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thursday, november 1, 2012

VOLUME LXIV, NUMBER 36

Environmental House Tufts Votes wraps up voter under consideration registration process for next year

by James

Pouliot

Daily Editorial Board

by

Melissa Mandelbaum Daily Editorial Board

The Sustainable Action Squad (SAS), a branch of the Tufts Sustainability Collective, is currently working on a proposal for the creation of an Environmental House on campus for the upcoming academic year.

The Office of Residential Life and Learning (ORLL) is awaiting the group’s final proposal, at which point ORLL Director Yolanda King will invite SAS members to a session with a small group housing committee, during which a decision will be made, King said.

The committee will consist of an ORLL staff member, a Division of Student Affairs staff member and a Tufts Community Union (TCU) senator, King said.

Seniors Rose Eilenberg and Danielle Jenkins, both members of SAS, began discussions with the ORLL last fall, and SAS has officially taken on the project this semester.

Tufts offers 15 Special Interest Houses or apartment units on campus, such as the Africana House, International House and Arts Haus. The university also owns a number of wood-frame on-campus small group living options, like 12 Dearborn Rd.,

that are unaffiliated with a special interest theme.

Eilenberg said that the Environmental House would likely host student group meetings in its common room, screen films and grow a garden and a compost.

“I think that the Tufts environmental movement in general needs a space,” Elizabeth Slocum, a freshman who hopes to live in the house, said.

King explained that one of the biggest challenges in creating a new Special Interest House is proving that there will be stable student interest year to year.

However, Jenkins said she is confident that most students support the introduction of an Environmental House.

In an online survey conducted this month, 71 students said that they would live in the house, and 50 said maybe, according to Jenkins.

In a separate question, 141 of 148 respondents said they would support the creation of an Environmental House as of Oct. 29.

“We have about 35 [environmental studies] majors a year, and we expect that to grow,” Director of the Environmental see ENVIRONMENT, page 2

Art Gallery reaches out to campus with survey, workshops by

Abigail Feldman

Contributing Writer

The Tufts University Art Gallery made its way into students’ email inboxes last week with an online survey meant to gain a better understanding of the gallery’s presence on campus.

The survey, led by Art Gallery Education Outreach Coordinator Dorothee Perin and Art Gallery Administrative Associate Hannah Swartz, was intended to give staff at the gallery a sense of the gallery’s reputation, Perin said.

“We are trying at the gallery to get a better sense of who our audience is, what they want and how they experience the exhibitions that we have,” Perin said. “All this is ultimately to better serve Tufts students and Tufts faculty.”

According to Swartz, the survey is part of a larger-scale self-assessment plan called the Audience Research Plan.

The study began in 2007 after the gallery received a grant from the American Alliance of Museums to conduct a selfassessment study.

“Basically it benchmarks our organization against other organizations of similar sizes and similar missions to see how we’re doing and how we hold up in an array of different categories,” Swartz said.

To make sure they collected accurate data, the gallery collaborated with the Tufts University Office of Institutional Research and Evaluation.

“They’ve done a lot of this work before and they wrote out a basic plan for us,” Swartz said.

“They’ve helped us really craft out each of the questions word by word.”

The plan and the survey are focused on understanding four main points, including audience composition, visitor reasons for going to the gallery, the quality of visitors’ experiences and the gallery’s image on campus.

The sample of about 2,780 students who received the survey were asked to respond to questions such as, “How often do you visit the Tufts University Art Gallery?” and “Please rate the following see GALLERY, page 2

Tufts Votes, a non-partisan, student-run organization, has concluded its voter registration campaign and is moving into the final stages of the get-out-the-vote effort.

The group registered over 1,000 students through approximately 50 voting drives in the first seven weeks of the academic year, according to junior Jacob Wessel, who heads Tufts Votes.

Tufts Votes acts as an umbrella organization for multiple groups involved in voter registration and information drives, including Tufts Democrats, Tufts Republicans, the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) Center and local leaders for the Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren campaigns. Tufts Votes coordinated the groups’ efforts and ensured that all were following the proper registration procedures.

Bronwen Raff, president of Tufts Democrats, said Tufts Votes’ rationale for registering students goes beyond promoting a political agenda.

“What’s important to keep in mind is that all that we’re doing is non partisan,” Raff, a senior, said. “I [think] that it’s much more important that our campus is aware, knowledgeable and registered to vote than it is to push for a single candidate.”

Though the Tufts Republicans were involved in the registration coalition, their participation was

Caroline Geiling / The Tufts Daily

With Election Day less than a week away, the student organization Tufts Votes has been working to increase the voter turnout among students. limited due to the graduation of much of their leadership and the small size of the group, Institute for Political Citizenship (IPC) President Eric Peckham, a senior, said.

The different organizations believe that assisting students with

registering is important because the process is often complicated by obscure rules, according to Wessel.

“Voter registration can be quite a tricky process,” he said. “[There see VOTE, page 2

Red Line from Harvard to Alewife to close for four weekends by

Audrey Michael

Daily Editorial Board

The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) is closing the Red Line between Alewife and Harvard Stations on four upcoming weekends, including Thanksgiving weekend, to continue repairs that began in 2011.

The Porter Square, Davis Square and Alewife stations will be closed the weekends of Nov. 17, Nov. 24, Dec. 1 and Dec. 8.

The repairs are part of the second stage of the Floating Slab Project, an effort by the MBTA to replace concrete slabs, parts of tracks and part of the third rail, as well as fixing leaks, according to MBTA Advisory Board Executive Director Paul Regan.

The MBTA will provide shuttle buses between the Alewife and Harvard stations as they did during the repairs last fall and winter.

As of now, there is no plan to reinstate the shuttle from Tufts to Harvard that ran during the Davis Square closure last year, according to Director of Facilities Services Bob Burns.

“Part of the reason could be that

Inside this issue

we haven’t seen or heard from any students, but the second part is that it’s very costly too, so we would need to weigh the two,” Burns said.

“Last year ... [the MBTA] shut down that last leg of the stops on the Red Line for about three months, but if it’s going to be just [a few weekends] over a couple months, we’d really have to think hard before we’d do that.”

Burns noted that Facilities will not consider bringing back the Harvard shuttle unless students voice concerns about the closures.

“If there is a ground swell of [interest], we’ll need to hear it as of right now,” Burns said. “No one’s gotten a hold of me or ... anyone on the staff, so at this point we have no plans to reinstitute the other shuttle.”

According to an October 2012 MBTA outline of the project, “the nearest point of access [for bringing in materials] is a high rail truck pad 2.2 miles from Harvard station near the Longfellow Bridge in Cambridge.”

“We’re bringing in a lot of big materials, things that don’t fit easily into the tunnels,” Regan said.

“There are only so many spots

where you can access the system with big materials.”

Partially for this reason, this stage of the project cannot be completed in the hours when the T closes overnight, Regan explained.

“The five hours overnight are dedicated to ongoing maintenance that keeps the system running,” Regan added.

Regan explained that completing the project is crucial for both passengers’ and area residents’ safety.

“It’s a section of tunnel that goes through a very populated area,” he said.

The floating slab system involves a concrete slab resting on rubber disks, which serve to minimize vibrations and wear and tear.

“We underestimated the amount of leakage we were going to get,” Regan said. “[The MBTA] hasn’t had the money to do maintenance that would be getting more usage out of the slabs.”

Though the project involves closing the section of the Red Line over Thanksgiving weekend, Regan said that it is important to conduct see MBTA, page 2

Today’s sections

Find out where the presidential candidates stand on LGBT issues.

The onstage energy is contagious at the Boston Ballet Fall Program.

see FEATURES, page 4

see WEEKENDER, page 8

News Features Comics Weekender

1 4 6 7

Editorial Op-Ed | Letters Classifieds Sports

10 11 13 Back

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News

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Students draft proposal for environmental housing ENVIRONMENT

continued from page 1

Studies Program Colin Orians, who submitted a letter of support for the proposal, said.

The Environmental House will likely first be established as an apartment unit, Eilenberg said, but SAS hopes to secure an actual house soon. King said that she would consider converting 12 Dearborn Rd. into the Environmental House. “[Special Interest Houses] don’t work as well when they are a hallway within a larger dormitory or a suite within an apartment complex,” Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman added.

In the past, Tufts has tried to keep some small group wood-frame homes without a theme affiliation to provide options for students whose parents prohibit off-campus living, Reitman said. “[The TCU Senate has] expressed a desire to keep an option of un-themed smaller buildings part of the repertoire,” Reitman said.

Eilenberg believes that the creation of an Environmental House is in the interest of the university in order to stay competitive with peer institutions. “[University President Anthony] Monaco has made it clear that that [the environment] is a very important issue to him,” she said.

The most recent version of the proposal states, “Of the 108 four-year institutions rated by [the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System], which includes Tufts, 67 have an environmental house, apartment or residential building.”

At the third meeting between ORLL and SAS last Friday, King made minor suggestions to the proposal, according to Eilenberg and King.

“The students have done a great job put-

GALLERY

continued from page 1

Danai Macridi / Tufts Daily Archives

The Sustainable Action Squad, which operates under the Tufts Sustainability Collective, has entered into talks with the Office of Residential Life and Learning regarding the creation of an Environmental House on campus. ting the proposal together,” King said.

Eilenberg said she had the idea to start the project in 2010, when she discovered that her residence, 12 Dearborn Rd., had been an Environmental House at Tufts in the ’80s.

Reitman believes that the original Environmental House may have disappeared due to a decline in the demand for ecofriendly living, pointing to the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certified Sophia Gordon Hall, which was completed in 2006.

“The eco-house was one of the few places that was probably first in recycling,” Reitman

Campus groups encourage voting VOTE

continued from page 1

are] bureaucratic, paperwork rules that can get in the way of someone registering to vote. We wanted to make sure that the first time around we’ve filled out the information completely.”

Students who change their address frequently can complicate the registration process for themselves, Wessel said, explaining that this requires them to reregister every year and know both their mailing and street addresses to avoid bureaucratic difficulties.

He added that Tufts’ location on the Somerville/Medford border and the borders of three separate Somerville precincts means that students are split among four different polling locations.

“If you live in Medford, your polling place is in [the Gantcher Center], but downhill it’s much more complicated,” Wessel said.

“Generally, the downhill dorms will vote at the Holy Bible Baptist Church. If you live across from the tennis courts, or if you live in a house across from Fletcher Field, those peoples’ polling place is somewhere that no one’s ever heard of before, that doesn’t seem like it’s part of the Tufts environment.”

Wessel hopes that Tufts Votes can put pressure on the City of Somerville to consolidate the campus into fewer precincts and find polling places more accessible to the large student population.

Art Gallery hosts sustainability exhibits

Tufts Votes and its coalition of voter-activist groups are now using the last few days before the election to encourage as much voter participation as possible among Tufts students, Wessel said.

To boost voter turnout among students, the organization has reserved vans to shuttle students from the Mayer Campus Center to various polling places on Election Day. The IPC will fund the shuttle service, according to Wessel.

Run under the purview of the Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service, the IPC sees itself as representing the political aspect of “active citizenship,” Peckham said.

Peckham said that the funding for Tufts Votes came jointly out of the IPC’s normal budget and a $1,000 grant from the Massachusetts Campus Compact, part of a nationwide organization that promotes civic engagement on college campuses. Money will also go towards fliers and other awareness efforts in the next week, he said.

Tufts Votes is an organization that comes together every two to four years around election season but then rapidly dissipates, Peckham said.

After Election Day, Wessel hopes to make Tufts Votes a more permanent fixture on campus, registering and reregistering students at the beginning of each year rather than waiting until the election.

said. “Now pretty much all of society does it, but Tufts is very into it, and so it wouldn’t be as unique as it used to be, and that’s probably why one of the reasons the need for it is diminished.”

King expressed optimism that the Environmental House will be met with approval from the committee before the spring housing lottery.

“None of the [Special Interest] Houses have been changed since I’ve been here,” she said. “I’m actually excited [about the proposal] because we’ve had the same houses for a while.”

No plans yet for Tufts-Harvard shuttle MBTA

continued from page 1

the repairs before the risk of bad weather becomes too great. The MBTA plans repairs on a seasonal schedule, he added.

“When weather is good, we want to do projects outside,” Regan said. “As the weather changes, we move into the tunnels.”

The Floating Slab Project is part of the MBTA’s $34 million Capital Improvement Project and is partially funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

“We were given a deadline [by the government] to find projects where people could be put to work quickly,” Regan said.

He emphasized that the ARRA’s funding of the project has allowed the MBTA to move forward with the construction.

“There’s a finite amount of money the MBTA can spend on capital projects,” Regan said.

Regan anticipates there will be no more major closes on the Red Line after this stage of the project, though there may be more weekend closures in fall 2013, according to MBTA’s project outline.

The project is slated for completion in 2017, according to Regan.

“If you look at the five-year capital plan, it includes payments up to 2017,” he said.

characteristics as you believe they apply to the Tufts Art Gallery.”

The staff at the gallery hopes that the survey will encourage more students to visit.

“One of the back-end strategies of having the survey is it was also a way to let people know that the gallery exists, so not only are we polling the students, but we’re also marketing,” Swartz said.

Research from last year indicates that the gallery receives a steadily increasing 7,000 or 8,000 visits per year, Perin said.

Swartz added that although many of their visitors are prospective students, parents, alumni and community members, they plan to reach out more to the students on campus.

“You have no idea how many times I talk to students who go through the gallery for the first time for an event.

Sometimes they’re seniors and they [say], ‘Oh my god this is such a beautiful space,’” Perin said.

Perin noted that the gallery, despite its critical recognition within the Boston art scene, could be hard for students to find because of its location inside the Aidekman Arts Center.

“We have this goal in our heads, which might be an unrealistic goal, but we would love to see every single student come through the gallery once in their four years,” Swartz said. “That would be an incredible achievement.”

Swartz also hopes to dispel misconceptions about the gallery, such as the idea that it showcases only student work.

“We do show the [Museum of Fine Arts] thesis exhibitions and we do have our community gallery in Slater Concourse, but primarily the work that we show is [that of] professional artists, many international,” she said.

Beyond the survey, the gallery is excited to promote many new exhibits and programs this year. Continuing until Dec. 16, the gallery is presenting an exhibition called “Food-Water-Life” by the Paris-based Lucy and Jorge Orta, according to Perin.

“The exhibition touches on ... modern themes of sustainability and water supply, food waste, immigration and border control,” Perin said. “It’s been a really good opportunity for us at the gallery to collaborate with different centers and departments on the Tufts campus.”

The gallery is also working with the New Entry Sustainable Farming Project at the Friedman School of Nutrition, Perin said, and has been cultivating gardens outside the gallery and offering planter workshops.

Perin said the gallery has so far received about 400 responses to the survey. Once the staff receives more information about the gallery’s reputation and demographics, Swartz said, they are confident that it will mean a boost in attendance.

“I think that students who have come to the gallery really love it and enjoy it.

The hardest part is just getting them here,” Swartz said.

Police Briefs

Smoke and mirrors At 5:30 p.m. on Oct. 25 Tufts University Police Department (TUPD) responded to a fire alarm at the ATO of Massachusetts house at 134 Professors Row. Students in the house had been getting ready for a party by testing their fog machine, which caused the alarm to go off. The Somerville Fire Department also responded to the alarm. The students were reminded that fog machines are not allowed in on-campus housing.

It’s hammer time TUPD at 11:50 p.m. on Oct. 27 noticed a large crowd outside of the ATO house at 134 Professors Row. A

student in the crowd pointed officers to a male student who was having difficulty walking. He was unable to give his name to police and said he had drunk “three hammers and a lot more.” He was transported to Lawrence Memorial Hospital.

You shall not pass TUPD at 1:20 a.m. on Oct. 28 arrived at a party at a house on Chetwynd Road in response to a noise complaint. Officers advised an occupant of the house to break up the party.

A few minutes later, no one had left the house and a Tufts student came out to sit in a beanbag chair on the front porch. Officers asked him if everyone inside was age 21, and he answered that they

were not. Police then attempted to break up the party themselves, but the student blocked the officers’ path and said they could not go inside. When asked for his ID, the student told the officers he legally did not have to provide it. TUPD learned the name of the student from another person at the party and reported him to the Office of the Dean of Student Affairs for failing to present an ID and cooperate with police.

Side by side TUPD responded at 2:30 a.m. on Oct. 28 to a report of a fight in progress on the corner of Packard Avenue and Professors Row. Bystanders pointed out two male

students sitting on a bench on the street corner when the officers arrived. When the officers asked them for identification, the students provided multiple fake names, and when a crowd gathered, one of the students attempted to get away and struck a lieutenant with his shoulder. He was then placed under arrest. The other suspect, who was identified as his brother, then tried to help his brother escape. Both men were arrested, and Somerville Police Department officers were called in to assist. One suspect had to be lifted into the Somerville Police wagon because he refused to enter.

They were charged with disorderly conduct, assault and battery of a police officer and resisting arrest.

Music of the night Officers at 9:30 p.m. on Oct. 29 arrived in a practice room in the Aidekman Arts Center basement after it was closed to find a jack and other items on a chair, as well as two pairs of feet sticking out from under the desk. The feet belonged to two students, who said they had climbed in through the window to use the piano. TUPD asked the students to leave.

—compiled by Audrey Michael

Thursday, November 1, 2012

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Presidential campaigns break from norm, avoid discussing LGBT rights Lack of discourse has not diverted voters’ attention from issue

by Jacob

T

Passy

Daily Editorial Board

he day after President Barack Obama’s historic declaration of support for marriage equality in May 2012, a 51-percent majority of Americans supported the President’s decision, according to a poll conducted by Gallup. This was not the first survey to show popular support for same-sex marriage — a CNN/ ORC poll from August 2010 initially presented this change in opinion as well.

These striking numbers point to a growing movement to improve the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) individuals, and the importance of LGBT issues in the minds of many Americans this election season.

Polling on LGBT rights began only recently, according to Associate Professor of Political Science Deborah Schildkraut.

“Pollsters didn’t ask about marriage equality not that long ago because it wasn’t something that was discussed,” she said. “It wasn’t something that policymakers were debating.”

Schildkraut explained that the polls on the issue largely began when Massachusetts became the first state to legalize equal marriage. She said that polls have since shown an increasing trend within the United States toward acceptance of LGBT individuals.

“The question is if this is something that people feel strongly enough about to the point that it would affect their vote, but I would be very surprised if that’s the case,” she said.

While Schildkraut is wary of the impact of LGBT rights issues on voters’ decisions at the ballot box, the presidential campaigns have still approached them as though they hold significant influence.

Throughout the Republican primary, LGBT-related issues — most notably marriage equality — were used to energize the party’s base, according to Matthew Nelson, lecturer and Ph.D candidate in the Department of English. Nelson said that Republican candidates during this period presented these issues in a very conservative manner.

One such example is the pledge circulated by the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) that promised to create a federal constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. Governor Mitt Romney signed the pledge alongside five other candidates, including Texas Governor Rick Perry and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.).

Since the national conventions, however, the conversation surrounding LGBT rights issues has been sparse. Nelson pointed to the nation’s moderates — many of whom are highly sought-after independent voters — as a reason for the quiet stance Republicans have taken.

“Once you’re out of that primary and once you’re out of that race to the right, the Republicans realize there are middleof-the-road people who are becoming increasingly friendly towards gay [rights] issues,” he said.

The lack of discussion is surprising, though, as many expected it to be highly debated in light of Obama’s support for marriage equality.

The reason for this lies in the fear that this would become an issue that could estrange voters, Nelson said.

In the three presidential debates and the vice presidential debate, LGBT rights were left out of the discourse. The word “gay” was never used in any of the four debates, according to an article published by The Advocate, an LGBT interest magazine, last week.

creative commons Kevin Goebel / flickr

Left: “What Was Missing in Debates? The Words ‘Gay’ and ‘Lesbian,’” published on Oct. 22 by the Advocate.

Middle: According to a poll conducted by Gallup asking Americans, “Do you think marriages between same-sex couples should or should not be recognized by the law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriages,” 50 percent of those polled responded that same-sex marriages should be recognized by law. This is only the second time in Gallup’s polling of this question that at least half of Americans have supported legal same-sex marriage. Right: Adapted from a map originally published by the Human Rights Campaign.

all graphics bernita ling for the tufts dailiy

This contrasts the 2008 presidential election, in which marriage equality and other concerns of the LGBT community were raised in both the presidential and vice-presidential debates.

Issues pertaining to the LGBT community are also not prominently featured on Romney’s websites. Instead, they are included as a subhead in the section on his campaign website dedicated to “Values.”

On Obama’s website, LGBT rights are outlined in the section of “Equal Rights,” but are also included is his “Obama Pride: LGBT Americans for Obama” campaign.

Emily Cardy, who co-teaches the ExCollege course “Love, Law and the State: The Evolving Right to Marry” with Ari Kristan, argued that the economy and other social issues have taken precedence over LGBT rights.

“Women’s issues have been a bigger flashpoint than same-sex marriage,” she said.

Despite the lack of political debate surrounding these issues, the candidates have taken very different stances in response to the LGBT community.

“This is one area where there are some pretty clear differences between the two candidates,” Schildkraut said.

Schildkraut argued that Obama’s support of marriage equality is potentially the clearest indicator of either candidate’s position on issues relevant to LGBT individuals.

“The Obama administration has also stopped efforts to defend [the Defense of Marriage Act] DOMA in courts,” Schildkraut said. “These are some very clear actions on the side of the Obama administration.”

Romney does not support equal marriage and promotes the concept of “traditional marriage,” which LGBT Center Director Tom Bourdon defined as marriage between one man and one woman.

According to Bourdon, the Romney campaign has announced it will reinstate judicial support for DOMA, the 1996 legislation signed by President Bill Clinton that supports a traditional definition of marriage at the federal level.

Bourdon also explained that Romney continues to support the movement by NOM toward a federal constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage.

He did question the impact these stances might have on LGBT-identifying citizens if Romney were elected.

“What’s not clear to me is, if they were to get that constitutional amendment through, if that means for someone such as myself, who is legally married in a state that recognizes it,

that it would actually erase my marriage and every same-sex marriage that exists to this day,” he said.

Romney’s stance on equal marriage, though, is not new. As governor of Massachusetts during a time when marriage equality was approved by state legislators, he was vocal in his disagreement on the issue.

“When Mitt Romney was governor of Massachusetts, he vehemently opposed same-sex marriage and did a lot to try to block people from out of state getting married here using the 1913 law,” Kristan said.

That law was originally enacted as one of many anti-miscegenation laws throughout the country, which banned marriage between white and black citizens.

Another LGBT-related issue that has received much attention recently was Obama’s repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” the policy that banned gays and lesbians from serving openly in the armed forces.

According to Bourdon, Romney and vicepresidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) stances on this issue oppose Obama’s, but the issue itself is no longer a point of focus for the campaign.

“These men have fought to keep Don’t Ask Don’t Tell on the books, but at this point they’ve said what’s done is done, and they won’t be fighting that anymore,” he said.

Areas where the two candidates have convergent views include hospital visitation rights and combating workplace discrimination. According to Schildkraut, Obama is a supporter of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA).

This bill, which has been proposed in all but one Congress since 1994, would defend LGBT individuals from being discriminated against by employers. While it is unclear whether or not Romney would approve the bill in its current form, he has been a proponent of it in the past.

“Romney and Ryan have shown their support for ENDA in the past, which would protect LGBT people,” Bourdon said.

Obama has enacted or supported even more legislative change for the LGBT community than those already listed. At the start of his presidency, according to English Lecturer David Valdes Greenwood, Obama put into place increased protections for

Thursday, November 1, 2012

The Tufts Daily

Gabriela Ros / The Tufts Daily

Students in Tufts Queer Straight Alliance advocate for members of the LGBT community and its allies. some gay and lesbian families.

“The president has already worked toward using executive orders or other powers of his office to make things happen like benefits for same-sex couples in hospital settings and to give increased, equal access to protections for gay and lesbian partners of members of the government,” Valdes Greenwood said.

These efforts by Obama continue more recently on the issue of immigration.

“He also instructed the Justice Department not to allow gay and lesbian partners’ deportations or to review them more carefully,” Valdes Greenwood said.

Valdes Greenwood cautioned that discerning Romney’s stance on these questions could prove difficult.

“I don’t think we’re going to see him be quite clear, as he wasn’t in Massachusetts,” he said, arguing that Romney would likely follow the Republican Party’s stance on these issues.

Despite the multitude of political issues that exist for the LGBT community, the majority of them are pushed aside for the debate on marriage equality. Still, Kristan said that the LGBT community itself often uses marriage as a deciding issue.

“To some extent, I believe that marriage becomes somewhat the litmus test for [which candidate] the LGBT community decides to support,” she said.

“It’s a way for candidates to show their support without getting into some of the thornier issues.”

This, in part, explains the narrow focus both campaigns have taken toward the LGBT community. For Queer Straight Alliance co-president Max TanguayColucci, the constant emphasis on marriage alienates his peers from the political discourse.

“I feel like a lot of people our age are dismissing politics in relation to LGBT issues,” Tanguay-Colucci, a sophomore, said.

“They feel that same sex m a r -

riage is the only issue that’s being discussed and it doesn’t have an effect on them.”

In spite of the problems that marriage equality may pose to the LGBT community, it is difficult to ignore its relevance to this election cycle. In four states — Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington — referenda on marriage equality are on the ballot. Kristan emphasized that each state’s referendum was unique.

“They’re so different, and I think it’s because every state has a slightly different process for doing this,” she said.

According to Kristan and Cardy, the question being asked in each state is different. Minnesota, unlike the others, is voting for or against the banning of equal marriage in the state’s constitution. In Maryland and Washington, the referenda challenge the approval of legislation that has passed in support of marriage equality.

In Maine, on the other hand, Kristan said that the referendum is a straightforward, “up or down” vote on whether the state should grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Kristan noted that Maine was also unique in that it has previously seen the issue of marriage equality on the ballot. In 2009, Maine voters blocked a bill approved by state legislators that would have allowed same-sex marriage within the state. That ballot question, though, was not in a major election year, which could make the difference, according to Kristan.

“This year you have the presidential election, and Maine also has a highly contested senatorial race,” she said.

“So you’re going to have a much higher turnout across the political spectrum and the conventional wisdom is that this helps pro-

5

Features

ponents of same-sex marriage.”

“Every time it’s been on the ballot people have voted against marriage equality, but it might just be a matter of time,” Schildkraut added.

Schildkraut cautioned though that, historically, these ballot initiatives have helped Republican candidates.

“The other big analogy to that is 2004, where these campaigns on these ballot issues were very effective at mobilizing people and while they were there, they voted for George Bush,” she said. She continued that it is unclear whether the change in public opinion cited earlier will change past precedent.

Others reflected on these ballot initiatives with more optimism.

“I do really believe that we will either have one or two states where the voters pass gay marriage at this election,” Valdes Greenwood said. “That’s going to change all of the rhetoric because the anti-gay forces will never again be able to say the people didn’t want it.”

While states will continue to vote for or against marriage equality, Cardy argued that, ultimately, this is an issue that will not be decided at the ballot box, but rather in courts.

“There is probably no more important institution with the greatest potential for impact than the Supreme Court, and a lot of cases significant to the LGBT community will be decided by it,” Cardy said.

Currently, two major cases are making their way through the federal court system. Just a week ago, Judge Dennis Jacobs of the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ruled that DOMA was unconstitutional. A similar decision was made in the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Proposition 8, the ban on same-sex marriage in California that was approved by voters in 2008.

Cardy said that the Supreme Court would soon hear both cases. She therefore felt that the most important stance on LGBT rights issues taken by the two presidential candidates was tied to their view of the role played by the Court’s justices.

“We have two justices who are old, and chances are the next president is going to appoint at least one, if not two, court justices,” Cardy said. “Both candidates, I think, actually have pretty well thought out [their] feelings about the philosophies of Supreme Court justices and what they’re looking for in a justice.”

Regardless of who wins and gets to make such decisions, Bourdon said that he hopes equality will be at the forefront of their agenda.

“Whichever party gets elected into office, my hopes are that we will see more rights given to people, as opposed to taken away, to create more equity in this country,” he said.

Yuri Chang | I hate you, but I love you

Good news if you date a vegetarian

T

ufts students want to have sex more than five times per week according to OkCupid, a popular online dating site. In 2011, OkCupid took data on college tuitions from U.S. News & World Report and then remixed it with their own data collection. The chart displays college tuition versus how many times a week students would like to have sex. OkTrends, its official data blog, detailed, “generally speaking, the more your parents are paying for your education, the more horny you are.” The private institutions were noticeably higher than public ones in how often students wanted to have sex per week.

Tufts fell right on the predicted best fit line of users wanting to have sex 5.25 times per week. Whatever that .25 means.

Interestingly, Sarah Lawrence, a 72 percent female school, scored the highest out of all the colleges that were compared, coming in at six times per week.

When the ratio of female to male students is three to one, I suppose that does leave a lot of unsatisfied women.

OkCupid is a free dating website where users are presented with questions about everything ranging from their hobbies, tastes and political views, as well as what they look for in a partner. The answers are then entered into an algorithm to match up users by their compatibility.

OkTrends takes the observations from hundreds of millions of OkCupid user interactions and finds some compelling and, not to mention, raunchy patterns and values of our society. For example, if you are someone who uses Twitter on a daily basis, you are more likely to have a shorter relationship and masturbate every day. For both men and women, the odds of enjoying giving oral sex are much greater if you are a vegetarian.

Statistics from social media platforms such as OkCupid can tell us more about our society than some of the world’s most esteemed research centers. We voluntarily enter very personal information on our own time and at our own convenience. We are not sitting through hours of testing in research centers nor are we picking up unwanted phone calls from national survey groups. OkCupid draws its research from seven million active users, in comparison to the typical sample size of 1000 by the prestigious Gallup polls.

OkTrends also reveals more serious matters on race and homosexuality.

The data shows that only 55 percent of white users are open to dating outside of their own race, while 80 percent of non-whites said yes to dating other races. Furthermore, the median number of sex partners for straight and gay men and women was six people all across the board, disproving the stereotype that gay people are more promiscuous.

Beyond trends in the United States, social media websites are effective tools for assessing international cultural differences, or perhaps lack thereof.

OkCupid found that “the correlation between sex and money is robust when extended to entire nations” regardless of culture or even religion. For example, countries with high GDPs such as Japan, Qatar and Switzerland had the highest portion of people looking for casual sex.

On the other hand, Guatemala, Sri Lanka and Syria, three countries with very different cultures but similarly low GDPs, also had a lower percentage of people wanting sex with no strings attached.

A theory could be made that people in wealthier countries can afford more time for, um, leisure, while those in poorer countries do not.

As someone who is struggling through her statistics class, I highly suggest that you take a look at the blog yourself; statistics have never been this entertaining.

Yuri Chang is a senior majoring in international relations. She can be reached at Yuri.

Chang@tufts.edu

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Comics

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Doonesbury

Crossword

by

Garry Trudeau

Non Sequitur

Tuesday’s Solution

Married to the Sea

www.marriedtothesea.com

SUDOKU Level: Tripping over the piles of wet leaves Sandy so kindly left behind for us

Late Night at the Daily

Tuesday’s Solution

Hannah: “I’m not ex-pas-perated. I can’t even say ‘exasperated.’”

Want more late-night laughs?

Follow us on Twitter at @LateNiteAtDaily

Please recycle this Daily.

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Wiley

Weekender tuftsdaily.com

Arts & Living

Weekender

The Daily guide to cheap, creative costumes by

7

ashley seenauth / The Tufts Daily

A tour of costume stores for last-minute needs

Alex Hanno, Melissa MacEwen, Joe Stile and Caroline Welch Daily Editorial Board

T

he spirit of Halloween will descend upon us yet again this weekend, bringing wickedness and monsters back to the campus for round two.

Still, in the midst of the Halloweekend blowout, there is a distinct chance that your creative juices have been exhausted. Whether you’re looking for your first, second, third or fourth costume this weekend, or if you’re just trying to find the perfectly festive ugly sweater a bit early, the Daily has compiled a helpful guide to some of the better costuming locales near campus.

Artifaktori When most people rush out to get a last minute Halloween costume, they head straight to a costume shop, prepared to fork over a fistful of dollars for some generic, overpriced getup they’ll only be able to wear once a year. They think about dressing up as the most popular movie character from the past year, or possibly as last month’s biggest pop-culture faux pas. They think about the latest trends and current events, and the day after Halloween, they soon regret such thoughts.

Artifaktori wants you to think something else: vintage.

Located right in Davis Square at 22a College Ave, with another location at 121 Charles Street in the Beacon Hill district of Boston, Artifaktori provides what every college student needs, whether they know it or not, selling the perfect mix of dressup and legitimate style. Offering an extensive, diverse line of clothing handpicked by store owner Amy Berkowitz, including ’20s flapper outfits, ’50s business suits and everything in between, Artifaktori is as chic as it gets.

What’s perfect about the store is that it doesn’t matter if you’re searching for a costume or a new look — you’ll find either one there. Pick a historical period and there’s bound to be some piece of clothing inspired by that era at Artifakori.

What’s more, after you’re through with Halloween, you can simply turn your “costume” into your own unique style, mixing and matching articles of clothing with the latest Artifaktori accessories.

Perhaps one of the store’s largest draws, in terms of dressing up, is that Artifaktori outfits aren’t catered to Halloween. Are you hosting a “Mad Men” party? Maybe attending a “Great Gatsby” (1925) get-together?

Still looking for a cute dress to impress your next date? Artifaktori has you covered. With shoes, hats and random accessories that include such oddities as old cameras and classic records, Artifaktori is a chic, vintage gold mine.

As the store attests on its website, “You never quite know what you’ll find when you walk through the doors of this cozy little shop.”

Goodwill At Goodwill, the adage that one man’s junk is another man’s treasure holds true, especially around Halloween. With rack after rack of old clothes, shoes and other items, Goodwill is a costume goldmine.

Because Goodwill garments are all preowned, shopping there can be hit or miss.

Still, this makes finding a gem all the more worthwhile.

Tufts students flock to the Goodwill Store in Davis Square on 230 Elm Street, attracted by low prices and the store’s extensive assortment of clothes. Junior Marie Schow found her Halloween lion suit in the children’s section of the store.

“I bought my Halloween costume from Goodwill after being inspired by

Macklemore’s hit song ‘Thrift Shop,’” she said. “While Goodwill’s costumes require a little more creativity, there are a wide range of themes and sizes at bargain prices.”

Junior Sara Hanneman, who dressed as Tinker Bell last weekend, found herself at Goodwill for different reasons. “[I went there] because I waited until the last minute,” she said. “I just needed some basic staples I could craft into my costume.”

Hanneman also noted the store’s layout and proximity to campus as reasons for its popularity among Tufts students.

Another useful aspect is that Goodwill sorts its clothes by item type and color. For example, sections for winter jackets are separated from dresses and shirts. Each of these clusters is then visibly divided into groups by various shades and colors.

“It’s helpful that they sort by color,” Hanneman said. “I knew I needed green for my costume, so I just went straight to that section.”

Goodwill usually promotes seasonal holidays like Halloween and Christmas by creating individual sections for each celebration.

The only downside to Goodwill is that even the best clothes are generally lumped in with the less desirable clothing.

“Goodwill is great, you just have to dig for what you want,” junior Katie Miller said.

“And you have to be flexible.”

Buffalo Exchange Buffalo Exchange, a staple clothing store located on 238 Elm Street in Davis Square, is unique among garment stores in the area in that it sells exclusively used clothing that has been traded in by locals.

This gives customers an opportunity to get name brand, vintage or odd pieces for potential costumes.

For customers seeking last minute costumes at better prices, this will be ideal since cheaper used pieces are useful for holiday costumes that people rarely wear more than a few times.

“I got all my outfits for Halloween from Buffalo Exchange this year. I always find interesting pieces and things that just go with the rest of my wardrobe,” junior Audrey Abelleira said. “I never go in looking for anything too specific. I just wander around until I stumble upon something great.

The shopping in Buffalo Exchange is half the fun.”

Another advantage to Buffalo Exchange is that after the holiday, if you don’t like the clothing from your costume anymore, you can sell your clothing to Buffalo Exchange and make some money back.

B u f f a l o E x c h a n g e has recently launched its “Celebrity Z o m b i e Invasion,” in which individuals who come in and show their

ashley seenauth / The Tufts Daily

Goodwill offers an eclectic mix of used clothes from which to construct a costume. during the holidays, it is open all year round and boasts around 40,000 pieces of contemporary and vintage clothing. In fact, the store is one of the largest of its kind in the entire world.

The Garment District notably has a bythe-pound section where customers can buy cheap clothing, astonishingly, by the pound. The section displays the contents of one 850 pound clothing bale during week days, and the contents of multiple 850 pound bales during weekends. Men’s, women’s and children’s clothing are all mixed together at the low price of $1.50 a pound. Sadly, this section is closed for the Halloween season, but it will resume operation on Nov. 3.

If you decide to visit, be sure not to make the common mistake of thinking that The Garment District and Boston Costume, which shares the Garment District’s large building, are anything more than shops.

The Garment District Since 1986, The Garment District has “People assume it’s an actual district, distinguished itself as one of the best but it’s not, it’s just a store,” store manager places around Boston to find fun, inex- Arnold Kaufman said. “All the newcomers in the city get excited because they pensive clothing. Though the think it’s this whole strip mall of 40-employee shop stores. But it’s not. It’s a three thrives around story building full of fun stuff.”

Halloween Kaufman noted that a n d while many people pulled together their own individual costumes from the store’s vast clothing stash, readymade, somewhat expensive costumes like beer kegs are always very popular around Halloween.

Traditional costumes, like ghosts and super heroes, are also consistent best-sellers.

Halloween also has a few extra perks for the store employees as they cope with throngs of festive customers.

“The employees munch on candy,” Kaufman said.

“And we get to wear costumes during our shift and all that.”

Located at 200 Broadway in Cambridge, The Garment District is only a few blocks away from the Kendall/MIT T-stop on the Red Line.

Need another reason to go?

They’re open until midnight every day! ashley seenauth / The Tufts Daily celebrity zombie costume get $10 off their next purchase greater than $50. This kind of incentive is a huge plus for the more frugal Halloween shopper.

Still, not everyone is convinced by Buffalo Exchange’s attempts to gain new customers.

“I like [Buffalo Exchange] for buying clothes, but I’m not sure that it works for buying costumes. It’s more like trendy, everyday clothes,” junior Carolyn Boudreau said.

Whether or not you use it as a costume shop, Buffalo Exchange is a low-key shop that offers customers a good selection of higher quality, relatively affordable clothing options. If you look hard enough through their clothing and accessory options, you’re bound to find some worthy last-minute purchases for this weekend’s festivities.

The Tufts Daily

8

weekender

Thursday, Novemeber 1, 2012

What’s Up This Weekend Looking to make your weekend artsy? Check out these events!

“Mr. Marmalade”: This year’s First Year Show is a black comedy centered on a four-year-old girl and her bizarre imaginary friend. Tonight and Friday at 8 p.m. in Balch Arena Theater, Aidekman Arts Center. Tickets are $5 at Aidekman Box Office.

Discover Japan Through Music: A mix of traditional Japanese music and J-Pop comes to campus. Performers will include members of the Japanese Culture Club, Elizabeth Reian Bennett and Ayako Cathleen Read.

Tonight at 8 p.m. in Distler Performance Hall.

Admission is free.

pella group sQ! will present their fall show this weekend with special guest, B.E.A.T.s.

Saturday at 8 p.m. in Goddard Chapel.

Tickets are free for Tufts students either through the Campus Center Info Booth or tuftstickets.com. Tickets are $5 at the door for non-Tufts students.

cussionist Robert Schulz will perform a program of modern works of percussion that includes four works by Luciano Berio, Michael Colgrass, Seung-Ah Oh and Stefan Hakenberg. Sunday at 3 p.m. in Distler Performance Hall. Admission is free.

Tufts sQ Presents: sQurvivor: Coed a cap-

Robert Schulz: Performance faculty per-

—compiled by the Daily Arts Department

Ballet Review

Boston Ballet Fall Program is lively, dynamic by

Martha Shanahan

Daily Editorial Board

As The Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” blasted through the theater during Christopher Bruce’s “Rooster” last Friday

Boston Ballet Fall Program Music by Rolling Stones, Bach, Thom Willems Choreography by Jorma Elo, Christopher Bruce, William Forsythe Sets and Costumes by Mikko Nissinen At the Boston Ballet through Nov. 4

night, Boston Ballet dancer Jeffrey Cirio spun with enough force to fling his tie over one shoulder. It stayed there, hanging nonchalantly next to Cirio’s impish grin, for one second too long, a subtle indicator of just how much fun the performers were having.

After all, dancing to The Rolling Stones isn’t the time for worrying about whether or not your tie is on straight.

“Rooster” is the superb and eye-catching opener of the Boston Ballet’s Fall Program. It’s hard not to feel happy when listening to The Stones groove through classics like “Not Fade Away” and “Ruby Tuesday,” but watching the Boston Ballet rock stars channel their inner Mick Jaggers during the show is the icing on an already delicious cake.

The men, dressed in flashy suit jackets and ties, dominate this piece with swagger that would make the Stones proud. Bradley Schlagheck, positioned at the front for Bruce’s delightfully quirky interpretation of the Stones’ song “Little Red Rooster,” delivers with pecks and head bobs worthy of the cockiest bird. The rest of the company, with more than a few highly entertaining solos, follows him through the remaining seven songs with choreography that draws the appropriate nods to go-go and Stonesera dance moves.

The program’s centerpiece, a world premiere from Boston Ballet’s resident choreographer Jorma Elo, is a thoughtful narrative on the arc of a man’s life. “Awake Only” opens with a touching sequence between Cirio and the young, adorable and brilliant Liam Lurker, a Boston Ballet School student. From there, an emotional and oftentimes baffling narrative unfolds, leading audiences through the story of Cirio as a conflicted son trying to make sense of his life and relationship with his younger self. Elo plays with ideas of what it means to tell a story though movement, and Cirio joins the lively Sabi Varga and a dynamite company in playing along.

“Awake Only” does feel a little melodramatic at times — for example, it ends with the young boy cradling Cirio’s limp head in his arms, and its viewers get the sense that movement isn’t sufficient for the whole range of emotions that Elo wants to convey. But interesting gestures set alongside some sweeping, larger-than-life solos from Cirio and Varga make for a pleasing and thoughtful account of a coming-ofage story set to Bach.

For this program, though, Boston Ballet saves the best for last. The company’s interpretation of William Forsythe’s forceful “The Second Detail” causes the heart to beat faster and makes the legs wish they could escape their seats to join in. The Boston Ballet’s dancers attack this piece with attitude and precision that is thrilling to watch.

Forsythe’s mechanical choreography is a perfectly logical pairing to Thom Willems’ pounding, synthetic music. It’s a combination from which it is nearly impossible to pull your eyes, or ears, away. Each dancer is a cog in a well-oiled, restless machine, but each also has an opportunity to express his or her inner diva — they are selfish actors in a play that requires teamwork. During the

Denis Baldwin via Flickr Creative Commons

Dancer Jeffrey Cirio shines in Boston Ballet’s Fall Program. performance, quartets or pairs take center stage to make unified statements as a group only to finish dancing and strut away to stand on the side with their hips jutted

out, assessing the competition. Forsythe’s dances often take classical technique and turn it on its head and “The Second Detail” is no exception. The dancing is wild, then

tightly wound, then explosive, but it is always confident.

Boston Ballet’s Fall Program will continue at the Boston Opera House through Nov. 4.

The Artsy Jumbo

Yessenia Rivas knows her moves Yessenia Rivas has been dancing almost since she could walk, and started taking formal lessons at the age of two. As an avid choreographer, dancer and actor in groups like Spirit of Color, Sarabande and the 3Ps, she’s a huge presence in Tufts’ drama and dance community.

Rivas choreographed her first routine in her senior year of high school for her dance studio. She has since created several routines for various productions, addressing difficult topics like her struggle with bulimia in last spring’s “Love is Louder.”

“To help me get ideas across in the routine, I had the dancers tell me their personal struggles and fears,” she said. “One of their fears was of not being accepted. We took that feeling of isolation and tried to work it into the routine. [But the piece] could be interpreted any way by the audience.”

When she’s working on a routine, Rivas has a specific idea of what to look for in the songs that accompany her dance.

“I’m big on telling stories, so a lot of the time when I’m choreographing, it’s my way to tell a story about something that’s bothering me or something I’m going through and finding the song that goes along with it,” she said. “I really love listening to beats and lyrics and getting through to the meaning of the song.”

—by Matthew Welch

Justin McCallum for the tufts daily

Thursday, Novemeber 1, 2012

The Tufts Daily

9

weekender

Theater Preview

3Ps First Year Show’s twisted material promises laughs Freshman cast and crew animate ‘Mr. Marmalade’ by

Dan O’Leary

Daily Editorial Board

Much of an average student’s freshman year in college is spent figuring out the ways in which college differs from high school.

Fortunately for freshman students interested in theater at Tufts, the student theater umbrella organization Pen, Paint and Pretzels (3Ps) puts on a First Year Show to help them transition to college-level performing. This weekend, the cast and crew — composed entirely of first-year students — will present their hard work by performing Noah Haidle’s black comedy “Mr. Marmalade.”

Director A.J. Knox, a graduate student in the Drama Department, explained that the purpose of the First Year Show is to help create a sense of community among the students, as well as to aid students in learning how theater works at Tufts.

“My whole idea with the show, and the idea behind the first year show in general, is to create an ensemble, create a sense of community,” Knox said. “The first semester of college is hard, and I think this is a great way to get kids involved and meet new people and start to get [acquainted with] the ins and the outs of the Drama Department here at Tufts.”

The all-freshman philosophy on the production extends beyond the 10-person cast to the entire crew, with positions such as stage manager, assistant director and costume and lighting crew all filled by first-year students. One unique aspect of the production is that every crew member has a corresponding upperclassman mentor assigned to them, to help with the transition to theater at Tufts and at a college level in general.

“Mr. Marmalade” centers on Lucy, a fouryear-old girl with an imaginary friend named Mr. Marmalade. The only catch is that Mr. Marmalade is unlike most childhood imaginary friends. The titular character has a penchant for drugs, alcohol and pornography, and he often tends to ignore Lucy.

Knox described the character as a “strange, bizarre creation of hers.” Throughout the show, Lucy develops a friendship with Larry, a five-year-old boy who proudly holds the honor of New Jersey’s youngest suicide attempt. Despite the bleak subject matter, there are numerous moments of sweetness and intimacy in the play.

According to Knox, the First Year Show does fit in thematically with many of the other productions occurring this semester. He did mention, however, that “Mr. Marmalade” is unique among other productions because its material pushes boundaries and presents different, unconventional perspectives.

“I think the story is new. The characters are different. Rarely do we do shows about children here that are aimed at adults, so I think that’s a nice kind of change and it offers a different sort of theatrical experience,” Knox explained.

Actor Alex Knapp offered praise for the direction that Knox took with the cast.

“I like AJ’s style ... he lets you create your character and build them to what you want them to be, but then he just supplies a bit of a vision and streamlines it so it fits all together,” Knapp said.

When it comes to the cast of “Mr. Marmalade,” acting experience runs the gamut from some who have been acting nearly their whole lives to those who only have a few years of experience. For these new

Tufts first years experiment with dark comedy cast members, this college production poses different challenges from their high school acting experiences, as they are now forced to balance coursework with rehearsals, navigate the unfamiliar style of dark comedy and adapt to a more condensed production schedule than those at the high school level.

When audiences come see “Mr. Marmalade” this weekend, Knox said he hoped that they would leave with a reminder of the importance of play and imagination.

“I hope that [viewers] get a sense of how

Ashley Seenauth / the Tufts Daily

in the unusual “Mr. Marmalade.” wonderful and important it is to retain a sense of your inner child and the freedom and the fun that comes with playing,” he said. “I mean, that’s what theater is — we’re all playing as actors and directors and anybody who’s working on this show ... we’re imagining the world, creating the world.”

“Mr. Marmalade” is playing in Balch Arena Theatre at the Aidekman Arts Center Nov. 1 and 2 at 8:00 p.m. Tickets are $5 and can be purchased at the Balch Arena Box Office or by calling 617-627-3493.

halloween photo with monaco contest winners

Courtesy erin bondy

Erin Bondy, Katrina Miaoulis, University President Anthony Monaco and Hannah Duggan.

Top 10 | Artsy things you should have done during Hurricane Sandy For those lucky enough to enjoy the storm without worrying about flooding and other disasters, Monday was a nice break from school and extracurriculars. Apart from cowering away from the windows and hoping the power wouldn’t go out, here is a list of what you could, should or would have done during Sandy.

10. Doodled on your homework.

9. Made references to “Grease” (1978) and hoped people caught them.

8. Staged a candlelit one-man show of “Grease” for your captive housemates.

7. Thrown on a white dress, ran outside and pretended to be Marilyn Monroe caught in the wind.

6. Drank hurricanes to black out for the blackout. Artistically.

5. Painted abstract pictures of the storm to post online later as “real” photos.

Bonus points for pieces that include cartoon characters or clever puns.

4. Hosted an a capella karaoke night.

Rocked it like a hurricane.

3. Scrapbooked.

2. Built and decorated a windproof fort.

1. Filmed it. Haven’t you seen “Storm Chasers”? Nothing bad ever happens to them.

—compiled by the Daily Arts Department

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

A full course meal

I

n light of impending course registrations, we are going to take a moment to provide you with a quick article about how you, a member of the Tufts University community, can take your food education into your own hands. By the end of our article’s run, we will only have presented you with the very tip of the iceberg, so from there it will be up to you to press on to find knowledge and good eating! Fortunately, there are more and more food-related classes being offered and food groups are popping up everywhere.

With rising numbers of self-declared food movement activists, we can only imagine the number of courses and organizations will explode, so you better get a head start, right?

Of course, you can probably wiggle food issues into almost any liberal arts discipline, so today we’ll just focus on the particular classes that endeavor to deal directly with food and food issues. We’ve scoured the course catalog so you don’t have to. You can find more information on each of the classes we’ve mentioned here on the World Wide Web. Next semester, our Medford campus will bear witness to a few food-related classes. Despite the limited offerings, the courses offered manage to reach broadly across food system issues. If you’re looking for an examination of the social side of things, Professor Cathy Stanton of the Anthropology Department will be leading a seminar titled “New Food Activism” which is an “anthropological exploration of the multifaceted local and sustainable food movements that have emerged in the past two decades in many parts of the world.” Professor Colin Orians of the Biology Department will also be teaching a food-related seminar, but with more of a focus on the science surrounding many of the food movement’s greatest concerns.

His class, “Seminar in Plant Biotechnology: Food for All: Ecology, Biotechnology and Sustainability” is “an interdisciplinary examination of the pros and cons of two divergent approaches to meeting the increasing global food demand: organic farming and genetic engineering.” If you’re willing to get up for a morning class to learn the basics of nutrition science, Professor Kelly Kane will be teaching Human Nutrition. Unlike the seminars, Human Nutrition is offered multiple times during your college career so don’t fret if you can’t fit it in this time around, but try to squeeze it in if you have the chance!

For the thrill seekers among us, you should take a peek at the courses offered through our various graduate schools.

For example, with professor permission, the ambitious student could take Friedman School Professor Hugh Joseph’s “Community Food Planning,” or Professor James Tillotson’s “The Global Food Business.” According to several students who have taken graduate level courses like these, the workload is heavier, but the extra effort is worth it.

A less academic and more hands-on way to get involved with food issues is to join a club! On campus, Food For Thought, Tom Thumb’s Student Garden, Hillel’s Moral Voices and Tufts Culinary Society each take on at least one angle of food and food systems. Off campus, there are groups like theMOVE, which aims connect people who want to volunteer on a farm to farms that need volunteers. There is also the Slow Food Boston chapter, dedicated to improving the food we eat and hosting events around that mission. Finally, you can always find volunteer opportunities with community gardening groups like The Food Project, CitySprouts and Groundwork Somerville.

Be it through a class or an extracurricular, engaging with food system issues is something we should all consider if we want to keep eating the nomz of our choice.

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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editorial

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Re-elect Barack Obama

Some elections, like 2008, are about transformative, revolutionary change, about uprooting the status quo and enacting sweeping reforms. 2012 is not one of them. This time around, we have a choice between moving forward in inches or backsliding in yards. But that doesn’t make the choice any less clear or the result any less vital: America is best served if President Barack Obama is re-elected to a second term.

When Obama took office nearly four years ago, many of us believed the economy was poised to come roaring back from the depths of recession and that the many failures of the Bush Administration could be wiped away with a few presidential pen strokes.

The reality has been a slow and uneven, but promising path to recovery. The United States has come a long way since 2009, when the economy was bleeding hundreds of thousands of jobs each month and the auto industry was on the brink of collapse. But we still have an exceptionally long to-do list for the next term. The next president’s priorities will have to include immigration reform, a sensible policy to tackle climate change, a safe troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, comprehensive tax reform and job growth — to name just a few.

These goals were not all achievable over the last four years. They won’t all get done over the next four either, no matter who wins the election on Tuesday. But the fact is, whereas Mitt Romney hasn’t offered any realistic proposals for meaningful reform, Obama has outlined and begun to implement an agenda to move the country forward in these critical areas.

Let’s start with what Obama has already accomplished. And his record of accomplishment is prodigious, especially given the unprecedented level of Republican obstruction with which he has had to contend. His economic stimulus measures — which Romney opposed — saved millions of jobs, created millions of others, and spared the nation from an economic calamity that could have been on the scale of the Great Depression.

He executed a successful troop withdrawal from Iraq and brought an end

to the military’s discriminatory ban on openly gay soldiers. And under his leadership, U.S. forces have decimated Al Qaeda and killed Osama Bin Laden, the architect of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

But it is the Affordable Care Act that will define Obama’s first term legacy — provided the act is not repealed. This country is too wealthy, our medicine too advanced, to continue to allow our citizens to go bankrupt or die from serious illness simply because they cannot afford care. Providing people who suffer from preexisting conditions with access to health insurance and preventing insurance companies from imposing lifetime caps are measures that are crucial to the social and medical wellbeing of the nation, and we do not believe these protections would survive a potential Mitt Romney administration.

We recognize that Obama has not been a perfect president. We recognize that he has failed to address comprehensive immigration reform, work to tackle the social justice issues of poverty and mass incarceration, show leadership on the issue of gun control or display the political deftness he needs to enact an agenda in spite of a Republican Party determined to thwart his every initiative. But it is impractical to hold Obama to the standard of the staggering expectations that existed for him when he took office.

Instead, there are two questions we must ask when we decide whom to support in this election: Is the country better off than it was when Obama took office? And will the American people prosper more with him or with his challenger, Mitt Romney, at the helm?

If not for the Obama administration’s reforms the past four years, we would not have had 31 consecutive months of job growth. We would not have a functional auto industry or a health reform law that has already given thousands of children who were previously denied insurance coverage access to medical care. We would not have a government mandate that employers and insurers include contraception in their health insurance plans.

A Romney presidency would endanger all of this progress.

Whereas Obama has proposed investing government funds in sustainable energy sources like wind and solar, Romney has failed to produce any viable agenda for reducing our oil dependency.

Whereas Obama would penalize companies that send jobs overseas, Romney has failed to articulate any ideas to cut down on outsourcing.

With regard to deficit reduction, Obama would repeal the windfall tax break the Bush administration awarded to the top five percent of income earners; Romney has proposed new tax breaks that would cost $5 trillion without offering any specifics about how he would pay for them.

Obama has already made progress on student loan reform: He has expanded the use of Pell Grants, prevented the interest rate on loans from increasing, and introduced a government program in which federal student loan repayments are capped at 10 percent of income. Student debt has rarely even emerged as a concern in Romney’s stump speeches, although he did once suggest that students who want to get an education should “borrow money from [their] parents.”

Romney has demonstrated he will say anything and advocate any position to get himself elected. His positions on countless issues, from Afghanistan policy to tax reform to the auto bailout to abortion, have wavered. His constant flip-flops make it difficult to discern his true beliefs on the most important issues he would face if he were elected.

And the willingness he showed to pander to the most extreme factions of his party during the Republican primary does not give us confidence that he would stand up to them as president.

What we need is a president who will move the nation forward along the path to recovery, not one that will kowtow to the Tea Party as it fights to repeal vital civil rights and economic reforms.

Obama may no longer be the candidate of revolutionary change, but he is the candidate with the best ideas, the best track record and the most integrity, and he would make the best president.

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Jodi Bosin Executive New Media Editors Brionna Jimerson Justin McCallum

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BUSINESS Christine Busaba Executive Business Director Simmone Seymour Advertising Director Li Liang Receivables Manager Shang Ming Wu Sales Director

Correction

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On Thursday, Oct. 25, the Daily ran an editorial entitled “Photo release should serve as a warning.” In it, we wrote, “On Oct. 22, Vanity Fair published never-before-seen photos of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney,” implying that the photos were authentic. In fact, Vanity Fair published these digitally altered images as a joke. We regret any confusion that may have resulted from our mistake.

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Thursday, November 1, 2012

The Tufts Daily

11

op-ed | letters

Op-Ed

Craig Frucht | Road to November

The height of silliness

The dangers of a nuclear Iran by

Daniel Bleiberg

On Sept. 26, President Barack Obama addressed the U.N. General Assembly, arguing, “A nuclear-armed Iran is not a challenge that can be contained.

It would threaten the elimination of Israel, the security of Gulf nations, and the stability of the global economy.”

The President’s message was delivered just weeks after he signed into law the Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act of 2012, imposing the harshest sanctions yet on Iran’s energy and financial sectors. Passed by voice vote in the Senate and 410-11 in the House of Representatives, this bipartisan effort proves the American government’s determination to stop the Iranian nuclear threat.

Although the West would like to see a solution through diplomacy, negotiators have become increasingly skeptical of Iran’s intentions as the regime continues to violate six United Nations Security Council Resolutions and its obligations as a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). The International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) reported in May that Iran had doubled its stockpile of medium enriched uranium in a three-month period, putting the regime well on its way to acquiring weapons-grade enrichment status.

A nuclear-capable Iran would be able to produce a bomb at a time of its choosing, and that possibility presents a grave threat to U.S. national security both at home and abroad.

Iran’s nuclear weapons program should be placed in the context of Tehran’s broader hegemonic aspirations. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corp has a history of interfering in the affairs of its Middle Eastern neighbors through a variety of programs including funding Hezbollah — designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. and other nations — in Lebanon, training President Bashar al-Assad’s forces to slaughter civilians in Syria and supporting insurgents targeting American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. One does not need an arsenal of nuclear-armed missiles to threaten regional peace and stability — a state simply needs to acquire nuclear capability to intimidate its neighbors into submission.

In assessing the Iranian quagmire, policymakers must weigh the regime’s deeds more heavily than its words. The U.S. State Department’s designation of Iran as the most active state sponsor of terrorism and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s sworn mission to “wipe Israel off the map” speaks volumes about its aggressive behavior in the Middle East. If the U.S. is unable to contain Iranian belligerence today, how does it expect to contain a nuclearcapable regime tomorrow? Tehran can already send shockwaves through the oil market simply by threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz, and that threat becomes all the more real once Iran breaks past the point of becoming nuclear-capable.

A nuclear-capable Iran would spark a

S

MCT

nuclear arms race among Iran’s neighbors, endanger U.S. soldiers in the Middle East and decrease American influence in the region. The containment theory overlooks the likelihood that a regional nuclear arms race would begin if Iran were to acquire nuclear weapons capability. Former Saudi member of Parliament Mohammad Aal Zulfa captured this fear well when he stated that, “Iran will undoubtedly lead the countries of the region to obtain the same kind of weapon with which to threaten Iran.” In our own backyard, American policymakers are increasingly worried as Iran strengthens its presence in Latin America and promises to share its technology with nations hostile to U.S. interests, such as Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela.

Statements by the Iranian regime suggest that the harsh impact of sanctions is already being felt, as consumer prices have dramatically risen and the local rial currency has plummeted over 60 percent in value over the last year.

While the widespread street protests

by Iranians vindicate the efficacy of Western pressure, they also demonstrate that ordinary Iranians seek a government and economy that works for them and not the government elite. The

people of Iran have a remarkable and rich history, and the international community must make clear that the undiminished efforts to halt Iran’s nuclear march are aimed solely at the regime.

Iran must be held accountable for its failure to comply with international laws, norms and obligations. The international community must be resolute in its demands that Iran suspend further uranium enrichment immediately.

The West has been reflexively negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program for almost a decade now, with no progress and no tangible results. Iran’s willingness to negotiate with the P5+1, or the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany, is predicated on their need to forestall increasingly intense international pressure and serves to advance their illicit enrichment activities. As Iran begins to feel the bite of sanctions, the international community must continue to intensify pressure on the regime to abandon its aspirations for nuclear weapons.

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

Letter to the Editor Dear Editor, Last Wednesday, I came out as a sexually active gay man to the Red Cross at the blood drive. Instead of being treated with acceptance and understanding, I was informed that the reward for my honesty and full disclosure is a long-standing, FDA-mandated “lifetime deferral” from donating blood in the United States. According to our government, I’m tainted, and so is the entire sexually active gay male population of the United States.

FDA regulations permanently ban sexually active gay men from giving blood. As the reasoning goes, gay men are more likely to have HIV; there-

fore, they should all be banned from donating. This policy is discriminatory, homophobic and out of date — a tragic holdover from the days when HIV/ AIDS was known as the “gay cancer” or “gay plague.” Being gay does not mean that someone has HIV. Likewise, being straight doesn’t exclude someone from getting HIV. The FDA needs to stop treating gay men as contaminated, second-class citizens and tolerating this archaic blanket ban. Instead, it’s time to turn towards more rational, scientifically based eligibility criteria that doesn’t rely on misguided fears and misunderstanding of high-risk activities for blood donors.

Unprotected sex and intravenous drug

use are real high-risk activities. Being gay? Not so much.

No matter how strongly the Red Cross’s volunteers, posters and ads urge people to give blood, sexually active gay men won’t be allowed to “be a hero,” or “give life,” until the FDA reviews its policies.

In the meantime, as a gay man, my obligation is to get as many eligible donors to give blood as I can. As a donor, you’re not just giving blood for yourself or for the blood banks and people who need transfusions. You are also giving blood for those of us who can’t.

Sanguinely, Barton Liang, Class of 2016

o Donald Trump, Sarah Palin and Richard Mourdock all walk into a bar and — Yada, yada, yada. The punch line is an Obama conspiracy theory, a racial slur or another Republican rape gaffe. Have your pick.

The Republican Party is spinning a narrative right now that Romney has momentum.

This might be believable if not for two bits of evidence to the contrary.

First, a surfeit of public opinion data suggests that President Obama maintains a lead in more than enough swing states to bring him to 270 electoral votes. As a general rule, if it’s less than a week before Election Day, you’re behind in Ohio and Nevada and the graphs of your poll numbers there over the last two weeks look like flat lines, words like “surging” do not accurately characterize your election prospects. Phrases like “underdog” and “is probably going to lose” may better capture your predicament.

Second, Republican figures have unleashed a torrent of gaffes recently that reek of the kind of frenzied, enraged desperation you simply don’t see from people who are confident they are going to win.

It was actually Romney himself who used the expression “the height of silliness” last week, referring to Obama’s accusation that Romney had advocated allowing the auto industry to enter bankruptcy. But Obama’s claim that Romney would have allowed the auto industry to go bankrupt doesn’t seem all that silly given that Romney once authored an op-ed in The New York Times entitled “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.” And it is decidedly less silly than Romney’s assertion that Syria is “Iran’s path to the sea,” which is akin to saying that Minnesota is Vermont’s path to Canada.

That claim, in turn, seems robustly sane compared to the vitriol that has spewed forth from some of Romney’s fellow Republicans in the media over the last two weeks. Let’s quickly recap these comments in order from least to most repellent.

It surely isn’t a good sign that the “least repellent” award goes to Sarah Palin, who wrote on Facebook that “President Obama’s shuck and jive shtick with these Benghazi lies must end.” Palin may not have known that “shucking and jiving” is a racial slur often used to characterize African Americans, but even so, her comment does nothing to help the Romney ticket on a subject that it has bungled repeatedly throughout the fall.

Speaking of racial insults, there was also John Sununu, a top Romney campaign operative, suggesting in an interview with CNN’s Piers Morgan that Colin Powell only endorsed Obama because Obama is “somebody of the same race.” This isn’t even dogwhistle politics — it’s overt racism. Imagine the uproar from the right if David Plouffe had said a Romney supporter had only endorsed him because he was white.

Even worse was Donald Trump attempting to extort Obama into releasing his college records and passport application by promising a $5 million check for charity.

This clearly harkens back to the old theory that Obama isn’t a true U.S. citizen, and it’s a transparent attempt to tap into race-based distrust of Obama.

But the most horrifying was Indiana Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock, who said that pregnancies that result from rape are “something God intended to happen.” Mourdock’s comments, while absolutely obscene, aren’t directly related to the presidential race, but they do serve as a distraction to the Romney campaign’s relentless narrative that Romney is pulling ahead.

At best, these are just a few isolated remarks from a handful of horribly misguided men and women. At worst, they are symptomatic of a party among whose leadership harmful and grossly offensive attitudes about civil rights are the norm. What is certain, however, is that people who think they’re ahead don’t resort to dog whistling and race baiting.

Craig Frucht is a senior double majoring in political science and psychology. He can be reached at Craig.Frucht@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 Op-Ed

op-ed | letters

Thursday, November 1, 2012

A call for fall break by

Noah Kurinsky

As we begin to wind down from midterms, and I finally get an hour to myself during which I’m not frantically typing, eating or getting a few hours of sleep, I find myself wondering how I made it through the last two fall semesters intact.

The short answer: I didn’t.

My freshman year, I took typically easy freshman classes, but I worked about 24 hours a week — which I consider the equivalent of my workload this year, all things considered. As the weeks wore on, I began to neglect sleep, then proper diet and even, regrettably, personal hygiene.

I would work my butt off during the week, work at Flatbread in Davis Square Friday night, Saturday night and Sunday morning, and start anew on Monday. It all came to a head one Sunday morning, when, exhausted, I let my hand slip into the food processor I was cutting celery with and cut off the tip of my index finger, damaging my middle and ring fingers as well. I spent the day at the hospital, the next week on painkillers, and barely avoided needing additional surgery to

repair my finger. The date was Nov. 7.

Sophomore year, I worked a grading job, and began taking more intensive engineering classes. After a few especially busy weekends, my parents asked me to house-sit, so late on a Friday night, exhausted from class, I drove a half hour home. I should, at this point, mention that I suffer from asthma. In my rush to get out the door after classes were finally over, I forgot an inhaler. When I got home I began to have symptoms of an acute attack, but I was so exhausted all I could think to do was go to sleep and hope it would get better in the morning. Turns out it wouldn’t — it had developed into a full-blown asthmatic crisis by morning. I drove all the way back to Health Services, and when the nurse realized I could barely get a breath out, let alone in, she sent me straight to the emergency room. I was given four nebulizer treatments and three doses of Prednisone before my symptoms were finally alleviated, at which point I was maintaining a regular heart rate of 140 beats per minute. A normal resting heart rate is about 60 beats per minute. Mine was what you’d

expect to have during a cardio workout. I was admitted overnight and fitted with a heart monitor. The heart monitors are set to sound the alarm if your heart rate goes much over 140, so every time I moved an inch my nurse would come in, and every bathroom trip had them worried I was dying. Oh, and the date? Nov. 9.

When my parents got back from their trip, we talked about why it was that two years in a row, I ended up in the hospital on the exact same weekend. We concluded that I was overworked, and in my stressed state, I was neglecting to take care of myself. I took a look at my schedule to see when it all went wrong and realized something crucial, which I’m sure many of you have realized as well. Tufts, unlike many other colleges, has no fall break. We have a grand total of five regular school days off every fall, Thanksgiving included. This is ridiculous. Without a break, there is no time to catch up or unwind, and every day you choose to spend catching up on sleep or unwinding instead of doing homework only means more work later on. This causes us all undue stress, and for me,

this twice manifested itself in the form of an unexpected hospital visit.

So with November upon us, I wanted to share my story so that it may serve as a cautionary tale, a wake-up call to the administration and a call to action for students. We need a break for our mental and physical health. I’m sure many of you are with me when I say I would gladly start a week earlier for a week off in October. I’d even give up a week of winter break if that helped at all.

I hypothesize that the petition to cancel school due to the hurricane was partially a symptom of our need for a little time off — Monday was simply amazing, but it shouldn’t take a natural disaster to afford us a day off. The reason that we have to endure this every fall is that we don’t express our frustration and exhaustion in a public enough way. This is how I’m doing my part. Fellow students, now it’s your turn.

Noah Kurinsky is a junior majoring in engineering physics. He can be reached at Noah.Kurinsky@tufts.edu.

Op-Ed

Elizabeth Warren will fight for students by

Bridget Boyle

With less than a week to go before Election Day, the race for U.S. Senate between Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown (LA ’81) remains extremely close.

Television ads and radio spots are currently flooding Massachusetts in an attempt to influence voters, but we should focus on how both candidates have voted or plan to vote on crucial issues in the U.S. Senate. Education is one of these issues.

The decisions the U.S. government makes regarding student loans, Pell Grants and work-study affect the entire Tufts community, whether we are originally from Massachusetts or not. Elizabeth Warren will look out for the interests of students, and has made college affordability one of her top issues.

Warren is best known as a consumer advocate and for her work launching the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Created in response to the recent financial crisis, the Bureau seeks to implement financial reform to stop rising consumer debt, which includes debt from the rising cost of a college education. The Financial Aid Shopping Sheet is an effective tool the Bureau created to help students compare the cost of education at different schools, along with what loans are available to them and how much they will owe after graduation. In addition, the Bureau has initiated a student loan complaint system to ensure that private lenders do not exploit students. Warren’s role as a top advisor to the Obama administration during the bureau’s creation was pivotal to its success.

Senator Scott Brown, on the other hand, has not shown a commitment to students and in several cases has voted against our interests. This past March, Brown voted for a budget bill that would have cut $5.7 billion from Pell Grant funding, almost 25 percent of its funding. In addition, Brown also voted against the Stop the Student Loan Interest Rate Hike Act of 2012. Had the Senate not passed a bill later in June to stop the increase, this “nay” vote could have meant a jump in the student loan interest rate for subsidized Stafford loans to 6.8 percent — double what the rate is currently. To put that into perspective,

40 to 50 percent of Tufts undergraduates would have been affected by the rate hike, according to a Daily article published on Sept. 20 of this year entitled, “Obama releases financial aid guide.”

Brown later voted for the bill that eventually passed and stopped the interest rate hike, but his failure to support the first two proposals demonstrates a lack of commitment to students. During his reelection campaign, Brown has largely stayed quiet on education. His campaign website fails to mention student loans or education on his “on the issues” page. In contrast, Warren has stated she would have voted differently than Senator Brown on both the budget bill and the Stop the Student Loan Interest Rate Hike Act of 2012. The first issue on her campaign website is education, and she details a comprehensive strategy to improve both public education and college affordability in many of her campaign and debate appearances. When Brown does mention education, it is often in response to Warren’s stances. But rather than detailing an alternate plan to manage college costs and education, Brown instead points to Warren’s salary as a professor as “one of the driving forces behind the high costs of education.” As a Warren campaign spokesperson countered, “Scott Brown would rather attack Elizabeth than defend his votes to cut Pell Grants and allow interest rates to go up on student loans. Attacking Elizabeth is not going to make college more affordable.”

I encourage everyone to look in to the candidates’ stances on issues that are important to you and decide which candidate shares your views. For me, I know government assistance in the form of Stafford loans, Pell Grants and work-study is what makes affording college possible for me and many of my peers. I want a Senator who will protect these opportunities so they don’t disappear on my next financial aid award, and that is why I support Elizabeth Warren for the United States Senate.

Bridget Boyle is a sophomore majoring in international relations. She can be reached at Bridget.Boyle@tufts.edu.

MCT

Letter to the Editor Dear Editor, It has come to my attention that the Tufts Community Union Judiciary has recently ruled to derecognize the Tufts Christian Fellowship on the grounds that it requires leaders affirm certain beliefs that the group holds as central to its identity.

Though I understand the TCUJ’s concern to protect students from unjust discrimination based on religious preference and applaud their desire to promote an equitable and diverse campus,

I must in this case voice my strong disapproval of their action in regards to TCF. Tufts’ non-discrimination policy is rightly intended to protect students from being excluded from participation or leadership in a student group based on a characteristic that is irrelevant to the group’s activity itself (i.e. unjust discrimination).

It is surely not intended to prevent groups from considering qualities or commitments that are seen as essential to success in the relevant leadership position, such as the Beelzebubs’ evaluation

of potential members based on musical talent, or the Tufts jazz band’s evaluation based on improvisational ability — something I myself experienced as a freshman when the director at the time wisely suggested I practice my scales and come back the following year.

I am concerned by this decision, as I cannot help but see in it a misapplication of Tufts’ non-discrimination policy, a misunderstanding of the school’s founding value of tolerance and a subtle encroachment on religious liberty on campus.

I am currently teaching at an international school overseas and often speak highly of Tufts to my students, recommending they consider it in their college search. It is my sincere hope that the administration will take action soon to ensure that Tufts continues to display the true diversity which made my college experience so memorable and worth recommending.

Sincerely, Paul Johnson Class of 2004

The Tufts Daily

Thursday, November 1, 2012 Wanted

13

Sports

Housing

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.

One 6 br apartment. Two baths.

Very convenient to school.

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

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.

Frustrating weekend still sees women qualify SAILING

continued from page 15

captain and skipper William Haeger paired with classmate Paula Grasberger for the day, while Hutchings and junior crew Kathleen Kwasniak represented B-division.

The day began well enough for both groups, with their first races ending in runner-up and fourth places for the Aand B-divisions, respectively. While consistency was hard to come by, Saturday was highlighted by several strong finishes, with Haeger’s boat finishing fourth in their third race and third in their fourth race and Hutchings’ boat finishing fifth, eighth and fourth in the B-divisions’ last three races of the day.

Sunday, however, was a different story, with the Jumbos dropping down the standings after some poor results.

The A-division managed to keep within the top five for the remainder of their six races, but plummeted down the ranks thanks to a 17th place finish in their 11th race after a change of crew. Meanwhile, the B-division had a mixed bag of results, tempering second and fifth place finishes with a 17th-place disaster.

“I made a few fundamental errors.

Despite some of my strategic and tactical mishaps, Kathleen’s crew work kept us fast,” Hutchings said.

In total, the two groups finished with 91 and 86 cumulative points, respectively, for a total of 177, which was good for sixth place with a healthy margin ahead of seventh and eighth place teams Dartmouth and Harvard. However, the inconsistencies left a bad taste in the team’s mouth. “[Haeger and I] left feeling we could have done better,” Hutchings said.

“We’ve been there in the top-three heat, we know how to be at that level, we just don’t know how to do it consistently.”

Thankfully, with the qualifier behind them, the team can now look forward to the Atlantic Coast Championships and

ECAC Championships next for Tufts WOMEN’S CROSS COUNTRY

boosting their national ranking.

“We have high expectations for ourselves and for the team,” Hutchings said. “We just haven’t been sailing consistently for an entire regatta, but once we can do that, we’re headed for great things.”

Meanwhile, the women’s team sailed this weekend at the Victorian Coffee Urn, hosted by Connecticut College, with the stakes of their own qualification into the Atlantic Coast Championships on the line. While they did well enough to qualify, frustrations abounded.

“It was a frustrating regatta, just due to some poor race management,” senior captain Natalie Salk said.

The senior trio of Salk, Amelia Quinn, who is also a Features Editor at the Daily, and Mackenzie Loy all suited up for A-division, while senior Mariel Marchand and junior crew Sara Makaretz represented the team in the B-division.

During the A-division’s second race, their final score was rendered RDG 20 feet short of the finish line. In the following two races, the team had some additional misfortune with stray marks forcing a change of course, losing the team some valuable placements. The final scores for the division tell the tale, with nearly no top-five placements for the first day.

Luckily for Tufts, they were able to turn it around overnight.

“Sunday we picked it up, and we sailed really well as a team,” Salk said.

And it showed. The A-division won their eighth race and finished with just 64 points, while the B-division claimed several top spots, including runner-up in their eighth race, for a total of 67 points.

The Jumbos finished fifth overall, securing their own spot for regionals.

Both teams will get to enjoy a break this upcoming weekend, with no major regattas, before re-engaging themselves for the Atlantic Coast Championships the weekend of Nov. 10 and 11.

continued from back

and if we can use it as a lesson to get a little fiery for Regionals, I think we’ll perform to our full potential.”

Confidence and teamwork will certainly go a long way toward helping the team improve its performance.

“We need to execute our race plan better at Regionals,” Peterson said. “We know we are capable of running with the top pack, but we need to work on believing in ourselves and having the confidence and courage to put ourselves in position to make it happen.”

The top seven runners on the team will have this weekend off to rest and refocus before the NCAA Regional on Nov. 10, while the second seven will head west to Williams to compete in the ECAC Championship on Saturday.

In the postseason, every race is a battle. All runners need to step up and fight for every last spot in order for the team to be successful, especially at Regionals, where teams and individuals are vying for a trip to the NCAA Championship. “[At Regionals] I want to be very focused on passing girls throughout the entire race,” Gould said, “because in these big meets, every point is going to count.”

Daily File Photo

Senior tri-captain Lilly Fisher finished 48th as Tufts managed to finish fourth in the NESCAC tournament.

Rand barely misses out on title MEN’S CROSS COUNTRY continued from back

among the contenders for the individual title until the 200m mark, at which point Rand and Horowitz, the eventual racewinner, kicked into gear while Wallis fell back from the lead When the rest of the runners had crossed the line, second-seeded Tufts emerged victorious, finishing with 66 points, just three ahead of Middlebury. The battle for third and fourth place was even tighter, as a single point separated in-state nemeses Bowdoin and Bates, with Bowdoin coming out on top.

“We knew we had a great shot to win

NESCACs, and actually accomplishing it was awesome,” said senior Adam Brosh. “It was just about executing on the day of the race.”

With the NESCAC title now under their belt, Tufts will look to harness this momentum in anticipation of the Division III New England Championship at Westfield State on Nov. 10.

There will be a target on Tufts’ back, but the team isn’t concerned heading into the regional meet.

“There’s always a little pressure that comes with being the top team,” said Brosh. “I think we will be able to handle this well. Our goals are clear. The team is focused.”

Editors' Challenge | Week 9 Basketball is back, baby! We here at the Sports Section are celebrating the only way we know how — trying to shoot crumpled up Dailys into trash cans, only to come up with airballs every time. Although we pick football games, not basketball games, we thought it appropriate to express our NBA alter-egos as we head into the second half of the Eds Challenge season.

In first, yet again, is David “LeBron James”McIntyre. The haters continue to try and put him down, but frankly, there’s no stopping this phenom when he gets out in the open.

Although his three game lead is hardly insurmountable, the decision to take his talents to the executive editor’s position is looking like it’s already paying off.

Coming in second is point guard extraordinaire Zachey “Mike Bibby” Kliger. Although his talents may have faded recently, his mind and picking ability have not, and in any event, the savvy sports editor bears such a resemblance to the former Sacramento King that it’s almost uncanny.

Ethan “Steve Nash” Sturm rounds out the top three. He was once at the top of the game, but injuries and other problems have since set in. Now it’s just a battle for Sturm to stay relevant. Hopefully, a partnership with section legends Alex “Kobe Bryant” Prewitt and Dan “Steve Blake” Rathman will allow him to stick around for a few more weeks.

Now we start to descend into the bottom part of the standings, beginning with the

fourth and fifth placed editors, Andy “Amar’e Stoudemire“ Wong and Jake “Kevin Love” Indursky. They both have lots of talent, but nagging injuries have prevented the pair from exercising their full NFL prognosticating ability.

Three editors sit tied for sixth with 70-48 records: Ben “JaVale Lindy McGee” Kochman, Marcus “Austin Rivers“ Budline and Aaron “Vince Carter” Leibowitz. Publicity-hound Kochman spends too much time on antics and stunts instead of considering his picks; Budline is up-and-coming but doesn’t have the experience to compete with the top dogs; and Leibowitz’s picking career, much like his jump shot, have started to fade away into the dregs of the standings.

Bringing up the rear, yet again, are Kate “Brian Scalabrine” Klots and Alex “Eddy Curry” Baudoin. Klots has been displaying her bumbling picking style all season long, squandering all of her opportunities to jump up the standings and being reduced to giving the other editors high-fives. Meanwhile, Baudoin is continuing to struggle with his fitness, stumbling around the office, bumping into other editors and looking exhausted after making only one pick.

Guest picking this week is former sports layout man Steve “Phil Jackson” Smith, who is planning to use his basketball acumen and extensive knowledge of Buddhism and peyote to somehow help him to predict NFL games.

OVERALL RECORD LAST WEEK

David 81-37 11-3

Zachey 78-41 10-4

74-44 11-3

Ethan

Andy 72-40 10-4

Jake 71-47 9-5

Ben 70-48 6-8

Marcus 70-48 8-6

Aaron 70-48 9-5

Alex 69-49 8-6

Kate 66-52 11-3

GUEST Steve Smith

Kansas City at San Diego Denver at Cinicinnati Baltimore at Cleveland Arizona at Green Bay Chicago at Tennessee Miami at Indianapolis Carolina at Washington Detroit at Jacksonville Buffalo at Houston Minnesota at Seattle Tampa Bay at Oakland Pittsburgh at NY Giants Dallas at Atlanta Philadelphia at N. Orleans

San Diego Denver Baltimore Green Bay Chicago Miami Washington Detroit Houston Seattle Oakland NY Giants Atlanta New Orleans

San Diego Denver Baltimore Green Bay Chicago Miami Washington Detroit Houston Seattle Tampa Bay NY Giants Atlanta Philadelphia

San Diego Denver Baltimore Green Bay Chicago Miami Washington Detroit Houston Seattle Tampa Bay NY Giants Atlanta Philadelphia

San Diego Denver Baltimore Green Bay Chicago Miami Washington Detroit Houston Minnesota Tampa Bay Pittsburgh Atlanta New Orleans

San Diego Denver Baltimore Green Bay Chicago Miami Washington Detroit Houston Seattle Tampa Bay NY Giants Atlanta Philadelphia

San Diego Denver Baltimore Green Bay Chicago Miami Washington Detroit Houston Seattle Tampa Bay NY Giants Atlanta Philadelphia

San Diego Denver Cleveland Green Bay Chicago Miami Washington Detroit Houston Seattle Oakland Pittsburgh Atlanta Philadelphia

San Diego Denver Baltimore Green Bay Chicago Indianapolis Washington Detroit Houston Seattle Oakland NY Giants Atlanta Philadelphia

San Diego Denver Cleveland Green Bay Chicago Indianapolis Washington Detroit Houston Seattle Tampa Bay Pittsburgh Atlanta New Orleans

San Diego Denver Baltimore Green Bay Chicago Miami Washington Detroit Houston Seattle Tampa Bay NY Giants Atlanta Philadelphia

San Diego Denver Baltimore Green Bay Chicago Indianapolis Washington Detroit Houston Seattle Oakland NY Giants Atlanta New Orleans

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The Tufts Daily

Thursday, November 1, 2012

15

Sports

Sailing

Coed, women’s teams qualify for Championship by

Andy Wong

Daily Editorial Board

With the end of the season quickly approaching, this weekend was the perfect time for the coed sailing team to put up one of its best performances of the year at the Erwin Schell Trophy hosted at Brown University. With the event’s top eight teams earning a qualifying spot at the Atlantic Coast Dinghy Championship to be held at King’s Point in two weeks, the Jumbos managed a sixth-place finish at the 18-team event — but not without a few hiccups.

“We started out the gate very strong, but we weren’t able to keep it up,” senior tri-captain William Hutchings said. “We made some pretty silly mistakes and lost our focus a little bit.”

Racing started Saturday with two divisions and 10 races, six for the A-division and four for the B-division. Junior trisee SAILING, page 13

Courtesy William Hutchings

Senior tri-captain captain William Hutchings and junior crew Kathleen Kwasniak saw mixed results at the Erwin Schell Trophy, but it was enough to see the team qualify for the ACD Championships in two weeks.

Men’s golf finishes tied for 24th over weekend

Daily Staff Writer

It was an underwhelming close to the season for the Jumbos, who finished 24th at the 35-team New England Intercollegiate Golf Association (NEIGA) fall championship. The tournament was the Jumbos’ last chance this fall to finish in the top half of a tournament — a goal they had not yet accomplished — but after a promising first day, the tournament was cut short by Hurricane Sandy, making the weekend event a one-day affair.

“I started getting emails and phone calls from both the coaches and athletic directors as early as last Thursday asking me if there was any contingency plan for the championship,” NEIGA executive director Mike Serijan said. “At the time, models of Hurricane Sandy had multiple paths, so it was my plan to wait until absolutely necessary to make a decision. The only other time we made the decision to cancel Round 2 was in 1999.”

On Saturday, the forecast became more predictable, and by then Serijan knew that Monday would be unplayable. He, along with the rest of the NEIGA executive committee, officially cancelled Monday’s final round as well as the Sunday night awards banquet to ensure the safety of athletes traveling home.

G.J. Vitale

The New England Intercollegiate Golf Championship (NEIGC) is different from most collegiate championships in that Div. I, II and III schools are all represented at one tournament. Taking home the Div. I title was Bryant University, which shot 316 as a team on Sunday. Div. II had co-champions in UMass Lowell and St. Anselm, each with a tournament-best of 311. UMass Dartmouth won Div. III with a score of 312.

The tournament was played on two different courses at the Captains Golf facility in Brewster, Mass., and because golfers were not able to play on each due to the storm — Div. I and II teams played on the Port course, while Tufts and other Div. III schools played the Starboard course — an individual champion could not be declared.

But five players each shot a three-over-par 75 on Sunday, the low round of the day.

Tufts ended its Sunday with a 51-overpar 339, leaving it tied for 24th overall with Wentworth Institute of Technology and University of Southern Maine. Of the three NESCAC teams represented, Tufts came out on top, as Bates College and Wesleyan University finished 29th and 33th, respectively.

The low score on the day for the Jumbos came from sophomore John Wawer, whose

79 tied him for 26th overall in the field of 171 golfers. Freshmen Nick Dorian and Jay Wong each shot rounds of 85 and finished tied for 105th place.

Rounding out the Jumbos’ scores were senior Ben Saperstein and sophomore cocaptain Alex Zorniger, who both shot 90, landing them tied for 144th place.

The disappointing team result marked the end of a fall season generally marked by underperformance, as the Jumbos were consistently hampered by bad weather and inconsistency, particularly regarding their day one performances. Ironically, the tournament that was cancelled after the first day contained probably their steadiest performance of the season, as the Jumbos were constantly placed at a disadvantage by the large deficits they faced heading into the second day of tournaments.

After a challenging fall semester, the Jumbos hope that, by learning from their mistakes and gaining some experience, they will see better results in the spring.

“Golf is a sport in which mental toughness is paramount to success,” senior cocaptain Michael McCarthy said. “We didn’t perform as well as we hoped this past weekend, but we know that our ability to bounce back ... will help us this upcoming spring.”

Elephants in the Room Weirdest thing you’ve ever gotten trick-ortreating

Cameron Longyear Sophomore Volleyball

Adam Brosh Senior Men’s Cross Country

Katie Stuntz Junior Field Hockey

John Dodds Senior Football

Together we’re Giant

H

golf

by

Brian Tan | Now Serving

I would solve the NHL lockout by

Llamas are

When I was a freshman, I

Binders full of

Melted chocolate.

I don’t know a Like wut? Give it single thing about to me hard hockey

Tres kewl

Threw up the deuces

Kelly Brennan’s Hair

Eating a hockey puck

Expensive

Learned to count to 100

Jalapenos

In pajamas

Lost a lot of frackets (frat jackets)

Loose leaf paper

A meatball sub

Raisins from the Getting a petition grandma that lives from the Tufts stunext door to me dent body

Edible underwear

Voting Mitt Romney 2012

Easy kills

Told everyone to go back to DU

Bias incident reports

photos courtesy tufts athletics

ow can you not get romantic about baseball? There were comebacks. There was the grand slam. There were electric pregame speeches. There was pitching.

There was hitting — surprisingly. There was another bearded closer. There was the NLCS Game 7 ending in absolute pouring rain. There was the three-homer game from a Panda. And even though we are two years removed from it, yes, there was some torture too.

How fitting it was that the San Francisco Giants won the World Series in extra innings. They came back from down 2-0 and 3-1 against Cincinnati and St. Louis, respectively. Then they swept a Tigers team that had just come off a straight up domination of the New York Yankees. Somehow, some way — maybe it was the playoff air in San Francisco or just the smell of AT&T Park garlic fries — the Giants overcame every single obstacle thrown their way.

Is it considered fitting at all that closer/ slider specialist Sergio Romo struck out Triple Crown winner Miguel Cabrera looking on a fastball down the middle, on the last pitch of the World Series?

Marco Scutaro, who played for the last place Colorado Rockies for most of the season while struggling at the plate, turned out to be the biggest midseason addition to any team this year. General Manager Brian Sabean usually loves his mediocre, veteran middle infielders, but he certainly struck gold with Scutaro, who was the NLCS MVP, and drove in the World Series winning run.

The indelible image of him celebrating before the final out of the NLCS Game 7 will not be forgotten in San Francisco.

Meanwhile, the World Series MVP, Pablo Sandoval, affectionately called “Kung Fu Panda,” was benched in 2010 for struggling on offense and defense.

While every baseball analyst in the country counted the Giants out against pitching machine Justin Verlander in Game 1 of the World Series, Sandoval put on a show for the ages by going yard three times — twice against the Tiger ace. And just think, the Giants were probably a Scott Rolen error away from getting swept by the Reds in the Division series.

Someone on Twitter wrote, “Imagine you went into a coma in March, woke up today and saw Tim Lincecum warming up to relieve Barry Zito in Game 1 of the World Series.”

As a former two-time Cy Young winner who won the World Series clincher in 2010, Lincecum suffered his worst year by far as a starter and was demoted to bullpen duty. Yet as a reliever, Lincecum pitched like the Timmy of old and was dominant, to say the least.

As for Zito, don’t even get me started.

After not making the 2010 postseason roster, years of struggle and a $126 million contract later, Zito went out against St. Louis with the Giants down 3-1 in the series and pitched the game of his life by shutting out the Cardinals for almost eight innings. A former Cy Young award winner himself with the Oakland A’s over on the other side of the Bay Bridge, Zito, of all people, is ironically the Giants’ savior of the postseason. The team did not lose any of those games in which he pitched.

The Giants won their second World Series in the last three years, but they weren’t even the most talented team in baseball. By truly exemplifying the ideals of teamwork and clutch hitting, the Giants proved themselves to be the best at winning games. It pains me to say it now, but we will have to wait all the way until April to see the San Francisco Giants go at it again. But until then, go Giants.

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

Sports

16

INSIDE Sailing 15 Golf 15

tuftsdaily.com

Men’s Cross Country

Impressive showing propels Jumbos to first conference title since ’05

by Sam

Gold

Daily Staff Writer

The gun sounded, and the race, fraught with tension, commenced. Runners from the 11 schools of the NESCAC lined up at the start to vie for both an individual and a team championship. It was all over in less than half an hour.

Senior co-captain Matt Rand, who is also a Contributing Writer for the Daily, narrowly missed out on the individual title, edged out by a mere half-second by Bowdoin’s Coby Horowitz, who won on his home turf. But the All-American and first team allconference’s second-place finish among 124 competitors was the driving force behind Tufts’ team victory — an elusive fourth NESCAC title, its first since winning three straight from 20032005 and a huge confidence boost for a team that experienced a special day in Maine.

“The atmosphere that day was nothing short of magical,” sophomore Jason St. Pierre said. “This victory is only the beginning of a season’s worth of exertions finally coming to fruition.”

Though it was Rand who led the charge, as has been the case throughout the season, the entire top-seven provided the boost that would eventually claim the team title for the Jumbos.

At a meet — one of the toughest conference meets in the nation — that required a stellar performance from each of Tufts’ seven scorers, six personal bests

Daily File Photo

Senior co-captain Matt Rand nearly won the NESCAC individual title, but his performance was enough to spearhead his team to an overall victory. and five runners in the top 20 could not have been timelier.

Junior Ben Wallis, the second Jumbo to score, arrived just outside the top 10 in 11th place with a time of 24:41. Behind him in 14th place by approximately 15 seconds was senior Kyle Marks, who notched a time of 24:56.

Wallis and Marks were the other two Jumbos to gain individual honors on the day, as their top-14 finishes earned them All-Conference second team designations for the first time. Rand, meanwhile, was named to the All-Conference first team, as coach Ethan Barron was named NESCAC

Coach of the Year on the back of his team’s performance.

Junior Jake McCauley and senior Tyler Andrews were the last two scorers for Tufts, finishing two seconds apart to finish in 19th and 20th place, respectively.

The most interesting part of the race happened about a mile from the end, as the lead 10 runners, including Rand and Wallis, broke off from the rest of the field, with Marks and Andrews fading slightly but remaining in the top 20.

Both Rand and Wallis were see MEN’S CROSS COUNTRY, page 13

Women’s Cross Country

Freshmen power Jumbos to Fourth at NESCAC Championship by

Matt Rand

Contributing Writer

The NESCAC Championship marks the beginning of the championship season, not the end — something the women’s cross country team is glad to know after their performance on Saturday fell short of expectations. Although there were bright spots, the squad’s fourth-place tie with Bates was not what Tufts was hoping for.

“I know that if we race at our best, we can give Middlebury and Williams a run for their money,” freshman Audrey Gould said.

“Unfortunately, we didn’t have it in us on Saturday, and I don’t think our finish really represented the level of talent we have on our team this year.”

Williams (45), Middlebury (71) and Amherst (107) easily out-paced Tufts’ 138 points — a tie with Bates, a team that Tufts beat handily earlier this season.

Individually, Kerri Lambert, a senior from Amherst, ran to individual victory in a time of 20:33 over the six-kilometer course — easily the best time of the day in the field of 127.

Gould’s performance was the highlight of the meet for Tufts. In the first championship race of her career, she ran aggressively to place seventh overall in a time of 22:02.

With that finish, she earned FirstTeam All-NESCAC distinction.

“I knew in this race I would have to go out hard and get in position if I wanted to finish in a top spot,” Gould said. “I ended up going out hard and then falling off the pack a little, but I’m still glad that I put myself out there right from the gun because it helped me get my head

in the race.”

Another rookie turned in a stellar performance for the Jumbos, as freshman Olivia Beltrani was the next team member to finish. She placed 30th overall with a time of 22:37. One second behind her in 31st was junior Abby Barker.

Closing the scoring for the Jumbos were junior Laura Peterson and junior tri-captain Madeleine Carey. Peterson placed 38th with a time of 22:42, while Carey clocked in with 22:56 for 43rd.

Right behind her came junior Lauren Creath, while sophomore Meghan Gillis broke into the Tufts top seven for the first time in her young career.

Although the talent displayed by the underclassmen was promising for the team on Saturday, several members of the squad didn’t live up to personal expectations.

“I didn’t execute my race plan, and I didn’t finish where I wanted to,” Peterson said. “There’s nothing I can do to change the results, though, so I’m focusing on taking away a few lessons from the race this weekend and being better prepared for Regionals.”

Peterson and her teammates have had stellar seasons overall thus far, so there is plenty of reason to believe the squad can rebound in the coming weeks. But some adjustments need to be made if the team wants to reach its potential this postseason.

“We just need to race tougher from the get-go and make sure we’re working together and pushing each other throughout the entire race,” Gould said. “It was a mental game for us this weekend, see WOMEN’S CROSS COUNTRY, page 13

Crew

Women, men conclude respective seasons with solid finishes by

Claire Sleigh

Contributing Writer

The men and women’s varsity crew teams fielded a combined 29 boats at this weekend’s Head of the Fish in Saratoga Springs, New York. It was a successful close to the fall headrace season that displayed the depth of the Tufts Crew program, according to women’s coach Brian Dawe.

Although none of the boats went home with the Head of the Fish first-place trophy — a literal fish-head stuck to a wooden plaque that is both comical and revolting at the same time — the teams did go home with four second-place medals and several other close finishes.

This is the first time that the men’s and women’s teams have raced at the same regatta this fall season. According to senior captain Caroline Patterson, the team was able to bond over the course of the regatta.

“It was a great first opportunity we had for all of us to row as a crew,” she said. “We felt good about how it went across the board.”

The regatta functioned as a more traditional race, with athletes competing in multiple events and types of boats. The women, who have spent the season focusing on sculling, added races in the light eight and joined with the men’s team for what Dawe called the highlight of the day: the mixed collegiate eights. Meanwhile, the men rowed in fours for the first time this season.

Senior captain Kyle Flood was impressed with the ability of both the men’s and women’s rowers to adapt to each other on race day, even as they were switching up lineups.

“It was surprising how both the men’s and women’s teams came together well,” he said.

“It speaks volumes about both programs.”

Tufts came into the race bent on beating Middlebury, who edged them out of the

jj zhou for The Tufts Daily

The men’s and women’s crew teams got the rare chance to compete together over the weekend, as both squads rowed in the Head of the Fish Regatta. first place finish last year. However, neither school was expecting the forceful return of Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), who used to sweep the event and powered through again this year to take the top two slots. Tufts A ended up finishing fourth, with Tufts B coming in at sixth, in what was some rowers’ fourth race of the day.

The highlight on the men’s side came when the defending lightweight four dominated the competition to achieve second place, with a finish time of a mere two seconds behind Williams, one of the top Div. III crew programs. Despite minimal practice time in the four, the two varsity rowers, sophomore Sam Helrich and junior Jeff Thibodeau, along with junior varsity rowers, freshman Jackson Horwitz and sophomore Jeff Aalberg, were able to come together under the leadership of freshman coxswain Maria Karam to dominate the 12-boat field.

The Tufts lightweight program is traditionally very successful due to team members such as Helrich and Thibodeau who row in

the first boat but are technically lightweight.

“We have some guys within our program who are competitive within the first varsity boat who happen to be lightweight,” associate head coach Anna Lindgren-Streicher said.

“When they get the chance to race against other lightweight competition, it’s a good match up for them.”

The women also saw strong results from their lightweight boats, with the open lightweight double manned by junior Sofi Shield and sophomore Laura Aravena and the lightweight eight both finishing in second.

Shield and Aravena have been rowing together throughout the season and have been able to match up well.

“Their rowing styles are complimentary,” Dawe said. “Every once in a while you get two people who work together, which [is] pretty amazing.”

Dawe saw significant improvements from the women’s last performance against Ithaca and UMass Amherst, who remained some of the top contestants in the sculling races.

The women saw major improvements in the quad races, with the boat stroked by junior captain Caroline Ricard coming in second place in the open event, and the two Tufts quads in the collegiate event taking third and fourth, with the A boat finishing only 20 milliseconds behind the same Ithaca boat that beat them by twenty seconds two weekends ago.

The men’s eight was also able to make some improvements from last year and capitalized on the relatively short head-race distance to put into practice the rating work done in the past couple of weeks. The men kept the rating between a 32 and a 34, a marked increase from past races.

Because the men’s eight did so poorly last year, the boat was seeded last, which sophomore coxswain Kasia Gawlas saw as an advantage because they were able to pass four boats on their way to a tenth-place finish.

“We generally do really well when we are passing boats, everyone has something they can focus on, there’s someone to beat,” she said. “We do better during 2k season mentality-wise because it’s more of a one-on-one.”

According to Flood, the results showed the effort the team put in this season but also provide motivation for winter training.

“For the four and the eight, I think we all pushed ourselves really hard,” he said. “Over the season I think we’ve made a lot of progress, and I think if we keep making progress, we’ll actually do really well in the spring.”

Both squads are hoping to use the experience at this race to springboard into winter training for the 2,000-meter sprint season.

“We’ve been working on everything technique-wise, the ratings were higher because it was a significantly shorter race, naturally you have to bring it up to stay competitive,” Flood said. “That’s helpful going into the spring because those are 2k’s.”