultimately, free; and introducing shuttle buses around campus for students and faculty with mobility issues.

“If it weren’t for a group of senators staying up until midnight on a Wednesday night or until two in the morning on a Sunday night, none of this would be possible,” Pena said. “They just … never fail to amaze me.”

Galinsky looks to improve student wellness as TCU President

GALINSKY continued from page 2

campus. She has seen the project grow from its beginning stages to now being institutionalized at Tufts.

She also helped create the Food Security Senate Subcommittee, which aims to reduce food insecurity on campus. This year, the Senate sponsored a campus food pantry, a grocery store shuttle pilot program, a meal swipe drive that accumulated 1,800 meals to be donated to other Tufts students and provided grocery bags to students staying on campus during school breaks.

“My goal as president is to make these long-term, permanent solutions, and then [to expand] a lot of the different initiatives and concerns that students have been coming to me with,” Galinsky said.

She highlighted student concerns over the formation of new student organizations, a lack of cultural center funding and improvements to the Steve Tisch Sports and Fitness Center as some of her priorities. During her presidency, Galinsky also hopes to further student mental wellness day programming, increase attention and funding toward club sports and introduce a subsidized spring break trip program.

“These are just some examples, but definitely all with this common theme of working to ensure that barriers are lowered for students so that they can excel during their academic and extracurricular activities here at Tufts,” she said.

Winning the presidency “means everything” to Galinsky. Despite starting in the premed track, Galinsky’s work in the Senate has inspired her to pursue a career in policy.

“After working for three years on some of these projects, seeing them come to life now has been one of the most reward-

ing aspects of my Tufts experience,” she said. “Winning this presidency means the opportunity to continue the work I love, to be able to work alongside students to advocate for their needs and ensure that their Tufts experience is as smooth as possible.”

Galinsky believes there is a portion of the student body that “might not realize the impact of what student government and Senate has on their lives.” She said she will work to increase transparency with students through Senate Town Halls and hopes to increase voter turnout in future elections.

“We can do a better job showing that there are channels of communication that are through [the] Senate, and that it’s really important to know who your elected officials are,” Galinsky said.

Jaden Pena, the outgoing TCU Senate president, worked closely with Galinsky during his time at Tufts.

“What I’ve loved most about working with Arielle is that she is so genuine when approaching concerns that need to be addressed,” Pena wrote in an email to the Daily. “No matter the project or initiative, Arielle is truly driven by her want to make Tufts a better place and it is reflected in every meeting, discussion, or conversation I’ve ever had with her.”

Krystal Mutebi, the current TCU diversity officer and women’s community senator, will serve as Galinsky’s vice president. The TCU Executive Board, including Galinsky and Mutebi, has already begun meeting with administrators to coordinate events for the upcoming school year.

“Regardless of whether you voted for me or not,” Galinsky said, “I’m excited for the opportunity to work with you and alongside you to be able to actively pursue positive change on this campus.”

COUP continued from page 3

tions to hold the military junta accountable for their actions.

“There is a lack of decisive action from relevant established international mechanisms such as the U.N. [Security Council] and the [International Criminal Court] to save lives of innocent people,” Tun said. “People on the ground are dying. People on the ground are really suffering. … We want the international community to hear the voices of the people of Myanmar.”

Asked by Muehlke, the Fletcher state department fellow, what his experience is like working at the U.N., Tun said that he can get frustrated by inaction on the part of other members.

“The [U.N.] members hear the voices of the people loud and clear, but the action that we receive does not really … live up to the expectation of the people,” Tun said. “We have a resolution [in] the General Assembly, but the elements that are contained in the General Assembly Resolution [are] not that much [and] not legally binding.”

Muehlke also asked Tun if he expects any key events to happen in Myanmar within the next year. Tun pointed to potential action being taken by the U.N. Security Council and the upcoming Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in May.

Muehlke then asked how Myanmar can have a democratic future, specifically pointing out the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims as a point of concern.

“We need to find a solution including the repatriation of the Rohingya in a voluntary, safe and dignified manner,” Tun said. “Our young generation, they are leading us. They are the ones who will build a country of the future.”

Tun then took questions from the audience. Asked about sanctions as an effective tool, Tun said that they are effective despite concerns about the impact on civilians.

“Some people say [sanctions] might affect only the general public,” Tun said. “Look at the crisis of the general public. We have nothing else to lose. … That is why we keep urging the international community to impose sanctions against the military.”

Another student asked Tun how the United States can convince China to stop supporting the military junta.

“The voices of the people of Myanmar are very clear,” Tun said. “Only a federal democracy will make the country be stable, so that is the message that we always convey to the countries in the region.”

Tun also discussed the prospect of the military junta holding sham elections and urged countries to put pressure on those who support the junta’s plans.

“The sham election, if they go through [with it], definitely [will] create more violence in Myanmar,” Tun said. “The Secretary of State, Mr. Blinken, already [talked] about rejecting any kind of election organized by the military. … It is very clear it will never be a free and fair and independent election.”

ChatGPT: Love it or hate it, you have to understand it first

Anushka Singh Science Editor

Originally published April 20, 2023.

If you have been active on social media over the last four months, it is very likely that you have heard about the hype of ChatGPT. You might have experimented with it or used it for an assignment. But do you know how it works? Is it going to replace your job? Is this the start of an artificial intelligence powered apocalypse?

To understand ChatGPT, let’s take a step back and see how we reached this point. The field of AI started in the 1950s when mathematicians, logicians and scientists started trying to mimic the logical reasoning and problem-solving methods used by the human brain in machines. All of the newest AI models seen in the news today are generative models, which means that the models are able to generate data that has not been directly selected from any other source.

ChatGPT is a generative predictive text model, meaning it gives text outputs based on a certain input. At its core, the model is trying to predict what the next word in a sentence is.

Peter Nadel, digital humanities and natural language processing specialist at Tufts Technology Services, explained

that ChatGPT is a big black box model based on GPT 3.

“There’s a GPT 3 model and that is a 175 billion parameter, a word to [vector] model. So, what it does is it takes this enormous, enormous amount of text,” Nadel said. “They pass it into this really complicated algorithm that can assign Bayesian weights to each of the words so that basically what you’re training for is a model that can predict the next word of a sentence. And so that’s what the GPT series are built around.”

GPT 2, which was the version of the model that preceded GPT

3, is a casual language model. This means to use it, a person has to pass the first two to three words in a sentence and the model can complete that sentence. To develop ChatGPT, the team at OpenAI used a strategy known as reinforcement learning with human feedback based on the feedback given by GPT 3 — a method called “few shot learning.”

“You basically give it a text document where you say, 10 plus 10 equals 20, 20 plus 20 equals 40, and then you say 40 plus 40 equals and then you just leave it blank, and the task is to pre-

dict the next thing, and it already knows that 40 plus 40 equals 80,” Nadel explained. “It knows that just from the massive amount of information that is held in the GPT 3 model, what you’re teaching it, really, is how to respond to a question, and that’s what’s fundamentally different about ChatGPT versus GPT 3.”

The newest GPT 4 model has expanded on the training data and capabilities of GPT 3, to be able to support multiple languages and images in its response. The wording of your input determines what kind of

output you get from the model, which means that if you are looking for the best response, you might have to try a couple of inputs with different prompts.

ChatGPT does have its downsides. A machine learning model can therefore only give out information that it learned from its input. If the input is biased, incomplete or not large enough, the machine learning model may give out a result that it deems correct but is far from the truth.

An example of this bias in action is with facial recognition software, where the algorithm is often trained to recognize white people more easily than Black people because of the data used in training the model. Since the performance of these artificial intelligence models heavily depends on the data inputted into the model, bias in such models can perpetuate oppression that already exists, and it’s why AI tools can give out false information. If the user does not realize that the output is incorrect, that can lead to harmful misunderstandings.

These predictive text models can be used for writing essays, poems and cover letters, but if a model is asked a factual question, make sure the response is cross checked with some actual research.

AI hasn’t replaced my job as a journalist yet, but it’s nearly impossible to predict what the future of AI will look like.

Tufts professors receive $8 million investment for biotech startup

Originally published March 9, 2023.

Morphoceuticals, a biotech company co-founded by Tufts professors Michael Levin and David Kaplan, recently received $8 million in seed funding from Prime Movers Lab and Juvenescence. The company is taking a new approach to the challenge of regenerative medicine by exploring the bioelectric controls of the human body to induce the regeneration of tissue, limbs and organs. Levin hopes their work can revolutionize regenerative applications and help millions of people with various injuries and health conditions.

A few years ago, Levin and Kaplan successfully regenerated the hind leg of a frog using a wearable bioreactor called a biodome. This biodome contains a “payload” of drug compounds to motivate the cells to start regenerating the lost limb. Just 24 hours of exposure to the biodome enabled regenerative growth in the frog’s hind leg over the next 18 months.

“That’s really unheard of in biotechnology,” Michael Hufford, the interim CEO of Morphoceuticals, said. “You really don’t hear about a very short-term intervention like that,

incredibly brief, 24 hours, leading to such an incredibly long period of regeneration and culminating in something as remarkable as a fully functioning limb.”

While the technology succeeded on a frog limb, it must first be tested on mice before any clinical trials on humans can be done. According to Levin, $8 million in funding will help Morphoceuticals hire more staff, buy high-tech equipment, rent space and pay for experiments that will help obtain Food and Drug Administration approval and advance research goals.

“We need to have many conversations with the FDA to figure out what is a path … toward safety and efficacy testing,” Levin said. “So, part of the money will go toward hiring people who know how to put together FDA packages.”

Conducting thorough experiments to get FDA approval is a crucial milestone for Morphoceuticals, as it will allow them to begin clinical trials on humans and provide treatments sooner. Initially, these treatments will focus on computing a set of drugs that will improve amputee stump health. Enhancing the health of amputee stumps will lead to less inflammation, better vascular use and healthier skin in the affected area. The treatment will be as simple as applying a topical drug.

“Instead of applying electricity, we’re just modifying the ways that [our cells] are talking to each other, using drugs that modify these ion channels and gap junctions,” Hufford said. “It’s just a topical application that triggers that program [in our cells] to rerun and regrow the limb.”

Levin spoke about the implications of his work.

“There’s a huge need for people with birth defects, traumatic injury, cancer, aging, degenerative disease, all of these things,” Levin said. “I get phone calls and emails every week from people in the most unbelievable medical scenarios. People with kids who have birth defects, spinal cord injuries, lost limbs, cancer.”

Levin and Kaplan’s work aims to spark a revolution in biomedicine that will eventually lead to limb and organ regeneration. Levin compared Morphoceuticals’ work to the development of computers, which first focused on hardware in the ’40s and ’50s and has since transitioned to software development.

“All of the biomedicine today is very focused on the molecular hardware, so genome editing, CRISPR pathway rewiring, protein engineering, single molecule, single cell approaches,” Levin said. “We need to move beyond the focus of molecular hardware and

really take advantage of the software of life.”

Levin and Kaplan’s research have been particularly exciting for the biology and biomedical engineering departments. Collaborations with other research labs on campus have allowed many undergraduate students to become involved in this research.

“The Kaplan Lab has a huge number of undergraduates in the lab and so it’s great that they provide so many opportunities,” Catherine Freudenreich, chair of the biology department, said, adding that the Levin Lab also supports many undergraduate

research projects. “I think [both professors] are very well liked by the undergrads.”

Beyond research, Kaplan is the faculty mentor for a neurobiology club on campus, and Levin co-teaches a developmental biology lab course, Freudenreich said.

Levin emphasized the “critical unmet need” that Morphoceuticals addresses.

“We are in a place where we have preventable biomedical suffering in incredible amounts,” he said. “This [technology] is an [absolutely] vital path for humanity forward. That’s what I want people to focus on.”

Taylor Escudero Assistant News Editor

QUAN TRAN / THE TUFTS DAILY

OpenAI’s ChatGPT website is pictured on April 19.

MICHELLE LI / THE TUFTS DAILY

The Science and Engineering Complex is pictured.

F EATURES

Tufts and its host communities: Won’t you be my neighbor?

by Carmen Smoak Assistant Features Editor

Walking across campus, it is easy to forget that Tufts occupies an integral space within two communities, Medford and Somerville. The campus passes seamlessly over the dividing line between these two cities, making for a campus that feels completely removed from the surrounding community.

In reality, through legal affiliations as well as neighborly connections, Tufts is complexly intertwined with its host communities and has been for decades.

Jon Witten, a distinguished senior lecturer in the urban and environmental policy and planning department, spoke of the relationship between Tufts and the communities it occupies.

“If you think about Tufts relative to Medford or Somerville … the footprint of the university holdings is so extensive, that it has a dramatic impact in the influx of undergraduate and graduate students [and] the influx of faculty and staff,” Witten said. “So, it’s a symbiotic relationship that is a very delicate balance. Because both the city and the university, they need each other.”

Relationships between local communities and universities can take on many forms. While both parties seek to work together, occasional butting of heads is inevitable.

“From the city’s perspective, the university creates impacts and from the university’s perspective, the university brings in thousands of students and generates a whole host of revenue activities,” Witten said. “So it’s this delicate balance between the kind of town-gown approach and that’s been historic [and it’s] not easily reconciled.”

One major factor in the relationship between Tufts and its host communities is taxation. Local governments rely heavily on tax revenue to function. According to Witten, property tax revenue accounts for almost three quarters of most municipal budgets. Nonetheless, Tufts pays little to no property tax on its expansive campus because it is legally classified as a charitable nonprofit.

“In Massachusetts, there is a general property tax exemption for charitable institutions like religious institutions, educational institutions and several other nonprofit institutions … but universities almost exclusively in Massachusetts are tax exempt property,” Witten said.

Zac Bears, vice president of Medford City Council, explained the large effect this has on small governments like Medford.

“Private colleges and private hospitals don’t pay property taxes … really the issue here in Medford, and especially across the state, are large colleges and universities and large hospital systems … [which

are] billion-dollar institutions that have high demands on a community while giving back to the community as well,” Bears said.

Bears explained that he believes the balancing of demands and contributions of large universities on small governments needs to shift.

“If Tufts was taxed on its nontaxable property … it would pay $8 million to the city every year. We have a $200 million budget. That’s almost 5% of the budget, right? That’s not nothing,” Bears said.

Tufts does, however, make an effort to give back monetarily to Medford and its other host communities in the form of Payments in Lieu of Taxes, or PILOT.

“Many nonprofits that are tax exempt will negotiate with the municipality to make a payment in lieu of taxes, and it’s a good faith action. They are not required to do it. But as a general rule every year those PILOT payments are typically negotiated,” Witten said.

Rocco DiRico, executive director of government and community relations for Tufts, explained how Tufts carries out its payments.

“Tufts University does pay property taxes on several properties in Medford and Somerville. Each year, the university contributes more than $2,600,000 in property taxes and voluntary payments in lieu of taxes (PILOT) to our host communities,” DiRico wrote.

Bears conveyed the burden of Medford’s lowered tax revenue and a sense of urgency to pass legislation to get universities and hospitals to pay a bigger share.

“We [Medford City Council] are working on state legislation

and hospital systems to pay some share between zero and 100% of their property tax burden, ideally around 25%. And that would really help a lot of communities. Still [tax exempt entities would] get a huge discount than what they would get if they were a business or a homeowner. But it could help out with police and fire services, health services, people who need assistance from our housing folks at City Hall.”

However, the relationship between Tufts and its host communities is more than just money. Tufts provides open recreational space as well as educational resources to the surrounding communities. These benefits of Tufts’ presence are not as tangible as money, but they are important to the relation between the university and its host communities.

“The municipality wants more money; the university isn’t going to pay … that additional money. So what is the university offering in exchange? Well, you know, it’s this beautiful campus that’s available to the public,” Witten said. “It’s a very informal, but really important, mutually beneficial relationship.”

DiRico expanded on the community benefits that Tufts has to offer.

“Tufts University also provides financial support to more than 50 Medford/Somerville nonprofits through our sponsorship and Tufts Community Grants programs,” DiRico wrote. “Tufts also makes its athletic facilities open to local youth sports organizations including Somerville Youth Soccer and Medford/Somerville high school sports teams. Each year, we host Tufts Community Day, an event which attracts more

than 3,000 neighbors for a day of music, arts, STEM education, and free food. We also invite our neighbors to attend concerts, movies, lectures, and other programs on campus.”

When it comes to supporting Medford, Bears expressed appreciation for the community benefits that Tufts offers, and how these benefits could be accounted for in Tufts’ monetary contributions to Medford.

“[We could] potentially set up a system so that 25% of what [Tufts] would pay could be split half as community benefits [and] half as money,” Bears said.

At the end of the day, Tufts and its host communities have to work together despite their differing agendas because they are dependent on one another.

“I think it’s just about how we create systems and change behaviors so that you can build trust and build community together,” Bears said.

Togetherness in this relationship extends beyond Tufts’ institutional interactions with its host communities; it often relies on student interactions with Somerville and Medford. While students generally only live in Medford and Somerville for a short period of time, Bears expressed that they possess power in how the community interacts with Tufts.

“Sometimes you get residents … who say, ‘Well, the students are transients, and they’re not going to be here very long. What engagement and license do they have in the community?’ I don’t care if you live here for five weeks or 50 years, it’s a place that you live,” Bears said.

One way students get involved is by registering to

vote in Medford or Somerville, which is possible even without being a permanent resident. Bears emphasized the importance of active voter participation.

Bears suggested “being engaged with the issues and voting in the local elections, registering to vote … or advocating for the vision of what the Tufts and community relationship could look like and how that helps students.”

DiRico referenced ways in which Tufts supports and encourages students to get involved within their local communities.

“The office of Government and Community Relations at Tufts University is eager to engage with students. We regularly meet with the Leonard Carmichael Society, the FOCUS program, and Tisch College students that want to volunteer in our host communities,” DiRico wrote. “Each year, more than 1,000 students volunteer at local nonprofit organizations.”

Above all else, Bears drove home the importance of student involvement, agency and action on and off Tufts’ campus, as well as working together to support the local Medford/Somerville community.

“I always think student activism and organizing is really important. … We try to show solidarity for those fights as elected officials who care about what’s going on at Tufts,” Bears said. “The place where we really could go next is for student organizations on campus to think about taking positions on issues affecting the community and saying … how they’d like to see Tufts act as a member of the larger communities that it’s a part of.”

PARISSA ALERASOOL / THE TUFTS DAILY

Community members enjoy Community Day, an event sponsored by the Tufts Office of Community Relations and the cities of Somerville and Medford, on the Academic Quad in 2014.

The Tufts Cannon: A long-standing tradition of student activism

by Ella Sanders Assistant Features Editor

Situated between Goddard Chapel and Ballou Hall is the Tufts Cannon, a reigning symbol of the Tufts community and its deeply rooted traditions. The cannon dates back to 1956 when it was gifted to the university by the city of Medford and the Medford Historical Society. The cannon is a replica of “Old Ironsides,” an original cannon from the USS Constitution.

The tradition surrounding the cannon began when a group of students painted it in 1977 in protest of the visit of the First Lady of the Philippines Imelda Marcos, who was there to donate a $1.5 million gift to the Fletcher School’s East Asian and Pacific Affairs program on behalf of the Marcos Foundation and receive an honorary degree. Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos had enacted martial law in the Philippines in 1972, and students painted the cannon to protest the Fletcher School’s acceptance of the grant.

Opposed to the protesting students, another group of students painted over their design. Since then, the act of painting the cannon and guarding one’s work overnight has evolved into a long-standing tradition at Tufts.

The cannon continues to serve as a medium for student activism on campus and has been used this semester by many student organizations including the Tufts Philippine Student Union and Tufts Climate Action.

PSU hosted a month of events in honor of Filipino American History Month in October. Megan Berja, the senior advisor for PSU, shared that the group decided to kick

off the month by painting the cannon on Oct. 6.

PSU met by the cannon at around 10 p.m., and as more people started showing up, the group began brainstorming what they should add to the design. Berja shared that while the club paints the Filipino flag and the letters FAHM, there is usually a debate about what the rest of the cannon should look like.

“People every year have different opinions of what they want to put on [the cannon],” Berja said. “So we tell them [to] go for it. It’s a cannon. It’s our tradition.”

The history of painting the cannon is very important to PSU, given the tradition’s origin story as a mode of resistance to the Philippines’ authoritarian regime in the 1970s.

Last year, PSU, Tufts Asian Student Coalition, Pilipinx Education, Advocacy, & Resources and Malaya Massachusetts organized an event called “Counterhistory of the Cannon” to educate students about the important history behind Tufts’ long-standing tradition.

Berja elaborated on the context behind the event.

“Tufts doesn’t really publicize the first-ever instance of [painting the] cannon, while … [it] is the university’s most important tradition,” Berja said. “We felt that it’s important to let the community know that this is how it started.”

Berja reflected on how the Tufts community engages with the cannon in its activism, noting that social media helps amplify and add nuance to simple spray paint designs.

“A lot of the information that we usually put out is too wordy … [and] I don’t think that [the cannon can always] give out the full message,” Berja said.

Tufts Climate Action also painted the cannon this semester. The student group was particularly active on campus leading up to and during Tufts Parents and Family Weekend. Posters highlighting Tufts’ investments in the fossil fuel industry and signs calling for university divestment were spread around the campus.

The student group met to paint the Tufts Cannon on Oct. 21, the Friday of Parents and Family Weekend, covering it in large orange words: “NO DONATIONS TILL DIVESTMENT,” “FOSSIL FREE TUFTS!” and “CLIMATE JUSTICE NOW!”

TCA’s primary focus is urging the Tufts administration to divest from fossil fuels, and the group’s presence on campus has taken the form of posters, rallies and demonstrations outside of Ballou Hall.

“Tufts has this whole reputation … [They say they] encourage civic engagement in our student body. Like, ‘we are a progressive and innovative institution that’s at the frontier of all these different research,’” Moli Ma, a leader of TCA, said. “With that reputation, and then the other side of it being that we are still invested in this very archaic, bad and immoral industry.”

In years past, the club has used the cannon to challenge the administration. Last year, for example, the club walked over from Ballou Hall after a rally to paint the cannon.

Ma, a sophomore, explained how different student organizations have used the cannon to share their messages with the greater Tufts community.

“The cannon is a go-to for all clubs at Tufts. It’s such a deeply ingrained tradition. Everybody walks by, everybody sees it,” Ma said. “We wanted to use it as a way of disseminating information. It’s

sort of like postering, but it’s a Tufts special edition of getting the word out there about something.”

The tradition also served to connect the student group over a hands-on activity and outside of a traditional meeting setting, according to Ma.

“[It’s] just getting that time to chat with everyone in a very casual setting,” Ma said. “Everybody’s figuring out how the spray paint works. [People] were like, ‘Oh, I messed this up.’ And then people are helping each other. So it’s very hands-on, instead of us sitting in a classroom and having a formal meeting.”

As TCA looks to the future, Ma shared that the club has many projects in the works, and the cannon will remain a part of their repertoire.

The cannon has become a symbol of student expression on campus, and as such has been widely advertised to prospective students through the undergraduate admissions website and on-campus tours.

Senior Chiamaka Chukwu is a student fellow for Tufts admissions focusing on diversity and access.

Reflecting on her own experience as a prospective student, Chukwu remembers thinking the cannon tradition was unique.

“That’s one of the things that made me think that Tufts was super cool,” Chukwu said.

At Tufts, Chukwu painted the cannon her freshman year for the Civic Semester and then with the Student Prison Education Abolition Coalition in a call to defund the Tufts police.

While Chukwu has not specifically advertised the tradition to prospective students in her role in admissions yet, she mentioned the possibility of talking about the unique tradition during her weekly Jumbo Chats on Tuesdays.

“I think it’s a really good way for students to express themselves and express certain views that they have, specifically in regards to politics, and I think it’s also a good way to inform the campus [about various issues],” Chukwu said.

Chukwu also pointed out the ephemeral nature of a cannon painting.

“I think what makes it really tricky is the fact that … if you want your stuff to stay on the cannon for a long time, you have to guard or protect it because people could paint over it,” Chukwu said. “So that’s the one thing that I’m like, I wish this wasn’t the case. But I do think it’s a really good way for students to express themselves and I’m pretty glad that Tufts has that as a part of their tradition.”

Chukwu shared her view on how the Tufts community can engage with the cannon in a more thoughtful and intentional manner, going forward.

“I don’t know if I would say that painting the cannon has necessarily contributed to supporting marginalized communities on campus,” Chukwu said. “I previously talked about how [the cannon] gets painted over really easily. So I feel like if there’s something a Black or Indigenous person wants to make super aware to campus, they kind of have to guard it so that it’s not painted over.”

As you pass between Goddard Chapel and Ballou Hall at night, you may just catch students huddled around the cannon, planning out what they should paint next. For student groups looking to reach the greater campus, the tradition of the cannon has and will continue to exist as a prominent force of student activism and expression within the Tufts community.

A RTS & P OP C U l TURE

Seniors of Trunk celebrate 4 years of finding joy in children’s theater

by Nate Hall Deputy Arts Editor

Originally published May 21, 2023.

Traveling Treasure Trunk is unlike any other student group at Tufts. In fact, they might just have more fun than anyone else on campus.

Tufts’ oldest children’s theater troupe, known to many as “Trunk,” has been entertaining children at local daycares, preschools and hospitals with original skits, songs and plays since 1987. In their final months at Tufts, the four graduating seniors of Trunk reflected on their experiences in the group over the last four years.

The journey of every “Trunker” starts with an audition. The seniors of Trunk talked about why they decided to try out as first-years and described their own audition experiences.

For senior Joshua Leferman, it was a performance during his first-year orientation week that introduced him to the group.

“It was beginning of freshman year, and I really had no idea what I was doing. … And then I saw Trunk at the O-Show,” Leferman said. “Now, I believe that I was one of like two people in the audience who found that funny, but I found it so funny. And I was like, that is a group of people that I want to be a part of.”

While many discovered Trunk in their first weeks at Tufts, senior

Samantha Kelleher knew she wanted to join Trunk before she was even on campus.

“In high school, I was involved with children’s theater,” Kelleher said. “That was actually a huge part of why I wanted to come to Tufts. I actually wrote about Trunk in my ‘Why Tufts’ essay.”

Trunkers write, direct and design costumes for all of their performances, and the troupe is constantly building on the work of former members, taking old

stories from past years of Trunk and making them their own.

“We write new content every year, and some of it stays and some of it doesn’t,” senior Ruth Greenfield said. “The one thing that always changes is we write a play every semester. And that’s always different. But it’s fun. The content lasts for ages.”

The most rewarding part of Trunk? According to the seniors, it’s the joy of performing for kids that makes it all worth it.

“My favorite part of Trunk is always the kids,” Leferman said. “It’s always been the kids, [and] it always will be the kids. … The nice thing about performing for kids is that kids are — for the most part — a judge-free zone.”

Kelleher echoed this sentiment, explaining the fun of tapping into a youthful silliness.

“You can’t embarrass yourself around kids because they just love the ridiculousness of everything,” she said. “So it’s just being

as chaotic and silly as possible, which is something that you don’t get that often in college.”

The seniors also discussed how Trunk has evolved as a group over the years. The club was made up of just a few seniors when current senior Madeline Porter joined in 2018, and after those seniors graduated in 2019, the group was led by an entirely new cohort of first-years and

‘The Boston Festival of Films from Iran’ continues to inspire with its global narratives

by Siavash Raissi Arts Editor

Originally published Feb. 10, 2023.

Last week, the Museum of Fine Arts hosted The Boston Festival of Films from Iran, a three-day event dedicated to the exclusive screenings of Persian movies, both new and old. Since its inception in 1994 as a collaborative initiative between the MFA Boston, the MFA Houston and the National Museum of Asian Art, the festival was forced to take a two-year hiatus due to COVID19. But for the first time since, the event has returned with a selection of four powerful films, each of which stands out for its unique narrative, discussions and sharp criticisms of contemporary Iranian society.

“Bostonians are lucky to have an abundance of venues to see arthouse cinema, but what sets the MFA’s film program apart is our focus on international film,” film curator Katherine Irving wrote in an email to the Daily. Irving was responsible for consulting on curating this year’s lineup in collaboration with the MFA Houston and the National Museum of Asian Art. Continuing the MFA’s past tra-

dition of featuring other international cultures on the big screen, Irivng commented on how “it would be impossible to exhibit the best global cinema without including the works of Iranian filmmakers, who since the 1970s have been creating some of the world’s best films.”

As a result, this year’s movies range across a variety of topics, genres and eras in Iranian culture. For instance, though the festival usually solely focuses on recently released works, “The Runner,” by director Amir Naderi, was released in 1984. The story of an 11-year-old orphan, played by child actor Madjid Niroumand, the film has been hailed as a landmark in Iranian cinema, with The New York Times labeling it as the “gem of the Iranian New Wave.” Irving explained the process behind the film’s unique selection.

“We want to give audiences a snapshot of contemporary Iranian culture and politics, and usually only include new releases. ‘The Runner’ represents a departure from this philosophy,” Irving wrote. “When I watched it, it struck me as a potent example of the uniquely Iranian tradition of portraying stories about

everyday people and events that might at first seem unremarkable but on closer observation, capture something profound and universal.”

Serving as a historical backdrop in Iranian cinema, “The Runner” presents coming-of-age themes that are notably prominent in the festival’s opening night screening, “The Apple Day” (2022). Often compared to other films like “Bicycle Thieves” (1948) by Vittorio De Sica, “The Apple Day” focuses on the story of a boy named Saeed and his father, who sells apples from his truck, and the hardship they face when the family’s truck is stolen. With a lack of female filmmakers in the country due to the patriarchal organization of Iran’s visual media industry, Irving notes that the film stands out for coming “from a Tehran-based, woman-run distribution company, Eli Image, who are doing the brave work of exporting subversive and artful Iranian films.” Thus, with its righteous main character, viewers at the MFA were exposed to the film’s encapsulation of the universally simple yet nuanced experiences of childhood.

While these touching stories share their own place as com-

mentaries on the general human experience, with the recent rise of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement and the growing fight for human rights being waged in Iran, it would have been impossible for this year’s films to avoid the public discontent regarding the country’s most pressing issues. Consequently, “This is Not Me” (2022) and “Holy Spider” (2022) both stand out for their powerful, true-to-life narratives regarding the oppressive practices of the Islamic government, as they present the country’s political shortcomings from the perspective of marginalized groups.

Though Iran is the only Muslim country in the Persian Gulf that recognizes transgender identities, trans individuals are still faced with various legal obstacles designed to dissuade and prolong the transition process. Thus, “This is Not Me” (2022) by Saeed Gholipour is a documentary film following the lives of Saman and Shervin, two transgender men, as they navigate the country’s political obstructions in their journey to gain recognition for who they are.

“‘This is Not Me’ provides an important perspective from

the trans community of Iran, a group that is often excluded from conversations around gender oppression in the region,” Irving wrote. As the Woman, Life, Freedom movement continues, the movie’s message highlighting Iran’s gender-based exclusionary practices remains even more relevant today.

The same can be said for “Holy Spider” (2022) by Ali Abbasi, arguably the most widely recognized film in the festival. The movie tackles Iran’s deeply rooted issues as it tells the true story of Saeed Hanaei (Mehdi Bajestani), a serial killer targeting sex workers in the city of Mashhad, and Arezoo Rahimi (Zar Amir Ebrahimi), the fictional journalist who covered the investigation. Despite being shot before Mahsa Amini’s murder in September 2022, the movie’s themes regarding the systematic and cultural oppression of women in the Islamic Republic is a testament to the film’s cultural impact. From negotiating with a police force that does not seem interested in protecting the lives of female sex workers to navigating through a

QUAN TRAN / THE TUFTS DAILY

Graduating seniors Josh Leferman, Ruth Greenfield Sami Kelleher, and Madeleine Porter of Traveling Treasure Trunk, Tufts' children’s theater troupe, are pictured on May 2.

Trunk seniors look back on past performances

TRUNK

continued from page 9

sophomores. Porter, who has now been a member of Trunk for five years, reflected on the changes the club has made.

“All the traditions that we knew were taught to us by those two seniors and the little bits and pieces that we got from the other members [in] fall 2018,” Porter said. “Because everyone kind of got immediately replaced by entirely new people who had no idea what was going on, we changed a lot of the traditions.”

One of the biggest changes was Trunk’s leadership structure. Instead of the traditional hierarchy, Trunk has adopted a task-

based structure with roles like Truncle — the social chair, short for “Trunk’s fun uncle” — and Biz Lightyear, the business manager.

“We have positions that you run for every semester, but we don’t have a president,” Greenfield said. “We’re a horizontal group, and that’s been really nice.”

The seniors also discussed the challenges of adapting to the pandemic. After being sent home in 2020, Trunk began performing for students over Zoom in spring 2021.

“We basically did everything virtually,” Leferman said. “All of the shows took place in our rooms, to the detriment of all of our roommates. So you can imag-

ine at ninein the morning when we’re going to kindergartens and preschools and making loud, weird noises … and the audience would be whoever decided to show up on Zoom.”

For many of the seniors, Trunk was a vital support system during the early months of the pandemic.

“Trunk, for me, over [the COVID-19 pandemic], was honestly just a really great social thing to have,” Kelleher said. “It was nice to have people to text, to have that support system outside of your little pod.”

Last year, Trunk celebrated its 35th anniversary, and this April, they held a reunion event on

campus that brought together Trunkers of past and present for a day of celebration and performance. Trunk took advantage of its strong network of alumni to organize the event and reconnect with former members of the group.

“We invited everyone who we could find who had been in Trunk in the past 35 years and we met in [Curtis Hall], and for four hours we played games,” Greenfield said. “We did a Trunk show where people signed up on a whiteboard to perform little skits. … You’d have people who are in Trunk currently performing with people from 10 years ago.”

Film fest showcases stories of women, trans people

FILMS

continued from page 9

patriarchal society that actively seeks to diminish her voice, Rahimi’s story is one that certainly resonates with generations of Persians. Despite facing multiple obstacles during production as a result of Iran’s strict censorship laws on filming movies where women are depicted without headscarves, the completion of “Holy Spider” demonstrates the importance of opposing such policies for the sake of distributing a valuable global message.

While the fight for freedom continues in Iran, initiatives like those at the MFA remain crucial to promoting these global narratives to new audiences.

“Our goal in presenting culturally focused film festivals is always

two-fold: to celebrate the community that is being represented and give its members a space to enjoy their nation’s latest films, but also to deepen Westerners’ understanding of global cultures through cinema,” Irving wrote.

“Film is uniquely effective for this purpose because it’s so immediate — viewers become almost immersed in a culture, learning as if through direct contact.”

For audiences unfamiliar with Iranian cinema, the MFA continues to stand out for its contribution to the cultural landscape of Boston.

“I hope these films will remind Americans that even though Iran might seem abstract and far away, it is home to fellow humans who want to feel safe, to protect their families, to live their lives as they choose,” Irving wrote.

Many of the seniors plan to apply the skills they’ve learned in Trunk to their future jobs after graduation. Greenfield and Leferman are interested in pursuing careers in education, and Kelleher wants to work in children’s television. The seniors shared their gratitude for the time they’ve spent in Trunk, and talked about the joy that Trunk brought to their college experiences.

“I came into college in not the best spot,” Leferman said. “And for me, Trunk was an outlet to be able to … really talk about what was going on in my life, and for that I’ll always be grateful. So yeah, my life would be much worse without Trunk.

Jennette McCurdy heals with her poignant memoir ‘I’m Glad My Mom Died’

by Jack Clohisy Arts Editor

Content warning: This article discusses eating disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, emotional and verbal abuse and sexual harassment.

Gen Z knew her as Sam Puckett, the rambunctious, bad-tempered loudmouth from the hit Nickelodeon television show “iCarly” (2007–2012). This would be the name that followed Jennette McCurdy around for the majority of her professional adult life; a name that McCurdy grew to detest. As seen with an array of child actors who were exploited for their talents at a young age, what audiences see on-screen can

be vastly different from their lived experiences. McCurdy decided to swap out her script for a pen and paper and detailed the horrors and harsh realities behind the life of a star in Hollywood. “I’m Glad My Mom Died” (2022), a memoir that spans from her early childhood to her teenage years and twenties, is McCurdy’s literary debut. After nearly two decades of exploitative labor taken from the star, McCurdy has found her true vocation in writing.

As a child, McCurdy recalls that it was her mother’s idea for her to begin acting. McCurdy’s mother, Debra, introduced McCurdy to open-call auditions for commercials at a young age. Reflecting on when her mother wanted to sign McCurdy with an agent to jumpstart her career, McCurdy writes, “Mom wants this more than any-

thing, not me. This day [my audition for the acting agency] was stressful and not fun, and if given the choice, I would choose to never do anything like it again.” This would only be the start of the stress and obligation McCurdy felt toward her mother.

McCurdy recounts an instance when she tried to quit acting and her mother reacted violently: “She bangs on the steering wheel, accidentally hitting the horn. Mascara trickles down her cheek. She’s hysterical, like I was in the Hollywood Homicide audition. Her hysteria frightens me and demands to be taken care of.” McCurdy decided to hide her desire to quit in order to appease her mother. Effectively, McCurdy highlights the immense pressure she felt to placate her mother by continuing to act.

In addition to the pressure her mother placed on her to continue acting, McCurdy details the struggles she faced with obsessive-compulsive disorder and eating disorders. She recounts that when she began to go through puberty, she was nervous that she would grow too large for her mother’s liking. McCurdy asks her mother what she can do to stop growing, and her mother replies, “there’s this secret thing you can do … it’s called calorie restriction.” Soon after her mother put her on a diet plan, McCurdy was proud every time she would eat half of her allotted portion because she was “shrinking twice as fast.”

This type of mindset toward food would only further worsen as McCurdy grew older, with her aversion to food developing into bulimia, marked by periods of time where she would binge and then purge the food she ate. It wasn’t until after her mother died that McCurdy was able to reckon with this destructive cycle that had been implanted and perpetuated by her mother. Despite the heaviness in nature of such content, McCurdy effectively depicts the root and recurrence of eating disorders, but she does not allow herself to become victimized by her struggle. By humanizing herself and uncovering the thoughts and emotions she tied to food, it is evident that she

is greater than her eating disorder, which can provide hope to those in similar situations.

Outside of physical and mental illnesses, McCurdy’s relationship with Nickelodeon is explored. She recounts uncomfortable, sexually suggestive encounters with an executive she calls “The Creator,” as well as dismay and frustration with preferential treatment her co-star Ariana Grande received on the set of their show “Sam & Cat” (2013–2014).

Despite being exploited throughout her young career, McCurdy managed to transcend her restraints, freeing herself from her acting agents and film obligations and shifting her life toward intentional and meaningful living: therapy and writing. Working with a therapist on her eating disorder helped her reconstruct her relationship with food. Writing brought her an outlet to process grief and trauma after her mother died of cancer while she was on Nickelodeon. McCurdy took the lemons life gave her and decided to make lemonade for herself and others. This memoir acts as a beautiful testament to resilience and perseverance. McCurdy displays an immense amount of strength and tenacity to emerge stronger despite her upbringing.

“I’m Glad My Mom Died” is a mustread book and an impressive body of nonfiction for a debut work.

COURTESY WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

The cover of “I’m Glad My Mom Died” (2022) by Jennette McCurdy is pictured.

Late Night At The Daily

Aaron: “As a theatre kid, I loved it ...”

Henry: “... Can we talk about how rancid that sentence is?”

CROSSWORD

MISSED CONNECTIONS

Tufts’ gym isn’t working out

by Maxwell Shoustal Deputy Opinion Editor

Originally published Jan. 26, 2023.

Anyone who has recently been in the Tufts gym has likely noticed and been irked by the crowding. In some ways, this is not Tufts’ fault. It is not a surprise that gym attendance is heightened in the period following New Year’s Day as New Year’s resolutions are meant to be based on the idea

by Justin Hong Staff Writer

The Tufts Asian Student Coalition called on the university to hire more faculty specializing in Asian American studies to fill an urgent gap in the race, colonialism and diaspora department. With Professor Courtney Sato going on leave, there will be no courses or full-time faculty in the Asian American studies concentration next fall, according to the coalition’s March 30 letter to the administration. I find this regrettable. I am not privy to the university’s finances, and expanding the department may not be financially tenable, but Tufts ought to reconsider this decision and try to meet student activists’ demands.

I am incredibly grateful for the education I’ve received thus far at Tufts. I was fortunate enough to take Intro to Asian American Studies last semester with Professor Sato and I am glad I cleared my schedule to do so. I still remember the first day of class when Professor Sato implored us to think about, in the words of scholar Gary Okihiro, when and where we enter the historical narrative. This class had a profound impact on me as a Taiwanese American and helped me understand my place in American history.

of self-improvement. Logically, going to the gym fulfills this natural desire. However, given the unpleasantries of the current state of the Tufts gym, the administration ought to concoct and implement a more responsible plan for the future.

Getting the proper amount of exercise is important for everyone, but it carries the utmost importance for college students. Exercise can relieve common sources of pressure in college, such as having trouble con -

centrating, poor sleeping habits and disconsolate moods. In addition to the obvious benefits associated with being physically fit, it is these mental health benefits that behoove a university such as Tufts to prioritize gym accessibility. It would be unfair to claim that Tufts has not been attempting to support students’ mental health in other ways, such as Counseling and Mental Health Services, whose number is printed on all students’ Tufts ID cards. Furthermore,

Tufts’ various identity-based centers undoubtedly play a role in improving the mental health of members of these communities. Moreover, the newly implemented Indigenous Center proves that Tufts has remained committed to building communities to relieve the anxieties and stresses felt by these groups. Nevertheless, even members of these groups can stand to benefit from what consistent exercise offers for one’s well-being.

In the time since returning to Tufts, it has become especially clear that the Tufts gym is inadequate. Although Tufts has an undergraduate enrollment of approximately 6,500 individuals, the fitness center space is about 7,000 square feet. The gold standard of college gymnasiums, the Yale gym, has 14 floors and over 12 acres of indoor space. A less jarring example is the Colby College gym, which has a three level, 13,000 square foot fitness center. Both schools have significantly larger facilities than Tufts despite having smaller undergraduate enrollments.

Since the gym is dominated by cardio machines such as treadmills and ellipticals, those looking to do weight training might find scarcer opportunities. The inadequate number of benches brings a somewhat

Asian American studies deserves better

I’ve thought about that idea frequently since then. It’s apparent, even in my family, that some of us don’t know our own history because we never had the chance to learn about it in the classroom. Over winter break, my family and I were having dinner when my sister started talking about the Abercrombie & Fitch documentary, specifically, the shirt that had two caricatures of Asians at a laundromat with the caption “Two Wongs Can Make It White.” My mother and I, who had not yet watched the documentary, gasped at how something so blatantly racist could have ever been made, but my sister and my brother were less shocked. My sister genuinely thought the wordplay was clever while my brother failed to understand the historical significance of the reference to laundry service and its connection to Asian Americans.

We laughed it off at the time, but when I think about it, it’s because I took Professor Sato’s class that I didn’t act the way my brother or sister did. Without the formal opportunity to take an Asian American studies class here at Tufts I wouldn’t know my own history — when and where I enter American history. In an age of rising hate against Asian Americans, classes like these are critical so everyone can see the mis-

takes of the past, understand why they’re wrong and make sure they are not repeated.

An understanding of Asian American history would reveal how ideas like the model minority myth were created through immigration laws that incentivized well educated people — among others — to migrate here from Asia or how Asian Americans are perceived as perpetual foreigners who remain loyal to their nation of origin long after moving to the U.S. These patterns have been a throughline in our history; so much so that rhetoric used by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to round up Japanese Americans during World War II — ostensibly to prevent foreign espionage — mirrors almost exactly the sentiments expressed by Rep. Lance Gooden, R-Tex., earlier this year when he questioned a Chinese American congresswoman’s loyalty and suggested she have her security clearance revoked. This pernicious, often unconscious bias can be found in the poking and prodding of every ‘where are you really from?’ or ‘you’re so exotic!’ lobbed at me and my Asian American compatriots. Whether it be at our kitchen tables or the halls of Congress, these tropes will be repeated until we learn where they came from

disappointing lack of variety to students looking to pursue weight training goals.

In addition to overcrowding at the gym, Tufts physical education classes have too few offerings, which makes it difficult to land a spot in one of these courses as an underclassmen. By the time freshmen in the School of Arts and Sciences are able to register for classes, many P.E. classes tend to be completely filled.

During the New England wintertime, outdoor opportunities for exercise are scarce, and access to the Tufts gym and enrollment in physical education courses become ever more necessary. With spots in these P.E. classes filled, students turn to the gym as a last resort of sorts. Their intentions of improving their physical fitness and mental health are worthwhile, and should be more urgently considered by the Tufts administration. Students going to the gym in the early weeks of this semester will without a doubt see overcrowding no matter what time they attend, and this less than ideal experience could turn away some people who might have otherwise established very good habits. A New Year’s resolution should be yours to fail, not the Steve Tisch Sports and Fitness Center’s.

and why they are wrong. We must all put in the work to eliminate systemic racism from this country. By not making Asian American and other ethnic studies courses readily available, Tufts makes it harder for students to do just this. I grew up in a primarily white town, went to a primarily white high school and still attend a primarily white institution in a primarily white part of the country. I never had the opportunity to take an Asian American studies class in high school and only barely had the opportunity to do so here.

I urge the administration to heed student activists’ calls to expand the ethnic studies course offerings.

While this may be impossible at the moment due to the university’s limited financial resources, the administration should negotiate with students in good faith to come to an agreement to expand the race, colonialism and diaspora department when the financial resources are available. Tufts prides itself as a school that molds its students into “active citizens of the world,” but it’s high time we students call into question the validity of that statement and hold the administration accountable to it.active citizens of the world, but its high time we students call into question the validity of that statement and hold the administration accountable to it.

ANN MARIE BURKE / THE TUFTS DAILY

The Steve Tisch Sports and Fitness Center is pictured on Aug. 28, 2020.

Willow Project exposes urgent need for permitting reform

by Maxwell Shoustal , Keshav Srikant and Esma Erdem Deputy Opinion Editor, Staff Writer and Staff Writer

Originally published March 14, 2023.

In January 2017, ConocoPhillips, the largest crude oil company in Alaska, proposed the Willow Project — an oil drilling project in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska that will take decades to complete and could produce up to 600 million barrels of oil. Since the proposition, the project has been seeking government consent, and President Joe Biden’s administration recently approved the project on a smaller scale than what was proposed. While Alaska’s Congressional delegation argues that the project will create jobs, boost domestic energy production and reduce the country’s reliance on foreign oil, environmentalist politicians such as Al Gore described the project as “recklessly irresponsible.”

According to the Biden administration’s estimates, the project could produce 278 million tons of greenhouse gasses, — which is equal to adding 2 million cars to the traffic — over the course of a 30-year span. The project faces significant opposition from environmental groups and Indigenous communities, as it not only threatens the local communities in Alaska but could also exacerbate the climate crisis. Drilling and construction in the fragile Alaskan ecosystem will negatively impact habitats of endangered or vulnerable species such as polar bears, walruses and caribou. As the proposed location is used by Indigenous communities for hunting and fishing, the project also concerns Indigenous rights. The development of the project would harm their traditional ways of living and cultural heritage.

The extraction, production and consumption of oil all contribute to climate change through the process of burning fossil fuels. Climate change threatens to destroy habitats, reduce biodiversity and potentially cause serious harm to the health of our planet. It is essential to take these environmental consequences into account when developing such projects. Though the Biden administration has approved the project, they should have been more considerate of environmental factors.

Nevertheless, Biden’s incentives to approve the project are

understandable: Drilling more oil will mean the United States is less dependent on oil from notable human rights abusers like Saudi Arabia and Russia. We paid for this dependence dearly when gas prices went up and inflation increased after the Biden administration imposed sanctions on Russia and stopped buying Russian oil. However, the way to achieve energy independence is not by drilling more oil, but by pursuing renewable energy projects, which would create independence without hurting the climate. For more clean and renewable energy to truly take hold in America, though, we need permitting reform.

The idea of permitting rules for projects was largely born with former President Richard Nixon’s signing of the National

Environmental Policy Act — a bill meant to stop projects that would hurt the environment. Unfortunately, NEPA is now often used to stall projects for reasons unrelated to the environment.

In 2022, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W. Va., proposed a bipartisan permitting reformbill. The reform would have placed a time restriction on how long NEPA reviews could last and would have helped the government meet goals laid out in the Inflation Reduction Act. However, the proposal was tanked by right-wing Republicans as retaliation for Manchin’s support for bills like the Inflation Reduction Act and by progressive Democrats who argued it would lead to more pipelines being built. While permitting reform may have led to more pipelines, such as the controver-

sial Mountain Valley Pipeline in West Virginia, it would also have cleared the way for many clean energy projects that are stalled due to excessive permitting laws.

In fact, 42% of projects stalled by NEPA are related to clean energy while only 15% are related to fossil fuels, according to a 2021 R Street policy study. For this reason, Manchin’s permitting reform was a practical proposal which would have done more good than harm.

One consequence of excessive environmental regulation that Manchin’s bill would have curbed is the Ten West Link transmission line: a high-voltage transmission line project from Arizona to California that was stalled pending regulatory approvals for eight years until this January. In some

states, permitting processes go even further. California, for example, has the California Environmental Quality Act, which was based on NEPA. Intended to protect the environment, this law is currently being used by oil companies to block an oil drilling ban in Los Angeles.

Ultimately, it is understandable that there is hesitancy around relaxing regulatory rules because we often think of them as protecting the environment. Still, the data is clear: Such rules do more to stop the type of infrastructure projects required to become an energy independent country and move away from oil than help the environment. As the threat of climate change continues to worsen, it is essential that we pass permitting reform.

GRAPHIC BY ANNABEL NIED

Tufts football alum joins staff as new athletics civic engagement coordinator

Keila McCabe Staff Writer

Originally published Nov. 10, 2023.

In October, Tufts welcomed back star wide receiver and double Jumbo Frank Roche as the new athletics civic engagement coordinator. The Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life funded the position in hopes of facilitating more opportunities for athletes and coaches to engage in civic life on campus and in the community. Roche said he is excited about the role and working with some of the preexisting engagement from teams and athletes.

“I’m definitely excited about the position and the ability to kind of be a connection between athletic teams here at Tufts and community organizations and opportunities beyond campus,” Roche said. “A lot of stuff is already going on with teams, they’re already involved a lot in the community. So it’s just a matter of elevating that and getting the word out there about what our student athletes are doing.”

Senior Associate Director of Athletics Alexis Mastronardi echoed Roche’s sentiments regarding the civically active athletic community.

“We have so many teams and individual student-athletes doing tremendous things in the community already,”

Department, so that we are best meeting the needs of the surrounding community, while also working to match opportunities

football team and graduated in 2019 with a bachelor’s degree in political science, minoring in entrepreneurial leadership.

is tied for second-most of all time and his 989 receiving yards in 2019 is the second highest in school history. Roche went on to teach at nearby high schools post-graduation and is currently coaching football at Everett High School in addition to his position at Tufts. Roche commented on the significance of working at his alma mater.

“My experience as a student is the main reason why I’m back here working,” Roche said. “I think it’s a great fit and great opportunity to be back in a place that’s given me so much. And hopefully I can contribute to this community.”

More specifically, upon starting his role, Roche is excited about an upcoming project to implement a student civic engagement presence on each team.

Mastronardi wrote in an email to the Daily. “Our hope for Frank in this role is that he can organize, coordinate and channel our efforts as an Athletics

with our student-athletes’ interests and passions surrounding civic engagement and service.”

As a Jumbo, Roche was a starting wide receiver for the

During his last year at Tufts, he earned his master’s degree in middle and high school education. His record of 12 receiving touchdowns in a single season

Sailing coach Ken Legler leaves his legacy at Tufts

racing national championships in 1977.

Originally published May 21, 2023.

Tufts is just one of the hallmarks of the journey of sailing coach Kenneth Legler’s historic career, but it will be the one where that coaching career comes to a close. As both a competitive sailor and a coach, he has made a dramatic impact on the sport as a whole.

With this being his 43rd and final year as the Jumbos’ head coach, he has amassed a large number of awards and accolades during his tenure, including an induction into the Intercollegiate Sailing Association Hall of Fame.

Before he came to Tufts, Legler sailed throughout high school and college. He attended the University of Rhode Island primarily due to the financial considerations it offered.

“I ended up kind of choosing a sailing school if you will. I actually got into Tufts, because it was so much easier back then, but the tuition was $5,000 instead of $3,000 for URI. My dad wanted me to make up the difference, but at the time minimum wage was only [$1.25] an hour. So I wouldn’t have been able to sail,” Legler said.

He excelled in college sailing, becoming an All-American and winning the dinghy and team

Leaving the college sailing scene, he was not initially looking to become a sailing coach, as running a sailing center was his top choice. The availability of running such centers was very limited however, and he found himself embarking on a different path.

“I took the first coaching job available after college which was assistant coach at [the U.S. Naval Academy],” Legler said. “And that dovetailed into head coach at [the U.S.] Merchant Marine Academy.”

At the Merchant Marine Academy, Legler made an immediate impact, winning two national championships. He decided to make the switch in 1980 to his college rival: Tufts.

“I knew they were loaded with talent. And [they were] also [in] the Boston area, and there weren’t all that many head coaching jobs available,” Legler said.

He took over for head coach Joe Duplin, who was a world champion sailor in the Star class, named for a type of two-person sailboat.

“The now-retiring sailing master at MIT was a Tufts undergrad at the time, and he actually talked me into applying to Tufts because the former coach was leaving,” Legler said.

“So I said, ‘Sure.’”

The program was in good hands with Legler, as he won

his first national championship at Tufts in that year in the coed dinghy championship. The next year, the team went back to back in the coed dinghy championship, winning again with a different group of sailors.

Legler continued his success with Tufts throughout the ’80s and ’90s, trading national championships with the U.S. Naval Academy. Recruiting had a large role to play in the success of those years.

“We were able to dominate in the ’90s because nobody else was recruiting except us and Navy,” Legler said.

Tufts commanded college sailing in that stretch, taking five women’s dinghy national championships in 10 years, along with winning the coed national championship again in 1997 and ripping off four back-to-back team racing national championships from 1993–96. Tufts set records along the way.

“We won eight women’s nationals — more than any other school,” Legler said.

Now, women’s sailing has become more competitive, as the recruiting scene coupled with the college admissions scene makes it difficult to attract both the best sailors and students from across the country.

“We enjoyed a recruiting edge 30 years ago, because Tufts was just beneath the Ivy Leagues and above all the rest, above Tulane and Michigan and Boston

College and other schools so we had a layer to ourselves,” Legler said. “What happened was Tufts got harder and harder to get into; it became equivalent to the Ivy Leagues. At the same time, the Ivy Leagues started recruiting, and there’s your win style.”

The Ivy Leagues also have the capability to offer scholarships to students, a significant advantage in the recruiting process. As such, Tufts has stayed within the top sailing schools in the country over the past years but hasn’t won any dinghy national championships since 2003. It is still an appealing place to sail, simply because of the acclaimed history that encompasses its coaching staff. Legler has coached 92 All-American sailors throughout his career.

Legler’s recruiting strategy is simple; he looks for pure skill and students who are eager to sail as often as possible.

“If they [train] through winter sailing in their local frostbite fleet, they don’t have to go to the big championship in California just to prove they can sail in a big fleet,” Legler said.

His motto does not change much in the coaching realm once those students reach Tufts, emphasizing having fun along with striving to get the best results.

“They have to be able to keep up with academics, keep up with sailing and also keep up with just enjoying life,” Legler said. “And if

“I’m excited about our civic life ambassador program that we’re hoping to get off the ground and running,” Roche said. “One to two people from each team will become civic life ambassadors, and they’re … someone who we can rely on as a point of contact and someone who is really committed to civic engagement and community service. How I see them is as a leader who their teammates can look to, and who I can look to in terms of communication for events and service opportunities.”

they can pull off all of those three things, they’re doing great.”

As he transitions away from coaching, he will look to finally take some time for himself and enjoy sailing away from competition. Without the pressures of coaching, a lot more time opens up for personal enjoyment of the sport as well as making an impact on the literature side of things. He hopes to publish a book on sailing in the next year.

“It’s going to be called ‘College Sailing and Other Short Course Racing.’ And I don’t know if I’ll finish it in ’24, but I hope to finish it in ’24,” Legler said.

He will sail in his free time away from coaching, still holding onto the passion that has guided the majority of his life.

“I’m still sailing whenever I can,” Legler said. “I sail all winter in Boston Harbor and in the summer. And starting next year, I’ll be sailing in the fall and spring too.”

The Tufts sailing team is ranked just outside of the top 15 in the country in open rankings and No. 14 in the women’s rankings. Both the women’s and coed squads received bids to nationals, which begin on May 23. No matter how the team finishes, however, Legler has a different measure of achievement as he leaves Tufts.

“I like to think that I’m going to leave behind a team that sails for fun and enjoyment by being successful.”

Arielle Weinstein Executive Sports Editor

DAVID KIM / THE TUFTS DAILY

The Tufts women’s basketball team is pictured on Feb. 11.

History made as women’s basketball crowned NESCAC champions

Bharat Singh Sports Editor

Originally published March 2, 2023.

A magical weekend at Cousens Gymnasium saw the Jumbos crowned NESCAC champions for the first time since 2019, adding a fourth title in conference history. An incredible defensive effort powered Tufts past both Middlebury and Trinity College, extending their overall record to 21–6 as they head into the NCAA tournament where they will host the United States Merchant Marine Academy on March 3.

The Jumbos’ historic weekend began with a semifinal clash against Middlebury College. A dominating first quarter set the tone for Tufts’ largest win margin this season, 74–39. Junior guard Callie O’Brien hit the ground running with 7 quick points as the Jumbos took a 21–5 lead into the second quarter. The scoreboard pressure mounted as sophomore guard Sofia Gonzalez drilled back-toback 3-pointers early in the second quarter while junior forward Mallory Folliard contributed from the bench. Folliard put up an impressive 12 points and seven rebounds on the night, joining junior forward Maggie Russell and O’Brien with double-digit points.

Tufts’ 41 points in the second half, including 30 off the bench, marked the game as one of Tufts’ best NESCAC performances in recent years. O’Brien finished with 12 points and four assists while Russell registered 15 points and a gamehigh 14 rebounds. The Jumbos dominated the paint and second-chance points, comfortably outscoring the Panthers 36–22 and 10–6 respectively.

Gonzalez reflected on the win and the team’s mindset going into the semifinal.

“The Middlebury game was just another championship game, as coach calls it,” Gonzalez wrote in an email to the Daily. “And that’s exactly how we played - and the score especially showed that. I expected us to play our best, maybe not to that extent, but I think it was great for us because it was proof that if we play together, the outcome of the game will be successful.”

Unlike the 1-point thriller on Senior Day, the NESCAC final against Trinity was dominated by the No. 1 seed. Right from the tip-off, the Jumbos set the tone with

Oliver Fox Sports and Society

Unfairly psychoanalyzing referees

Originally published February 21, 2023.

Refereeing is literally impossible. That makes no sense, so I’m going to explain it with my favorite overly-complex comedy bit: responding to an imaginary heckler. Action.

Imaginary Heckler: “Ahem, that’s uh … (fixes glasses) NOT what the word literally means. Heheh.”

Ok, listen here, Mr. I-haven’t-evolvedmy-sense-of-humor-since-the-seventhgrade, you were supposed to comment on

two quick layups from Gonzalez and free throws from Russell. With 16 points and 14 rebounds, Russell led the scoring and rebound charts on the night. The pressure mounted as the Jumbos held the Bantams’ offense to just 13 in the opening quarter while continuing to score with important contributions from O’Brien and sophomore guard Annika Decker. Back-to-back 3-pointers from junior guard Hannah Kelly and Gonzalez gave the Jumbos a 19–13 lead going into the second quarter.

Tufts rode their early scoring momentum into the second quarter to put 15 on the board before the break while Trinity struggled offensively, putting up just 8 points. The Jumbos’ 5 points off the bench compared to the visitors’ 3 highlighted the team’s flexibility with scoring options, a regular theme throughout this championship-winning season. The first half built a perfect platform for the Jumbos, having established a 34–21 lead while the Bantams’ offensive anchor Reilly Campbell and forward Samantha Slofkiss picked up a pair of fouls.

Despite Trinity winning the third quarter 12–8, Tufts maintained its lead and went into the fourth quarter leading by 9 on the

the egregious take that refereeing is impossible, but I guess I don’t control what you choose to spend your very limited portion of this word-limited column on.

Here’s a definition you may find useful:

1. Literally, adv.

2. In a completely accurate way

Virtually; used to exaggerate, very nearly At the highest level, the difficulty of refereeing deserves some near-impossible exaggeration, as the outcomes of games matter to most people and — because sports betting is now ubiquitous — huge sums of money may be riding them.

Super Bowl LVII found referees once again called to the forefront of the sports world to defend their conduct before the utterly biased and not-exactly-independent court of public opinion, in which the jury curiously happened to consist of 12 Eagles fans. A holding call on Eagles’ cornerback James Bradberry in the waning moments of the Chiefs’ final drive gave Patrick Mahomes and his team the ability to run out all but a few seconds from the clock,

back of two layups from Russell and Kelly. Trinity shot 28.8% from the field as Tufts was able to shut down offensive outlets and force contested shots.

“We were just focused on not allowing each player to do what they like to do defensively,” Russell wrote in an email to the Daily. “I think our communication on defense has allowed us to play fantastic team defense.”

The Jumbos’ tight defense was matched with an outstanding offensive performance from behind the arc. Three early 3-pointers in the fourth quarter from Gonzalez and Kelly killed off any hopes for a late Trinity comeback as Tufts ended the game with a comfortable 19-point margin. Gonzalez shot 3–5 from deep, her second-highest percentage this year and wrote about her shooting mentality.

“My mindset for open looks is honestly just to shoot them,” Gonzalez wrote. “If I’m open, I know my team and coach trust me to make them. I think I’ve grown a lot this year in developing my games in other areas, especially defensively, and that has propelled me to play well offensively as well. I will continue to expand my game to help lead the team to success.”

kicking a chip-shot field goal that literally won them the game.

Now, Bradberry himself admitted to tugging on receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster’s jersey, which is a textbook hold. Whether the referee should have thrown a flag on such a decisive play is an open question, such as what happened when Ravens’ cornerback Jimmy Smith harassed 49ers’ wide receiver Michael Crabtree on the decisive play of Super Bowl XLVII.

I am not sure if either was holding. I am not sure if either referee should have thrown a flag. This ordeal has only made me sure of one thing: Refereeing is completely absurd.

In the live broadcast, I couldn’t even see Bradberry touch Smith-Schuster. I had literally no angle with which I could decide if there was a penalty or not, yet my first reaction when the flag was thrown was a loud groan of disappointment. I didn’t care what I saw next. My mind had decided that — for the purposes of maximum enjoyment — there

Russell wrote about the evolution of the team and emotions after the final buzzer sounded.

“It felt amazing. I am so proud of this team and how much we’ve grown together this season in order to win a NESCAC,” Russell wrote. “It means everything winning with your best friends. Each year each team brings something different to the table. This year we bring a lot of energy, desire to win, and just a love for playing the game with each other.”

Gonzalez also paid tribute to the Jumbos’ coaching staff, highlighting head coach Jill Pace, now a NESCAC champion both as a player (with Bowdoin College in 2009) and coach.

“Coach Pace, Coach Sam Mancinelli, and Coach Vanese Barnes are … amazing coaches on and off the court,” Gonzalez wrote. “They know how much we care about the sport and each other and support all of us with everything we do. They are able to coach us in ways they know can elicit success from us. In my two years, I’ve learned, especially from Coach Pace, about the importance of sticking to your principles and never wavering them for success.”

could not be a penalty on that play. It was too crucial.

The fact that I even had that thought is telling of the impossibility of refereeing. I consume more football than the Food and Drug Administration has deemed calorically responsible, yet my emotional response to a penalty I just didn’t want to exist was that the official should not have thrown it.

Don’t think I forgot about you, Imaginary Heckler. Just like the word literally and the whole basis of this column, the referee has to operate in margins of weirdness that the rest of us simply are not comfortable with. They are somehow expected to watch the greatest spectacles we have invented and pass off instantaneous, dispassionate and correct verdicts. Literally all of them could have gone either way, and it was up to the referee’s imperfect human nature to decide the difference. Anyone got a better idea?

Oliver Fox is a sophomore studying history. Oliver can be reached at oliver.fox@tufts.edu

The Tufts women’s basketball team is pictured on Feb. 11.