The Tufts Daily - Thursday, December 8, 2022

Host Communities

LOCAL LOCAL

residents will decide how s omerville spends $1 million of its budget next year

by Chloe Courtney Bohl Editor in Chief

For the first time in the city’s history, Somerville will let its residents decide how to spend a portion of the city budget next year. Mayor Katjana Ballantyne has set aside $1 million of the city’s $293-million fiscal year 2023 budget for participatory bud geting, a method designed to fund small-scale community improvement projects while engaging locals — particularly those from historically mar ginalized communities — in the political process.

Participatory budgeting originated over 30 years ago in Porto Alegre, Brazil and has since been replicated in thou sands of cities worldwide — including the neighboring City of Cambridge, which piloted its program in 2016 and is cur

rently completing its ninth cycle of PB.

Every municipality handles the process a bit differently, but it typically begins with the solicitation of project propos als from residents by city offi cials or volunteers. After this outreach and idea-generation period, residents get to vote on their favorite proposals, which the local government is responsible for implementing. Most municipalities encour age all of their residents to vote, regardless of their age or citizenship status. Somerville aims to complete the partici patory process and implement the chosen projects by sum mer 2023.

“My administration is com mitted to lifting up the voices of Somerville residents, and participatory budgeting gives

baker vetoes funds for education campaign about crisis pregnancy centers,

disappoints reproductive rights advocates

by Estelle Anderson Staff Writer

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker vetoed funds for a pub lic education campaign aimed at crisis pregnancy centers, or anti-abortion clinics that pose as authentic medical centers in order to deceive pregnant peo ple into taking their advice, on Nov. 11. The funding had been part of a significant economic development bill passed unan imously by the state House of Representatives and the Senate on Nov. 3, much of which was devoted to supporting access to reproductive care.

“What crisis pregnancy centers typically do is [they] will entice people. They aggressively adver tise on the internet and will claim that they offer a range of services and options [such as] free preg nancy tests or free ultrasounds,” Somerville City Councilor-at-

Large Kristen Strezo, who cham pioned an ordinance passed last March that banned crisis preg nancy centers in Somerville, said. “These centers are typically unstaffed by any medical provid ers and their main goal is to talk people out of … making decisions for themselves.”

According to Councilor Strezo, crisis pregnancy centers attempt to lure in all pregnant people, but particularly target low-in come women, women of color and younger women. Those who enter crisis pregnancy centers might believe they are stepping inside an actual reproductive clinic, only to be met with false medical information.

“Their whole business model is based on deception and inac curate claims … by misrepre senting medical information,” Strezo said.

Paige Duff, a sex health advo cate who is currently working on

a project related to crisis preg nancy centers in her political sci ence class, said crisis pregnancy centers are often incredibly easy for people to access.

“One of the things that is most troubling about crisis pregnan cy centers is even though most of them do not offer abortion services at all, they will include rhetoric about abortion and … choice on their websites.” Duff, a junior, said. “They’re not going to provide abortion services, but they’re showing up anyway.”

Duff was disappointed by the governor’s decision to veto the funding and thought the public education campaign that Baker vetoed would have helped reduce the power that crisis pregnan cy centers hold and made more people aware of their tactics.

“The implication of this deci sion is that it means that it’s up to

In this Host Communities edition of The Tufts Daily, we have chosen to feature content about Medford, Somerville and Boston, the cities that are home to Tufts’ campuses and where Tufts students live, work and play. It is our hope that these stories inspire you to explore and actively engage in your local communities. Visit tuftsdaily.com/local to read more of the Daily’s local coverage.

— The Tufts Daily Managing Board, Fall 2022

Somerville to prioritize equity, outreach in new democratic budgeting effort

both residents, and commu nity based organizations, a new way to engage with the municipal budget process,” Ballantyne wrote in a state ment to the Daily, adding that a small portion of the $1 mil lion earmark will go towards administering the new bud get program, while the vast majority will be allocated by community members.

Since the scale of most par ticipatory budgeting programs — including Somerville’s — is small relative to a city’s total budget, the projects that get funded tend to be one-time capital investments like add ing a water fountain to a pub lic park, resurfacing a pub lic basketball court or buying new tech for a public school district. Done right, PB can improve daily life in a com munity while simultaneously giving its residents a sense of agency in local governance.

“The primary goal is … next summer to see these projects in the community, coming to life,” said Megan Huckenpahler, the city budget analyst helming Somerville’s participatory budgeting effort. “But … a broader goal that’s maybe harder to quantify is increased civic engagement. So [I hope] we can get folks involved with the city, think ing about how they’d like their local government to be allo cating funding — particularly from groups who have been historically disenfranchised. Getting folks who may not already be engaged with their local government to … think of an idea that they get passion ate about, and then they con tinue to volunteer with the city or join a board or commission because of this.”

Participatory budgeting isn’t without its flaws, and many cities’ attempts to execute it have failed. A 2022 report by the nonpartisan think tank the Brennan Center for Justice found that while some cities — most notably New York City — have continued to expand their PB programs each year, others have been forced to shut them down due to insuf ficient funding for staff and outreach, low engagement and voter turnout, and a sense that participants’ time was being wasted designing low-stakes projects.

Somerville city officials are committed to designing a PB process that is equita ble and avoids these pitfalls.

Huckenpahler has convened a group of volunteers to serve on the city’s Participatory Budgeting Working Group, which meets weekly to discuss what participatory budgeting should look like in Somerville and how to maximize commu nity engagement throughout the process.

“There’s a lot of collabo ration with Communications,

the

meet residents where they already gather in the commu nity, build trust, and adapt as we go,” Huckenpahler wrote in an email to the Daily.

Huckenpahler struggled to find a group of volunteers that reflected the diversity of Somerville as a whole and extended the Working Group application deadline, hoping “to be able to make a mean ingful selection.”

“We are still underrepre sented in terms of Somerville’s communities of color,” she wrote. “Within the folks we selected there was a lot of pas sion from this group about getting involved in their community, budgeting [and] democracy.”

At a Nov. 17 meeting, Somerville’s Director of Racial and Social Justice Denise Molina Capers made a presen tation to the Working Group about effective outreach strat egies for disenfranchised com munities. Capers reminded Working Group members that most people in Somerville don’t know what participatory bud geting is or how it is relevant to their lives.

“Your first assumption is that people understand how taxes work,” Capers explained to the committee. “The sec ond assumption is that people care about how taxes work, or even have time to care. The third assumption is that peo ple understand the language behind all of that and the municipality’s [inner] work ings. The [fourth] assumption is that people can answer the question, ‘What’s in it for me?’”

Somerville’s Working Group is drawing inspiration from Cambridge’s eight-plus years of participatory budget ing during the design stage. Jackson Price, budget analyst and participatory budgeting

coordinator for the City of Cambridge, said that in-per son community outreach has been essential for engaging a diverse group of Cambridge residents in the process.

“We’ve conducted target ed door-to-door outreach in predominantly Black, Brown, immigrant, and low-income communities,” Price wrote in an email to the Daily. “We have worked with non-profits, neigh borhood associations, and part ners embedded in local com munities to promote PB across different neighborhoods.”

Price added that Cambridge’s Budget Department trans lates informational resources about participatory budgeting into Spanish, Haitian Creole, Bengali, Amharic, Chinese, Arabic, Portuguese and more languages that are commonly spoken in the area in an effort to include as many residents as possible.

Price also shared that between 7,200 and 7,600 peo ple have voted in each of Cambridge’s previous three participatory budgeting cycles — about 6% of the city’s 2021 population of 117,000.

Mayor Ballantyne attend ed the Somerville Working Group’s Dec. 1 meeting to hear from its members about how they became interested in par ticipatory budgeting.

“My wife and I moved here 10 years ago … and now we’ve been here 10 years and we have kids,” Klaus Schultz, one of the Working Group volun teers, said. “I’ve been wanting to participate in local govern ment and this, if I’m honest, this committee provided an opportunity that I thought would actually work for me.”

“The budgeting part isn’t as important to me as the par ticipation part,” Rachel Mead, another volunteer, said. “In large part because I don’t feel that $1 million is — I don’t want to say meaningful, I

think it is in many ways and it can be to many people — but it’s not a make-or-break part of our city’s budget. But I think if people get a taste for par ticipating in city government, then this will maybe inspire them to be a part of inclusive leadership.”

Another volunteer, Bob Fischer, spoke to the Daily about why he joined the Working Group. Fischer, who is 64 years old, lived in Somerville and attended church here as a child, then moved back eight years ago. He sees the participatory bud geting initiative as a means of fostering dialogue and mutual care between members of his community.

“There’s a physicist, long dead, called David Bohm who came up with this idea of dia logue. It’s how, instead of me here and you over there, how do we think together? How do we create thinking space between us so that we’re think ing together about something, and we’re willing to let go of our assumptions?” Fischer explained. “And so that’s part of what I’m hoping for is that there’s this shift in focus away from separateness and more togetherness — and the only way that that ever happens is through some kind of public discourse.”

Fischer plans to continue volunteering on this project beyond the completion of the design phase, but he said he won’t be satisfied unless he sees it through to completion.

“What I realized is I know the people in my building. I know the people up and down the street. … But for the most part, I have zero idea of the community that I’m really in,” Fischer admitted. “And so I’m both excited and anxious about some of the outreach stuff because I literally don’t know who my peers are inside of the city.”

Office of Immigrant Affairs, and Racial & Social Justice on how to best conduct outreach and

KIANA VALLO / THE TUFTS DAILY

Davis Square is pictured on Nov. 3, 2021.

Tufts, local leaders respond to Baker’s veto of crisis pregnancy center awareness campaign

people, like sex health educators, on a very small level … [to try] to break down crisis pregnancy cen ters for people because the state hasn’t funded an educational cam paign that could do so much of that work,” Duff said. “Am I happy to do it? 100% … but would it be more effective if it was happen ing at a standardized state level [instead of] me talking to someone in my college house? Of course.”

Paige Shayne, president of the Tufts Students for National Abortion Rights Action League, echoed this sentiment.

“If there was more education about [the centers], that would hold these pregnancy crisis cen ters accountable for giving correct

LOCAL

information. … Since people don’t really know that what [the cen ters] are giving is incorrect, there’s nothing holding them accountable or making them give the correct information,” Shayne said. “That, in combination with the fact that [these centers] don’t legally need to give correct information, is a super dangerous mixture, and women are going to get wrong information and be shamed into not having abortions, even if that’s the right thing for their own bodies.”

While Baker’s decision comes as a disappointment to many reproductive rights advocates, Councilor Strezo emphasized that there is still reason to have hope.

“I am encouraged by the incoming governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and all

of the great work that they are all going to do for choice, for body autonomy, for respecting a right to choose [and] for abortion rights,” Strezo said. “There are many, many elected officials through out the Commonwealth who are interested in protecting their con stituents’ access to abortion and reproductive care, because all this is, is health. It’s all healthcare.”

On the Tufts campus, student groups like NARAL are preparing to fight back and compensate for the lack of an education campaign around crisis pregnancy centers. NARAL is planning to send out a newsletter about the decision in the coming weeks to ensure that Tufts students are well informed.

“Even though [there’s] not going to be an official education

campaign about it, reproductive centers and clubs on campus can do a good job of spreading that

information and making sure people know about [crisis preg nancy centers],” Shayne said.

s omerville named a leading global city for climate action

by Daniel Vos Assistant News Editor

Somerville has made the 2022 Carbon Disclosure Project’s cities A-List, an award for leadership on environmen tal action and transparency. Only 12% of the 1,002 cities evaluated worldwide received

this designation based on commitment to long-term cli mate action plans, fossil fuel emission reduction targets and local climate risk assessments.

Compared to non-A-List cit ies, A-list cities like Somerville are taking about three times as many mitigation and adapta tion measures and have made

long-term or mid-term targets to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, according to the CDP.

Somerville Mayor Katjana Ballantyne, who recently sup ported a measure to create a net-zero fossil fuel emissions policy for new construction and renovations in the city, commended the work of the city’s Office of Sustainability in a statement made to the Daily.

“I’m so thrilled that the hard work of our sustainabil ity office has been recognized by CDP,” Ballantyne wrote in a statement to the Daily. “Somerville is proud to be a leader in adopting innovative and forward looking policies that help fight climate change, and we will continue our work to build towards a more sus tainable future.”

Somerville Ward 3 City Councilor Ben Ewen-Campen noted that what sets Somerville

apart from other cities is a dedication to climate aware ness in many of its policies.

“Basically every single thing we do has a climate angle,” Ewen-Campen said. “Housing, major climate angle, public transit, major climate angle, bike lanes, trees, new school buildings, every single thing you think about you have to be thinking about the energy usage and that is something that I think Somerville does and tries to do.”

To cut down on fossil fuel dependence, Somerville has to retrofit buildings to be electric.

According to Ewen-Campen, that requires ramping up pro grams for homeowners and renters to make buildings more energy efficient.

“We know from many years of studying our carbon accounting in Somerville that building, heating and cooling

is by far the biggest contrib utor that we have any con trol over,” Ewen-Campen said. “And last year, the state passed this landmark climate legis lation that set up a pilot pro gram for municipalities to ban fossil fuel infrastructure in new construction.”

Many of Somerville’s ambi tious sustainable energy pro grams have been stunted at the state-wide level. This has made it difficult for the city to meet many of the goals on its climate action agenda.

“We’ve had a Republican governor for eight years who has not been good on these issues and has often sided with the gas companies and large corporations,” he said. “I’m hopeful that we will have, under Maura Healey, someone who is much more aggressive.”

engineering professors present research on new sociotechnical component of intro course

UNIVERSITY by Hannah Cox Contributing Writer

Desen Özkan and Chelsea Andrews of Tufts’ Center for Engineering Education and Outreach hosted a discussion on Dec. 2 presenting findings from their ongoing research project “Improving Students’ Sociotechnical Literacy in Engineering.” Özkan is a post doctoral researcher at the CEEO and the Institute for Research on Learning and Instruction, and Andrews is a research assistant professor.

The project’s goals were to make social, economic and political decisions in engi neering visible for students as they learn technical skills and to help students “identify assumptions that go into [engi neering] work … and [critique] decisions … through a justice lens,” according to Andrews.

Özkan received a Ph.D. in engineering education from Virginia Tech and, in addition to her research on interdis ciplinary learning, teaches courses at Tufts’ School of Engineering and School of Arts and Sciences. Andrews has a Ph.D. in engineering educa tion from Tufts and studies how children engage with engineering design.

The researchers discussed the history of engineering education, pointing to two common teaching narratives of technological determinism and technological neutrality — the former narrative pos its that technology is a domi nant force that shapes socie tal development, for better or worse, while the latter argues that technology is not inher ently good or bad, but the way humans use it can be. In their project, Özkan and Andrews

also drew on ideas from W.E.B. DuBois, identifying how the issue of split identity mani fests in engineering and point ing out that it is necessary to account for diverse identities in all areas of engineering.

For the first year of their research project, Özkan and Andrews added “sociotechnical content” to the curriculum of two of the five sections of ES2: Introduction to Computing in Engineering, a class that pre viously had a reputation as a “purely technical” first-year computing course, according to Andrews. The new content includes readings and discus sions meant to anchor students’ work in real-world problems. Students in the course were asked to analyze and discuss real-world data, and complete a final project focused on a societal and computing theme, where they were encouraged to

reflect on equity and impact in engineering. They also added equity learning assistants — all of whom are students who have fulfilled the first-year engineering requirements — to the course to help facilitate discussions about the societal impacts of engineering.

In addition to Özkan and Andrews’ work designing the modified ES2 course, Associate Dean of Student Diversity, Inclusion, and Success Ellise LaMotte provided institutional support for the project, and research assistant professors Ethan Danahy and Jennifer Cross teach sections of the course and helped design the curriculum alongside assistant professor Deborah Sunter.

Andrews described the design of the ongoing research study.

“We’re using a qualitative case study approach because we want to know more than

just correlation, so we’re look ing at, ‘How and why does this impact students and what are they thinking during the class?’ Andrews said. “‘How are they experiencing this with all of their identities — all of those intersectional identi ties in particular?’ … We want to know the process through which all of these things are affecting each other.”

At the end of the course, the equity learning assistants interviewed the first-year stu dents about their experiences in ES2. Based on the respons es, many students felt that contextualizing their work with readings and discussions about equity and real-world impact helped them to zoom out and remember the bigger picture when focusing on min ute details in their coding.

LAUREN ALIOTTA / THE TUFTS DAILY

A residential street in Somerville is pictured on Dec. 6.

KATRINA AQUILINO / THE TUFTS DAILY

The Massachusetts State House is pictured on Feb. 11.

FeaT ures

half a century since the lawsuit that shook the city: reexamining b oston school desegregation

by Sam Berman and David Van Riper Contributing Writers

“Boston made me feel that I didn’t have a chance, and that’s what racism does to you,” Beverly Crockett-Taylor said as a Black woman who grew up in the Dorchester neighborhood in Boston amid the tumultuous events preceding and during the desegregation of the Boston public school system that began in 1974.

Linda Norton, a white woman who concurrently grew up in the white, working-class part of Dorchester about a mile away from Crockett-Taylor, reflected that at the time “any Black person coming into our neighborhood would be in ter rible danger.”

During the 1960s and 1970s, Boston was a de facto racially seg regated city, as was reflected in the demographics of the city’s public school system, according to Steve Cohen, senior lecturer in Tufts’ Department of Education.

“So [to] make a long story short, from ’65 to ’72, the number of racial ly imbalanced schools in Boston went up. Because they didn’t do anything about it. In fact, they did less than nothing about it,” Cohen said. “By 1972, there were over 60 racially imbalanced schools just in Boston.”

To combat such injustice, civil rights lawyers with the NAACP filed a class-action lawsuit in 1972, known as Morgan v. Hennigan, against the Boston School Committee, in which Beverly Crockett-Taylor and her family members were listed as plaintiffs. The lawsuit resulted in Judge Wendell Garrity’s landmark 1974 decision to order the integra tion of Boston public schools, which precipitated bitter racial conflict that would become known nation ally as “Boston’s busing crisis.”

With this context in mind, Cohen elaborated on the racial tension that had existed in Boston, even prior to the 1974 decision.

“It’s not as if the judge made the decision in ’74, and then suddenly, there was racial animus. Many of the white families sort of saw it that way because they never thought about what Black kids were going through in those schools,” Cohen said. “Boston was also a very turf bound, neighborhood city. So kids from Southie, [for example], didn’t go to Charlestown. … They stayed where they were, for the most part.”

With the beginning of desegre gation busing and the 1974 school year came an onslaught of height ened retaliatory violence from the white, primarily working-class demographic of Boston. Images of the violence were broadcast nationally, Cohen added, which sensationalized the issue, without contributing much to the situation on the ground.

“Because we were trying to over throw a system that has been intact for over 100 years of unfairness based on race. so you don’t change

things overnight,” Cohen said. “And I think what media often did by look ing at particular spokesmen [was] to inflame situations by getting people who make good TV. … But it [was] often not very helpful to understand the issues, at least in the complexity they deserve. I mean, there’s a rea son that virtually all urban school districts have troubles.”

Out of the coverage came the prevailing title, “busing crisis,” which caught the nation’s attention, Norton explained.

“[At the time] people my age who saw the popular media, there were only three channels … so everybody saw the same stuff. People my age and older … if you say ‘Boston busing,’ the images are right there [in their mind],” Norton said.

But what was the education al impact of desegregation on the Bostonian students, particularly on Black students? On the one hand, Black students were given the oppor tunity to attend more well-funded schools than they had previously. Some of those educational bene fits, however, were undercut by the ever-present conflicts.

Crockett-Taylor shared her fami ly’s difficult experiences.

“I think for my siblings, it was incredibly painful, because they were older, and they had gone through the violence in the [bus] riding. And I have a brother who just left town as soon as he grad uated. He wanted out of Boston and has never returned to live there,” Crockett-Taylor said. “I did the same. … My scars were so deep and the wounds still felt fresh after high school, and I left and moved to Washington D.C. and never returned.”

On top of the violence many Black students experienced, Cohen cited many problems with the city’s public school system. He explained that the poor quality of even the formerly majority-white schools limited the positive effects of integration on the ground.

“At the end of the bus line … whether it was a school that was formally all Black, or a school that was formerly all white, they mostly were not good schools,” Cohen said.

The lack of a substantive, con certed effort by municipal lead ers to make the desegregation effective along with the poor quality of Boston’s public schools led to an interrelated array of educational problems and racial tension.

Despite the integration’s challenges and issues, CrockettTaylor expressed that for her, the desegregation did have significant benefits in her life. She went to an integrated mag net high school in Dorchester called Madison Park, which was announced in 1966, but Crockett-Taylor believes would never have existed if not for the tide of desegregation that took root during the 1960s.

Crockett-Taylor recounted the benefits of Boston’s public school desegregation efforts, despite its limitations.

“I [had] never had a conver sation with a white person until high school. I had interactions such as ‘I’d like to buy that item, could I see it please?’ in a store. But that was the extent of my interaction with the white com munity,” she said. “So when I got to high school at Madison Park, my first conversation was with a young, [white] man, and he was in my media class, and … it opened [up] a lot of doors just to be able to pass that threshold of having a conversation to having a friendship to staying connected.”

In addition, Crockett-Taylor shared an anecdote to illustrate other social benefits of the deseg regation that she perceived in Boston.

“About four years after I left Boston … I did return, and I was walking down the street with a niece. And I saw a Black man holding hands with a white woman on the Commons, and I got really afraid. I said to my niece, ‘Oh my God, that’s danger ous, he shouldn’t hold her hand.’ … I was fearful of violence. And my niece said to me, ‘It’s okay Beverly, things are different now. That’s okay now,’” Crockett-Taylor said. “The city grew, it healed, it changed, because one aspect of the city changed, and that was the schools and it started to have a reverberating effect in other insti tutions and other social norms. … Boston’s not perfect but things [have] changed.”

As for making a decisive judg ment on the success of the inte gration, though, Cohen noted that current evidence is insuffi cient in his view.

“[It is] too early to tell. … There hasn’t been desegregation. I mean, let’s put it that way,” Cohen said. “Desegregation is a dream that we have not tested yet.”

As Cohen suggested, while it is easy to think of segregation in

Boston as a thing of the past, the city remains racially divided to this day, as one of the most racial ly segregated cities in the nation, according to a report by the Othering and Belonging Institute at University of California, Berkeley. There is still a long way to go to achieve racial equity in Boston’s educational system, Cohen explained.

In light of the 1974 decision, Natasha Warikoo, professor of sociology at Tufts, also added that busing was not a complete solu tion in her view.

“I think maybe at the time of busing … we had this idea that if we just do this, then everything will be great, without also recog nizing what gets lost when kids of color move from predominant ly minority spaces to integrated spaces in which they’re no longer part of the majority,” Warikoo said.

On such a view, busing was merely one component of a multitude of requisites for the quality education of Black and all Bostonian students. Today, we need a more well-rounded approach, Warikoo explained, emphasizing a wide range of fac tors that contribute to a strong academic environment for all.

“We need to think about … educational opportunity more holistically … educational oppor tunities, health care, all of these things shape children’s access to quality and ability to make use of quality education,” Warikoo said.

Echoing Warikoo’s sentiment, Cohen called for a more nuanced and comprehensive approach to the issue, going forward.

“I think it’s our failure as society to recognize complexi ty,” Cohen said. “When they say the ‘busing,’ it’s almost always negative, as if it was [about] the bus. … There were Black kids in Boston … who carried signs saying, ‘It’s not the bus, it’s us.’ The bus became a symbol that came out of shorthand, but it wasn’t about how the kids got to school.”

To challenge the narra tive around the public school desegregation efforts, Cohen elaborated on what, in his view, can and should be done in the United States.

“We’ve never done a really good job with poor kids, ever. … And it’s not going to be, I suspect, a single curriculum. … It is not going to be a par ticular pedagogy. You need teachers, parents, kids, admin istrators working together to make schools places that real ly work,” Cohen said. “What’s astounding to me is how many U.S. schools work so well. But they’re almost always in places with resources. That should tell us something.”

Crockett-Taylor emphasized that investment in schools, grounded in principles of equity and fairness, can be life-chang ing for many students.

“When people invest in you, you feel worthy of the investment. When your sur roundings are not up to par, and you’re in a place where everything’s broken and rag gedy and underfunded, you feel that, and you begin to see yourself that way. Investing in people makes them feel that they are worthy,” she said.

“The impact of changing these negative racial institutions is [that] you can start to chip away and make a real differ ence in a person’s life by rec ognizing that they deserve to get everything they’re getting.”

Now, half a century since the NAACP filed the lawsuit that would forever change Boston, there is much to take away from the complex, layered story of the city’s school integration. Within that intricacy, the story fosters an understanding that so many students like the young Crockett-Taylor were not concurrently “invested in” across the southern and north ern United States, and still are not today.

COURTESY BEVERLY CROCKETT-TAYLOR

Beverly Crockett-Taylor’s 1976 integrated junior high school class is pictured.

b

oston highways: a bridge or a divide?

by Jillian Collins Features Editor

In 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the interstate highway system into existence — forever changing the coun try’s built environment and social infrastructure. Wealthy white families could now live in sub urbs and commute to cities. While highways bridged suburbs and cities, they built straight through urban communities of color.

Garrett Dash Nelson, presi dent and head curator at the Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library, explained the role highways played in forming this racial divide.

“The introduction of high ways into U.S cities allowed white affluent communities to flee the historic industrial cen ters of cities, leaving behind oftentimes a Black and Brown population stuck in challenging circumstances,” Nelson said.

Air pollution, congested auto mobile traffic and unattractive aesthetics can make highways unpleasant to live near. Nelson explained that these negative externalities are often forced upon marginalized neighbor hoods through urban planning.

“The cities that felt that they needed to accommodate themselves to highways did so oftentimes by placing highways in some of the most vulnera ble parts of town,” Nelson said. “Those were the areas where it was relatively cheap to seize land … that had pretty little political power [and] pretty little ability to say no to the people in power.”

According to the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, less than 30% of white residents in the Greater Boston region live in areas with the top 20% of air pollution intensity. At the same time, these severely polluted areas are home to 45% of Black and Asian residents and over

50% of Latino residents. These inequitable outcomes were caused by many decision-mak ers in U.S politics.

“It was made by govern ments, it was made by indus tries [and] it was made to some extent by ordinary people to really reorganize the nation’s geography along automobile travel,” Nelson said.

As a city, Boston has been both a catalyst and an inhibitor in the development of highways.

Massachusetts Turnpike (I-90) and Interstate 93 (I-93) run directly through the city. There is a deep history of envi ronmental justice activism against highway expansion proj ects in order to prevent future destructive impacts on commu nities of color.

“Boston actually historically has been a leader in this, both the famous story of the cam paign against the Southwest Corridor [and] the Southwest Expressway, which [were] plan ning to run essentially through Roxbury, Jamaica Plain and eventually Cambridge, which was stopped by the early 1970s,” Nelson said.

Chinatown is in an area of Boston that has been extreme ly affected by highway develop ment; it is also a majority Asian and lower-income popula tion. Penn Loh, a senior lectur er in the Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts and previous executive director at Alternatives for Community & Environment, discussed the grassroots organi zation in Chinatown that occurred in response to the development of the Central Artery, a section of highway in downtown Boston.

“Chinatown itself is a neigh borhood that had been basically cut in half by the Mass Pike and I-93. So both those highways built in the ’50s and ’60s took away land from Chinatown,” Loh said.

The City of Boston began planning in the 1980s for the Central Artery or “The Big Dig” — a three-decades-long proj ect that totaled to be the most expensive public works project ever completed in the United States. The project involved undergrounding Interstate 93 in tunnels through downtown Boston. According to Loh, Chinatown had to continually fight for its urban space during this project.

“When the Big Dig was still being built, one of the planned proposals was to build an offramp from the Big Dig into Chinatown,” Loh said. “The rea son for that was the hotels in the convention center in the Back Bay wanted a way for people to get off the Central Artery and make it over to their area.”

Chinatown was already suf fering from harsh environmen tal and traffic conditions from other major roadways to the point where it was a safety con cern. The proposed ramp into the Chinatown neighborhood would have exacerbated its existing issues and cause more displacement of communities of color. In protest of the ramp, a coalition was formed.

“The groups in Chinatown … had already identified pedes trian safety as one of the big issues,” Loh said. “It’s a pub lic health issue, it’s an envi ronmental [issue], and a built environment issue. So they fought back, and [Alternatives for Community & Environment] joined that coalition.”

Over the next two years, this coalition mobilized and orga nized people to disrupt the development of the ramp into Chinatown. Many different institutions came together — immigration organizations, the church, the Chinese Historical Society and the Tisch College Community Research Center, Loh explained.

At Tufts, former Professor Doug Brugge organized students in a research project in 2002 to capture the reality of pedestrian safety in Chinatown. Brugge and students looked at accident data from the Boston Police Department to deter mine the most dangerous intersec tions in the area. Then they went to those streets with video cameras and filmed them at all times of the day. When analyzing the footage, they discovered that there were many “close calls” of automobile and pedestrian collisions.

“Chinatown was one [where] traffic was bad all day long and all night, and that there were dangerous situations happening virtually 24/7,” Loh said.

Alternatives for Community & Environment also hired a transpor tation engineer to look into alterna tive routes for the ramp that would allow those hotels in Back Bay to have access to the new highway.

“[The transportation engi neer] spent hours and hours pouring through all these plans [and] came back to the coalition and said, ’You know what, I think there’s another way for them to do what they want to do without going through Chinatown,’” Loh said. “He presented that to the folks at the Central Artery, and their engineering people said, ’Maybe this could work.’”

At the end of the two years, Boston decision-makers did not follow through with the construc tion of the ramp into Chinatown.

“That, to me, was a really nice example of how community organizing and coalition-build ing paired up with this kind of technical assistance that really made a difference,” Loh said.

Loh explained the duality of the Big Dig in that it expanded urban green space through the Rose Kennedy Greenway — Boston’s contemporary linear park — but did so at such a high cost to the public. It leaves society to ques tion how public money could have been directed differently.

“Some of the biggest and most expensive developments are right along that Greenway now. They’re the ones that reaped a lot of windfall benefits from that public project,” Loh said. “Ultimately, at the end of the day, there were 15 billion dollars in public money spent on several miles of underground highway.”

The construction of highways has fueled society’s dependence on automobile transportation. In order to decrease the expan sion of highways, other trans portation solutions need to be discussed. Nelson explained that it is critical that equity plays a role in planning future travel.

“We’re going to have to think about how to prioritize investments in alternative forms of transpor tation and prioritize those invest ments in a way that really puts the most exposed communities first,” Nelson said. “I think a good exam ple of what not to do is … the cur rent effort around moving people to electric cars [because it] benefits the most privileged first. Almost all of Massachusetts subsidies for electric vehicles have gone to peo ple living in wealthy suburbs.”

When thinking about alternate forms of transportation, senior environmental engineering stu dent Emika Brown brought up the need for walkability, bikeability and public transportation in Boston. She argued that solutions need to be catered to the unique needs of specific areas of Boston.

“It allows people to have access to important services and reduces this area’s overall carbon footprint,” Brown said.

“Brickbottom [has] really hor rible bikeability and walkability, but it’s still in Somerville … [yet] Davis [Square] on the Somerville Community Path has really good walkability,” Brown said. “I’ve learned that it is important to pri oritize solutions that are geared toward specific communities in this area.”

Brown also explained that the divide of highways can be very hindering to an area’s walkabili ty which feeds into a good public transportation system.

“It’s a more physical barri er than I think people realize … [It becomes] challenging [just] to cross,” Brown said. “Especially if your community relies on public transportation more than others. That’s really horrible because walk ing and biking are inherent to pub lic transportation. You can’t have it without that, so if you’re creat ing a huge divide it almost doesn’t matter if you do have good public transportation.”

Equitable investment in public transportation is one solution to dealing with the harms of highway expansion in Boston, Brown sum marized.

Reflecting on the history of highway expansion in Boston, it becomes clear that there needs to be intersectional solutions.

“There’s no way we can think about the environment or envi ronmental questions without also dealing with people and the issues of power, politics, justice and injustice which are intimately connected to how people create their societies,” Nelson said.

A Boston highway intersection is pictured.

Tufts and local community members react to impending davis s quare renovation project

by Maya Katz Assistant Features Editor

Due to its close proxim ity to campus, Davis Square has been a place for many Tufts students to spend time and enjoy a variety of local businesses in the area. But according to recent local news reports, Scape Development plans to construct a four-sto ry lab building that would displace beloved businesses including When Pigs Fly bak ery, McKinnon’s Meat Market, Sligo Pub, Kung Fu Tea, Martsa on Elm Tibetan Cuisine and Dragon Pizza. On Sept. 22, the City of Somerville’s Planning Board officially approved the renovation plan.

Justin Hollander, professor of urban and environmental policy and planning, provided the context behind the devel oping renovation project in Davis Square. He explained that different interest groups and the city government shape and influence real estate proj ects such as the one by Scape Development.

“There are not only individ uals but organizations, pension funds, that are looking to grow their money, and they look at Davis Square,” Hollander said. “The city right now looks at that block and the kind of cash revenue they are generating … so the city sees this as an opportunity to increase their tax base [through the renova tion project].”

Hollander added that real estate projects, such as the Scape Development plan, can increase the value of local properties, which the city of Somerville sees as financially beneficial.

“It’s hard for them to raise taxes, and so if you can increase the value of properties [through this new lab building], then you can bring in more revenue without actually passing a bill that says everyone has to pay more taxes,” Hollander said.

Hollander cited that Harvard Square had changed from when he was in college, with the added presence of larger com panies. Davis Square, he noted, appears to be undergoing a similar transition in his view.

“When I went to college, the center of Harvard Square was really cool, and there were all these interesting shops and stores at that core center. Now, there’s a bank on every cor ner of the center of Harvard Square,” Hollander said. “It’s much more of a place where big companies are looking to make investments to try to get solid returns, and so that’s what Davis Square has become.”

While the renovations could change the culture that many Tufts students value in Davis Square, Hollander cited that there are many other commer cial centers in the area such as Teele Square and Ball Square.

“I would not shed too many tears,” Hollander said. “I think, it’s, of course, hard for Tufts students that maybe came here because Davis Square is this cool, hip place, but now with the Green line that will eventu ally come … there are all kinds of other places in this region that are now easily accessible to Tufts students that have the same kinds of independently owned businesses.”

That said, Hollander says that the displacement of these businesses at Davis Square is likely to be permanent in light of nationwide economic trends.

“It’s going to be hard for independent businesses to come back,” Hollander said. “The way that lending works is [that big national corpora tions] can get lower rates on their loans if they bring in national chains.”

With this renovation project, Hollander noted that home owners and renters will likely be affected differently by this project as well. Homeowners tend to fare well because these projects often improve the real estate market. However, renters are likely to suffer from the ris ing prices and might be forced to move, Hollander added.

“For renters, it’s a different story,” Hollander said. “Rents are really high now, and they’re not likely to go down anytime soon, so all of this continued investment — national and international capital — into the neighborhood is making it much harder for renters to be able to stay there.”

Somerville residents Andrea and Carl Axelrod live just a block from Davis Square. They have lived in Somerville for about five years and have enjoyed living in the area.

“We had rented in Cambridge for eight years, and I loved it there. I had never even come out to Somerville and Davis Square,” Andrea Axelrod said. “When we found this place, it was like a whole new world so I have really embraced it and really have enjoyed it, and it’s unique and I would like to have it maintain its uniqueness.”

Carl Axelrod also sees Davis Square as being special because it is easily accessible and has a wide variety of local businesses.

“I think the variety of restau rants … the number of dif ferent places to grab a cup of coffee,” Carl Axelrod said. “It’s a neighborhood that is easily walkable.”

Carl Axelrod said he will be disappointed to lose the local businesses with the Scape Development project, and he is concerned about what the years of construction will look like for the businesses being displaced.

“My main concern is with the retail establishments — that even if there’s an effort to bring them back, what’s going to happen in the year or two years of construction?” Carl Axelrod said. “They’ve got to exist in some fashion, they just can’t go out of business for what will be, I’m sure, at least a year and a half to two years. So, I assume Davis Square is going to lose [certain] businesses.”

The Axelrods shared that they appreciate the personal feel of the local businesses in Davis Square and believe they con tribute deeply to what makes the area a special place. They will particularly miss the pizza at Dragon Pizza and the baked goods from When Pigs Fly.

“There’s just something very personal, if you can go into

stores and sort of see the peo ple that own a place,” Andrea Axelrod said. “My concern is that the uniqueness begins to become not so unique. I mean look at what’s happened in Harvard Square.”

Tufts senior Katya Silverman-Stoloff has been working at Dragon Pizza since July and has enjoyed work ing at the restaurant. She has found that working there helps remind her of the presence of the surrounding Somerville community.

“I really like the energy, it’s very casual [and] infor mal and I like my coworkers,” Silverman-Stoloff said. “It’s mostly local people … who just live in the area, and I like being connected to the Somerville community outside of just existing in this Tufts bubble.”

Silverman-Stoloff shared that she has discussed the renovation project with her boss at Dragon Pizza. Her understanding has been that the impacted businesses have known about the future dis placement for a few years, but they had not known exactly when it would happen.

“It’s all fairly vague,” she said. “I think my boss doesn’t know that much so it’s hard for him to relay information to us.”

Since there has not been real movement with the proj ect yet, Dragon Pizza has been continuing with business as usual, although they will have to find a new location at some point. Furthermore, despite the future displacement, Silverman-Stoloff said that Dragon Pizza currently plans on expanding into the space next door. The expansion would allow for more seating

space for restaurant diners, provide a pick-up space for food delivery apps and func tion as an event rental space.

“I think [my boss is] eager to expand the business, and so he’s moving forward regardless of the renovation,” SilvermanStoloff said.

Overall, Silverman-Stoloff is concerned that the renovation project will impact the small town feel of Davis Square in the future.

“I do feel sad because it reminds me of something that’s happening in my own town, which is they’re building these big apartment buildings right in the center of these small towns,” Silverman-Stoloff said. “I feel like it loses this feel of small communities.”

Even as the presence of a large lab building could change the feel of Davis Square, Silverman-Stoloff thinks that Tufts students can help preserve the essence of Davis Square and its spirit.

“I think part of what makes Davis Square special is its energy and the existence of young people there and the desire for people to want to keep it very lively and very happening,” she said.

Silverman-Stoloff sees Davis Square as unique because it has the feel of both a bustling center and a small town, and she hopes that this spirit will be preserved in the future.

“[Davis Square] feels very lively and energetic, but at the same time kind of feels like a small town,” Silverman-Stoloff said. “I feel like few towns that I have been to have both of these qualities of feeling like there’s a lot happening, but also it feels very local and small [and] com munity-focused.”

ELIN SHIH / THE TUFTS DAILY

Stores located along Elm Street in Davis Square are pictured on Nov. 12.

Life In sTem: Kyrielle Lord on science and social justice

by Ian Lau Science Editor

The Daily sat down with environmental engineering major Kyrielle Lord, a junior, for a conversation about sci ence, social justice and Lord’s Tisch Summer Fellowship with the Mystic River Watershed Association.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Tufts Daily: What is the Tisch Summer Fellowship?

Kyrielle Lord: Tisch Summer Fellows is through Tisch College. There are a few dif ferent parts of it. You have an internship with a community organization in the area and are also part of a reflection group with other Tufts stu dents doing fellowships, which is really nice to talk about. It is a really nice way to engage in work that is meaningful to you, but also have the time to sit and reflect on it. I feel like something that happens in school a lot, or even just in general, is that it’s hard to take the time to think about what you’re learning and really process everything that’s hap pening. So I really appreciated that I could kind of do both. I also got really lucky with my reflection group because everybody was very sweet and excited about their work. It’s easy to get siloed working on your own projects, so just hearing about what other peo ple are doing and what other work looks like is also particu larly interesting.

TD: How does the fellow ship matching process work? What is the format of the fel lowship?

KL: Tisch College has a list of organizations that [have] pretty long standing relation ships [with Tufts]. The Mystic River Watershed Association (MyRWA), where I was work ing, has had Tisch Summer Fellows for a few years. I was trying to find organizations that involved some kind of sci ence because I want to figure out how to practice science and social justice work in tan dem. Tisch does a lot to match you with what you’re inter ested in, and a lot of behind the scenes work to make sure everybody is in a place that suits what they want to get out of a program, and what the organization is looking for.

TD: What inspired you to pursue environmental engi neering as a major?

KL: Both of my parents are engineers, so I’m lucky that it’s something I’ve been raised to think about. My mom espe cially has always been really supportive of me in any kind of STEM pursuit, which I real ly appreciate. Environmental engineering is the most holis

tic of the engineering fields. Some of our classes will ask questions that we don’t nec essarily have the answer to, just because they are such big questions. So I really appreci ate that we’re learning about science, but we’re also learning how that directly impacts peo ple. It’s hard to understand the processes that are affecting the environment without under standing how that impacts people. Learning more about who is being impacted more, and starting to understand the scope of it is really powerful for me. It’s hard to learn about all of the things that are going wrong in the world all the time, but it is very nice to get a better understanding of what’s going on. And hopefully, there will be a way to understand these problems and to figure out better solutions than the ones we have right now.

TD: What kind of work did you do at MyRWA?

KL: As an Environmental Science and Stewardship Fellow at MyRWA, I was in a group of four other students. We did a lot of group work, which is amazing because everybody had very different backgrounds and brought a lot of different perspectives. We would work with water shed scientists and also in the office under the outreach coordinator. On Mondays and Tuesdays, we would do water sampling and test for cyano bacteria, a type of blue-green algae. We were trying to test in the watershed because in high concentrations, a specific strain of [cyanobacteria] can be toxic. In water that peo ple might be swimming in or that might be used for drink ing water, it’s really important to make sure that you know if there’s something toxic there.

GRAPHIC BY FLORA MENG

We would collect samples in a canoe and then come back to the lab to do some sampling that afternoon and the next day, too.

I’ve gained a better appreci ation for how much work goes into planning labs, because [the lab] has already given us so much information and worked through so many errors. They know the best way to sam ple and have a better sense than us. It took the students a while to figure out how to best sample, but I thought that the process was really interesting. We were all working together to figure out, “Okay, what’s the best way to do this?” which is cool because you don’t get that kind of agency as a student. A big point about doing science is that it is useful, not just interesting, and so the pro cedure takes a little while to figure out. We’d always con sider, is this something that is actually useful to people? Is this something we should actually do? Or should we try to figure out a better way to do something that’s more helpful?

And then we helped out around the office and got to learn a lot about the other work that people were doing. They’ve recently been trying to engage with more vulner able populations and histori cally excluded and overlooked populations. MyRWA start ed out as a purely scientific organization and is based in Arlington, so there’s a lot of privilege within the associa tion. They are in the process of hiring new, younger people, including their first organizer. [MyRWA] is so fun and wel coming to us, which is real ly nice. They’re supporting a really big project in Malden to make part of the river acces sible because historically, it is

super polluted. They are try ing to support an organization in the area so that [the river] can be a resource for the res idents. I felt that it was inter esting to help with the initial research of figuring out what organizations are in the Lower Mystic in areas near Boston, Charlestown, East Boston, Chelsea, and Revere. We figure out what work is being done there, who exists there so that [our organizers] can go and engage with those communi ties. MyRWA is in the process right now of trying to figure out what the gaps are and how to respectfully — with histor ical knowledge how we have treated these communities in the past — start building a relationship of trust.

TD: What do you feel was the most rewarding part of your work as a Tisch Summer Fellow?

KL: I learned a lot about what’s happening in the water shed, but also its historical con text. I have a better understand ing of the area and the river, and it’s really cool to be learn ing more concretely about who has access to the river. Coming from San Diego, I feel like I have my bearings a little better. And it was really cool, to learn more about the policy and science involved in the real world. But also, I loved my intern group. We all got along really well for not knowing each other. Everybody in the workplace was very wel coming to me and interested in what we were doing. They were very open with what they were doing and always wanted to include us.

TD: What are your next steps for the Tisch Summer Fellowship and/or your work with MyRWA?

KL: I’m continuing to work with MyRWA through Tisch

Scholars. I work about eight hours a week now, compared to 35 over the summer. One thing that’s really nice is that I have the relationships that I built over the summer with peo ple coming in. They’ve been really open about doing what I’m interested in and pursuing skills and projects that I think are engaging, so I’m trying to get better with making deci sions for myself. I’m trying to give myself more confidence and learn how to be more con fident in my capabilities as a person. I’m excited for that.

This summer, I want to try doing some more engineering. I realized that it is a space that I take myself out of. The engi neering world is more intimi dating and there’s more I don’t know about. Even though I don’t think that that’s where I want to end up at the end of the day, those are still all good skills and knowledge that I need to learn about. I’ve gotten a better sense of what different projects are out there and, as I think about what kind of work I want to do in the future, working at MyRWA this last summer let me see a wider span of projects. If anything, my interests have gotten broader because I’ve seen that there are more projects with work focused on community building. I feel like that idea will change as I keep thinking about what envi ronmental engineering is, but there’s still time.

In Photos: A walk in the neighborhood

LAUREN ALIOTTA, BOWIE BELLO, NATALIE BROWNSELL, DAVID KIM, SAMANTHA POKORNY, ELIN SHIH AND QUAN TRAN / THE TUFTS DAILY

The importance of art education in the Greater b oston area: artisans asylum

by Jack Clohisy Executive Arts Editor

Art education: a topic of contention in the American education system. Why is it that art education fell by the way side when it came to institutional pri orities in school programs nationwide? An emphasis on STEM? An emphasis on ‘conventional’ careers? The cuts to fund ing for art programs across the country is why some organizations and companies are pioneering new paths to provide an education to students that encompasses a broader scope of disciplines outside of the conventional academic setting. In relation to Tufts, there are many local groups who are committed to fostering a meaningful art education to anyone of any age interested.

Enter Artisans Asylum, a not-forprofit endeavor aimed at making artis tic spaces more accessible to the gen eral public. Located in the Allston/ Brighton neighborhood of Boston, Artisans Asylum is a local facility that can be utilized by all nearby commu nity members. With affordable class offerings in the month of December including charcuterie board making, figure drawing, 3D modeling and digital design and even a class on construct ing a “fire-breathing steel dinosaur that roasts marshmallows” — Artisans Asylum has it all.

With memberships, community mem bers are allowed to use any of the spaces that they have trained and tested on. Student members earn a discount and have access to spaces at Artisans Asylum that may not be as easily accessible on the Tufts campus — a real benefit for those who are looking to practice their craft or pick up a new one.

Similar to the innovative aspects of Tufts’ curriculum, such as the Experimental College, Artisans Asylum has opportunities for individuals to also teach a class at the facility. For those who are interested in giving back to their communities as well as providing opportunities for people to get in touch with or discover their artistic sides, Artisans Asylum is a beacon of hope for art education.

The significance of art education is more important now than ever. In 2020, the public school district in Randolph, Mass. — a city just south of Boston — announced that it would be cutting art, music and physical education from its 2020–21 academic year curriculum. The announcement was met with expected frustration and criticism, but it is a sce nario all too familiar in schools across the country.

Programs like Artisans Asylum provide a solution for the continuous cutting of the arts within educational institutions. Although students from districts such as

artistic vandalism in the modern age: why soup does not mix well with Van Gogh’s paints

by Siavash Raissi Assistant Arts Editor

On March 10, 1914, 32-year-old Mary Richardson visited the National Gallery of Art in London in hopes of finally being able to view Diego Velázquez’s “The Rokeby Venus” in per son. Depicting a naked woman as she reclines across a luxuriously draped bed alongside a representation of Cupid, the work has a prominent place in the National Gallery’s collection as one of the only portrayals of nudity from 17th century Spanish art. Yet Richardson, a prominent suffragette of her time, did not intend to solely admire the painting at a distance. Enraged by the recent arrest of another suffragette, Emmeline Pankhurst, she began to wield a meat cleaver smuggled into the museum and attacked the canvas, leaving sev eral gashes on the painting’s surface. Though the painting was successfully restored, contemporary writings and criticisms of the action featured heavily charged language, accusing Richardson of having committed an act as repre hensible as murder.

Although immediately resulting in controversy, most audiences today would retrospectively agree that Richardson’s protest against the glori fication of the male gaze in defense of women’s fundamental rights resulted in positive change and awareness towards a growing issue. And so, despite having occurred a century prior, Richardson’s

actions continue to inspire modern activists fighting for similar instanc es of progress. Most prominently, the same criticisms once used for the suf fragette are being echoed today in the controversies surrounding Just Stop Oil, a climate change group drawing media attention for its attempts to vandalize and damage famous artworks by Monet, Van Gogh and Munch with substances as varied as soup, mashed potatoes and glue. Videos of these events have gone viral beyond the art world, garner ing hundreds of thousands of views on social media, and subsequently, hun dreds of outraged comments. Despite these parallels, how does Richardson’s method of activism actually compare to the actions of Just Stop Oil, and are they justified in their pursuit of global change?

In an age dominated by social media and the narratives it perpetuates across all aspects of society, it has become more and more difficult to draw the public’s attention toward pressing chal lenges. As a result, extravagant stunts and displays of action like those of Just Stop Oil have proliferated. As popular art history YouTuber The Canvas states in his video covering the subject, it is undeniable that the group’s intentions target a common societal interest in slowing down the rapid progression of climate change. Climate change affects the lives of everyone on the planet,

Randolph should have the opportunity to have some form of art education in their schools, with local spaces such as Artisans Asylum in the vicinity, this has to come with some sense of relief.

Artisans Asylum provides courses in art that diverge from the prototypical visual art courses available. With digital design and robotics courses available, younger individuals can be exposed to a multitude of artistic media much earlier than what some art educators can cover in a conventional classroom setting.

With concern over the future of art education in America as each new aca demic year begins, Artisans Asylum

continues to provide a space for com munity members to learn and educate others on the importance of different media of art. And if students are to be truly prepared to enter this world edu cated and exposed to all facets of edu cation, as Tufts continues to do with its interdisciplinary curriculum, Artisans Asylum should not be one of the only art education resources and outlets for students. Despite this, there is still much gratitude to be had for Artisans Asylum’s ability to provide the educa tional resources and spaces necessary to foster artistic learning that schools are less and less capable of prioritizing.

VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

An art classroom is pictured.

Matthew Winkler Winkler’s Weekly Symphony Guide

BSO fall season in review

The Boston Symphony Orchestra closed their fall season with Modest Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition,” Sergei Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini,” and Elena Langer’s suite from “Figaro Gets a Divorce” on Nov. 25–26. As their last concert will take place over the holidays, here is a retrospective look over the end of their 2022 season.

Works written in the 20th century consti tuted 12 of the 25 pieces performed across eight programs, making it the most repre sented musical era. At six works performed, contemporary classical music came in sec ond, and the classical era (1750–1830) trailed closely behind with four. Twenty compos ers were represented, with only works by Mozart, Bernstein and Shostakovich being played more than once. Of the 20 compos ers, 15 were men and five were women, with the women being all living contemporary classical composers. Of the men, only John Williams is living.

A holistic look at the BSO’s season produc es the same message of their opening concert: They are progressive in their efforts to push the classical canon forward, but still refuse to go beyond that canon. Deceased compos ers overwhelmingly populate BSO concerts, but they are deceased people from the notso-distant 20th century. The likes of Bach, Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven no longer hold a monopolistic grasp. The argument the BSO makes is for the current expanded canon to be 20th century works, with only the most vetted masterworks of previous eras being sparse ly included. The inclusion of contemporary works, then, is a trial for their entry into the canon, with the successes hopefully enjoying continued performances by other orchestras, and the failures discarded. The model that emerges is to center performances on works of the previous century while starting to build the canon for the next century. While still a fundamentally conservative and historicist presentation, this approach ideally prevents the stagnation of classical music by having a forward-looking, linear attitude.

In this author’s opinion, the BSO’s Oct. 27–30 performances of Beethoven’s “Piano Concerto No. 5” and Shostakovich’s “Symphony No. 5” were by far their great est, no doubt aided by the peerless Mitsuko Uchida on piano. In addition to flawless exe cution, the BSO delivered a rousing emotional interpretation that could compete among the best recordings. Conversely, their singularly uninspired rendition of Mozart’s “Symphony No. 40” proved their worst performance of the season.

Among the contemporary works, Jessie Montgomery’s “Rounds” and Elizabeth Ogonek’s “Starling Variations” stood out from a composition perspective. While Ogonek’s “Starling Variations” had great success in its attempted musical imagery and was among this author’s favorite pieces — in all fairness, Montgomery’s “Rounds” is likely the great er work. While both works hopefully have continued performances, “Starling Variations” was more of a successful musical experiment, and “Rounds,” as a more complete work, is more suited for the canon.

The BSO is now on a brief hiatus during December for the Pops’ season, but will return in January with Tchaikovsky, Beethoven and an American premiere writ ten by Ella Milch-Sheriff, another contem porary female composer.

Matthew Winkler is a sophomore studying history and music. Matthew can be reached at matthew.winkler@tufts.edu.

The ethics of art vandalism

VANDALISM

regardless of national origin or polit ical affiliation. Yet, despite receiving significantly greater political attention than 50 years ago, new international policies and diplomatic agreements still fail to match the drastic changes necessary to combat the amounts of pollution spread by large oil compa nies. As time passes and CO2 levels increase, future approaches to solving this issue will become even more diffi cult to achieve. From this perspective, it can be argued that the group’s radi cal approach to prompting an imme diate dialogue around climate change — even if it angers many — is entirely justified considering the current lack of progress. Such a dialoge is essential if we want to save the planet. Even to the most outraged critics of Just Stop Oil, their words, asking “What is worth more, art or life? … Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting or the protection of our plan et and people?” are admittedly quite thought-provoking.

Though their intentions and the conversations produced may be pro ductive, the same cannot be said for the targets of their vandalism. Featuring a female subject, “The Rokeby Venus” and its use of the nude was ultimately designed to solely stimulate the male gaze, maintaining a centuries-old artistic tradition of objectifying wom en’s bodies for the sake of aesthetic

pleasure. Thus, Richardson’s destruc tion of the painting can be interpreted as a direct reaction to its subject mat ter and its widespread, positive recep tion — an active act of protest against a painting that perpetuated problematic values. However, works like Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers,” Monet’s “Haystacks” or Constable’s “The Hay Wain” do not glorify climate change but rather the natural beauty found in the very land scapes the group is trying to protect. As a result, these acts of vandalism do not share the same provocative nature as the destruction of “The Rokeby Venus.” Instead, they appear as unorganized demonstrations of frustration unfairly directed toward artistic institutions.

As stated earlier, while any media attention on climate change is pro ductive, most would agree that this impact can be greatly amplified with a different target. Why destroy unrelated artworks being enjoyed by museumgo ers and their families instead of objects directly concerning oil mining CEOs, politicians and the institutions that support these environmentally harm ful industries? Even if one dissects Just Stop Oil’s choice to throw soup on “Sunflowers” as a comment on how collective society treats and harms its own environment, this meaning will be lost by a majority of the public, lead ing to confusion regarding the group’s intentions.

However, this still does not account for how it affects average museumgoers

who lose the opportunity to view the painting in real life, or the staff respon sible for cleaning up the space and then restoring the work. In these cases, the anger directed towards Just Stop Oil is warranted, as individuals other than the group’s target become responsible for the fallout of their actions. As a result, the group’s radical approach to activism will certainly isolate many who may begin to associate climate change advocacy with chaos and the unlawful destruction of property.

The news coverage of Just Stop Oil is unprecedented. Within a short amount of time, their extreme dis plays have garnered mass attention outside of the art world and have initiated new conversations about the extent to which we genuinely care about climate change in comparison to less important, yet culturally sig nificant, objects in museum collec tions. As irreversible global warming threatens the environmental stability of future generations, the group’s ulti mate intentions are certainly valid. However, their flawed methods of pro test fail to address or intimidate the true perpetrators behind these forces, instead isolating the public unity they critically need to create significant change. Although history has since softened on Mary Richardson’s van dalism, apart from the criticism of her contemporaries, is it certain that the same treatment will be applied to Just Stop Oil decades from now?

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Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” (top left), Constable’s “The Hay Wain” (top right), Monet’s “Haystacks” (bottom left) and Velázquez’s “The Rokeby Venus” (bottom right), which were all vandalized, are pictured.

Fun & Game S

SUDOKU

Mark, describing what it’s like to read a features article: “Pleasure? Try blessing.”

CROSSWORD

Difficulty Level: Saying goodbye.

MISSED CONNECTIONS

You: the first person to help out when no one else offered. Me: haven’t stopped thinking about your smile since. When: Before Thanksgiving. Where: Friends birthday party.

You: too tall and sweet for your own good. Me: a normal height tbh. When: like midnight???. Where: some random basement.

VIEWPOINT

Royals celebrate climate progress in Boston,

reach

by Maxwell Shoustal Staff Writer

Boston was recently honored with a royal visit from Prince William and Princess Catherine for the purpose of announcing the winners of their Earthshot Prize Awards, which go to indi viduals across the globe who are working on solutions to repair the planet by 2030. The awards were presented in partnership with the Boston-based John. F Kennedy Foundation, which is how the city was chosen as the host of this year’s awards. The concept of “Earthshot” is remi niscent Kennedy’s “Moonshot,” the commitment he made during a speech at Rice University in 1962 to put a man on the moon. Earthshot emphasizes the urgent need for global climate action.

Although none of the very deserving winners of the one-mil lion pound prize are from Boston, or even the United States, the awards ceremony and surround ing festivities also showcased Boston’s ongoing transformation into a more environmentally con scious city. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, Governor Charlie Baker and Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey were all listed among the honorary members of the Earthshot Prize Host Committee.

Perhaps most deserving of this honor is Senator Ed Markey, who co-authored the Green New Deal.

Organizers pointed to Boston’s newly-renovated, environmental ly sustainable City Hall Plaza.

Amid constant arguments about the societal value of the British royal family, and whether the monarchy should be modern ized or done away with, the royal family has found success in seem ingly sincere efforts to combat climate change. King Charles III has been an outspoken environ mentalist and climate advocate for decades. He supports sustain able farming practices, more effi cient urban planning, renewable energy and guiding businesses on how to be more environmentally friendly. Given the influence of the British monarchy on the world stage, the simple act of demon strating support for these sensi ble policies is powerful. However, King Charles has also made more tangible changes by installing solar panels and biomass boilers at his residences, establishing the International Sustainability Unit in 2010 and leading the design of the city of Poundbury as a model for sustainable urban design, among other climate initiatives.

Prince William and Princess Kate join the King’s important goal of fighting climate change with the

Earthshot prize, which is now in its second year of funding and highlighting solutions to this pressing issue.

In addition to presenting Earthshot awards in Boston, the royal couple also met with President Joe Biden and Mayor Michelle Wu. Wu was elected in November 2021 on a platform that prioritized climate change, an issue she has since fore grounded as mayor. Over the past year, she has already signed an ordinance to divest city funds from fossil fuels and unveiled a plan to keep vulnerable com munities from extreme heat, recognizing that the impacts of climate change are already upon us. Wu promised Boston voters progress on this issue, and her future plans indicate a clear focus on measurable improve ments — such as converting the city’s fleet of school buses to be entirely electric by 2030, ban ning fossil fuels from all future building construction and using city funds to make homes more energy efficient.

Prince William and Princess Kate are correct in describing their goal of repairing our cli mate as an “Earthshot.” It is an ambitious goal which seems just as unlikely as it did in the 1960s when JFK promised that

OP-ED

an American would set foot on the moon. Boston itself still has a long way to go, despite Mayor Wu’s initiatives — the city’s goal for net-zero carbon emissions is set at 2050; a date which is not the most ambitious. Furthermore, the city must con tinue to improve the T, since clo sures affect Bostonians’ access to quality public transportation.

Let’s remember the moment we stepped foot on the moon. The Earthshot awards, along with the pomp and circum stance of the royal visit, provide Boston with an opportunity to celebrate accomplishments and also acknowledge the work that is unfinished — there will have to be another ceremony next year and for many to come.

Protests in China reveal possibilities for change

by Anonymous

On Sunday, Nov. 27, a rare anti-lockdown, pro-free speech protest broke out in Beijing. Demonstrators crowded the Liangmaqiao diplomatic dis trict, holding up pieces of blank, white paper to show their oppo sition to China’s draconian zeroCOVID policy. Protests also broke out in other major Chinese cities such as Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu following a fire in Ürümqi, the capital of Xinjiang, where at least 10 lives were lost due to COVID19-related “barricades and locked doors” that slowed down the fire evacuation.

Having lived in Beijing, a city patrolled by censorship and sur veillance, for my whole life, it feels surreal to me that protests could happen in a place I had always passed by. In order to go to my favorite shopping center in mid dle school or to visit my friends in the Liangmaqiao Diplomatic Compound, I often went past the Liangmaqiao Bridge. Earlier this year, when the local government shut down all the restaurants and entertainment venues as part of tightened COVID-19 regulations, a walk along the Liangmaqiao Bridge or a late night swim down the Liangmaqiao river became our only form of entertainment.

This area is all too familiar to me, but I would never have imagined it would become the heart of protests for change and openness in a coun try where marching the street feels like chasing a mirage.

When videos and pictures of the protests first flooded my feed, my heart was filled with mixed feelings of fear and uncertainty, as well as pride and joy. Knowing China’s his tory of exerting violence to suppress dissidents, I am terrified about the danger these brave demonstrators are faced with. But at the same time, this protest finally brought forth a possibility for a better China. Being able to see shared grievances dis played in public, I was finally able to let out a sigh of relief.

While the excitement surround ing these protests is overwhelming, the future is highly unpredictable. It is possible that the local govern ment further increases censorship measures — already, journalists have reported that some stationary companies have limited the sale of white printing paper in response to the white paper protests. Other reports have revealed that local police in Shanghai have begun sur veilling citizens’ phones in search of western social media apps like Twitter and Instagram in the after math of the demonstrations.

However, the Chinese govern ment should be aware of the reper

cussions that may ensue from tight ening censorship measures. I believe that doing so may intensify public discontent, which could undermine the entire regime and put China’s global image at serious risk. The people have not yet demanded fullscale regime change despite wishful pro-democracy thinking, but if sup pression worsens, existing grievanc es could quickly escalate.

It is difficult to gauge how much power these protests can real ly exert; due to the decentralized nature of this movement, there is no leading figure among the pro testors. Considering China’s his torical success in silencing diverg ing political voices, it is almost impossible for a single individual to stand out as a prominent dissi dent. It’s hard not to be engulfed in pessimism when even plain white papers have become the target of censorship.

Nevertheless, this swirl of rage could drive future change in China. Although it won’t happen over night, this new wave of protests confirms collective resentment of authoritarian policies and has sowed the seeds for a new vision of free speech and civil disobedience.

Chinese people are going through a critical moment in his tory. What we need most right now is greater public awareness of this newly spawned revolutionary

force, and support for these pro tests. Some may scoff at the white paper movement, dismissing it as illegitimate or cowardly. But in a country where free speech is highly constrained, not speak ing in the first place is the only way not to be silenced. Chinese people have come a long way to make protests like these possible. The collective effort of Chinese students participating in rallies all across the world — from Tokyo to Amsterdam to London to New York City — is a manifestation of solidarity. The least we can do is support any effort being under taken by these brave Chinese demonstrators who merely wish for a freer country for the people.

Watching from abroad as everything unfolds at home is difficult, and it only makes me want to go home even more. However, I don’t even know when I can next expect to return. The best I can do is write about these events from 6,700 miles away and tell sto ries about Liangmaqiao to my family and friends in Beijing who live right by the protests. When I did, they reacted with complete shock and surprise. Though news coverage of the protests is widely available in the United States, the Chinese censors are working away to eradicate any mentions in the Chinese media ecosystem.

but Earthshot is still out of

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Prince William and Princess Catherine of Wales visited Boston last week to announce the winners of the 2022 Earthshot Prize.

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China’s zero-COVID policy has incited protests across the globe.

The battle for America’s soul

In 1892, an immigrant from the Russian Empire stepped off a ship into the bustling city of Boston with nothing but the clothes on his back. He did not come to the coun try by choice: Indeed, when he was younger, he did not imagine that he would ever leave his village, much less Europe. The situation in Russia had changed, however, and those of his Jewish faith faced increasing violence and attacks by mobs, while the state hardly lifted a finger to stop them. In the United States, he worked hard and brought his family still in Russia over, one by one. It was a good thing too: If they had remained, they would in all likelihood have been murdered by the Germans in the Holocaust. The U.S. saved his life, and the life of his fam ily. It also saved the life of his unborn descendants, who came to prosper in a way inconceivable in the “old country.”

That man’s last name was Berlin — he was my great-great-great-grandfather.

My family’s story is not unique. Many American families can similar ly trace their roots in this country to escape, whether from violence, poverty or oppression. However, despite the ubiquity of immigration in American society, there is also deep-seated opposition to it. At times, this oppo sition has won out. In 1924, immigra tion by “undesirables” like Jews, Asians and Africans was severely curtailed.

In the 1930s and ’40s, tens of thou sands of German and Polish Jews were denied visas: even Jews departing from Nazi Germany to seek asylum were returned to Europe, where some were subsequently killed in the Holocaust.

As recently as this decade, former President Donald Trump slashed the cap on refugee admissions from 85,000 in 2016 to a paltry 15,000 in 2020.

This, despite the fact that Trump’s own grandfather, Friedrich Trump, came to this country to escape the German draft? Across its history, including before its actual founding, the United States has served as a haven for English Puritans fleeing religious persecution, Irish leaving behind famine, Jews evading pogroms and Afghanis escaping from the Taliban. Nevertheless, Americans are consis tently hostile to new immigrants — despite descending, in large part, from immigrants themselves. Truly, this is the pot — or shall I say the melting pot — calling the kettle black.

Looking back, it is easy to forget that history is unfinished. The present and the future will inevitably be annexed to the past, studied by future generations as we now study past ones. Hopefully, the future history of our country is a long one — it’s up to us. Will future generations continue to tell immigra tion stories? Will future immigrants see the Statue of Liberty, or the wall? Will we continue to be a country of the world, or just another of many in it? That is our choice. For the sake of past generations of Americans, and for future ones, let’s make the right one.

by Justin Solis Staff Writer

VIEWPOINT

Nuclear war is closer than we think

Asher Berlin is a sophomore study ing history. Asher can be reached at asher.berlin@tufts.edu.

Originally published Dec. 6.

Fans of the 1983 blockbust er “WarGames” will likely recall the game-turned-reality threat of “Global Thermonuclear War.” I do not in any way look forward to nuclear war, yet, in today’s current international climate, we are advancing dangerously close to such a case. It is evident from recent rhetoric and conflicts in the Russia-Ukraine War that Russian President Vladimir Putin could likely detonate a nuclear weapon, but this fact seems to be largely ignored by main stream media.

A look at international news will quickly update you on the status of the ongoing conflict. Despite its mili tary’s size and funding disadvantage, Ukraine has been able to defend itself and, at some points, counterattack Russia. Because of the unprecedent ed trajectory of the war, Russia finds itself in a dire situation — exactly the condition in which one would consider using weapons of mass destruction. A desperate Putin, surrounded by a team of allies and yes-men, seems closer than ever to deploying such a weapon.

Recent policies have shown that Russia has not taken the usage of nuclear weapons off the table. In fact, it has effectively done the opposite. Recently, Russia elected to postpone nuclear arms control talks with the United States, leaving their future plans ambiguous. Russia also plans to increase its missile capability whilst also building new missile sys

tems, potentially gearing up for the usage of nuclear weapons. Putin has also declared captured Ukraine terri tory under Russia’s “nuclear umbrel la.” A nuclear power’s extension of its “umbrella” over a particular region means that power in question will defend that area if it is attacked, rely ing on nuclear deterrence to caution external forces from intervening. While this is by no means precluding coun tries from providing aid to Ukraine, it will certainly force countries like the United States to toe the line carefully.

The possibility that a nuclear weap on may be utilized by Russia has United States intelligence deeply concerned, so much so that CIA Director William Burns issued a cautionary message to Sergei Naryshkin, Russia’s foreign intelligence service head. This was the first in-person contact between leaders from the United States and Russia since the February invasion. President Joe Biden has even stated that the world is at the highest risk of “Armageddon” since the Cuban missile crisis.

It is not only the United States that is concerned; other important actors in the international system are consider ing nuclear fallout with greater severity than ever. Western countries have already designed plans targeted at mitigating panic at home in the event of a detonation.

Despite the wide-reaching and dev astating physical impacts of an atom ic bomb, the most damaging outcome would occur after the bomb detonates. The deployment of a nuclear weapon, which hasn’t happened since World War II, would result in an impossible scenario for the United States and NATO nations.

The United States would have to decide to either punish Russia in kind, thus esca lating the risk of global nuclear war, or accept damages and pursue peace talks. Arguably, the latter is more treacherous than simply retaliating because it sets a precedent that the usage of nuclear weapons will not be punished, virtually guaranteeing that a country will not hesi tate to use such a weapon again.

The best way to respond in such a situation would be a full-scale con ventional engagement by NATO forc es. This solid response would instantly punish Russia, while also taking care to avoid playing chicken with nuclear doomsday. Should Russia continue to detonate nuclear weapons, NATO will face a more difficult choice that likely will involve a nuclear-driven response. However, the convention al land, sea and air conflicts would demonstrate to Russia that it has vio lated an international taboo.

Still, hope does remain that Russia will not use nuclear weapons. Should a bomb be used, Russia will become a pariah in the international system, dealing irreconcilable damage to its trade with other countries. Putin must also know that some form of counter attack will arise in response, further crippling his nation. From an exterior point of view, the risks seem too great for Russia to chance.

In the movie “WarGames,” nucle ar war is thankfully avoided. Similarly, such a terrifying prospect could be avoided today if Putin, like the auto mated nuclear system in the film, real izes that nuclear war is “a strange game. The only winning move is not to play.”

EDITORIALS

with,

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OP-EDS Op-Eds provide an open forum for campus editorial commentary and are printed Monday through Thursday. The Daily welcomes submis sions from all members of the Tufts community; the opinions expressed in the Op-Ed section do not necessarily represent the opinions of the Daily itself. Opinion articles on campus, national and international issues should be 600 to 1,200 words in length and submitted to opinion@tuftsdaily. com. The editors reserve the right to edit letters for clarity, space and length. All material is subject to editorial discretion and is not guaranteed to appear in the Daily. Authors must submit their telephone numbers and day-of availability for editing questions.

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Vladimir Putin is pictured.

Somerville makes 2022 Carbon Disclosure Project’s cities A-List

Tina Woolston, director of the office of sustainability at Tufts, commended Somerville for its achievement, not ing the recent visit of the Prince and Princess of Wales to Greentown Labs in Somerville as validation of the city’s worldwide leadership.

“Policy is a key strategy for imple menting widespread climate solutions and local governments can create these policies at a relatively quick pace while considering the needs of their munic ipality,” Woolston wrote in an email to the Daily. “For example, both Boston and Cambridge have enacted emissions disclosure and reduction ordinances that require buildings of a certain size to meet an emissions intensity thresh old or pay a very high ‘alternative com pliance fee’. This has been an import ant driver of decarbonization efforts amongst businesses in those localities.”

She also highlighted some of Somerville’s essential steps to ease the transition to zero carbon emissions.

“Providing EV charging stations, bike lanes on popular roads, and community choice aggregation for 100% renewable electricity [opportunities to purchase affordable renewable energy] can make it a lot easier for everyone to take posi tive action. Somerville is already doing many of these things as is Boston,” Woolston wrote.

Ewen-Campen explained how the policies Woolston mentioned are “tri

ple-win policies” that benefit the cli mate and marginalized communities, while also creating more jobs.

“The classic example of this would be investing in public transit,” he said. “It’s obviously good for the climate to have less people driving more people on public transit. … It creates a lot of good paying public sector jobs and we just know from the data that public transit disproportionately serves his torically marginalized populations.”

He also stressed the need for federal support if Somerville hopes to realize its sustainability targets. He is hopeful that incoming Biden administration policies will do that.

“Those [policies in the Inflation Reduction Act] have been described as kind of transformative in terms of climate policy, and I’m hoping that what that means [is] a pot of money for municipalities to retrofit buildings, to redesign roadways, to allow non-fossil fuel burning vehi cles … to be a safe and viable way to get around, to public transit,” EwenCampen said.

According to Ewen-Campen, moving forward with Somerville’s climate ini tiatives must be a collaborative effort.

“There has to be that interplay, where you have local policy leaders looking for these solutions and coming up with frameworks and then there absolutely needs to be massive finan cial investment from the federal gov ernment,” he said.

Graduate School Of Arts And Sciences

Art Education, BFA/MAT

Biology, BS/MS

Chemistry, BS/MS

Child Study and Human Development, BA/MA

Classics, BA/MA

Data Analytics, BA/MS or BS/MS Economics, BS/MS

Education: Middle and High School, BA/MAT or BS/MAT

Environmental Policy and Planning, BA/MS or BS/MS Mathematics, BS/MS Museum Education, BA/MA

Music, BA/MA

Philosophy, BA/MA

Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning, BS/MA or BA/MA

School Of Engineering

Bioengineering, MS

Biomedical Engineering, BS/MS

Chemical Engineering, BS/MS

Civil and Environmental Engineering, BS/MS

Computer Engineering, BS/MS

Computer Science, BA/MS or BS/MS

Cybersecurity and Public Policy, MS

Data Science, BS/MS

Dual Degree Program: Innovation & Management

+ Engineering degree, MS

Electrical Engineering, BS/MS

Human Factors Engineering, BS/MS

Human-Robot Interaction, MS

Materials Science and Engineering, MS

Mechanical Engineering, BS/MS

Offshore Wind Energy Engineering, MS

Software Systems Development, MS

The Fifth-Year Master’s Degrees are offered through the following programs:

Athletics department connects with local communities, gives back

things being done in our athlet ic department and this role pro vides the opportunity to elevate our impact in the community even more.”

This year, one of Tufts ath letics’ major initiatives is the Jumbo Giving Tree, a partner ship with the Medford Family Network to pair local families with athletic teams, who pur chase gifts for them from a wish list. This year, six families will receive gifts from Tufts athletic teams.

Roche described some of the other initiatives that the athletics department is participating in or looking to participate in in the future. Currently, both the men’s and women’s soccer teams are helping out at local soccer clinics for children with disabilities. In the future, teams will be paired up with local senior citizens to help them get regular exercise.

“I think civic outreach and having civic identity is important as a student-athlete because you’re more than just an athlete, especially at Tufts,” Roche said. “As a former stu

dent-athlete at Tufts, I think some of the times I grew the most was outside of practice and normal team activities but you know, getting outside your comfort zone, and gaining more knowledge of the com munity that you live in.”

This weekend, the volleyball and baseball teams threw a hol iday party for local children in the foster care system. Brittany Bennet, a junior middle hitter on the volleyball team, reflected on the experience.

“It’s really fun to … get to actu ally see the impact you’re making

like right in front of you.” Bennet said. “Directly getting to speak to the people that we’re helping is really moving for a lot of us.”

Organizing and participat ing in these types of events is mutually beneficial, as the ath letes get the chance to connect with the surrounding commu nity and provide support to them in the process.

“It’s really awesome to get to provide [gifts] to kids who might not get [them] and it’s also just a great opportunity for our team to like, get closer together off the court and outside of classes,

Swimming and diving off to a powerful start in winter season

SWIM continued from back

think that really paved the way for our success for the rest of the meet,” Lundgren said.

Lundgren continued to talk about his own weekend successes and what led the Jumbos to their performances.

“We’ve been working really hard. All throughout presea son, in lift and in the pool. … This was the first preseason semester in a while where we haven’t had too many restric tions and so I think everyone was just super excited to have that full training available to us and I really think we made the most of it,” Lundgren said.

In addition to the five relays and freestyle events, Sikka swam the 100 butterfly in 48.47, earning a “B” cut in the event. As a new addition to the team, Sikka talked about the team chemistry this season.

“Oh, it’s amazing. I’ve spo ken to so many of my team mates. I’ve never actually had such a big team with 80 of us, including the women’s team. It’s such a great environment, just in terms of motivation, [and] in terms of everybody holding each other account able,” Sikka said. “I just feel

so included. And I think that’s really the big thing that made me want to join Tufts was the inclusion and the diversity in just the university itself and to see that in the sport that I love is just amazing.”

Capping off a very success ful first meet for the Jumbos, Lundgren and Klinginsmith earned NESCAC accolades both being named the Swimming and Diving Performers of the week. This is the first honor for both athletes, starting the sea son strong for Tufts.

To wrap up their first semes ter of competition, the Jumbos will look to face off in a quad meet next weekend facing rivals Williams, Wesleyan and WPI at Wesleyan University. Following this meet, there will be no rest for the ‘Bos as they head into their winter break training session. Lundgren discussed how he feels about this upcoming time.

“I’m personally looking for ward to the training trip over winter break, we’re down in Florida for that and that’s just two weeks where all you have to worry about is swimming. And it’s just a great chance to get a huge chunk of training in,” Lundgren said.

and do something for our whole community,” Bennet said.

The impact that Tufts stu dents can have on their local communities is significant, and small initiatives such as those carried out by the athletics department can add up to have a larger influence.

“I think the relationship is beneficial for both parties,” Roche said. “Our student athletes can learn a lot from those experi ences, and with you know, 900plus athletes, who are very intel ligent and driven and motivated, a lot can be accomplished.”

modified ES2 course, students consider engineering’s social implications

VETO

continued from page 3

Students also identified how discussions and reflec tions affected their sense of belonging. One student shared that they felt comforted by the changes the researchers put in place, particularly as a first-gen eration student of color.

Another student in the class felt that some of the discus sions put them in a vulnerable and uncomfortable position as the only African American stu dent in some of the discussion groups about diversity, equity, inclusion and justice.

The researchers described their main findings from the interviews, noting that no two students had the same perspective on the modified course. They also emphasized the importance of “center[ing] minoritized students’ subjec tive experiences” and rejecting

the “majority-fits-all model of education”.

The researchers received “a lot less pushback than [they] expected” on their study, Andrews said. However, adapt ing ES2 did not come without its challenges: For instance, providing timely feedback to students proved difficult, as instructors and TAs were unsure how to grade socio technical coursework such as discussion participation, and what written feedback to offer.

The researchers then opened the floor up for ques tions, during which professors and students asked about time requirements for the added sociotechnical curriculum, strategies for allowing safe, respectful discussions about sensitive topics, and the utility of sociotechnical perspectives in engineering careers.

COURTESY JOSEPH ACQUAVIVA

The Tufts swimming and diving teams brought strong competition to the MIT Winter Invitational in December 2021.

Matt Goguen

Jumbo Giving Tree highlights Tufts athletics’ civic outreach initiatives

In an offseason that began with a frus trated fanbase due to a lack of spending from ownership, Chaim Bloom and the Red Sox have officially begun their addition phase. With the poor performance of the team in the 2022 season, fans are pleading to this ownership to spend the exorbitant amounts of money from John Henry’s bank account on valuable players that can vault the Red Sox back into postseason conten tion. Although naysayers believe this is eas ier said than done, the organization has been proving this fanbase wrong these past few weeks.

As Chaim Bloom has stated for most of the offseason, he views this team as a con tender. While I was skeptical of this view during the early parts of this offseason, I can now almost see a clear picture for this team. Bloom hoped to rebuild a lackluster bullpen which could barely hold three run leads in 2022 with the additions of Joely Rodriguez, Chris Martin and All-Star clos er Kenley Jansen. While Jansen is slowly inching towards “father time,” a formidable closer is vital in Major League Baseball, no matter what the baseball nerds want to tell you. Although losing Matt Strahm to the Phillies will sting, I can still see a robust bullpen group for this team. A healthy Garrett Whitlock would go a long way. John Schreiber should continue his breakout from 2022. Tanner Houck was solid down the stretch last season. As much as I don’t want to believe it, this Red Sox bullpen is in surprisingly acceptable shape for next April.

The other large question that circled through every Red Sox blog this offsea son was whether Xander Bogaerts, a Red Sox legend, would resign in the offseason. Regarded as one of the top shortstops in baseball, I truly believed that the Red Sox would not shell out the money to pay him for multiple years. I mean, if you look at the contract that they offered him last March, it was laughable. However, analysts are reporting the Red Sox are “picking up steam” with talks with the Bogaerts camp. To my surprise, the Red Sox are offering a large contract with various incentives for the All-Star caliber player, which is a precarious route to travel on. Sure, Bogaerts is a sure fire everyday starter who will bat over .300 almost every season, but it’s a large risk to give a large contract to Bogaerts (who is cur rently 30). Additionally, with shortstop pros pect Marcelo Mayer ascending through the minor league ranks, Bogaerts may not hold down that spot for much longer. Although I still feel as if signing Xander is the right move, I’m hoping the contract is not a mon strosity.

After the recent signing of Japanese phe nom Masataka Yoshida, I believe that Chaim Bloom isn’t finished stockpiling players for next season. I’m predicting a contract with Xander Bogaerts in the coming days, as well as another bat that will slide into DH next season. With that in mind, I’m hoping the Red Sox don’t re-sign J.D. Martinez, as he will cost too much for a position that doesn’t offer much value. Assuming Bogaerts does return next season, I’m hoping that Chaim Bloom continues to deflate Henry’s bank account, as money does talk in this league. Here’s to hoping I guess.

Matt Goguen is a senior studying biopsychology. Matt can be reached at matthew.goguen@tufts.edu.

Editor

A large part of being a student at Tufts is making the effort to engage with the surrounding community. The Tufts stu dent-athlete mission statement embod ies these values and the athletics depart ment instills them through community outreach. The statement reads: “Jumbo athletes strive for excellence on and off the field. They experience the joy and person al growth inherent in high-level competi tion while cultivating lifelong connections with teammates, the Tufts community and the world around us.”

This season, Tufts Athletics has embarked on many initiatives to reach out to the surrounding community to provide good cheer and service to those in need. Many teams are taking on missions to better the community around them. One such initiative is a partnership with the Medford Family Network, an organization that strives to help local families in need by providing concrete support — in the form of food, clothes, baby formula and more— and programming for parents and children.

Athletics has a designated civic outreach coordinator, former Tufts football player Frank Roche. He has

spearheaded the initiatives to expand Tufts’ outreach through athletics to the surrounding community to benefit both the community and the teams themselves.

Upon starting in the position he spoke about what the position would mean to him and some of his aspirations.

“As a former Jumbo, Coach [Jay] Civetti and many others here have instilled in me an appreciation for the growth that student-athletes can experience in a ser vice setting,” Roche told Tufts Athletics. “There are already so many amazing

men’s and women’s swimming and diving off to a strong start, first and second place finishes in opening meet

by Katie Spiropoulos Contributing Writer

While the majority of the Tufts community was settling back in after Thanksgiving break, Tufts swimming and diving were hitting the pool. Over the course of three days, both the women’s and men’s teams competed at high levels, finally, with the men’s team winning the meet by a margin of 1010–937 over the host MIT and the women’s team coming in second over all. Additionally, swimmers from both teams broke various school records.

First-year swimmer Armaan Sikka shared his thoughts on the meet.

“I thought we had a great weekend. Honestly, one of the best weekends I’ve had in a long time,” Sikka said. “As a team, we had a great competition as well. We won overall, with the [men’s team] beating MIT and the rest of the

universities, … and the [women’s team] came second.”

On the first day of competition, Tufts swam a “B” cut time and fin ished first in the women’s 800 yard free relay with a time of 7:24.75, swam by senior Katelin Isakoff, first-year Lily Klinginsmith, senior Chloe Deveney and senior Claire Brennan. The ‘Bos men’s team also snagged first in the same event with a “B” cut time of 6:39.22, composed of sophomore Ethan Schreier, first-year Armaan Sikka, sophomore Eric Lundgren and junior Eli Houlton. Later in the solo events, first-year Madeleine Dunn won her first collegiate race with a “B” cut time of 17:00.14 in the women’s 1650 yard free, breaking the Tufts record time.

The ‘Bos continued their success throughout the weekend with other nota ble finishes like Schreier who later on Saturday broke his own school record from the 2022 NCAA Championships in the 200 butterfly with a time of 1:47.16.

Klinginsmith shattered another record in the 100 butterfly winning her race and earning a “B” cut time of 54.83. On Sunday, Isakoff also won the women’s 500 freestyle for the Jumbos coming in at 4:56.18.

While the whole team competed at a high level over the course of the meet, one standout, in particular, was sophomore swimmer Eric Lundgren. Not only did Lundgren break his own school record of the 200 backstroke on Sunday, but he also broke the 100 back stroke school record on Saturday as well. Lundgren also led the ‘Bos to their only Sunday win with a first-place finish in the individual 200 medley swim.

Lundgren also swam in the winning 800 freestyle relay team that started the men’s meet off on a high note Friday night. He shared some of his personal highlights of the weekend.

“We were just really excited after that race, everyone was super fired up. And I

Keeping up with the 617 Spend, spend, spend

by Arielle Weinstein Deputy Sports

OLIVIA BELLO / THE TUFTS DAILY

Student-athletes are pictured inside the Steve Tisch Sports and Fitness Center on Feb. 12.