TuftsDaily10-18-2012

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thursday, october 18, 2012

VOLUME LXIV, NUMBER 28

Where You Read It First Est. 1980

Kralev talks diplomacy, foreign policy

by Josh

Weiner

Daily Editorial Board

Nicholas Kralev, renowned journalist and author of the new book “America’s Other Army,” last night delivered a speech in the ASEAN Auditorium at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

His speech, entitled “The U.S. Foreign Service: Behind the Scenes of American Diplomacy,” provided an overview of his longtime coverage of American diplomacy and how it has evolved into the present day.

Before beginning his presentation, Kralev requested a moment of silence for the four American diplomatic personnel killed in Libya last month.

“It’s unfortunate that only at a time of tragedy does the media choose to recognize members of the Foreign Service,” he said.

Kralev then described how politics has influenced his life from a young age, especially when he experienced the climax of the Cold War in his native Bulgaria.

“At first, I wanted to become a theater director,” he said.

“However, I saw that because of politics, the real theater was occurring in the streets, where so many people gathered to express themselves at this time. So I decided to become a journalist, so that I could document all of this firsthand.”

Kralev described how this career path led him to the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, tenures at The Washington Times and the Financial Times and travels with numerous diplomats and U.S. Secretaries of State, including Colin Powell and Hillary Clinton.

He addressed three basic questions that summed up the relevancy of American diplomacy — “What is diplomacy in 2012? Why should we care about diplomacy?

What do U.S. diplomats do?” -and claimed that these were actually three of the questions that the diplomats he has spoken to have had the hardest time answering concisely.

While criticizing a number of American diplomats’ past actions, including those of Cameron Munter, the controversial former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Kralev recognized the wide variety of skills which are required of successful diplomats. His list ranged from effective governance of their regions to handling critical negotiations with other statesmen.

“Is there any other profession that requires all of these?” Kralev asked the crowd. “I couldn’t think of one. They’re literally expected to be able to do everything.”

Kralev stated that, while U.S. diplomats have never all seen eye-to-eye, there has been increased consistency in their general aims over recent years.

This trend has emerged particularly in the aftermath of Sept. 11 and the Iraq War, as the U.S. has heightened its efforts to bring security and stability to other nations around the world.

“Since [Sept. 11], there’s been an agreement amongst Republican and Democratic administrations about international interests,” Kralev said. “Before [Sept. 11], that wasn’t the case.”

Kralev also distinguished between traditional and transformational diplomacy. He claimed that the United States has adopted the latter policy more frequently in recent years when dealing with issues such as providing meaningful foreign aid and ensuring effective governance by foreign administrations.

“It’s basically about changing the world through Foreign Service see KRALEV, page 2

Teach for America application process underway

by Justin

Rheingold

Daily Staff Writer

Tufts was a top contributor to Teach for America (TFA) for the third consecutive year this year, with 21 members of the Class of 2012 currently serving in the

Zhuangchen Zhou / The Tufts Daily

Common Application officials this month announced the elimination of the “topic of your choice” essay option, among other changes to be enacted in August.

Common App to remove ‘topic of your choice’ option by

Nina Goldman

Daily Editorial Board

The Common Application, the standard form for college applications, will be updated next fall.

Common App officials announced a series of changes to the application, including the removal of the “topic of your choice” essay prompt, at the annual conference of the National Association for College Admission Counseling earlier this month.

Instead of the free-choice essay, the application will rotate

by Julia

see TEACH, page 2

MCT

Teach for America remains a popular option for Tufts seniors, with nine pecent of last year’s graduating class applying to become a corps member.

Common Application Director of Outreach Scott Anderson said 36 percent of Common App users chose to write this year. The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that the announcement that the essay topic would be removed was “met with gasps” at the conference.

The option to choose their own essay topic allowed students to take a more creative approach to the application, Tufts Admissions Counselor Tom Esponnette said.

“I know a lot of colleges are a litsee COMMON APP, page 2

Africana Center opens up library to community Evans

Contributing Writer

corps, according to Regional Communications Manager at TFA Gaby Barahona.

Tufts was this year ranked 20th in the number of graduates to participate in TFA in the medi-

every year between four or five topics.

The Common App’s new format, which will go into effect Aug. 1, also features stricter enforcement of the word count limit and a streamlined process for students requesting a waiver of the fee. The option to upload a resume to the site will be delegated to the individual collee’s discretion, in an effort to simplify the site’s user experience.

The alterations have prompted mixed reactions. Most critics take issue with the removal of the open-ended essay topic, which

The Africana Center this fall launched a Book Sign-Out program after taking the time over the past few months to catalogue their large assortment of books, which now serves as a library open to anyone in the Tufts community.

Director of the Africana Center Katrina Moore said that the idea for the library came from the Africana Center’s extensive collection of resources.

“The collection of books was here, but we had no formal way of sharing that, so it is important to do an inventory so we know what we have and share them with the students,” Moore said.

Students can sign out books from the Africana Center front desk for up to a week at time and check the library’s invento-

Inside this issue

ry online at LibraryThing.com.

“It is a pretty easy system,” sophomore Ricario Phillips, who works at the Africana Center, said. “[The catalog] tells you the location and the availability of the book, and it is always open so you can add books whenever.”

The center welcomes book donations from the community, according to Denise Phillips, coordinator of programs and special projects at the Africana Center.

“I have been here for awhile, and I have seen how students like to give back in terms of their peers and in terms of their resources,” she said. “We have always been sort of a deposit for students — graduating seniors, mainly. A lot of the books are from former students who have graduated and want to share, as well as alumni and speakers that come to the Africana Center.”

Moore explained that a majority of the books are about the African diaspora, adding that she is interested in collecting a canon of black classics so that every student on campus will have easy access to such a selection.”

The catalogue currently represents a diverse base of subjects, according to Phillips.

“When you think about culture, you can’t limit it in any particular way,” she said. “I think that what we offer is a wide range.”

Both Phillips and Moore said that they see the Africana Center not only as a cultural center and a resource, but also as location that fosters a sense of community.

“By students coming to use the center as a resource, it does create a community, so it serves see BOOKS, page 2

Today’s sections

The Office of Fraternity and Sorority Affairs hopes to reinstate a group of lesser-known Greek organizations.

Film may not be forgotten, but it is something of a forgotten art. The Boston fine arts scene look to change that.

see FEATURES, page 3

see WEEKENDER, page 5

News Features Weekender Editorial | Op-Ed

1 3 5 8

Op-Ed Comics Classifieds Sports

11 12 14 Back

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Thursday, October 18, 2012

Opinions differ over newly streamlined Common App COMMON APP

continued from page 1

Zhuangchen Zhou / The Tufts Daily

Nicholas Kralev, former Washington Times and Financial Times correspondent, gave a lecture last night hosted by the Fletcher Diplomacy Club, Fletcher Security Studies Program and PRAXIS.

Kralev discusses diplomacy’s identity crisis KRALEV

continued from page 1

to make your own country more secure,” Kralev said.

Kralev closed his speech by addressing what he termed “diplomacy’s identity crisis,” a phenomenon which he believes has become especially severe in the 21st century.

He argued that the notion of what makes a “good diplomat” has become overly ambiguous in recent years, claiming that many diplomats have been hired without a thorough background in international relations and without a clear sense of the skill sets they need.

As a result, the role of U.S. diplo-

macy has become rather ill-defined, he said.

“Ultimately for me, if you don’t know what kind of service you want in 10 years, how can you know the skills which you will need, the people you should recruit and how you can properly train them?” Kralev asked.

After the lecture, Kralev told the Daily that he felt satisfied with the audience’s reception of his speech and felt that Tufts’ Fletcher students were the ideal audience for his presentation.

“It was an obvious choice for me to come here,” Kralev said. “Clearly people here are interested [in my subject matter] because they might

soon be in the Foreign Service schools themselves. Most of them stayed for the full hour-and-a-half and asked very insightful questions at the end.”

Several members of the audience were impressed with Kralev’s approach to the subject matter.

“I thought it was a very interesting perspective on foreign service,” Stephanie Petersen, a first-year student in the Fletcher School’s Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy (MALD) program, said. “It’s refreshing that someone looked at how Foreign Service is structured and how it operates. It’s very valuable for someone who’s not in the State Department.”

Tufts grads consider Teach for America TEACH

continued from page 1

um-sized schools category. Nine percent of seniors from the Class of 2012 applied to participate in the program.

TFA is a national organization dedicated to bridging the achievement gap in elementary and middle school education by selecting recent college graduates to teach in impoverished areas. Barahona said that 196 Tufts graduates have participated in TFA since the program’s start.

Joni Roberson, a recruitment manager for TFA, cited the diversity and leadership of the student body as reasons for Tufts’ high involvement in TFA. “In Teach for America, we’re really looking for students with strong academic achievement, significant leadership experiences and a fit that is aligned to our mission,” Roberson said. “I think that Tufts students oftentimes demonstrate those three characteristics very strongly.”

Sade Porter, a senior, said she is applying to TFA this year because of her experience being taught by TFA corps members while in middle school in the South Bronx.

“I can attest and confirm that Teach for America actually meets its mission statement,” she said. “I had to give back because I am a product of what TFA has done.”

Porter said she is the final stage of a multi-tiered application process

that includes an application, online activities and interviews. Although current applicants will be notified

by Nov. 1 if they have been accepted, another wave of applicants can still apply at the Nov. 2 deadline, according to Roberson.

“The process is very individualized,” she said. “I work very closely with all of the students so that they feel very comfortable and confident about the application process and also that they are on the right timeline for them based on their longterm goals.”

Although TFA is popular among education majors, students from a variety of academic disciplines apply every year, Roberson said.

“We accept students from all academic majors, and no teaching or tutoring experience is required,” she said. “We are looking for passionate and dedicated leaders who believe that all children should have the opportunity to have an excellent education and that their ZIP code should not determine their future.”

Once the application process is complete and students have been accepted into TFA, they have two weeks to decide whether they will accept the job offer and make a twoyear commitment to the program, Roberson added.

However, prior to entering the classroom as full-fledged teachers, TFA corps members go through intensive summer training programs

designed to get them acclimated to managing a classroom and teaching lessons, according to Roberson.

Seth Rau (LA ’12), who completed the TFA training process this past summer, is a current corps member teaching fifth grade at the Imagine 100 Academy of Excellence in Las Vegas.

“After you are accepted to Teach for America, you go to your placement city for a week for an introduction,” he said. “You then go to an institute for five weeks ... The first week is intense lesson planning and classroom management, [and for] the next four weeks, you are a team teaching with three others and a certified teacher.”

According to data in a Sept. 5 press release, TFA currently has over 10,000 corps members teaching in high-need areas across the country.

TFA is not limited to a specific number of participants, and the organization has the ability to hire as many students as they feel fit their mission, Roberson said.

“One thing that is important about our process is that it is selective, not competitive,” she said.

“We are looking for everyone who is ready, willing and able to take on this challenge, and what’s great about that is that you are never in competition with anyone for a position. So we have the capacity to double our numbers from last year if we find the candidates.”

Sign-out program aims to benefit students BOOKS

continued from page 1

Kyra Sturgill / The Tufts Daily

The Africana Center now offers a Book Sign-Out program in which students can check out books from the center’s growing collection.

as a combination of resources,” Phillips said.

Phillips also explained that in light of rising textbook prices, the Book Sign-Out Program will provide students with a cheaper means of accessing books for their coursework.

“The more resources we have available, the more willing people will be to use it,” Ricario Phillips said. “Whether you did or didn’t know we had a library, the formalized system helps ease [students] into relying on [the Africana Center] more as a resource.”

tle bummed about that because [the essay] gives students a little more freedom of choice,” Esponnette said. “A good number of students chose to be creative within their essays.”

Anderson said that the Common App’s intention was to streamline the application, not to limit creativity.

“The question — and the criticism — presumes that ‘topic of your choice’ is the only option that encourages student expression,” Anderson told the Daily in an email.

“We don’t believe that to be true, and neither do the 15 members of our ... group of school-based and college-access counselors representing students from diverse geographic and socio-economic backgrounds.”

The Tufts supplemental application within the Common App encourages creativity, Esponnette explained, so the change will not deal a significant blow to Tufts applicants’ ability to express themselves.

Becca Joseph, a high school senior currently applying to colleges using the Common App, said the revamped application would still allow for creativity in her writing because the other five topics are mostly general.

“The prompts are pretty vague,” she said.

Joseph chose the “topic of your choice” prompt to write about a trip that helped her overcome her shyness. She said she picked the prompt for its openendedness, but she believes she could have worked within the constraints of the upcoming application structure.

Freshman Philip Dubow disagrees with the elimination of the application’s open essay, noting that he relied on that topic when applying to Tufts and other schools last year.

“I found the other prompts to be constraining,” Dubow said. “I think that it’s going to severely limit the depth and the breadth that students can go into.”

Esponnette said that enforcing the 500-word limit should be manageable for students.

“Most people stuck to the [suggested] word limit,” he said.

Joseph, however, expressed

concerns that applicants would need to cut important parts from their essays to adhere to the word limit.

“If it’s a few words over, it should be okay,” she said.

“If you cut it down, and you have to cut a few parts just to fit the word requirements, it’s not fair.”

Esponnette said despite the removal of the universal option to upload a resume, he anticipates students who wish to send in resumes, at least 1/4 of applicants, will be unable to do so.

“I’m pretty sure we’ll still see the resumes next year,” he said. “It gives us another piece of information of the students, [but it’s] not as valuable as the essays.”

Anderson said the changes will result in a “new streamlined, intuitive interface” for the application’s site.

This will be especially helpful for students applying for waivers of the application fee, Esponnette said.

Dubow, who had to apply separately for 10 different fee waivers last year, said the ability to apply for all of them at once would have made the process much easier.

“That’s a great thing,” he said.

“Personally that would have saved me a lot of time.”

Overall, Anderson said, the Common App’s most significant updates are an attempt to adapt to the website’s heightened popularity.

The Common App last year received and processed 2.8 million applications from 663,000 applicants and eight million school forms, he said.

“The most significant features are under the hood,” he said. “The current system performs extremely well, but it was not designed to handle the volume we are anticipating in coming years.”

“We expect those numbers to continue to rise as more institutions join the association,” he added.

Esponnette said the forthcoming changes are the most significant update to the Common Application during his time working in admissions.

“There have been changes, but no major changes in the past few years until this upcom-

Police Briefs Colors of the weed

The power of three

Tufts University Police Department (TUPD) officers at 11:35 p.m. on Oct. 12 saw three male students standing in an emergency exit doorway of Lewis Hall. When the officers approached, they observed the students smoking marijuana.

The students handed over a multicolored glass pipe with a small amount of marijuana, which the officers confiscated.

TUPD arrived at West Hall at 11:15 p.m. on Oct. 13 in response to a report of the smell of marijuana coming from a student’s room. When they arrived, the officers asked if they could enter the room, to which the students agreed.

When asked if they had been smoking marijuana, the students said they had not. Police noticed a desk with a clear sandwich bag containing green stems and seeds and a jar containing leaves that resembled marijuana leaves. The students said that the desk wasn’t theirs, but as one student appeared to be calling the owner of the desk on his cell phone, a third student entered the room and admitted that all three students had been smoking marijuana.

Police confiscated the marijuana and reported the students to the Office of the Dean of Student Affairs.

Going Dutch TUPD officers at 10:24 p.m. on Oct. 13 were called to a party in a house on Tesla Avenue. When they arrived, a group of students was loading onto a bus. The students said they were going to a bar on Holland Street.

Many students were drinking, and the street was littered with beer cans. Officers made the students pick up the cans and move the bus to the Carmichael Hall parking lot, where it would not block the residential street.

—compiled by Audrey Michael

Features

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tuftsdaily.com

Jacob Passy | A Bit Off

Flea with your family

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Virginia Bledsoe / The Tufts Daily

Unlike the fraternities and sororities with houses down Professors Row, multicultural Greek organizations remain inactive at Tufts for now.

Fraternity and Sorority Affairs looks to revive dormant multicultural Greek organizations

by Jessica

Mow

Contributing Writer

Jumbos’ familiarity with fraternities and sororities on campus is usually limited to the major landmarks on Professors Row. Little-known by most, though, is that a group of lesser-known Greek organizations have existed in the past and depending on interest, they are to be reinstated on campus by the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Affairs.

These organizations, distinctive for being multicultural fraternities and sororities, are distinguishable by their historic cultural associations.

Though no current Tufts student is a member of any of these groups, Fraternity and Sorority Affairs will gauge interest for reviving the organizations at an informal information session later this semester.

The movement for multicultural sororities and fraternities, which emerged in the ’80s and ’90s, was defined by an inclusion of all races, cultures and religions.

“There are women’s organizations and men’s organizations, and there are some organizations that are based in religion, so there [are] organizations based in race as well,” Director of Fraternity and Sorority Affairs Su McGlone said.

While a number of fraternities at Tufts associate with a religious tradition, their ties are not as prominent as those of multicultural organizations.

“ZBT [Zeta Beta Tau] and AEPi [Alpha Epsilon Pi] are both historically Jewish organizations. It doesn’t mean you have to be Jewish to join, but that’s part of their history,” McGlone said. “Anyone can join any organization, [but] the historically culturally-based organizations do still exist and they’re very strong on some campuses.”

At Tufts, all sororities and fraternities fall under the governance of the Inter-Greek Council, but there are separate governing bodies for the multicultural, all-male and all-female Greek organizations.

While the Panhellenic Council (PhC) oversees Tufts’ three sororities and the Interfraternity Council (IFC) oversees its 10 fraternities and the co-ed ATO of Massachusetts, the Multicultural Greek Council (MGC) is specifically directed toward the multicultural organizations.

Often, though, these groups are in chapters comprised of students across several schools and are therefore governed by a citywide council.

“They would have members from Tufts, but then they would also have members from other universities in Boston, and they would be city-wide chapters,” PhC President Carolyn Pruitt said.

According to McGlone, the MGC is currently dormant. In the case that these chapters become active, though, there would be a restored MGC in addition to the citywide council.

“To be a member of the Multicultural Greek Council or to have recognition on Tufts University ... [entails] having one member from the citywide chapter who is a student at Tufts basically come to us ... and they will be a recognized chapter on campus,” Graduate Assistant at Fraternity and Sorority Affairs Hayley Keene said.

In addition, the National PanHellenic Council (NPHC) would govern any fraternities or sororities that are historically African-American and the National Association of Latino Fraternal Organizations (NALFO) would govern groups that are historically Latino.

Organizations that were previously active at Tufts that fall under NPHC include Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority.

Previously active organizations under NALFO include Omega Phi Beta Sorority, Sigma Lambda Upsilon Sorority, Alpha Rho Lambda Sorority and Lambda Upsilon Lambda Fraternity.

Though there are no current members of any citywide multicultural chapters, the chapters are still recognized by the university.

“The organization exists. The national organization knows that there could be a chapter here ... it would just be dormant,” McGlone said.

Whether or not these dormant chapters will be revived, however, remains unclear. Keene suggested that a possible factor might be the decisions of students as to which organization fits them best.

“I think it’s important for students to have the choice of what organizations they want to join,” Keene said. “I think it’s important for them to find an organization where they know they’re

going to be at peace with their decision and that they’re just going to be happy about it.”

Keene ultimately hopes to offer students more options for joining Greek life.

“Once you decide to make that commitment, [you] will forever be a member of that organization,” she said. “And that’s something that you take great pride in, because it’s a lifelong sisterhood or brotherhood.”

According to Keene, the advantages of joining a citywide chapter extend beyond those of joining one of the more well-known chapters on campus.

“To allow the Greek community to have a greater impact from a Bostonwide stance is very large ... You never know what’s going on at some other collegiate institution that you could go and participate in because your fraternity brothers or sorority sisters are over there,” she said.

Multicultural Greek organizations have existed on the Tufts campus before. According to Keene, a member of Delta Sigma Theta just graduated last year.

However, Keene explained, it is difficult for citywide chapters to maintain a large number of members on campus, and not just because they’re not well-known.

“Because they’re citywide chapters, there’s no executive board for those chapters,” Keene said. “Over time, people have graduated out. There hasn’t been that continuous year-to-year awareness to allow more people to become a member of those organizations.”

The informational meeting in December will feature a panel of representatives from select citywide chapters that Fraternity and Sorority Affairs has contacted.

Following the panel discussion, students will have the opportunity to ask the representatives questions or attend a private, individual-chapter session where they may field more specific questions.

Keene encourages students to maintain an open mind and consider the benefits of joining a multicultural Greek chapter.

“It makes the connection larger, which I think is amazing because you have those [connections] built in across the city,” she said. “You never know who you may meet.”

ach year when Parents and Family Weekend arrives, it’s the same old tune. I hear my friends chattering on, unsure of where to take their good ol’ mom and dad. As college students, we know the lay of the land fairly well, particularly what is and isn’t a safe bet. It goes a bit like this: more expensive restaurants are a yes, and your dorm room is a no — at least until you clean it.

For me, I like to turn the weekend into a bit of a shopping trip so I don’t go broke preparing my closet for a Boston winter.

My freshman year, having escaped humid Florida, I begged my parents to take me shopping for my first winter coat. This year, I plan to do something similar but also to make it a bit more extraordinary.

See, if I wanted to go to the Cambridgeside Galleria, I could do that on my own time and spend my own money. When it comes to getting my parents involved, I like to make it special. Believe or not, they’re as easily bored as I am.

That is why I’m taking them to the Top Shelf Flea Market this Sunday, Oct. 21, in our near and dear Davis Square. The market, which will be open from noon to 5 p.m. at the George Dilboy VFW Post on Summer Street, is all but guaranteed to have something for everyone.

This October’s installment represents the flea market’s sixth bi-annual occurrence, and it’s grown a lot over the years. The market also occurs each May. According to Giuseppe Timore, organizer of the Top Shelf Flea Market, he decided to create the market when he was writing “An Affordable Wardrobe,” a blog dedicated to thrift-store finds.

“I started collecting clothes whether they fit me or not, and the flea market was my way of selling that stuff,” he said. He added that the event often brings a diverse crowd of customers, largely because the vendors he chooses offer a variety of interesting options.

“It’s sort of a combination of the Tufts student community and people like me,” Timore, who is in his thirties, said. That makes it the perfect place to shop with your family, but what’s great is that this isn’t the typical thrift shopping experience. The clothes at Top Shelf, Timore guaranteed, are high quality and interesting.

“I try to find people who have a good, picky eye about what they’re selling,” Timore explained. “You’re guaranteed that there won’t be junk.” Which is good, since I know secondhand clothes conjure up an image of piles of less-than-appealing clothes.

This time around, Timore himself will be bringing a diverse range of men’s clothing with a nod to the prevailing fall trends.

“I’ve got a lot of tweed, sweaters, and nice outerwear. I’ve also got hip, lumberjack-style stuff that’s really old,” he said.

For women, though, Timore was enthusiastic about the wide range of styles that the other vendors, including Davis Square’s own Artifaktori, will bring to the mix. He shared that you can expect plenty of great vintage clothing, spanning from classic ’50s style to the funkier fashion of the ’70s and ’80s.

Timore ensured that clothes won’t be the only thing you find on Sunday. There will also be vendors selling jewelry, knickknacks and furniture — perfect for finishing off your dorm room decorating.

Timore warned me that the prices may be a bit higher than what you could find elsewhere, but he argued that, “they’re still very fair for what we get.”

For Timore, though, the most exciting part is how the flea market is slowly becoming more of an institution for local residents.

“I’m gratified that it’s become something that people look for every October and May,” he said.

Jacob Passy is a senior majoring in international relations. He can be reached at Jacob.Passy@tufts.edu.

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The Voices of Tufts Diversity Experience October 25th-26th An overnight program for prospective students interested in learning about diversity on campus

Volunteer to host at the Student Outreach website, webcenter.studentservices.tufts.edu/admissions/outreach/ hostsignup.asp?voices If you have any questions, please contact Naiara Souto at Naiara.Souto@tufts.edu

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Weekender Arts & Living

Weekender Feature

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ILM the forgotten art Collaboration gives film a new dimension

Courtesy Matt Saunders / Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts Courtesy Jeff Rapsis / Somerville Theatre

by

Alex Hanno

Daily Editorial Board

S

ometimes we forget film is an art. With mindless flicks flooding the cinemas every weekend, herding us there in eager droves, it can certainly be difficult to remember this fact. We’re often content with explosions and recycled jokes, and there’s nothing wrong with that, per se. But once in a while it wouldn’t hurt to widen our scope of cinematic interest and absorb film as many filmmakers have intended for it to be absorbed: as an art.

Luckily, a slew of upcoming and ongoing projects in the Boston area presents film in an array of innovative, artistic lights. Fascinatingly, many of these undertakings link film with another artistic medium.

Such creative fusions demonstrate that movies are capable of and keen on exploring certain emotions and themes that many people associate with other art forms. These projects also attempt to show that art in general is a collaborative craft. While film can elicit true empathy on its own, it can produce an even more stimulating effect when combined with music, static art or the stage, for example.

For artist and Harvard lecturer Matt Saunders, bringing film together with photography and painting felt natural. In fact, the definitive titles for different art forms mean little to Saunders. He sees art as an opportunity to create images that, when taken together, produce a cohesive effect. For him, whether this takes the form of animation, photography or a melding of the two doesn’t matter in the least.

“All those distinctions are kind of meaningless,” he said. “The basic core process of my work is very much with making images out of materials and thinking about where these images are located, and what’s specific about how they are made.”

Painting, drawing, photography, animation — each of these artistic mediums share a similar dialogue, and the artist’s latest show, “Matt Saunders: The movies that were secret remain secret somehow and a nation forgets its pleasures,” attempts to portray that.

Inked, hand-drawn short animations screen throughout the space while characters from the films hang along the walls in the form of “photo prints” — pictures taken of his canvas paintings — similarly colored in gray, nuanced tones. Each of his pieces, be it film or static art, compliments and evolves from the others, creating what Saunders hopes viewers will see as an “image stream.”

“They present different information,” he explained. “But that carries over [from one art form] to the way you see the other ones, so it creates a more complicated dialogue of transition and materiality.”

On display in The Carpenter Center basement and within the Harvard Film Archive, Saunders’ project, which he hesitates to call an exhibit due to its constantly evolving nature, is largely dedicated to the site that houses it. One of his main aims was to strengthen the relationship between film and

other visual arts by drawing in people from both worlds, which the Carpenter Center has strived to do for 50 years.

“The idea was to try to find a way to show artwork not in the exhibition space that exists in the building, but to try to activate that zone where the two programs touch,” Saunders said.

The show will run through Nov. 4 and attendance is free. Gallery hours are from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 1 p.m. to 11 p.m on Sunday, with screenings taking place in the Carpenter Center Lecture Hall every weekday at noon.

When it comes to thinking about cinema in relation to theater, the world is no stranger to film adaptations of popular plays. Just think: How many renditions of “Hamlet” have made it the big screen? While such a production does bring together the stage and the screen in some loose form, Coolidge Corner Theatre and Huntington Theatre Company’s recent collaboration unites these two arts in a far more intriguing and intimate fashion.

“This year, [Huntington’s] season included a couple of titles that were directly film related, such as Fritz Lang’s ‘M’ (1931),” Coolidge Corner Theatre Program Manager Jesse Hassinger said. “So we explored the idea of

that they can offer playwrights and/or directors [the chance] to discuss how either the themes of the film have influenced them, or the films directly have influenced their work.”

“It’s nice to be able to offer the audience not only a different viewpoint on some of the themes, but also [to demonstrate] how those themes can tie into the plays that are about to be performed as well,” he added.

“Stage & Screen” already kicked off earlier this month with a screening of Gore Vidal’s “The Best Man” (1964), followed by an appearance from stage director Michael Wilson and Christopher Shinn, creator of the play “Now and Later,” which runs through Nov. 10 at the Huntington’s Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts.

Both productions explore similar themes of deceit within the political world, and thus provide a compelling base for comparison and discussion. Hassinger hopes that this discussion will help bridge the gap between theater and film and demonstrate their intertwined, symbiotic relationship.

“Hopefully there is going to be this dialogue between the films that we have presented and the plays that [audiences] are hopefully going to go see,” he said. “And it will raise the level of interest and appreciation to a higher plane,

Courtesy Rebecca Curtiss / Huntington Theatre Company

Charles Haugland, artistic programs and dramaturgy at the Huntington Theater Company, and playwright Christopher Shinn led a dialogue linking cinema and theater at the latest “Stage & Screen” event.

doing a limited series where we would join up with a couple of their productions to show a related film.”

This ongoing series, titled “Stage & Screen,” is a bold venture that brings current Huntington artists to the Coolidge Corner Theatre for the screening of a film that impacted their work in one way or another. Following the screening, the artists will take part in a conversation with the audience, talking about themes or subjects relevant to the film and to their upcoming productions. This unique pairing of theater and cinema demonstrates that these arts always have and always will reciprocally influence one another.

“I think the nicest thing about working so closely with the Huntington on this series is

so that [audiences] can see that there is a little bit of dialogue between different art forms — that the stage is not completely separate from movies and vice versa.”

The series will continue into the 2013 season with more events at the Coolidge Corner Theatre and related Huntington stage productions going up as well. The next pairing, which will take place on Monday, Jan. 7, will link Spike Lee’s “Do The Right Thing” (1989) to the upcoming show “The Invisible Man,” directed

by Christopher McElroen, with a discussion on themes of race and identity to follow.

Though movies aren’t usually perceived as a “live” art, as they’re filmed in advance, years ago they did include an aspect of performance along with their presentation. Back in

the days of silent cinema, orchestras accompanied showings to add an almost indescribable quality to movie screenings a sort of energy that comes along only with viewing a live show.

This Sunday, Oct. 21, New Hampshire composer Jeff Rapsis and the Somerville Theatre are teaming up to bring that energy back to life with a screening of Lon Chaney’s classic, “The Phantom of the Opera” (1925), accompanied by a live score from Rapsis. The film will screen in 35 mm with an original print, allowing the audience to view “The Phantom of the Opera” as it was initially intended: on the big screen, with pristine visual quality and a live score backing it.

Having taken an interest in vintage cinema and music as a teenager, Rapsis finally put his passions together in 2007 and has been making scores for silent films ever since. Over 300 shows later, Rapsis is still amazed by the emotional effect that’s created by joining live music with film on the big screen, a pairing he views as altogether organic.

“To me it was like peanut butter and chocolate: two great things that were even better together,” he said. “I find it interesting to see how [silent films] come to life when they are projected in front of an audience with live music. It is often quite surprising how much energy they still have in them.”

Rather than try and replicate what an original score might have sounded like, Rapsis creates his own material for the screenings, delivering a performance that is largely improvised based on the feel of the film and the audience’s response. Perceiving it as an art continually in progress, his musical performances aren’t about exact preparation, but rather about expressing a relationship between the film being screened and the musical feel of the moment.

“All your critical faculties and all the things you would worry about or second-guess or wonder just sort of subside, and you can just naturally make music in a way that I find surprising sometimes,” Rapsis said.

Describing silent films as more like the opera than anything else — big in both emotional and physical senses — Rapsis believes the only way to properly complement their powerful visual presence is with a live score.

The result is a recreation of silent films as they were meant to be seen and an illustration of the cohesive bond music, live performance and cinema all share.

“The live music creates this element of real performance that’s not present in a contemporary movie,” Rapsis shared. “The live music, in the way I do it, could be different every time.

It creates a certain energy that’s present in any live performance.”

Catch these programs now to see film as the collaborative art it was meant to be.

Top left: Saunders’ “L’Eclisse” (2012) is an intimate example of film, photography and painting all melding into one. Top right: To further the film’s artistic effect, Lon Chaney’s classic, “The Phantom of the Opera,” will screen in 35 mm and will be accompanied by live music.

The Tufts Daily

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Thursday, October 18, 2012

Top 10 | People you don’t want your parents to know you have sex with in college The college social scene is, in large part, about sexual regrets, either due to students being completely libidinally crazed or due to their failure to satiate these primordial lusts. Seeing as we all, at some point or another, have waded into these murky waters during our time at Tufts, the Daily Arts section has taken an uncompromising look at the copulatory partners who will not be discussed during Parents and Family Weekend.

6. Your professor: And he still gave me a B+!

3. Your TA: And she still gave me a B+!

2. Your roommate: Drunk.

8. Your Orientation leader: Why else would they buy you drinks?

5. Drunken frat partiers: If your hookup considers Ray-Bans, neon pinnies and baseball caps appropriate party gear, that’s probably one you’ll want to keep on the DL.

7. Your roommate’s significant other: At least wait until your roommate’s asleep.

4. A certain really friendly Daily editor: Guess who!

10. That one delivery guy: If any dirty video is an indicator, tips are open to interpretation.

9. Uh... what’s his name?: Drunk...

1. Your hand: Not a person, but always a faithful companion.

—compiled by the Daily Arts Department

Theater Preview

Drama Program’s ‘Our Private Lives’ comically reworks dark subject material in English-language debut Black comedy will challenge audience expectations and taboos by

Dan O’Leary

Daily Editorial Board

The Drama Program of Tufts’ Department of Drama and Dance is kicking off Parents and Family Weekend with its first production for the 20122013 season, which will be sure to present many interesting and thoughtprovoking questions to the audience.

This weekend will see the premiere of “Our Private Lives,” a black comedy by Colombian playwright and telenovela writer Pedro Miguel Rozo.

“Our Private Lives” marks the 25th Tufts production for director and faculty member Laurence Senelick, and will also be the North American Englishlanguage debut of the play, which was originally written in Spanish. The Royal Court Theatre in London developed the initial English translation of the text.

Senelick explained that the Tufts production team worked to remove many British terms in order to make the language more American.

Senelick praised “Our Private Lives” for its comedic elements and social commentary.

“This show is a kind of parody, in a way, of a telenovela and all the agonies and all the dysfunctional families you usually see,” he said. “But it’s also a comment on Colombian culture and the state of Colombian society. What you’re getting in this play is a transition from the old Colombia to the new Colombia, seen through the eyes of this one particular family, which is being riven by a scandal.”

This family is a formerly well-to-do Colombian clan, living in a village that is slowly growing into a city. When a story begins to circulate around the town about the patriarch of the family molesting a young boy on his farm, the rumor threatens to envelop the family.

The remainder of the play focuses on the characters’ search for the truth.

Senelick had wanted the department’s first show to open on Parents and Family Weekend. Faced with this logistical consideration, he searched for a short show that would require less rehearsal time and construction time than usual, and ultimately decided upon “Our Private Lives.” Because the show is not separated into acts like most traditional plays, it can run straight through without any intermissions or breaks.

One distinct aspect of “Our Private Lives” is that it often features the actors pantomiming actions in lieu of using traditional props.

“Because so much of this [show] is in people’s minds, they speak their thoughts out loud in this play [and] things fade in and out of reality. So sometimes there’s a real prop and sometimes there isn’t,” Senelick explained.

This minimalist approach also carries over to the set of “Our Private Lives,” which is composed of just a few walls with portals and windows. Partially due to the need for less intensive construction because of the unusually early premiere, the basic set also reflects the play’s themes. According to Senelick, the combination of rough and smooth textures in the set represents the village’s transition into a larger town.

“Our Private Lives” is brought to life by a student cast and crew that run the gamut in terms of age and experience. The group of seven actors

includes seniors Zachary Gillette and Ryan Willison, as well as three freshmen participating in their first Tufts production. Freshman Jem Wilner, who plays a psychiatrist, voiced her appreciation for the cast’s small size. “[It] makes for a very intimate cast.

We all know each other a lot better by the end of this,” she said.

Senior James Pouliot, an assistant director for the production who is also an assistant News editor at the Daily, assists Senelick with everything from working with individual actors to helping with blocking. Pouliot said that working on “Our Private Lives” has been a great learning experience for him.

“The play ... asks more difficult questions,” he said.

Senelick hopes that the play will push some of the boundaries of comedy and challenge its audience.

“One of the things we’re exploring in this play is how far can you go with comedy,” he said. “What subjects are taboo? In a way, this play — and I hope the production — will challenge some of those ideas or make people rethink their positions. I’m hoping it will be controversial.”

For a video preview and interviews with Laurence Senelick and two cast members, check out the Tufts Daily’s Jumbo Slice blog.

Courtesy Ted Simpson

The Tufts Drama Department will soon perform the thought-provoking “Our Private Lives”

by Colombian writer Pedro Miguel Rozo.

The Artsy Jumbo

Junior artist Mia Greenwald explores printmaking Mia Greenwald has been interested in art since before she can remember.

“It’s what I’ve always wanted to do,” she said.

A junior, Greenwald is a dual-degree student, majoring in International Letters and Visual Studies at Tufts while simultaneously taking courses at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts.

Although she has no particular area of concentration at the SMFA, Greenwald has recently been exploring printmaking.

“I’ve been taking a lot of printmaking classes this semester,” she said.

“Right now I’m in a screen printing class, an etching class and an experimental drawing and painting class.”

Last summer, Greenwald took her artistic interests off the canvas and into the classroom while on a study abroad program in Cuba.

“I researched the politics and economics of the art market [in Cuba] to see how that influences the dynamic of the art world there,” she said.

At Tufts, Greenwald utilizes her artistic abilities to design T-shirts for many of the groups in which she is involved.

“I’m on the Ultimate Frisbee team, so I designed shirts for them, and I’m on the [varsity] swim team, so I designed shirts for NESCAC’s,” she said.

This year, Greenwald also joined Tufts Exposure, the main photojournalism program on campus.

Ideally, Greenwald wants to continue making art after college.

“I would like to be an artist,” she said. “[But] I realize that that’s not necessarily a possible career path, so I’m open to possibilities.”

—by Caroline Welch

Ashley Seenauth / the Tufts Daily

The Tufts Daily

Thursday, October 18, 2012 TV Review

Substance unsurprisingly lacking in ‘Real Housewives’ reunion episode Season finale offers forced drama and petty fights by

Brionna Jimerson

Daily Editorial Board

Season five of “The Real Housewives of New York City” wrapped this Monday with Part II of the season’s reunion.

The Real Housewives of New York City Starring Ramona Singer, LuAnn de Lesseps, Sonja Morgan Airs Mondays at 9 p.m. on Bravo This is an episode fans looked forward to, giddily anticipating half-hearted — or heartless — apologies, quick zingers and a parade of Louboutins and statement dresses. But this season’s reunion left us wanting more. It felt like the reluctant gathering it probably was, as none of the women seemed particularly interested in rehashing old problems or reopening wounds.

The season brought many changes for “The Real Housewives of New York” series, with half the cast being swapped at the outset: Kelly Killoren Bensimon, Jill Zarin and Alex McCord were replaced by Heather Thomson, Aviva Drescher and Carole Radziwill, leaving the old guard of Sonja Morgan, Ramona Singer and LuAnn de Lesseps standing to break in the new women.

Throughout the season, the new blood became just as contaminated as the old, resulting in countless nitpicky fights over capes, titles, wine and Aviva’s ex-husband — and ex-lover of at least half of the castmates — the infamous Harry.

At the reunion, the ladies seemed sedated, settling themselves in for a moment-by-moment dissection of the season past. Reunion shows are touted as the be-all and end-all, clearing the air of events that took place often months earlier while offering cast members the chance to make belated digs. Carole kicked off the night by promptly establishing herself as the most sane cast member: She admitted that, as a veteran journalist, she was drawn to joining the cast out of her interest in the spectacle of it all.

Aviva’s ex-husband Harry was next on the docket. Harry’s intimate knowledge of some of New York’s most elite women is no secret — it even extends beyond this particular group of ladies.

LuAnn and Sonja both openly admitted to “dating” Harry in some capacity in the past, either before or after his relationship with Aviva.

But when it comes to add-ons, Aviva stole the show this season. The seventh Housewife may as well have been Aviva’s prosthetic leg — it was always a plot point. Prosthetics are no joking matter, but never has a piece of plastic and fiberglass received more airtime than Aviva’s perfectly tanned faux limb. Ever unforgiving and nosy, the classless Ramona proceeded to spend plenty of time telling Aviva how she should care for her prosthetic — because, you know, Aviva hasn’t dealt with it for years, and she doesn’t know the ins and outs of proper usage.

Attention then turned to Sonja, who touted Sonja Home, her still-

Christopher Macsurak via Flickr Creative Commons

Veteran Housewife Ramona Singer kept Season 5 interesting with her always crazy, often classless antics. unfinished line of household items, — he was, then he wasn’t, then he was focusing most notably a toaster oven. an “Italian friend” — LuAnn finally Throughout the season, Sonja butted came out with it and admitted that she heads with Heather, a businesswoman lied to keep a bad-looking situation who created a popular shapewear line, from getting any worse. Funny, since over the design for the toaster oven’s she was miked during all of her conbox and packaging. Two photo shoots, versations and someone on the crew several screaming matches and one surely knew how to translate French. still-unavailable toaster oven later, Better luck next time, Lu. Sonja sat on the couch and pulled out Oh, and what’s Carole doing all the mock-ups for the logo, designed by while? Exactly what she should be “fans,” as if trying to belittle Heather’s doing: staying out of the mix, defendcreative work. Whoa, Sonja. That was ing herself when necessary and observactually a pretty rude move to make, ing the spectacle. especially towards Heather, who actu- The reunion was a limping culmially cared about Sonja’s brand enough nation of a season spent bickering to go in with her on this charade of over absolutely nothing, and the cast members continue to come off as business know-how.

LuAnn’s alleged affair with a hipster self-important women hiding behind pirate — completely serious — in St. charity causes and swanky events in Barths made for interesting conver- an effort to make themselves relesational fodder. On a vacation to the vant in the New York social circle. Of island of St. Barths, the ladies sans Aviva course, no one watches RHONY seekspent an evening at a dance club with ing incredible character depth and a man known only as Tomas. As several nuanced storylines — don’t forget, castmates attested, Tomas came home these are people made into characters, with LuAnn that evening and [insert with the help of copious amounts of your own joke about pirates, sex and editing — but at a certain point, the booty here]. After about a mile and finger pointing and “setting the record a half of backpedaling with excuses, straight” betray a lack of substance phone calls in foreign languages and that has become a trademark in “The outright lies about Tomas being there Real Housewives” franchise.

What’s Up This Weekend Looking to make your weekend artsy?

Check out these events!

Sorie Kondi: Self-taught Sierra Leone musician Sorie Kondi is known for his impressive vocal range and playing a thumb instrument made from scrap metal that resembles a piano. Tonight at 8 p.m. in Distler Performance Hall. Tickets are free with a Tufts ID at (617) 627-3679; limit two per person.

Global Flows Exhibition Walkthrough: A special tour of the Global Flows exhibit

will be offered by Amy Schlegel, the exhibition curator and director of the Tufts Art Gallery. The Global Flows exhibit showcases “the global” through a historical and cultural perspective, via art and artifacts.

Friday at 11 a.m. in the Tufts Art Gallery, Aidekman Arts Center. Admission is free.

Major: Undecided presents Bed, Bath and Beyonce: In their first show of the semester, Major: Undecided presents a show of live student-written sketch comedy. The evening promises to be full of jokes, laughs and, possibly, a special

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weekender

guest performance. Friday at 9 p.m. in Barnum 008. Admission is free.

Cheap Sox presents Vote Pro-Laugh: Improv comedy troupe Cheap Sox will have their first show of the semester this weekend. This show will also feature new troupe members Marcus Hunter and Michele Herzog. Saturday at 9 p.m. in Hotung Cafe, Mayer Campus Center.

Admission is free.

—compiled by the Daily Arts Department

Mae Humiston & Sara Gardner | Let’s Talk About Food

Let them eat whatever!

L

ast week we talked about distribution in the sense of how food travels from the field to the consumer. This week we will focus on another dimension of distribution: equity. “Food equity” refers to the idea that access to fresh and healthy foods should be universal. In this sense, proximity to a grocery does not determine or restrict the idea of access. People may be deprived of fresh and healthy foods because of a multitude of geographic, economic, cultural and educational factors. Because it is so multifaceted, food equity is a common goal for many groups in the food movements. We think it is important for you to understand food equity issues if you want to learn about today’s food systems.

A common term used by food movement groups to describe areas of limited access is “food desert.” There are issues surrounding the semantics of this phrase, but the general concept is widely agreed upon: There are places where people cannot get fresh and healthy food that is affordable, culturally appropriate and accessible through existing means of transportation. Sometimes, “food deserts” do not actually lack food — rather, they are devoid of food with substantial nutritional value or, as some members of the food movement would say, they only have food with “empty calories.” The food available in food deserts is typically either fast food or gas station snacks. While they stave off hunger, their nutritional content leaves much to be desired. This is why healthiness is an essential part of the definition of food equity.

Affordability and location are also important factors in determining whether a food system is equitable. Logically, any rational business looks to set up shop where people will spend money. However, this often keeps businesses that are championed for their fresh foods, such as Whole Foods and farmers’ markets, out of disadvantaged areas — specifically, those affected by structurally racist urban planning and zoning, disproportionately high levels of environmental degradation or weak or failing infrastructure and policies that perpetuate inequality and disparity. Clearly, the issues involved in food equity dilemmas are indicative of greater structural problems.

There are, however, many people and groups looking at the problems pertaining to food to help fix them. Some farmers’ markets have started accepting food stamps and offering “Bounty Bucks,” where, for example, $10 buys $20 worth of food. There are also mobile market models and community-supported agriculture shares that bring farm-fresh food to under-served areas. Some farms also donate their excess produce to food banks and kitchens to help out their community. While the fact that these models generally depend on excess production and therefore do not directly or sustainably address issues of economic disparity, they do provide a space for community engagement with these issues.

The Food Project of Boston goes even further to connect people in marginalized communities with fresh foods and the actual growing process. The Food Project built raised beds all around Dorchester and Roxbury for residents, and the head grower spends as much time acting as a community reference as she does farming. The Food Project and other programs like it work to empower people by giving them the resources needed to grow food they want and need. Such an approach begins to address issues of equity, but is certainly not a cure-all.

In order to advance toward securing food equity for all, we need to recognize the structures that perpetuate existing problems. When a household cannot obtain fresh, nutritious food, we need to examine why that is. By taking notice of economic, geographic and cultural gaps in access and distribution, we can also understand where changes can be made and whether they apply to policy, infrastructure or economic models.

Sara Gardner is a freshman who has not yet a declared a major. She can be reached at Sara.Gardner@tufts.edu.

Mae Humiston is a senior majoring in anthropology. She can be reached at Mae. Humiston@tufts.edu.

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Thursday, October 18, 2012

Detrimental Common App changes

Rebecca K. Santiago Editor-in-Chief

editorial | op-ed

At this year’s National Association for College Admission Counseling’s (NACAC) annual conference, the Common Application (Common App) unveiled a makeover for its existing system. Among the various changes — which will go into effect Aug. 1, 2013 — two stand out as the most substantial: the elimination of the “topic of your choice” personal essay and the strict enforcement of the personal essay’s 250-500 word range. These changes are purposeless and will only serve as a detriment to both students in the midst of the college application process and college admissions officers.

Reactions to the elimination of the “topic of your choice” option have been mixed.

According to The Chronicle of Education, a counselor present at the conference welcomed the change because he felt it “disproportionately served savvy, affluent students who were comfortable writing about their achievements.” Another lamented the loss because it “benefited teenagers who didn’t fit a particular mold.”

Although both arguments have merit, having the option to develop and write an essay on a topic of one’s choosing does

not mean that college applicants have to.

Those more comfortable writing an essay answering a specific question would still be able to do so. But the choice to write on an open-ended topic should be given to those students who feel that it acts as a better outlet for their creativity and expression of their personality — key factors that college admissions officers look at when considering applicants. The Common App should not have the right to so severely limit the ways in which prospective students present themselves to the universities to which they hope to be admitted.

The strict enforcement of the essay length also merits reconsideration. Admissions officers are bombarded with thousands of essays every application season, so a cap on length — albeit a flexible one — is necessary. Yet, it can be difficult to convey the nuances of your personality in 500 words or less. This also acts as another stricture on creative expression, and displaying an error message if an essay’s word count is just over the limit is completely unnecessary.

While the implications of these changes most directly affect students, college admissions officers will feel them as well. Dean

of Undergraduate Admissions Lee Coffin wrote in an Oct. 10 blog post on Inside Admissions that one of the most important factors in determining whether or not students are admitted into Tufts is their “fit” in the Tufts community. Admissions officers must ask themselves, “Can I see this person at Tufts? Can I see this person actively contributing to the Tufts community?” The personal essay is often the best tool that an admissions officer can use to gauge the personality, and thus the “fit,” of a student. With limits on how a student can express that to a university, with limits on how they can make themselves stand out among thousands of applicants, an admissions officer’s job only becomes more difficult.

There are only so many ways for college applicants to make their applications stand out from the pile. The “topic of your choice” personal essay and flexible essay length guidelines play key roles in allowing hopeful college students to express their personalities to the best of their abilities.

Because of their potential to hinder applicants and inconvenience admissions officers, these changes seem slated to do more harm than good.

keran CHAN

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Off the Hill | Dartmouth College

A farce of a prize

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Michael Beechert The Dartmouth

The Nobel Peace Prize, perhaps at one time a universally admired achievement, has managed to take yet another step toward becoming a complete farce. Just three years after granting a newly elected Barack Obama the prize for little more than the content of his campaign speeches, the Norwegian politicians that comprise the Nobel Committee gave the award to the European Union, a decision that left much of the world scratching its collective head in confusion.

According to the Nobel Committee, the EU deserved the honor for having “over six decades contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe.” Essentially, the committee deemed it appropriate to reward most of the members of an entire continent for behaving exactly as they should — for not attacking one another.

Of course, many EU member states have engaged in some sort of armed conflict in the past six decades. But an undistinguished history of participation in international military operations is not enough to discredit the EU alone. After all, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and not the EU, serves as the military coordinator for much of the continent. No, the Nobel Committee’s decision is flawed for two main reasons: It affords the shared ideals of the EU too much credit for the continuing peace on the continent, and it completely ignores the present-day quagmire in which the EU finds itself.

The idea that the European peace is a direct result of the liberal values shared throughout the continent is a nice one. This type of thinking appeals to our idealism as good Westerners and to our senses of democracy, freedom and fairness. But solely concentrating on the proliferation of liberalism as the cause for peace, as the Nobel Committee does, leaves a much more visceral factor out of the equation — the rather large United States military presence in Europe.

From the end of World War II to the modern day, the United States has maintained significant amounts of personnel and equipment across the European continent. The purpose of such an expensive and large force — approximately 90,000 men and women — is not to prevent, for example, France and Germany from attacking one another again.

Rather, the preservation of such a presence today grants the United States easier access to the Middle East and offers the military a better position from which to respond to emergency situations.

Regardless of U.S. intention, however, European states are the beneficiaries of such a security blanket. They have to worry less about providing for their own defenses and can concentrate funds and efforts on welfare programs or other potentially stabilizing projects. And of course, a large and capable American military presence is likely to deter an unfavorable balance of power from materializing in Europe — just in case, say, Germany started wondering about exactly how much it could flex its ever-growing muscles. So perhaps the Nobel

Committee should have awarded the prize to the U.S. Army as a joint declaration for having “over six decades contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe.”

And of course, the EU as it exists now is in rather poor shape. Anyone not living under a rock is aware that the EU is still in the midst of a fiscal crisis that has been ongoing for several years. Less wealthy and less financially competent countries, such as Greece and Spain, have been forced by more wealthy and more financially competent countries, mainly Germany, to impose strict austerity measures on irate populaces, which have responded with protests that have at times devolved into violent riots.

At this point, it is not unreasonable to state that the only glue holding the EU’s fiscal union together is German willingness to act as a bailout fund. Nor is it unreasonable to assume that German tolerance and patience will eventually evaporate. If this happens and chaos results, the financial pact between EU nations will be abandoned, and the entire ideal of European unity will have been dealt a deathblow.

The Nobel Committee is obviously well aware of the fragile state of the EU. Perhaps it felt that a Nobel Prize would do something for morale on the continent. But there were other, more deserving candidates. And how such an esteemed body could so blatantly ignore the harsh status quo of its chosen winner, in the form of current unrest and possibly impending pandemonium, is inexplicable.

Correction P.O. Box 53018, Medford, MA 02155 617 627 3090 FAX 617 627 3910 daily@tuftsdaily.com

In the Arts article “Boston Symphony Orchestra shines under Marcelo Lehninger’s conducting” run on Oct. 15, the review incorrectly stated Marcelo Lehninger conducted Pyotr Ilyich Tchiakovsky’s Sixth Symphony, “Pathetique,” last fall. In fact, Myung-Whun Chung conducted this performance.

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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Op-Ed

Op-Ed

Walt Laws-MacDonald | Show Me The Money!

Don’t believe the hype

I

Courtesy dan jubelirer

The case for divestment by

Nick Ryder, Jeremy Goldman, and Dan Jubelirer

As evidenced by this week’s presidential debate, our political leaders are not talking about the most pressing issue of our generation: climate change. So far, there has not been any adequate legislation or proposals from either side of the political aisle to help avert catastrophic climate change.

But even more frustrating than our politicians’ ineptitude is Tufts’ support of fossil fuels, by, most likely, investing part of our $1.45 billion dollar endowment in the industry. Tufts has roughly half of the endowment invested in equity, but does not disclose which companies it invests in. Many schools of similar size have invested 51 to 20 percent of their endowments in the fossil fuel industry. By this logic, it is a safe estimate to say that Tufts has invested between $100 and $150 million in oil, coal and gas companies. While the purpose of endowment investing is to maximize returns, fossil fuel investments seem strikingly incompatible with the high value Tufts places on environmental sustainability.

As an institution dedicated to educating leaders for the future, it is unacceptable for Tufts to invest in fossil fuels. In the words of Bill McKibben in the now-viral Rolling Stone article “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math,” if a college’s endowment is invested in fossil fuels, “[the students’] educations are being subsidized by investments that guarantee they won’t have much of a planet on which to make use of their degree.”

Fossil fuel companies are uniquely positioned to alter the physics and chemistry of the planet just for the sake of making a profit. The UK-based Carbon Tracker Initiative estimates that oil, coal and gas companies have five times as much carbon in their reserves as is safe to burn. If burned, our planet would heat up at by at least 5 to 6 degrees Celsius, well beyond the 2 degrees Celsius limit agreed to by the international community in 2009.

When Tufts invests in a corporation and provides it with capital to operate, the money is not only used to drill for more oil and strip mine mountains for coal, but also to influence the energy

policy of the United States. During the 2008 elections, oil companies alone spent a staggering $132.2 million on federal lobbying, used in order to kill climate change legislation and advocate for approval of the dangerous Keystone XL Pipeline, among other environmentally harmful directives. Is this how we want our tuition money to be used?

Divestment, the removal of investments in socially irresponsible companies for social and environmental reasons, is not a new concept on college campuses. Throughout the 1980s, 155 colleges and universities divested themselves of the portions of their endowments that were invested in companies doing business in South Africa with the apartheid regime. This movement gained national attention, inspiring dozens of cities and states to take similar economic action in the effort to end apartheid. Divestment added necessary political pressure to South Africa, and brought the injustice of apartheid into the public consciousness. Roughly 30 years later, a similar movement is garnering the same kind of momentum — one focused on climate change.

We understand the importance of Tufts’ investments to the operation of our university and to the quality of our education. We are convinced that divestment from fossil fuels is critical not only for the future of our planet but for the long-term stability and growth of the university’s funds, since in the long run fossil fuel stock will not continue to be profitable as global oil supply diminishes. Studies by financial experts such as PH&N Investment Services have concluded that socially responsible investment does not harm returns.

Of all the environmentally conscious actions Tufts students could decide to take, the push to divest from fossil fuels will have the greatest impact. The significance of turning off lights when leaving a room or deciding to bike instead of drive should not be ignored, but this pales in comparison to our school’s massive investment in the very industries that pollute the atmosphere and actively work to prevent a sustainable future. The Mission & Strategy page of Tufts’ website ensures that the institution will “strive to be a

model for society at large” and “welcome change and innovation, continually improving quality in every aspect of the University.” It is time for Tufts to live up to its values.

Hampshire College just announced that it will divest from fossil fuels; it is the first college in the country to do so. If Tufts follows suit, not only will we be living up to our own standards of social awareness and active citizenship, we will also show that we are real leaders in the transition to a sustainable economy. Tufts could also increase its fundraising and attract forward-thinking students and faculty by being the leader in a sustainable future.

We believe Tufts’ divestment from fossil fuels could even be a selling point used by our admissions office.

Last Friday, students who are working on the divestment campaign met with officials from the Tufts administration to share our proposal. While they respectfully listened to our demands, and were interested in the idea in theory, we were told that Tufts outsources our investments to fund managers, so it would be virtually impossible to divest. However, this is not a valid excuse. Via the fossil fuel fighting organization Better Future Project, Junko Yoda, an advisor there and former Vice President of Goldman Sachs, has told our campaign that with an endowment of our size, fund managers can create a diversified, fossil-fuel free investment strategy. We pay a lot of very smart people a lot of money to manage our endowment, and we do not accept the excuse that it is too difficult simply because Tufts hires external investors.

We must take climate change seriously as a school. The science is in: Global warming is happening, and it is already taking a devastating toll on people’s lives and on our economy. We must divest from the industry causing it, not only for the self-interest of the school, but also for our future.

Nick Ryder is a freshman who has not yet declared a major. He can be reached at Nicholas.Ryder@tufts.edu. Jeremy Goldman is a sophomore majoring in economics. He can be reached at Jeremy.

Goldman@tufts.edu. Dan Jubelirer is a sophomore majoring in peace and justice studies. He can be reached at Dan. Jubelirer@tufts.edu.

f you followed my column last semester — or read any of them, really — you probably know that I sort of freaked out about the Facebook initial public offering (IPO). It was a big deal. Facebook is the company, website, fad of our generation. Facebook has impacted the dayto-day lives of nearly a billion people in a way that few other products have.

But the reason I spent half the year talking about it has little to do with how the “like button” has revolutionized marketing or how Sandra just accidentally burned down her shed in Farmville. The Facebook IPO was unprecedented on several scales: 955 million active users, $3.71 billion in revenue, and a $100 billion valuation before its eighth birthday.

As I mentioned in a column last year, Facebook didn’t really need to go public.

Most companies schedule an IPO to raise capital, but Facebook wasn’t in any sort of cash crunch. Many, including myself, suspected that Facebook chose to go public because of an SEC rule that would have forced the company to release its financials, regardless of whether or not it was publicly traded.

Mark Zuckerberg confirmed this unconventional reasoning in Facebook’s official S-1 filing, saying “We don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services.” Simply put, Facebook was never out to make a killing, but if it was going to release its financials it might as well make some money in the process. Publicly traded companies are held responsible by their shareholders.

So what is a company that isn’t out to make money really worth?

The Facebook IPO was hyped to a level that had never been seen before. The media gave it a tremendous amount of attention, making sure everyone knew what it meant for the company, its users and the stock market itself. However, most news sources and I did a pretty terrible job describing what it actually meant for shares of Facebook and soonto-be investors.

And herein lies the beginning of one of the most poorly mishandled IPOs in the history of the stock market. The IPO was extremely loud and incredibly slow — that is, much hyped and drawn out. The news was only covering the “event,” not how the shares would actually fare.

Before the IPO was even officially announced, the company was valued at close to $100 billion, making it one of the largest companies to ever list for an IPO. If Facebook had decided to go public a few years earlier, investors could see it as a growth opportunity. Instead, many felt that the company had already seen its quickest period of growth. Facebook was no longer adding new users as quickly as it once had, and it has struggled to monetize its mobile platforms, where most users now used the site.

If Facebook’s $100 billion price tag wasn’t enough to make investors pause, the number of shares offered was.

Facebook planned to raise just $5 billion, or 5 percent of its total valuation when it opened for trading. When LinkedIn, by contrast, went public last year, it floated closer to 10 percent of its valuation on its IPO. Even after the number of Facebook shares was increased to 421 million, the total number dwarfed those available for trading.

As the IPO date crept closer, Facebook blew through its price range, moving from $25 to $35 to $34 to $38 a share.

Thanks to the endless hype, Facebook saw a huge demand for the IPO, finally pricing its shares at $38.

Come back next week for “Part II: The Flub.”

Walt Laws-MacDonald is a sophomore majoring in quantitative economics. He can be reached at Walt.Laws_MacDonald@tufts.edu.

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

Comics

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Doonesbury

Crossword

by

Garry Trudeau

Non Sequitur

Tuesday’s Solution

Married to the Sea

www.marriedtothesea.com

SUDOKU Level: Getting Stoop Kid to leave his stoop.

Late Night at the Daily

Wednesday’s Solution

Rebecca: “Falcon, don’t tell our editors to twitch on the floor in abject misery.”

Want more late-night laughs?

Follow us on Twitter at @LateNiteAtDaily

Please recycle this Daily.

by

Wiley

Friday, November 6, 2009 Thursday, October 18, 2012

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CHILDCARE JOB. Local Tufts alum (close drive to Tufts) seeking responsible, patient, loving, energetic, non-smoking part-time babysitter and/or nanny. Hours and scheduling flexible. Salary commensurate with experience.

Please call Faith at (781) 258-9027 for details.

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Sports

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Housing

Housing

Housing

—

One 3br apartment. Large downstairs den. Right next to school.

Washing machine and dryer in unit. Call 617-448-6233

One 6 br apartment. Two baths.

Very convenient to school.

Washing machine and dryer in unit. Call 617-448-6233

Large nine bedroom house. 6 separate bedrooms and two living rooms and kitchen. 4 bathrooms - parking and garage. Call 617-4486233

—

classifieds policy All Tufts students must submit classifieds in person, prepaid with check, money order or exact cash only.

All classifieds submitted by mail must be accompanied by a check. Classifieds are $15 per week or $4 per day with Tufts ID or $30 per week or $8 per day without. The Tufts Daily is not liable for any damages due to typographical errors or misprintings except the cost of the insertion, which is fully refundable. We reserve the right to refuse to print any classifieds which contain obscenity, are of an overly sexual nature or are used expressly to denigrate a person or group. Questions? Email business@tuftsdaily.com.

Courtesy Ken Legler

Tufts took on top competition at South River in Annapolis, including the host school, the US Naval Academy.

Jumbos paced by A-division performance from Haeger, Grasberger SAILING

continued from back

England Single-handed Championship, returned to the single-handed race format in the laser dinghy C Division. He finished with 94 points, including a second-place finish in the tenth race and third-place finishes in his third and fourth races. In the end, the results were enough for a fifth-place finish.

Rounding out the event was sophomore Alejandro Ruiz-Ramon, who represented the Jumbos in the D Division’s single-handed Laser Radial race. He finished with 102 points, including a victory in his sixth race, for eighth place in his division.

Tufts finished with a total of 433 points, a full 21 behind sixth-place Stanford but one point ahead of

the U.S. Naval Academy. College of Charleston, powered by Maegli’s dominating 36 points in the C-Division, won the event by an impressive margin, with 287 points to the second place Georgetown Hoyas’ 314.

“We would have been unhappy with anything less than eighth,” Hutchings said.

“We’ll take [seventh place]. We weren’t thrilled, but it was an okay result.”

“It showed us that we definitely have areas to improve on, boat handling being the biggest, for the rest of the season,” Grasberger said.

The co-ed team next sails this weekend at the Sherman Hoyt Trophy, hosted

by Brown, followed by the Erwin Schell Trophy at MIT the following weekend, where they will attempt to qualify for the Atlantic Coast Championship.

Results against strong Seven Sisters competition show team’s progress Women’s crew continued from back

struggled against a powerful UMass force, but Tufts women did significantly better in the singles events, with sophomore Taylor Maykranz finishing in second place and sophomore Laura Aravena in fourth.

According to Dawe, the women will be focusing more on quads in the two weeks leading up to the Head of the Fish, a regatta at which they will face Ithaca again.

“These fast Ithaca quads are troublesome because they are beating us by so much,” he said.

Water conditions were almost perfect

over the weekend, although the strong current made the row up to the starting line particularly challenging. But according to Dawe, the regatta provided the whole team with a chance to become more confident racing in smaller boats, which is one of the goals of the women’s varsity fall season.

“Going into this they had a lot of confidence in their rowing in eights, but going into this you don’t know in terms of sculling,” he said. “What was really pleasing to see as a coach was that the team just did everything. Everyone was taking responsibility, and no one was standing around.”

Unlike most traditional college coaches, Dawe chooses to focus on sculling during the fall because he believes that smaller boats allow rowers to master technique and become independent.

“You appreciate self empowerment once you learn how to scull,” he said. “I like the camaraderie also. The boats are smaller, and a lot of scullers talk to each other on the water.”

The camaraderie was on display during this regatta in particular. Due to transportation difficulties, the Tufts women were late to the regatta, but they had help rigging their boats by members of the opposing teams.

The sport’s competitiveness balances out this camaraderie, though. According to senior coxswain Audrey Abrell, the fall season gives the Tufts women a chance to self-motivate while also keeping the team in mind.

“Rowers have had the opportunity to improve independently and attain personal goals while competing for the team,” she said.

According to Abrell, the regatta was the perfect display of what the women’s fall sculling program is all about.

“The whole point of us doing sculling is to give rowers experiences like this, to row and make friends with other boats on a unique course,” she said.

Editors' Challenge | Week 7 Here in the sports section, we spend most of the time we should use for editing on mindless internet fluff. Not just any mindless internet fluff, but the fluff you love to hate and hate to love. Much like this box, our favorite videos catch your eyes, leave you wondering why you watched, and come back time and again. They also leave you questioning the value of life, which, consequently, most of our editors were doing last Sunday night after a horrible day of picks. But which of them can weave through the jungle of viral videos and emerge a true star?

On top after Week 6 is David “Chocolate Rain” McIntyre, who stayed dry while others felt the pain. His 11-3 week propelled him to the top of the standings, and while he might not look very old, his picks tell us that he’s all grown up and ready to compete for the title.

Falling out of the top spot is Zachey “Numa Numa” Kliger. Kliger looked good for a few weeks, but his lack of depth exposed him as nothing more than an excitable gent who enjoys throwing throwing his hands in the air and putting up subpar 6-8 records.

Nipping at the leaders’ heels are Andy “Gangnam Style” Wong and Ben “99 Luftballons” Kochman. Wong occasionally spews nonsense words in English that we accept as his picks, and so far the strategy is succeeding more often than not. Kochman, meanwhile, speaks no English at all, so we’ve been making his picks for him while he OVERALL RECORD LAST WEEK

David 59-33 11-3

San Francisco Seattle at San Francisco Buffalo Tennessee at Buffalo NY Giants Washington at NY Giants New Orleans at Tampa Bay Tampa Bay Dallas Dallas at Carolina Houston Baltimore at Houston Indianapolis Cleveland at Indianapolis Green Bay Green Bay at St. Louis Minnesota Arizona at Minnesota NY Jets at New England New England Oakland Jacksonville at Oakland Pittsburgh Pittsburgh at Cincinnati Chicago Detroit at Chicago

Zachey 56-35 6-8

Andy 55-36 6-8

Ben

54-37 8-6

keeps searching party supply stores for that elusive 100th balloon.

Our next pair are Ethan “Peanut Butter Jelly Time” Sturm and Marcus “Call Me Maybe” Budline. It seems as though Sturm has been spending too much time playing baseball while eating PB&Js to understand the intricate art of football picks. Budline, meanwhile, has been handing out his business card to Vegas line makers, but it’s unlikely that any will be calling him back after his 5-9 week.

Things really get ugly in the bottom half of the standings, where Aaron “Charlie Bit my Finger” Leibowitz, Alex “Never Gonna Give You Up” Baudoin and Jake “Bed Intruder Song” Indursky. You see, Indursky is constantly paranoid that someone’s going to snatch him up, so it doesn’t help that Baudoin insists on trying to sneak up and rickroll us all at every turn. We’re not even going to get into Leibowitz’s issues, which include complaining about the other sports editors and speaking in an English accent.

Bringing bringing up the rear, yet again, is Kate “Friday” Klotz. Her favorite song is quite apt considering that’s about the day she’ll realize she’s already missed getting her first pick of the week in on time.

Guest picking this week is our esteemed leader and editor-in-chief Rebecca “Maru the Cat” Santiago, whose enthusiasm for all things picking and editing has led to her inexeplicably jumping into ever-smaller boxes.

Ethan 52-39 5-9

San Francisco San Francisco San Francisco Seattle Tennessee Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo NY Giants NY Giants NY Giants NY Giants Tampa Bay Tampa Bay Tampa Bay New Orleans Dallas Dallas Dallas Dallas Houston Houston Houston Houston Indianapolis Indianapolis Indianapolis Indianapolis Green Bay Green Bay Green Bay Green Bay Minnesota Minnesota Arizona Minnesota New England New England New England New England Oakland Oakland Oakland Oakland Pittsburgh Pittsburgh Cincinnati Cincinnati Chicago Chicago Detroit Chicago

Marcus 52-39 5-9

Aaron 52-39 6-8

Jake 51-40 5-9

Alex 51-40 6-8

Kate 47-44 6-8

GUEST Rebecca Santiago

San Francisco San Francisco San Francisco San Francisco San Francisco San Francisco Buffalo Buffalo Tennessee Buffalo Buffalo Tennessee NY Giants NY Giants NY Giants Washington NY Giants NY Giants New Orleans Tampa Bay Tampa Bay New Orleans Tampa Bay New Orleans Dallas Dallas Dallas Dallas Dallas Dallas Houston Baltimore Houston Houston Houston Houston Indianapolis Indianapolis Indianapolis Indianapolis Indianapolis Cleveland Green Bay Green Bay Green Bay Green Bay Green Bay Green Bay Minnesota Arizona Minnesota Minnesota Minnesota Arizona New England New England New England New England New England NY Jets Jacksonville Oakland Oakland Oakland Oakland Jacksonville Cincinnati Pittsburgh Pittsburgh Pittsburgh Pittsburgh Cincinnati Chicago Chicago Chicago Chicago Chicago Chicago

The Tufts Daily

Thursday, October 18, 2012

15

Sports

Men’s Crew

Varsity shows improvement from last year, novice crews come out strong by

Claire Sleigh

Contributing Writer

The Tufts crew program came out in full force with five eights at this weekend’s Quinsigamond Snake Regatta in Worcester, Mass. showing not only the depth of the team, but also the quality. The men’s top varsity boat came in 10th out of 27 teams while the second varsity eight came in 23rd.

Meanwhile, both the men’s and women’s novice squads were also in action, as the novice men also competed in the same event, and the novice women fielded two boats in the open women’s eights race.

The first men’s varsity boat has seen improvement since tackling this race last year, when it came in 14th place. Despite narrowing the margin of time between themselves and the top place boat, the men still saw some room for progress.

According to coach Jay Britt, the squad took the race a little too cautiously and can afford to bring the rating up higher in future races. The men took the race at around 31 strokes-per-minute, which is around the same pace they took at the Textile Regatta earlier this season despite the fact that this weekend’s race was on a significantly shorter course.

The team jumped on the higher ratings during their first practice after the race and hopes to row comfortably at a higher rating for the Head of the Fish in two weeks.

“The race was a step in the right direction in what our goals are for this fall,” Britt said. “[We want] to get stronger in our aerobic base so we can build on it over the winter and be faster on it come spring time.”

According to Director of Rowing Gary Caldwell, seeing such improvement from last year’s times this early in the season is impressive for the sophomore-dominated squad.

“We are really pleased with the progress that the young varsity squad is making,” he said. “In the short run it means that we may not show early speed, but in the long run it

Courtesy Anna Lindgren-Streicher

At the Quinsigamond Snake Regatta in Worcester, the top men’s varsity boat managed to finish 10th out of 27 teams. gives us room to make significant progress.

That we are this good this early is a really good sign.”

Men’s varsity was able to field two boats in this regatta because of the efforts of freshman coxswain Maria Karam, who started coxing three weeks ago. In addition to this weekend being Karam’s first race, there were also two novices in the boat filling in for injured rowers. Britt believes that the varsity rowers in the boat did a good job adjusting to these setbacks and thinks that the boat did well, all things considered.

“It’s a different race for a novice to hop in the boat and row at the higher rate with everyone,” he said. “Kudos to them for doing so well.”

Meanwhile, the men’s novice squad came in close behind the second varsity eight to finish in 25th place.

The women’s novice raced against 50 other boats, many of whom were the top varsity boats from strong rowing programs. The experienced women’s novice eight finished in 15th place, coming in first among novices and third in varsity eights and beating many of the second varsity eights. The second nov-

ice boat came in 34th, a huge improvement from last year’s dead-last finish.

“I am extremely happy with not only the results from the two novice crews at the Snake, but I’m more pleased with the daily energy and commitment all 20 are showing in time at the boathouse every single day,” Caldwell said. “Results speak of commitment and work ethic.”

The novice squad will row again at Lake Quinsigamond in two weeks, while the varsity men will travel to Saratoga Springs, New York, for what Britt describes as a more traditional race scene.

At the Head of the Fish in Saratoga Springs, each rower will race in multiple events, and Tufts will be fielding both eights and fours.

Senior captain Kyle Flood will row a single.

This will be the team’s last race of the fall season, and Britt is looking forward to it being highly competitive and a good opportunity for the men to bring the rating up over a shorter course.

Until then, all the squads are looking toward the informal Jumbo Head Regatta this coming weekend, an exhibition headrace for Parents and Family Weekend.

Tufts alum faces unique challenges as new Big East head ARESCO

continued from back

Aresco said. “I didn’t know it would arise, but it did, and it was something that my entire career had prepared me to do.”

Aresco was thrown right into the fire after some disappointing announcements.

Syracuse and Pittsburgh would both be leaving for the ACC in 2013. Last month, Notre Dame announced that it too will be leaving for the ACC in all sports but football.

“I knew there would be no honeymoon at this job,” Aresco said. “But the transition was easier because I had been in this community for many years. There’s a lot of work, but it’s energized me.”

Unlike at CBS, Aresco is now constantly in the public eye.

“That’s the biggest difference,” he said.

“You’re in the public eye a bit when you’re at a broadcast network — you deal with the media. But it’s not the same as

being in a public position like this ... You become more of a public figure, and you have to adapt to that.”

If anyone is ready to adapt, it’s Aresco; if he could live off hamburgers for two years, he could do just about anything.

“The experience at Tufts was a springboard,” he said. “It prepared me for challenges to come, and I never felt anywhere I went that I couldn’t deal with the situation.”

Elephants in the Room Favorite latenight order

Music I’d run a marathon to

Fantasy football First thing I do when I wake up team name

Favorite Accesory

Caroline Patterson Senior Women’s Crew

Noodlez

An all-Canadian playlist (Justin Bieber, Avril Lavigne and Nickelback)

The Front Porch Look like P. Diddy Hecklers

My onesie

Scott Blumenthal Junior Men’s Soccer

Rafa RamosMeyer’s home cooking

“Vamos a la Playa” by Miranda

Sproles Royce

Jam out

Tufts soccer brown towns

Kelly Brennan Sophomore Volleyball

Thai food

J. Cole

The Fighting Jumbos

Dance with my roomate

My Gatorade water bottle

photos courtesy tufts athletics

Brian Tan | Now Serving

The clutch factor

I

t’s a two-point Sacramento lead, we’re down to seven seconds, Bryant is putting a move on Christie, rebound O’Neal, coming up short, tipped out to Horry from downtown for the win... Yes! Lakers Win!” Robert Horry, nicknamed “Big Shot Rob,” is famous for hitting big shots in crucial moments of basketball games, such as the game-winning three-pointer in game four against the Kings in the 2002 Western Conference Finals. His ability to perform under crunch time earned him his nickname and praise from others for being “clutch.”

What does it mean to be “clutch?”

Being clutch means coming through or raising your game in a close or high-pressure situation. Being clutch is Reggie Miller scoring eight points in the last nine seconds to beat the Knicks in the playoffs. Being clutch is David Freese hitting a game-tying two-run triple, one strike away from losing the World Series, and then hitting a walkoff dinger later. Being clutch is Olympic swimmer Jason Lezak’s improbable come-from-behind win to earn a gold medal for the US in 2008, keeping Michael Phelps’ famous gold medal pursuit alive. Larry Bird sinking the last money ball to win the 1988 three-point contest is clutch. Him sticking up his finger as soon as the ball left his hand is even more clutch. Being clutch is an art, a lifestyle and an attitude.

The difference between being clutch and being lucky is often overlooked.

Being clutch involves consistently raising your game in big moments. Being lucky is a once-in-a-blue-moon type of thing. Tim Tebow was lucky when the Broncos miraculously beat the Bears last year. Eli Manning was clutch for having eight 4th quarter comebacks or game-winning drives in 2011. You wouldn’t call someone who does well from guessing on a multiple-choice test “clutch.” He or she would be considered lucky. The definition has extended more and more into daily scenarios to describe a favorable occurrence.

Finding a $20 bill in the back pocket a pair of old jeans can be very clutch.

Going to Moe’s on a Saturday night is most definitely clutch.

Some statisticians in sports claim that the clutch factor, in fact, does not exist. They write that great players will perform well under clutch circumstances just as often as they do in the regular season. They argue that the theory of having a clutch ability is not possible.

In other words, a baseball player who has a career batting average of .280, given enough at-bats, will eventually hit around .280 in clutch moments or in the postseason. He will not automatically become a .330 hitter with more power all of a sudden in an important situation. For example, Robert Horry has shot 34.1 percent from three throughout his career and actually has had a very similar three-point percentage in the postseason as the regular season.

Personally, I understand where this argument stands, but I disagree, because everyone who has played sports competitively knows what it’s like to be in a clutch moment. There is no denying that nerves do get the better of some people when people choke and lose sight of the finish line. But there are other people that love the pressurepacked situations. There is going to be a difference between the player about to kick a game-winning field goal who loves the pressure and rush of adrenaline, and the kicker who is wetting himself before the kick.

Being clutch is stepping up to the line and having confidence in executing your game plan. Maybe some day, if you exhibit your clutch gene and step up your game when it matters most, your nickname can have the words “Big Shot” in front of it too.

Brian Tan is a sophomore who is majoring in economics and Chinese. He can be reached at Brian.Tan@tufts.edu.

Sports

16

INSIDE Men’s Crew 15

tuftsdaily.com

alumni spotlight

Big East commissioner, a double Tufts grad, reflects on his journey to the top by

Aaron Leibowitz

Daily Editorial Board

Mike Aresco (LA ’72, F ’73) doesn’t get much time to stop and reflect these days.

In August, he was named commissioner of a Big East Conference in turmoil, and since then he’s been in the media and all over the country, explaining his vision for the conference’s future and attempting to work out a new TV deal.

But when given a moment to look back on how he went from a son of factory workers in Middletown, Conn. to the leader of a major college sports conference, Aresco spoke fondly — nostalgically, even — of his time on the Hill, both as an undergraduate and a Fletcher student.

“I was a good student in high school, but I think relatively unsophisticated,” Aresco said. “When I got to Tufts, it opened up a new world — the sophistication, the people, the professors. Tufts was a place that challenged students to think.”

A history major, Aresco became a selfproclaimed voracious reader, and today, the lectures of certain professors still stand out in his mind. Dan Mulholland, he said, was as articulate and interesting as any professor he ever had. And Sol Gittleman, with whom Aresco has kept in touch via email, was “absolutely terrific.”

Outside the classroom, Aresco lived in Carmichael his freshman year and played freshman baseball, though the rest of his career was spent playing intramurals.

Perhaps his bravest venture was working with a group of men to resurrect the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity, located in the university-owned house that is now the Africana Center.

After one year, the fraternity had worn out its welcome, but the university allowed them to live in the house for a second year.

In two years living on a tight budget, condi-

tions weren’t always ideal, but Aresco and his brothers made do.

“That was a unique experience,” Aresco said. “We subsisted on hamburgers a lot, and our dining budget was always exhausted.

During Pledge Week, we’d try to buy steaks for everybody, and by the time we finished, we didn’t have any budget left.”

By the time he graduated from the Fletcher School with a Master of Arts in 1973, Aresco, like any true liberal arts student, was not sure where to go.

“In the early part of my young adulthood, I ran away from a lot of careers,” Aresco said.

“I had the opportunity to do several things, and I couldn’t make up my mind what I wanted to do.”

Ultimately, though he wasn’t sure that he wanted to become a lawyer, Aresco decided to go to law school at UConn.

After that, he worked for an insurance company for a few years.

Then, suddenly, he got his big break: He met someone at ESPN. “It was a serendipitous thing,” Aresco said.

“But some people thought I was crazy. [They said,] “Why would you join a place that’s going to fail?’ And I said, ‘No, I think ESPN’s got a good plan.’”

In his 12 years at ESPN, Aresco climbed the ladder — from counsel, to assistant general counsel, to the programming department and ultimately to a role developing long-term strategies for ESPN’s college sports properties.

From there, he became CBS Sports’ executive vice president of programming, a position he held from 1996 until this year.

After 30-plus years working in the college sports world, he was finally offered his biggest position yet: Big East Commissioner.

“This was a new challenge that I really wanted to do when the opportunity arose,” see ARESCO, page 15

Courtesy Tufts Athletics / The Big East

Mike Aresco has held many roles in life, including Tufts student and executive vice president of programming at CBS Sports, but now he is taking on his greatest challenge yet: leading a Big East conference that is in turmoil.

Women’s Crew

Co-ed Sailing

Tufts has mixed showing against Jumbos finish toppowerhouses UMass and Ithaca seven in Annapolis by

Claire Sleigh

Contributing Writer

In crew, a spring season sprint lasts 2,000 meters.

Fall headraces usually range between 4,000 and 5,000. But between back-to-back races and the row up to the starting line, members of the women’s varsity crew team estimate that they rowed an exhausting 20,000 meters on Saturday.

The extra challenge only added to the experience of what was a rewarding and exhausting day at the Seven Sisters Sculling Head on the Connecticut River in Northampton, Mass. Tufts raced against UMass-Amherst

and Ithaca College, with each rower competing in two boats — a quad and either a single or a double.

According to coach Brian Dawe, the Tufts rowers had a good showing against UMass, a top-tier Div. I program with a sculling focus under the leadership of coach Jim Dietz, and Ithaca, which has the first varsity sculling program in the country.

The races went off in two waves. The first, at 10 a.m., featured sophomore quad races and upperclassmen 1X and 2X races.

Tufts’ quads swept the event by taking the top three of six spots.

Ithaca took the first three slots

in the doubles event, but it was a toss-up for slots after that, with UMass and Tufts alternating. UMass dominated the singles event — the Minutemen took all but one of the top nine spots. Junior Caroline Ricard came in sixth place and senior Kate Breña came in 10th.

The second wave went off at 1 p.m. with reverse boating — upperclassmen quads and sophomore singles and doubles. Tufts captured second and fourth places in the quad race, with two Ithaca boats claiming first and third place.

The sophomore doubles see WOMEN’S CREW, page 14

Courtesy Brian Dawe

The women’s crew team faced some top competition at the Seven Sisters Sculling Head, including UMassAmherst and Ithaca.

by

Andy Wong

Daily Editorial Board

With an intrepid team of six sailors in tow, the No. 10 co-ed sailing team brought its talents to Annapolis, Md. this weekend to test their mettle in the 2012 Navy Fall Invitational.

With two days, a whopping four divisions and fourteen races apiece, the Jumbos finished by narrowly nudging past the U.S. Naval Academy’s Midshipmen in the Sunday’s final races to clinch seventh place overall.

“There are two meccas in NEISA sailing: the Charles [River] and the South River outside Annapolis’s Naval Academy,” senior tri-captain Will Hutchings said. “This is the biggest regatta of the fall.

It really does test how deep you are.”

“Coming into the regatta, we were hoping to get in the top five, but we had a rough first day, so we couldn’t quite make it,” junior Paula Grasberger added.

With a total of eighteen teams from all over the country at the regatta, including the nation’s four top squads, Tufts was prepared for some of their stiffest competition of the year.

The College of Charleston, ranked third nationally, even carried an Olympian on their team — senior laser sailor

Juan Maegli, who carried the Guatemalan flag in this summer’s Olympic ceremony and finished ninth in his class on the world stage.

“I think we probably could have finished third or fourth, if we were sailing our best, but there were just some really good sailors out there,” Hutchings said.

A-Division regulars junior tri-captain and skipper William Haeger and crew Grasberger were back in action this weekend. After struggling on Saturday, Haeger and Grasberger regrouped on Sunday, finishing runner-up in their twelfth race and top four in four of their last five races to pass Yale down the stretch. They finished with 93 points, good for fifth place in their division and only one shy of matching the fourth-place Brown Bears.

In the B Division, junior skipper David Liebenberg partnered with sophomore crew Sam Madden. Despite winning their first race of the meet, the pair vacillated between highs and lows for the weekend, finishing with 144 points to land thirteenth in their division.

Hutchings, three weeks removed from breaking into the top five of the New see SAILING, page 14