Fall 2013 - Issue 1

TUFTS OBSERVER

September 23, 2013

VOLUME CXXViI, issue 1

O

Gay Rights in Russia ( pag e 6 )

, Daft Punk S Ambitious Album ( pag e 2 2 )

an Ugly Walking Tour ( pag e 2 6 )

Will Vaughan

2 Griffin Quasebarth

Ben kurland

The branding iron by Ben Kurland

PUTIN’S PERROGATIVE by Moira Lavelle creative commons

unpacking the podium by Kumar Ramanathan and Gracie McKenzie

Robert Collins

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STREAMLINED DELIVERY by Anastasiya Lobacheva

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alison Graham

Ugly Walks by Douglas Cavers

The Observer has been Tufts’ student publication of record since 1895. Our dedication to in-depth reporting, journalistic innovation, and honest dialogue has remained intact for over a century. Today, we offer insightful news analysis, cogent and diverse opinion pieces, creative writing, and lively reviews of current arts, entertainment, and culture. Through poignant writing and artistic elegance, we aim to entertain, inform, and above all challenge the Tufts community to effect positive change.

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Editors editor-in-chief Molly Mirhashem managing editor Nicola Pardy production director Ben Kurland asst. production director Bernita Ling section editors Douglas Cavers Justin Kim Aaron Langerman Moira Lavelle Gracie McKenzie Alison Pinkerton Kumar Ramanathan Nader Salass Evan Tarantino Flo Wen publicity director Stephen Wright photography director Knar Bedian photography editor Alison Graham art director Robert Collins lead artists Griffin Quasebarth Eva Strauss copy editors Liana Abbott Anastasia Mok Sarah Perlman staff writers Ellen Mayer

Contributors Alison Graham Andrew Terrano Kenneth Legler

COVER BY: Bernita Ling

September 23rd, 2013 Volume CXXVII, Issue 1 Tufts Observer, since 1895 Tufts’ Student Magazine

Table oF contents The Branding Iron by Ben Kurland 2 feature from the editor Molly Mirhashem 5 Byletter Putin’s Perrogative: The Kremlin’s Anti-Gay Crusade by Moira Lavelle 6 news Selling Citizenship by Robert Collins 8 news Construction Projects Spruce Up Tufts Campuses by Colin Halvey 10 campus & Prose Disorder by Sarah Perlman 12 poetry inset coming full circle 13 photo & prose It’s a Little Pixelated But I Can Still Tell It’s You by Angie Lou 17 poetry Worth the Pain by Walker Bristol 18 opinion Unpacking the Podium by Kumar Ramanathan and Gracie McKenzie 20 opinion & culture Give Life Back to Music by Aaron Langerman 22 arts & culture Streamlined Delivery by Anastasiya Lobacheva 24 arts Ugly Walks by Douglas Cavers 26 off-campus blotter Police Blotter by Aaron Langerman and Moira Lavelle 28 police

THE BRANDING IRON BEN KURLAND

You

are a brand. While Yahoo’s rebrand and Miley Cyrus’s Disneydefying antics made the front page, you slowly and quietly built your brand, whether you knew it or not.

In the last decade, “personal branding” has gone from a gilding on the résumés of marketing MBAs and graphic designers to a required consideration for any application.

Branding has outlived the brief lifespan of just a buzzword and become a synonym for identity itself. Today, your personal brand encompasses whom you follow, which hashtags you use, and which profile picture you select. But it doesn’t stop there: it’s how you dress, what you do, and who you are. With the rise of social media, the line that once existed between personal and professional lives has disappeared. If someone snaps a picture of you blowing off steam over the weekend, soon enough it will show up online with tags identifying just who you are, what you’re doing, and the people you do it with. This can affect college admissions, internship offers, and even career prospects. The refrain goes like this: your personal brand already exists.

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And those pictures from middle school are part of it. So is that opinion piece you wrote for the Daily freshman year. In 2013, there is no more branding yourself; there is only rebranding.

These days, polishing your résumé means polishing your Facebook, your Instagram, and your LinkedIn— professionalism is the name of the game, but so is humanity, capability, and a dozen other traits. Users are expected to upload #twesumes, 140 character twitter bio summaries of everything they are and want to be. Digital rebranding is hard work. It’s no surprise, then, that this industry already exists. Services like Brand.com and Reputation.com provide what is called “online reputation management,” charging up to $10,000 for promises to remove negative information from web searches and only show the positive. These companies provide search engine optimization services, or SEO, to make sure that the links you want at the top of your results push everything else down. The website BrandYourself.com does this same thing, but offers free basic packages aimed at people like college

students looking for work, but without ten grand to blow. In fact, Johns Hopkins University and Syracuse University have already hired them to provide reputation management for their students. The stories of BrandYourself ’s customers include some like Brittany Perskin’s, the Vanderbilt cheerleader whose Google results changed dramatically last year when she had sex in a photo booth that uploaded directly to Facebook at a sorority formal. But personal branding isn’t just for the scandalized; it’s a generational requirement.

The mainstream personal branding movement grew with our generation. For students at Tufts today, Facebook is an extension of the real world. Choosing a profile picture is already an exercise in how you want to be seen. With this comes an emphasis on individuality so strong that the term “Generation Me” has been coined to describe it—and not for nothing. The Narcissistic Personality Inventory is a test designed to analyze narcissism based on the National Psychiatric Association’s criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Since its creation, scores have been increasing.

Studies show that two thirds of college

FE E UR AT

students today are above the mean scores from 30 years ago. Twenty-somethings today are three times more likely to have experienced Narcissistic Personality Disorder than their sixty-something counterparts. Traits related to narcissism are also increasing. Our generation is more likely to hold extrinsic values and to have increased self-focus; even our names and the names we choose for our kids are becoming more unique. Pronoun use is changing; an analysis of the American Google Books library for the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology by year found that use of words like “we” and “us” is dwindling while use of “I” and “me” is growing.

With social media, small ponds are gone, especially for college students. Gone are the days when competition consisted solely of the other members of your high school class. Your brand is now in direct competition with everybody who shares your name and everybody who wants to be where you want to be. At Tufts, the class of 2017 faced a record low acceptance rate of 18.7 percent. Meanwhile, Harvard took only 5.8 percent of applicants. Contained in the remaining 94.2 percent were valedictorians, students with perfect test scores, and more with countless other accolades.

Every year at Tufts, Lee Coffin, the Dean of Undergraduate Admissions, makes roughly the same speech to the incoming class. In it, he quotes the new freshmen to make it clear just how diverse the population he just accepted really is. “I’m the only liberal, urban, multiracial male I know,” claimed one member of the class of 2015.

“I aspire to be a sort of Irene Adler mixed with Catwoman,” a freshman wrote, “with a dash of Hillary Clinton added for dignified flair.” These are brands. Tufts applications require defining “I” and “me” and have little use for “we” and “us.” The Tufts application process feeds on the narcissistic traits necessary to make yourself stand out, and to believe that you could stand out, among 18,420 other applicants. But in order to stand out, you have to commit— and that means a major change in how rebranding has worked for years.

Personal rebranding is hardly a novel concept. The idea of reinventing oneself has always been popular among college and high school students. Ally Sheedy’s Breakfast Club transformation from the

basket case to the star athlete’s girlfriend seems so standard. “Right now,” one of Lee Coffin’s freshmen wrote last year, “I’m a tree-hugging quixotic agnostic who believes in aliens, but who knows how long that will last?”

It’s a turbulent age, and the trope of reinventing yourself once you get to college is a classic one. An easy and ubiquitous tale is the one of the freshman who hated her name growing up and gets to choose a new one on her first day. That simple change was as powerful a rebrand as any, but the simplicity vanishes in a world where a name change means an edit to a Facebook profile that garners questions and views.

And it’s same for your Instagram handle, your LinkedIn page, and your blog.

Neutrality isn’t an option; in this day and age, having no Facebook is a kind of branding too, and a suspicious one at that. To people without social media, the question is: do you have something to hide or are you just a misanthrope? Both Norwegian shooter Anders Breivik and Aurora shooter James Holmes were noted as having suspiciously limited Facebook presences. Within a day of the Navy Yard shooting, Huffington Post led its article on Aaron Alexis with the fact that he “left a scant social media footprint, though that could have been by design.” Not having a social media account has become a red flag; an unwillingness to put your personal life on display must be for a reason. History is essential to the personal brand, proof behind the claims, and each contradiction dilutes the brand.

For many Tufts students, internships are the key to résumé building, which means that they are the key to brand building. A relevant internship is the answer to the classic catch-22 of trying to find work without experience, and trying to get experience without work in an increasingly competitive job market. But a massive rebranding of career goals means that your internship in that art studio isn’t going to carry over well when applying for consulting jobs in the Financial District.

Nor will your references or networking be of much use if you’ve tried to switch names or traits. This is all the more reason why consistency in brand is so crucial online.

Microsoft commissioned a survey that found that only 7 percent of Americans

think that their online reputation has an effect on their job search. But in reality, according to a study by Jobvite, 94 percent of recruiters are looking at or planning to look at social media profiles when making hiring decisions. The number of hiring managers who say they chose not to hire someone based on social media, 43 percent in 2012, has double since 2008 and quadrupled since 2006. For Tufts grads, looking for young and relevant jobs, there is little chance that your online presence isn’t being scrutinized. Evidence of underage drinking and excessive profanity, though pretty standard for college students and recruiters alike, can decrease your chances of getting a job. But rebranding your online presence is more than just cleaning up the negative; it’s about deciding who you are.

In 2013, there is no more branding yourself, there is only rebranding.

The personal branding movement draws from corporate rebranding, a practice that focuses on revitalization and refocus more than covering up the past.

Yahoo’s unveiling of a new logo this month received a lot of criticism not because the logo was worse—their old one was undoubtedly dated and unprofessional— but because the new one lacks personality.

This is not a new story. eBay, founded by Tufts grad Pierre Omidyar, straightened up the company’s logo last year with almost no public response. A few years ago, Tropicana ditched its illogical but iconic packaging of a straw-in-orange for a cleaner version with just a glass of orange juice on the front. Two months later, their sales were down 20 percent and the company was out about 30 million dollars. Meanwhile, their competitors’ sales all increased. The job market isn’t much different than the orange juice aisle; when your brand is too SEPTEMBER 23, 2013

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RE FE AT U boring, all a recruiter needs to do is reach over to one that’s more compelling.

This was the refrain in the article in Fast Company that sparked off the personal branding movement. “You’re every bit as much a brand as Nike, Coke, Pepsi, or the Body Shop. To start thinking like your own favorite brand manager, ask yourself the same question the brand managers at Nike, Coke, Pepsi, or the Body Shop ask themselves: What is it that my product or service does that makes it different?” The number one thing that recruiters say they use social media profiles like Facebook and twitter for is “cultural fit.” The necessity of developing a personal brand that sets you apart is becoming more and mainstream.

Five miles from the Tufts campus, students at Northeastern have the opportunity to take CMN 6061, Personal Branding, which “examines the importance of developing a personal brand in today’s hyper-competitive marketplace” and then teaches students how to develop theirs.

Tufts itself is not far behind on this.

They’ve brought speakers to campus to discuss “Me 2.0” and how to “Stand Out

By Developing Your Personal Brand.” The Career Center dedicates a section of its website to resources for developing your personal brand. The career fair at the end of September is proud to feature a “LinkedIn photo booth” to provide profile pictures “for your LinkedIn account or any professional online branding.”

Tufts has long since recognized the importance of branding to its success.

In 2005, the University conducted a yearlong brand audit, which included the development of the “Tufts Personality.”

To be “Tufts” is to never be “verbose or pedantic”—oh, the irony—but to be “spirited, exuding enthusiasm for Tufts,” to be “intellectually substantial,” and to be “committed to genuine diversity, conveyed through voice, tone, and style.”

Right there is the core of branding: the emphasis on presentation, on tone and style, over substance. A genuine rebrand requires both, but to make a substantial change, style has to blare so loudly that it overpowers the old brand.

No rebrand has relied so much on the flash and attention of style than Miley Cyrus’ at the Video Music Awards at the end of August. Make no mistake, Cyrus’ twerking 4

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The decisions you make, the activities you participate in, and everything you do is now part of your brand. on Robin Thicke was a full throttle exercise in personal rebranding. And for anyone paying attention, it was just another incident in a long train of haircuts, videos, and content to distance the now 20 year-old performer from her Disney star past. The tween audience she had almost a decade ago is much older now, and more interested in shock value than they are in wholesome Hannah Montana. Cyrus’ VMA performance played directly to that.

And it worked.

During Cyrus’ performance with Robin Thicke, the twitterverse clocked in at 360,000 tweets per minute about the act. For comparison, last year’s VMAs peak never broke 100,000. In the days following her performance, she added 226,273 Facebook fans and 213,104 Twitter followers. The amount of brand exposure that Miley Cyrus generated meant that by the next day, she had completed her transition from Disney good girl to provocatrice. And this success isn’t limited to people talking about her. When her latest single, “Wrecking Ball,” debuted—continuing the shock and awe trend by featuring her demolishing a wall in the nude—it broke VEVO’s record for most viewed music video in 24 hours, with 19.3 million views in a single day. It has been downloaded over 400,000 times. It’s projected to take number one on Billboard’s Hot 100, a feat that even “Party in the USA,” released at the height of her Hannah Montana fame, never reached.

Miley isn’t the first to latch onto controversial performances to change image and rise to the top, a fact she openly acknowledged herself. “How many times have we seen this play out in pop music?” she asked. “Madonna’s done it. Britney’s done it.”

In fact, Miley isn’t even the first to leverage the controversy of Thicke’s song, “Blurred Lines,” as a rebranding tool. In a desperate attempt to rebrand, RadioShack released an

ad featuring “Blurred Lines,” which flashed #UWANTIT over images of Thicke and scantily clad women wearing necklaces hanging with the RadioShack logo.

Rebranding through controversy is not a concept unique to today. The French painter Manet entered notoriety on the controversy of his Le déjeuner sur l’herbe, as it featured fully dressed men and nude women. Sound familiar? The Vanderbilt cheerleader of the photo booth scandal may have her BrandYourself.com profile on the front page of Google, but above it are no fewer than six results relating to the incident. For our technology-obsessed generation, seemingly temporary decisions may leave permanent digital footprints.

One of the personal branding articles that Tufts provides to its students advises that you “create a brand statement to guide you in making decisions that are “on-brand” and provide a filter for not participating in activities that are “off-brand.” The decisions you make, the activities you participate in, and everything you do is now part of your brand. “Every time you are in a meeting, at a conference, networking reception or other event, you should be mindful of what others are experiencing about you and what you want others to experience about you,” Forbes advised earlier this year. “Each of these engagements is similar to a job interview – expect in these cases you are being evaluated by your peers.” Constant judgment is no longer considered rude, but expected.

Leaving the house is an exercise in unending vigilance about how you appear and what you do. Life is a business decision.

Our generation is uniquely suited to personal branding. Each of us runs a half a dozen social networking representations of our brand, with carefully chosen handles and pictures. Even our basic psychology has adapted to fulfill the needs of the age.

Personal branding is a switch that, once on, can never be flipped off as long as you want to succeed. It’s an exercise that’s applied to every aspect of our lives—there is no escape.

Tagged vacation pictures make it onto Facebook before you’ve even returned home; there are no hidden guilty pleasures when your Spotify choices upload live to your Facebook timeline. There are no more errors or contradictions in our lives, there are only damages to our brand. Personal branding is no longer a tool; it is our identity. O

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Letter from the

Editor H ere we are again. Every May during finals, the approaching summer seems like an endless expanse of relaxation and potential. Thoughts of the fall semester are nonexistent, and it seems like an eternity will pass before we’ll be forced to encounter the daily stresses and obligations we’ve just spent months carrying out. But each year, the summer flashes by in a blur, and a whirlwind of work days, vacations, and family gatherings lands us right back where we stood on this campus only 100 days earlier.

Routines are comforting; complacency comes easily. Once the semester is in full swing, the mountain of schoolwork, athletic practices, off-campus jobs, and extracurricular activities can render us exhausted and apathetic. The days feel monotonous and we soon find ourselves longing for Columbus Day, Thanksgiving break, winter break, or any chance to get away from the deadlines and schedules.

Certainly not all days are like this. There are plenty of days at Tufts when we’re happy to be here. But once the appealing sheen of new courses has dulled and the excitement of moving into a new room has waned, we often fall into patterns. We go through the motions. And before long, time starts racing again.

And we don’t realize it racing, because we’re there cheering it along. We anticipate the weekend starting Monday, and in doing so, we give time that extra little push it needs to keep on accelerating.

Knar Bedian

The neuroscientist David Eagleman has a particularly compelling theory about time, and why it seems to pass much more quickly as we get older. He argues that our minds don’t measure time in seconds, minutes, or hours— but rather in new experiences. The first two weeks of college or a trip overseas can seem to last forever, because we are constantly experiencing unfamiliar things. But as we get older, fewer things are new. As we settle into a daily routine, doing the same things over and over again, we look back and nothing stands out. Time has raced by, and we are left standing with a string of identical days.

It’s too often repeated that college is the best time of our lives— but that’s not what I want to get across. I believe that the greatest happiness in our lives will in fact not be concentrated into the first fifth of our lifetimes—it would be rather disheartening if it were. But regardless of how much greater life may become when we all move on from Tufts, and transition into our own separate but intermingling lives, we must recognize that we have ended up in a pretty wonderful place here. We shouldn’t waste it by settling into comfortable cycles.

Sometimes, life will be better than it is now. And other times, it will certainly be worse. That being said, we should do what we can to keep time moving at a relaxed pace, since we only have so many days at Tufts. Time moves quickly enough on its own; the least we can do is to mix things up a little, to take a few risks, so we have some chance at slowing it down.

Molly Mirhashem, Editor-in-Chief

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Putin’s Prerogative: The Kremlin’s Anti-Gay Crusade

by Moira Lavelle

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n a recent poll, about 66% of Russians reported they believe that homosexuality is unacceptable regardless of the circumstances.

In another survey, 35% of the Russian population cited homosexuality as a disease, and 43% thought that it was a symptom of bad parenting or abuse. Suffice to say, the attitude towards homosexuals in Russia is fairly antagonistic.

This antagonism is being mirrored in a new set of laws spearheaded by Russian president Vladimir Putin this year. On July 3rd, Putin signed a law that made it illegal for gay couples to adopt Russian-born children. The law extends to individuals outside the country: any individual or couple who lives in a country where marriage equality is legal cannot adopt a Russian child. There are whispers that a new law will take this one step further and seize Russian children from their blood-related families if the parents even suspected of being gay or lesbian.

The Putin administration claims it is protecting Russian children against a form of sexual deviance that is homosexuality.

The Russian government passed another law in this vein earlier this year by a vote of 388 to 1: any form of media that acknowledges homosexuality is marked as propaganda and pornography and is legally required to contain a 18+ warning. In a survey conducted in June, 88% of Russians stated they supported this new propaganda law. Putin signed another law stating that foreigners in Russia could be arrested for being homosexual or “pro-gay” and detained for up to 14 days.

Anti-gay sentiment has gained a significant amount of traction with the public due to the government’s rather overt, repressive intentions. Critics argue that this new push from the government comes as a rejection of western liberal ideas—there has been some wistfulness for old imperial ways amongst the upper class. However, others look at Putin’s politics individually: the first six months of his current presidential term consisted of a large number of protests and street demonstrations. Putin has started pushing agendas that are markedly more conservative, often aligning himself with the Russian Orthodox Church. Putin’s harsh conservatism could be a way of coalescing a divided populace under one ideology.

Putin has stated, “The law does not in any way infringe on the rights of sexual minorities. They are full-fledged members of our society and are not being discriminated against in any way.” Yet Russia has become a dangerous place for homosexuals, or even those suspected of promoting gay rights. There have been handfuls of violent, anti-gay murders and beatings committed by civilians. At a gay rights protest outside the State Duma, several protesters were beaten while police looked on in typical governmental indifference.

The western world has grown increasingly outraged as news has filtered out of Russia. Many commentators have compared the new laws to anti-Jewish laws created during the rise of Nazi Germany. President Obama has received increasing pressure to “do something.” The question becomes: what can be done?

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One movement hoping to pressure the Russian government calls for the boycott of Russian vodka. The boycott, advocated by popular gay rights activist and writer, Dan Savage, and the group Queer Nation, aims to create economic pressures for the Russian economy and government. Many gay bars in America have been particularly supportive of this movement. Despite popular backing, it seems that the boycott does not have the capability to accomplish much. Political scientists state that while the Russian government depended on vodka profits in the mid 1800s, today’s Kremlin is not tied to the vodka industry. Furthermore, as many vodka producers have rushed to explain, most “Russian” vodkas aren’t entirely Russian. The famous brand Smirnoff has not been produced in Russia since the 1930s.

Similarly, the primary target of this boycott, Stolichnaya, is distilled in Latvia and is owned by a company in Luxembourg. Support for the vodka boycott has thus largely died down.

Many westerners are calling for an even larger social embargo: a boycott of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia. The anti-gay laws have raised many questions regarding the games. It is unclear as to how tourists and athletes will be treated when it is legal for anyone who is homosexual or “progay” to be arrested.

How will homosexual athletes, family members, or fans, for that matter, navigate the openly hostile social landscape? A c c o r d ing to the Olympic Charter, “no kind of demonstration or political, religious, or racial propaganda is permitted” at the Olympics. Yet under Russia’s new propaganda laws any mention of homosexuality is propaganda. How will foreign journalists fare and how will this legislation alter their reporting? Even U.S. corporate sponsors of the 2014 Olympics (such as Coke, General Electric, McDonald’s, Visa, Dow Chemical and Procter & Gamble) are beginning to feel nervous about the strongly anti-gay sentiment.

President Obama has expressed his great distaste for the situation in Russia: “I have no patience for countries that try to treat gays or lesbians or transgendered persons in ways that intimidate them or are harmful to them.” But the President has stated firmly that the U.S. will not boycott the Olympics, reasoning that it would be cruel to the athletes. It is clear also that Mr. Obama hopes to avoid the public relations disaster of the last U.S. boycott of the 1980 Olympic games in Russia.

What can be done to ameliorate the situation in Russia is, at the moment, a question that remains unanswered. Gay rights groups are gaining more and more popularity in Russia with support from the western world. Conversely, though, as President Putin feels the heat of global disapproval, he continues to crack down through anti-gay legislation.

On September 6th, President Obama met with a group of gay rights activists in St. Petersburg while there for the G-20 economic summit. Obama called the activists’ work “critically important.” This meeting has not directly changed Russian attitudes or repealed any of the conservative laws, but the activists cited it as a step in the right direction. O

35% of the Russian population cited homosexuality as a disease, and 43% thought that it was a symptom of bad parenting or abuse

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s the comprehensive immigration reform bill awaits an uncertain vote in the House, a little known immigration program called EB-5 is drawing the attention of American business owners; Chinese millionaires; Federal prosecutors; the People’s Supreme Court of China; and a cottage industry populated by a visa brokers, and Ponzi schemers. The EB-5 Immigrant Investor Visa Program is over 20 years old and has no concrete statistical history other than the number of green cards it has issued and a long list of criminal cases. At the same time, it’s about to reach its yearly allotment of 10,000 visas for the first time in its history.

EB-5 has become more popular than ever in the wake of the global financial crisis. For example, many U.S. businesses have begun using the program as a way to fund their projects throughout their struggle to obtain loans from banks and institutional investors. The program allows a foreign investor to obtain a green card by either investing at least $1,000,000 in a job-creating American business venture, or at least $500,000 in a project located in what the federal government deems a “high unemployment area.”

While the Obama administration promotes EB-5 and deems it an effective economic stimulus, an astonishing number of fraud and embezzlement allegations have accompanied the sudden increase in the program’s popularity over the past two years. The program enjoys near-unanimous support amongst lawmakers, although there is no statistical evidence to support its supposed contributions to job creation.

One failed EB-5 project, a massive hotel and convention center complex near Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, was led by a 28-yearold developer whose LinkedIn page advertises his “nearly 15 years of property development experience.” This developer, Anshoo Sethi, raised $145 million through 250 Chinese investors. The project ended last year with an SEC securities fraud lawsuit. In New Orleans, foreign investors accused the operators of an EB-5 regional center (one of 225 centers authorized by the federal gov8

Collin

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ernment) of directing $13.5 million into fictional companies, only to funnel the money back to themselves. Similarly, in El Monte, California, the principals of a commercial project were arrested for fraud and embezzlement. In Texas, a regional center is being investigated for luring Mexican investors into a Ponzi scheme. In Mississippi, a failed startup car manufacturer called GreenTech, once touted by Bill Clinton as the spearhead of a new breed of American businesses, is being investigated for making improper claims to Chinese investors during its EB-5 venture in 2009. Additionally, Alejandro Mayorkas—the head of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and the individual responsible for administering the EB-5 program—is currently under investigation for using his influence to obtain a visa for one of the GreenTech investors. The list goes on.

An EB-5 project usually begins with an appeal from American entrepreneurs to foreign investors, most of whom Chinese.

In China, a brokerage industry that profits from the American principals’ need to recruit Chinese millionaires has emerged and charges both parties stiff fees. Some foreign investors have fallen prey to phony American principals when their brokers falsely claimed that the U.S. government guarantees EB-5 projects. Even some of the regional centers—the privately-owned, government-sanctioned offices through which the projects must be arranged—have also misrepresented the program to investors.

Even if investors avoid fraud, they take on substantial risk in a typical EB-5 project because they can lose their substantial monetary investment and promised green cards without having had an opportunity for due diligence. Investors must then prove to the USCIS that their investment has created at least ten jobs, or preserved 10 jobs in a “troubled business.” They must wait two years before they are eligible for a permanent green card.

While the Obama administration announced an effort to streamline the EB-5 process in 2011 and pushed for its renewal

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C itizenship in late 2012, it has not addressed the foundering credibility of the program. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the leading proponent of the program, says the credibility problem poses a threat to the future of foreign investment. Senator Leahy’s amendment to the current immigration bill acknowledges the pitfalls of EB-5, but only adds more USCIS oversight to the process rather than fostering systemic change.

Meanwhile, despite the rash of criminal cases, only one regional center has lost its certification and 197 additional regional centers have been opened since 2008.

Regulation of the project remains halfhearted, in the United States, but in China the conduct of EB-5 brokers has earned a rebuke from the Chinese People’s Supreme Court. Following the collapse of Anshoo Sethi’s O’Hare project and the resulting securities fraud investigation, several agencies of the Chinese government attempted both to warn the public and to discredit EB-5 advertising. Since the Chinese government does not normally allow its citizens to invest abroad, the official acknowledgement of the burgeoning industry is highly irregular, calling attention to the lack of U.S. government oversight.

While Senator Leahy has been the most prominent voice in favor of EB-5 and is the only real advocate for reform, other senators including Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Mike Lee (RUT) have advocated for a fundamental expansion of the program.

They propose allowing EB-5 to offer a visa to foreign investors who make a residential property purchase of over $500,000. Some would take the program a step further. Edward Lazear, a Stanford professor and the chief economic advisor to President George W. Bush, argues that the United States should sell citizenship directly for $50,000 per person.

The rationale for EB-5 rests on whether or not the program’s measurable influence on the economy outweighs its inefficiencies. According to the Chicago Tribune, the USCIS claims that the investments have poured over $2 billion into the U.S. econ-

by Robert Collins omy and led to the creation of 46,000 American jobs since the program’s inception in 1990.

But what kind of jobs have been created? Are they temporary or permanent? And what does businesses’ increasing reliance on EB-5 say about the recovery of the U.S. economy?

Despite the claims of the USCIS, no reliable metric exists for determining the number of jobs created as a result of EB-5. In the agency’s figures, no breakdown of jobs created by EB-5 can be found. In fact, no job creation statistics are included on the USCIS website at all., According to FloridaWatchdog.org, USCIS representative Christopher Bentley has said that the agency does not track the success or failure of the business ventures after the issuance of a green card. If that is true, then USCIS cannot prove that EB-5 has created a single job that has persisted beyond a period of two years. Regional center—with government oversight nearly nonexistent—tend to keep mum regarding the number of jobs their projects have created, and it is impossible to know how they compile their statistics and present them to USCIS. Moreover, in an economic recovery that ideally should see 300,000-400,000 jobs created per month, a tenuously projected figure of 46,000 jobs over a span of 22 years is barely a drop in the bucket.

In the wake of the American housing bubble that sparked a worldwide financial collapse, a foreign investment program for large private projects with little measurable effect on the job market may not seem to be the ideal formula for economic recovery.

But as the economic malaise continues and partisan gridlock in Washington stifles hope for bolder measures, some would argue that the economy needs all the help it can get. They would posit that that EB-5 provides an important boost for businesses, regardless of its job-creating power. But for others, the program is more than a statistical mystery and a hotbed of crime; it is a denial of our heritage as a nation of immigrants. O SEPTEMBER 23, 2013

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REFRESHING RENOVATIONS Construction Projects Spruce Up Tufts Campuses

BY COLIN HALVEY

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Tufts Sailing Team Boathouse, 1963

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his past summer, Tufts facilities began renovating Tufts’ three campuses with over 60 renovation projects. Construction teams have been hard at work building a new sheep barn for the Veterinary School in Grafton, restoring the Biomedical Research and Public Health building, and updating facilities here at the Medford/Somerville campus. Much like those of us trying to begin the school year with a fresh start, Tufts, too, is starting the year with its best foot forward.

Returning sophomores and incoming freshman were pleased to discover that Wren and Haskell, which are both divided into ten person suites, received some redecoration and refurbishment this summer. Built in 1964 and 1965 respectively, Wren and Haskell were due for a few cosmetic changes.. Nicer, gray paneling has been added to common room walls and alcoves with a cushioned seats were built in. The old, dilapidated couches have also been replaced with new, pleather couches that are apparently stain-proof.

The common room also received modern circular tables in addition to the new couches and walls. The bathrooms of both buildings were refitted with new tiling, fixtures, and lighting, which the residents of Wren hope will help to solve the cockroach problem that concerned many of them before moving in this year.

Sophomore Sarah Brown said that Wren “makes her feel like she is in a hotel.” While Wren Hall was a popular choice for sophomores before the renovations, now that the renovations have been finished the residents claim that they have gotten the best of both worlds. Sophomore Kyle McGrail says, “I chose Wren because I wanted to live in a suite with my friends, even though it wasn’t the nicest building on campus. The new common rooms and bathrooms have made it incredible though. We thought that

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living in the basement was going to be one of the worst parts of Wren, but it has been completely scaled up.”

Halligan Hall, which housed the athletic offices before the Steve Tisch Sports and Fitness Center opened last year, is also being repurposed. The building is being remodeled to accommodate the needs of the Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) students who have taken it over. Halligan, which was constructed in 1956, offers 10,000 sq. ft. that can be turned into classrooms and offices. ECE Chair Eric Miller claims that the renovations will “greatly improve the learning environment for students both due to the facelift for the classrooms as well as the introduction of new spaces for meeting and interaction.” The addition of faculty and graduate student space on the second floor is aimed at providing a more integrated environment for the ECE departments and the Computer Science department.

Chairman Miller hopes that this centralized space will allow for “far more interaction leading to advances in all aspects of our program.” Furthermore, he added that the renovations and construction being done to Halligan 102 will provide “much needed space for hosting seminars, workshops, and similar events.”

The Tufts Sailing team, one of Tufts’ most successful and competitive teams, recently received a new boathouse on Mystic Valley Lake. The last boathouse, which was constructed in 1948, had become essentially antiquated and was not befitting the internationally competitive team that recently won their first National Match Racing Championship. The new Lawrence S. Bacow and Adele Fleet Bacow Sailing Pavilion, named after the formerPresident of Tufts and his wife, will allow the team to increase its appeal to prospective sailors and enable it to compete on an even higher level than previously possible.

The most noticeable renovation, and also the most frustrating for some, is the remodeling of Cohen Auditorium, the largest lecture hall on campus. Cohen is the only venue on campus capable of holding large classes like Bio 13, or staging performances like last year’s SOC’ show, “Stay in Yo Lane.” By the end of October, Cohen will boast an updated ceiling and floor, fresh paint, new seats, and an improved stage. The stage and some of the new seats will be handicap-accessible. Although it is inconvenient for those who were scheduled to have class in Cohen, the renovations will offer Tufts a better-equipped facility in which Tufts students can learn and showcase their talents.

In many ways, Cohen represents the face of Tufts. It is often one of the first buildings that prospective students and their parents see when they visit, and the building in which many orientation meetings take place. Admissions stopped bringing campus tours to Cohen last year because, according to Dean Lee Coffin, the “degree of wear and tear that had come to characterize [the building] suggested an overly worn atmosphere.” Dean Coffin is confident the new renovations will “erase the worry” that prospective students will get a poor representation of the quality of Tufts’ offerings. Having a newly renovated space will illustrate Tufts’ commitment to modern, state-of-the-art facilities.

The recent updates around the various campuses are not detracting from the distinctive Tufts aesthetic. Rather, these projects are helping Tufts retain its suburban charm while also developing it as a modern research institution. In this way, students will not have to choose between the resources and facilities of a larger metropolitan university and the classic feel of a close-knit university rooted in its community. O

SEPTEMBER 23, 2013

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r e d r o Dis Perlman h

By Sara

“Mood stabilizers,” you say with a grin.

You laugh and shrug like it’s nothing, yet you won’t meet my eyes.

A strange noise escapes me—strangled, unrecognizable.

Stable? Secure. Strong. Sturdy. Safe: An old friend we had not heard from in months.

I return your weak smile and stare at the tiles on the floor.

That week you spent in your car, Sleeping in a parking lot, pissing in a cup, Were you scared?

While you slept with concrete beneath your feet, I stared at the ceiling. Sleep taunted me, Painting a world without you in it.

The diagnosis brought a sick sense of relief.

Hands of grief strangled me from the inside, But finally—finally this monster had a name.

This monster that called me a bitch.

This monster that punched holes through the wall.

This monster that had devoured and replaced you.

Through the tattoos and the smoke and your anger Is the boy who reached for my hand at the clap of thunder.

He will never let you win.

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knar bedian

Top: Daniel mcdonald, Bottom: alison graham

coming full circle

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Photos, clockwise from left: Sofia Adams, Alison Graham, Brenda lee, Brenda Lee

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Photos, Top to bottom: Alison Graham, Brenda Lee, BRENDA LEE

y

poetr

it’s a little pixelated but i can still tell it’s you

By Angie Lou

you can’t keep looking for me because when the holograph of my screen illuminates your dark room i can see all the cracks in your paint and when i fixate my eyes on a single point of your ceiling i know that even parallel lines intersect at infinity. you can engulf your attic in flames and believe we are all just antiheroes in a dostoevsky novel you can keep my dirty underwear and memorize my diary but you can’t make me your ocean floor for everything. i just want you to see that there are fields of carnations after forest fires but if you bathe your eyes in methanol i will watch the sunset all by myself. you know who you are on the inside this is for the kid who has nightmares unless the hallway lights are on the one who drops acid at his fraternity and walks away from the half-conscious girls pressed up against him this one’s for the boy whose teachers caught him passing notes in class only to read them aloud and realize they were all written in binary code this one’s still for you.

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WORTH THE PAIN the emotional toll of student activism

by Walker Bristol

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heir battles have been won across history: divestment from nuclear warfare and Apartheid, the founding of the Africana Center, and the later establishment of the Africana studies program. A class poet declares that he is “a homosexual” onstage at commencement in 1969, and students occupy Bendetson in 2000, forcing then-President John DiBaggio to denounce anti-gay discrimination. The student activist community at Tufts, through interweaving the myriad experiences of the underprivileged and harnessing their extraordinary strength, has been responsible for great change. But for the singular activist—with her own journey, her own blood and tears to spill—that beautiful success comes at an inescapable cost.

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She came to Tufts with a caring mind.

That made the first part easy: She was already willing to put any effort to help those around Her before doing anything that She thought would benefit just herself. She had respected the activist community, and now She had the time to get involved.

“It’s a very different community than the sort I’ve been a part of,” said Jordan Dashow on being part of the Coalition Against Religious Exclusion (CARE). “Knowing that there are other people who are just as, if not more, passionate for fighting injustice…it really restores my faith in the student body.”

At first for Her, it was once or twice a week for each cause, although most of the organizers clearly worked on their own time, too. But those individuals with the greatest presence in the meetings She had begun frequenting spoke with a sort of fatigue in their voices. Their passion was unmistakable, but they were getting older.

Seniors had been at “this”—fighting for curricular change, policy change, cultural change—for years now. And although just as passionate, the enthusiasm expressed by seasoned activists, compared with that of leaders in community groups and academic fields, wasn’t quite as optimistic.

Stephen Goeman, an alumnus of Students Promoting Equality Awareness & Compassion (SPEAC), ascribed his own fatigue as the result of “success in activism being really hard and really hard to gauge, and more often than not met with vocal outrage.” Pretty soon, She experienced that vocal outrage firsthand. When She would mention how She was involved in the cause of sexual assault prevention, She suddenly felt the burden fall on Her to defend against every attack challenging women’s rights activism or notions of “rape culture” from her peers. How can they expect me to

know everything, She thought, I only just got involved. She put herself on a fast-track to understand the issues as deeply as those She admired.

Coming to that deeper understanding isn’t just challenging, though—it’s violent.

“People actively disbelieve that [various forms of injustice are] a problem,” Goeman noted. “They put up cognitive barriers to shield themselves from seeming like they’re complicit in a system of oppression.” Brandon Archambault, a founding member of CARE, reflected that the activist spiritual journey often begins with a pressing desire to imitate your idols and for these idols to reinforce your ideology. But ideally, “You don’t do things for approval.”

Upon realizing that fact, She became utterly self-questioning. She never really did break free from the thirst for validation, but as She came to an elaborate understanding of the work She was doing, it was less and less a necessary part of her experience. As the issue-at-hand became the overwhelming enemy, the stress of critically examining every step She took to ensure She wasn’t on the toes of those who inspire Her, or of those She was trying to liberate, diminished.

Overwhelming: that the problem was all around Her, and no matter how hard She fought, there was no guarantee that She was making a difference. In Her work fighting sexual assault, She began to learn that more and more of those close to Her were survivors. She read the statistics—1 in 4 women on college campuses are raped—and it was baffling that muting this epidemic wasn’t one of the university’s top priorities. To many of Her friends, the problem was invisible—nobody talked about it, it wasn’t obvious in everyday life. But to Her—knowing the culture, knowing the faces of the survivors—it was undeniable.

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Eva Strauss

“It’s like fighting a menace with no face.

You can’t really tally your successes.” academic toll she felt in the weeks after the instatement of the CSL policy: “I got two of the worst grades I’ve ever received. It was pretty bad. My only in-class final was open book, and I didn’t give a shit.” Rita recalls how in her own meetings with campus officials, she’d been cut off and interrupted if she ever implied that the administration was distant from the student experience. It bred an anxiety and helplessness unmatched by any exam schedule or job search. “I doubled my dosage of Prozac to stay alive.”

And then there’s the culture. Early on, She realized that the “activist” fighting oppression was, ironically, an oppressed identity of its own kind. She was called radical and uppity in the Daily, She was dismissed when she’d try to table or work.

The academic pressure, the sleeplessness, the knowledge of the pain surrounding Her, the administrative dismissiveness— all compounded by the fact that she lived in a culture where her activist identity was not acceptable.

Soon, She was immobilized. She was afraid to speak of it to her therapist because she didn’t want Her counseling sessions to get political. The minor mistakes She’d make in her campaigning suddenly appeared apocalyptic.

“You hear about people who experience pain they don’t deserve, and that just becomes anger,” Muskin-Pierret said. “I think that’s why a lot of people I know have

turned to self-harm. They’re filled with compassion, so you take it out on yourself.”

And so She started smoking—at first just for relief, but eventually because it felt as if She deserved hurt. Self-harm wasn’t logically valid, but it felt emotionally inescapable. And even Her fellow activists—who were sympathetic to Her feelings, politically and emotionally—didn’t know how to ask about the scars on her forearm, or why She shaved her head.

But one day, someone did. Someone could have been an administrator, a fellow activist, or another student—even one who was politically opposite. Someone gave her space—an extension on her paper, an understanding of her compassioninspired torment, a promise to listen—and in that space, She could breathe. Someone else told Her that they shared Her pain and would be there to cry and vent. Someone offered Her strength. “All I can give them is my presence,” said Tufts Freethought president Katrina Dzyak, on supporting her fellow activists. “All I can be is more empowering for them.”

She had a caring mind. As many of us do: us students, us faculty, us administrators alike. Upon being made aware of the systematic oppression that tears at those around us, some of us haven’t a choice but to rise up.

And in rising, we sometimes fall to the darkest places. This isn’t a call for action. This is a call for empathy. Activists in this community are driven by love, and for that they will tear at themselves—we owe them not calls for “civility” or “dialogue,” for those conversations are already happening in activist circles. We owe them our presence and the knowledge that it’s not just their likeminded activists who are there to empower them.

We are caring. Let’s not oppress those fighting oppression. Let’s love the loving. O

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“Some of these issues are really difficult to deal with,” recalled a member of Action for Sexual Assault Prevention (ASAP).

“You don’t learn a little bit about sexual assault policy, you start and learn everything, and I’ve found myself less equipped to deal with it.” Leah Muskin-Pierret, another ASAP member, added: “It’s like fighting a menace with no face. You can’t really tally your successes.”

But She was caring. And the more She learned, the more selfless She realized She had to be, and the more She sacrificed for the cause. In publicly denouncing injustice, She essentially gave up prospects of working in government or mainline journalism—preserving them wasn’t worth being complacent to an unsafe campus environment. (Archambault commented: “You can put Facebook on private, but have publishings you write and are quoted in that people will find. You give up a lot of career options.”) She would stay up until the early morning, drafting e-mail proposals to deans and designing posters for campus-wide campaigns.

When most of those emails went ignored, the posters vandalized or ripped down, She encouraged escalation, which only took more investment. Organizing a rally can take weeks. Composing an op-ed or building a website, even longer. While She felt reinforced when She left Her meetings with administrators, no tangible action ever seemed to result. They didn’t seem to know how to reform the oppressive structures they were a part of. After several administrative meetings of his own, Dashow noted: “It’s very difficult to influence bureaucracy when the bureaucracy itself doesn’t know how it works.”

A member of CARE, Rita (name changed for anonymity) remembered the

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UNPACKING THE PODIUM The Biggest Names Don’t Always Give The Best Lectures

Office of Gov. Patrick (Creative Commons)

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n 2012, seventy-five percent of all incoming college freshmen supported marriage equality. Tufts is no different: last April, the Tufts Democrats and Tufts Republicans signed a joint statement in support of marriage equality, and our campus culture evidently reflects support from the larger student body. But Tufts’ next high-profile speaker, Justice Antonin Scalia, has made it repeatedly and vehemently clear that he does not agree.

Not only are Scalia’s views on LGBT rights incongruent with those of the college population in general, they are also at odds with Tufts’ campus culture. We often hear that college is about exposure to new opinions, and visiting lectures are ostensibly one means of doing that. Scalia’s lecture will certainly expose students to someone who will voice opinions that may differ from theirs. Yet, some argue there are problems inherent in providing a platform for a speaker with such intolerant and discriminatory opinions.

But let us set aside that debate momen20

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tarily. While it’s important in its own right, and worthy of extensive discussion, there’s a larger, more systemic problem here.

The Richard E. Snyder President’s Lecture Series, under which Scalia has been invited to Tufts on October 3rd, “is intended to invigorate the intellectual environment on campus by providing a forum for the presentation of provocative points of view on matters of national and international importance.” Since 2011, speakers have included Anthony Romero, the Executive Director of the ACLU, and famed British historian Niall Ferguson.

Similarly, Tufts’ Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies has sponsored a high-profile namesake lecture series since its establishment in 2002. Speakers have included both of the Clintons and their contemporaries George H.W. Bush and Madeleine Albright, as well as former British Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher.

These lectures carried great prestige with them, but lacked an opportunity for

serious engagement. Bill Clinton’s 2011 talk was functionally a summary of his newly released book Back to Work, followed by a handful of generic questions from the audience of thousands. Former White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove, and Anthony Romero of the ACLU, stated their formal positions on broad, vague issues, and then proceeded to dodge questions during their respective lectures in spring and fall of 2012.

On the other hand, when journalist Christiane Amanpour spoke in April 2013, she candidly answered personal questions and then held a special post-event session specifically for student journalists. Earlier that month, Tufts students were some of the first to see immigration activist Jose Antonio Vargas’ short film “Immigration is Documented”—it wasn’t published online until the next day. In September 2012, transgender rights activist Kate Bornstein spoke about a theory of social justice, delving into her own personal narrative, catering her talk to the identities and concerns

So if the visiting lecture is losing its usefulness as a means of exposing students to information, then what role do highly prestigious, powerful speakers end up playing?

It is undeniable that one of the key roles of these speakers, whether intentional or otherwise, is to build up the prestige of Tufts as an institution. Clinton and Scalia are two of the most important men in American politics. They carry with them the gravitas of wielded power. When Tufts can release photographs of these powerful men in front of Tufts University logos in Tufts University buildings speaking to a Tufts University audience, its prestige benefits from that power.

“These lectures were promoted and organized around the speakers’ expertise rather than their status or personal prestige.

“

of Tufts students in the audience, and engaging extensively in student questions and critiques of her lecture. These lectures were promoted and organized around the speakers’ expertise rather than their status or personal prestige.

The differences in the nature of these lectures invoke a deeper question of what the role of the university is in our world of modern, high-speed communications.

We live in an era in which information is becoming freer and more accessible. For centuries, the university played a hugely important role in granting students access to otherwise inaccessible information through professors and libraries.

Today, however, in an age when Wikipedia doesn’t ask for $60,000 a year and more Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are offered every day, universities are challenged to go further in how they educate their students. One thing they can still provide that communications technology cannot is a space for students and faculty of various backgrounds and interests to innovate and interact creatively.

This changing role affects the way we should think about visiting lectures as well.

The argument that bringing a Bill Clinton or an Antonin Scalia to campus would expose the student body to the way in which these powerful figures work could have held in a pre-Internet era, but today, we already know what they will say before they arrive at the Tufts University-branded podium. A Jose Antonio Vargas or a Kate Bornstein, on the other hand, is unencumbered by the expectations of prestige and can offer engaging discourse on their fields of expertise.

Yes, the opinions of Vargas, Amanpour, and Bornstein are more closely aligned with the beliefs of their audiences than those of Scalia will be in October. But to make that critique would be to continue evaluating the quality of the lecture in terms of what information or ideology it exposes. But if we consider the quality of a lecture to be determined by whether it allows students to engage with the speaker’s particular expertise, then the less prestigious lectures succeeded wildly beyond those of Clinton or Romero did, and that of Scalia is likely to.

Increasing the prestige of our institution does benefit Tufts students in some ways, primarily by adding some metaphorical shine to our degrees. Admissions can use the list of big-name speakers to draw prospective students, surrounding us with peers who might otherwise choose other, similar-caliber colleges. Finally, and cyclically, a more renowned institution can secure more acclaimed speakers. But what increased prestige fails to do is increase the quality of our education.

As exposure to information becomes less and less of a core component of modern higher education, we must critically examine the entire university experience, both inside and outside the classroom, to figure out how these institutions can best educate their students. Hosting powerful, famous speakers who are often simply on glorified book tours, giving repetitive speeches on positions we already know and dodging questions does not contribute significantly to our education. The prestige their presence provides is merely a facade, used to sell our institution.

We also ought to recognize that power relations in the transaction between powerful speakers and the university go

nE UioR AinT FE op

by Gracie McKenzie & Kumar Ramanathan

both ways. Aside from benefiting monetarily, for these speakers to have a list of well-known universities that have hosted them further builds up their status. As we critically consider the role of the university, we must question whether we want Tufts to contribute to this process of reinforcing privilege and power for the sake of increasing our prestige alone.

Lectures in this model do happen all the time at Tufts on a smaller scale, through academic departments and programs, the Lecture and Entertainment Board, and student organizations. These more personal lectures, however, don’t get nearly the same amount of funding and press as the Snyder and Fares speakers require. Reducing the spotlight and resources devoted to the few large-scale lectures could theoretically result in more, better-advertised smaller ones.

Emphasizing this model shows us how we tap into speakers that reflect the diverse intellectual interests and identities of Tufts students. We are all working on building our knowledge, skill-sets, and reflection of vastly different—although often overlapping—interests, and this model helps facilitate that process better than hosting one stop on a lecture circuit where there’s only space for two or three barelyanswered questions.

Consider this an appeal to the Tufts University community at large to refocus how we think of visiting lectures. Our university is imbued with the power of using its money, resources, and pulpit wisely, and the more the nature of education changes, the less the model of hosting powerful, large-scale speakers makes sense. Let’s think out of the box when we decide whom to host on campus, with a focus on learning and engagement instead of power and prestige. Many of our academic departments and student groups are already doing some of this—let’s take that model and use it to greater effect in our various university-wide lecture series.

A greater number of smaller and more engaging Snyder and Fares lectures may not make headlines like Antonin Scalia will, but they would better serve our interests as an institution of higher education, making the university a more innovative and creative place. O SEPTEMBER 23, 2013

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GIVE LIFE BACK TO MUSIC Why Daft Punk’s Album Matters

Aaron Langerman

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aft Punk’s new album Random Access Memories not only returns musicianship to electronic dance music, but also seeks to restore meaningful human experience to a genre that has become increasingly shallow in its overthe-top use of costumes, lights, gimmicks, 22

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and oversized venues. In a break from their past work, Daft Punk opted to record real musicians for the new album instead of looping samples. The list of musicians featured on the album is impressive: Nile Rodgers (lead guitarist of Chic), Pharrell, Julian Casablancas (lead singer of The

Strokes), Paul Williams, DJ Todd Edwards, and Panda Bear make the album a collaboration of established musicians from different eras and genres. Random Access Memories looks to the past—especially 70s disco and 80s soft rock—with the aim of moving electronic dance music forward.

E iRc TU us EA FM

The album follows the journey of a robot trying to rediscover its humanity. Along the way, Daft Punk takes the listener through a diversity of styles and sounds. The opening song, “Give Life Back to Music,” has a disco guitar riff that fades into the slow synth groove of “The Game of Love.” The last song, “Contact,” is a rock anthem with a two minute drum solo. By using real musicians for the entirety of the album (the only sample in the entire album is the guitar riff of “Contact”), Daft Punk performs the act of remembering the roots of dance music. And they do it well—the album is cohesive, intelligently structured, and offers the listener a unique concept, giving the album immense replay value and forcing the listener to rethink what electronic dance music is as a genre.

Dominating the scene through the 1990s and 2000s, Daft Punk brought electronic dance music into the mainstream.

Mastering the use of synthesizers, samples, and visual effects, Daft Punk made raves what they are today—a spectacle of robot helmets, high tempo beats, and dazzling lights. Daft Punk disappeared for six years following their last tour in 2007. Then, on May 17, 2013, after five years of recording in the studio, Daft Punk released their fourth studio album: Random Access Memories. In its first week, Random Access Memories became Daft Punk’s bestselling album.

A lot has changed in the world of electronic music scene since Daft Punk’s last album Human After All (2005). What Daft Punk initiated has now grown to oversized proportions. Today, music festivals such as Electric Daisy Carnival draw in over 320,000 people in three days, grossing over $40 million. The sheer number of festivals and raves has grown immensely. Ultra, Electric Zoo, IDentity, TomorrowWorld, Camp Bisco, Hard Summer, and Electric Forest rack up millions of dollars every year. Headlining DJs such as Deadmau5 earn up to $1 million for a festival appearance. SFX Entertainment, a new company headed by media business veteran Robert Sillerman, recently spent over $1 billion to acquire electronic music ventures and promoters. Electronic dance music has done more than make it into the mainstream—in many ways, it has become the future of music festivals.

Electronic festivals have transformed into bombastic spectacles. Jaw-dropping light shows, fireworks, DJ personas, rave costumes, gimmicks, fireworks, building-sized speakers, huge crowds, and scantily-clad women dancing onstage have all become standard fare. Deadmau5 dons a spinning light-up mouse helmet at each of his shows. Dada Life sprays the audience with champagne and bananas. Electronic dance music has become a circus. At this critical juncture, Daft Punk returns to the scene with a radically new vision of how electronic dance music should transform.

If Daft Punk’s new album has a central message, it’s the title of the first track: “Give Life Back to Music.” Daft Punk is urging us to realize that something valuable in music has been lost in this cha-

Daft Punk has exposed electronic dance music for the sham it has become. rade of lights and costumes. It’s no coincidence that Random Access Memories is a nod to computer memory and the increasing technological influence on music. Somewhere in the midst of all the downloading, remixing, and looping, we have forgotten where electronic dance music came from. The way Daft Punk sees things, we’ve become robots in the way we experience music.

This concept develops alongside the robot’s existential journey in Random Access Memories. The robot has forgotten its identity and where it came from. “I need to know now, / Please tell me who I am,” the robot voice sings on “Within.”

The climax of this development occurs at the heart of the album with the two middle songs: “Touch,” followed by “Get Lucky.” These are the only two songs on

the album where the singer’s voice is not modified to sound like a robot. For a moment on this journey, the robot is able to become human again. This rediscovery of its humanity begins in “Touch,” which is a ballad of existential questioning: “Sweet touch / You’ve given me too much to feel / Sweet touch / You’ve almost convinced me I’m real / I need something more / I need something more.” These lines raise the fundamental yet unanswerable question of the human condition: in a world where all we have is our physical interaction with the world, how can we know if any of what we experience is real or meaningful?

The response to this existential question, for Daft Punk, is the optimism of “Get Lucky.” “We’ve come too far to give up who we are,” Pharrell sings. “So let’s raise the bar and our cups to the stars.” Following the nihilism of “Touch,” the message of “Get Lucky” seems to be that even if the existential questions of life can never be answered, this fact doesn’t have to be paralyzing or depressing. By affirming life in the face of nihilistic existential questions, the robot is able to rediscover its humanity. No other DJ in the electronic music industry has come close to creating a music experience as emotionally meaningful as Daft Punk’s new album. Through this concept of a robot rediscovering its humanity, Daft Punk has exposed electronic dance music for the sham it has become: a plastic art, full of deceptive appearances and flashy aesthetics.

In this profound journey, Daft Punk is not just trying to return musicianship to dance music. In a fundamental way, Random Access Memories is a project of rediscovering our humanity and making music a meaningful experience that can help us affirm life in the face of hardship. To Daft Punk, electronic dance music can be more than party music— it can be one of the fundamental ways we celebrate and affirm our existence.

Daft Punk’s new album leaves the listener at a crossroads: we can remember this album as either a human, appreciating the totality and intricacies of the journey, or as a computer that chooses bits and pieces of their random access memory to be remixed at the next big music festival. O SEPTEMBER 23, 2013

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streamlined delivery our changing relationship with entertainment

anastasiya lobacheva

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Robert Collins

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t’s no surprise to anyone that streaming services are changing the way we consume music and television. With the ubiquity of personal devices, listening to any song or watching any TV show through streaming services is effortless.

People can spend more free time in different places watching TV or listening to music. If the advent of buying music online meant consuming more music, the advent of streaming services means we are now devouring it. This also applies to TV shows. Gone are the days when you would have to pay over $30 for a season of your favorite show, or worse yet, wait an entire week to watch an episode. The rise of Netflix and other such services has alleviated these nuisances and, in turn, created the phenomenon of binge-watching.

Streaming is thus changing our music and television habits in a simple way—we are listening to more music and watching more TV online. Americans are becoming increasingly comfortable with the idea of streaming a television show online instead of owning it or watching it as it airs.

According to a report by market research firm eMarketer, by next year, over half of Americans will be watching movies and television on the Internet. One third of Americans say they would consider getting rid of their television. A similar trend is occurring within the music industry.

For the first time in two reporting periods, digital song sales dropped 2.3 percent over the first half of 2013. Simultaneously, there was a 24 percent increase in total number of songs that were streamed. The tide is turning against owning a song or TV show in favor of having access to a plethora of content that can be streamed on multiple devices, such as televisions, computers, and phones. This simple difference in our consumption habits is changing both our relationship with music and television and the nature of the content that these services provide in a complicated way.

When we devote less time to making actual purchases in favor of having free access to media, the nature of the relationship we have with media inevitably changes. Instead of spending $10 on a single iTunes album, users can pay a $10 monthly fee to Spotify and stream an unlimited amount of music. This cheaper means of accessing music translates into spending less

time with a particular song or album in exchange for the ability to listen to more music. The act of choosing which album to download or what show to watch requires careful, time-consuming consideration– –with the advent of programs like Spotify, this occurs less frequently. The consequence of this ownership is an intimate relationship with music that comes with a song’s permanent existence in the memory of your computer’s hard drive. Listening to the music repeatedly and knowing it exists in a place that you consciously allotted for it creates a more personal connection with the music than when you simply click a button on Spotify.

The same principle applies to our relationship with television. The gap between weekly episodes allows for greater reflection and discussion on characterization and suspense about what happens next.

Conversely, after watching 10 episodes in one sitting, you are less likely to remember the intricacies of a single episode some time later. Through Netflix, users experience television in a long continuous moment that allows little time for reflection.

By next year, over half of Americans will be watching movies and television over the Internet.

Apart from changing our interaction with media, streaming services are also revolutionary in that they make it much easier for people to share what they are listening to or watching. Spotify has the options to “follow” friends in order to track what they are listening to or share music at the click of a button. Easily sharing playlists and seeing what friends are listening to refines musical tastes or builds musical variety. A subscription to Netflix allows you to watch a show as soon as you hear about it, facilitating a faster spread of interest than if you had to wait and remember to watch the show.

It is also much easier to find new music based on user preferences with streaming services. Spotify or other online radio

stations such as Pandora suggest music according to song or genre preferences, expanding your musical repertoire with minimal effort. Netflix also makes suggestions for new shows based on previously viewed material. The new aspect of these suggestions is that streaming services seem to know what consumers want even before they do. Algorithms and artificial intelligence technology have replaced the nuances of finding the perfect new song. It takes a lot less time to find something you might like through streaming services, but a program telling you that you should like a song or a show gives you a preconception of it before you even start to listen or watch it.

The way we are consuming music and television could also change the content of what we consume. A recent New York Times article questioned whether the measly royalties that streaming services like Spotify and Pandora pay to artists accrue to any meaningful sum over time. The royalties an artist receives for a 99 cent download is only about seven or nine cents, but a royalty per stream on a paid service is substantially less—about 0.5 or 0.7 cents. For free streaming services, royalties are up to 90 percent less than their paid tier. Only big artists who have millions or billions of plays would be able to gain anything from such services.

If royalties stayed the way they are now and streaming became the main source of music distribution, only the most popular would be able to make ground. Artistic integrity may have to be compromised for the sake of marketability.

With the legitimization of streaming services, old media have found a new niche by incorporating technology that cater to our personal preferences. So much so that these systems know what we want to watch even before we do. Platforms like Netflix or Spotify are structurally designed to encourage us to stay within our comfort zones and explore merely within genres we are accustomed to. While new features like social networking are flashy and fun, they can distract from expanding our cultural tastes. As our relationship to music and television evolves over time, it would be dangerous to ignore what these changes signify about our consumption of media. O SEPTEMBER 23, 2013

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ugly by douglas cavers

W

ell, school has started. Commence the late nights in Tisch, the bustle of extra-curriculars, and the hazy swoon of this morning’s latté mixed with last night’s tequila shots. Most of it is fun, but it’s certainly draining.

That’s why I like to take walks. What simpler way to escape the scramble of student life than putting one foot in front of the other for an hour or two?

Now, there are lots of beautiful walks in the area—the Middlesex Fells, the Mystic Lakes, and so on. But I’m not going to write about them. You probably already know them, and if you don’t, Google can tell you more than I can.

I’d rather share with you three of the outstanding ‘ugly’ walks I’ve taken through our cityscape.

Why these ‘ugly’ walks? Because you can fi nd unexpected treasures when you leave the beaten path. We live in this city, so let us explore all of its urban sprawl. Leave behind for a while Boston’s leafy parks and tidy suburbs; instead, take one of these ‘ugly’ walks through concrete and rubble.

ALISON GRAHAM

tufts to sullivan square Few Tufts students ever take Broadway farther east than Soundbites. How could we pass up those pancakes? But once you clean the syrup from your face, an hour’s walk east will take you through some of Somerville’s best ugliness, culminating in Sullivan Square.

A few minutes from Ball Square, you’ll find Magoun Square: a cluster of little shops with tacky awnings. Several pizzerias and Chinese joints buzz with the hiss of grills. Inside a melange of Portuguese, Spanish, Creole, and Boston accents floats in the air.

There are even some bars, if you’d prefer to walk a little wobbly.

Leaving Magoun and entering Winter Hill, Broadway passes by storefronts with chipped paint and old brick. The sidewalk gradually decays and turns to dirt, apparently for some construction that’s not really happening.

Along the way, you’ll stumble on a sign reading Mercearia Brasileira. Then another. Then another. These small Brazilian and Latin American markets dot Broadway for quite a stretch.

Add to that a few rather tasty hole-in-the-walls. Get the soup at Mamma Lisa’s near Temple Street, or some Ethiopian food at Fasika.

Finally, Broadway ends in the concrete chaos of Sullivan Square. Go to the T station. Directly above, on massive grey pillars, I-93 throbs with traffic. Behind, the T rails sing and screech with passing trains. Before you is a huge rotary, a whirlpool of jostling cars. Over all towers a power plant, its chimneys bellowing white smoke. And farther off, the Boston skyline. It is arresting, the bigness and busyness of the place.

ALISON GRAHAM

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ALISON GRAHAM

SEPTEMBER 23, 2013

FF RES O TUPU AAM CFE

walks

tufts to mystic river reservation

ALISON GRAHAM

Here’s a forty-minute walk from Tufts, to the Mystic River Reservation, a lovely but little known riverside park. It’s hidden in a maze of run-down strips and busy thoroughfares, but worth the trip.

From Tufts, start going south down Boston Ave. After gazing on the dingy windows of a tall warehouse, hang a left on Harvard St and pass under the railroad bridge.

Continue through the residential blocks of Medford; when you hit Main St, check out Oasis for some Brazilian barbeque.

Keep going down Harvard until you reach Mystic Ave. Take in the odd beauty of its ramshackle auto-shops. Savor its visual feast of billboards and LED placards, the windmill spinning in the distance. Then cross the road.

Keep going straight on the Mystic Valley Parkway into the shade of a highway overpass.

You’ll reach a bridge over the Mystic River. On it, the juxtaposition of the winding, lily-padded waters with the traffic’s furious roar is strangely pleasing. Take it in for a bit.

On the other side, there is the Meadow Glen Mall. It’s a funky place, where old men sit in the tacky food court and crack jokes. Local tweens roam the shops on nervous first dates. Pop in if you’d like; otherwise keep right on the Mystic Valley Parkway.

You’ll see some paths dart off the sidewalk into a quiet wall of trees. This is the Mystic River Reservation. Go in and lie on its wide fields of lush grass, contemplate the swaying willows, the reedy riverbanks and meandering ways.

You’ll be surprised all that ugly urban sprawl could surround such a pretty park.

south station to castle island This one’s a trek from Tufts, but the hour walk features some great ugliness snuggled between exciting downtown Boston and beautiful Castle Island (which is not a real island).

Take the T down to South Station. Then go north on Atlantic Ave until you hit Seaport Blvd and hang right. Notice the beautiful rust of the old bridge nearby, and look over your shoulder at the perfect view of Boston’s skyscrapers.

You’ll notice Seaport Blvd is not so ugly. There’s the Institute of Contemporary Art and some great restaurants and bars overlooking the harbor. As you go down Seaport, you get deeper and deeper into the marine park. Great warehouses populate this commercial complex. Walk by the Boston Design Center, a warehouse that rises eight stories over the water. Walk to Summer St, and pass over the man-made inlet that serves as a cruise ship terminal. Once you’ve crossed over, go east on 1st St. On 1st St, you’ll be right next to a massive maritime shipping yard, with stacks upon stacks of huge freight containers from all over the world. I would certainly not suggest you sneak in and wander about these great metallic mountains; that would be illegal. Of course I would never do anything illegal.

Continue along 1st St until you hit Castle Island Park (not really an island). It’s a beautiful fort from Boston’s bygone years transformed into a park. It offers a great view of the mouth of

DOUGLAS CAVERS

Boston harbor and the islands beyond. Sit there a bit and watch the ferries go by.

There is no public transport from Castle Island, so you’ll have to walk back where you came from and jump on a bus.

Those are just three of this city’s ‘ugly’ walks. There are many more; veer from the well-worn path yourself, and see what other hidden beauty you can find.

SEPTEMBER 23, 2013

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Police Blotter

By Aaron Langerman and Moira Lavelle

FRESHMAN INVASION September 1, 12:50 am, Fairmount St. In a confusing set of events, Medford police broke up a party with approximately 150 people. Four hours later, police returned to the same street to find over 300 different people partying at a different house. It was unclear why so many people were crowded on one street until we remembered: it was freshman orientation week. Until the frats open up, beware. No street is safe from the wake of the freshman.

RAVING TOO HARD Monday, September 2, 1:30 am, Hill Hall Residents reported a student yelling “random things” in his room. The unintelligible yeller was unable to open the door for TUPD because he was too busy thrashing around the room. TUPD officers opened up the door, to find the distressed student admitting to taking the drug ‘molly,’ bringing a whole new meaning to the phrase, “Pop a molly, I’m sweating.” He was transported to the hospital for further evaluation.

SMOKING SOME BEERS Sunday, September 8, 4:50 pm, Curtis Street Police received a call about someone lying on the sidewalk completely by himself outside of a Curtis St. residence. Friends told officers he consumed “10 shots of alcohol and smoked some marijuana.” At that point, what’s the difference between the sidewalk and his bed? A trip to Somerville hospital, that’s what.

SEPTEMBER 23, 2013

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PHOTO BY: ALISON GRAHAM SEPTEMBER 23, 2013 TUFTS OBSERVER 31

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