TuftsDaily02.06.14

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THE TUFTS DAILY

Mostly Sunny 27/12

TUFTSDAILY.COM

Thursday, February 6, 2014

VOLUME LXVII, NUMBER 12

Where You Read It First Est. 1980

Best-selling author discusses recent novel by Josh

Weiner

Daily Editorial Board

Rachel Kushner, author of “The Flamethrowers,” spoke at the Center for the Humanities at Tufts (CHAT ) on Tuesday afternoon. Kushner began by reading an excerpt of her novel, which focuses on the New York arts scene in 1975. The novel was selected as a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award, named one of the top five novels of the year by The New York Times and chosen as the Best Book of the Year by New York Magazine, according to the CHAT website. After the reading, Kushner discussed her inspiration for “The Flamethrowers.” “I wanted the story to take place in the New York City underworld of the 1970s,” she said. “It’s an easy concept to pick up ideas about if you know where to look. [With so much] photo documentation, you can see a lot of where people lived and ... the social fabric that was a whole part of what the art world was in the 1970s.” Kushner explained that the near-penniless main character, Reno, travels to New York City hoping to succeed as an artist, symbolized what many people in this era went through. “There was a time where people could live in New York for

very little money,” she said. “The best art gets made when there’s the least amount of money on the market, it seems.” Given her familiarity with the 1970s arts movement in New York, Kushner said her ideas for “The Flamethrowers” came fairly naturally and did not require much background research. “I hadn’t seen that there were many novels written about that time,” she said. “I’d written on occasion about contemporary art just for fun ... and I didn’t need to do any research. I just used what I knew and put it into a story, into context.” Kushner said she incorporated elements from her experience with big city life, including her childhood in San Francisco, into the novel. She wanted to fully evoke the urban environment of the novel, down to the particular odors. “The young people in the streets [in my novel] smell like gasoline,” Kushner said. “When you grow up in a world like mine, gasoline is like any evocative smell. People love the smell of gas — they associate it with fun and progress.” Kushner said that she went on several walks around the parts of New York City where parts of the novel take place, in order to look for ideas. see AUTHOR, page 2

Sofia Adams / The Tufts Daily

Around 130 students participated in a Tufts hackathon last weekend.

Over 100 students participate in Tufts’ latest hackathon by Jei-Jei

Tan

Daily Editorial Board

About 130 students participated in Tufts’ latest, 24-hour hackathon, TuftsHack, which began Saturday afternoon. During the event that juniors Marcella Hastings and Will Clarkson organized, students worked in teams

to develop and code software projects. Through the hackathon, students learned practical computing skills not taught in Tufts classes, Hastings said. “For a huge percent of the student population, they’re going to go out in[to] the industry and start building products for people to use,” Hastings

said. “The point of the hackathon is to give people a chance to come and try actually building things.” Participating in the hackathon, therefore, benefits students in their job search, according to Lecturer of Computer Science Ming see HACKATHON, page 2

Tufts Mock Trial team has successful weekend by Justin

Rheingold

Daily Editorial Board

Caroline Geiling / The Tufts Daily

The Tufts Mock Trial (TMT) team qualified two delegations for next month’s American Mock Trial Association’s Opening Round Championship Series (ORCS) where the teams will compete to participate in the National Championship Tournament. The TMT A- and D-teams competed at a regional tournament in Manchester, N.H., last weekend, and placed second and fifth, respectively, according to TMT co-president and A-Team co-captain Brian Pilchik, a senior. D-team co-captain Katie Grosch, a sophomore, explained these finishes are a slight improvement over last year’s results. “Last year we also sent Tufts A and D, and the teams got third and sixth,” Grosch said. “So we each moved up a place.” Competition was tough, as TMT had the chance to compete against some of the best teams in the tournament, Grosch said. “There were some really good teams at this regional and both teams were lucky enough to hit some of the top teams in the tournament, so we had some really good rounds, some really good trials,”

Students sled on the President’s Lawn by Tisch Library during yesterday’s snow day.

Inside this issue

see MOCK TRIAL, page 2

Today’s sections

Tufts’ Indian dance groups bring their culture and competitive spirit to campus.

The CSL will no longer allow student groups to apply a justified departure from the TCUJ nondiscrimination policy.

see WEEKENDER, page 5

see OP-ED, page 9

News Features Weekender Editorial | Op-Ed

1 3 5 8

Op-Ed Comics Classifieds Sports

9 12 15 Back


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