2011-04-21.pdf

THE TUFTS DAILY

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VOLUME LXI, NUMBER 52

Where You Read It First Est. 1980 TUFTSDAILY.COM

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Student council to bring back engineering society to the Hill

by Victoria

Messuri

Daily Staff Writer

The Engineering Student Council (ESC) plans next month to reinstate a long-dormant Tufts branch of the Order of the Engineer, a nationwide organization promoting unity and ethical practice among professionals in the field of engineering.

Qualified students will pledge into the society, which has been inactive at Tufts for over a decade, at a ceremony on May 6, according to ESC Secretary Alyssa Kody, a sophomore.

Upon being accepted into the Order, students will receive a certificate and can order a stainless steel ring to wear on the fifth finger of their writing hand, Kody said in an email to the Daily.

“The ring is worn to remind the engineer to act ethically and make ethical decisions,” ESC President Maren Frisell, a junior, said.

Qualified attendees at the ceremony will recite an oath called the Obligation of the Engineer, which sets forth an ethical code for practicing engineers similar to the Hippocratic Oath taken by new doctors.

ESC Treasurer Victoria Sims, a sophomore who proposed the idea of bringing the Order back to Tufts, said that to qualify for induction, individuals must be students enrolled in a graduate or

undergraduate program accredited by the national Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology or licensed professional engineers.

Seniors, graduate students, faculty and administrators at the School of Engineering have been offered the opportunity to be inducted into the Order, Kody said.

According to Frisell, the Order’s emphasis on ethics in professional engineering aligns with the goals of the ESC. The honorary ceremony will doubly serve as a commemoration to the schools’ seniors, Frisell said.

“It’s also a way to show appreciation to students as they graduate,” she added.

Lewis Edgers (E ’66), an associate dean of engineering and a member of the Order, said the society became inactive on campus a decade ago after student interest waned due to its lack of structure.

“Order of the Engineer has no financial commitment or meetings,” Edgers said.

“The organization sort of fell asleep for 10 years, I’d say.”

Board members on the ESC initiated the reactivation of the Order several months ago, according to Edgers, in response to a reawakening of sorts of the moral code that defines the body.

“In the last several years, there has been see ORDER, page 2

Danai Macdridi/Tufts Daily

Junior Maren Frisell and sophomore Ashley Martin fit students interested in joining a new chapter of an engineering society with rings to be distributed at a ceremony next month.

With help of Tufts grad student, Medford hopes to save $1.6 million on energy costs by

Rachel Rampino

Daily Editorial Board

The city of Medford in February signed a contract with an energy procurement consulting firm run by a Tufts master’s student that will help it renegotiate its energy contracts and save a projected $1.6 million in the next three years.

The deal with GridSmart Energy, whose president is Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning (UEP) master’s student Michael Adler, comes as part of a broader municipal movement to support environmentalism and energy efficiency.

Energy procurement firms such as GridSmart work with mass energy

users, such as municipalities and corporations, to secure the cheapest and least risky deals with energy suppliers, according to Adler.

Renegotiating energy contracts is part of a three-pronged approach to energy efficiency and environmentalism supported by Medford Mayor Michael McGlynn, according to Carey Duques (G ’06), Medford’s energy and environmental director and environmental agent. The city’s approach also includes upgrades to buildings to improve energy efficiency and incentives for its residents to shift away from wasteful behaviors, Duques said.

This will mean switching all trafsee GRIDSMART, page 2

Inside this issue

William H. Butt V/Tufts Daily

The Senate and Athletics Department say club sports, such as the men’s Ultimate Frisbee team, have suffered from financial mismanagement in the department.

Senate urges administration to address club sport finances by

Kathryn Olson

Daily Editorial Board

A Tufts Community Union ( TCU) Senate resolution passed on April 10 calls on administrators in the School of Arts and Sciences to improve its financial oversight of the club sports program, citing a lack of transparency and misallocation of Student Activity Fee funds meant to go towards Tier I club sports.

The resolution, authored by TCU Treasurer Kate de Klerk, asks the university to fund a new athletics business manager position that would administer the finances of the university’s club

sports program, which is currently under the jurisdiction of several different athletics department staff members.

A lack of communication between the Athletics Department, the Senate and the administration has prevented financial transparency and led to a situation in which a sum of $10,000 that was supposed to be allocated for use by Tier I club sports was instead never used, according to de Klerk.

“It was essentially just sitting there,” she said.

The Senate has since 2000 allocated a portion of the Student Activities Fee to the athletics department for distribution to club sports. The body currently see SPORTS, page 2

Sophomores place high in international math tournament by

Michael Del Moro Daily Editorial Board

A Tufts team that competed in an international, four-day mathematical modeling competition in February placed in the top 15 percent of 2,775 participating teams, the competition organizers announced on Friday.

This year’s Mathematical Contest in Modeling, in which three other Tufts teams participated, marked the third time Tufts has fielded successful competitors in the event.

The contest, which is held annually by the Consortium for Mathematics and Its Applications and this year took place Feb. 10 to Feb. 14, required participants to respond to one of two modeling problems: one in discrete mathematics and another in continuous mathematics.

Sophomores John Abel, Kim Stachenfeld and Jay Stotsky, all chemical engineering students, submitted a problem solution that achieved the title of “Meritorious Winner.”

A team made up of juniors Stephen Bidwell and Victor Minden and senior

Liam Clegg received “Honorable Mention,” placing it in the top 45 percent of participants.

Two other teams — one consisting of sophomores Zach Himes, Brandon Dillow and Daniel Fortunato and another made up of sophomore Min Zhong, junior Yunlin Huang and senior Liwei Liao — successfully completed the competition but did not receive additional awards.

Abel’s team chose to attempt to solve a problem that required the students to determine the minimum number of signal repeaters necessary to provide 1,000 people with uninterrupted service.

Repeaters take weak radio signals, amplify them and translate them into different frequencies to avoid interference.

According to Abel and Stachenfeld, the team had limited experience with radio networks before receiving the problem details electronically the on the evening of the first day of the competition.

Their group camped out for the next 96 hours in South Hall, where they see MATH, page 2

Today’s sections

Harry Potter is just one in a long line of bookto-film adaptions, some succesful, some less so.

Freshman diver Johann Schmidt is trying to get new recruits on TuftsLife — no experience needed.

see WEEKENDER, page 5

see SPORTS, page 13

News Features Weekender Editorial | Letters

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Op-Ed Comics Sports Classifieds

11 12 13 14

The Tufts Daily

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Engineering society to return to campus

ORDER

continued from page 1

discussion in the School of Engineering about ethics. … The students have gotten interested in that subject,” Edgers said, stressing the weight of morally based decisions in engineering.

“Ethics are really important, especially in areas where public safety is affected,” he said.

Edgers chairs the Curriculum Task Force (CTF), which he said serves as a think tank for curriculum development for both faculty and students. CTF has recently been focusing on the role of ethics in the engineering curriculum, he said.

“As a Canadian organization, Order of the Engineer has really only begun to grow in the United States in the last 20 years,” Edgers said.

Sims, who is from Toronto, brought up the idea to reinstate Tufts’ chapter based on her experience with a similar Canadian version of the society called the The Ritual Calling of an Engineer. “[Sims] told us about this program,” Frisell said, “that’s really how it came to the table.”

Frisell added that a Tufts chapter of the society would serve to bring a sense of unity among Tufts’ engineering students and graduates.

“One of the main points of the council is to empower the students and give them a basic connection,” Frisell said.

Within a year, she said, the society had the potential to see a good amount of participation among the engineering student community.

“There are [approximately] 200 engineering students in each grade,” Frisell said. “If we get over half next year, I think that would be a great uniting goal.”

News

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Four Tufts teams successfully compete in tough field MATH

continued from page 1

learned a new programming language called LaTeX in order to put together a 21-page solution without any outside help, Abel said.

“Not only did we have to determine where to place these repeater towers, but [also] to figure out the configuration of the system as a whole, which channels would be represented,” Abel said.

Because of these variables, Stotsky said, there were different possible outcomes.

“In making the mathematical model, we did have to make some assumptions,” Stotsky said. “So depending on what kind of model you were using or assumptions you make, you could actually get pretty different answers.”

Though the team was not allowed to consult any in-person help during the competition, previous coaching and review sessions prepared group members for realizing the different variables and taking into account possible factors that they might encounter, according to Stachenfeld.

Responses were judged on whether or not the models were realistically functional.

“Our model was definitely functional in certain geological situations,” Abel said, adding that terrain differences and other variables can affect functionality.

Stachenfeld said that the team fared well despite being unfamiliar with radio signals.

“At the start of the project we actually had no idea how a radio worked at all,” Stachenfeld said. “We were actually very pleased.”

Last year, a Tufts team received the highest award, the “Outstanding Winner” title. Despite no Tufts team reaching that level this year, having

Courtesy John Abel

Left to right, sophomores Kim Stachenfeld, John Abel and Jay Stotsky learned on Friday that they placed in the top 15 percent of over 2,000 participating teams in an international mathematics competition. four teams compete successfully in the intense competition was a major feat, according to Professor of Mathematics Misha Kilmer, co-coach of the teams.

“We’re happy with it, but I also think we’re going to be coming for the number-one spot next year,” Abel said. “We did well for our first year.

We’re eternally grateful for the help that we received before the contest.”

Abel added that the fact that all four Tufts teams received at least a successful participant award shows the strength of Tufts’ Department of Mathematics.

The department is proud of the stu-

dents, Kilmer said.

“To be able to perform so well for the third year in a row is quite incredible,” Kilmer said.

Kilmer and Assistant Professor of Mathematics Thomas Höft co-coached the Tufts teams for this year’s competition.

Kilmer said the fact that all the members of Tufts’ top team are sophomores is particularly noteworthy.

“The students performed exceptionally well under four days of intense pressure,” she said. “Neither one of those problems were easy. … They were difficult for different reasons.”

Tufts student’s firm secures energy consulting contract with city of Medford GRIDSMART

continued from page 1

fic lights in the city to more energyefficient LED lights and building a wind turbine behind the McGlynn Middle School as a “beacon of environmentalism,” Duques said.

Energy procurement firms like GridSmart began to form in 1997 after most states on the Eastern Seaboard restructured and deregulated their energy markets, Adler said. Prior to 1997, companies could not negotiate for different energy suppliers because the suppliers also owned the supply lines, a practice known as vertical integration, he said.

Since large energy users can now buy energy on the open market each month,

GridSmart and other similar firms act as facilitators between the users and the energy market, Adler said.

“Often people are in energy agreements they don’t understand that are heavily slanted against them,” Adler said.

“In many instances it’s about price and getting a better deal, but other times it’s about getting a less risky or more transparent deal.”

Adler worked with Medford using the same process he uses for all of GridSmart’s clients, he said. He compiled the city’s electricity and natural gas bills, related data and evaluated usage and costs, and then used this information to negotiate new contracts in the energy market.

McGlynn told the Daily that, with

Adler’s help, the city will save over $375,000 per year.

“He has a strong understanding of the energy market and is working hard to make sure that the city of Medford has fair contracts that save money in the long run,” McGlynn said of Adler.

Adler became involved in Medford’s energy usage while interning with the city of Salem as a part of his program at Tufts.

Medford was looking for a new energy procurement firm when GridSmart entered into a competitive bidding competition for the city’s contract, Adler said.

“We’re able to give the city twice the services for half the price,” Adler said.

The city chose GridSmart because Adler would devote more time for less money, and educate the city’s energy staff while in the process, according to Duques.

“It started with just talking to Adler and understanding where he was coming from and the service he was going to be able to provide with as much one-on-one time as possible,” Duques, who earned a master’s degree from the UEP program, told the Daily. “He’s able to give us the time, and educate us along the way.”

GridSmart has over 50 clients representing $100 million in energy costs, according to Adler. Notable clients include Yankee Candle, Enterprise Bank Corp and the city of Lancaster, Adler said.

Senate resolution calls for business manager to be hired in Athletics Department SPORTS

continued from page 1

contributes $53,000 toward club sports programs, according to de Klerk. The administration does not contribute any money to these programs.

Assistant Director of Athletics Branwen Smith-King said that miscommunication between the athletics staff and the Senate led her to reserve the money for Tier II club sports, which are not traditionally guaranteed Student Activities Fee funds or practice space, she said.

“I was told that [the $10,000] was supposed to be used for club sports as a whole, not just for Tier I, so I was setting it aside to be used for Tier II club sports to build awareness of their needs,” she said.

In the interim, $10,000 of the annual $53,000 the Senate gives to the Athletics Department for distribution to club teams has built up, unspent, over the past two years, de Klerk said.

Misallocation — or lack of allocation — of funds is a symptom of larger problems of financial transparency, accountability and miscommunication within the department, which could be alleviated with additional oversight, de Klerk argued.

Tufts is the only university in the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) without a single individual responsible for managing the

finances of its Athletics Department, according to the resolution, which passed in the Senate on with a vote of 27-0 with one abstention.

In addition, the document also states that all other Tufts departments with comparable budgets to that of the athletics department have business managers.

Smith-King and de Klerk both said that the administration of club sports’ finances and logistics is often given secondary priority among the athletics staff.

“They’ve been working really hard and seem to be doing on the whole a good job, but the problem is that the job is too big, and the resources they have don’t allow them to function properly,” de Klerk said. “[The School of Arts and Sciences] needs to meet us halfway and acknowledge that club sports is a very important part of Tufts athletics and the Tufts student experience.”

A small step in increasing transparency came last semester with a new system within athletics by which the department can track the funds allocated to each Tier I club sport with a separate account and ID number, de Klerk said.

This allows students to access records of how the department uses its club sport funding.

“Until this year, there was no reliable way of tracking the funds we gave athletics,” de Klerk said.

Yet she stressed that additional oversight is still needed to administer the

program and give support to the more than 620 students who participate in club sports.

“When there is a lack of communication and misallocation of funds, people end up having to pay more out of pocket,” de Klerk said. “Teams are limited in terms of the kind of equipment they can have. Students get in trouble because they don’t know the rules, and they don’t take advantage of resources because they aren’t communicated to them.”

Junior Alex Cooper, a captain of Tufts men’s Ultimate Frisbee team, said that while he thought the allocation process was fair, additional funding requests can take a long time to get approved. He said it took the Athletics Department three weeks to approve a request to enter an Ultimate tournament.

“Discrepancies happen. ...

Unfortunately, the administration is very bureaucratic; it’s completely understandable, but it’s frustrating when the money is needed for certain things, and we don’t get access to it,” he said.

Tufts’ club sports program began adding Tier II club sports while most NESCAC schools were cutting such programs, adding to the burden placed on the Athletics Department staff, according to Smith-King. Last year, she said, three new sports were added.

“We’ve been adding programs without

adding staff, but we do it in the spirit of being a team player. We want to help the students,” Smith-King said.

She supported the idea of increasing administrative support of club sports.

“Additional oversight needs to accompany additional programs,” Smith-King said. “It just makes sense. ... Extra help would make a difference in our office.”

De Klerk said it is the administration’s responsibility to ensure that its athletics programs function properly. It has taken a major step toward this in breaking ground on the Steve Tisch Sports and Fitness Center, but should not continue to let club sports fall to the wayside, she said.

“It’s not appropriate for the Student Activities Fee to pay for someone’s salary. [The School of Arts and Sciences] has the responsibility to step up,” de Klerk said. “With the new gym, the administration is showing that athletics is important, but if they don’t take care of this element of athletics, my fear is that most of the resources aren’t going to be used optimally.”

De Klerk believed that additional administrative help would allow club athletes and Athletics Department staff to work together more effectively in the future.

“We’re all trying to accomplish the same thing — to run a smooth program that benefits students. It’s just hard when wires get crossed.”

Features

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Path to tenure rigorous but worthwhile

by Sarah

Korones

Daily Editorial Board

When the economic recession hit, no one could blame university administrators for trying to cut corners. The cessation of construction projects and the slow spread of wireless on campus were taken with a grain of salt. But there may have been one corner in particular that administrators were wary of cutting back on: the hiring of tenuretrack professors. While the path to tenure is by no means a simple one, its benefits can often prove an integral part of the intellectual atmosphere of an academic institution.

Originally instated to ensure academic freedom among faculty, tenure refers to an academic’s right to not be terminated without just cause. It comes into play on multiple levels — tenure protects educators who may support a controversial line of thought, it provides them with the freedom to explore their own interests and it encourages them to devote time to helping junior colleagues who wish to establish themselves.

In other words, tenure leaves academics without the anxiety of precarious job security or pressure from university politics and gives them the flexibility needed to explore their intellectual interests.

“If you work for a government, they tell you what to do. If you work for a company, they tell you what to do. But the university really does not tell a tenured faculty member what they should be doing research on,” Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning Sheldon Krimsky said.

But every rose has its thorns, and the perks of tenure do indeed come with a price tag. Receiving tenure is a tedious process, both for applying professors and the board that reviews them. According to Krimsky, who will chair the Tenure and Promotion Committee for Arts, Sciences and Engineering starting in May, a professor who has been hired on the tenure track must apply after five years of work.

Along with the application, student evaluations and solicited letters from experts in the field are also submitted for review by a number of committees. Once the information is compiled, it goes through a slew of reviews, including the faculty members of the applicant’s department, a subcommittee of the Tenure and Promotion Committee and later the full body, the university’s senior deans, the provost, the Board of Trustees and finally the university president.

“It usually takes about a year,” Krimsky said. “It’s a very scrupulous process. It’s one of the most serious decisions any university can make.”

The complexity behind the process, Krimsky said, stems from the fact that the university, in offering an employee tenure, is effectively endowing the individual a lifetime of employment as long as they meet the general qualifications of the position.

“They’re not given a year-to-year contract or a multi-year contract, but they’re given life employment,” he said. “It’s a very unusual position to be in.”

And while it takes time and scrutiny for each committee to review an application, for the professors who are on the tenuretrack, the process is even more stressful. At the end of five years, these academics face one of two circumstances: earning tenure or losing their job.

“As an assistant professor, if you don’t get tenure you’re basically leaving the university — you’re done,” said Professor and Chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering Kurt Pennell, who received tenure in 2009.

“That’s the sort of pressure you feel as a junior faculty member.”

Associate Professor of Psychology Samuel Sommers said the stressful tenure application process he went through in 2009 was worth it in the end. With total security in his position, Sommers now feels free to research interests that are completely his own.

“It has enabled me to branch out in new directions with my scholarship,” Sommers

said in an email. “I can take on a high-risk research project for which I don’t know how the data will turn out without losing too much sleep in the process. And once I received tenure, I decided to write a general-audience book, something that isn’t really expected or prioritized in my field of psychology.”

For many universities facing troubled economic times, the lengthy tenure application process and the full benefits that must be paid to tenured professors are increasingly difficult to provide — a fact that has resulted in the increased hiring of adjunct professors, those who teach on a part-time, non-salaried basis.

According to Krimsky, however, the place for tenured professors on campus cannot be replaced.

“There’s no substitute for a person who is invested in lifetime employment at the university,” he said. “His or her role advising students and commitment to the governance of the university is very strong. You don’t get the same kind of commitment with an adjunct appointment, and usually adjuncts don’t go through the screening process that we go through when we appoint a tenured professor at a university.”

Provost and Senior Vice President Jamshed Bharucha, who is involved in the final stages of the tenure application process, stood firm in asserting that economic strain does not mean fewer tenured professors at Tufts.

“We’re committed to our tenure professoriate,” Bharucha said. “We’re an institution with a very strong student-faculty ratio. We’re committed to the permanent faculty who are committed to the institution.”

The benefits of working at a university, Krimsky said, are nearly endless, and allowing for tenure only encourages academics to pursue their work on campus.

“A lot of people want university jobs,” he said. “It’s probably the one place where they have the most autonomy to do the research and the teaching that they would like to do.”

Street Smarts: Tufts’ sartorial scene Ever notice the Jumbos on campus who put more into their wardrobes than a momentary thought about which pair of sneakers doesn’t clash with their sweatpants? We have, and some of their sartorial styles caught our eye.

Compiled by Romy Oltuski

Photos by Justin McCallum

“What I’m wearing, this sweater, is something a little different. I also like traditional and European looks.”

—Ke Nogo, Fletcher student

“I’d classify my style as preppy with necessary outerwear. I prioritize comfort over most other things. This sweater is absolutely my favorite thing. I got it at Top Shop in Edinburgh when I went there and brought nothing warm enough with me.”

—Molly Clarke, senior

“Suspenders make me happier than belts.

They even just sound more dramatic. Say it: suspenders! — Belt. The trick is you have to adjust them to the place you want them and then leave them there, and don’t touch them.”

—Minh Ha, sophomore

See Jumbo Slice at blogs.tuftsdaily.com for the full shoot.

Yuantee Zhu | What Would Yuantee Zhu?

Commonwealth’s casualty

D

ear Yuantee, Earlier this semester, I sought your advice on how to win the heart of the minx in my feminist philosophy class with enormous tats. I really dug your column, especially how you used your humor effectively and always in the context of your point. To take your advice, I mistakenly thought, was my best shot at getting laid.

After finding out her name (long, ethnic and difficult to spell), I soon learned that she was training to run the Boston Marathon. I thought I’d hit the jackpot.

Marathon Monday would be my big day.

I found her tracking number after a good deal of Internet surfing. The last update I’d get of her progress would be after 30 kilometers, so at the 32 mark, I’d be waiting.

I wore my friend’s girlfriend’s Tufts Class of 2011 T-shirt so she’d think I was a senior at Tufts, which would be so awesome. I soaked it in water to make it look as though I’d been sweating for 30 kilometers. I cut off the bottom half of my shirt to show her my situation, as you would Zhu. I was drunk.

She came running all beautiful over the hill, her playful jubblies rendered stoic by her sports bra, her flowing curls confined to a hypnotizing ponytail. It was a look I recognized from watching her at the gym.

I snuck onto the course and began jogging slowly, waiting for her to catch up in all her bodily glory.

When we finally met, I began making the loud noises that you advised me were necessary, biding my time before mustering the courage to address her by name.

I began seducing her as I ran, uttering her name repeatedly. She definitely recognized me, and I could tell by her surprised look that she was impressed, likely wondering what else she might have in common with the mysterious, marathonrunning boy from her feminist philosophy class. I took a break in between utterances of her name to tell her I liked to party. I asked her if she was drunk, and she didn’t respond, so I assumed she was. I told her how much I’d had to drink and that she was looking swell.

She slowed to a walk, and I faced the dilemma of whether to walk with her or to impress her by continuing to run. I settled on running circles around her as she walked. I took my shirt off and began waving it around, riling up the spectators to chant the name written on her arm — that long, loin-tickling name I’d been repeating for weeks.

But just as I thought we were really connecting, she caught a second wind, and I began to hit the wall. She pulled ahead, and I couldn’t keep up. I screamed her name one last time before collapsing at the 35-kilometer mark, while she disappeared over the horizon and Elvis came roaring past me.

I dreamt I woke up in the hospital and she was standing over me, her smiling face shining bright above her ample, cloudlike breasts. Instead, I woke up at the Burren alone, the scratchy guitars of legendary Tufts band Knives For Sale playing in the background. I thought it must be a non-Senior Pub Night Thursday, but then I realized that I was still dreaming and that I was actually in the hospital alone, listening to Knives For Sale on my iPod as an overweight nurse’s bosom laughed at me from above.

I’m going insane, Yuantee, fearing my muse to be a lost cause. I ran the marathon for her. What more could I Zhu? —Commonwealth’s Casualty CC, Not a lost cause. Train next time. At least, that’s what I would Zhu.

Yuantee Zhu is a senior majoring in biology.

He can be reached at Yuantee.Zhu@tufts.edu.

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Thursday, April 21, 2011

Weekender Arts & Living

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Weekender Feature

From book to screen: The adaptation process examined by

Allison Dempsey

Daily Editorial Board

Seventy-five years ago, a young Southern woman by the name of Margaret Mitchell was finishing up her only novel. That book, “Gone with the Wind” (1936), was an instant sensation, and Hollywood knew it would be.

The “Gone with the Wind” movie deal was signed before Mitchell’s book hit the shelves, and it took three years of cast changes, script revisions and filming before the final version was released in 1939. The film version of “Gone with the Wind” was one of the earliest successful book-to-movie adaptations and began a trend that would grow in popularity in the years to come.

Nowadays, it feels like an original screenplay is far more unusual than one adapted from a book. When Googling the name of a book, an IMDB.com page often comes up higher than an Amazon.com page. But can putting actors’ faces to characters’ names maintain the original goals and intentions of the author? Is a screenwriter able to formulate characters as well as a novelist? The Daily investigates the inclination and strong desire to turn written word into motion picture and the potential pitfalls of such a transformation.

The issue of length Back in 1924, Erich von Stroheim worked to adapt Frank Norris’ novel “McTeague: A Story of San Francisco” (1899) for the big screen. Since this was one of the pioneer ventures in book-to-movie adaptations, it was unclear exactly how to proceed. The finished product, a film entitled “Greed,” had a running time of approximately 16 hours.

Hours and hours of footage ended up on the cutting room floor until they had a final product: a mere two hours that was nearly impossible to understand because many important facets of the plot had to be cut at the last minute. “Greed” made it very obvious that much care and concern had to go into the scripts of adaptations in the future.

When “Gone with the Wind” had its turn on the big screen, Mitchell’s words were handled with great delicacy. She was involved in nearly every step of the writing process to ensure that her characters maintained their authenticity and original essences, according to Ellen Firsching Brown and John Wiley, Jr., in their new book, “Margaret Mitchell’s ‘Gone with the Wind:’ A Bestseller’s Odyssey from Atlanta to Hollywood” (2011).

Many people today are wary of this particular adaptation because of its length: With a running time of nearly four hours, it is an investment of both time and energy to get through the whole thing. A current edition of the book runs at 1,024 pages, so, as a result, the film had to be tailored immensely.

Many plot details and even some important characters were cut out entirely, yet this did not hinder this particular movie from being a great success.

As an expert on the “Gone With The Wind” transformation, Brown shared some thoughts on the book-to-movie process with the Daily via email. “If a book is beloved,” she said, as “Gone With The Wind” certainly is and was, “the audience wants

to experience that book in the visual form.

A director betrays that trust if he doesn’t stay true to the underlying story. Of course, interpretations and adjustments have to be made, but I think that the best adaptations are those that don’t run too far off course.”

Competing worlds So many movies released in the past several decades have their roots in literature that it is difficult to keep track of them all.

Many book versions of classics get lost in the thunder that their movie adaptations create, such as Mario Puzo’s “The Godfather” (1969) and Stephen King’s “The Shining” (1977). It would likely be difficult to find steadfast book loyalists for these tales who insisted on reading the original book before seeing the movie, as the films have garnered infinitely more press and attention than the published volumes.

A more common situation is for the fame and notoriety of the book to long predate the release of its movie version. Directors and producers want to be confident that their films will attract a significant audience, and so they wait for confirmation of the book’s popularity in terms of sales and press attention. In some cases, it can take decades to take the next step into film adaptation or to have the pieces fall into place just right.

Just this past weekend, the first installment of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” (1957) hit theaters, with two more installments on the way to make a complete trilogy. Drawing movies out into multiple volumes, even movies originating from books over half a century old, is an extremely effective way of maintaining interest and making money, as the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy (2001, ’02 and ’03) and the “Chronicles of Narnia” series (2005, ’08 and ’10) would indicate. These series were enormous undertakings on the part of everyone involved in production, yet it is difficult to think that they live up to everything J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis created in their own minds. The authors’ words allow readers to each envision their own fantasy worlds, a capability that is taken away when someone else does the imagining for the viewer.

Sensations and franchises It would be remiss to not reflect on some of the biggest series of today, in both literature and film. The “Harry Potter” and “Twilight” series are the reigning leaders worldwide in both media. Fans queued up for the releases of both the books and movies, and the anticipation mounted between segments of the tales. The books garnered their fame from their fantastical aspects and intriguing plots, keeping readers hooked for volume after volume. T h e movies created an

entirely different sort of adoration, one fueled by celebrity crushes, spectacular visual effects and impressive cinematography.

The “Harry Potter” franchise exemplifies the skeptical popular opinion on book-tomovie transformations. Despite the celebrity buzz and the media firestorm surrounding the film versions, fans generally believe that the movies don’t stand a chance of living up to the books In an email to the Daily, senior Maayan Simckes, vice president of the Tufts Harry Potter Society, shared her own opinions on the “Harry Potter” film adaptations. “There is no way to take a 759 page book and do it justice in a single film,” Simckes said. “[There are] awkward scenes made up to help fill out the movies’ sort of splotchy plot lines. For people who didn’t read the books, it can definitely be hard to follow a lot of the details that are kept in the films because they just don’t have that rich background the rest of us do who have read and reread the books over the years.”

Brown had her own weigh-in on the modern-day classics and how they differ from dealing with older and more historical works. “I think it’s less of a concern,” she said, “for pure fiction like [‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Twilight’] as opposed to historical fiction … For fantasy, it’s all a made-up world, so I don’t think there’s as much risk as for a book … where the success of the underlying story ties so directly to experiences based on reality.”

Personal interpretation No matter which way you look at it, loyal readers are likely to feel an inherent compulsion to see the film versions of their favorite books when the trailers are released and the actors announced.

More often than not, however, they are disappointed by some-

one else’s actualization of our favorite literary characters and plots. Maybe Reese Witherspoon is not quite right for the role of Marlena in the upcoming “Water for Elephants,” or perhaps Emma Stone isn’t gawky enough to play Miss Skeeter in this year’s “The Help.”

Authors create malleable characters and situations, allowing their readers to interpret physical descriptions and characteristics in their own way without losing the essence of the character that the author intended. As soon as a screenwriter tackles the book, he or she instantly and permanently mars the author’s aims with his or her own ideas. Harry Potter will forever be Daniel Radcliffe, and Edward Cullen can no longer be anyone else but Robert Pattinson. These figures permeate society so much that even book purists’ images cannot possibly escape unscathed.

So what’s a book loyalist to do? The bookto-movie trend appears to be approaching its peak rather than its nadir. Rather than criticizing someone else’s interpretation of a beloved tale or favorite story, it may be necessary to accept book-to-movie adaptations as a societal trend in the entertainment industry. It’s impossible to include every detail and facet of a book in a film. Adapters and screenwriters are producing and will continue to produce their best efforts, and no matter what, their work will reach an audience.

The box office would not disagree.

celebritywonder.ugo.com; harrypotterspage.com; Design by Elliot PHilips

The Tufts Daily

6

Weekender

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Comic Book Review

Comic book follow-up to ‘Black Dynamite’ worthy of its namesake by

Mitchell Geller

Daily Editorial Board

Within the first 10 pages of “Black Dynamite: Slave Island,” the comic book follow-up to the

Black Dynamite: Slave Island Brian Ash

Ape Entertainment 2009 film “Black Dynamite,” Black Dynamite kills a great white shark by stabbing it with its own fin. “He wasn’t the first great white motherf----- I had to take out with my bare hands,” Dynamite remarks.

“Hell, he wasn’t even the second.”

In most comic books this would be a metaphor for white people, but in the world of Black Dynamite (“The Greatest Black Hero of Them All!”), there’s a good chance that he actually means sharks.

“Black Dynamite” pays homage to the blaxploitation films of the 1970s. The movie was pitch-perfect, starring Michael Jai White as the titular Dynamite, a kung-fu-fighting, former C.I.A. agent out to avenge his brother’s death and clean up the streets. “He’s a mean motherf----and he’s super bad,” his theme song states — reprinted in the comic book to remind us who we’re dealing with. And, if it’s possible, he’s even badder as a comic book hero.

The film was a modest success, but the fan base was hungry for more and the film’s creators were happy to oblige. “Slave Island,” written by “The Boondocks’” Brian

Ash, is likely the closet thing we’ll get to a sequel any time soon.

The book is drawn to look like the comic books of the ’70s. It’s not flashy or bold or bright, a far cry from the styles that are popular in comics today. The colors are washed out, and the inking is perfectly imperfect. If readers didn’t know any better, it would be easy to mistake the book as the product of another time.

The writers clearly love their character and put him in a bizarre situation perfectly suited to let a badass black hero kick the maximum amount of gluteus maximus possible. “Slave Island” finds Black Dynamite investigating the titular “Slave Island,” which turns out to be a theme resort run by the nefarious Noah Hicks. As the name suggests, the resort caters to a clientele that wishes to return to simpler times.

Simpler, more racist, times.

The island has a capacity of a few hundred guests and 2,000 slaves, who are all made to think that they’re living in the pre-Civil War south. Because the theme is Southern Plantation. It’s a strange conceit, but it sets Black Dynamite up to say things like, “There’s just something about the word slavery that really pisses me off” and “Looks like I’m gonna have to do this whole slave revolt by my damn self.”

And then he does.

The comic book is perfectly paced and hits the blend of comedy and action that made the film so enjoyable. By the time the villain Hicks calls in the cavalry (literally the U.S. Army, procured through a phone call to Richard

Nixon), Black Dynamite has killed the aforementioned shark, seduced two women, held court with Alex Haley, killed countless goons and started a slave revolt.

There is no subtlety in the world of Black Dynamite: Everything is good and evil, as it were, black and white. When Black Dynamite confronts Noah Hicks, he rides into Hick’s office on a horse, holding a torch. It’s one of the book’s most striking, hilarious images: a full page illustration of a torch-bearing, shirtless Black Dynamite on a massive stallion in the middle of Hicks’ control center screaming at the villain who stands in the foreground hunched over a desk, “Noah Hicks, I’m here to burn this motherf----- down!”

The book ends with a cliffhanger, which, coupled with the cover’s declaration that “Slave Island” is “The sensational First Issue!” seems to contradict Ars Nova and Ape Entertainment’s claim that it’s a one-off issue, suggesting that we will get more of Black Dynamite in the near future.

The end of Black Dynamite’s theme song declares: “He’ll be hauling you out with the rest of the trash, if your mouth write a check that your a-- can’t cash!”

Turning Black Dynamite into a comic book character was a bold move, but Ash, along with the character’s creators, definitely cashed the check. It’s a hilarious book that is as smart as it is ridiculous, and we can all feel safer knowing that Black Dynamite is out there cleaning up the streets and making comic book stores a little more interesting again.

Courtesy Ape Entertainment

Black Dynamite will save the world and show off his abs, at the same time.

What’s up this weekend?

Weekender Interview | Jeff Pinkner and J.H. Wyman

Looking to make your weekend artsy? Check out these events!

WOODSTOCK 2011: Channel your inner flower child uphill tomorrow.

WOODSTOCK 2011 will feature live music, tie-dying, giveaways and free food. (Friday at 7 p.m. at the Res Quad. Admission is free.)

African Caribbean Culture Show: The African Students Organization and the Caribbean Club celebrate culture and history through music, dance and poetry. S-Factor and Envy will be among the performing groups. (Friday at 7 p.m. in Cohen Auditorium. Admission is free.)

Courtesy Smallz and Raskind/Fox

The cast of Fox’s sci-fi drama ‘Fringe.’

‘Fringe’ producers promise shocking season finale by

Ben Phelps

changed from our previous plan.

about who dies?

Q: [You] have a history of really bold finales. A couple things have come out about what we can expect.

Wyman: Well, at some point you have to say, “All right, they’re driving,” and you’ve got to go with it. There’s been so many things that people have assumed or thought from various sources that weren’t true. I mean, “Fringe” always does things the way you don’t expect.

At least we try to. So it’s going to be effective, and I think it will be selfexplanatory.

Daily Editorial Board

“Fringe” executive producers and showrunners Jeff Pinkner and J.H. Wyman recently participated in a conference call with reporters to discuss their sci-fi drama, which currently airs Fridays at 9 p.m. on Fox. The two shared their thoughts on setting an end date for the show, what to expect from the season finale and their favorite alternate universe nicknames.

Q: I’m curious, given the relatively early renewal news, did that allow you to make some wholesale changes to the season finale? How deep into it were you at that point?

J.H. Wyman: We didn’t really change course at all. Jeff and I had a plan for the series, for the season this year, and we just went along with that. Nothing has

Jeff Pinkner: What has come out?

Q: Well, we know that somebody we love is going to die … There’s talk of introducing a third world … What can you say about any of that?

Pinkner: Half of that is true. Somebody who we all love deeply will die. We’re not introducing a third world. There’s our world, and then there’s the world that Peter was taken from as a baby. We still have plenty of story … to tell just in those two worlds. Maybe at some point in the future there will be a third world, but not yet.

Q: What challenges did you guys face as you were putting together the end of this season?

Q: How pissed are people going to be

see FRINGE, page 8

Wyman: Well, we had so many emotional things to pay off. We’ve been really sort of cognizant of finding all the emotion that we can to logically come to a conclusion that would be satisfying, and

The Sing-Up!: Anchord presents its final a cappella show of the semester, featuring a comedy skit and music by Seal, Hoobastank, Ingrid Michaelson and more. (Friday at 8 p.m. in Goddard Chapel. Admission is free.)

Major: Undecided Lives With Your Family and Your Wife Hates It: Tufts’ sketch comedy group performs its latest set, including sketches “Jerry, You’re Sterile,” “Gary Gray: Professional Sportscaster” and “Duct Tape,” among others.

(Friday at 8 and 9:30 p.m. in Braker 001. Admission is free.)

Wanito: PeaceTones, a nonprofit working with artists in developing countries to combat poverty, presents the 2010 “Haiti Sings” competition winner, Wanito, as he performs at Tufts. (Friday at 10 p.m. in Hotung Cafe. Admission is free.)

Sorry for Partying: Check out Tufts Dance Collective’s spring show, featuring dances to songs

by Bruno Mars, Ke$ha and Kanye West. (Saturday at 6 p.m. in Cohen Auditorium. One free ticket with a Tufts ID.) —compiled by the Daily Arts Department

The Tufts Daily

Thursday, April 21, 2011

7

Weekender

HUMANIST FORUM II MUSLIM

7:00PM—9:00PM FREE ADMISSION THURSDAY APRIL 21, 2011 ROBINSON HALL ROOM 253

Eboo Patel AFRICAN METHODIST EPISCOPALIAN

SIKH

EVANGELICAL

JEWISH

ATHEIST

JENNIFER BAILEY

VALARIE KAUR

CHRIS LATONDRESSE

RABBI OR ROSE

CHRIS STEDMAN

2011 Wellington Burnham Lecture

The China Syndrome: Local Labor Market Effects of Import Competition in the United States

David Autor Professor of Economics, MIT David Autor is a Professor and Associate Department Head of the Massachusetts Institute of TechͲ nology Department of Economics. He is also a Faculty Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and Editor in Chief of the Journal of Economic Perspectives (published by the American Economic Association), and has served on the Board of Editors at the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics and the Journal of Labor Economics.

Professor Autor received a B.A. in Psychology from Tufts University in 1989 and a Ph.D. in Public Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in 1999.

His current fields of specialization include human capital and earnings inequality, labor market impacts of technological change and globalization, disability insurance and labor supply, and temporary help and other intermediated work arrangements.

Professor Autor is the recipient of an NSF CAREER award for his research on labor market intermediation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship, and the Sherwin Rosen Prize in 2008 for outstanding contributions in the field of Labor Economics. He is also a Fellow of the Society of Labor Economists and was a recipient of both the John T. Dunlop Outstanding Scholar Award given by the Labor and Employment Relations AssociaͲ tion (2006) and MIT Undergraduate Economics Association Teaching Award (2005). ProͲ fessor Autor is currently a member of the American Economic Association’s Standing ComͲ mittee on Oversight and Operation of Programs (SCOOP). Prior to obtaining his Ph.D., Professor Autor spent three years directing efforts in San Francisco and South Africa to teach computer skills to economiͲ cally disadvantaged children and adults.

April 21, 2011 4:30—6:00 p.m.

Winthrop Street Hall 51 Winthrop Street *Reception to follow

The Tufts Daily

8

Weekender

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Top Ten | Books that should never be made into movies With the opening weekends of movie adaptations of “Water for Elephants” and “The Help” around the corner, we at the Daily got to thinking about which pieces of literature we would hate to see on the silver screen.

would start to get pretty repetitive as soon as we entered the “re”s. No pun intended.

thoughts — in a movie, you’re just watching a pond freeze over.

8. Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” (1951): To make it low-budget, the screen could simply flash “smoke more drugs.”

10. Snooki’s “A Shore Thing”: Excessive tanning, boozing, foul language and rampant sex on the Jersey Shore. No movie necessary — we can just turn on MTV to see that.

7. Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” (1925): Contemporary audiences may not prove fully sympathetic to a movie about Hitler’s “struggle.”

5. Orson Scott Card’s “Ender’s Game” (1985): Not only would a film never live up to the classic, but does anyone really want to see 11-year-olds kill other 11-year-olds?

9. Webster’s Dictionary: Not only would the movie version last about 10 years, but things

6. Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden” (1854): It’s boring enough to watch the pond freeze over when you have access to the narrator’s

4. Philip Roth’s “The Breast” (1972): We feel like the Kafka allusions may be lost in an NC-17 film about a breast trying to penetrate young girls with its nipple.

3. The Kama Sutra: The plot is just too complex — viewers wouldn’t be able to handle

all the twists and turns the story (and actors) would take. Though if James Cameron started developing a 3-D adaptation, we’d probably buy a ticket.

2. Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea” (1952): Scene one — the old man boards his boat. Scenes two through 67 — the old man sits in his boat. We won’t spoil the ending.

1. Stephenie Meyer’s “Twilight” (2005) Oh, wait...

—compiled by the Daily Arts Department

Of character nicknames on ‘Fringe,’ executive producers say ‘Walternate’ is favorite FRINGE

continued from page 6

at the same time sort of suggest things are going to go further in a different direction … So challenging only in that we were trying to take out things, like we had too much story that we would like to tell.

Pinkner: Ultimately, we try to write stuff that we would want to see [and] really … make you reconsider everything you had seen before. … One of the themes that we constantly go back to is perception and the different natures of reality and choices and how those different choices branch off down different paths.

Q: So you guys have a game plan?

If you were given the opportunity to give an end date, kind of like “Lost” (2004-10) was given, would you go for that? If so, how many seasons do you see the story arc of “Fringe” going towards?

Pinkner: I think that we have an ending in mind. We said this before, it’s sort of like a file folder. Like there are chapters that we can tell to round out that ending, that we can drop in before we get to the ending,

that will just make it richer, and at the same time aren’t necessarily required storytelling for the ending to work and be satisfying.

Q: How do you guys plan to narratively balance over here and over there? I know you, of course, in the past have done some episodes where we had a little bit of merging per episode. Is that what we should look forward to as we come to the finale?

Pinkner: Absolutely. The run up to the finale and the finale impacts both universes directly.

We will be going back and forth within episodes.

Q: I was curious as to how you came up with the nickname for all the alternate versions of our characters.

Wyman: Basically we just started — when we start[ed] ripping it, the writer’s room, we were here, we just started calling them so as not to confuse each other we would say, “A Olivia” and “B Olivia” I mean, it was that simple. And so we would say, “And then B Olivia goes here, so then we

Courtesy Gage Skidmore via CC

‘Fringe’ executive producers Jeff Pinkner, left, and J.H. Wyman. just started writing it on the boards, and then it became B Olivia was Bolivia, and then we started calling her that.

Then Walternate, one of the writers, I believe it was Ethan Gross, came up with the concept of calling him Walternate, which was obviously stuck. …

It became really fun, actually.

Q: Do you have any personal favorites?

Pinkner: Walternate’s my favorite. Joel?

Wyman:

Yes.

I

would

say

Walternate is the one that it just sort of embodies who that character is, and it’s sort of like it’s inevitable. The others all feel — and the online community, too, has their own favorites; Bolivia or Altlivia. But Walternate is just the one that you hear it and you just know it’s right.

The Tufts Daily

Thursday, April 21, 2011

9

Weekender

Movie Trailer Roundup

Mitchell Geller | Makes it Rain

“Abduction”: If your friends strong-armed you into watching the “Twilight” (2008, ’08 and ’09) movies like ours did, you’ll be disappointed by the number of bullets Taylor Lautner manages to avoid in the “Abducted” trailer — what if they were silver?

Gimmicky, death-defying stunts aside, you can tell this is Lautner’s endeavor into “real acting” because he’s wearing a shirt throughout the entire trailer. The film, which seems to marry the plots of “The Bourne Identity” (2002) and Caroline Cooney’s 1990 novel, “The Face on the Milk Carton,” presents lame action and a mope fest worthy of, well, a “Twilight” star. Against a montage of attempted flirting, rad pool parties and wrestling matches, Lautner laments, “Inside, I just feel like I’m a stranger in my own life.”

One creepy abducted-kids-meet-aging-software website later, it becomes clear that he probably is, and suddenly, cops are knocking on Lautner’s door, some major FBI butt is getting kicked, and Lautner, who is apparently a BFD to national defense for unexplained reasons, is on the run with a lady friend, a sexy silver car (Cullen envy?) and a moody hoodie.

Parents …

(Pt. 2)

trailers.apple.com

trailers.apple.com

“Crazy, Stupid, Love.”: It’s barely been six years since “Hitch” (2005) hit the big screen, but with Hollywood’s remake epidemic, it comes as little surprise that studios would try once again to bank on a successful formula. Enter “Crazy, Stupid, Love.” — a movie that promises to be a mix between “Hitch,” “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” (2003-07) and, to a lesser degree, an ode to Ryan Gosling’s abs.

The story follows a young, hot playboy (Gosling) who gives tips to an older, less suave male (Steve Carell) on how to score with the opposite sex. While the majority of women will seemingly sleep with anything in a fitted suit jacket, the actual love interests (Emma Stone and Julianne Moore) prove to be more complex, suggesting that one in 10 women may actually have a brain. “Crazy, Stupid, Love.” is a clear step down from Ryan Gosling’s recent “Blue Valentine” and Julianne Moore’s “The Kids are Alright” — but we guess movie stars have bills to pay, too.

“The Beaver”: Walter Black (Mel Gibson) has lost all hope. He’s not successful, he’s not happy and his wife ( Jodie Foster) has kicked him out of the house indefinitely. But right when things are looking their worst, a miracle happens: He finds a beaver puppet in a dumpster and begins working through his issues by talking to it.

Soon enough, he’s taking The beaver everywhere he goes (including the shower) and communicating with others through him. He even quits his job and leaves The beaver in charge.

While playing crazy isn’t much of a stretch for Gibson, we’re still confident he’ll deliver the laughs and tears like he always does.

And yes, this movie is actually real — Foster directed it herself.

trailers.apple.com

trailers.apple.com

“Rise of the Planet of the Apes”: This is Hollywood’s seventh entry in the “Planet of the Apes” film franchise, yet it seems like they still haven’t gotten it right.

First off, there are far fewer apes in the world than humans, so it seems unlikely that they could overthrow gun-toting armies just because they gain a little intelligence. Not to mention the United States’ annual defense and military budget, which alone is roughly $1 trillion. Surely some of that must be spent on antimonkey weaponry.

Secondly, why do half the shots look like they were left over from “King Kong” (2005)? Computer animated primates running around and climbing on buildings doesn’t have to be revisited.

James Franco stars in this prequel and even his acting can’t save all the overdramatic clips. People keep saying things like, “Some things aren’t meant to be changed!” And there are enough intense reaction shots to make these generic phrases seem groundbreaking. Apes aren’t humans, huh? Thank you, Brian Cox, for clearing that up, because we really weren’t sure for a second there.

I

“The Help”: Originally a novel by Kathryn Stockett, “The Help” (2009) was the talk of suburban book groups for the past year.

The movie trailer was just released, and you can almost hear the collective soccer-mom shriek and the rustle of the calendar pages as group outings are planned and babysitters hired. People love when their favorite books become movies (see Weekender feature), and this will certainly be no exception.

Focusing on a small town in Mississippi, the story follows a journalist attempting to give credence to the black maids of the town, often slighted and ignored by their white employers.

Our generation recognizes Emma Stone as the girl who wouldn’t sleep with Jonah Hill in “Superbad” (2007), but in the lead role as a crusading 1960s southern journalist, she may have a chance to prove herself.

imdb.com

—compiled by the Daily Arts Department

From the Office of the Tufts Daily Dear Lil B, At Coachella, you announced that your next album will be called “I’m Gay.” This was no surprise from you, The BasedGod, because you’re a crazy person and have a habit in your songs of calling yourself all sorts of things that you really are not (see: “I’m Paris Hilton,” “Justin Bieber,” “Ellen DeGeneres”). But people are sort of freaking out.

You still claim that you’re fully straight, but at this point it seems like

it might be safe to just come out of the closet already.

There are no gay rappers. Well, no openly gay rappers, anyway. But that’s ridiculous. Even if the “10 percent of everyone is gay” statistic is total B.S., there have to be some rap performers who are homosexuals. And it really wouldn’t be a big deal if you were, you know, gay. Hip-hop is no longer that super macho. Like, there are pictures and videos of Lil Wayne kissing Birdman. Cam’ron wears pink velour tracksuits constantly. Fabolous’ name

is Fabolous.

We’re not saying that these guys are gay, but they probably wouldn’t mind if you — or anyone else in the rap game — came out.

One way or another, we can’t wait for “I’m Gay,” and its inevitable sequel “But Seriously You Guys, I’m Gay,” which might be a bit harder to play off.

Love (but not like that), —The Daily Arts Department

n my other life I’m a student of science — in May, I’ll be graduating with a B.S. in psychology and English — so I took this very seriously. I’m nothing if not a man of my word: Just as I promised I would last week, I sent my dad a selection of rap songs, and just as I predicted, he was more than willing to give them a listen and share his thoughts. The results of my experiment will be presented in (sort of) APA format.

Methods: Participants: The participant in the present study was one white male. He was selected because he was my father and had little to no knowledge of, or experience with, hip-hop.

Materials: The participant listened to nine songs, which allowed researchers to extrapolate opinion on numerous long-standing hip-hop debates without the participant’s explicit knowledge. Participants were asked to rate enjoyment of each song on a Likert scale ranging from one (“do not like at all”) to seven (“liked very much”), as well as to rank the songs in order of favoritism (he didn’t do this).

The songs were Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind” (2009), The Notorious B.I.G.’s “Juicy” (1994), Tupac Shakur’s “Changes” (1998), Kanye West’s “Diamonds From Sierra Leone (Remix)” (Featuring Jay-Z) (2005), Lil Wayne’s “Right Above It” (Featuring Drake) (2010), Nas’s “N.Y. State of Mind” (1994), The Root’s “Baby” (2006) and Wu-Tang Clan’s “C.R.E.A.M.” (1993). The songs were all presented as digital mp3 files.

Design: The current experiment wasn’t really an experiment and no manipulation was done.

Procedure: The participant was asked to listen to the songs at his convenience and rate them.

Results: The following are the participant’s responses: “‘Empire State of Mind’ — Timeless references; complex production; good imagery; interesting: 6.” “‘Juicy’ — self-serving; looking for approval; too long; materialistic: 3.” “‘Changes’ — interesting presentation and message: 4. “‘Diamonds From Sierra Leone (Remix)’ — lots of energy; keeps your attention: 5.” “‘Right Above It’ — So what!!: 2. “‘N.Y. State of Mind’ — What’s the point!!: 2.” “‘Turn My Swag On’ — BORING!!: 2.” “‘Baby’ — sounds like a ’60s oldie — good beat: 5.” “‘C.R.E.A.M.’ — You and everyone else!!: 3.”

The mean rating overall was 3.56 (S.D. = 1.51).

Discussion: Based on the participant’s rankings of the nine songs he listened to, it is clear that, while he doesn’t totally hate it, he is not a fan of hip-hop. As we predicted, the song he found most enjoyable was Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind,” literally the most parentfriendly rap song of all time.

According to his ratings, the participant prefers West Coast hip-hop to East Coast. He agrees with the outcome of Jay-Z and Nas’s beef from which Jay-Z ultimately emerged the victor. He prefers Kanye West to Lil Wayne, hates Soulja Boy just as much as most people do (myself not included), dislikes Wu-Tang Clan and thinks it’s a good thing that The Roots are playing Spring Fling (It is a good thing, but haters finna hate.)

Future research should delve further into the East Coast/West Coast debate and examine other subgenres and groups (i.e., Southern rappers, Midwest rappers, backpack rappers, blog rappers, cocaine rappers).

My dad was a great sport, and I’d like to take a second to thank him here.

Hip-hop isn’t an easy genre to break into if you have no experience with it — I mean, even I hated it when I was younger. I don’t agree with his assessments, for the most part (“Juicy,” “N.Y. State of Mind” and “C.R.E.A.M.” are some of the best rap songs ever written), but it is fascinating to see the trends that emerged in these results. He was more drawn to current mainstream/pop hip-hop than old school “real” hip-hop, for example: The machine is doing its job, and the shiny poppy safe stuff really is perfectly tailored to a mindbogglingly wide audience.

Works Cited: Really? You thought I’d go this far? Sorry I’m not sorry.

Mitchell Geller is a senior majoring in psychology and English. He can be reached at Mitchell.Geller@tufts.edu

The Tufts Daily

10

THE TUFTS DAILY Alexandra W. Bogus Editor-in-Chief

Editorial Mick Brinkman Krever Saumya Vaishampayan Managing Editors Martha Shanahan Executive News Editor Michael Del Moro News Editors Nina Ford Ben Gittleson Amelie Hecht Ellen Kan Daphne Kolios Kathryn Olson Matt Repka Corinne Segal Jenny White Brent Yarnell Elizabeth McKay Assistant News Editors Laina Piera Rachel Rampino Minyoung Song Derek Schlom Executive Features Editor Jon Cheng Features Editors Sarah Korones Emilia Luna Romy Oltuski Alexa Sasanow Falcon Reese Assistant Features Editors Angelina Rotman Sarah Strand Amelia Quinn Ben Phelps Executive Arts Editor Emma Bushnell Arts Editors Mitchell Geller Rebecca Santiago Matthew Welch Allison Dempsey Assistant Arts Editors Andrew Padgett Joseph Stile Ashley Wood Rebekah Liebermann Bhushan Deshpande Larissa Gibbs David Kellogg Rachel Oldfield Jeremy Ravinsky Daniel Stock Devon Colmer Erin Marshall Alex Miller Louie Zong Craig Frucht Kerianne Okie Michael Restiano Joshua Youner

Executive Op-Ed Editor Op-Ed Editors

Editorial | Letters

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Editorial

Club sports program needs financial overseer

Following a lack of administrative communication that resulted in a failure to properly allocate funds to club sports, the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate on April 10 passed a resolution calling for the university to appoint an administrator who would oversee the finances of the Athletics Department.

The miscommunication — which occurred over the past two years and involved confusion between the Senate and athletics administrators regarding which funds went to Tier I and Tier II club sports — resulted in $10,000 of the club sports budget remaining overlooked and unused.

The failure to properly allocate these funds reflects a need for an administrator to oversee the management of funds for club sports, and the university should follow the Senate’s recommendation. Currently, various members of the Athletics Department work to manage the budgets for sports at all levels, including varsity teams, Tier I club sports and intramurals (Tier II club sports aren’t guaranteed funding), yet it is clear that club sports tend to fall by the wayside in this setting. Due to the sheer amount of money that is involved in the club sports budget, as well as the complexity of the programs various entities, it is necessary that someone oversee the budget as a priority, rather than

relegating this task as a secondary job to several athletics administrators who have other responsibilities. Because so many different teams fall under the club sports umbrella, it is already innately difficult to keep track of how the budget is being balanced, and the fact that this responsibility is spread out only adds to the confusion.

Club sports are treated as student organizations, and, as such, their budget comes from the Student Activities Fee. The unspent $10,000 means that students who are graduating this year will never get to reap the benefits of the money they contributed to it due to administrative issues. If administrators are going to be in charge of these funds, it needs to be ensured that the handling of student money will take priority.

According to TCU Treasurer Kate de Klerk, the senator who authored the resolution, there are some differing opinions regarding whether the Senate and Athletics Department should propose a business director to oversee all of athletics’ financial operations, or if the position should focus solely on club sports. In a conversation with the Daily, de Klerk, a junior, explained that while the Senate’s resolution encourages the installation of a business director to oversee the finances of the entire department, the

Athletics Department has tended to support a position that would focus primarily on club sports. She added that the Senate and the Athletics Department would have to meet and agree on a shared goal before lobbying the administration.

The Daily supports the appointment of a business director specifically charged with the overseeing of the club sports budget, as opposed to one who would be involved with all athletics finances. The Athletics Department currently has full-time staff members in charge of finances, and there is no reason to alter a system that is already functioning well. Additionally, if a business director were to oversee the finances for all of athletics, it may lead to the continued tendency to put club sports on the back burner, which is the exact problem that this position’s purpose would aim to avoid.

Tufts’ club sports program is a complex operation that encompasses a large portion of the student body, and it is a large enough entity that it merits its own financial director.

Student interest in club sports is only increasing, and the Senate has reacted accordingly in passing this resolution. It is time for the university to do its part to help sustain club sports and ensure that student money is properly handled and allocated.

erin marshall

Cartoonists

Editorialists

Ben Kochman Executive Sports Editor Philip Dear Sports Editors Lauren Flament Claire Kemp Alex Lach Alex Prewitt Daniel Rathman Noah Schumer Ethan Sturm Matthew Berger Assistant Sports Editors Aaron Leibowitz David McIntyre Ann Sloan Meredith Klein Virginia Bledsoe Jodi Bosin Danai Macridi Dilys Ong James Choca Lane Florsheim Meagan Maher Justin McCallum Oliver Porter Ashley Seenauth Aalok Kanani Andrew Morgenthaler

Executive Photo Editor Photo Editors

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Off the Hill | Ohio State University

Reconsider where you give, don’t reconsider giving

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by

Anusree Garg The Lantern

Greg Mortenson, author of “Three Cups of Tea” — a memoir that has comfortably remained on The New York Times best-sellers list for the past 219 weeks — might be a philanthropic phony.

Last Sunday, “60 Minutes” ran an expose on Mortenson, blowing the whistle on his charity, his book and sullying his veracious reputation. “60 Minutes” revealed that Mortenson’s charity, the Central Asia Institute, “spends more money domestically promoting the importance of building schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan than it does actually constructing and funding them overseas.” When visiting 30 of the 141 schools built under the auspices of Mortenson, “60 Minutes” found that half functioned reasonably well, but the other half were either poorly constructed, used as storage facilities, or even nonexistent.

The very plot of Mortenson’s book is dubious. Mortensen claimed that he was held for eight days by the Taliban; “60 Minutes” was able to track down a few of his supposed captors who revealed that they were not kidnappers[;] rather they were his hosts and

they were never part of the Taliban. One of his alleged captors is actually the director of a research tank in Pakistan. Clad in western business attire[,] he refuted Mortenson’s assertion saying, “This is totally false, and he is lying.”

As an admirer inspired by Mortenson’s dogged commitment to children’s education in Afghanistan and Pakistan, hearing “60 Minutes” besmirch his character and his work was wholly disheartening. But this disillusionment of an exemplary philanthropist is both necessary and imperative.

Philanthropy is not all peaches. All people, Samaritans or not, have their own interests. The degree of this self-interest needs to measured.

Fortunately, a few websites perform this measurement. Charity Navigator “works to advance a more efficient and responsive philanthropic marketplace” by analyzing the “financial health” of more than 5,000 American charities. It does this by sharing data on the expense breakdown for the charity, rating its organizational efficiency, even disclosing the charity’s total revenue and the salary of the head director. Similarly, The American Institute of Philanthropy, a charity watchdog, ranks organizations based on

their financial performance determining how generous a charity truly is.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported on charity scams involving the crisis in Japan. Fraudulent charities using heartrending language spammed the emails of benevolent souls. Donors took the bait and thousands of dollars went in the pockets of the unscrupulous miscreants, not to victims in dire need. Scams like this are completely avoidable. Donations are desired in a multitude of the world’s problem areas — a simple check can prevent the profits of charlatans and maximize the utility of each dollar by donating to only the most efficient and altruistic charities.

Mortenson, whether the “60 Minutes” investigation rings true, has done a good deed — he has helped many children in Afghanistan and Pakistan obtain an education they otherwise would not receive.

However, the extent of his good work has been enormously inflated. Shattering the sacrosanct image of charities does not mean losing hope and faith in philanthropy.

One must replace blind-giving with a realistic perspective. Reconsider where you give, don’t reconsider giving. Simply, remember Reagan’s catch phrase, “trust, but verify.”

Correction The photo credit in yesterday’s article “Boston Ave. Boloco ends delivery service” incorrectly named Meredith Klein as the photographer. In fact, Danai Macridi took the photo.

The Tufts Daily is a nonprofit, independent newspaper, published Monday through Friday during the academic year, and distributed free to the Tufts community. EDITORIAL POLICY Editorials represent the position of The Tufts Daily. Individual editors are not necessarily responsible for, or in agreement with, the policies and editorials of The Tufts Daily. The content of letters, advertisements, signed columns, cartoons and graphics does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Tufts Daily editorial board.

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Thursday, April 21, 2011

11

Op-Ed

The truth about Facebook ‘privacy’ by

Brendan Fadden

Are you worried about your privacy on Facebook? Currently, 85 percent of college students have a Facebook account. Many employers check potential employees’ Facebook profiles to get an idea of what kind of people they are. Compromising pictures and comments left by friends can ruin job opportunities and consequently change your life. Many graduates in the job market have learned the hard way that it might be a good idea to put concerns of personal privacy above the social-networking aspect of Facebook.

Facebook has become the poster-child for online privacy issues, especially after the recent decision by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to silently introduce permission for third-party applications to access private information from user accounts. These applications can now access a user’s phone number and address if the user has recorded this information in their profile settings, even if it is not made public to everyone.

Those users who are not aware of these changes are in jeopardy of having their private information sold to others. According to CBS News, 15 privacy and consumer protection agencies recently filed complaints against Facebook with the Federal Trade Commission. These companies stated that Facebook “manipulates privacy settings to make users’ personal information available for commercial use.”

In addition to selling personal information to third-party companies, some users of the site reported that their private chats were accessible to everyone on their contact list, which makes people wonder if the Facebook chat feature is secure at all. The Early Show on Saturday morning exposed five critical breaches of online privacy: privacy settings changed to default mode after each site redesign (something that happens a few times a year), ads may contain malware, friends can unknowingly make one’s online privacy vulnerable and scammers are creating fake profiles for nefarious means. CBS News also reports that a British police agency stated that the number of Facebook-related crimes they have dealt with in the last year has increased by 346 percent. They go on to

facebook.com

report that researchers at VeriSign iDefense Security Intelligence Services discovered that a hacker who had illegally obtained access to about 1.5 million Facebook accounts was selling them on the Internet. InsideFacebook. com, a website that analyzes and shares information on the latest news and strategies of Facebook, published an article revealing that Facebook has been pressured by different governments to change its privacy policies after governments feel that Facebook is releasing too much private information. Last year, the Canadian Privacy Commissioner forced Facebook to accommodate certain privacy changes.

Playing Farmville in Tisch Library instead of doing homework is something I am sure a lot of students can relate to. But even the fun quizzes and games that we occupy ourselves with instead of doing homework may leave us susceptible to fraud and identity

theft. Although they may seem harmless, in actuality, the applications powering these quizzes are able to gather more information about us, which then may be sold to thirdparty companies. Facebook wants users to supply more and more information to them, and in return, Facebook sells this information to advertisers. Some users have even gone as far as creating websites dedicated to highlight the shortcomings of Facebook’s privacy control.

In response to the distasteful publicity, Facebook stated that it would come out with a feature that would address the privacy issue.

The company reported, “We believe there is tremendous value in giving people the freedom and control to take information they put on Facebook with them to other Web sites.

We enable people to share this information only after they explicitly authorize individual applications to access it. This system of user

permissions was designed in collaboration with a number of privacy experts.” Despite this, Facebook is still selling your information to third-party companies. It seems that Facebook is essentially turning into an online phone book.

Hacking is also a huge problem that can jeopardize one’s future and online privacy.

A common scam, known as a 419 scam, is when someone hacks one of your real friends’ accounts, then messages you, claiming to be them, saying they lost their wallet and need some money to be wired over to them. This money ends up in the hackers hands, often in some far away third-world country. I am sure many people have witnessed or even experienced firsthand their own account or that of a friend being hacked into. The hackers often walk away with sometimes sensitive and very personal information, or leave behind embarrassing wall posts on friends’ and family members’ walls.

The ethical wrong doings of Facebook surrounding the issue of them selling their customers’ personal information is profound and should not be overlooked. If governments are requiring that Facebook change its privacy policies, then you, too, should be aware of and concerned about the circumstances that require these policies. The Wall Street Journal reported that “the privacy problems are piling up as the company, which is approaching 500 million users, grapples with how to build new services off all the data provided by users without offending users.

The company is focused on ways to turn that vast amount of data into a multi-billion dollar ad-business.” Facebook is trying to not offend its users, but in my opinion, any selling of another person’s personal information is offensive and ethically wrong. Facebook is a business that is highly lucrative in large part due to selling users information to advertisers. Your personal online privacy is at risk every time you use Facebook. That does not mean one should stop using it, it just means that one should use a privacy application to maximize your privacy.

Brendan Fadden is a freshman who has not yet declared a major.

Why swap clothes? by

Rose Eilenberg

On April 22, which happens to be Earth Day, the Tufts Eco-Reps will be hosting the second (hopefully annual) clothing swap. You’re excited, I know.

A chance to get rid of those old clothes taking up drawer space and maybe pick up a few “new” items. But a clothing swap has more value than a fun, free way to spruce up your wardrobe. The benefits fit into two categories: before and after.

In the “before” category, consider that nice shirt you just saw. How much did it cost? Ten dollars? Now stop and consider where that came from and how that price could possibly cover the true costs of production, transportation and retail.

First, someone had to grow the cotton.

They probably weren’t paid fair wages and they probably used a ton of pesticides. If they were in a developing country while using the pesticides, it’s likely they weren’t wearing any protective gear while doing the spraying. Then someone took that cotton and made it into fabric. Again, if this took place in someplace like India, there’s a chance that they were working in extremely unsafe conditions with prolonged exposure to various chemicals like chlorine that are commonly used to bleach, dye and treat fabric. Then the wastewater containing all these chemicals from the fabrics are released directly into the environment.

OK. So the fabric is dyed and treated and the shirt is sewn, perhaps by child laborers. Now it has to get from India to whichever mall you happen to be in.

That takes a huge amount of fossil fuel to fly it over to the United States and distribute it by trucks to any of the stores you might happen to shop in.

Great. So you buy the shirt. It looks

good on you. But then styles change and you can’t really wear that shirt anymore if you want to be fashionable. So you throw it away. This brings us to the “after” portion. Where does that shirt go when you throw it away? There are a few options: One, it goes to a landfill. Two, it goes to an incinerator. Three, it ends up somewhere in the ocean, in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an area of floating trash that is currently estimated to be larger than the state of Texas.

For your shirt, let’s consider what happens in a landfill, which is where about half of America’s trash ends up according to the EPA, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In the best case scenario, in a modern, well-designed, lined landfill, the most that will happen is nothing. The shirt will sit indefinitely, unchanging and taking up space. If it ends up in a landfill of poorer design, it will begin to decompose, perhaps leaking the dyes into the groundwater (joining a liquid called leachate that forms in all landfills from the variety of decomposing matter) and the organic material in the cotton will be transformed into methane by the action of anaerobic bacteria.

Ideally, all our clothes would be made from renewable, sustainably obtained materials and dyes and the workers who made them would be treated fairly and paid well. The clothes we buy would be of higher quality (and yes, probably more expensive) and last longer. When we are done with them, hopefully they would be able to fully decompose and add to the ground any nutrients they took out.

But all that is the ideal. In the short term, we can try to be educated consumers and think about where our clothes and all our other daily prod-

courtesy rose eilenberg

ucts come from. Another crucial step is to extend the life of the products we already have. A clothing swap allows us to do this (for free)! It is a small start on the long road towards sustainability.

So please donate your clothes to the Tufts Free Clothing Swap. There are bins in eight convenient locations: Dewick, Carmichael, the campus center, Lewis, Hodgdon, Miller, Wren and Carpenter House. They will be out until Friday morning. If you can’t make it to a bin beforehand, feel free to bring donations by the event on Friday. We are

accepting all clean clothes that aren’t stained or ripped. We will also accept shoes and accessories. Any leftovers at the end of the day will be donated to charity. Don’t forget to come out to pick up something for yourself from the clothing swap and participate in all the other awesome Earth Day events this Friday from noon to 4 p.m.

Rose Eilenberg is a sophomore majoring in mechanical engineering and environmental studies.

Op-ed Policy The Op-Ed section of The Tufts Daily, an open forum for campus editorial commentary, is printed Monday through Thursday. The Daily welcomes submissions 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. Op-Ed cartoons are also welcomed for the Campus Canvas feature. All material is subject to editorial discretion and is not guaranteed to appear in the Daily. All material should be submitted to oped@tuftsdaily.com no later than noon on the day prior to the desired day of publication; authors must submit their telephone numbers and day-of availability for editing questions. Submissions may not be published elsewhere prior to their appearance in the Daily, including but not limited to other on- and off-campus newspapers, magazines, blogs and online news websites, as well as Facebook. Republishing of the same piece in a different source is permissible as long as the Daily is credited with originally running the article.

The Tufts Daily

12 Crossword

Comics

Thursday, April 21, 2011

SUDOKU Level: Out-plotting Maggie

wednesday’s Solution

Late Night at the Daily

Wednesday’s Solution

Kochman: “Wait, can we go back to that? How old were those girls?”

Please recycle this Daily

TCU PRESIDENTIAL FORUM: Tomas Garcia and Benjamin Richards

r fo s te a id d n a c e th r fo Have questions t in h ig n to k s a e m o C t? n e TCU presid ! s m ru fo l a ti n e id s re p o the first of tw

THURS. 4/21, 9:00PM PEARSON 106 Pizza will be provided.

Other TCU Senate Forums

COMMUNITY REPS FORUM MONDAY 4/25, 9PM, BRAKER 001

PRESIDENTIAL FORUM #2 MONDAY 4/25, 10PM, BRAKER 001

Election day: Tues 4/26. Questions? Visit the Elections Commission online at ecom.tufts.edu or email us at ecom@tufts.edu.

Sports

13

tuftsdaily.com

Diving

Women’s Tennis

Tufts falls to Amherst in tight 5-4 match by

Ann Sloan

Daily Editorial Board

The No. 5 women’s tennis team came close to a historic upset against No. 1 Amherst on WOMEN’S TENNIS (11-3, 4-1 NESCAC) Medford, Mass., Tuesday Amherst Tufts

Courtesy Johann Schmidt

Freshman Johann Schmidt was this year’s NESCAC one-meter and three-meter diving champion, and he placed sixth in the three-meter competition at Nationals. Now he’s looking to help the team grow by recruiting new members.

Freshman diver recruits on TuftsLife Schmidt, a former gymnast, hopes others will make the leap by

Aaron Leibowitz

Daily Editorial Board

Johann Schmidt wants you to join the Tufts diving team. The qualifications?

Commitment, curiosity and athletic ability — in that order.

In a post submitted to TuftsLife.com on April 13 titled “Tufts Diving,” Schmidt wrote: “Have you ever done gymnastics before? Have you ever been off diving boards and wanted to try more? Or are you just daring and willing to do a varsity sport? ... The

Tufts Swimming and Diving team is looking for divers.”

Schmidt had received three email responses to the post as of this Tuesday and he hopes more people will be up for the challenge.

“It’s a lot of fun,” Schmidt said. “We’re not looking for national divers; we’re not looking for NESCAC Champions; we’re looking for people who want to be dedicated to the sport and that want to have fun at the same time.”

In other words, they’re not looking for anyone who can hold a candle to Schmidt,

who as a freshman won 14 events, including the onemeter and three-meter diving competitions, at the NESCAC Championships and placed sixth in the three-meter dive at Nationals.

Based on Schmidt’s performance, it might not seem like the team needs much support. However, the men’s squad had just three divers this year — ideally it would have five or six — and with senior Trevor Stack set to graduate next month, the see DIVING, page 15

Jo-ing, Jo-ing, gone: Clair breaks single-season home run record in sweep

5 4

Tuesday afternoon. The Lord Jeffs, however, were able to protect their undefeated NESCAC record and hold off the Jumbos for a 5-4 win. Amherst’s win comes just two days after they defeated No. 2 Williams, the three-time defending national champions, by a 7-2 final.

Tufts has not bested the Lord Jeffs in more than a decade and the loss ends a seven-match winning streak for Tufts, which included five shutout victories.

“It’s always tough when you lose a match 5-4 because you always think about if there’s anything else you could’ve done to get an extra point,” senior tri-captain Julia Browne said. “It should definitely give everyone confidence that we can beat them next time.

[Tuesday] was a really tough loss because it was close, but we can definitely do it and we proved that.”

After rain forced the match indoors to the Gantcher Center, the Jumbos only managed to grab one win in doubles play.

At the No. 2 doubles spot, sophomore Lindsay Katz and freshman Eliza Flynn edged out Amherst junior Laura Danzig and senior Mimi Bell to win 9-8. The No. 1 doubles team of Browne and freshman Shelci Bowman and the No. 3 pairing of junior tri-captain Jennifer LaCara and freshman Dana Siegel fell 8-4 and 8-6, respectively.

Tufts, however, enjoyed more success in the singles matches.

Browne, the nation’s topranked solo player, was victorious against national No. 20 Danzig at the No. 1 slot.

Browne won the first set in a tiebreaker 7-6(1) and followed it up with a more convincing 6-2 win in the second set. She has not lost at singles since March 27 and is 9-2 in 2011.

Bowman also won her No. 3 singles match, rallying

back after losing the first set to Amherst freshman Gabby Delvin to win the match, 0-6, 6-3, 7-5.

“Even though I didn’t win the first set and it was 6-0, I was right in there with her,” Bowman said. “We were playing close games, but it just so happened that I wasn’t fully anticipating her shots. But I knew how important it was to win and how much it would mean to the team, so I just tried to stay focused.”

With Amherst up 4-3, the Jumbos’ fate fell in the hands of sophomore Lauren Hollender and senior tri-captain Edwina Stewart, Tufts’ No. 5 and 6 singles players, respectively. Stewart fell to Bell, 6-1, 7-6(7-3), allowing the Lord Jeffs to squeak out the overall win. With the team match officially over, Hollender pushed through for a victory in three sets against Amherst senior Laken King.

Despite the missed opportunity to upset the nation’s top-ranked squad, the Jumbos realize the recent progress they have made as a team.

“Compared to the last few years we’re much closer than we have been. The score shows that if one match went a different way, we would have won,” LaCara said. “Our team this year is stronger than it’s ever been.”

Even the team’s younger players have seen the progress that Tufts has made in past years against the Lord Jeffs.

“It’s hard to go from not beating a team for a very long time to beating them easily.

We knew it would be a tough fight … but this shows that we’re right there with them,” Hollender said.

The Jumbos may face the Lord Jeffs again in the NESCAC Championships in May and will have another chance to prove their top-five ranking against Williams on Saturday.

While still not happy about the Amherst loss, the Jumbos view the effort as a confidence booster going into the contentious weekend.

“To play [Amherst] so close like this when we saw that Williams lost by a bigger margin, we see that we can compete with any team,” Browne said. “We should really be very excited and believe more in ourselves going into this weekend’s matches.”

Andrew Morgenthaler/Tufts Daily

Justin McCallum/Tufts Daily

Freshman catcher Jo Clair, shown here earlier this season, set the Tufts single-season home run record with a two-run blast yesterday against Bridgewater State. She now has 15 dingers this season, breaking the previous mark set in 2005. The Jumbos, who won the first game 5-0 and the second 8-1, still have seven games left, including a three-game NESCAC series at home against Colby this weekend. For a full recap of yesterday’s doubleheader, visit The Score at blogs.tuftsdaily.com/thescore

Freshman Shelci Bowman won a gritty three-set match at the No. 3 singles slot, but the fifth-ranked Jumbos fell to top-ranked Lord Jeffs at the Gantcher Center, 5-4.

The baseball team’s 14-game winning streak came to a screeching halt in a 10-3 loss at Brandeis yesterday. For a full recap of the game, visit blogs.tuftsdaily.com/thescore.

The Tufts Daily

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David McIntyre | The Beautiful Game

R

A beginner’s guide

ecently, I was asked by a hallmate to explain how the European soccer structure worked. I thought, “Well, it’s really simple,” before launching into a 15-minute explanation. Turns out, it isn’t so easy to understand, and I realized that no one had ever really explained to me how soccer was organized — I just sort of picked it up over the years of listening to soccer commentary and reading soccer articles on the Internet.

My friend cannot be the only one having these thoughts. So, in an attempt to foster better understanding of the beautiful game, here it is, my plain-English attempt to explain how soccer is organized in Europe.

To begin with, each country has its own league structure, independent of all other nations, which is commonly known as the “league pyramid.” Atop the pyramid sits the best, highest quality league in the whole country. Those top leagues are the most publicized in the United States, like the English Premier League, Serie A (Italy) and La Liga (Spain), and contain the most well-known teams, like Manchester United, AC Milan and Barcelona.

The teams in those leagues play each other team twice (for a 20-team league, that’s 38 games), and the team with the most points at the end wins the league title (three points for a win, one for a draw).

Sounds simple enough, right? But it is at this point where most American fans start getting totally confused. Below each of the top leagues is the rest of the “pyramid,” consisting of many other leagues organized in a sequential order. This is confusing at first, but becomes more clear when a new concept is introduced: promotion and relegation.

I’ll use England as an example, where the league structure is as follows: 1) Premier League, 2) The Championship, 3) League One and 4) League Two (there are many others, but those are unimportant for this example).

Basically, at the end of each season, the bottom three teams in the Premier League are moved down (“relegated”) into the Championship for the next season, the bottom four teams from the Championship are relegated to League One and the bottom four teams from League One are relegated to League Two. Of course, the reverse also happens (“promotion”), in which the top teams in the lower three leagues are moved up, thus restoring each league to its original number.

If you’ve gotten this far, you now understand how a typical European soccer league works. But of course, there are still several more levels of complexity to add on.

On top of the league system, each country’s soccer federation organizes a knockout competition (sort of like an American-style playoff system or March Madness) open to every club in that nation, even the tiny ones. This competition (examples include the FA Cup, the Copa del Rey and the Coppa Italia) runs concurrently with the league season.

Finally, there is a third level: European competition. The top finishers in each of the leagues around Europe are entered into one of two tournaments during the following season: the Champions League (the top competition) or the Europa League (the subordinate competition). These tournaments also run concurrently with the league season and are organized much like the World Cup: Namely, there is a group stage and then a knockout round to determine the champion.

I know that I’ve left some things out (like the League Cup or UEFA coefficients) and glossed over others, but there could never be enough space to include everything. Hopefully, however, this guide will be a serviceable roadmap in what can be a very murky trip though the world of European soccer.

David McIntyre is a freshman who has not yet declared a major. He can be reached at David.McIntyre@tufts.edu.

Sports

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Golf

Jumbos rebound from disappointing fall Senior-led team finishes strong, placing seventh out of 18 at invitational by

Noah Schumer

Daily Editorial Board

After a fall campaign that saw the golf team tie for 30th out of 37 competitors at the New England Championships last October, the Jumbos returned to action this spring with respectable showings in three tournaments: the Worcester State Invitational on Tuesday in Worcester, Mass.; the Western New England College (WNEC) Invitational last Thursday in Springfield, Mass.; and the Hampton Inn Invitational the weekend of April 9-10 in North Dartmouth, Mass.

“We did a little better,” coach Bob Sheldon said. “We played in three tournaments and were in the top half in all three.

It was a solid showing.”

The team, which is composed of four seniors and one freshman, finished its season strong by placing seventh out of 18 teams at the Worcester State Invitational, shooting a combined score of 331 in cold, windy conditions. Salem State emerged victorious at the event with a score of 313. Senior tri-captain Cal Shapiro and senior Lindsay Walker led the way with rounds of 81. Senior tri-captain Dan Moll also posted an impressive mark, recording an 84. Shapiro’s score would have been lower were it not for one tough hole in the front nine.

“Cal shot an 81, which is good for him,”

Sheldon said. “He was one-under through seven holes, and then he shot a nine on one hole, so if you took that hole out his score would have been even better.”

The harsh conditions, along with some overgrown fairways, worked against Tufts, minimizing the team’s strength: driving the ball.

“We’re a big hitting team, a team of longball hitters,” Sheldon said. “Lindsay Walker was a hockey player for three years and he leads us off with a slap shot off the tee.

Shorter courses help us out a little bit.”

Last Thursday, Tufts placed sixth out of 12 teams at the WNEC Invitational, totaling 323 with their top four scores to place them just four strokes behind the fourth-place finisher, UMass-Dartmouth. WNEC won the tournament on its home course with a score of 307.

In their first tournament of the spring season on April 9-10, the Jumbos shook off some rust after a short preseason and finished eighth out of 18 teams at the Hampton Inn Invitational. Tufts had a two-day score of 676 and Moll led the way, placing ninth individually out of a field of 88 golfers and shooting a team-low 79 in his Saturday round.

Salem State won with a two-day total of 637.

“It’s tough the way the season works up here,” Sheldon said. “We don’t have a spring trip, so we start playing two days before the

first tournament.”

For a team stocked with seniors, Tuesday’s result marked a culmination of an era. For Shapiro and Walker, finishing with the same score was a symbol of their camaraderie over long careers.

“There’s very little competition among us,” Walker said. “It’s a good group of guys and we like to see each other perform well.”

Sheldon said he will miss this group of seniors.

“These guys have been with me for four years,” Sheldon said. “They’re pretty close; three of them live together, and they know what to expect from me. That will be hard to replace.”

The golf program will rebuild next year behind freshman Sebastian Vik — who gained valuable playing experience this season — and a deep class of incoming players.

“We have three freshmen coming in who I know about, and Sebastian got some good experience, so the future of the program is bright,” Sheldon said. “We’re excited.”

Tuesday, however, belonged to the senior class. Fittingly, senior tri-captain Luke Heffernan, who shot a season-worst 93, closed out his career by birdying the final hole of his round on Tuesday.

“He didn’t have his best day,” Sheldon said. “But it was not a bad way for him to end things.”

Men’s Fencing

Men’s fencing takes eighth at club Nationals

Sixth-place finish from sabre team highlights strong weekend in Chicago

by Steven Soroka

Daily Staff Writer

A full season of practice and hard work culminated on April 10 in Chicago when the men’s fencing team placed eighth at the United States Association of Collegiate Fencing Club’s National Championship. Over 700 collegiate fencers gathered at host University of Chicago to compete for the club crown.

Local rival Northwestern University earned the title with a final tally of 805 points while the home team finished in 12th place with a total of 455 points.

Tufts was able to amass 530 points — edging out No. 9 Arizona State and No. 10 William & Mary by just 15 and 30 points, respectively.

The three separate squads enjoyed varied results at the meet, with the sabre team paving the way to the Jumbos’ impressive showing by placing sixth of 33 for 255 points. The epee group had success as well, finishing 10th of 34 competing squads and adding another 195 to the Tufts total. The foil team was unable to join its counterparts in the top 10 and ended up in 20th of 34, good for 80 points.

“The sabre team graduated a key senior,” senior sabre team member Yuantee Zhu said. “It was a hard hit to overcome, but fortunately we had a really good freshman join the team this year.”

In the early rounds, the sabre squad faced a familiar team in UMass, a team it had previously beaten in the New England Intercollegiate Fencing Conference regular season. But the Minutemen got revenge in Chicago, besting Tufts.

“UMass fenced especially well that day,” Zhu said. “We had beat them in the past, but we were not able to do so this time.”

While some people might view traveling out of the friendly confines of New England a challenge, the team saw it as an advantage.

Daily File Photo

The men’s fencing team, here at a meet last winter, finished in an impressive eighth place at club Nationals on April 10.

“Normally, our competitions begin at 8 a.m. in places like Amherst, so we are used to getting up early,” Zhu added.

“Our pregame routine was actually easier at Nationals because we had hotels and did not need to drive over early.”

While the Tufts men’s fencing team does not enjoy the same varsity status as the women’s team, the two squads still support each other regularly. Both fencing teams share coaching, hints and sometimes even practice times.

“The relationship between the men and women is strong,” Zhu said.

“Normally, practices are separated, with girls in mornings and guys at night, except for Friday, where we can compete with whoever. While the styles of men and women are different, practicing against each other helps holistically.”

Coed practices also break up the monotony of training.

“The guys’ team is a fun and eccentric

bunch,” freshman sabre team member Julia Hisey said. “In practice, they occasionally try out other weapons to keep things light.”

Tufts will be losing some important senior contributors next year. Senior tricaptain Eric Berg will leave a big hole to fill on the foil team. Also, the graduations of fellow tri-captain Huy Ngu and Brian Agler from the epee team will leave voids in the team’s roster.

Fortunately for Tufts, Mike Eskin, the former school coach at Dana Hall School in Wellesley, Mass., with more than a decade of fencing experience, has brought new knowledge to the men’s team this season.

“He has been incredibly valuable this season, between help with running practices and giving out advice,” Zhu said. “We definitely pulled off some victories that would not have been possible without him.”

Thursday, April 21, 2011

The Tufts Daily

15

Sports

Tufts has seen gymnasts, dancers and even wrestlers give diving a whirl DIVING

continued from page 13

program would like to add a few more names to its roster, if only to make the training experience more fun and competitive.

Coach Brad Snodgrass, who has manned both the Tufts and MIT diving programs for 24 years, explained that Tufts has a history of divers who did not dive until college. Junior Kelly Flanagan, a former gymnast, began diving two years ago and just missed the finals at this year’s NESCAC Championships. Snodgrass said he has seen ex-pole-vaulters, dancers and wrestlers shine as divers. “I really think of [diving] as the original extreme sport — but it’s safe,�

Snodgrass said. “It really is a lot of fun, and very few people who have tried it out don’t like it.�

Three out of the six members of the men’s and women’s teams did gymnastics in the past, as did assistant coaches Rob Matera (LA ’10) and Lindsay Gardel (LA ’10), who had great diving careers at Tufts.

Schmidt himself was a gymnast for six years and made the transition to diving during his freshman year at Clarkstown High School South in New York. Although he’s now unstoppable on the boards, adjusting to diving from a mental standpoint wasn’t easy. “When I was younger I was so scared to go off the high-dive and the threemeter,� he said. “That’s probably the biggest adjustment I’ve had — it’s more of a mental thing and having a better attitude about diving. When I first came in, I was so scared to do a lot of things, and now I just love it.�

While the program has had some great divers in recent years, including the 2008 one-meter and three-meter national champion Kendall Swett (LA ’08), convincing devoted divers to come to Tufts has been a struggle. The main reason: Hamilton Pool does not

offer sufficient diving facilities — only a one-meter board in a nine-foot-deep area — and Tufts divers must therefore take an athletic van to MIT for practice five times a week.

Snodgrass and others have pushed for renovations, but the coach explained that due to economic troubles and other, higher university priorities, a new swimming facility will probably not be constructed for another five years, when he hopes that another phase of the new athletic facility begins.

Because of these lackluster conditions, Snodgrass makes sure his recruits come to Tufts for academics first and diving second. “We’ve lost many people who come to Hamilton Pool on their recruiting trips and say, ‘You’re kidding me? This is it?’ I look forward to the day when we don’t lose people because of the facility,� he said.

For Schmidt, being a Div. III diver, even while having to make the trek to MIT five times a week, has been well worth it so far. “The benefits really outweigh the costs,â€? he said. “Yeah, you’re going to have to spend a lot of time practicing, but you’ll have fun with the team, you’ll learn something new, you’ll put this on your rĂŠsumĂŠ — it’s a great way to just have fun and be active on campus.â€?

Now, he hopes others do what he did as a high school freshman and take the leap to diving. “A lot of people have really wanted to try the sport, I’m sure, in their life, and this is an opportunity for people to try,� he said. “We’re not saying we’re going to take you automatically just because you’re willing to try it, but if you’re willing to put in effort and you do show some talent, you could possibly be a great asset to the team and try something new for yourself as well.�

Who knows? You might be the next Johann Schmidt.

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!"#$%&'()&$*+,,&)-'$ S.11-9 A Resolution Calling for a Greater Commitment to Environmental Sustainability on Campus WHEREAS Tufts University has demonstrated that sustainability is an important campus and global issue by convening the convention which drafted the Talloires Declaration in 1990, which was the first official statement made by university administrators of a commitment to environmental sustainability in higher education, and by founding the Office of Sustainability (OOS) and the Tufts Institute of the Environment (TIE); and WHEREAS the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) formally established as a national goal the creation and maintenance of conditions under which humans and nature "can exist in productive harmony, and fulfill the social, economic and other requirements of present and future generations of Americans," or, a national goal of environmental sustainability; and

WHEREAS Tufts’ sustainability practices in the categories of administration, food and recycling, and shareholder engagement have diminished in the past year, as noted by the non-profit Sustainable Endowments Institution (SEI), which gave Tufts a sustainability grade of ‘B;’ and WHEREAS Tufts does not currently have a sustainability policy or action plan and sustainability is not included in the Tufts Vision Statement; and WHEREAS a diverse array of groups on campus advocates for sustainability, including but not limited to Eco Reps, Engineers Without Borders, the Environmental Studies Program, Fletcher Green, Jumbo Janitor Alliance, the Office of Sustainability, Rez Quad CafĂŠ, Students at Tufts for Investment Responsibility, Students for a Just and Stable Future, Tom Thumb’s Garden, Tufts Against Plastic, Tufts Bikes, Tufts Community Agriculture Project, Tufts Dining Services, Tufts Institute for the Environment, Tufts Energy

Forum, and Tufts Sustainability Collective; and WHEREAS on Tuesday, 29 March, 2011 at a Sustainability Roundtable, representatives from the above groups met to discuss future sustainability goals for Tufts and drafted a letter to President-elect Anthony Monaco articulating these goals; therefore BE IT RESOLVED that the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate affirms that Tufts is an elite academic institution that has the power and the responsibility to implement large-scale sustainability initiatives and to lead by example; and

businesses; making Tufts a leader in university sustainability; and formulating a comprehensive sustainability action plan; and BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the TCU Senate commits itself to pursuing and prioritizing campus sustainability to the fullest extent of its power including but not limited to lobbying the administration and university president and continually funding student groups that have a commitment to sustainability.

Respectfully submitted on 10 April 2011

by Jibade Sandiford and Signe Portishawher Adopted by a vote of 27-0-1.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the TCU Senate calls upon the Tufts administration to explore and implement the sustainability initiatives set forth, namely: the establishment of a sustainability task force; including sustainability in pre-orientation, orientation, and campus tours; working towards campus carbon neutrality; investing our endowment in sustainable

The Tufts Daily

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