TuftsDaily11-29-2012

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THE TUFTS DAILY

TUFTSDAILY.COM

thursday, november 29, 2012

VOLUME LXIV, NUMBER 52

Where You Read It First Est. 1980

Tufts looks to improve pedestrian safety by

Nina Goldman

Daily Editorial Board

Tufts administrators are currently working with the City of Somerville to improve pedestrian safety at the intersection of Powderhouse Boulevard and Packard Avenue, where a student was struck by a car and seriously injured on Nov. 8.

Immediately following the accident, the city added a radar feedback sign on Powderhouse Blvd., put pedestrian crossing signs in the intersection, updated the traffic light with LED technology to improve visibility and updated signage in the area, according to Somerville Director of Communications Tom Champion.

“The City of Somerville is looking at that entire intersection, and we’re going to help them do that,” Tufts Director of Public and Environmental Safety Kevin Maguire said.

“Somerville has been a very good neighbor with this.”

Other improvements are yet to come, according to Maguire.

The university has hired a traffic engineering consultant from Vanasse Hangen Brustlin Inc. to examine the intersections around the Tufts campus.

“They will be looking at the intersections all around the perimeter of the Tufts campus, in Medford as well as Somerville,” Champion said.

“Now we will be working with them to review and imple-

ment any recommendations they get.”

Maguire said that Tufts is pushing the consultant to complete the pedestrian safety study within a month, but Champion said the factors that contributed to the Nov. 8 accident — important information for making future improvements — would not become clear until the Somerville Police Department releases an incident report. Somerville police are still investigating the accident, and they could not be reached for a comment.

Improvements to the intersection following the accident come in addition to several updates that were made there last spring and summer, including a repainted crosswalk and double yellow traffic lines, as well as several new signs warning vehicles of crossing pedestrians and reinforcing parking laws. The city also cleared tree branches to improve visibility and replaced the faded signs at the intersection.

“These changes were not to bring into compliance but to add additional margins of safety,” Champion said.

The earlier improvements, although funded by the City, included input from the university as well, according to Maguire.

“We worked directly with the City of Somerville to facilitate those changes,” he said.

According to Champion, Somerville frequently consults see SAFETY, page 2

‘Fast Food Nation’ author speaks on food injustice by

Nina Goldman

Daily Editorial Board

Author and journalist Eric Schlosser discussed mistreatment of the poor laborers who power the food industry in a soldout lecture in Cohen Auditorium Tuesday night.

The talk was part of Tufts Hillel’s Moral Voices Merrin Distinguished Lecture Series, which this year is focusing on food justice. Junior Rose Pollard, who chaired the committee organizing the program, introduced Schlosser by referencing the impact his 2001 book, “Fast Food Nation,” had on the rise of the food movement during the last decade.

“This book helped start a revolution about how Americans think about what they eat,” Pollard said.

However, Schlosser had not come to talk about organic food or abuse of livestock, although he acknowledged these as important aspects of food justice.

“The injustices in today’s food system are merely symptoms, and they cannot be understood and they cannot

be changed without addressing the underlying problems,” Schlosser said.

Schlosser’s focus throughout the talk was the racism, poverty and the unchecked corporate power surrounding the treatment of workers on the produce farms and in the slaughterhouses that feed America.

“Discussions about sustainability usually neglect to mention human beings and human rights,” he said. “We have to ask ourselves as a society why is it we seem to care more about the animals we eat than about the poor people that feed us.”

His concern with the abuse of food industry workers began in the early 1990s as Californian politicians were decrying undocumented immigrants as “parasites.” Schlosser started examining the role immigrants play in California’s economy, eventually following strawberry harvesters for a full year.

“It totally opened my eyes to see where food is coming from,” he said. see SCHLOSSER, page 2

Courtesy Ethan Finkelstein

The confetti used at the parade appeared to be shredded police documents containing Social Security numbers and other classified information.

Tufts student discovers classified information in Thanksgiving parade confetti by

Martha Shanahan

Daily Editorial Board

The discovery made by freshman Ethan Finkelstein that shreds of highly classified police documents were used as confetti during last week’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade has prompted an internal investigation in the Nassau County Police Department and a review of how the department disposes of its documents.

Finkelstein, who is from Manhattan and attends the parade every year, was standing with his family at 65th St. and Central Park West when a strip

of confetti paper landed on his friend’s coat.

“On the block we were standing on ... someone was throwing all these white shreds of paper,” Finkelstein said. “It was everywhere, thousands of these pieces of paper.”

Finkelstein said that one of the pieces that landed on another parade-goer caught his eye.

“It said SSN, and there was a number on it,” he said. “We didn’t think much of it at first. We thought it was like a one in a million thing.”

They picked up more of the pieces of paper and found more Social Security numbers, license

plate numbers, car descriptions, names of detectives in the Nassau County Police Department and the phrase “Romney motorcade.”

“We didn’t know what to make of it at all,” Finkelstein said.

Finkelstein and his family contacted a local New York television news station, WPIXTV, about the strips in the hope of bringing to light the story of how such sensitive information ended up flying through the air at the Macy’s parade.

“We thought that maybe they would look into the story,” he said. WPIX reported Monday that see CONFETTI, page 2

Paperclip Challenge to kick off tomorrow Tomorrow, the Tufts Venture Fund and Entrepreneurs Society will hold the Red Paperclip Challenge for the first time. The 24-hour national event involves teams of up to five participants who begin the competition with a red paperclip and trade it up for more valuable items, according to Tufts Venture Fund Co-founder and senior Eric Peckham.

The race will begin at the Mayer Campus Center at 6 p.m. Teams will then photograph their trades and post the photos to a running Twitter feed for the duration of the event, Peckham explained.

Teams have to return by 6 p.m. the following day to showcase their final item to a panel of celebrity Jumbos, including famous professors, deans or well-known students like the president of the Tufts Community Union Senate, according to Tufts Venture Fund Co-founder and junior Alexandra Halbeck.

“We’re working on putting together a panel of judges — fun people connected with Tufts in various ways,” Peckham said.

Inside this issue

The judges will determine which teams win prizes for the items that they bring back.

“We’ll have a few different categories, like most ridiculous, biggest, most expensive, most impressive,” Peckham said.

The challenge has no concrete rules and originality is encouraged, Halbeck said.

“We just want people to get creative,” she said.

“Entrepreneurship always seems so inaccessible and we just want to show people that anyone can have an idea and make something happen.”

Junior Glendon Gong, who plans to participate in the challenge, expressed excitement about the opportunity to compete with other students who have similar entrepreneurial mindsets.

“My team’s strategy is to be eager and persistent,” Gong said. “Some items could be seen as garbage in other people’s eyes, but it could be precious and a worthy trade to us.”

“It’s a very interesting challenge and idea,” Gong added.

“I can’t wait to collaborate with some of my best friends to try to do something impossible to unimaginable.”

The inspiration for bringing this challenge to Tufts was Entrepreneurial Leadership Program Director James Barlow’s experience with organizing a similar event at the University of Bristol in England.

At the end of that event, one team came back with two live sheep and another brought back a kayak, Peckham said.

“It’s a pretty grassroots effort in terms of us having just a bunch of students who got together and thought that this would be a fun idea,” he said.

“The challenge has a goofy and adventurous spirit and that just fit with the spirit of our two organizations.”

The Paperclip Challenge was first inspired by Canadian blogger Kyle MacDonald, who made 15 trades in one year, beginning with exchanging his paperclip and eventually ending up with a house.

“We’re looking for creativity and wildness,” Halbeck said.

“Our goal is just to get as many students as possible to meet up and exercise their entrepreneurial spirit.”

—by Sarah Zheng

Today’s sections

The Tufts Venture Fund seeks to encourage new ideas and the development of student businesses.

Graffiti jumps from the streets to the galleries as the oncefringe art form rises in popularity.

see FEATURES, page 3

see WEEKENDER, page 5

News Features Weekender Editorial | Letters

1 3 5 10

Op-Ed Comics Classifieds Sports

11 12 13 Back

The Tufts Daily

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News

Kyra Sturgill / The Tufts Daily

Thursday, November 29, 2012

Courtney Chiu for the Tufts Daily

Freshman Ethan Finkelstein sparked a police investigation following his discovery that strips of confetti at this year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade displayed confidential police data.

Author and food journalist Eric Schlosser spoke during Tufts Hillel’s Moral Voices Merrin Distinguished Lecture Series on Tuesday evening.

CONFETTI

SCHLOSSER

Local police investigating use of sensitive documents as confetti continued from page 1

the confetti came from a Nassau police employee who attended the parade as a spectator.

In a released statement, Nassau County Police Inspector Kenneth Lack said that the Nassau County Police Department is seriously concerned about the mistake.

“We will be conducting an investigation into this matter as well as reviewing our procedures for the disposing of sensitive documents,” he said.

The story has since been picked up by the national media, and Finkelstein has done inter-

views that have appeared on WPIX, CNN, local Fox News stations in New York and Boston, the national Fox show Fox and Friends, National Public Radio, the New York Post and Newsday, as well as his high school’s newspaper.

“It kind of just spiraled from [the WPIX interview],” he said.

Finkelstein spoke with representatives from the Nassau County Police Department before he came back to Tufts after Thanksgiving break and again this week on the phone.

“A detective called up to follow up on the investigation,” he said.

“I think they’re also surprised about how much the story has blown up, too. It seems like it was really just a big mistake on someone’s part.”

Finkelstein believes that the mistake, while understandable, reflects poorly on the department’s handling of confidential documents.

“It was just someone not paying attention, but it also raises the question of ... how police departments handle their sensitive information and whether they’re disposing of it correctly, which is why I think it’s important,” he said.

Kyra Sturgill / The Tufts Daily

Write the caption here.

Research continues on dangerous intersection SAFETY

continued from page 1

with the university when pursuing public safety projects near campus.

“That was part of ongoing discussions about pedestrian safety with Tufts,” he said.

Maguire added that Tufts will continue to work independently with the consultant in order to improve pedestrian safety on the rest of campus. The university has also recently made its own upgrades to improve safety in other areas on campus, including at the intersection of Professors Row and Packard Ave., Maguire said.

“That is a problem intersection that has been identified,” he said.

“We did a number of things on and about the university to improve

pedestrian safety before students came onto campus in the fall.”

The Powderhouse/Packard intersection has seen several accidents involving Tufts community members in recent years — two students, one on a bike and one walking, were struck in 2011, and a student and a staff member were hit while walking in 2012, according to Maguire. In none of those cases was the victim severely injured, he said.

“I think you’ve got a couple things going on with that intersection,” Maguire said.

Besides a high traffic volume, he said, the street’s width is a problem because it invites speed. He did not, however, see a problem in the presence of a blinking traffic light — yellow, in the case of Powderhouse,

on which the car involved in this month’s accident was driving.

Champion, for his part, said the recent series of accidents at that particular intersection is most likely anecdotal.

“Every accident is the result of a number of contributing factors,” he said. “This particular intersection is not far off average. There are other intersections where there are more accidents.”

Maguire emphasized it is important for pedestrians to take initiative if they want to avoid accidents.

“Pedestrians have the right of way at a crosswalk, but they also have more to lose if they’re hit by a 3,000 pound machine,” he said.

“These are city streets. You’ve got to be careful.”

Police briefs

Love tap

Missing in action

A person on Nov. 16 at 8:45 p.m. walked into the Tufts University Police Department (TUPD) station and informed officers that he had driven his car into a police cruiser.

Fortunately, the cruiser sustained only minor damage.

TUPD on Nov. 18 at 12:34 a.m. arrived at a house on Sunset Road on report of a loud party.

Officers noticed large numbers of people entering and leaving the house. They then began clearing out the house, counting approxi-

mately 200 people at the party.

Officers were told that the resident hosting the party had left the scene due to the overwhelming number of people present.

Officers cleared the partygoers from the house and locked the apartment.

—compiled by Audrey Michael

Renowned food journalist addresses food justice issues continued from page 1

What Schlosser found, he said, was systemic mistreatment of workers. The workers, whose labor is necessary if Americans want to eat healthier, were forced to pick every strawberry by hand, he said.

Schlosser explained that the California farms were profiting enormously from undocumented immigrants, who were paid minimum wage off the books and could be fired at a moment’s notice.

“They liked hiring illegal immigrants who were usually fearful, unlikely to protest, unlikely to approach state authorities over violations of the labor code,” he said.

Another problem included routine sexual abuse of female farm workers, who were scared to complain and get fired. In fact, Schlosser said the growers’ power over their employees has increased, as a fear of being fired has grown into a fear of deportation.

“It’s actually gotten worse, and one of the things that’s made it worse is the immigration crackdown in this country,” he said.

He said the immigrants, many of whom had Native American heritage and could not speak Spanish, much less English, were “extremely industrious, hard workers [and] easy to exploit.”

The workers Schlosser spoke with were often living cramped in small apartments, and even caves, cars and garages. According to Schlosser, a sixth of the population of Soledad, Cal. lives in garages during the harvest.

Yet, the undocumented immigrants of the area are criticized and condemned.

“We’re not talking about homeless, lazy drug addicts.

We’re talking about workers harvesting the healthiest food we can eat, living in the wealthiest state in the wealthiest country in the world,” Schlosser said. “And all of us are connected to these workers every time we bite into fresh fruit, fresh vegetables.”

Many similar abuses can be found in the meatpacking industry, a world Schlosser explored in his book “Fast Food Nation.”

“The type of exploitation that had been going on for decades in the fields of California was coming to the factories of the Midwest,” he said. “Every single one of us who eats meat is con-

nected to these workers with every single bite.”

Since Schlosser’s article about the strawberry pickers and his follow-up study of slaughterhouse workers in “Fast Food Nation,” were published, he said, the problem has only worsened.

According to Schlosser, wages in the California grape industry are currently lower than in the early 1960s, when activist Cesar Chavez mobilized the farm workers to hold hunger strikes for higher wages.

Racism is behind this systemic abuse, Schlosser asserted.

“These people look different from the mainstream ... and we allow this to be done to them,” he said. “The food that we eat is too often and has too often been made possible by someone else’s misery, and that someone else is usually not white.”

Of slaughterhouse workers, Schlosser found that 80 percent were Latino and 26 percent were undocumented. The work is “bloody, smelly, horrific,” he described, and injuries are three times as common as in other kinds of factories.

When workers are injured — or try to form unions — they are usually fired.

Citing brutal statistics, including that people in poverty are twice as likely to be obese than well-off Americans and that those who are obese are two-thirds more likely to die young, Schlosser painted a grim picture of the state of “food justice” in America.

Change is possible, he said, but the availability of organic food and increasing farmers’ markets is not enough.

“The measure of this food movement cannot just be how the educated upper middle class now lives,” Schlosser said.

“The truth is, the wealthy will always eat well. It’s the poor and working class people in this country who really need a new food system.”

Instead, the focus must be on improving conditions for food workers and the American poor.

“We need to increase the minimum wage in this country,” Schlosser said. “We need to fight against every manifestation of racism and intolerance in this country.”

Shakura Cox, a freshman who attended the lecture, said she came away inspired.

“I wasn’t expecting to hear about the workers that much ... I didn’t realize how horrific the conditions were,” Cox said. “I really feel like I want to make a change.”

Features

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tuftsdaily.com

Jacob Passy | A Bit Off

Groupon gift groupie

I

Jodi Bosin / THe Tufts Daily

New group Tufts Venture Fund collaborates with the Tufts Entrepreneurs Society to offer opportunities to students on campus with innovative ideas.

New student group adds to entrepreneurial spirit on campus, hopes to fund ideas

by Jessica

Mow

Contributing Writer

Tufts students and alumni with ideas for new businesses have had a growing range of options over the past few years, enabling them to go so far as to develop iPhone applications and create websites as the basis for their businesses. But a new club seeks to expand this range even further.

Tufts Venture Fund, established earlier this semester by two students interested in venture capital, is the newest addition to the list of options for students looking to transform their ideas into real business plans.

Junior Alexandra Halbeck and senior Eric Peckham first discussed the idea in September.

“It pretty quickly transformed from people who were interested in venture capital and wanted to talk about venture capital ... to ‘Oh my God, maybe we could make this something big,’ to sitting down with [Director of Tufts Gordon Institute’s Entrepreneurial Leadership Program] James Barlow,” Halbeck said.

According to Halbeck, Tufts Venture Fund is for students interested in venture capital, but also acts as a resource for students with ideas.

“We want to provide opportunities to students who are interested in venture capitalism or analysis. We need a team of core analysts to be analyzing ventures, as well as people building connections,” Halbeck said. “[We aim to offer] student entrepreneurs the guidance, connections and resources that they might need in order to develop their ideas into a full-fledged business.”

Peckham and Halbeck created the fund not out of frustration with students’ previous options, but rather out of a desire to add to

them and give students with more concrete ideas the necessary resources to launch their businesses, according to Halbeck.

“We are working to make connections with local [venture capital] firms in Boston ... we’re working to connect with alumni, we’re working to connect with people on campus,” she said. “We want to bring everybody together so that we can give people with an idea the opportunity and the connections that they need to make it something real.”

The Venture Fund has also been working closely with the Tufts Entrepreneurs Society to help students get their businesses running.

“The Tufts Entrepreneurs Society is kind of the base of the pyramid, where you have as many people as possible involved, and as you go further up, you have people who are physically starting their own companies,” President of the Tufts Entrepreneurs Society Albert Nichols, a senior, said. “[They] need a support group and they need connections, they need networks, they need money, and the Tufts Venture Fund is essentially there to help facilitate all those processes at the top of the pyramid.”

According to Barlow, who also serves as the faculty adviser for Tufts Venture Fund, while a course in the Entrepreneurial Leadership Studies (ELS) program may be beneficial for learning about the technicalities of starting a business, the formal ELS curriculum isn’t for everyone.

“What we’re trying to do here at Tufts is evolve a really supportive ecosystem that supports student innovation, student entrepreneurship,” Barlow said. “[A club caters] to those who don’t necessarily have the bandwidth to do a full course.”

TaKUMA KOIDE / Tufts daily archives

Tufts Entrepreneurs Society is working to ensure the success of new club Tufts Venture Fund.

As the group has only been on campus for a few months, Tufts Venture Fund has goals that it cannot achieve right away. For one, they are not currently recognized by the Tufts Community Union, though they are working toward it, Halbeck said.

More importantly, however, they hope to raise an actual fund.

“The money going into the fund would be [through] gift-giving, most likely,” Halbeck said. “We can provide market research, we can provide connections ... and other things that these ventures might need ...

Once we have a portfolio of those ventures, we can look at them and say, ‘Okay, you’re ready. Now what do you need?’ and they can say, ‘Money.’”

According to Halbeck, they can then take a look at the need on campus and go from there to see what they can do to make these ventures grow.

With the establishement of the Tufts Entrepreneurs Society two years ago, as well as the development of the ELS program and the new addition of Tufts Venture Fund, Tufts has seen a rising interest in entrepreneurship, specifically with a lean toward active citizenship, according to Barlow.

“A social entrepreneur is really somebody who’s not just looking at doing something entrepreneurial, but has a social positive impact as [part] of what they’re doing,” Barlow said.

Students involved in these social entrepreneurial initiatives on campus, though, look beyond the typical active citizenship niche at Tufts.

“I think in the way that things are framed at Tufts, you hear a lot about active citizenship and giving back to your community,” Nichols said. “I think that the entrepreneurial view of that is different in the sense that you’re not ... going back and kind of giving away your time to go do something and help someone do something, but you’re using a business or using a venture to solve that problem for hundreds and thousands and millions of people.”

The Tufts Venture Fund is hoping to expand this mindset of entrepreneurship to a broader group of students.

“We’re trying to [encourage] more people to recognize themselves as entrepreneurs,” Halbeck said. “We want people to get involved, we want people to start thinking of themselves as creative, intuitive people with natural ingenuity and a lot of great ideas.”

Nichols would also encourage more students to think of their passions and ideas in an entrepreneurial way.

“If people can find value in what you are doing [and] if you are creating value with your education, then you’ve become a successful entrepreneur,” he said.

t’s undeniably that time of year, folks.

The time when all you want to do is shop. Thanksgiving has come and gone, and everywhere you go there are ads touting the latest deals for holiday shopping. Whether or not you celebrate a holiday this time of year, it’s almost impossible to avoid the pressure to buy and buy.

But let’s face it: As college students, we barely have enough time to even think of a gift to give someone, let alone go out and buy it. It doesn’t help that finals are regrettably right around the corner.

The other day, when I was clearing my inbox of the holiday-fueled spam hawking the latest reduction in prices, I paused looking at one email — the daily Groupon email. If you’re like me, when you get these emails, they almost automatically find their way into the trash folder.

You probably signed up for the email updates when you heard about that one great deal for that place you always go to.

I mean, who doesn’t want a 51 percent discount at Diva Indian Bistro? As you quickly discover, though, nine times out of 10 the deals that day will be for places you’ve never heard of.

So when I saw this email and was thinking of my holiday gift list, it hit me.

Groupons make the perfect holiday gift.

That’s because when you give someone a Groupon, you’re giving him or her a chance to explore.

Seriously, if you go to the website you’ll learn about tons of different places you’ve never heard of. True, many of the deals on the site are for your run-of-themill acupuncturists or nail salons. But if you take the time to sift through the deals that are available, you can find some really neat places. For instance, take The Book Shop in Ball Square. Now, when you generally think of the business in this square, you think of food, like Sound Bites or Lyndell’s or True Grounds.

But there’s more to this square than meets the eye, and I never would have considered that had I not seen the deal the used bookstore is featuring on Groupon right now. For $15, you can get $30 worth of merchandise at the store.

And with books costing as low as $2.99, that’s a pretty nice deal.

For me, though, Groupon is not just about the deal. It’s about finding an affordable excuse to go exploring. As I’ve learned this semester, it’s hard to gather the motivation to root out these largely unseen local establishments, and it can be a bit pricey on top of that.

Plus, you’re not always guaranteed to find a new place that you like. I’ll put it this way — some of these lesserknown destinations should probably stay that way.

The ease and affordability that Groupon provides is priceless. It helps you to find these places, but also prevents you from spending an arm and a leg for what may not be a great time. I don’t want to detract from your enjoyment of your Groupon gift, but I can’t vouch for every single business that uses the service.

So while every place you visit with one of these coupons may not be the best, you may be lucky enough to find your next favorite thing — to take an idea from Oprah.

Okay, I admit that it may be a bit weird to give a Groupon as a gift to someone else. Instead, let this be your holiday season gift to yourself. And at the end of the day, if it’s getting you off campus and helping you to explore the world around Tufts, how bad could a gift like that really be?

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

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goes to the gallery

Once controversial, street art now expands into mainstream

Graffiti is beginning to expand past its traditional concrete landscape.

by

Caroline Welch

Daily Editorial Board

M

odern art galleries are often home to a diverse and eclectic assortment of art. Here, more so than in any other art institutions, art is often controversial, cutting edge, avant-garde. In some contemporary art museums, anything goes — even graffiti.

In the past few years, graffiti and street art have been gaining a notable presence in galleries and art institutions, which have traditionally been reserved for more “legitimized” art forms. Indeed, many graffiti artists are now taking their work off the street and into the whitewalled room.

Take, for instance, the recent Os Gemeos exhibit at Boston’s very own Institute of Contemporary Art. The street art duo, comprised of Brazilian brothers Otavio and Gustavo Pandolfo, has been a major player in urban art for over a decade.

Revered in their field, the brothers now have their first show in the United States at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA). This is just the latest example of graffiti crossing over into the gallery, a trend that seems to be gaining credibility and popularity in both the art world and among the public, particularly in Boston.

Pedro Alonzo, the curator of the Os Gemeos show, is one of Boston’s most public supporters of street art. A resident expert on urban art, Alonzo has a long history with the genre. He was the man behind the ICA’s 2009 Shepard Fairey exhibit, as well as the museum’s 2011 Swoon installations. He has arranged numerous other street art shows around the United States, as well as in England and Mexico.

Ironically, early in his career, Alonzo was not the street art advocate he is today.

Alonzo even admitted that when he started working as curator, he had never really considered street art to be a credible or authentic art form.

“My initial reaction was, well, this isn’t really art,” Alonzo said. “And then I kept going back and thinking, why isn’t it art?

At one point I realized that I had developed a preconceived notion about what art is and what art isn’t and in order to really understand, I had to break with those ideas ... really flip the paradigm and look at it differently.”

Though he reached that conclusion a couple years ahead of the rest of the art community, Alonzo believes that it is catching up, albeit slowly.

“I’m one of the few curators that really look at this seriously, and most people are still waiting to see what happens,” he said. “[But] it is changing and I think there will be a generational shift where [street art’s] presence will be commonplace.”

Curators and museum directors are not the only ones involved in this evolution.

Graffiti artists themselves recognize the

increased interest and desire for street art — and some are capitalizing on it.

Project Super Friends (SF) is one such group of people. Founded in 1999, SF is a collective of artists and designers, most of whom decided to pursue art semi-professionally after initially becoming involved in the graffiti scene.

“It started as a loosely based graffiti group,” founding member Josh Falk explained. Since its inception 13 years ago, SF has grown from a small spraypainting trio into a twelve-member multimedia ensemble that receives and often collaborates on various art commissions around Boston.

“At first we were just a group of likeminded individuals whose main goal was to beautify the world in some way,” Falk said. “But over the years, we just realized we could make money on it.”

“Before ... the main component was a group of friends hanging out,” SF member Matthew Zaremba added, chronicling the group’s development over the years. “Then it was a group of friends that all were artists in some realm. And then it became, ‘How can we support our own culture?’”

Members of SF have been contracted for a wide range of projects all over Boston, from making murals and doing live paintings to designing smaller pieces for businesses and hosting studio shows. Each year since 2005, for example, they have been hired by Northeastern University to create a mural during the school’s annual Spring Fest.

Though this event allows most of the members to work together at the same time, few of their jobs are this communal.

Recently, Falk teamed up with fellow member Dana Wolfe to paint a series of graffitistyle murals at numerous Cross Fit locations in the city and he and Zaremba just

Caroline Welch / The Tufts Daily

finished an assignment for a Cambridgebased advertising company.

Though they are able to profit from their work, SF is in no way a traditional moneymaking enterprise. Though they actively take on clients, at its core SF remains a casual group of friends who share a passion for street art. In fact, the majority of SF members have different “day” jobs — Zaremba does marketing for an online street wear company called Karmaloop and Falk works for a real estate developer as a photographer and bartends one night a week in Harvard Square. For SF’s members, street art is not a profession, but rather a “lifestyle,” and ultimately their goal is to have fun.

Others might not see it this way. Though by now they have definitely achieved a sort of “insider status” in the culture, many of the members of Project SF were at one point accused of selling out by some of their peers.

“We received a lot of flack back in the day when we were the kids who were trying to take [graffiti] out of the street,” Falk said.

“That’s the purist thing, they all hate on that,” Zaremba added. “But a lot of the kids who hated on us did what we did after the fact, way after the fact.”

Though they were still committed to making art simply for art’s sake, SF realized what many museums and galleries are beginning to discover: People wanted their art.

“The aesthetic of graffiti is highly marketable, so I’m not surprised that it’s [becoming] so prevalent and saturated,” Nick Z., another of SF’s founding members, said. “It’s only natural that that’s what happened to it. Graffiti is a crime, but if you take the crime away from it, everybody wants it.”

Caroline Welch / The Tufts Daily

As part of their ICA exhibit, twin artists Os Gemeos created a larger-than-life public mural in Dewey Square.

Indeed, what makes graffiti so controversial in any setting is the fundamental illegality of the art itself. In Massachusetts — as in most places across the country — graffiti is considered a felony. According to Mymassachusettsdefenselawyer. com, any “willful or malicious marking, scratching, etching or otherwise marking or defacing the property of another” constitutes graffiti.

Graffiti can result in fairly severe punishments if caught — in some cases, up to three years in prison and a one-year suspension of a driver’s license, not to mention hefty fines. Boston has taken additional steps to deter graffiti artists by allocating $250,000 for graffiti removal and launching clean-up programs like “Graffiti Busters,” a volunteer assembly that has removed graffiti from over 1000 individual sites around the city, according to the City of Boston’s website.

Many members of Boston’s graffiti community take issue with these defacement laws.

“I don’t see people knocking on Elizabeth Warren’s door saying, ‘You owe the city of Boston [money] because your stickers are everywhere,’” Zaremba said.

Alonzo also acknowledged that discrepancies exist in this type of legislation.

“If you think about everybody’s use of public space — losing your dog and putting up signs or ... putting up signs for guitar lessons or computer lessons — much of that is done illegally,” he said.

But none of those violators are prosecuted for their “crimes.”

Though there are definitive anti-authoritarian connotations — such as its illegality — associated with graffiti, there’s no denying that the relationship between graffiti and the rest of the art world is changing.

The evolution of graffiti from its original “outlaw” status into something that, today, is often socially sanctioned and even commercialized has produced both proponents and critics across the spectrum. Advocates say that this transition is providing more visibility and is garnering acceptance for graffiti among a broader population. Opponents argue that taking graffiti out of its urban context is undermining the essence of the art itself, as well as the message it’s trying to propagate.

Despite the wide range of opinions surrounding the issue, at this point it appears that the integration of graffiti into mainstream art culture can only gain momentum with the passage of time.

“The attitudes are changing,” Alonzo insisted. “And they’re definitely changing in a way that they’re allowing artists to do more public work, because it’s cool, and it’s fun and people like it.”

Tufts University Art Gallery Director Amy Schlegel agreed.

“Thirty to 40 years ago, most people would have said, ‘It’s ugly, it’s an invasion of private space, it’s assaulting my senses, I don’t even want to look at it,’” she said. “[But] it’s really come into its own as an art form. Now I just accept it as ... another part of contemporary art practice.”

The Tufts Daily

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weekender

Thursday, November 29, 2012

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

Spirit of Color (SoC) presents Off the Record: Student dance group SoC presents its fall semester show, which will also feature guest performances by Sarabande, Envy and Blackout. Tonight at 9 p.m. and Friday at 8 p.m. in Cohen Auditorium. Tickets are free with a Tufts ID; limit two per person.

Tufts Wind Ensemble presents: Oh! The Places You’ll Go!: The Tufts University Wind Ensemble performs music and songs from around the world, including songs from “The Lion King” (1994), a Latin American fiesta and a musical rendition of the namesake Dr. Seuss story. The concert will feature a guest appearance by the HYPE! Tufts Mime Troupe.

Saturday at 1 p.m. in Distler Performance Hall.

Admission is free.

Tufts Jazz Orchestra presents West Side Story: The Tufts Jazz Orchestra, led by Joel LaRue Smith, will perform music from the famous Leonard Bernstein musical that combines jazz and Latin music. A small jazz ensemble led by Smith will open the concert. Saturday at 8 p.m. in Goddard Chapel.

Admission is free, no tickets required.

Hamlet the Hip-Hopera: Shakespeare’s classic drama returns with a twist in this modern take on “Hamlet.” The main text and setting is the same, but the show delivers it through slam poetry, rap battles and dueling verses.

Friday and Saturday at 10 p.m. in Hotung Cafe. Admission is free with a Tufts ID. —compiled by the Daily Arts Department

Concert Review

Neil Young brings sound, fury to TD Garden by

Dan O’Leary

Daily Editorial Board

For any musician or band who has had a career spanning more than four decades, it’s usually fair to assume that their peak performing years are long past. While there are many bands with impressive, lengthy resumes that continue to tour, sometimes their concerts can seem stale — a glimpse of their former greatness. But on Monday night at the TD Garden in Boston, Neil Young and Crazy Horse gave a thunderous performance that proved that they are one of the true exceptions to that trend.

Energetic, loud and vital, Young and company’s concert was stunning for an artist of any age, let alone for someone who is 67.

Once opener Patti Smith finished her incendiary set, roadies dressed in white lab coats scurried out on stage, preparing the equipment and pretending to tend to the four oversized Fender amps. All of this echoed the former stage designs for Young’s “Rust Never Sleeps” (1979) and “Ragged Glory” (1990) tours from decades earlier, complete with the same oversized microphone that descended from the rafters right before Young took the stage.

With a huge American flag hanging in the background, Young and Crazy Horse walked onto the stage and proudly stood at attention for the National Anthem.

Needless to say, it was a strange beginning to a concert.

Despite the unusual opening, Young and company quickly got down to business.

The American flag was quickly replaced by the Crazy Horse logo. Waves of Young’s hallmark distortion and feedback began sounding from the speakers. Launching into “Love and Only Love,” Young and Crazy Horse struck the first bone-rattling chords that slowly morphed into the song, with their garage band style rumblings evoking the image of an old engine revving up into gear.

Part of what made the concert so impressive was the vigor and energy with which Young threw himself into the music.

His guitar playing was a marvel to watch.

He aggressively attacked his guitar and extracted tortured notes from the instrument, which allowed for a mesmerizing performance. Crazy Horse was right behind him the whole time, with guitarist Frank “Poncho” Sampredo trading guitar riffs with Young and gleefully adding to the cacophony of noise onstage. All of this controlled musical chaos was anchored by the rhythm section, featuring bassist Billy Talbot and drummer Ralph Molina.

Throughout the night, the playing vacillated between tight and focused to loose and messy, adding a welcome element of unpredictability to the concert.

Young gave members of the group plenty of opportunities to showcase their talents, with a set that flowed seamlessly from one song into the other. Even though a large portion of the set was devoted to new material from its 2012 album, “Psychedelic Pill,” the band played the songs with such seeming effortlessness that it felt as if they were old favorites that Young had been performing for years. New songs like “Ramada Inn” worked well with classics like “Cinnamon Girl” and “Powderfinger,” all of which were complemented by the continuous waves of feedback.

One standout was new song “Walk Like a Giant,” which clocked in at nearly half an hour. During the song, Young stomped furiously on the stage. The song finished with a simulated storm and roughly 10 minutes worth of feedback. This was one of the only excessive parts of the concert, since the feedback had no real musical value.

After this, Young gave Crazy Horse a brief respite, opting to perform a few solo acoustic pieces. Here, he highlighted the

Dan O’Leary / The Tufts Daily

Neil Young and Crazy Horse brought a thunderous performance to Boston’s TD Garden. strength of his unmistakable, high-pitched voice, still in remarkably good shape after all these decades. The best moment of this section was easily “The Needle and the Damage Done,” with Young delivering a haunting performance of one of his most famous songs.

Following the acoustic section, Crazy Horse returned to the stage for the remainder of the concert, continuing to deliver powerful renditions of songs one after the other. This all culminated in an inspired set closer, “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black),” with the entire audience singing along

to one of Young’s most well-known and beloved songs. The crowd cheered as Young sang the famous line, “It’s better to burn out than to fade away” — a fitting description for the legendary rocker, whose Monday concert indicated he will not go quietly into the final part of his career.

The Artsy Jumbo

Senior Nadav Hirsh explores all aspects of theater For senior drama major Nadav Hirsh, the theater has always been part of life. By the age of five, Hirsh was already acting. Since then, he has branched out into almost every other theatrical direction.

“I got more serious about [theater] as I got into high school and started doing summer programs where I learned more about the tech side of things,” he said. “[Then] I directed a show my senior year of high school, and that kind of opened me up out of the acting bubble.”

After working on over 15 shows at Tufts alone, his theater interests have come to include electric work, lighting design, directing and even miming in Tufts’ HYPE! Mime Troupe.

Hirsh believes the pairing of drama with linguistics, his minor, has helped him develop a unique artistic outlook, one he strives to bring to every project he works on.

“My perspective as an artist is that the audience matters more than anything else you’re doing ... [In linguistics], it doesn’t really matter what you think language should sound like because ... people use it the way they use it, and that’s how I feel about theater,” he said. “It really doesn’t matter how much you feel your art is important if no one wants to go see it.”

Down the road, Hirsh hopes to combine his many talents and build a career he’ll truly enjoy.

“If all went perfectly, swimmingly, I would be able to make a living doing some combination of acting, electric, lighting design and voice acting,” he said.

Catch Hirsh on stage at CheapHYPE! on Dec. 9, and see his next directorial production, “Alice in Wonderland,” in spring 2013.

—by Alex Hanno

Ashley Seenauth / the Tufts Daily

The Tufts Daily

Thursday, November 29, 2012

‘Spring Breakers’ contrasts Harmony Korine’s previous work

Stars, glamour mark change in writer/director’s cinematic approach by

Melissa MacEwen

Daily Editorial Board

Even if you are only the most passive of movie buffs, odds are good that you either own or have seen a few of the films that top popular culture’s list for being Completely Messed Up, with a capital c, m and u. Odds are even better that, along with something by David Lynch and Gaspar Noé, one of these films was written and/or directed by Harmony Korine.

Korine burst onto the movie scene in 1995 with the $20 million blockbuster “Kids,” a film that he both wrote and had small role in. Not bad for someone who was only 22 years old at the time. In the wake of this initial success, Korine went on to write, direct and act in a number of films, including “Gummo” (1997), “Julien Donkey-Boy” (1999) and “Ken Park” (2002). He even wrote a book, “A Crack Up at the Race Riots” (1998).

Korine became somewhat notorious for his film composition and subject matter — short, abstractly related vignettes that generally focused on teenage sex, drug use and violence. His slew of NC-17 ratings and a ban from the David Letterman Show garnered him an avid cult following, mainly composed of teenagers and twentysomethings. But aside from a number of short films and a handful of belowthe-radar movies like “Trash Humpers” (2009), Korine has remained out of the spotlight for a while. Now, he’s back.

March 2013 will witness the release of the long-anticipated “Spring Breakers,” Korine’s latest directorial endeavor. As of yet, relatively little is known about the film. A cast list and a one-sentence description are available on IMDb — “Four college girls who land in jail after robbing a restaurant in order to fund their spring break vacation find themselves bailed out by a drug and arms dealer who wants them to do some dirty work” — and a handful of photos have been posted online. Still, something about the film already feels off, or at least not representative of Harmony Korine’s work. To start, there are the stars. While Korine’s past films have featured actors as renowned as Werner Herzog and Chloë Sevigny, these cast members had always previously been used because of their talent and the depth they could add to the film; their fame was secondary (plus, “Kids” was Sevigny’s first movie). However, his upcoming “Spring Breakers” is clearly driven by the presence of James Franco and Selena Gomez among the cast. Without them, it is unlikely that “Spring Breakers” would have garnered the same level of public discussion.

Then, there’s the actual plot. “Four college girls?” “Dirty work?” Seriously?

Considering the fact that the film’s protagonist ladies aren’t wearing anything other than bikinis and microskirts in the promotional photos, “Spring Breakers” sounds like a porn film at its worst, a Quentin Tarantino knock-off at its best. Already, the film has a flashy, fleshy glamour that may or may not have replaced the gritty, painful intimacy of Korine’s previous films.

gdcgraphics via Wikimedia Commons

Harmony Korine will return to filmmaking with his March “Spring Breakers.”

Mostly, it might just be that Korine is, to put it bluntly, not as young and groundbreaking as he once was.

Though angst and poor decision-making are bound neither by age nor generation, at 39, Korine can no longer claim to be the rebellious voice of the Millennial generation. Korine’s films have long threatened to sacrifice their surprising poignancy for unadulterated shock-value — “Trash Humpers,” for example, was only minimally classifiable as social commentary and seemed mostly interested in making its audience squirm — and “Spring Breakers” might just mark his first steps into bigbudget, audience-friendly film making. The fact that his novel, “A Crack Up at the Race Riots” is, according

to recent press releases, slated to be re-released around the same time as “Spring Breakers” also seems to support the idea that his work has come down to a profit. Why else would he bring the novel back into print now, other than with the intention of letting it ride “Spring Breakers’” coattails back into the public eye?

“Spring Breakers” could be an amazing movie, and the buildup surrounding Franco and Gomez could just be a distraction from an imminent Korine classic. Still, the film threatens to undermine the offbeat image Korine has carefully cultivated for himself.

Luckily, we only have a few more months to wait to see how this will play out.

Top Ten | Songs for Santa on Christmas It’s prime present-shopping time in America, so Santa Claus is obviously at the top of everyone’s consciousness. Santa has a difficult job, what with making the nation’s presents and delivering each and every one of them. He should get to listen to whatever he wants during his annual sleigh ride. The Daily Arts Department put our heads together to figure out his ideal playlist for the big day.

10. “Air War,” Crystal Castles: In case there’s a turf war.

9. “Polar Bear,” Ride: To remind him of the fauna of his homeland.

8. “Fly Like an Eagle,” Steve Miller

Band: In case he’s looking for a little inspiration.

4. “Margerine Melodie,” Stereolab: It’s just a nice song.

7. “Jingle Bells,” James Lord Pierpont: We bet it’s been stuck in his head since Halloween, too.

3. “Smoke Two Joints,” Sublime: But don’t smoke and fly, Mr. Claus.

6. “Santa Claus Goes Straight to Ghetto,” Snoop Dogg: Also, for Christmas, we want Snoop Dogg to be Snoop Dogg again and not Snoop Lion.

5. “Red Christmas,” Insane Clown Posse: On the offhand chance he resents his exhausting Yuletide duties, listening to screamo punk clowns would assuredly make him feel better.

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Weekender

2. “Flight Test,” The Flaming Lips: Actually, maybe he might want to give this a listen on the 23rd or so. Gives him times to get the sleigh engine checked or whatever.

1. “Deer Lodge,” These Arms are Snakes: Plain old “Deer” might be a nice change from “reindeer.” That glowing nose probably gets annoying.

—compiled by the Daily Arts Department

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

The delicious side of food

U

p until this point in this column, we have discussed only the physical processes surrounding food. This part of the food discussion was primarily concerned with how our dishes look and taste, as well as where our food comes from and where it goes once we finish it. But beyond the tangible trappings of the food-cycle, there is also an entirely imperceptible realm of culture, ritual and spirituality associated with it. Food has always been an intrinsic part of cultures all around the world. Our food is infused with meaning, which permeates into its lifecycle from production to disposal.

From the way we grow our food to the way we prepare it, from the table setting on which we place it to the leftovers we save and the scraps we throw away, every step in the food-cycle possesses some type of symbolism — of nourishment, life, family, tradition and so on — that transcends the way a certain cuisine looks or a specific ingredient tastes. This visceral experience of food changes across cultures. It can be seen in the terraced agriculture on rolling Italian hills and the roaming and Spartan eating and herding style of the Maasai tribe of Africa. It is evident in the rules of Kashrut dietary laws in the Jewish tradition. The intrinsic value of food exists beyond just taste and the sensual pleasure it provides. Indeed, it exists in the unspoken superiority and comfort of a meal lovingly prepared by a mother and in the oral tradition of recipes passed down through generations. These delicate nuances continue through all stages of the food-cycle, beyond just those concepts related to the consumption and preparation of food. It is as clearly shown through the three-part harmony of the corn, beans and squash grown by earth-attuned Native Americans, and it lives in the ceramic pots that serve as containers for rice and staple foods of people around the world.

A great deal has been spoken, written, read and painted about this element of food. This element exists as the essential beauty of food. It inspires awe and evokes reverence — think of the luscious curve of a fruit-filled still life or, as Adam Gopnik so brilliantly phrases it, “The sweetness in our morning coffee [that] is at once a feeling, an idea and a memory.” These indefinable connotations of food, whether they are cultural, societal or artistic, pervade our relationship with the food we eat and are extremely significant in it. In discussing the food movement, it becomes essential to capture the importance of these aspects. Often, in its quest to solve the problems with our global food systems, the food movement fails to include descriptions of the intangible value and subtle beauty of food. While it is crucial that we strive to better the ways our food is produced, distributed, consumed and disposed of, it is just as important to realize the worth of the traditional, ritualistic and visceral features relating to food.

Many of these serve as the impetus for our collective action to better our food sources and methods.

We must not lose sight of the beauty that makes the love of food possible, because the ultimate goal of the food movement should be to preserve the metaphorical, ecological and physical beauty of food through constructive actions. By making good food choices and taking into consideration all steps of the food cycle, whether they are the purely substantive or the wholly conceptual, we can achieve a food system that is all the more sustainably beautiful.

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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Write to Us! We want to hear from you! Send an Op-Ed of 800 to 1,200 words in length to oped@tuftsdaily.com and/or a Letter to the Editor at letters@tuftsdaily.com Wednesday, September 12, 2007

THE TUFTS DAILY

13

OP-ED

Bare feet: just watch what you eat

My Op-Ed NADIA DI MARCO

I am currently sitting in the Tower Café mortified and surrounded by bare feet.

There is a girl to the left of me bobbing her head to the music surrounding her ears. She is completely oblivious to the fact that her bare, wiggling toes are less than two feet away from my face.

She’s not even comfortable. She keeps adjusting, readjusting and moving around.

Perhaps it’s a new trend? To my right there is another young girl resting her bare feet on the marble table.

On the table.

The very same table upon which this girl’s feet are splayed is one where I ate many a time last semester. I’m not alone in my repulsion; I see the girl sitting next to her eyeing her feet as well, but she’s just oblivious. That’s two people in a five-foot radius with zero consideration for their fellow neighbors.

When I sit on an airplane and the person (usually a kid) next to me has his or her bare feet on the tray table, I get the same feeling of disgust. I don’t understand why anyone

would think that it is okay to throw their feet about in public.

Do people like the thought of licking other’s people feet? (Let’s leave kinky cases out of this.) How about the thought of smelling other people’s feet? No, no, no! In our society, feet are known to be dirty, smelly and unpleasant; I mean come on, I don’t even want to be close to my own feet.

By the way, as I type, the girl next to me just moved her foot even closer to me!

Why don’t people get it? It is just plain common sense! You would think attending Tufts University would be enough to figure out that being barefoot in a café is not only rude, it’s despicable. It says, “I don’t care about anyone but me and my own comfort.”

Imagine going into work and putting your bare feet on your desk or going to a client’s job site, or anywhere else professional.

Imagine walking into your dean’s office and he or she has his or her bare feet on the desk.

It would never happen, because it’s not okay.

We are here to get ready for the real world.

Speaking from experience as a Resumed Education for Adult Learners student, you

can trust me, people: No one will take off his or her shoes in a professional atmosphere.

My rampage has turned into concern; these kids need to understand it’s not okay. When their rude habits leave Tufts, they’re in for a big surprise.

Is it that unreasonable to ask that people keep their shoes on in obvious places? Take ‘em off at the beach, at home or in a Japanese restaurant — I don’t care! But please keep them on when you’re next to the poor girl on the couch trying to concentrate.

And for crying out loud, please keep them off the table!

I came in here just to eat my lunch and read some books for class, but I got too distracted by disgust. To vent, I decided to write this piece. I’m not the type of person to say, “Can you please get your feet out of my personal space?” I’m shy, hate controversy and I can’t go around telling everyone I see with bare feet that they are rude and inconsiderate. I see enough people reading the paper that I figure if my rampage does get published, the bare feet people might read and understand what they are doing wrong.

And just in case you are someone who

All of my thoughts on the important issues on campus, like Dewick’s panini machines Obama for (vice) president

MATTHEW LADNER

On Monday, Will Ehrenfield voiced his support for Sen. Barack Obama in the coming Presidential campaign (“Obama for president”, Sept. 10). I too, at one point, supported Obama in his bid for the White House. He is an intelligent, charismatic man whose greatest political asset is indeed his criticism of the war from the start. And he may be the harbinger of great change to Washington. That’s why he’d be a great vice president for Sen. Joseph Biden.

I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that many people are not familiar with Sen. Biden; in fact I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that many people are not familiar with most presidential candidates, Democrat and Republican.

The media, in their attempt to focus on Obama, Sen. Hillary Clinton, former Mass. Governor Mitt Romney and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, have allowed candidates such as Sens. Biden, Christopher Dodd, Sam Brownback, and former Ark. Governor Mike Huckabee to fall through the cracks. However, attention needs to be paid to these “also-rans,” because among them lies the best man to lead our country.

It is true, Biden did vote to authorize the war in 2002. When asked about this vote, Biden says that, as President, he too would have asked for the authority to go into Iraq. He simply would not have used it. It is also true that he voted for the special funding bill earlier this year, while Obama and Clinton did not. He explained this in a debate soon after, saying that he “knew the right political vote.” But he also knew that a large portion of that funding would be going to better equipment for our soldiers.

Biden is the only candidate with a viable, possible plan for post-Bush Iraq. N. M. Governor Bill Richardson wants to leave within 6 months of being inaugurated. Unfortunately, that’s physically impossible. There are simply too many men to be withdrawn in 6 months. If all of the troops are withdrawn right now, as soon as possible, we’re going

“I would like to tell you that the war is for you or for us to win. If we win it, it means your defeat and disgrace forever as the wind blows in this direction with God’s help. If you win it, you should read the history. We are a nation that does not tolerate injustice and seek revenge forever. Days and nights will not go by until we take revenge as we did on 11 September, God willing, and until your minds are exhausted and your lives become miserable.”

(Osama bin-Laden, January 19, 2006) If you feel a slight rumbling beneath you at this very moment, do not be alarmed. It is simply the collective reverberation of proud Americans from previous generations turning over in their respective graves.

Our nation has lapsed into a fit of defeatism and self-proclaimed declinism as our politicians and, more tragically, our citizens have forgotten the courage, values and resolve that propelled our country to greatness.

Even worse, we have betrayed our forefathers’ confidence in the righteousness of fighting on freedom’s behalf — a confidence that once instilled courage in the hearts of American revolutionaries despite the seeming impossibility of victory and later invigorated Allied forces fighting fascist enemies in Europe and Asia.

We are assured of America’s defeat daily in Iraq, not by our enemies on the battlefield, but by a growing contingent within the Democratic Party. It is this lot — led by Sen. Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Rep. John Murtha and the party’s presidential candidates — who insist on the futility of U.S. military and Iraqi political efforts alike.

They insist on the rapid withdrawal of troops from battle.

They insist that staying in Iraq to fight extremism, to deter Iranian interference, to run with the current wave of military momentum and to build on popular uprisings against alQaeda throughout the country (or, what residents of the now famous Anbar province call the “Great Awakening”) is contrary to American security interests.

Sean O’Loughlin is a freshman who has not yet declared a major.

Nadia C. Di Marco is a sophomore majoring in clinical psychology.

It’s time to wake up: Iraq, jihad and America’s choice

SEAN O’LOUGHLIN

to need a lot of helicopters.

Saigon told us that much. We cannot simply up and leave. But it’s clear that staying the course and continuing the surge is not working. The notion of a “strong, central, democratic” Iraqi government is simply naïve. It will not happen in our lifetime. The Biden plan is the only option.

The Biden plan is simple.

Imagine a country with a national government, but also with distinct regions, each with certain jurisdiction, that is complementary to, yet still subordinate to the national government. If this sounds familiar, you may live in the United States of America. This is also what it says in the Iraqi constitution. The Bush administration has said that for the Iraqi constitution to be implemented, the national government needs to be strong enough to enforce security throughout the country.

But as the success of al-Anbar province has shown us, security is built from the ground up, not the top down. The Biden plan does just that.

Biden was elected senator in 1972. He has served as chair of both the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Foreign Relations Committee. What our country needs most right now is foreign relations experience, and Biden’s got it. He is the best man, Democrat or Republican or Green or Bloomberg, to sit in the Oval Office.

For more info, please visit joebiden.com.

ANNIE WERMIEL/TUFTS DAILY

doesn’t notice the barefoot problem, be aware they are out there, so think twice before eating on a table on campus.

It is in this certainty of defeat, however, that the broader implications of a precipitous retreat — and make no mistake, bloodthirsty terrorists aching to extend their jihad would understand our withdrawal as nothing less — are lost. What is remarkable is how salient these consequences are, yet how obfuscated they become in the midst of political posturing and rhetorical pandering.

There is little question within American military circles, and on the streets of Baghdad, that U.S. forces are the dam preventing unmitigated sectarian violence and the Talibanization of Iraq.

To leave now, to abandon the progress that our troops have recently made on the security front, to simply throw the country into the wind, is to condemn hundreds of thousands, if not millions, to unfathomable misery. For the sake of comparison, think Rwanda, Darfur or Bosnia.

Interestingly enough, these are thoughts that seem to weigh insignificantly on the conscience of Sen. Obama, who indulgently lauds himself as a champion of hope. His hope is an audacious brand indeed.

The reality is that we are in the midst of the first great war of the 21st century. It is a war of ideology as much as it is a contest to be won on the battlefield. And whereas Iraq may not have been the frontline of this struggle in 2003, it is the theater of the conflict today.

On one end of the spectrum is the United States, defending the rights of ordinary Iraqis and committed to the creation of a stable ally in a region otherwise defined by dysfunctional government. While American-style democracy may never take root, Iraq still clings to the prospect of representative politics.

Amazingly, after four years of devastating violence, Iraqis continue to show resolve and an admirable determination to emerge from the shadows of despotism and terror.

At the other end of this spectrum are the existential enemies of human progress. Peddling an antiquated ideology of extreme Islam and preaching a virulent message of hatred, the warriors of Islamism draw on a totalitar-

ian vision of societal order that is, at its most basic level, a fantasy. Their unrelenting pursuit of a long-dead caliphate is glaring in its denial of modern political realities and the overwhelming power of the Western world. However, this delusional ideology sanitizes indiscriminate violence and brutality, deeming them obligatory within a framework of “defensive” jihad against Islam’s enemies.

In fomenting civil war in Iraq, al-Qaeda and its proxies seek to engender despair, inefficiency, insecurity and resentment — the air to their militant fire. We must realize the simple truth that just as Iraq is our frontline against terror, so too is it the terrorist’s against Western civilization.

After turning back the “effeminate superpower,” their next step is cleansing the Holy Lands of infidel blood and ousting a Saudi regime that is, unbelievably, inadequately Islamic. From Mecca to Egypt to Jerusalem and beyond, the caliphate is to be extended and its enemies destroyed. Thus, looking to those among us who frown at American military gains and find a perverse vindication of their anti-war politics in every truck-bomb that claims innocent Iraqi lives, we find a segment of our country definitively unprepared to face civilization’s enemies.

It is true that our predicament is a frightening one. Armed with a dangerous irrationality and a passion for martyrdom, the jihadists are decisive and resolute. There is no appeasing this enemy. There is no reasoning with it. There is no compromising and there is no coexistence.

Surrender or Persevere.

These are the only options and the choice is ours to make.

In choosing the path to victory, however, one thing has become increasingly clear. In November 2008, American voters will have to send the Democrats the very same message that must thunder in the ears of those extremists who dare to wage war against the United States of America: “You cannot win and you will not prevail!”

Matthew Ladner is a junior majoring in international relations.

OP-ED POLICY The Op-Ed section of The Tufts Daily, an open forum for campus editorial commentary, is printed Monday through Friday. Op-Ed welcomes submissions from all members of the Tufts community. Opinion articles on campus, national and international issues should be no more than 500 words in length. Editorial cartoons and Op-Eds in the form of cartoons are also welcome. All material is subject to editorial discretion, and is not guaranteed to appear in The Tufts Daily. All material should be submitted by no later than 1 p.m. on the day prior to the desired day of publication. Material may be submitted via e-mail (viewpoints@tuftsdaily.com) or in hard-copy form at

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Editor-in-Chief Ben Kochman Falcon Reese Managing Editors Jenna Buckle Executive News Editor Shana Friedman News Editors Lizz Grainger Stephanie Haven Amelie Hecht Daphne Kolios Patrick McGrath Laina Piera Martha Shanahan Melissa Wang Jenny White Menghan Liu Assistant News Editors Melissa Mandelbaum Audrey Michael James Pouliot Josh Weiner Hannah Fingerhut Executive Features Editor Jon Cheng Features Editors Amelia Quinn Derek Schlom Lily Sieradzki Emily Bartlett Assistant Features Editors Alexandria Chu Jacob Passy Melissa MacEwen Executive Arts Editor Kate Griffiths Arts Editors Alex Hanno Joe Stile Matthew Welch Alex Kaufman Assistant Arts Editors Dan O’Leary Caroline Welch Jonathan Green Bhushan Deshpande David Kellogg Seth Teleky Yiota Kastritis Peter Sheffer Denise Amisial Jehan Madhani Louie Zong Keran Chen Nicholas Golden Scott Geldzahler NewtonPortorreal

Thursday, November 29, 2012

That Facebook status isn’t working

Rebecca K. Santiago Editorial

editorial | op-ed

Since Facebook became a publicly traded entity, a certain status update has become quite popular among users. It essentially invokes numerous legal barriers meant to protect citizens from governments seeking to monitor and seize their postings.

While this particular status update has been proven to be a hoax — Facebook’s status as a publicly traded entity does not change the privacy agreements or terms and policies users agreed to when they created their accounts — it brings attention to the increasingly vital issue of who owns content uploaded to social media websites.

Currently, Facebook collects a mass of information from its users to sell to advertisers, and since its historic initial public offering — and subsequent plummet to the bottom of the stock barrel — Facebook has been aggressively tailoring individual advertisements, controversially aggregating its data on users to show them advertisements outside of Facebook.

In another attempt to monetize its users, Facebook seems to be pursuing a service known as “Gifts,” with which

users can buy presents for their friends.

As is universal in online shopping, users would need to upload credit card information that Facebook will keep unless users delete it after the purchase. The data could be used to track shopping habits and personalize ads like fellow online retailer Amazon.

Facebook has unilaterally denied that it infringes on its users privacy and insists that users own their own data. So while ads are annoying and corporations are scary, the danger of Facebook’s ambiguous privacy policies comes from government. Law enforcement agencies are currently able to access electronic communications, like emails or Facebook messages, without obtaining warrants.

Currently, Congress is reviewing the remarkably antiquated Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, spurred

by Senator Patrick Leahy’s (D-Vt.) proposal of amendments to the bill that would require a warrant to access such information.

Users of social media of any kind necessarily should be wary of what they upload

or post because that information is, as soon as it is submitted, free to be reviewed by any law enforcement agency without any common sense application of due process.

Without the sort of reason necessary to bring to a court before a citizen’s privacy is grossly invaded, anyone’s virtual content is free to be accessed by law enforcement. No laws have to have been broken or suspected to have been broken for law enforcement to access online communications.

While there should be some semblance of privacy behind communications that are ostensibly private — anything in an inbox, for example — that is not the reality of federal law. Instead, laws made by a congress that could not anticipate the proliferation of online communications today still govern how law enforcement treats the privacy of citizens. Until changes are made that protect user privacy and perhaps even after such changes are made, users should remain cautious and understand that this problem extends beyond the scope of a Facebook status.

keran chen

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Off the Hill | University of Notre Dame

Overcoming culture shock in China

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Before I came to China for my semester abroad, my mentor, a local business owner in Florida and longtime friend, gave me two pieces of advice. No. 1: Think before you speak. No. 2: Keep an open mind. He conveyed to me that China is a land of stark contrasts: immense wealth and abject poverty, deep-rooted history and the fastestgrowing infrastructure of any country in the world, intense racism and the most giving of friendships. I had absolutely no idea what was in store for me.

During orientation for the program, the director of the Council on International Education Exchange Beijing gave us an easy comparison to put things in perspective. If you take your parents’ income and divide it by five; take your house size and put five times as many people in it; take your public transit system and put five times as many people in it; and take the difficulty of getting into college and make it five times harder, then you have China.

The thing that perhaps has gnawed at me most since coming to China is the lack of awareness about making and keeping lines. You could say I was in a state of unconscious incompetence when I arrived in Beijing. I was waiting in line

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

at one of the restaurants on campus one morning to grab some baozi (steamed buns) before class. The building was pretty packed and people were struggling to push their way through the door, trying to get closer to the front of the line. To be honest, I was a bit shocked. I passed it off as a busy morning or thought there must have been a massive event or something going on. At this point, I had progressed to conscious incompetence. I refused to form a negative view of Chinese culture.

A few days later, it happened at a bus stop. There was a large group of people trying to get on a packed bus, and people began running from the back and shoving their way onto it. I told myself it was rush hour and people needed to get home, but something felt somewhat off. It wasn’t until people began attempting to push in front of me at the ticket office that I realized that is how things are done here. I did some research and we talked about the event in class. At this point, I reached a level of conscious competence.

It turns out there was a massive preOlympic campaign to prevent this from happening in the face of the world’s tourists and the global audience. There were slogans, such as “I wait in line and am cultured, I display courtesy and am happy,” that Beijing used to campaign, along with

a national lineup day held on the 11th of every month leading up to the Olympics.

Four years later, the inability to queue still seems pretty prevalent. I am told, however, this is only a fraction of how bad it was in the past.

I have learned a few less rude ways to say, “Please stay in line.” These include: “Please line up, OK,” “Don’t butt,” “Get to the back” and, my personal favorite, “Why do you jump the line?” I feel it is as much a problem of overcrowding as it is a problem of scarcity, despite there being only a slight difference between the two. If there are 250 people attempting to take a 100-person bus, it is inevitable there will be commotion trying to get on board. I have no doubt that this would be true in any society on Earth. I’ve witnessed it during rush hour in New York.

I think because much of China needs to do it so often, it has permeated into every location: pools, workout rooms, stores, bars and security lines.

I’ve tried to keep an incredibly open mind and have learned to appreciate how different everything here really is. I feel understanding these cultural differences and learning to embrace them has already begun to benefit me and is something nearly everyone needs to accomplish at some point in his life.

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Thursday, November 29, 2012

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Op-Ed

Op-Ed

Why Tufts Hillel is the foundation of my Jewish life on campus Emma Goldstein

I thought that when I went to college, it might be the time to rebel against my Jewish upbringing. However, upon entering Tufts Hillel at the orientation Bagel Brunch, I had a feeling that my adolescent rebellion would be shortlived. As I stood crammed in the Hillel basement, bagel and lox in hand, and as I looked around and saw so many different types of people, I knew that Hillel was going to be a central part of my college experience. I could feel welcome in this space for many different reasons.

As an active citizen, I have felt welcome in Hillel. On Monday evening, I sat in a circle of chairs, “Magic Treehouse” book in hand, in the chapel in the Hillel building. I was reading with third through fifth grade students from Medford and Somerville public schools and fifteen Tufts students for a Hillel program, JumboRead.

As a Community Health major, I have felt welcome in Hillel. On Tuesday night, I sat in Cohen Auditorium with 600 of my classmates, professors, staff, alumni and community members at a Hillel event. Moral Voices, a Hillel initiative hosted Eric Schlosser, author of “Fast Food Nation” as their signature program on this year’s study theme: food security.

As a Jew who struggles with my relationship to Israel, I have felt welcome in Hillel. Yesterday, I engaged in a fruitful lunch discussion about the recent tragic events in Israel and Palestine at Friends of Israel’s and J Street U’s event “Café Dilemma.” At the table, literally sitting on both sides of me, were people with whom I strongly disagreed. There were students from the political far right and students from the far left. Together, we read and discussed the same diverse articles on the situation. Together we argued about what we felt the best direction was for Israel and Palestine, a conversation nobody took lightly. This all happened over a kosher lunch in the Hillel building. A Hillel staff member was in the room, listening and supporting, suggesting additional resources on all sides of the spectrum.

I became involved with Tufts Hillel because it was a place where I felt welcome, and not just because I am by

andrew schneer / the tufts daily

Jewish. I felt welcome as someone who is passionate about pursuing social justice, engaging in the greater Medford and Somerville community, living as a global citizen, promoting health and wellness and education. Tufts Hillel felt like a place where I could do good and act well. I stayed involved after my first experiences. Hillel became my home and during my senior year, I became Hillel’s president. For Hillel and for my presidency, I feel privileged.

I feel privileged that Tufts Hillel is a safe space. I can question my feelings about my religion and my culture with the staff and rabbis, and with my peers and student leadership. I can express my support for Israel as a Jewish state and I can be critical of specific policies and still know I will be welcome around the Shabbat dinner table on a Friday night.

Tufts Hillel’s Israel policy is crafted and shaped for our campus and it actively states just what I love about Tufts Hillel. We are committed to “promoting broad based educational programs on campus that address Israeli society, arts and culture, technology and an historical and political understanding of the conflicts in the Middle East” and to “engaging in active dialogue” with all students and groups on campus. We choose not to sponsor

speakers who do not recognize the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state.

We disassociate ourselves from the BDS movement because around the world, this has been associated with a movement to delegitimize Israel. I invite you to read our Israel policy for yourself and get the facts about our approach to Israel programming.

Hillel’s mission is broad and actively addresses many aspects of being Jewish including cultural, social, religious and social justice issues. In the next few weeks, the majority of our programming is in observance and celebration of Hanukkah. I feel privileged to be in a leadership position of the vibrant, welcoming and open “foundation for Jewish life” on campus. I invite you to join us on Friday evenings for a Sabbath dinner with friends. I invite you to volunteer with JumboRead and engage with the youngest members of our community.

I invite you to come to the Granoff Family Hillel Center to question, to challenge, struggle and to learn about Israel. We want to see you here and would love to hear your voices.

Emma Goldstein is a senior majoring in American studies and community health.

She is the president of Tufts Hillel.

The real cost of Walmart

Brown Daily H erald E ditorial Board Brown Daily Herald

Where’s the only place where one can easily purchase a dress shirt, a basketball and a tomato? The neighborhood Walmart, of course. The world’s largest corporation and retailer has expanded at a rapid clip since its first store opened in Arkansas. The company, which celebrated its 50th anniversary this year, has come to exemplify the distinctly American corporate ethos, yet it is arguably one of the most un-American things that exists today. By its mere existence, Walmart is a prime example of the dangers of unbridled growth. Consumers may benefit, but don’t let Walmart’s slogan of “everyday low prices” mislead you. There’s a much higher price to pay for frequenting this corporation.

After all, why support local businesses and pay more for a slightly higher-quality good when we can just go to Walmart? Why bother about the plight of the Walmart workers? If these workers find the conditions so difficult, can’t they just leave their jobs and let others who are more willing fill in for them? In the end, Walmart is just a store, right?

These arguments fuel the Walmart machine. The perennial top dog of the

Dimon in the Rough

W

Off the Hill | Brown University

by the

Walt Laws-MacDonald | Show Me The Money!

Fortune 500, Walmart reaps profits of approximately $50 million each day and would rank among the world’s 25 largest economies if it were a country. These statistics are the result of Americans’ begrudging acceptance of Walmart as necessary to maintain their standards of living. The obvious reason why people shop at Walmart is to obtain everything they need in one place at low prices.

But local businesses aren’t the only ones hurt by the perpetuation of this cycle.

Employees are made to work unreasonable hours without overtime pay, especially during days like Black Friday. Workers’ health benefits are nearly useless, and their market-driven wages make it impossible for them to support themselves or their families. As a result, many workers who depend on their jobs at Walmart for sustenance and cannot quit are forced to go on government welfare programs.

The Winning Words Project estimates that with a dollar increase in wages for Walmart workers, millions of tax dollars could be saved.

If left unchecked, Walmart will continue to stem local business growth and eventually stamp out the unique characteristics of the places where it sets up shop. Recent failed nationwide strikes against Walmart indicate that nothing short of a massive consumer exodus from Walmart or gov-

ernment intervention will have any impact on its unchecked growth and dominance.

It actually isn’t an extreme thought to conceive of Walmart as a monopoly, similar to Standard Oil in the early 20th century. We find no legitimate reason as to why one family can amass the same wealth as the bottom 41.5 percent of U.S. families combined. Each heir of the Walton fortune would need to spend more than $350 million a year for the next 40 years to exhaust the family’s $89.5 billion net worth.

Every member of society has an inalienable right to opportunity and life. But Walmart doesn’t actually do society a service. It does society a convenience, and it’s time that we learned that convenience sometimes comes at a cost.

Hopefully Walmart can learn from Jim Sinegal, the chief executive officer of Costco, who takes prides in the retailer’s policy of paying an average hourly wage of $17 and the fact that it boasts one of the lowest rates of employee turnover for a retail store. Sinegal doesn’t even claim that Costco’s treatment of employees is motivated by “altruistic” reasons. Rather, he said it is simply “good business.” Walmart, by wielding such outsized power, would do society more than enough good by reaching out to the less fortunate and paying their workers a decent wage.

arren Buffett — Oracle of Omaha, investor and philanthropist of no relation, everyone’s favorite Hawaiian shirt-clad resident of “Margaritaville” — made a bold pick Tuesday for the next U.S. treasury secretary.

Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorganChase, a fellow Jumbo and my personal idol, would be “the best person you could have in the job,” according to the CEO and Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway.

Of course Jamie Dimon would make a terrific treasury secretary. But I’m going to try to put aside my fanboy ravings and explain why picking Dimon really is a great idea.

After graduating from Tufts with degrees in psychology and economics — but not quant, so it doesn’t really count — Dimon attended Harvard Business School, eventually working his way through the ranks of the giants American Express and Bank One, before taking his current position at JPMorganChase in 2004.

Elizabeth Warren — I have your attention now, don’t I? — called for Dimon to resign from his position on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in May of this year in one of the capstone moments of her crusade against Wall Street.

“We need to stop the cycle of bankers taking on risky activities, getting bailed out by the taxpayers, then using their army of lobbyists to water down regulations,” Warren said. “We need a tough cop on the beat so that no one steals your purse on Main Street or your pension on Wall Street.”

Warren’s statement came after the epic “London Whale” trading loss — most recently estimated at $5.8 billion — that has rocked JPMorganChase’s London office to its core. But blaming a CEO for one trader’s bad bet is ludicrous. This was a systematic failure, not a systemic one.

Though I support Warren on most of her consumer protection legislation and social issues, this statement made me question how much she really knows about Wall Street.

Let me make this clear: Little 19-year-old me clearly does not have the same education or experience as Senator-elect Warren. However — and this is a big however — Dimon is a beacon of hope on a very dim Wall Street.

JPMorganChase was Wall Street’s saving grace during the early stages of the credit crisis of 2007, reducing exposure to the housing bubble before any other major bank and catching the falling knife of Bear Stearns when other Wall Street titans were scrambling for capital.

Dimon was later criticized for using the crisis to his advantage, but this wasn’t the case. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson had actually pressured Dimon to go lower on their offer, but Dimon refused.

Dimon is regularly mentioned as one of the top CEOs in the country at a time when most bank heads have either been vilified or put on trial — ahem, Brian Moynihan (Bank of America), Bob Diamond (Barclays), Sandy Weill (Citigroup), etc. It’s sad that I can actually use “etc.” there.

The banking sector is not the only responsibility of the treasury secretary, of course — the president’s primary economic advisor must draw from both domestic and international factors. But as the 2008 crash and current recession have shown, banking is the backbone of the country’s economy.

Who better to lead the banking sector through crisis than a man who led a bank through crisis?

Perhaps the most important reason Dimon would make a great treasury secretary is that he understands banks need regulation, even if it’s not the same regulation that Warren and others argue for. Our economy and our banks are still in crisis mode. Dimon is far and away the most logical choice right now.

And he went to Tufts, so what could go wrong?

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

Op-ed Policy The Op-Ed section of The Tufts Daily, an open forum for campus editorial commentary, is printed Monday through Thursday. The Daily welcomes submissions from all members of the Tufts community; the opinions expressed in the Op-Ed section do not necessarily represent the opinions of the Daily itself. Opinion articles on campus, national and international issues should be 600 to 1,200 words in length. Op-Ed cartoons are also welcomed for the Campus Canvas feature. All material is subject to editorial discretion and is not guaranteed to appear in the Daily. All material should be submitted to oped@tuftsdaily.com no later than noon on the day prior to the desired day of publication; authors must submit their telephone numbers and day-of availability for editing questions. Submissions may not be published elsewhere prior to their appearance in the Daily, including but not limited to other on- and off-campus newspapers, magazines, blogs and online news websites, as well as Facebook. Republishing of the same piece in a different source is permissible as long as the Daily is credited with originally running the article.

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Comics

Thursday, November 29, 2012

Doonesbury

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Garry Trudeau

Non Sequitur

Tuesday’s Solution

Married to the Sea

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SUDOKU Level: Parting with your hard-earned cash for the perfect gift

Late Night at the Daily

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Nina, on sports: “If you want to get the ball in the net, why not just leave it there?”

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Thursday, November 29, 2012 Housing

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For Rent - 6 Room 4 Bedroom Apartment. Walk across the street to campus. Washer, dryer and internet. Call 617-625-3021. Avail June 2013

4 bedroom apartment available June 2013. Parking, yard, laundry & huge basement. $3000.00/month.

Located on Chetwynd Street - 2 minute walk to campus. Call 617666-1318 or email natalie@gpmanagement.com

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4 bedroom apartment on Ossipee Rd available June 1, excellent condition. Call Maria for more information at 781-942-7625.

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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.

23-6 run puts game away for Jumbos WOMEN’S BASKETBALL continued from back

MCT

The quarterback controversy brewing in San Francisco between now-starter Colin Kaepernick (7) and Alex Smith is just one of the many issues facing the NFC’s best teams.

Packers, Bears hampered by injuries INSIDE THE NFL continued from back

November, and sneak into the playoffs as the struggling underdog that can be overlooked by its opponent. When they are playing well, the Giants seem unstoppable, but they seem to struggle to maintain a level of

consistent play every game. That being said, no one would bet against Eli Manning with the ball in his hands in the fourth quarter of a playoff game.

Green Bay Packers, 7-4 Despite a multitude of injuries on both sides of the ball,

the Packers stand at 7-4, just one game behind the Bears for first place in the NFC North division. Much of the team’s success can be attributed to last season’s MVP Aaron Rodgers, who is putting together another fantastic season.

Rodgers also leads the league

with a 105.6 passer rating and has thrown for 28 touchdowns with a 66.5 completion percentage. But, after a big loss against the Giants in Week 12, it is clear that Green Bay must shore up the holes on its defense if it wants to make noise against the NFL’s best teams.

the game went on.

The Jumbos put the game away for good in the first few minutes of the second half, opening the period on a 23-6 run to grab a 60-27 lead, their largest of the game.

The teams traded baskets the rest of the way, with the Jumbos able to give some minutes to their bench players as they scored another comfortable non-conference victory.

“Every game is very important, but it’s definitely nice to play some non-conference teams before the NESCAC games really start up,” freshman guard Michelle Wu said.

Perhaps more impressive than their early-season record is the manner in which the Jumbos are doing away with their opponents. They have won four of their first five games by double-digit margins, and are outscoring opponents by 21 points per game.

“Our coaching staff does a great job of identifying areas of weakness that we need to work on,” Wu said. “They push us to get better everyday.”

Tufts will next see action on Saturday, when they host Regis College, a squad that is 1-1 but has historically given the Jumbos some problems and is known for its hard, aggressive play.

“I think this team has very high potential if we keep working hard and stay focused,” Wu said.

“It would be awesome to make it to the NCAA tournament.”

Editors' Challenge | Week 13 Welcome back from the break, sports fans! Hopefully everyone had a great Thanksgiving vacation and got to spend time with family, eat food and, most importantly, watch football games. While the editors took the last week off, we’re back with a vengeance and are ready to spend as much time picking games as our NFL alter-egos spend watching game film.

At the top is the elite editor of the group, Zachey “Tom Brady” Kliger. Even though he is mercilessly teased for his weird hairdo and UGG Australia endorsement, there’s no denying that Kliger has seized the mantle as the top picker of the group.

But Kliger is still under threat from David “Eli Manning” McIntyre, who plans to use his boyish charms and emotionless expressions to seize the top spot. Though he’s had a few struggles of late, assigning errant stories left and right, the historical record is clear: in crunch time, there’s no better man to lead the section and rise to the pinacle of the Eds’ Challenge mountain.

Then comes the rest of the pack, beginning with Ethan “John Harbaugh” Sturm and Andy “Jim Harbaugh” Wong. The similarities between these two pickers is astounding: besides their nearly identical looks, they both have shown the ability to engineer a good, but not successful, run at the championship and it looks like their dreams of a title are disappearing faster than Tim Tebow’s playing time.

OVERALL RECORD LAST WEEK New Orleans at Atlanta Jacksonville at Buffalo Seattle at Chicago San Francisco at St. Louis New England at Miami Arizona at NY Jets Indianapolis at Detroit Minnesota at Green Bay Houston at Tennessee Carolina at Kansas City Tampa Bay at Denver Cleveland at Okalnd Cincinnati at San Diego Pittsburgh at Baltimore Philadelphia at Dallas NY Giants at Washington

Zachey 113-47 13-1 Atlanta Buffalo Chicago San Francisco New England Arizona Detroit Green Bay Houston Kansas City Denver Cleveland Cincinnati Baltimore Dallas NY Giants

Residing in the middle of the standings is a group that doesn’t get much credit for their contributions. Alex “Nick Mangold” Baudoin, Aaron “David Deihl” Leibowitz and Marcus “Michael Oher” Budline always take care of the dirty work, pushing the way up the standings with astounding force. But most likely, it’s their huge body sizes that are holding them back from the widespread recognition and picking success that they desire.

Now we descend into the bottom of the standings, where the editors are just trying to hang on and not be embarrassed by the “acheivement” of finishing in last place. Jake “Norv Turner” Indursky and Kate “Andy Reid” Klots certainly haven’t had successful seasons, but at least they have the respectability of continuing to give 100 percent even when their picks were losing earlier in the year.

The same cannot be said, however, of Ben “Rex Ryan” Kochman. Once the pride of the section, Kochman has really let himself go, resting on his previous successes and dropping like a rock all the way to the bottom of the standings. Even he’s got a few wins this season, but let’s be honest — there’s not much to salvage from this managing editor except some half-funny jokes, ridiculous pronouncements and the love of eating.

Guest-picking this week is senior staff writer Cameron “Adam ‘Pacman’ Jones” Yu, who despite his former transgression of not joining the Daily earlier, is being given another chance by the powers that be to show what he can do.

Ethan David Andy Alex Aaron 105-55 110-50 103-57 101-59 99-61 11-3 11-3 12-2 12-2 12-2 Atlanta Atlanta New Orleans Atlanta Atlanta Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Chicago Chicago Chicago Chicago Chicago San Francisco San Francisco San Francisco San Francisco San Francisco New England New England New England New England New England NY Jets Arizona NY Jets NY Jets NY Jets Detroit Detroit Indianapolis Detroit Detroit Green Bay Minnesota Green Bay Green Bay Green Bay Houston Houston Houston Houston Houston Carolina Carolina Carolina Carolina Carolina Denver Tampa Bay Denver Denver Tampa Bay Cleveland Oakland Cleveland Cleveland Cleveland Cincinnati Cincinnati Cincinnati Cincinnati Cincinnati Baltimore Baltimore Baltimore Baltimore Baltimore Dallas Dallas Dallas Dallas Dallas NY Giants NY Giants Washington NY Giants Washington

Marcus Jake Kate Ben GUEST 99-61 97-63 97-63 95-65 Cameron 12-2 11-3 12-2 8-6 Yu New Orleans Atlanta Atlanta Atlanta Atlanta Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Jacksonville Chicago Chicago Chicago Chicago Seattle San Francisco San Francisco San Francisco San Francisco San Francisco New England New England New England New England New England Arizona NY Jets Arizona NY Jets NY Jets Indianapolis Detroit Detroit Detroit Indianapolis Green Bay Green Bay Green Bay Green Bay Green Bay Houston Houston Houston Tennessee Houston Carolina Carolina Carolina Carolina Carolina Denver Denver Denver Denver Tampa Bay Cleveland Cleveland Cleveland Cleveland Cleveland Cincinnati Cincinnati Cincinnati Cincinnati Cincinnati Baltimore Baltimore Baltimore Baltimore Baltimore Dallas Dallas Dallas Dallas Dallas NY Giants NY Giants NY Giants NY Giants NY Giants

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Strong effort falls short as Jumbos lose to Engineers MEN’S BASKETBALL continued from back

“A lot of guys stepped up, especially guys off the bench. Tom Palleschi came in and played well, and the same with Tommy Folliard,” Anderson said.

“Guys like myself weren’t really playing as well, and luckily these guys picked it up and took on larger roles than they were used to having.”

In fact, outside of Ferris, who had 17 points, the bench outscored the starters for Tufts 29-14.

But despite the valiant efforts of the bench in the first half and beyond, MIT showed its class at exactly the right moments of the game, countering every Tufts comeback with a series of quick baskets. MIT closed out the half on 9-0 run, highlighted by five points from Kates including a buzzer-beater three to send the Jumbos to the locker room with an eight-point deficit.

“MIT scored the last nine points off the half, and they won by 10, so things like that just won’t cut it against a team like them,” Anderson said.

MIT started the second half similar to how it started the first, opening up the game with a 12-4 run to put the score at 48-32. Ten of their 12 points came from Kates and Tashman, who scored eight and two points, respectively.

The duo’s contributions set the tone for the second half, and the Engineers were able to keep a comfortable, doubledigit lead for the majority of the period.

However, with six minutes to go, and the score at 63-47, the Jumbos went on their final run of the game, reeling off nine straight points in three minutes, five of which came from freshman guard Stephen Haladyna off the bench to put Tufts within seven.

But a dunk from sophomore forward Matt Redfield and four points from Kates pushed the Engineers lead back up to 11 with a little more than two minutes to go in the game, and the Jumbos were unable to mount a response.

Despite the loss to MIT, the game was full of hopeful signs for Tufts, especially considering their multiple comebacks in a season that has sometimes been marked by a lack of fight after falling behind. The only thing that stopped Tufts from an upset win was being unable to put together a full 40 minutes of solid play.

“We played well, we were able to penetrate the Engineers defense,” Ferris

‘World’ Champions

E

Tobias Reeuwijk / Tufts Daily Archives

Sophomore guard Ben Ferris scored 17 points against No. 1 MIT, but the Jumbos ended up succumbing to the Engineers’ potent scoring attack. said. “We just had a few mental lapses, and we executed for 38 minutes, but it has got to be all 40.”

The Jumbos will try to put together a complete game this Friday against Illinois Wesleyan at the Lopata Classic.

Elephants in the Room I would bring

Favorite Thanksgiving Food

The New York Jets are....

Favorite Davis Square Restaurant

Max Levitin Junior Men’s Track & Field

Turducken

The reason that I threw up on Thanksgiving

McDonald’s

Ali Rocchi Junior Women’s Basketball

Pumpkin frozen yogurt

Frozen in the second quarter

iYO

Would Fro-Yo be redundant?

Anna’s Taqueria

Anna, her affiliates and a case of her secret orange sauce

Ben Ferris Sophomore Men’s Basketball

Brian Tan | Now Serving

The second-best New Butternut squash and York football team of gravy all time

with me to a desert island

A boat

all photos courtesy tufts athletics

very year, we crown the champion of each of the big three American sports. After long regular seasons and exhilarating postseasons, the NBA Finals, Super Bowl and World Series all conclude with a winner that is theoretically the best team of the year in their respective sport. Each winner is then named the “World Champion.” The San Francisco Giants, New York Giants and Miami Heat are all World Champions, having won their respective sport’s championship.

As a fan of the San Francisco Giants, I love the ring to “your World Champion San Francisco Giants.” But it is totally unfair, obnoxious and arrogant to call American sporting champions “World Champions.”

Last time I checked, San Francisco beat Detroit, New York beat New England and Miami beat Oklahoma City in all of their championship games. None of those cities are outside the United States, so why are we calling them World Champions?

Let’s start with football. Believe it or not, there are actually leagues where American football is played in countries outside the U.S., including Brazil, Ireland and Poland.

Obviously, the NFL is better known than any of those leagues, and we are the only country in which American football is such a big part of our culture.

I acknowledge that any team in the NFL would probably be huge favorites against teams from any other leagues.

But until our Super Bowl champion plays a game against non-American teams like the Belfast Trojans, champions of the Shamrock Bowl of the IAFL, can we really say the New York Giants are “World” Champions?

It’s assumed that the best players play in our league, but my point is, what gives us the right to call ourselves World Champions? The winners of Australian rules football, which is totally different from American football, don’t call themselves World Champions, yet they also have the best players of their sport in the league.

In the world of soccer, it is somewhat assumed that the sport’s best athletes play club soccer in Europe. But after a club wins the Union of European Football Associations Champions League, they do not call themselves World Champions unless they go on and win the FIFA Club World Cup, played between the champions of all six continental confederations.

Is the explanation for giving ourselves the World Champion title simply that we, American fans in the U.S., are more arrogant and obnoxious than anyone else?

Meanwhile, baseball and basketball are also guilty of obnoxiously calling their postseason winners World Champions.

Basketball is known to have huge followings in China and many European countries. Many NBA All-Stars were not born in the U.S. and started playing basketball in their home countries. And, in the 2004 Olympics, the U.S. basketball team lost to Argentina, further proving that there are other skilled and capable international players outside the United States.

As for baseball, Japan has also had star players of its own, and many Japanese players have become stars in MLB. So if there are baseball and basketball teams that could potentially be just as good as American teams, how can we call ourselves World Champions without playing teams outside this country? And don’t tell me an MLB team deserves to be called World Champion if it beats the Toronto Blue Jays.

The U.S. national basketball team deserves to be called World Champions after winning the 2012 Olympic gold medal because they faced international competition. Meanwhile, the Miami Heat are technically World Champions, but all they have done in reality is become NBA champions. It’s claiming a title when you haven’t done anything to earn it that is obnoxious and cocky. In the sports where the competition is strictly American, it is rude to immediately lay claim to the title of “World Champions.”

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

Sports

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tuftsdaily.com

Men’s Basketball

Women’s basketball

Jumbos fall to Women’s basketball dominates Salem Engineers State, team remains undefeated

by Jake Indursky

by

Daily Editorial Board

Daily Editorial Board

Coming into Tuesday’s battle with No. 1 MIT, the men’s basketball team knew that in order to have a chance to win, they needed to contain the Engineers’ star player, senior guard Mitchell Kates. But despite an intense focus on MIT’s leading scorer, he still torched the Jumbos for 27 points, and his efforts were the difference between victory and defeat in Tufts’ 70-60 loss.

“We knew the key to stopping MIT was stopping Kates,” senior co-captain Scott Anderson said. “He’s probably the best player I’ve ever played against in my 4 years of Div. III basketball.”

Kates, who is averaging 23.4 points per game this year, usually gets help in the front court from classmate Will Tashman, who is averaging nearly a double-double this year, with 15 points and nine rebounds per game.

According to Anderson, the Jumbos were keying on the backcourt duo from the start, knowing that stopping the two would give them their only chance to pull off the upset.

However, stopping two dynamic players at once is easier said than done. And thanks to a lay-up and an assist from Kates and three buckets from Tashman, MIT was able to jump out to an early 8-0 lead in the first four minutes of the game.

But the Jumbos were determined to not go down without a fight, and as they did the whole game, they responded with a run of their own. Spurred on by a three-pointer from sophomore guard Ben Ferris, Tufts went on at 8-2 run of its own to close the score to 12-8.

“We played very hard, which is something we haven’t necessarily done this year,” Ferris said. “We played with some emotion and heart, which was good to see, especially against the number one team in the country.”

For the next 10 minutes, the Engineers, led by Kates and Tashman, traded buckets with the Jumbos. Tufts got solid first-half contributions from Ferris and brought junior guard Oliver Cohen off the bench, who had seven and eight points respectively in the first 20 minutes.

Then, after a three-pointer from Cohen and a steal and bucket from freshman center Tom Palleschi kept the Engineers lead at two, another long ball from junior forward Tommy Folliard gave Tufts their first lead of the game, 28-27. With the Jumbos’ starters struggling, the contributions of the reserves were the only thing keeping the team in the game.

The women’s basketball team stayed unbeaten Tuesday night, jumping out to an early lead en route to a dominating 74-45 victory Salem State.

With Tuesday’s win, Tufts improved to 5-0 on the season, and the team’s stifling defense — a trademark of coach Carla Berube’s system — was once again the key to the squad’s success. Tufts is holding opponents to under 40 points per game on just 29.0 percent shooting from the field on the season, and a plussix turnover margin per game has also allowed the Jumbos to get out in transition for easy fast-break opportunities.

And on Tuesday, the Jumbos were in top form on the offensive end as well, racking up a season-high 74 points on 40.9 percent shooting from the field.

see MEN’S BASKETBALL, page 15

Zachey Kliger

Sophomore guards Kelsey Morehead and Hannah Foley sank a trio of threepointers each, and Tufts as a team shot an impressive 46.7 percent from beyond the arc.

The Jumbos’ domination on the boards was the other big story of the game. Tufts easily won the battle of the glass over Salem State, with 51 rebounds to Salem State’s 28, including 18 offensive rebounds. Graduate co-captain forward Kate Barnosky and sophomore forward Hayley Kanner each recorded doubledoubles. According to Morehead, the increased offensive output is a result of simply having more time getting adjusted to each other.

“I think we will become [even] more comfortable reading one another offensively with more time,” she said.

Even as Tufts was hitting on all cylinders Tuesday night, the Lady Vikings

still managed to make a game of it for a majority of the first half. After scoring the game’s first nine points, the Jumbos got a bit complacent on the defensive end, allowing Salem to creep back to within three nine minutes into the game.

But then, Tufts went on a 16-5 run to close out the half, aided by critical play off the bench from junior guard Liz Moynihan, who tallied six points in the closing minutes of the half.

The Lady Vikings, meanwhile, lost their offensive rhythm, and only got consistent production from sophomore guard Rachel Carter, who finished the game with 15 points and two assists.

Carter, however, also finished with a game-high six turnovers, and Salem State found it increasingly difficult to cope with Tufts’ defensive pressure as see WOMEN’S BASKETBALL, page 13

Alex Dennett / Tufts Daily Archives

The women’s basketball team dominated another non-conference game on Tuesday, as the Jumbos downed Salem State with graduate forward Kate Barnosky recording a double-double.

Inside the NFL

NFL season grind on as NFC contenders start to emerge Don’t look now, but it is already Week 13 of the NFL season. With Thanksgiving football in the rearview mirror, it’s time to start getting ready for the NFL playoffs. So far, in 2012, the NFC has dominated the AFC, posting a 27-19 record in inter-conference play and boasting 11 teams with a record of 5-6 or better.

It should be fun to watch the last five weeks of the regular season unfold, as each of these teams wrestles for the top seed and home field advantage throughout the playoffs. With that in mind, here are the top contenders in the NFC, and where they stand heading into the final stretch of the season.

Behind quarterback Matt Ryan’s breakout season and the NFL’s best receiving core of Roddy White, Julio Jones and Tony Gonzalez, the Falcons own the NFL’s second-best passing offense, which has offset the sudden disappearance of starting running back Michael Turner.

However, seven of the Falcon’s 10 wins have been by less than one touchdown, suggesting that they’ve had quite a bit of luck en route to their nearly undefeated record. Atlanta will need to reestablish its running game and continue making stops on defense in key situations or they might be looking at a quick exit in the playoffs.

Atlanta Falcons, 10-1 Despite owning the best record in the conference, the Falcons have flown somewhat under the radar thus far in 2012.

San Francisco 49ers, 8-2-1 The 49ers are among the first in NFL history to force a quarterback controversy upon themselves during a season in which

they’re considered among the top contenders for the Super Bowl. Following starting quarterback Alex Smith’s Week 10 concussion, backup Colin Kaepernick led the 49ers to a thrashing of the Chicago Bears, connecting on 16-of-23 pass attempts for 243 yards and two touchdowns.

The week after the victory, coach Jim Harbaugh said that he wasn’t sure who would start as quarterback when Smith returned and would decide the starter on a week-by-week basis, and yesterday named Kaepernick the starter for this Sunday, leaving Smith upset. Even though San Francisco’s success is predicated on its stellar defense, a quarterback controversy is the last thing any team wants, especially with the playoffs looming.

Chicago Bears, 8-3 As has been the case for the past few

years, the success of the Bears is tied to the health of starting quarterback Jay Cutler. When he’s healthy, the combination of his arm, running back Matt Forte, and a dominant defense can beat any team in the league.

But if he’s injured, as he has been multiple times over the last several years, including this season, the Bears will have trouble making it past the first round. No matter what happens, Chicago must set its sights on acquiring help on the offensive line in the off season, as the line’s inconsistent play is behind all of Cutler’s various ailments and injuries.

New York Giants, 7-4 The Giants formula for success is clear: start the season off strong, stumble in see INSIDE THE NFL, page 13