TUFTS OBSERVER REVIVAL
ISSUE I VOLUME CXLI
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
NEXT-LIFE
BY MYISHA MAJUMDER
CREATIVE INSET
DINING DURING DISASTER
TUMULTUOUS
FEATURE • BY RABIYA ISMAIL, YUMEI LIN, AND AROHA MACKAY
BUSTING THE MODERNIST MYTH
ARTS & CULTURE • BY MAHIKA KHOSLA
SNITCHES GET STITCHES CAMPUS • ANONYMOUS
DEAR DESI PEOPLE OF TUFTS,
OPINION • BY KRITHI RAM-JUNNARKAR
THE TULIP
POETRY & PROSE • BY PAULA GIL-ORDOÑEZ GOMEZ
POETRY & PROSE • BY SONYA BHATIA
THE FIRE INSIDE
NEWS • BY ELEANOR FUCETOLA
THERE IS ANTISEMITISM AT TUFTS. SJP IS NOT IT. OPINION • BY BRIDGET DICK
TRANSLATING YOUTH ACTIVISM INTO ELECTORAL RESULTS NEWS • BY MEGHAN O’BRIEN AND MATTHEW TOLBERT
(UN)FAIR AND LOVELY
VOICES • BY AYIA ELSADIG
CLUB CORONA
CAMPUS • BY AMANDA WESTLAKE
STAFF EDITOR IN CHIEF: Myisha Majumder
ART DIRECTOR: Laura Wolfe
MANAGING EDITOR: Akbota Saudabayeva
LEAD ARTIST: Kelly Tan
CREATIVE DIRECTORS: Brigid Cawley Richard Nakatsuka
LEAD COPY EDITOR: Brittany Regas
FEATURE EDITORS: Evan Sciancalepore Cana Tagawa NEWS EDITORS: Caroline Blanton Anita Lam ARTS & CULTURE EDITORS: Wyoma Chudasama Ethan Lipson OPINION EDITORS: Mira Dwyer Mahika Khosla CAMPUS EDITORS: Melanie Litwin Josie Wagner POETRY & PROSE EDITOR: Alice Hickson VOICES EDITORS: Rachel Dong Ryan Kim CREATIVE INSET EDITOR: Erica Levy COLUMN EDITORS: Gloria Revanche Juliana Vega del Castillo
DESIGN BY JOHN DOE, ART BY JANE DOE
MULTIMEDIA DIRECTORS: Madeleine Oh Esther Tzau PODCAST DIRECTOR: Ethan Lipson PUBLICITY DIRECTORS: Paula Gil Ordoñez-Gomez Eve Ogdon STAFF WRITERS: Sonya Bhatia Rabiya Ismail Sabah Lokhandwala Aroha Mackay Issay Matsumoto Unnathy Nellutla Myles Platt Lee Romaker Siddhant Talwar Amanda Westlake COPY EDITORS: Claudia Aibel Chloe Courtney-Bohl Grace van Deelen Mahdi Ibrahim Unnathy Nellutla Ethan Yan COLUMNISTS: Sabrina Cabarcos Samantha Park Juliette Wu
DESIGNERS: Evelyn Abramowitz Kate Bowers Janie Ingrassia Joanna Kleszczewski Camille Shimshak Brenna Trollinger Sofia Pretell MULTIMEDIA: Florence Almeda Ben Borter Alex Liu Mijael Maratuech Seminario Unnathy Nellutla Justin Wang Silvia Wang EDITOR EMERITUS: Owen Cheung CONTRIBUTORS: Kate Bidgood Aidan Chang Amy Chu Vera Dai Will Macnamara Aviva Rosenberg
REVIVAL seven sunsets ago, i trudged through the desert of sleep. my shoes soggy with soot. my eyes heavy with night. i remember the crackling of cicadas that sang me to slumber. in the morning, they would rear their bodies out of the dirt for the first time in thirteen years. their jeweled eyes. their backs black like water. all the dust would settle. and they would swarm together like old-testament waters, rivers that flowed through all the dry ends of the earth.
L ETTER FROM THE EDITOR On a biweekly basis, every Monday and Tuesday past 9:00 p.m. since freshman year, you’d find me working on the Observer. The Mablab is a magical entity in my mind: how do you describe a hole in the wall above the Curtis Hall multipurpose room, one that watches over passersby through small windows? How do you describe the ambience of a place, equal parts disgusting and fascinating, where bodies are crammed like sardines, where the air smells like warm breath and a twinge of B.O., where artistic passion is a common thread, where laughter erupts in the late hours of the night? But most importantly—how do you describe the intense longing (and slight repulsion, for God’s sake, the ventilation is nonexistent) for this space now? My Mablab now takes place on a sometimes laggy, less-than-perfect software called Remo, where everyone can be viewed in 2-D and my headphones disconnect frequently. Yet still, I try as hard as I can to recreate the experience that is being a part of the Tufts Observer, a community I didn’t know I had longed for my entire life until I stepped foot into it. In this world, there exists an overwhelming sense of shared responsibility for empowering others through beautiful prose and timeless design. My Mablab now sits on the brand new concrete dining table at my sister’s first home, my brain rests in an unfamiliar bed near a drafty window, my fingers pull with all their might at a decades-old window decal that says sublime. My worlds have combined—as I work with my hands to renovate this home, my mind races with ideas to expand and support our figurative Observer home, now virtual instead of in her rightful place in the Mablab. When I joined the Observer, Editor-in-Chief was never the plan—but my training wheels were violently ripped off with only three real issues under my belt by an ongoing event I’ve consciously willed myself not to address explicitly in this piece. And while I won’t address the event by name, I believe that this time, more than ever, calls for empathy and communication, through gentle Slack reminders and personalized pep talks. It is my hope that we can use this flux period as a way to transition to a communal home—where we give ourselves time to breathe and to meaningfully uplift marginalized voices. I think about my transition from columnist, to section editor, and now, to Editor-in-Chief, and how these are all identities that intersect with my racial, religious, gender, and ethnic identity. Every piece I’ve written for the Observer, I have done with the intention of empowering myself and others, and sharing my lived experiences as a Muslim South Asian woman. I am so inexplicably proud of the work the Observer has done in my time on staff so far—but now that everlasting feeling of fulfillment is coupled with a newfound excitement. To Bota, my managing editor and now my partner-in-crime, the quirky uncle to my motherly instincts—we made it. Our magazine, the oldest publication on this very campus, has an Editor-in-Chief and Managing Editor that are of color. The founding fathers of this magazine are either rolling in their graves or dancing above them—but this is the actualization of representation, working hand-in-hand to center stories that may otherwise not be heard. To Abigail and Owen, thank you for teaching me everything you know and then some, but especially for the last night of layout, sitting in somber silence as reality sunk in. And to my managing board—Bota, Brigid, and Richie—I love you and your tireless commitment to making this magazine a home. There is no other team I would rather fight through sleepless nights with. To the entirety of the Observer team, I am already proud of you and all that you have accomplished so far and will in the future, and I am here for you every step of the way. To the Tufts Community, I hope I can hear each one of your voices to my greatest ability this semester. I hope we can empower you to take control of your own narrative and feel the inexplicable feeling of comfort in your chest as your peers give you support and love. Virtual hugs,
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Myisha Majumder Editor-in-Chief
FEATURE
PROTECT DINING WORKERS DINING DURING DISASTER THE CONTINUED FIGHT FOR DINING WORKER PROTECTIONS
PROTECT DINING WORKERS By Rabiya Ismail, Yumei Lin, and Aroha Mackay
DESIGN BY JOHN DOE, ART BY JANE DOE
T
ufts Dining released a statement on the status of dining operations on September 13, less than a week after Tufts University reopened, stating that some longer wait times have occurred due to staff becoming “accustomed to new service styles, procedures, and technology.” This statement, which they posted on their official Facebook, led to an almost immediate negative public response from many dining workers and students. That same afternoon the Tufts Labor Coalition (TLC) released a petition outlining six demands that TLC student organizers created in conjunction with dining workers regarding the cultivation of a safe work environment. According to an email fromTLC member Micah Kraus, “[D]ining workers told us directly which demands to include.” TLC is a student organization that promotes solidarity between students and campus workers, including dining workers, janitors, and adjunct staff. On campus, TLC has been a longstanding and fierce advocate for workers, garnering national attention in 2015 for their five-day hunger strike in opposition to the proposed layoffs of 35 members of the janitorial staff. Gabe Reyes, a member of TLC’s strategy team, said in an email that TLC “collaborate[s] with workers for labor justice and a community where classism and unequal treatment aren’t tolerated.” Throughout the pandemic, TLC has been working alongside UNITE HERE Local 26, the union that represents Tufts Dining workSEPTEMBER 28, 2020 TUFTS OBSERVER 3
FEATURE
ers, to fight for summer employment, extended benefits, and full pay during the shuttered spring semester. In response to the fall semester’s unique challenges, TLC is now advocating for increased worker protections, improved working conditions, and health benefits. Tufts Dining’s statement alleges that workers are still adjusting to the new system, which is in turn causing longer wait times at dining halls, but TLC demands that the attention shift to Tufts’ failure to equip workers with necessary resources during a pandemic. According to an email from Georgia Kay, lead student organizer of TLC, “[M]anagers may have known about the statement [being released], but none of the workers [knew].” Kay said they received a frantic phone call from Zahra Warsame, a Tufts dining worker and union leader who has worked at Tufts since 2005, who was upset about what had been said on their behalf. This is not the first time dining workers at Tufts have felt undervalued and un-
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appreciated. A quote from a 2018 Tufts Observer article on the dining staff ’s effort to unionize sheds light on this precedent— at the time, Warsame stated that “a lot of people are unnoticed, unappreciated. They put a lot of effort into the work they do, they take pride in the work they do, and they’re dismissed.” That dismissal was felt by the dining workers in the Tufts Dining statement, which alleged that “delays have occurred while staff becomes accustomed to new service styles, procedures, and technology.” Kay explained that there are employees, like Warsame, who have worked at Tufts for decades; the statement’s implication that “[the dining hall workers] don’t know how to do their job and need to get accommodated is just false.” However, the Tufts Director of Dining & Business Services, Patti Klos, told the Tufts Observer in an email that “staff ” in their September 13 statement referred to the entire team: regular workers, managers, and administrators.
Another continuous and endemic problem for dining employees is understaffing. In 2018 Christine Tringale, a current assistant sous-chef at Hodgdon Food-On-The-Run, told the Observer that she was overworked due to understaffing: “The workload has been excessive, and it’s constantly being added on[to].” In a recent interview, Tringale said that Tufts Dining “had vacant positions that needed to be filled before the pandemic.” But now, even with extended hours of service due to the pandemic, those vacant positions have still not been filled. In fact, according to Tringale, “They’ve been taken down and not reposted.” However, Klos stated via email that Tufts Dining has filled “5 of our 11 vacancies, and are in the final stages of filling about 6 more.” Though negotiations with the administration have resulted in improvements regarding wages and benefits, this longterm issue at Tufts has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Consequently, TLC demands that Tufts either expedite
FEATURE
hiring processes for bargaining workers or ensure that their new takeout operating system matches the current capacity of dining workers. According to Kay, “[Dewick] is incredibly understaffed and the dining workers—people who are 50, 60 years old—are regularly pulling doubles.” In the 63-page Tufts COVID-related Fall 2020 opening plan, only two subheaders, titled “Enhanced Cleaning” and “Dining Worker Safety,” specifically address these concerns, stating that the University “cares deeply about [their] team and works to facilitate everyone’s safety” and that guidelines for protecting the safety of dining staff would be available. On the Tufts COVID website for faculty, staff, and researchers, Tufts states that, like students, residential life, dining, and custodial staff are required to be tested twice a week. Students and workers at the MedfordSomerville campus share a single testing site at 62R Talbot Ave, leading to additional issues. Although there is a testing schedule, sometimes workers will “have to go back because the line is so long… or people won’t come back to work for an hour,” according to Tringale. TLC demands that employees be provided with “adequate COVID-19 testing.” Other TLC demands ask that workers be given appropriate personal protective equipment, specific COVID-19 safety training, drop-off locations to enable social distancing, appropriate sick time, family/medical leave, and health benefits.
On September 22, the Tufts Labor Coalition stated that Hodgdon management t r ie d to obst r uc t s e vera l employees from leaving the building after receiving word that a fellow worker had come into contact with a person who tested positive for COVID-19. According to the post, “Management tried to convince workers to stay and clean (which is not part of their jobs) instead of keeping themselves safe.” This incident is emblematic of the greater risks dining workers face and underscores the need for both increased safety measures and accessibility for dining workers. Safety measures go beyond physical protections and testing—many of the Tufts COVID-19 resources are accessible only via smartphone and in English. Consequently, the last TLC demand asks Tufts to invest in language translations for all COVID-19-related information online to make it accessible for those dining workers who do not speak English as their primary language or have access to a phone to use Tufts applications. Tringale commented that COVID-19 regulations such as the mobile application and social distancing signs are inaccessible—“not everybody [receives] information in their own language,” pointing out that “[the dining staff] is very diverse.” Kay and Reyes maintained that TLC will sustain pressure if the administration does not respond soon. Last spring, hundreds of dining workers and students staged a successful walk-out demonstra-
DESIGN BY CAMILLE SHIMSHAK, ART BY LAURA WOLFE
tion for fair contracts, and Kay said TLC would do the same if their demands are not met this time around, envisioning “direct actions, circulating petitions, a student walk-out, a workers’ strike—all of that [being] on the table.” According to TLC, the problem is clear. Kay said, “[Tufts] makes it seem like everything is great to appease students, but they’re offering all these services they can’t follow through on, and, in doing that, are exploiting workers.” Further, Reyes emphasized that “the administration actively and passively works to hide the labor that Tufts workers do. TLC tries to disrupt that trend and make it clear to the university… that our comfort and safety on campus cannot and will not be at the expense of worker comfort and safety.”
SEPTEMBER 28, 2020 TUFTS OBSERVER 5
ARTS & CULTURE
BUSTING THE MODERNIST MYTH: REIMAGINING CAMPUS ARCHITECTURE IN THE TIME OF COVID-19 By Mahika Khosla
T
he coronavirus pandemic is changing the way we conceive of the built environment. The modernist platitude of “form follows function” proves to be more compelling than ever in the present moment. However, the pandemic is also revealing the subtle cracks in modernism—that while its sanitized, cold, unfussy, minimalist aesthetic is perfectly functional for a new kind of distanced engagement, a bare, anonymous, modernist space is the last place in which one might want to quarantine. In this present age of confinement—in our dorm rooms or off-campus houses— the organization of space and aesthetic assumes a heightened importance. Each detail in each corner of each room becomes more prominent by virtue of the hours we spend just looking at it. The spaces we inhabit during quarantine have a profound impact on how we think, how we study, and how we engage with those we share space with. If you live at Tufts, your home (or your dorm room) assumes the dialectic function of being a safe, sanitized space, removed from the ever-present danger of the virus outside, while also being a social space, one you coinhabit with the people you inevitably socialize most with. Home in the time of COVID-19, especially on a college campus, blurs the boundaries between public and private, social and domestic, so much so that your wall decor
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is displayed to your classmates and professors on Zoom, and acoustic divisions within your house become as important as physical ones. While the pandemic is reshaping the way we think about space, both domestic and public, a reconceptualization of the built environment also has the potential to revive campus culture and the social engagement that Tufts thrives on. Architecture and form reflect the anxieties of the present moment. Transformations in architectural aesthetic have almost always occurred in response to the social, political, and, notably, medical needs of the day. In the 1850s, Georges-Eugène Haussmann demolished much of Paris’s congested, unplanned neighborhoods in favor of expansive boulevards and an excess of green space due to the widespread fear of contagion following the cholera epidemic in 1832. Repeated cholera outbreaks, which took nearly 10,000 lives in London, led to the design of the city’s elaborate drainage system by Joseph Bazalgette in 1870. Through the 20th century, the logic of modernism developed in tandem with the onset of diseases like tuberculosis and cholera. Architects such as Hugo Aalvar Henrik Aalto responded to the fear of disease by designing spaces that would aid in curing patients—large, bare rooms with white walls for calmness, clean metal furnishing, heating directed towards
one’s feet, and large windows that could let in sunlight (which was believed to kill tuberculosis germs). This minimalist aesthetic, first solely used in hospitals, was then adopted by some of the most influential modernist architects, including Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, in homes, offices, and public spaces. Professor Diana Martinez of the Tufts Architectural Studies Department discussed how the hospital, for many architectural historians, is considered the “locus classicus” (the authoritative, canonical style) of modern architectural space. “In the nineteenth century, when germ theory was not yet a scientific certainty, and many scientists still believed diseases like cholera and chlamydia were spread by ‘miasma’—essentially poisoned air, hospitals were designed in a way to maximize air circulation.” Discussing the role of architecture in managing the spread of disease, especially through airflow, she said, “We’ve become so dependent on forced air systems that it’s almost impossible for us to even imagine hospitals designed to maximize the circulation of fresh air. But that is what drove the architecture of hospitals in nineteenth century England and France. I hope that COVID-19 has taught us that while the ‘miasma’ theory of infection has been disproven, that disease can still spread through the air, and that fresh air in any case is nice to have flowing through space. An additional benefit is that this is far better for the environment!” Our public spaces have had to be reimagined to serve a dual, contradictory function—on one hand, they serve to recreate a sense of normalcy on campus, and on the other,
ARTS & CULTURE
they constantly remind people to stay cautious. A little attention to detail when walking across the academic quad to class or through the Campus Center to grab a coffee allows you to notice the seamless yet effective spatial changes Tufts has made in response to the pandemic. It is here that we notice the tension posed by modernism— while bare, open, sanitized spaces are essential to curbing the spread of disease, the modernist logic of “less is more” needs to be radically reimagined in order to make spaces inviting, intimate, and personalized. An attempt has been made to recreate a sense of “normal” social interaction through the revitalizing of our green spaces. From the bright Adirondack chairs on the President’s Lawn and outside each residential building to the multicolored Tufts blankets distributed to students upon arrival, Tufts is encouraging a new “normal” outdoors—and is using the aesthetic motif of color to do so. “When you cannot completely reinvent a new space, you can change the way it’s perceived by how you reconfigure and highlight it. An environment shapes people, just as much as they shape it. And so, a central part of our campus life continues to live on, through an appreciation of nature. Our green spaces are more valuable to us than ever before because they are now our safe spaces,” said Sara Herrera, a sophomore at Tufts majoring in Architectural Studies. Similarly, in response to the pandemic, the street has also been revitalized as a space of safe gathering and socializing. Davis Square is hardly recognizable—its urban landscape has been reconfigured to mimic the European street model. Like Barcelona’s La Rambla, restaurants and bars now rely on sprawling outdoor seating and streets cordoned off for pedestrian-only access. Cafés and diners that usually depend on their dingy, retro booth aesthetic have now attempted to recreate their charm outdoors with temporary, log cabin-esque wooden kiosks (see Diesel Cafe, for instance).
DESIGN BY JANIE INGRASSIA, ART BY LAURA WOLFE
While the redesigning of public space has recreated a sense of normalcy, it also serves as a life-size infographic that constantly reminds us of the responsibility we have to each other. Spatial design can be used to create a visual representation of pandemic regulations to make changing our habits of interaction easier. One of the more obvious changes to our common spaces is the installation of glass barriers in dining facilities and on-campus cafés. “While the use of such divisions comes from the need to reduce the spread of COVID-19, this type of reconfiguration of space was also chosen in part to convey a message about the new campus culture. As we come in contact with carefully protected staff on campus, this jarring interaction reminds students that others are relying on their decisions to stay healthy,” said Herrera. Similarly, the one-way traffic plan through the Campus Center acts as a reminder to avoid large crowds and improve efficient mobility. Herrera commented, “These methods of mobility were being increasingly implemented in modern supermarkets to regulate traffic flow. If one thing may stick around, it is these new crowd commands.” While the increased usage of green space, street space, and the simple act of opening our windows have served as temporary solutions to the crisis of public life in the time of COVID-19, the onset of New England winter brings about a whole new set of challenges. Architectural historian and critic Rayner Banham, in his 1965 essay “A Home is not a House,” introduced the idea of the “environment-bubble,” a portable, inflatable, membrane-esque, airconditioned bubble that ran on advanced technology and could be easily deployed when needed. As Professor Martinez described, “It’s one step beyond the charm of the brightly colored Adirondack chairs we’re seeing on campus these days.” Banham’s pneumatic design may not be the solution to public life in the time of COVID-19, but his thought experi-
ment indicates a potential for radically new forms of spatial innovation. “I enjoy thinking about the possibilities of experiments in COVID winter living—more soups, extreme layering, and lower carbon footprints,” said Professor Martinez. While the University has responded to pandemic needs with efficient solutions such as plexiglass and stickers to demarcate six-feet spaces, it is worth noting that our public spaces only fulfill the functional aspects of design thinking. But if the pandemic is far from over, what can Tufts do to make our public spaces more enjoyable, especially at the onset of winter? From the reconfiguration of classroom sizes to reduced indoor seating at The Sink to the building of temporary quarantine facilities on the tennis courts, the pandemic has busted the modernist myth of Bauhaus universalism and an architecture of permanence. In a world simultaneously plagued by crises of disease and climate change, a new form of urbanism—one that is tactical, impermanent, dynamic, iterative, low-cost, and ephemeral—must take its place. On campus, it also must be a bottom-up urbanism that responds to the changing needs of students, faculty, and staff. The modernist paradigm that governs our aesthetic sensibility must be subverted in order to make spaces sterile yet intimate. Herrera concluded, “The demands of the student body will always be present on campus; how we organize and prepare for these needs continues to be a challenge for our university.” A postpandemic world may allow us to think about and appreciate space, not just as backdrop, but as an essential tool to help navigate and adapt to an ever-changing, dynamic world.
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CAMPUS
SNITCHES GET STITCHES BREAKING THE RULES IN THE TIME OF COVID
Anonymous
8 TUFTS OBSERVER SEPTEMBER 28, 2020
CAMPUS
L
ooking around the Tufts campus, what can students see? Loose circles of students sharing meals on the Prez Lawn; blue markers outlining the sidewalks near dining halls; leaves beginning to fall onto the still-green grass; white signs reminding students to wear a mask and wipe down surfaces before leaving; or perhaps the Jumbo statue, grand as ever, also doing his part to stop the spread with his own mask. Unlike other schools, you likely won’t see frat houses overflowing with students, tailgates with no masks in sight, or even a crowded slip-and-slide down the side of a hill. Relative to other universities, Tufts has been successful in keeping its number of COVID-19 cases low among students and faculty. Several universities, such as the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Notre Dame, have been forced to move to exclusively virtual classes due to high transmission rates of COVID-19, particularly because of large parties and gatherings. Several universities, especially large state schools, have reported over 1,000 positive COVID-19 cases within a month of beginning classes. Meanwhile, almost a month since out-of-region move-in began, Tufts has kept positive cases firmly in the double digits, with only 0.06% of tests coming back positive as of September 22. For now, morale has stayed high and cases have stayed low, with students generally feeling secure in the strength of Tufts’ reopening plans. A sophomore RA, under the pseudonym RA 1, said, “I’m feeling really optimistic about [Tufts’s reopening plan], especially compared to other schools...I really like Tufts’ reopening plan and I think they’ve thought it out very well.” Tufts has yet to make the news for large parties or blatant disregard of CDC guidelines. However, students’ following COVID guidelines is not and was never going to be perfect—so what happens when they do break the rules? Official policies for disciplinary action, should students break COVID guidelines, have been consistently vague. In the Fall 2020 Campus Guide, where Tufts first outlined its reopening plans for the fall semester, the phrase “disciplinary action” is mentioned three times; however, the specific “action” is never stated. At Tufts, “disciplinary action” can range anywhere from an initial meeting to suspension from campus without a tuition refund. The official Tufts COVID-19 website also has little information about consequences for breaking university and state COVID guidelines, only stating that staff who refuse to be tested could “be subject to corrective action up to and including suspension and discharge.” Several universities have handed out strict punishments against students who have attended or thrown large gatherings. Northeastern University recently suspended 11 students without a tuition refund for hosting a gathering of 11 students, just over
DESIGN BY KATE BOWERS, ART BY VERA DAI
the allowed 10 people. Boston University, with regular testing and only four cases in the past week, sent an email from the dean of students that said, “If you host or attend a large off-campus or oncampus gathering, social, or party, you will be suspended from Boston University.” Individual cases of violating university policy are kept confidential, but Tufts has not yet had a newsworthy incident or punishment of students for breaking COVID guidelines. Based on official university communications, there does not appear to be any clear outline as to what consequences students can expect to face should they break university guidelines. While the lack of strict protocol does allow for Tufts to consider policy violations on a case-by-case basis, there also is no standard that Tufts is obligated to uphold when it comes to disciplinary action. RA 1 shared that “there’s not really any punishment as far as I have seen. I have seen the same people not wearing masks [or] social distancing… Even in casual settings, on or around campus, it’s always intervened by a student… Right now it seems like there’s a lot of rules and regulations, but no enforcement and no follow through.” There have also been instances where university statements have run directly counter to local COVID-19 regulations. During a recent town hall aimed at the Somerville and Medford communities, President Tony Monaco promised consequences for students who do not follow university guidelines. He specifically mentioned that students “hosting a 40 or more person gathering could result in suspension from the university.” Another RA who has chosen to remain anonymous, RA 2, commented on this statement over email, and said, “Somerville and Medford have said 10 people is the limit, so I am frustrated by the lack of transparency around this decision that is in direct contrast to our host towns. Also, forty people is more than enough to cause an outbreak, so why is the number so high? And why would President Monaco vocalize this number, giving off the idea to students that large social gatherings are permissible and that they may not have harsh consequences?” However, a statement from Dean of Student Affairs Camille Lizarríbar stated that “due to increased public health risks, any student who hosts a social gathering of more than 10 people, whether on or off campus, will...face suspension and expulsion.” While both Dean Lizarríbar and President Monaco expressed that students should expect harsh consequences should they hold large gatherings, there are inconsistencies in university statements on what size gatherings will warrant suspension and expulsion. Because of their role as the first responders to COVID-19 violations, RAs often get a front-row seat when students fail to follow the rules because they live with students in university housing
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CAMPUS
... RIGHT NOW IT SEEMS LIKE THERE’S A LOT OF RULES AND REGULATIONS, BUT NO ENFORCEMENT AND NO FOLLOW THROUGH. and are almost always the first reporters of COVID-19 guideline violations. They are responsible for upholding university policies, usually in regard to substance use and noise. This semester, with new rules dictating everything from where students may eat to who they may have in their rooms, the amount of policies that RAs must uphold has drastically increased. Aviva Michaeli, an RA for the Jewish Cultural House, said, “Freshman FYAs [First-Year Assistants, now RAs for first-years] used to be compensated in both meal plan and housing, and CDAs [Community Development Assistants, now RAs for returning students] were paid differently...depending on perceived responsibility.” This year, however, RAs for students of all years are receiving pay in the form of housing. For RAs of first-years, this means that they are compensated less, despite having a large number of university guidelines to uphold. This year, RAs are responsible for enforcing rules such as wearing a mask outside of one’s dorm room, communicating who is in what residential cohort, and documenting incidents of COVID-19 policy violation. Not only is the RA job more dangerous due to the higher chance of being exposed to COVID-19, but RAs often have to make snap decisions about how to escalate when students refuse to break up a party. These decisions can be especially difficult when RAs are advised to involve Tufts University Police Department. Some students commented that TUPD, when present, has not been helpful in enforcing COVID-19 guidelines. RA 3 commented, “I’ve also seen TUPD not wearing masks, so they’re not helping with COVID policies. They’re the ones breaking COVID policies.” With student organizations such as Tufts for Black Lives or even the Tufts Community Union encouraging Tufts to disarm or
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disband TUPD, it is increasingly clear that many Tufts students feel uncomfortable with the police presence on campus. Students, including RAs, may fear for their fellow students’ safety should armed police become involved, discouraging them from contacting police to handle COVID-19 policy violations. Recently, a small group of RAs, not on duty and socially distanced, heard a large gathering somewhere near the backyard of the special interest house they were in. The RAs decided to call the Assistant Residential Life Coordinator (ARLC) on duty, a graduate student who is responsible for overseeing a specific residential neighborhood and its RAs. RA 4 said, “We called the ARLC on duty, who told us that because the house was just off-campus, the only thing we could do was call TUPD...I didn’t know what was more dangerous...spreading the virus, or getting armed police involved, potentially putting students of color in danger. We decided to not call the cops and just ignore the noise as best we could.” RA 1 discussed how RAs “deserve so much more credit than what they’re getting,” given that they often have to make the difficult choice of either involving armed police or allowing dangerously large gatherings. While Tufts’ reopening plan has stood out from those of other universities, without a consistent outline of consequences for breaking COVID-19 regulations, RA 1 described a lack of trust in the system: “I have very little faith in how Tufts is disciplining students...there’s no consequences for students not following the rules.” Ultimately, as RA 1 said, “[Tufts’s reopening plan] is all on the honor system, it’s all on bystander intervention, which I think is no way to have a [COVID-19 prevention and mitigation] plan.”
OPINION
DEAR DESI PEOPLE OF TUFTS, By Krithi Ram-Junnarkar
A
s the school year begins, I want to know how we are planning to change. We have explicitly stayed apolitical in the past. In my time at Tufts, South Asian organizations have not done the work of amplifying the voices of Black activists and thinkers, or actively educated ourselves on anti-Blackness in our communities. Only this summer when the murder of George Floyd led to Black Lives Matter protests erupting across the United States—and it felt socially unacceptable to not acknowledge what was occurring—did we draft statements and sign petitions. Tufts Association of South Asians (TASA) put out a statement saying that they are no longer remaining silent and are aiming to use their platform to “support causes that value compassion, humanity, and community, both at home and abroad.” Now, how are we going to follow through on the promises we made? Time and time again, I have seen the majority of the Desi community at Tufts turn a blind eye when it comes to social activism and civic engagement. We have turned away from many appeals for solidarity from organizations like Students
for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the South Asian Political Action Community. Hasan Khan, a junior who has been a member of the Tufts South Asian community since he joined Tufts Bhangra his first semester, said, “South Asian campus life feels like it’s all about getting drunk at the TASA Culture Show after-party and not taking any social responsibility ever. Most people agree that it’s the two nights when we feel most like a community, which says a lot.” Shouldn’t community mean showing up for one another in tangible ways? When will we realize that our implicit and explicit commitments to being “apolitical” are nothing more than commitments to being self-serving and negligent? In December 2019, the Indian Parliament passed the Citizenship Amendment Act, which openly discriminates against Muslims and other marginalized groups, including low-income people and the LGBTQ community. Yet since then, there has more or less been silence from the major South Asian organizations at Tufts. Remarkably, Hindu Students Council, or HSC (which is not inherently a South Asian organization, but consists predominantly of
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students who identify as Indian), explicitly expressed their desire to stay neutral as an organization around this topic. The organization has historically remained apolitical because of the national branch’s ties to Hindu nationalism. Given that India is a Hindu-majority country governed by the right-wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, it is particularly dangerous for a Hindu organization to stay apolitical in this matter. By staying silent on political and social issues, HSC continues to perpetuate violence against Muslims and other marginalized communities. In the spring, Tufts President Tony Monaco put out a statement denouncing the work of Students for Justice in Palestine, prompting many student organizations to demonstrate their support for SJP and their disapproval of the Tufts administration’s racist silencing of SJP. The Tufts Bhangra team, an organization to which I belong, decided not to sign the petition because certain members of the team felt that they did not want to mix dance with politics. While it is true that the first priority of the Bhangra team is dance, it is unacceptable for us to stand by and be complicit as SEPTEMBER 28, 2020 TUFTS OBSERVER 11
OPINION
we watch the administration of our university antagonize a student group over and over again just because it does not affect us directly. Additionally, support from recognized organizations is deeply important. The team chose not to sign not because a member disagreed with the petition, but because they wanted to refrain from “politics” altogether. But we often forget that what we consider politics usually refers to human lives at stake. If we have the luxury to avoid fighting for social justice, it is largely a result of the different forms of privilege we possess. Whether we are part of the South Asian Diaspora or international students from South Asia, many of us possess forms of racial, caste, religious, and class privilege. We can’t forget that many of our parents and grandparents immigrated here to pursue higher education or with existing college degrees. We can’t forget that many of our families benefited from caste privilege in India, and many more of us benefit from class privilege both in the United States and the countries we leave to come study here. Many of us benefit from anti-Black, casteist, and Islamophobic systems. Meanwhile, we tell stories about how we didn’t fit in at school for being brown or how other kids laughed at the food we brought for lunch or that we felt too Desi for the United States but not quite Desi enough for the places in South Asia from which we hail. I know firsthand that these experiences were damaging and isolating, but we cannot get so absorbed in our feelings
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of otherness that we forget to fight for one another and for other marginalized groups whose voices we could be amplifying. We cannot claim the fun parts of being South Asian, of being brown, of being people of color, while at the same time not claiming the responsibilities that we have to one another and to other groups. We claim that we are a community, but community is more than sharing an identity. Community is showing up for each other and for those outside the community. Claiming neutrality is equal to being on the side of the oppressor. Why aren’t HSC and Hindus in general at Tufts addressing ongoing violence towards Dalits in India? Since when have art and social change been completely distinct from one another? The dance teams should be using their art and platforms as vehicles for social change and to support marginalized groups both in the United States and in South Asia. Now that TASA has put out a statement denouncing their past decisions to stay apolitical, what are we going to do as a community to put actions behind our words and sustain them long-term? Here is short, non-comprehensive list of ways that we as a community can begin to demonstrate solidarity: 1. We need to encourage the organizations we are part of—especially those that are not politics or activism-focused—to stand in solidarity with other organizations on campus working towards liberation and human rights. Institutional support is meaningful and necessary, and if
our organizations aren’t providing that support, it’s up to us to talk to the leadership, start conversations in the group, and make it happen. We should be signing petitions both as organizations and as individuals, having conversations to make our spaces more welcoming and safe to those with marginalized identities, and representing our organizations at educational events and actions organized by activist organizations. 2. Get involved with activist organizations on campus! This includes groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine, South Asian Political Action Community, Tufts Labor Coalition, Tufts Asian Student Coalition, United for Immigrant Justice, Tufts Student Coalition for Anti-Racism, and so many more. You can look them up on social media and a lot of them are having general interest meetings around this time! 3. Let’s continue educating ourselves on anti-Blackness, on caste, on Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, and so much more. A few organizations and individuals that I follow on Instagram who have unpacked these topics and share additional resources (especially book suggestions!) include @equalitylabs, @thefatsextherapist, @standwkashmir, @ihartericka, @alokvmenon, @vrye, @nonamehiding, and @adalahjusticeproject. Additionally, those of us with class privilege should be redistributing our wealth regularly to grassroots efforts, to the funds of [queer & trans] BIPOC, and to the people we learn from.
POETRY
the tulip
By Paula Gil-Ordoñez Gomez
DESIGN BY JOANNA KLESZCZEWSKI
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FEATURE
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1 |“Alien Ocean,” Will Macnamara, mixed media on canvas. 2 | “Teens,” Amy Chy, ink. 3 | Evelyn Abramowitz, photography. 4 TUFTS OBSERVER SEPTEMBER 28, 2020
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ALIEN OCEAN, WILL MACNAMARA
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PROSE
I never close my curtains. I pace back and forth in my room. When I was little, I found my grandpa utterly fascinating, his routine, his style, his calm manner and the faded tattoo on his hand. My grandpa would pace along his house; he would lean his head forward with his arms behind his back, hands held together—, the two body parts that stayed still. Through observation came imitation. I find myself with my arms behind my back, hands held, hoping that mimicking old habits in reminiscence will cure my shallow breaths. I left my house at night; my room suddenly felt too trapped. There was a cool breeze as I ventured through, trying to muster calm, steady breaths. Motion allows me to venture away from internalized thoughts that run in blurred circles. The air is brisk, the streets are empty. I am able to find a few stars in the sky. I can’t stop the physical movement., I want to be further. I have found that age is not linear, but rather an accumulation of all our different stages and motions in the passage of our lives. I think of young me a lot more than I used to, because she did not realize how strong she was. She calmed her rapid exhales, racing thoughts through soft chants into the pillow and other words that felt holy. Instead of escape, she found refuge in a fabricated, yet safe world softly spoken into tan sheets. For now, I run away.
tumultuous By Sonya Bhatia
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DESIGN AND ART BY JOANNA KLESZCZEWSKI
NEWS
T
his past week, the California sky turned an eerie orange, the temperature rose to a whopping 120 degrees Fahrenheit, and ash snowed from the heavens. As the wildfires across the West continue to burn, the coronavirus-related shortage of incarcerated firefighters has renewed ethical questions about the prison labor system and the rights of incarcerated people. Wildfires are not new to the California landscape, but they have increased in ferocity in recent years—an increase that environmental scientists link directly to climate change. Since 1970, the extent of California wildfires has increased fivefold. The warmer and drier summers have stripped moisture from the air and plant life, creating kindling for the fires that require only a spark to turn into a blaze. Currently, 27 major wildfires rage up and down the West Coast. The largest, the August Complex Fire, has destroyed over 700,000 acres of land and remains only 38 percent contained as of September 23. “In 18 years of growing up in the Bay Area, there has never been a DESIGN BY EVELYN ABRAMOWITZ, ART BY KELLY TAN
wildfire that made the air quality this bad,” said senior Adrien Hanley, “but since I left for college in 2017, there have been three in my region.” California is facing unique challenges this year in fighting the wildfires because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to the higher infection rates for people in the prison system, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) recently announced their decision to release as many as 17,600 inmates. Six hundred of the inmates released since July worked as firefighters in the state’s Conservation Camp Program (CCP). California first turned to prison labor to help contain wildfires in the early 1900s. After the onset of World War II, many of the state’s firefighters left to serve in the military overseas. While many industries turned to women as a labor source during the World Wars, in California inmates became the cheapest option to help combat wildfires. According to the American Friends Service Committee, approximately
4,000 incarcerated workers, adults, and juveniles currently work at Fire Camps— sites designated by the California Prison Industry Authority (CALPIA). CALPIA is one of the state’s prison labor programs that was founded in 1982, managed by the CDCR. Through the state’s CCP, incarcerated people with “minimum custody status” (the lowest classification of inmates) can volunteer to help fight the wildfires— although it requires extensive training and licensing from the state to participate. According to the CDCR, inmates undergo “the same entry-level training that CAL FIRE’s seasonal firefighters receive in addition to ongoing training from CAL FIRE throughout the time they are in the program.” The promise of shortened sentences is used to coerce inmates into participating in the program. According to CA’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, when not actively fighting fires, inmates participate in manual labor and “conservation projects” to prevent forest fires, such as clearing debris SEPTEMBER 28, 2020 TUFTS OBSERVER 17
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and dead brush. They also work on projects aimed at “maintaining parks, sandbagging, flood protection, and reforestation” and make between $2 and $5 a day for this labor. On the fire line, the inmates work under extremely dangerous conditions and make $1 an hour. The state of California stands to benefit from paying the inmates such a low wage, saving $90 million to $100 million a year. Molly Gould from Tufts for a Racially Equitable Endowment (TREE) commented on the low wages and dangerous conditions and stated that “the Prison Industrial Complex in the United States (and globally) is specifically designed to prioritize profit over people in a way that epitomizes institutionalized racism.” Activists at Green America, an environmental and labor rights not-for-profit organization, have likened the incarcerated firefighters’ work to slave labor, given the negligible pay, life-threatening conditions, and the essential nature of the work undertaken by a population shunted to the margins of society. In an article for Green America, activist Sytonia Reid explains how prison labor in America has roots in slavery: three years after the 1862 Emancipation Proclamation was passed, a 13th Amendment was added to the US Constitution, stating that neither “slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Reid and other activists argue that dangerous, barelypaid labor for the lowest classification of inmates is not only an unfit punishment, but a stripping of rights and exploitation of cheap labor by a powerful system. Gould echoed Reid’s sentiments, speaking about her vision of an equitable future without the prison-industrial complex that allows these instances of abuse to occur: “Incarceration is an economic endeavor that was never really meant to address societal problems but rather to uphold the systems of racial oppression that have always governed this country,” Gould explained. “Prison labor represents one example of blatant human exploitation for marginal capital gain. The American prison system creates traumatic ripples that affect individuals, families, and communities, and prison abolition 18 TUFTS OBSERVER SEPTEMBER 28, 2020
is the only logical path towards creating a truly just society.” Under recent public pressure to rectify this exploitation, the governor of California signed a new bill allowing inmates who had served as firefighters while incarcerated to withdraw their plea of “guilty” and re-enter a plea of “not guilty” after their time served. This would allow the court to dismiss information against the defendant and release them from penalties associated with their prior offense. This bill would not apply to incarcerated people convicted of murder, sexual offenses, kidnapping, arson, or those who have a history of violent escape attempts. The question then becomes: is this enough? While the new bill would provide a pathway for formerly incarcerated people to utilize their training and become full-time firefighters upon release, it does not address many of the underlying ethical issues for inmates still in the CCP. According to an email from TREE Events Coordinator Gabe Reyes, “[T]he use of prison labor to fight the California wildfires shows us just how much prisons are an intentionally classist and racist endeavor. Rather than dealing with societal problems in transformative or restorative ways, prisons subsume groups of people that our capitalist society does not value to do our ‘dirty work,’ like providing slave labor to do tasks that no one else wants to do. In this process, their communities are torn apart and often disallowed from gaining the economic and social stability that wealthier communities have.” In addition to the economic and social instability caused by mass incarceration, the implications for the environment are equally grim. Many activists believe that the fight against the prison-industrial complex and for climate justice are intertwined and will require the merging of political coalitions. As Sunrise Movement Tufts stated, “[I]n order to effectively combat the climate crisis, we need to build a multi-racial, cross-class movement that elevates the voices of the people most impacted and treat every life with value and respect. Nowhere in that vision is there a place for mass incarceration and the exploitation of prison labor.”
OPINION
THERE IS ANTISEMITISM AT TUFTS. SJP IS NOT IT.
By Bridget Dick
Tufts often has a dangerous tendency to conflate antisemitism with anti-Zionism. Zionism is entirely distinct from Judaism; it is a political ideology that drove the creation of Israel in a land already inhabited by Palestinians. It is responsible for the 1948 Nakba and the violent mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homes, as well as the current illegal military occupation of Palestine. Juda-
ism is a religion, my own, which cannot be conflated with these genocides. Tufts has its share of antisemitism; as many may remember, last fall, a Jewish student found a swastika affixed to their door. This hate must not go unrecognized or unpenalized. However, in the wake of these incidents and within the context of the general rise of antisemitism on college campuses, Tufts seems unable, or unwilling, to make this
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number of very conservative Zionists. These students reportedly used anti-Palestinian, racist rhetoric, and one or more filed a report with the Office of Equal Opportunity against the student coordinators, a drastic action that put FOCUS under serious scrutiny. These incoming first-years faced no repercussions for the harm their actions and words caused. Again, my mention of Palestine and our campaign were SEPTEMBER 28, 2020 TUFTS OBSERVER 19
OPINION
SUCH ALLEGATIONS THAT THE MENTION OF PALESTINE OR SJP IS HARMFUL IS A ZIONIST SMEAR TACTIC THAT WORKS TO SILENCE OPPOSITION TO THE UNITED STATES’ AND TUFTS’ DIRECT INVOLVEMENT IN THE OCCUPATION
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differentiation to the great detriment of us—their student body. The most recent repercussion of this, and the impetus of this op-ed, was the email sent out by First-Year Orientation CommUnity Service (FOCUS), a studentled pre-orientation program for incoming first-years, following my mention of Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine’s (SJP) Deadly Exchange coalition on FOCUS’s panel of student activist groups on campus. I spoke on the panel as a member of the Tufts Labor Coalition (TLC) and, with the permission of my fellow TLC presenters, briefly discussed TLC’s role in SJP’s Deadly Exchange coalition. Speaking for less than a minute, I mentioned that Tufts had sent our former police chief, Kevin Maguire, to Israel on a military training trip in 2017 without informing or consulting our community. Thousands of local US law enforcement officials attend these counter-terrorism trips, during whichthey train with Israeli police and security agents who regularly violate civil rights, suppress peaceful protests, and enforce racist and deadly policies. This is the Deadly Exchange, the mutual advancement of the United States’ and Israel’s discriminatory and repressive policing, which is part of a larger exchange between the two countries of arms, money (the US sends Israel $3.8 billion in military aid every year), and military tactics. At Tufts, SJP has been building a coalition of student groups to end the Deadly Exchange at Tufts via a Tufts Community Union referendum that would bar the University from sending Tufts University Police Department (TUPD) officers on any military training trips abroad. It was a quick speech that I had recited dozens of times before, and I gave it on the panel to introduce the freshmen to SJP’s campaign and coalition, a serious force in the Tufts activism community. However, the next morning FOCUS sent out an email clarifying SJP’s relevance to the panel as “an organization that has been able to form coalitions at Tufts” and apologizing for causing harm by not making “enough space in our programming for dialogue and the opportunity for students to voice their thoughts.” I was baffled. I was not contacted or consulted by the FOCUS coordinators or their Tisch College advi-
sors before their email about me was sent out. Their response denigrated our work in SJP to mere coalition-building and failed to mention the substance of our campaign. Moreover, it insinuated that my single mention of Palestine had caused harm, and I was upset that my brief, non-offensive comments triggered such serious institutional backlash. Nothing I said during that presentation was anything I wouldn’t say during the activity fair, our weekly “tea with SJP” sessions in the Campus Center, or a block of time tabling in Dewick. Flatly, there was nothing antisemitic about what I said. And yet, by validating the supposed harm done, FOCUS’s email implicated me, SJP, and our work in antisemitism. This rhetoric is incredibly dangerous; such allegations that the mention of Palestine or SJP is harmful is a Zionist smear tactic that works to silence opposition to the United States’ and Tufts’ direct involvement in the occupation. The conflation of Judaism with Zionism is widespread and intentionally cultivated to allow Zionists to weaponize supposed antisemitism to silence Palestinian voices. I have seen this in my Jewish communities growing up: in my own family, as well as my predominantly Jewish high school, which, similarly to Tufts, espoused a strong commitment to social justice but never allowed institutional recognition of pro-Palestinian work. The same morning the email was sent out, I reached out to the FOCUS student coordinators myself to try to ascertain what had happened. We quickly scheduled a Zoom call, during which they were very distraught. They felt guilty about sending the email but emphasized the enormous pressure placed on them by the University and their Tisch College FOCUS advisors to send the email immediately. Though they were unable to tell me who was behind these decisions, the University forces above them decided that the email was necessary and had to be sent out immediately. The FOCUS student coordinators were also prohibited from including any explicit support for SJP, and the email they wrote was severely edited to censure any pro-SJP rhetoric. Crucially, they acknowledged that I had not said anything harmful and that the students who complained were a small
OPINION
not harmful, but the anti-Palestinian racism that followed was. And yet, this is the second occasion just this past summer that SJP has faced harassment and allegations of antisemitism from the University’s own apparatuses. Earlier this summer, the senior administration condemned the Office of Campus Life’s decision to present us with their Collaboration Award for our Deadly Exchange coalition. The award and my mention of SJP during FOCUS are both natural outgrowths of our Deadly Exchange campaign and coalition, but Tufts refuses to give SJP equitable recognition for our work. Their responses to these incidents have not only obscured our efforts and achievements but also actively undermined and discredited our campaign and organization. Tufts’ actions are seriously detrimental to many individual students. The Uuniversity’s erasure of SJP’s demilitarization efforts is damaging not only to members of SJP and Palestinian students, but to Black and brown students who face harassment and surveillance by our own campus police. Our Deadly Exchange campaign is explicitly focused on the demilitarization of thTUPD, which has followed in step with the rising militarization of our country’s police. In 2017, TUPD began training officers to use semi-automatic rifles in case of an emergency, and, this year, TUPD’s presence and surveillance have been expanded as a means of ensuring that the University’s COVID-19 guidelines are being followed on campus. As the Black Lives Matter movement brings demilitarization to the forefront of national discussion, Tufts must reckon with its own racist policing and the harm TUPD does to its students of color. Rather than expanding this force on campus during a public health crisis, the University must invest in alternatives. While our community members of color feel its impact most greatly, all of us at Tufts are a part of the Deadly Exchange. The University sent our chief of police on a counter-terrorism trip, and we all must hold it accountable for this injustice. Kevin Maguire’s attendance directly implicates our university in the repressive, rapid militarization of the US and Israel, two countries with long histories of settler-colonialism, suppressing peaceful dissent, and violating basic human rights. Our campaign to end
Tufts’ involvement calls for the University to apologize, pledge to end TUPD training trips abroad, hold a town hall on the matter, and create a community advisory board to give students, staff, and the Medford/Somerville community oversight over TUPD. This fall, we plan to hold a studentwide TCU referendum, as I briefly mentioned earlier, and I urge you all to vote in favor of these necessary measures. For the time being, we in SJP are now going to help FOCUS rectify the harm they have done through improving anti-racism training for leaders and support staff, creating a clear process for addressing incidents of bias, and ensuring they hold the aforementioned FOCUS members accountable. We have had meetings with various actors: TCU President Sarah Wiener, Associate Dean of Diversity and Inclusion Nandi Bynoe, and Associate Director for Campus Life Christa Ricker, who oversees all the pre-orientation programs. However, everyone we have met with thus far still seems unsure why the email was deemed necessary to begin with; it seems that there needs to be larger institutional recognition of this mistake to ensure it does not occur once again. However, the impetus to do all this work should not have to be SJP, as we have our formal campaign to focus on; this anti-racism work should be the University’s own endeavor. SJP’s injuries are symptoms of a larger institutional failure to provide platforms and support to Black, brown, Indigenous, and Palestinian students. The University must both acknowledge the harm it has done to our organization and rectify it by giving SJP equitable institutional representation, recognition, treatment, and support, as it must for other groups that advocate for marginalized students on campus.
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SEPTEMBER 28, 2020 TUFTS OBSERVER 21
NEWS
TRANSLATING YOUTH ACTIVISM INTO ELECTORAL RESULTS By Meghan O’Brien and Matthew Tolbert Disclaimer: The authors have been involved in leadership positions with JumboVote and Meghan O’Brien was formerly employed by MassVote.
E
ven before the COVID-19 pandemic and the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many others, a young and diverse generation was beginning to bring its activism to electoral politics. The crises of 2020 have brought young people into the streets demanding change with a fervor not seen in decades. And yet, young people are chronically underrepresented at the polls, often voting at nearly half the rate of those over 65. This is not because young people are lazy or apathetic. This view fails to recognize the unique challenges young people, and BIPOC communities in particular, face in both registering and casting a ballot. It also ignores the role young activists play in current movements like Black Lives Matter, the Sunrise Movement, and March For Our Lives. The energy and ideas behind these current movements are rooted in a long tradition of young BIPOC leadership in social movements, particularly 20th century Black liberation movements. Young people are uniquely qualified through their status as the nation’s largest eligible voting group to shape the world with their vision on election day and beyond. A national poll conducted by Tufts’ Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) showed promise of this soon becoming a reality, and found that “despite…the interconnected crises shaping American 22 TUFTS OBSERVER SEPTEMBER 28, 2020
life, young people are interested and engaged in the 2020 election, believe they can make a difference, and stand ready to make their voices heard.” It is not enough to tell young people to vote, nor is it productive to shame others for not previously engaging in the democratic process. The younger generation and BIPOC communities are more likely to face undue burdens to both registering and casting a ballot on Election Day that include sudden changes in polling place, lack of transportation, and restrictive identification requirements. Peter de Guzman of Tufts’ CIRCLE pointed out that “these barriers are not entirely unique to young people, but they do affect young people disproportionately because of access to income, familiarity with completing government forms, and having proper ID.” Young people and people of color are victims of voter suppression tactics, not a politically apathetic monolith as they are often portrayed.
“Plain and simple, you should vote because your voice matters and your community matters and your life matters and you deserve to be represented in government.” Voter suppression tactics aimed at particular groups, whether by age, race, or
gender, are all rooted in some of the darkest chapters of American history. Six decades ago, much of the American South was under a regime of racial apartheid known as Jim Crow. This brutal system rose out of the collapse of Reconstruction in the 1890s and depended on the disenfranchisement of Black people and poor white folk alike, whose shared interest aligned against the landed gentry of the Old South. The cornerstone of the Jim Crow system was a denial of what John Lewis described as the “sacred right to vote.” During the Jim Crow period, systemic voter suppression in the form of poll taxes and “literacy tests,” a misnomer for arcane exams required to register to vote, coupled with endemic corruption and vigilante terrorism, maintained this system of disenfranchisement. The Jim Crow system was ultimately brought down by young, radical Black organizers who were denied the right to vote entirely. Their demand was clear: an affirmation of their full rights as citizens, chief among them the right to vote. Their triumph brought the United States closer to being a true democracy and is enshrined in the Civil and Voting Rights Acts. These victories demonstrate that the right to vote is sacrosanct in a country that claims to be a democracy, but that change cannot happen through voting alone. Change in the 1960s came through boycotts, strikes, and marches—the same strategies being used by young organizers today. In the 21st century, young leaders, especially BIPOC organizers, continue to advance some of the most sweeping social and democratic reforms of our time. From
NEWS
fighting for racial justice to confronting climate change to ending gun violence in schools, young people mobilize their peers and community members around existential issues while also facing 21st century voter suppression. These suppression efforts contribute to young people being underrepresented at the polls; however, for many young people, they are not insurmountable. The barriers that exist today are not the same as the overt barriers that existed in the Jim Crow South because of the work of young Black activists during the Civil Rights Movement. That’s not to say they don’t still exist— these barriers continue to shut out young voters right here in Massachusetts. Alex Psilakis, Policy and Communications Manager at MassVOTE, described how young voters in Massachusetts face undue barriers to casting a ballot: “The act of voting was, in my opinion, made unbelievably difficult for the September 1 primary.” He elaborated, saying that early September primaries tend to fall near move-in days for college students and new residents whose leases start in September, so these residents are excluded from voting at their new addresses. In addition, the Commonwealth’s voter registration deadline falls 20 days prior to an election, which makes registering at a new location in time even more difficult. Psilakis noted that expanded registration, early voting, and mail-in voting options due to COVID-19 have helped reduce the harmful effects of these policies, but election officials must make them permanent and continue expanding options for voters. “It shouldn’t be hard to vote. That’s simply a method of keeping turnout down and limiting change,” Psilakis said. “Making sure that voting is made as easy and accessible as possible is critically important to allowing young people to vote.” Beyond a lack of information and challenges navigating the registration system, young people feel less qualified to participate in the political process. A 2018 CIRCLE report showed that nearly a fifth of young people felt that they did not “know enough” to vote. JumboVote, Tufts’ student-led nonpartisan voter registration
DESIGN BY EVELYN ABRAMOWITZ, ART BY KATE BIDGOOD
and civic engagement group, seeks to counter this sentiment by empowering the Tufts community to take part in the democratic process on election day and beyond. Lidya Woldeyesus, a student chair of JumboVote, noted that the organization began sending materials to new and returning students this summer and will continue engaging with students with the goal of reminding them that “you deserve for a government to prioritize you.”
“There are so many ways that the government has failed people, and there are so many times when people show up to vote and no change happens. But I think if you find your niche, and you find the issues that you’re actually passionate about, then you can learn to make change in many different avenues. And voting is just one part of that.” Although many young people feel like they lack enough information to participate in the democratic process, Woldeyesus argued that this generation of young people is uniquely qualified to do so. She pointed out that “politics isn’t everything…but we know the issues facing our communities, our loved ones, and our society. We all have something we care about, whether it is big or small.” These issues range from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, to economic instability, to climate change, to institutions that continue to be plagued by the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. Although each of these factors impacts individuals and communities in different ways, Woldeyesus emphasized that “your
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voice matters in politics, and elected officials should listen and view you as a valued constituent.” The main point Woldeyesus wants her peers to take away is: “Plain and simple, you should vote because your voice matters and your community matters and your life matters and you deserve to be represented in government…One of the biggest ways to do that is to elect people to office who share your values.” Psliakis shared a similar message, encouraging young people to vote in state and local elections as well as presidential contests, noting that state officials are often “deciding a lot of policies that the federal government is too gridlocked to decide.” Psliakis explained that “a lot of states, for example, are jumping in and providing unemployment assistance; they’re providing PPE to their state when the federal government isn’t…And of course federal officials matter, too, but it’s those that are overlooked, the city-elected officials and state-elected officials, that play a huge role
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in deciding what the future looks like. So young people need to vote so they can decide their future, but they need to vote at all levels.” CIRCLE’s 2020 Youth Electoral Significant Index supports this sentiment, showing that young people have the potential to play decisive roles in critical swing states and closely contested House and Senate races. Woldeyesus acknowledged that “there are so many ways that the government has failed people, and there are so many times when people show up to vote and no change happens. But I think if you find your niche, and you find the issues that you’re actually passionate about, then you can learn to make change in many different avenues. And voting is just one part of that.” Groups like Black Lives Matter, March for Our Lives and the Sunrise Movement demonstrate the power young people have to usher change into their communities. However, facing such existential issues requires participation in all areas of civil
society, including the electoral process. By leveraging their power as the nation’s largest voting bloc, the younger generation becomes a stakeholder in a key part of the democratic process. Young people can remake this country in their image. Voting, despite the past and present barriers, is a critical part of the equation.
VOICES
(UN)FAIR AND LOVELY By Ayia Elsadig
What are beauty and perfection? And no, I’m not asking for the definition given in the dictionary, but for the definition that plays out in practice. We understand that beauty is defined as things that are aesthetically pleasing, and perfection as having no faults, but how do we really decide what’s beautiful or perfect? Growing up, I thought subscribing to beauty and perfection was the way to get noticed in society. I didn’t know what these concepts fully meant, but because others focused on them so much, I idealized them too. At the time, this behavior made perfect sense, but then again, it took me a good five minutes to figure out what nine minus eight was in third grade. Nevertheless, I tried my hardest to fit society’s beauty standards. In second grade, fresh off the boat from spending first grade in Sudan, I thought being perfect meant being funny, since all of the popular kids were funny. DESIGN BY SOFIA PRETELL, ART BY AVIVA ROSENBERG
There was just one problem: I wasn’t funny. Regardless, at the time I couldn’t possibly have had friends either way because I was a spoiled brat who thought if she wanted anything to happen, it would happen her way. My second-grade self also thought perfection meant having trendy stationeries. My classmates had the latest school supplies covered in superheroes, geometric designs, and flowers, while I had basic one-subject notebooks. Others always received compliments while I felt like a pariah. A void festered within me, hungry for that attention. The fear of becoming invisible among my peers grew within me every day. That fear reached my fingertips, which opened backpacks and pencil cases and rummaged through museum shelves and drawers. I managed to “own” cool stationery, but believe it or not, people did not take kindly to me stealing their belongings.
In third grade, beauty took on a physical meaning. When I looked in the mirror, my skin color, facial features, weight, and hair texture evolved from being natural features to parts of a doll that needed tweaking in order to be loved. I developed an obsession with wearing designer brands, a product of being surrounded by wealthy students that sported Pandora necklaces and DKNY coats. On top of that, everyone else in my class seemed much smarter than me, while I was still the spoiled brat who wanted everything to go her way. Naturally, nobody liked me. All of these attributes slowly weighed me down. That same year, a girl asked me to show her my hair, laughing cruelly when I did. That void from second grade instantly came back, but I knew there was nothing I could steal to fill this emptiness. I ran to the bathroom, taking my last shred of pride with me as tears streamed down SEPTEMBER 28, 2020 TUFTS OBSERVER 25
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my face. After that day, I wore my hijab wherever I went. People would praise me, saying masha’Allah (“look at what Allah has willed!”) for wearing my hijab at such a young age, but little did they know I wasn’t doing it for Allah. I was just using my religion to cover up my insecurity. My void and insecurities grew with me into high school, but I was no longer confined to the Muslim bubble that I grew up in. I could see that these beauty standards definitely weren’t limited to the Muslim community, but I also felt that most people weren’t trying to fit in like I was. I kept thinking about those who were indifferent to the physical pressures that society upholds—those who had real character and personality to them. They made me wonder if I had a personality. My brain couldn’t ignore the fact that I envied these people. The common denominator was that they all were comfortable being themselves, able to express their own opinions and display their true personalities no matter who they were with. Different—those people I met were memorable because they were different. I felt myself getting acquainted with this thing called “logic,” which made me reflect on every disagreement I had seen. Most of them didn’t result in divorce, broken friendships, or loss of respect. If I wanted to leave a mark on this Earth, there would come a time when I must spit out what I had learned from it. Although hard to digest, I had to admit to myself that people don’t hate different points of view unless the point of view is pro-genocide. The first time I prepared to share my differing point of view with someone, my stomach churned. My mind became a battlefield between young Ayia, who advocated just going with the flow, and logical Ayia, who wanted young Ayia to grow a spine. I took a mental break and had to be honest with myself: I needed to get over this fear that was hindering my character development. After a short pep talk, I shared my point of view. Surprise: no one hated me. I’m in college now and I’m still a perfectionist, but in terms of meeting my own standards. I’m comfortable with the fact that I’ll never be perfect, and that I should 26 TUFTS OBSERVER SEPTEMBER 28, 2020
accept what I have physically and mentally. It’s easier to live my life now without having to worry about what others think of me, but I couldn’t help but recall the struggle that I once went through alone. Was I just an anomaly out of millions of girls? Impossible. I am reminded by the pouches of Fair and Lovely my mom owns and the hundreds of DIY Western beauty scams my aunt has saved on her phone. I think of those that feel pressured to take off their hijabs to “compete with other girls” or to “attract a suitable husband.” I definitely didn’t struggle alone. My mind began to swirl with questions. Why was I pushed to follow a culture that teaches our daughters to allow others to evaluate them at literal face value? We are not merely girls. We may soon be the women who will go through the tiredness of pregnancy and the pain of labor to bear our children. We may raise— or ourselves become—engineers, doctors, sheiks and Imams (religious leaders), revolutionaries, teachers, lawyers, leaders, and more. When our children fall and claim they lack the competence to follow their dreams, we will lift them right back up— by throwing a shib shib (slipper), giving a hug, or both, exactly in that order. We are the backbone of the creation of our future generation. There’s a reason why the Prophet told us our mothers are three times as deserving of our good company as our fathers. There’s a reason why the Prophet told us paradise lies under the feet of our mothers. And I am damn sure it’s not because of our hair, skin color, wealth, or cool school supplies.
CAMPUS
CLUB CORONA
TUFTS CLUBS NAVIGATING COVID-19 By Amanda Westlake
DESIGN BY JOHN DOE, ART BY JANE DOE
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lubs and student organizations are, in many ways, the center of different Tufts communities; now, they must adjust to a new normal while also considering how to keep campus safe and limit the spread of COVID-19 as much as possible. In the midst of a pandemic, Tufts has resumed on-campus classes and activities, with some students moving back onto campus and others participating virtually from home. This hybrid approach, along with new regulations focused on preventing the spread of COVID-19, means student life has undergone significant changes. Many classes are now completely online, no groups larger than ten people may meet in person, and Tufts has even placed new bans on singing and playing wind instruments on campus. The Office of Campus Life, which oversees student activities, is working to support student organizations as they transition to virtual platforms. The annual student organization fair was hosted on a platform called Remo, and the new website JumboLife is an online hub for groups to post events and interact with members. The OCL plans to work with student groups to balance campus health with the unique needs of different organizations. Two of the biggest challenges they’ve experienced are the large size of some groups and the lack of spaces to meet in, now that
many meeting spaces have been repurposed into classrooms. “We’re more than happy to work with student organizations if they are interested in being creative in how they approach their work,” Chelsea Jordan, the assistant director for Campus Life Operations, explained, “though I would offer that a lot of student organizations are really taking the initiative to do that themselves, and it’s been really great to see how they are creatively approaching their work and still getting folks involved, even though they have to meet in a virtual capacity or maybe in a more limited capacity than they have in the past.” This new virtual environment also means that organizations have to find new ways to ensure that their meetings are accessible. For international students who are attending Tufts virtually this semester, there are now higher barriers to participating in social life and organizations. For those living in different time zones, virtual meetings and events are often infeasible to attend because they take place in the middle of the night. Ibrahim AlMuasher, a second-year international student, pointed out that while most general interest meetings happen in the evening in Massachusetts, “It’s 2:00 a.m., 3:00 a.m., 4:00 a.m., here in the Middle East, and even worse if you are somewhere in Asia or Southeast
Asia. And I think that that just is a complete oversight of trying to create an inclusive campus.” He added, “I think that it’s worse for first-year international students who were unable to go to campus in the US.” AlMuasher said that to remedy this, student organizations must make accessibility for international students a priority. He pointed out that this could take the form of recorded meetings or other asynchronous opportunities for involvement. “International students and first-year students have had to take initiative to go out of their way to meet people,” he said, “which I think is really unfair to them, because if we’re trying to create an inclusive atmosphere, then we need to take some of this inconvenience of the time zone difference, and put some of the burden on ourselves.” Music and performance groups have been impacted by the pandemic as well. Tufts recently announced a complete ban on students singing or playing wind instruments, which applies when students are outside, in bedrooms, and alone. According to a university press release from September 4, this is because “current scientific evidence strongly indicates that singing or the playing of wind instruments generates aerosolized particles that can remain in the air for a very long period of time and can transmit coronavirus to others.” However, some members of the Tufts
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music community are still dissatisfied with this response. “It just doesn’t make sense,” said Athena Nair, a sophomore and a cappella group sQ!’s music director. “It’s not clear why singing in your own bedroom spreads COVID.” sQ! plans to focus on non-singing activities for the fall semester, including working on arrangements and hosting bondings. Nair also described how the new policy has affected her on an emotional level, and how extracurricular activities can be extremely important to students: “As someone who loves singing…that’s a lot to give up, especially now, and singing is like the only thing that I can do. I have to give up dance, too, because I’m on a floor where people are below me if I dance. So singing seems like the only thing I can do, but I can’t even do that…I think we all need some space to pursue art and hobbies.” Another music group, community service-focused Public Harmony, usually hosts performances every week at women’s shelters and assisted living facilities. Now, instead of in-person concerts, they’re reaching out to venues to host virtual events and are putting together a 30-minute cable TV program for local TV stations. The program will consist of preexisting recordings to get around the singing ban, and because it’s on television, it will be more accessible for senior citizens who may not be able to use programs like Skype and Zoom. “Everybody is being super creative to try to work around [the no singing policy] until maybe the restrictions are changed,” said Public Harmony Co-President Dev-
DESIGN BY KATE BOWERS, ART BY AIDAN CHANG
on McKeon. She expressed more concern for music majors who are unable to work around the regulations, and added, “I think the policy is more problematic for people who don’t have another option; we have a couple options that aren’t ideal, but they’re hopefully going to work for this matter.” Activist and advocacy groups, while less impacted by social distancing guidelines than music and performance groups, also have to get creative in their work. Leila Skinner, a member of Students for Justice in Palestine, discussed the ways that SJP has adapted their work to a virtual environment. Over the summer, the group hosted an online book club called “Reading for Abolition” where members came together to read Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis. This fall, they plan to continue their work with a mix of virtual and in-person, socially-distanced events. Skinner emphasized the fact that advocacy work does not have to be bound by physical limitations: “We don’t need Tufts…being with each other [in-person] is so amazing, but there’s so many ways to be with each other virtually.” Another student organization, Tufts After School Tutoring and Enrichment (TASTE), which pairs Tufts students with elementary and middle school mentees at the Mystic Learning Center in Somerville, is still not sure what their work will look like this fall. They want to find a way to continue to connect with students while also recognizing the need for social distancing and coordinating busy schedules. New activities may include members writing letters to their mentees, dropping off
games at the center, or hosting tutoring sessions outside or over Zoom. “It’s really hard to do virtual activities with kids, and they’re not really able to stay focused or engaged through the screen, especially the younger ones,” said Sophie Driker, the copresident of TASTE. She also emphasized the importance of the connections formed between Tufts students and their mentees: “It’s been communicated from the Mystic staff that it means a lot to the kids, and it means a lot to the Tufts students who form relationships with them—because these are meant to be long-lasting bonds over time, and for the most part, they are.” The challenge of staying connected, building community, and doing meaningful work during a global pandemic is one that calls for creativity and flexibility. Accessibility is a large concern, as are the unprecedented difficulties students may be facing in their health or living situations. Above all, students recognize the need to ensure safety on campus and within the community. “I just know there are lives at stake,” Nair said, “and I want us to be really cognizant of that and think about the future, [to be able to] look back and be like okay, I’m glad I did everything I could to keep Tufts, to keep Medford, to keep our entire community safe.”
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the danish pastry house lives