Ashlie Doucette, Lucy Belknap, & Sofi a Valdebenito
4 • LETTER FROM THE CREATIVE DIRECTORS
Ahmed Fouad & Ruby Ofer
5 • FEATURE
Observing 130 Years
Ashlie Doucette
9 CREATIVE INSET
Leila Toubia
10 • VOICES
How Small the WorldTruly Is Taarini Gupta
12 • NEWS
Gaza in the Hands of A Realtor:
Trump’s Unprecedented Proposal to Take Ownership of the Gaza Strip
Atessa Kent
15 • POETRY AND PROSE
The Carousel
Abilene Adelmen
16 • ARTS & CULTURE
How the Artist Grows Today
Nina Nehra
18 • CAMPUS Code of Ethics:
Tufts Eforts to Contribute to a Responsible AI Future Caroline Lloyd-Jones
20 • POETRY AND PROSE
Moving to the Music
Mallika Sinha
22 • OPINION
Neither Here Nor There:
The Dual Isolation of Queer International Students
Selin Ruso
24 • ARTS & CULTURE
Doom Scrolling and TikTok Brain: How the Attention Economy Consumed Us
Mansie Bennett
26 • VOICES
It’s Friday and I Will Never Be a Woman
Sadie Schmitz
28 CREATIVE INSET
29 • CROSSWORD
Time For a Nap Kinderman
inception inception
Editor-in-Chief
Ashlie Doucette
Editor Emeritus
Veronica Habashy
Managing Editors
Lucy Belknap
Sofia Valdebenito
Creative Directors
Ahmed Fouad
Ruby Ofer
Feature Editors
Anna Farrell
Caroline Lloyd-Jones
News Editor
Amon Gray
Kazi Begum
Mansie Bennett
Danielle Campbell
Elizabeth Chin
Ishana Dasgupta
Eylul Derin
Rachel Dori
Samara Haynes
Jason Lee
Nina Nehra
Sadie Schmitz
Addy Samway
Selin Ruso
Lecia Sun
Eden Weissman
Designers
Nina Zimmerman
Staf Artists
Ahmad Abdul-Basser
Amanda Chen
Cherry Chen
Jaylin Cho
Erin Gobry
Ruby Marlow
Phoebe McMahon
Tanisha Sahni
Khrystyna Saiko
Elsa Schutt
Maria Sokolowski
Yayla Tur
Yuhan Wang
Felix Yu
i n c e p t i o n
Arts & Culture Editors
Siena Cohen
Henry Estes
Opinion Editors
Oyinkansola Akin-Olugbade
Ela Nalbantoglu
Campus Editors
Ione McKerley-Geier
Wellesley Papagni
Poetry and Prose Editors
Demilade Ajibola
Ivi Fung
Voices Editors
Lucie Babcock
Devon Chang
Art Directors
Isabel Mahoney
Leila Toubia
inception
Sophia Chen
Meg Duncan
Erin Gobry
Dana Jeong
Rachel Li
Tanisha Sahni
Unmani Tewari
Lead Copy Editors
Andrea Li
Amena Weifenbach
Copy Editors
Abilene Adelman
Emilia Ferreira
Laxmi McCulloh
Lisa Penfield
Maria Sokolowski
Claire Stromseth
Isabella Tepper
Meera Trujillo
Publicity Director
Emilia Ferreira
Website Managers
Andie Cabochan
Clara Davis
Dylan Perkins
Treasurer
Andrea Li
Crossword Editor
Elanor Kinderman
At frst, there was nothing. And then, there was a spark. Tere was the arrival of a thought. Tere was the emergence of the sun above the horizon, the frst wear of a new pair of boots. Tere was the uncapping of a pen, and the swearing of an oath. A bolt of lightning—zap!—and the opening of a fresh jar of jam. And then, time rinsed the novelty away.
letters
fromthe editors
Dear Reader,
I think it is the efect of many incredible English teachers that, as I write, I feel compelled to imagine the people who will eventually receive it. I refer to them (with endearment) as my imagined readers. Writing this note, while it may reach various audiences, there is one that I feel particularly attuned to—future generations of Observers
For context, I have spent much of the past weeks skimming through old issues of Observers/Tufs Weeklys, reading editorials, and, from more recent years, “Letters from the Editors.” While this digging into the archives was primarily intended as research for an article commemorating the Observer’s 130th anniversary (see pg. 5), it also became part of a personal project of understanding what these past 130 years have looked like.
Te most shocking thing I uncovered in this process (aside from the fact that people used to rely on the Observer to learn about sports), is that aspects of the publication that I perceived as integral to the Observer’s identity—designating a specifc theme to each issue, blending journalistic and creative writing, applying a Tufs-focused lens to articles—are actually relatively recent additions.
So, future Observer, if you’ve found yourself here (in the archives) I hope you are surprised to see what we used to look like. I hope that your favorite parts of the magazine have yet to be created. We haven’t survived for 130 years without hitting a few iden tity crises, and I doubt we’ll make it another 130 years without a couple more.
We love you and we believe in you, Ashlie and Observers everywhere
Dear reader,
When the two of us frst met on the stage of the Crane Room during the Spring 2023 Observer GIM, we were both in the midst of stepping into our frst leadership roles on the . As Lead Copy Editor and Publicity Director, we were anxiously preparing to pitch our sections to interested students, encouraging people to join teams we had yet to adjust to running. What we had not yet learned was that being on the Observer is about jumping into the deep end—and that we would fnd ourselves together in the deepest end as managing editors two years later.
We could not be more excited and honored to take on this role and play our biggest role yet in the Observer’s mission; however, we fnd it important to acknowledge the moment in which we’ve stepped into this position. More than a moment to pause and celebrate, we have been handed an opportunity to utilize our newfound platform to forge ahead with our mission.
Already in the frst few weeks of President Trump’s second term, colleges like Tufs have begun to feel the efects. Trump has signed executive orders restricting university research funding and DEI policies. He has targeted specifc communities on college campuses by opening schools up to immigration raids and barring transgender students from women’s sports in the NCAA. And this is to say nothing of the impact felt by students whose own communities at home are directly afected by other policies.
As you’ll read about in Ashlie’s piece on 130 years of Observer history, afer Trump’s election in 2016, an entire issue was dedicated to documenting the reactions of Tufs students. Tese reactions were full of outrage and shock, but they were also full of energy and motivation.
We recognize that this time around, while this passion remains, it is buried under layers of exhaustion and fatigue. However, we can promise that we on the Observer will continue to pour our energy into responding to the current moment in the best way we know how: by recording, preserving, and bringing awareness to every crucial event that afects the nation and the Tufs community. We will continue to stay true to our mission, in telling stories ofen untold, uplifing marginalized voices, and holding institutions accountable. In return, we hope that our readers will continue to do the same—to fuel their own energy into how they choose to respond.
love, & Sofa
Dear reader,
We’re thrilled to share the frst issue of spring 2025.
As frst-time creative directors, we are excited to lead the design team and share a world of creativity and inspiration with you all. We aim to uphold the same standards of precision and innovation that the Ob server has always strived towards. We are proud to say that our team’s designs are made with the utmost care and dedication.
Here’s to another 130 years of the O!
Love, Ruby and Ahmed
letters from the editors
Genre Hopping
shift in physical form would allow for additional, seemingly necessary shifts in the style, outreach, and mission.
Regarding the build-up to the decision, Dr. Arjune Rama (A’03)—one of the managing editors who oversaw the change—said, “We were really struggling with an identity as a publication on campus.” The Observer was seeking a new niche for itself amongst changes in both the supply and demand for Tufts student journalism. “We were confronting the beginning of people wanting and getting good news online for the first time at that time, and the [Tufts] Daily was able to be more timely and quick,” Dr. Rama explained.
After several weeks of continuing to publish on a weekly schedule post-9/11, it became clear to Observer staff that the existing system was no longer sustainable. “The paper almost folded. That was definitely suggested by people, that maybe it’s just time to stop,” said Vatz. “We just didn’t have the staff to run a newspaper.” Thus, the decision to switch form came in part “out of desperation. We just couldn’t keep it going, so we had to do something else. And changing it to a magazine bought us time because we only came out every two weeks, which felt monumental.”
In addition to slowing down the timeline of production, the change served as a critical opportunity to sharpen and even redefine the identity of the Observer. “I remember the idea was, well, what if we could create something that had our trademark depth, but was distinct and also beautiful?” said Dr. Rama. Vatz expanded on the vision for the content that would be published in the magazine. “We thought, you know what, what we really want to do is focus on more in-depth, thoughtful pieces, and have more room for slow news, you know, investigative journalism,” she said.
While the shift from newspaper to magazine is a more recent and extreme instance, it is one of many “monumental” changes made over the course of the publication’s 130 years. The Observer is commonly referred to as Tufts’ oldest living publication, with its first issue being published in the fall of 1895. Yet, early issues of the Observer—then called the Tufts Weekly—have almost nothing in common, stylistically and in terms of content, with the publication today.
A distinct feature of the present-day Observer is its synthesis of different genres of writing; in flipping through the pages of an Observer issue, the reader moves between poetry, lo cal reporting, personal narrative, and artistic and cultural analysis. But, ironically, the founding of the Tufts Weekly was grounded in a desire to separate journalistic writing from other genres.
In the Observer/Tufts Weekly’s first issue, published on October 8, 1895, an editorial piece titled “The New Departure” describes, “The attempt to combine a news journal and literary magazine has been for some time manifestly unsatisfactory for both editors and readers.” Here, “the attempt” refers to the Tuftstonian, Tufts’ sole student publication prior to the inception of the Tufts Weekly. The article continues, “To obviate these natural difficulties, a separation of the two departments seemed desirable and practicable… The Tufts Weekly will be made distinctively a news paper.”
24, 2025
The vision to “distinctively” publish news-based content, of course, does not continue today. The Observer sporadically published creative writing from its establishment until the fall of 2008, when it was given a more permanent place through the implementation of the “Poetry and Prose” section. This change followed a successful creative writing contest, which then led to the magazine publishing its first “Literary Issue”—now a semesterly occurrence—in the spring of 2008.
In the issue’s “Editor’s Note,” Art Di rector and “Poetry and Prose” Editor Nat alie Polito (A’10) Issue’ serves as emblem of the new creative writing has
taken in the magazine. It also marks the evolution of the magazine into a publication of increasing diversity and substance.”
Polito concludes the note, “Some may call it a non sequitur to this publication’s history, but we see it as nothing more than a necessary complement to the legacy and future of the magazine.”
Death to “Tufts’ Sports Source Since 1895”
Even within the Observer’s newsbased sections, the type of content being published has undergone many transitions. Throughout its existence as a newspaper, the Observer frequently dedicated multiple pages to its sports section, “Jumbo Sports.” In the fall of 1993, this section even adopted the byline “Tufts’ Sports Source Since 1895.”
When asked about the sports section, Dr. Rama—also the Observer’s last sports editor—laughed and reflected, “I probably contributed to the demise of the sports section… The reason I took on sports was because there was nobody. There were very few sports writers at the time because the Daily’s sports section was growing and growing and absorbing all the really good sports writers on campus.”
He went on to explain that, despite his lack of interest in sports, he frequently had to cover the topic while also trying to bring in new writers who were just as unfamiliar with Tufts athletics. “Our sports department was struggling because we didn’t have someone to really champion it. So when we made the change to the magazine, that [section] made the most sense to cut.” The Observer has not consistently reported on sports since its transition to magazine form.
Making Time Capsules
Changes in the defined sections of the magazine have been supplemented by shifts in the focus of articles as well as the overall creative vision. On September 22, 2014, the Observer released its first themed issue, “Return,” which is noted subtly on the cover’s bottom-right corner.
Aaron Langerman (A’15), the editorin-chief that semester, explained that— without a theme directing previous issues—it was difficult to cultivate a sense of cohesion between articles. “You flip through the magazine, and it feels like…
12 cooks in the kitchen. Every page is to tally different.” He continued, “And so my English brain, of course, was like: It’s so obvious. We need a central, cohesive theme, and that would help to direct us a lot.”
That semester also marked the formation of the role of Cre ative Director, who over sees the layout of the magazine in relation to the issue’s theme. Langer man described the process of deciding on a theme as a collabo ration between the editor-in-chief, creative director, and staff in other roles: “Sometimes it started abstract and went concrete, sometimes it started concrete went abstract, but it was always kind of a conversation with everybody.”
As each issue takes on a new theme, the magazine is able to adjust its creative vision to reflect the cultural atmosphere at the time of publishing. For example, in response to Trump’s initial election as president of the United States, the Observer published the “Post-Election Issue” on November 19, 2016, which was made up entirely of student responses to the prompt, “How are you processing the results of the presidential election?”
Carly Olson (A’17), the editor-in-chief when this issue was published, said that she was at the Campus Center when the election was officially called, and the tense and disillusioned environment amongst students made her wonder if the moment could be captured in writing.
Olson explained, “It was just such a
confusing, all-consuming time on campus, and I felt like we could do something to make a time capsule of sorts.” In this way, the theme acted as—and continues to act as—an access point to the experience of Tufts students immediately following the
2016 election. Resonant with her presentday reflections, Olson’s note in the “Letters From the Editors” section of the “PostElection Issue” concluded, “Leaf through this issue at your leisure, save it for a rainy day, throw it in a time capsule—this is Tufts looks like today.”
New Legacies
While Olson maintained her decision to publish a different kind of Observer issue post-election, she remembered receiving pushback from Obalumni. She explained, “One of [the emails] I remember was like, ‘This is an important time. Don’t lean into just: How are we feeling and doing? Report and act. This is not a time to indulge yourself.’” At the time, she defended the decision in the “Letters From the Editors” section. “Though I agree with the sentiments (and agree with the value of journalism)… as a student publication, we are in a unique position… to capture how our campus is feeling in a way that is deeply personal.”
However, in response to longerterm, structural changes to the er, as opposed to the direction of a specific issue, Vatz likewise cited negative feed back to the transition to maga zine form: “There were emails flying around among alumni who were not happy. Like the editors from the 80s and early 90s—they had their own email list—and they were like, what’s happening to the Observer emails were so hurtful at the time, because I was like, ‘Don’t you see what’s happening? Like, we can’t do this anymore. And I’m sorry that I’m changing your legacy, but [the
A brief glance at an issue of the Observer/ Tufts Weekly from a century ago, a decade ago, or even a semester ago proves that its 130 years in existence as a Tufts student publication is largely categorized by a series of gradual and major changes. For Tufts and Observer alumni, the Observer of
the past no longer reflects the publication of the present.
As the Observer has evolved, its extensive history has made it challenging to strike a balance between preserving its legacy and making changes that feel necessary. Dr. Rama described how the Observer continued to follow the blueprint it had made for itself through the end of its period as a newspaper, even when that was no longer working: “We were clinging so hard to the fact that we were the newspaper of record, but that stopped meaning anything. It just felt like a historical relic.”
Yet, rather than serving as something to “cling” on to, these 130 years of history are equally capable of serving as reassurance that regardless of the changes or transitions the Observer undergoes, its legacy as a contemporary reflection of the Tufts community endures.
In the “New Departure” from 1895, the Tufts Weekly envisioned its contingent role as a campus publication: “With this number we begin the work of Tufts’ first weekly. We realize the uncertainty of our position, the importance of the work, and the many difficulties attending it; but, believing that such a sheet is needed in our college, we step forth boldly…”
ART BY LEILA TOUBIA
Before coming to college, I had never cried in front of anyone besides my parents. No matter how persistent the ache resting in the bottom of my throat was, or how many tears welled up behind my eyes, the presence of a stranger always repressed such a release.
Like every night, I found myself sitting with my “since-pre-o-week” friend group on the 4th floor of the Houston Hall common room, which had become like my new living room. After many nights of groupstudy sessions and idle conversations, it was a place that felt safe and smelt like cozy sleepytime tea, coated with lingering laughter from Friday nights out.
My friends shared their excitement for their upcoming winter break plans to go home. They were excited to get to be kids with their friends again—frozen in a permanent yet infinite state of “senior year.”
Listening to these grand plans, I tried my best to be happy for them, but I was distracted, eagerly awaiting a phone call that would confirm whether I would also be able to go home and hang out with my people. I missed my friends terribly, all of whom I hadn’t seen since moving from Singapore to Dubai after graduating high
ByTaariniGupta
school in June. As soon as my mom called me back, I would finally be able to book winter break tickets back to Singapore. A little red dot—not even visible on a globe—that was my whole world. The citystate was where I spent the past 18 years of my life, and now, I could never even visit without a tourist visa.
After moving to Dubai, my status as a “permanent resident” of Singapore was erased on paper. Just like that, as if I had never stepped foot on the island. After picking up her call, I was only met with another obstacle.
“The tickets are too expensive,” my mom passively informed me through the phone, her words a sting of disappointment.
This couldn’t be happening. Not after all the late nights I’d spent daydreaming about the upcoming memories I would make back on familiar grounds. I so desperately wished to relive our last few months together, running freely with my friends as we club-hopped and roamed the nighttime streets in the city I’d always felt safest in. Not after I had gripped onto this plan as an anchor to get through each week when everything else happening felt like a fever dream.
How Small the World Truly Is
“But I just want to go back home! To my home.” I could tell that this idea of “home” being separate from where my family now resided bothered her.
“Home is where your family is,” she said curtly, ending the conversation. But that wasn’t the truth.
Still sitting among the group, I forced myself to swallow this sad yet fated reality, trying harder to repress my tears. I wasn’t going to cry in front of these brilliant people I’d just met. What would they think of me? I simply wouldn’t be able to.
Questions began to fog my already disoriented mind. Was I being ungrateful?
While I wouldn’t be returning back to my island abode of perfectly humid Sentosa summer days, Singlish accents, and the cheapest Michelin star food for another eight months, I had the opportunity to call Dubai my new home—this futuristic city that unfortunately bored the life out of me.
In the peak 120ºF of summer, I spent each day perpetually covered in a layer of sweat, with no friends to hang out with but my little sister (love her to bits though!).
I knew I owed a lot to my parents, though, who permanently emigrated out of New Delhi in hopes of opportunities in Singapore when I was just 3-months-old. The guilt of not appreciating what I had, a unique life, full of such rich, international experiences, would forever be at war with the stability of being from the singular, known land I craved.
But for now, I was here: in the quiet and comparatively sleepy town of Medford, Massachusetts. It was hard enough being homesick as an international student in her first semester. I was simply tired. Tired of being a foreigner everywhere I went, no matter how long I stayed and was able to “settle”; every street sign and new piece of lingo would forever be unfamiliar.
“Singapore and Dubai” whenever people asked me where I was from. Really, I felt like I was a lost NRI (non-resident Indian) with an International American accent who didn’t even know who she belonged to.
At this point, tears were on the brink of breaking through the layers of barriers I imposed upon them. They began dripping from my eyes, and then soon, streaming violently down my face.
For the first time, I let them, even if I could feel everyone watching me. Because at that moment, it no longer mattered who was there. I let it take over me entirely—the feeling of belonging nowhere and everywhere at once weighed over me until I could feel myself about to break the teal Houston common room chair I was sitting on.
home doesn’t conjure up anything specific. The word will always remain a nounturned-adjective—fragments of people, moments, and streets from different continents that converge a mental city map in my head—turn left from Dubai Marina and you reach the secret hideout, behind the bushes of red ixoras in my old condo that we used to drink nectar directly from when I was six-years-old. I float around this broken city in a dream-like state, traversing across geographic, cultural, and time-based borders.
Sobbing like the idiot I felt like, I tried to validate these sudden tears and explain my struggles to people I just met when I barely understood why it was affecting me so much in the first place. Was it even that deep? Why couldn’t I just believe and agree with my mom? After all, I’d be seeing my family very soon, in just a few months. Why couldn’t that be enough?
I’m still unsure about the answer. Maybe I get too emotionally attached to everything—from the same seat on the bus I sat on all four years of high school, to the sound of the annoying yellow birds that used to wake me up every weekend at 7 a.m. I missed everything and everyone. Yet, I wasn’t ready to acknowledge this about myself or accept the frequent tears that would inevitably erupt every so often as a result.
“Is everything alright?” my friend asked, concerned.
No Everything was not alright.
“I don’t have a home.”
How had this realization just dawned upon me? I could feel everything—homesickness, jealousy, and panic, all at once. I felt like an imposter, floating around on this planet having the audacity to answer
The beauty of this fragmented home is that each time I move somewhere, the city grows to be more chaotically wonderful. Each new dish that I enjoy, from Laksa to Falafel, gets added to my lengthy international recipe book that I have the power to write and one day share with my family, savored for generations to come.
After spending a rejuvenating three weeks over winter break, being a tourist in my own “new home,” I can now say that I am getting better at accepting the fact that home can exist in multitudes. It just means I have more memories to look back on and hold close to my identity and heart.
More Facetime calls with the people I love from across the ocean.
More countries and time zones to save on my weather and clock apps.
More world cuisines that can soothe me better than words ever could.
More favourite coffee shops, from Starbucks, to Arabica, to Ya Kun Kaya Toast.
More culture clubs I can find my own space on campus, from SIMSA to TASA.
To people who call home a single place, being in college is like temporary displacement. Longing for a return is bandaged by a simple solution—a train, flight, or car ride back to a confirmed destination: home.
Home: the perfect image of childhood bedrooms and neighborhood streets, packaged neatly in nostalgic smells and tastes of resolute family recipes, passed down from generation to generation.
But for me, moving to college signified a permanent displacement. In my head,
Only an international student knows how small the world truly is—and yet, at the same time, how wonderfully rare it is to be living as a human being, in this time, on this planet we all get to call home.
Gaza in the Hands of A Realtor:
Trump’s Unprecedented Proposal to Take Ownership of the Gaza Strip
By Atessa Kent
“That’s the clash that we’re seeing: a real estate developer dismissing human life, using his ally to fulfill this idea, and in front of him are defenseless civilians who want nothing but to live and die on the land.”
During a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on February 4, 2025, President Trump stated that the US would permanently own Gaza. Amid ongoing ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas, Netanyahu stood beside Trump at the White House, praising his proposition to redevelop the war-torn enclave into a “Riviera of the Middle East.” With no written plan, the President’s exact ambitions are ambiguous. The proposal is unprecedented in terms of prior US involvement in Gaza and has sparked international condemnation as well as skepticism toward its true intent.
Trump framed Gaza’s reconstruction as Phase 3 of the ceasefire deal; Phase 1 focused on the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, and Phase 2 aimed at ending the war with Hamas. Trump dismissed what Gazans have faced in the past 15 months of war, saying, “It’s been an unlucky place for a long time. Being in [the Gaza strip’s] presence just has not been good and it should not go through a process of rebuilding and occupation by the same people.” Trump remarked that Gaza would be made an “international, unbelievable place” and stated on X that Gazans would settle into safer regions in the Middle East. However, White House Press Secretary Karoline Levitt later contradicted this statement, insinuating that any relocation of Palestinians would only be temporary while the territory is redeveloped. Regarding the deployment of troops, she added, “He has not committed to that. He also has made it clear that American taxpayers will not be funding this effort.” Trump’s statements have elicited responses questioning his motivations.
Tufts Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History, Khaled Fahmy, offered an explanation for Trump’s approach. “He cannot fathom, he cannot imagine, he cannot understand why people are connected [to the land],” he said. “Because he is a real estate developer, he thinks about physical plots in monetary terms… and that’s the clash that we’re seeing: a real estate developer dismissing human life, using his ally to fulfill this idea, and in front of him are
defenseless civilians who want nothing but to live and die on the land.”
In addition to Netanyahu, many Israeli officials have been supportive of Trump’s remarks. Former Israeli Minister for National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir urged the Prime Minister to immediately adopt Trump’s proposed policy, stating that “encouraging” Gazans to migrate is the only correct strategy after the war. Minister of Defense Israel Kats promised a plan to allow Gazans to leave voluntarily during this process.
The US has historically advocated a two-state solution, supporting a return to the borders from before the Six-Day War in 1967, with a Palestinian state consisting of Gaza, the West Bank, and parts of East Jerusalem. Former President Biden sought to establish diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel in exchange for a US-Saudi defense pact, which included conditional US recognition of a Palestinian state.
In the wake of the October 7, 2023 attacks, Biden reaffirmed support for Israel and provided comprehensive military and diplomatic support as the Hamas-Israel war progressed. Despite characterizing Israel’s bombing campaign as “over the top”, he continued to provide a steady stream of weaponry while US officials asserted they would not draw any “red lines” in reference to Israel’s actions in Gaza. However, in early April 2024, Biden’s administration threatened to restrict US military funding toward Israel if their conduct did not change. This only manifested in a brief increase in Israel’s aid to Gaza. A month into the war, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared that post-war Gaza should be governed by a “revitalized” Palestinian Authority, with no forcible displacement and no Israeli occupation.
Trump’s approach is a sharp departure from Biden’s cautious diplomacy. Moreover, Trump has abandoned all precedents in USforeign policy. Under the first term of the Trump administration, the US became the first major power to recognize Israel’s expanded borders created after 1967. Malik Mufti, a professor of political science
specializing in the Middle East, explained, “For over 50 years… the solution to the problem rest[ed] on a return to the pre1967 borders, along with some mutually agreed upon adjustments… Now this proposal runs very much contrary to that because he’s talking about forcefully evicting two million people, right? And, strangely, not even giving it to Israel, but taking it over for the United States itself.”
Trump insists the new radical approach is necessary. “You have to learn from history. History is, you just can’t let it keep repeating itself. We have an opportunity to do something that could be phenomenal.” Netanyahu agreed, calling his vision “revolutionary” and arguing it presents a superior and more “creative” alternative to any plan involving the Palestine Liberation Organization or PA governing Gaza.
Despite Trump’s insistence, his proposal has been condemned internationally. Trump has repeatedly urged Egypt and Jordan to take in Palestinian refugees, threatening to withdraw aid if they did not oblige. Fahmy explained that while the Egyptian government has expressed willingness to contribute to rebuilding Gaza, it has fiercely opposed any resettling of the Palestinian population and has threatened to void the 1978 EgyptIsrael Peace Treaty. Fahmy clarified how the proposal may impact stability in the region. “What is at stake now is the peace treaty with Israel. What the Egyptians are saying is, if you push, there would be a price that Israel and the United States will pay, if Egypt relinquishes or abrogates the peace treaty. This is a cardinal principle of US policy in the region.”
Saudi Arabia called for the recognition of a Palestinian state in exchange for neutrality with Israel, and Saudi Prince Turki Al Faisal called Trump’s idea a “mad ethnic cleansing plan.” Within Palestine, multiple factions—including Hamas, the PLO, the PA, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad—have expressed outrage towards Trump’s position. Senior Hamas official Izzat al Risheq stated that Trump’s plans “reflect confusion and deep ignorance about Palestine”
and warned that they could “ignit[e] the region.” US allies, including France, the UK, Germany, and Australia, have reiterated their support for Palestinian statehood, and foreign ministers of France and Germany have deemed the forced relocation of Palestinians a violation of international law. The UN Human Rights Office and Human Rights Watch have labeled Trump’s proposal as a “crime against humanity.”
“The US involvement in Gaza was never direct. No previous US administration has ever said that we are okay with Israel moving people,” Professor Fahmy said. “They might have turned a blind eye, they might have been silent, but they’ve never actually gone to say what Trump has said… This is illegal. You cannot do this. People get moved during war, to seek shelter, to seek their own safety. But this cannot be an objective that is acted upon by the belligerent.”
Beyond widespread condemnation, Trump’s proposal has been met with skepticism regarding its feasibility. The scale of destruction in Gaza is vast: Over 92 percent of main roads, over 84 percent of health facilities, and nearly 70 percent of water and sanitation plants have been damaged, according to the UN In September 2024, a UN report projected that after a ceasefire, it would take 350 years just for Gaza to restore its 2022 GDP level. While Trump claimed his plan could be implemented in five years, his own envoy estimated it would take at least 10–15. Furthermore, extensive
military resources would likely be required to forcibly relocate Palestinians and eliminate Hamas, considering neither have indicated any willingness to leave. Professor Fahmy highlighted Palestinians’ devotion, having noted, “What is amazing in all of this saga is the resilience and the resistance of the Palestinian people. Their commitment is not to a state. Their commitment is to the land. The whole idea of a Palestinian state, in my mind, is secondary as far as Palestinians are concerned. The state is a means to an end, but the main end is the land. This is an honorable position, and if we see it anywhere in the world, we would stand in awe and in respect in front of it.”
Many question if Trump is serious or if this is yet another unfeasible idea he has set float since his inauguration, such as buying Greenland from Denmark. Since coming into office for the second time, the President has signed over 60 executive orders, contributing to what former White House Chief strategist Steve Bannon calls “muzzle velocity”: an attempt to overwhelm the media with a stream of radical proposals in order to prevent any coherent opposition from forming. Professor Mufti said, “Some people say he’s quite serious as a real estate developer. Others suggest that maybe he’s just trying to prod the two sides to try to reach a settlement faster, and so he’s thrown out this very provocative idea as a way of motivating and moving people along. Honestly, I don’t know which it is.”
Despite these doubts, experts warn Trump’s rhetoric could still have serious consequences. On CNN, President of the US Middle East Project Daniel Levy argued his proposal is “not serious, but that doesn’t mean it’s not dangerous.” He explained that regardless of Trump’s intentions, extreme Zionists in Israel and farright government officials could use his proposal as an indication that a two-state solution is off the table. Professor Mufti agreed, calling the President’s statements “alarming” because they could fan flames for eliminating Palestinian territory altogether. “This is a decision that the Israeli community is going to have to make itself,” Mufti said. “President Trump seems to be giving a green light to the most radical elements in Israel. Are they really going to go down this road of ethnic cleansing, or are they going to choose some kind of path towards mutual coexistence?”
eCarouse l
hT
Mom
I think you forgot to tell me that I am alone now and that with all the strangers the city isn’t safe and my room, both cold and unfamiliar, is dangerous so I wonder where I am supposed to go now
I guess I’ll go into the city anyway because there are lights there, January is a dark month, and I never quite grew out of my fear of the dark in the city
I find a carousel and it reminds me of being young, singing Joni Mitchell in the car, before passing time meant something and I’m afraid that maybe after all that’s happened even my memories are no longer a safe place to be now perhaps after all of the walking round, and round, and round on dirty, crowded city streets even the good things will always hurt but don’t worry, it’s okay because I have the carousel and I am working on it all and it is almost February
DESIGN BY UNMANI TEWARI, ART BY FELIX YU By
How the Artist Grows Today
By Nina Nehra
In the immortal words of Karl Marx, “All that is solid melts into air.” Although he would be rolling in his grave at the idea of brain rot humor, his words seem strikingly relevant in describing today’s digitized art and media landscape. Song releases, local shows, and gallery openings now exist almost exclusively between computer servers and radio signals.
What does it mean for an artist to share their work with the public in an increasingly digital world? Physical mediums for promotion, like galleries, flyers, and art fairs, have vanished in lieu of virtual methods, leaving artists to learn how to navigate this new advertising landscape. What used to be spread through word of mouth or hastily drawn flyers on lampposts is now entirely dependent on digital algorithms, follower count, engagement, and views. The primary way to discover a budding ceramicist or indie band is through scrolling on personalized algorithms and feeds and determining that the content being produced is eye-catching enough to merit a follow or like.
Sophomore Maya Godard, vocalist and guitarist of the Tufts-based band Call From Earth, discussed the networking benefits of having an online presence. “Social media is big for promotion. College students are just always on social media,” she said. “It’s through social media that we’ve been asked to do a few different things… we got asked [to play at an event] by this organization… and they just found us on Instagram.”
Social media reaches more people for much cheaper in comparison to billboards and Times Square ads. “There’s 4 billion people on social media and with a free account you now have access to literally everything,” said first-year Elan Rabiner, an artist and musician. “It’s never been a better time to be an independent artist.”
However, Godard also brought up one of the most prominent issues artists face on social media: the blurry boundary between using the internet as a means of promotion and becoming a full-blown internet personality. “I think that it can be great as a tool, but if you’re just doing social media, you’re going to lose the art,” she said. “I think in a lot of ways it’s a good way to start out, but I don’t think it’s necessarily the end all.”
On social media, an artist is no longer purely promoting the content they create but also themselves as a person. “You have to market yourself and in order to market yourself you are influencing people in some sort of way,” Rabiner said. Social media is engineered to allow people to devour as much of someone’s life as possible so long as they’re online, so artists inevitably sell their image as much as their work.
Online promotion is further complicated by algorithmic biases. Social media, in theory, allows users to access an online network with billions of people— but it’s these biased algorithms that actually dictate which artists get exposure. These algorithms are developed through a process called machine learning, in which artificial intelligence is trained with existing data. The problem with
this is that data is often racist, sexist, and a plethora of other ‘-ists’. The majority of ‘reputable’ data centers around white subjects. Non-white people become pesky outliers in otherwise coherent data, even
or phrases and words that affirm nonwhite, very frequently Black, identities. The AI that is being trained also adopts the biases of its engineers, who are part of a sector dominated by white men. These engineers likely do not provide representative data, which then leads to algorithmic biases. Therefore, artists that are marginalized in any number of ways have complex algorithms acting against them.
At Tufts, students are combating the widespread use of social media for promotion with a return to in-person events. Both Rabiner and Godard advocate for being ‘IRL’ by creating networks of artists in an attempt to promote community among artists,
Godard discussed the efficacy of word-of-mouth promotion on college campuses, propelling music’s role in building relationships and college social scenes. The physical spaces available to college-based creatives are a bulwark against the tide of digital marketing. “There are so many spaces on campus that have such a great place for promotion,” affirmed Godard. “Just like getting the word out there… We tell a few of our friends, they tell a few of their friends and it’s just like everybody’s friends in a room.” Similarly, Rabiner is dedicated to preserving and elevating spaces in which people view art. “I think it’s just really important to have a way of physically meeting people, a way of physically engaging with art and seeing it with your
music,” he said. “It’s important to build that sort of network in person.”
Rabiner founded an artist collective, Alcove, to do just that. Although it’s not exclusively Tufts-based, it showcases various types of artists on campus to the greater public. He aimed to create a space to view, listen to, and critically engage with art as well as the people behind it—without the barrier of a phone screen. Making his venues very personable, decorated with antiques, trinkets, and all things of the sort, Rabiner aims to disrupt the sterility of viewing art in all-white rooms and giant stadiums.
The Tufts community itself has also been integral to preserving more ‘analog’ methods of promotion and communication. “The Tufts performing arts community and band community is just really great,” Godard said. Organizations such as Apple Jam, that give on-campus creatives a stage on which to perform and interact with the wider Tufts community, remain vital not just to the art scene at Tufts but also the greater Medford area.
Physical spaces remain indispensable to creative communities worldwide, but social media is not going away anytime soon. Even with its never-ending slew of problems, social media and the internet as a whole have transformed what it means to be an artist marketing your work. The key to preserving artistic integrity while also trying to grow is striking the balance between preserving physical networks and not allowing it to consume you and spit you out as a walking commodity.
Code of Ethics Tufts Efforts to Contribute to a Responsible AI Future
By Caroline Lloyd-Jones
The Tufts University School of Engineering announced in November that, starting in the fall semester of 2025, graduate students will have the opportunity to pursue a Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence. With this addition, Tufts joins the rapidly expanding list of universities offering similar programs. However, Tufts claims that what sets this program apart from others like it is its distinct “emphasis on social good” in teaching the subject.
One way the program integrates its proclaimed commitment to positive societal impact is by incorporating explicit discussions of AI ethics. According to a November 19 statement from the School of Engineering, “In keeping with the School of Engineering’s focus on being an engine for good, the new AI program will emphasize the ethical and social contexts of AI in the world.” While this emphasis on ethics suggests a commitment to responsible AI development and usage, Tufts has provided little elaboration on what this actually entails in the context of a master’s program.
The program’s core curriculum requires only one course explicitly focused on ethics, a previously existing one updated to reflect current AI models: Ethics for AI, Robotics, and HumanRobot Interaction. Originally developed for the Master of Science in HumanRobot Interaction, the course was influenced, in part, by the research efforts of the Human-
Robot Interaction Laboratory and the Machine Learning Group, two longstanding Tufts institutions that have sought to address the ethical implications of their respective fields.
Dr. Matthias Scheutz, the director of the HRI Lab and professor of Ethics of AI, Robots, and Human-Robot Interaction, explained, “The goal of the course was, from the beginning, twofold: to give people a technical perspective of what it means to do ethical AI, HRI robotics, and robot interaction, and to touch on the larger implications of the technology for society.” Scheutz emphasized that this dual perspective—balancing both the technical and societal aspects of AI—aligns closely with Tufts’ broader institutional values: “That’s the theme that resonates with Tufts, and that is where global citizenship and all of that really play [into] this program.”
Although this ethical lens is not unique to the study of AI—Tufts incorporates ethical reflection across its curricula—artificial intelligence presents distinct challenges. Unlike other fields, where ethical considerations often focus on human decision-making and harm reduction, AI systems can operate autonomously, making decisions that are not always predictable or easily regulated: “A system that has the ability to independently generate behavior and affect the world independent of whether humans are involved or not, that kind
of system raises ethical questions, and it needs to have ethics built-in,” Sheutz said.
The concern for AI’s embedded ethical frameworks is heightened given its far-reaching influence across fields.
Sophomore Jad Oubala, founder and president of the Tufts AI Society, emphasized AI’s transformative power: “It’s one of those things that changes everything: every domain, every discipline, every ideology.”
He added that, at its current rate of development, AI is “something that’s so unbelievably hard to stop. So the best, most pragmatic course of action is to educate as much as you can with it and ensure that it’s being used as ethically as it can be.”
Both Oubala and Scheutz pointed to the immense carbon footprint of large language models (LLMs) as an example of a key ethical dilemma. The process of training a single LLM releases over 600 thousand pounds of CO2 equivalent into the atmosphere, while the data centers that power AI models consume enough energy each year to produce more greenhouse gas emissions than all of air traffic combined. As Oubala explained, a significant portion of these emissions come from the energy required
to keep data centers cool. “That’s half the battle… You have to have a ship’s worth of computers kept in a cold, cold place, running, constantly training these things.”
As LLMs become more complex and computationally demanding, the rate of energy consumption will only escalate, further accelerating climate change. Data center power demand is projected to increase 160 percent by 2030, and their carbon dioxide emissions could more than double. This environmental cost raises difficult questions about how to balance technological progress with sustainability—questions that tend to be overlooked by independent techdevelopment companies. As Oubala explained, “In their eyes, it’s a waste of money… [Corporations] are not gonna put money into [making] sure [their product] is the most ethical… Put money into getting it first, fastest, cheapest, largest.” He added, “That’s why you can’t leave it in their hands.”
But unlike private companies, which often prioritize efficiency and profitability over sustainability, academic institutions have the freedom and established spaces to explore alternative, lowerimpact methods of AI development. Because of this, universities and programs like the MS in AI are uniquely positioned to address such ethical dilemmas.
workable, that are safe, and publish and try to get it out,” Scheutz said. In this way, universities can explore solutions that may otherwise be overlooked in the race for commercial dominance.
Beyond technological solutions, universities also play a crucial role in shaping policy discussions and advocating for necessary regulations. Both Oubala and Scheutz highlighted that AI’s rapid expansion has largely outpaced governmental oversight, creating an urgent need for informed intervention.
to a culture of prioritizing ethical conversations in tandem with innovation. As
Scheutz explained, the MS in AI seeks to provide students with “two angles: a technical angle, understanding how these models work and where the challenges are and what the potential dangers are, and then a broader perspective” that considers the societal impact of these technologies.
By integrating both technical expertise and ethical reasoning, the MS in AI program has the potential to prepare students to critically assess the realworld consequences of AI development and empower them to question design choices, identify vulnerabilities, and advocate for responsible practices within the organizations they will one day influence. Scheutz explained, “They can… go to[their] supervisor and say, ‘Look, this is possible. We have not prevented that kind of attack, or we’re allowing for this kind of development in the way we’re building the model, and maybe we shouldn’t be doing this.’”
Scheutz elaborated on this unique role, noting, “We at the University are able to look at alternative methods that the companies will not invest in because they’re betting all their money on this horse.” While corporations focus on rapidly maximizing returns from their AI infrastructure, academia can take a longer-term, experimental approach. “In computer science, what we can do is… develop alternative methods that consume less power, that are still
Scheutz explained academia’s role in this process: “Right now, we are at a point where we need the government to step in, and again, that’s where the university can sort of provide the necessary discussion and backdrop for officials.” By conducting independent research, providing ethical frameworks, and fostering dialogue between technologists, policymakers, and the public, universities are able to help bridge the gap between AI development and responsible governance.
However, Tufts—and academia as a whole—can only facilitate these conversations if future system developers are equipped with both the technical knowledge and the ethical awareness necessary to navigate AI’s complexities. This multifaceted approach contributes
“If you can blend this philosophy/ cognitive science understanding with a technical knowledge, you can do really, really great things,” Oubala said. If the master’s program is able to successfully blend these two lenses, graduates of programs like Tufts’ MS in AI will be prepared to play an active role in shaping a more conscientious and accountable future for the field. “The people who have both of those [perspectives] are the people who are going to be most useful for everyone, and make sure that when we’re building these things—because they’re going to get built anyway—we build them well, and we build them at a pace where we can regulate them and understand them.”
MOVING TO THE MUSIC
Mallika Sinha
January gave me a torrid summer’s day, with the sun oozing slowly across the cloudy sky. I could barely make out the pink bougainvillea !owers through the blurred droplets against the car window.
2016 was sure to be my year; a year of renewal and rejuvenation and re-energisation and any other word beginning with re- that I could think of. A clean slate, a fresh start, so on and on and on.
I had moved to a new place, a new city, a new country—ready to start over.
Singapore, in many ways, was similar to Gurgaon, India. e streets thrummed with an almost manic energy, with millions of people out and about, all coming together as if being directed by an unseen conductor. ere were stalls selling fresh fruit—plump mangoes bursting at the seams with ery !esh, durians that smelled much worse than they tasted, rambutans glistening with sweat and sporting skin so red that it made my eyes water—and streets lled with people and cars and bicycles and little plastic bags of tea and coffee dangling from the handlebars, bouncing with every bump—it was enough to set anyone’s head spinning.
My family and I began taking it in; as we trudged up and down stairs and made seemingly endless elevator trips, it felt like each new box we brought up was another little piece of our memory we were transferring over from India to Singapore.
As we cut labels, peeled tape, and scraped glue o of every item in our possession, I began to feel doubt climbing up my spine like a twisted vine—what was I doing? Where was I?
Was this even real life, or all a foggy dream I had concocted in the shower?
I had done so many things in Gurgaon—ballet four times a week, piano lessons thrice a week, a er-school tutoring, and more; my life in primary school had been measured week by week, like a breakneck race, with the nish line moving further back the more I raced towards it. I had stopped stargazing, stopped enjoying my piano lessons, stopped going to the park with my friends, stopped thinking anything—it was all about doing all the time. In Singapore, time moved similarly, measured in breathless increments between one activity and the next.
February of 2016 gave me a warm embrace, thundering rains giving way to sunshine that gleamed so brightly it felt like I was being born anew. Singapore was a capricious home—it oscillated back and forth from glaring sun to pouring rain in a matter of minutes. I got soaked o en.
It was in these moments, when I was ghting with my squelching, raindrenched galoshes and freeing my feet from their clutches, that my gaze meandered over to the black upright piano standing ominously in the corner of the crowded living room. I had been avoiding it ever since the move, dodging questions of piano lessons from my increasingly confused parents.
It was doubly strange to them because the piano had always been my personal passion. I recalled the so dichromatic keys melting beneath my ngers, the smooth ivory beckoning me even as an apple-cheeked four-year-old, all the way until just before moving to Singapore.
“Quit? Why do you want to quit? You’re winning so many awards!” My parents gesticulated, pacing around the room.
“!at’s the problem! It’s too much!” I shouted back, tears welling up and threatening to spill down my cheeks.
Piano had been my oasis of tranquility, anchoring me in a sea lled with endless waves that tossed me around from place to place, event to event. Each bright note had brought me back to myself—until it became yet another thing to compete inanchor unmoored, leaving me adri in the endless inky blackness—the depths of my own self-doubt. What had once brought me comfort became a painful reminder of the outside world and its cruelty.
I remember the keys beginning to stare mockingly at me, my shoes staining the pedals with their incompetence, the ache in my hands a er practising for hours just to make sure I won yet another competition, driving me to play and play until my nails dripped thick red blood, so dark it threatened to swallow me whole.
at was the last time I had dared look at it. I couldn’t even face it anymore—every time I tried to sit and play the piano, I saw the keys dissolve into a stew of pockmarked grey, !owing out of the piano until they reached my feet and rose, choking me in their inky depths. I had thought that having the piano would be comforting—a symbol of home—but instead it became su ocating, a stain that reminded me of unhappier days.
Ever since we had moved to Singapore, my mother worried about me. I could see it in the folds of her face as she gazed at me, the furrows that developed between her brows as she worked through how to reach across the yawning gulf that inevitably develops between hesitant mother and oldest daughter.
Sometimes she reached out a hesitant hand, but often I didn’t know how to accept, instead lashing out until she retracted it.
“I’m not interested in the piano, mamma! Why won’t you leave it alone?”
“Beta, I am just trying to help—”
“I wish you wouldn’t!”
I regretted it the instant I said it, but as she liked to say, words are like eggs; once spoken and broken, you can’t take them back. e egg had cracked, and I could see its unctuous insides streaming all over our relationship, !owing insidiously and lling up all the gaps, pushing us further apart.
Six months later, I started attending the Canadian International School. I made a vow to myself—don’t make any friends. You’ll just lose them, there’s no point. And so, I didn’t. I had given up on the piano, given up on friendship—like a wraith, I existed barely as an a erimage of myself, the edges of my personality frayed and blurry, blending into the bright background of the rest of the world, like a photograph that hadn’t quite developed right.
I floated through life, squinting through the rain but still unable to coalesce the fuzzy pink shapes into beautiful bougainvilleas.
September gave me sweat and tears— salty droplets streaming down the canyons of my face, staining my cheeks with what felt like the unavoidable mark of loneliness and doubt about whether life ever got better.
New music class—typical introductions, icebreakers, and then we had to pick an instrument. I kept my gaze pointedly away from the piano. ere was no point anyway. Music could never bring me joy again.
Miss Agnes saw me frozen in my chair as the other students chattered happily, putting their grubby sixthgrade hands on every instrument possible and creating a cacophony in our tiny music room.
“Mallika, do you want to try playing an instrument?” she asked, leaning down so she could meet my eyes. I glanced at her for a second before looking away, unable to help feeling like she was looking right past my face and into my deepest thoughts.
“No, thank you. I don’t like music.” I said, my voice unconvincing even to myself.
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that,” she replied, her voice so kind I wanted to cry, “but it’s okay. Let me know if you change your mind.”
I nodded—I didn’t think I would change my mind.
October gave me a sliver of hope, golden and fervid and unable to be quenched. Time moved languidly again, taking steps so slow it felt like my life was being slowly trapped in amber.
I saw all the piano players coalesce like a sparkling school of silver sh, forming bonds that would tie them together for life. I observed the rest of the kids gradually nd tables to sit at during lunch, trading ti n boxes lled with long-grain rice drenched in fragrant curry for other boxes lled with steaming soup, little bits of scallions bobbing in the broth like coral waiting to be discovered in a warm shoal.
I ate my lunch in the library, alone— except for when the librarian sometimes took pity and made conversation with me. I saw everyone else in music class through a thick sheet of glass, re!ections just slightly o , refracted and re!ected to look like uncanny alternate universe versions of themselves, close enough to hear but never enough to reach out and brush my hand against.
Eventually, I grew tired. My conviction that being alone would save me the heartache became brittle, each little bit breaking the more I saw others around me grow closer. I began sneaking glances at the piano at home, grazing the pads of my trembling ngers against the smooth wooden cover and wondering what it would be like to open it back up and dive back into its depths.
Being a lone wolf is a tall task, and I wasn’t sure I was up to it. I missed laughing with friends, missed the warm feeling that bubbled in my chest when I shared a look or a joke with others, but most of all, I missed how serene I had felt playing the piano and !oating away with the notes.
Tuesday morning, music class again. As we swelled into the classroom, Miss Agnes gave us all a wave and continued sitting at her desk, waiting for us to grab our instruments and get settled. Today, instead of sitting in my little fortress of solitude (i.e. a rickety folding chair in the corner of the room), I went up to her desk.
“Can I have some sheet music?” I asked, terri ed.
She looked up at me, blinking for a few minutes before a beaming smile broke across her face, so wide I was afraid her cheeks would split apart. She nodded.
DESIGN BY MEG DUNCAN, ART BY PHOEBE MCMAHON
NEITHERNOR HERETHERE
By Selin Ruso
t io n la S tstnedu
The Dual IsolationofQueerInterna
You’ve finally gotten through the longest seven days of your life—your first week at college. Oceans away from your homeland and your loved ones. You double-check the meeting room and time on Instagram. ______ Students Association. You go through the feed and see upperclassmen posing with your country’s flag, eating your country’s food, playing your country’s games. It fills you with a
warmth you haven’t felt since you got on that plane. You can’t wait to finally talk in your own language.
You walk into that meeting room and… the air shifts. Heads turn. Laughter ceases—contrived smiles take their place. You know this smile well. You’ve seen it on the street, on the bus ride back home. The way it lingers almost convinces you, but you know it’s nothing more than a mask.
In an instant, you understand. You aren’t welcome here. Your kind isn’t welcome here.
This is the reality for many queer international students at Tufts. Culture clubs promise a sense of belonging, a home away from home, but they don’t come without their challenges. Though you are now in America, the beliefs and values of your home country still persist. A majority of Eastern countries, for example, view queerness as a “Western import,” a foreign imposition that disrupts the traditional social fabric. Extraneous. At the same time, queer spaces on campus can feel overwhelmingly American or Western, failing to acknowledge different cultural backgrounds.
Queer non-Americans are put in an impossible bind. In many culture clubs, queerness is treated as a complication— something to be downplayed, changed, or at worst, outright rejected. It becomes a dealbreaker, an unspoken taboo that leaves belonging painfully out of reach. For many international students, culture clubs are not just student organizations. They promise a piece of home in a foreign place, a refuge. They offer familiarity, language, traditions, and community—or at least, they’re supposed to. Unfortunately, even at a place like Tufts, where ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’ are supposedly celebrated, certain traditional and conservative values remain. Often, this doesn’t manifest through explicit discrimination or rejection, but rather, through silence,
indifference, and subtle exclusion. It is not ‘major’ enough to report, yet noticeable enough that it is always felt.
An anonymous transmasculine nonbinary student at Tufts recalled their first time going to their culture club’s meeting. “I walk in, and the room is already kinda segregated into male/female, which makes me nervous because I hadn’t started passing at this point. There’s a group of guys at a table, but I already knew I wouldn’t be welcome there. So I sat at a table with a few girls.”
When asked how this made them feel, they responded, “I was disappointed but not surprised by the outcome. It reminded me that even though Tufts preached a welcoming space, intersectionality has and always will be overlooked in the grand scheme for a quick fix. I thought it’d be different here since queerness is normalized, but it seems like white American queerness is the focal point. Culture clubs won’t go out of their way to make us feel comfortable.”
They did have some positive feelings about the experience. “I heard snippets of my native language around the room. Even if I wasn’t part of it, it felt like part of me was back.”
“But overall, I still felt uncomfortable the entire time. At my core, I knew I, as a person, would not be accepted here.” Their attendance at the culture club’s events slowly dwindled, reaching zero after freshman year.
What ensues after losing this cultural connection is blame. “It’s because I’m queer,” the student thinks. “I have made myself an other.” Queerness becomes this destructive force that holds one back from community, and from home.
Seeking solace and longing to feel accepted for their queer identity, the student turns to queer spaces on campus. These spaces pride themselves on being safe havens, inclusive to all queer experiences and bodies. In practice, however, they are overwhelmingly shaped by American frameworks, leaving little space for other perspectives.
I’ve personally felt that these spaces carry an American understanding of queerness—one shaped by American norms, experiences, and culture. Growing
up in a conservative Middle Eastern country, my experience with queerness was vastly different. In high school, I was called into the principal’s office over something as small as a pride pin on my backpack. My peers often posted Instagram stories of themselves stomping on pride flags. In history, literature, or sociology classes, we didn’t exist—when we did, we were labeled as ‘misguided.’ Against that backdrop, conversations about gay-straight alliances, pride, and visibility felt foreign. Because of this, I often fell silent during queer events on campus. If I did try to speak up, I’d be met with confused looks or hostilities regarding my ‘incorrect’ experience of queerness. I’d often be assured I was heard, but it didn’t feel like I was understood. This hasn’t just happened to me, but to almost every queer international student I know.
It isn’t fair that one’s queer identity and cultural identity devolve to be mutually exclusive categories. In cultural spaces, you’re expected to erase your queerness to belong. In American queer spaces, your cultural background is erased. You’re either one or the other, but you can’t be both. You must constantly switch between these two versions of yourself, deciding which one you wish to be reduced to today. You are always performing, always making yourself smaller.
This shapes the friendships you make, the communities you engage with, and the perceived level of comfort or discomfort you feel in spaces that are supposed to welcome you with open arms. It means second-guessing how you present yourself— how you dress, how you speak, how you look. It means questioning how much of yourself you can show without losing your place in a so-called community. You’re already far from home. The ‘sanctuaries’ that were supposed to be a new home only deepen the distance.
Where do you go from here? Can one find a middle ground? Often, one ‘solution’ students find is to befriend fellow international queer students on the individual level. This attempt at understanding, at sharing, can ameliorate this impossible bind, but to what extent? You are still alienated from your culture.
Does it, then, fall upon the cultural clubs to change their ways? That task is
easier said than done—thousands of years of colonial histories and nationalist ideologies lie within these negative dispositions towards queerness. As Albert Einstein once said, “It is easier to disintegrate an atom than a prejudice.” Given the deeply ingrained societal forces at play, it is understandable that certain culture clubs at Tufts behave this way. In fact, many would argue it is unrealistic to expect non-queer international students to change their attitudes regarding queerness in a fortnight.
On the other half of the equation lies a simpler solution. Queer spaces at Tufts need to be as inclusive as they claim to be. More space should be given to non-American voices, without judgment or ‘correction.’ They need not be held to American standards, or any standard, for that matter. Discourse on visibility and openness needs to be more flexible. For many international students, especially those whose home countries criminalize queerness, pride is not a priority—survival is. For their entire lives, caution and discretion have been a way for them to persevere, to stay alive despite their country’s norms and dangers. Just because they aren’t as vocal as American queer people may expect does not make their queerness any less valid. We are not incorrectly queer.
We need to move past these rigid perspectives. Queer international students should not feel like they are too queer for foreign spaces and too foreign for queer spaces. Whether you are queer, international, both, or neither, I urge you to listen. We’re here, and we exist—fully, with both parts of who we are. We are in your Intro to IR class sitting next to you, we are on your dorm floor, we are in line behind you at the dining hall. Do not expect us to be one or the other, our identities are not mutually exclusive. Especially at Tufts, a place that prides itself on diversity and inclusion, belonging should not come at the cost of erasing parts of ourselves.
By Mansie Bennett
Doom Scrolling and TikTok Brain: How the Attention Economy Consumed Us
Do you think TikTok has changed your brain? Does this full-length article scare you?
“I just don’t have the attention span to listen to a 45-minute podcast but I can doom scroll for an hour,”
junior Alexander Vang shared. Alex’s situation is far from unique. Many have similarly suffered an exponential decrease in their attention span and succumbed to the addictive pull of doom scrolling. Ac-cording to a survey doneby Morning Con-sult, 31 percent of adults report either “a lot” or “some” doom scrolling, including 53 percent of GenerationZadults.
But where did this all begin?
This shift to shorter attention spans started during the 2010s, when social media platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and Tumblr launched into the mainstream, inciting a rise in popularity of blogging, photo sharing, and longform media.
This phenomenon expanded in the years following TikTok’s initial foray into the scene of popular social media in 2016. During this time, a subtle yet profound shift occurred, which revolutionized the way we consume media.
This became especially pronounced in 2020—when the COVID-19 pandemic began and people worldwide were confined to their homes. With limited outlets for human interaction, the world turned to social media to compensate for this lack of connection. This new platform, with its
characteristic short-form media, incited a wave of newer, condensed online content to maximize its audience’s attention.
Designed for casual posting, TikTok allowed its users to feel more intimately connected to each other in ways that Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and X (formerly Twitter) could not offer.
With this revolution of short-form content came not only a shift within users’ digital consumption habits but the expansion of a market: the attention economy. This new market is a lucrative business model by which companies harness and capitalize on human attention through means such as data collection and algorithms to increase user interaction with their platform.
This short-form media content was unlike the previously popular ‘stories’ format, and more reminiscent of the spontaneous, stream-of-consciousness style posting of X. Unlike stories which expired usually after 24 hours, these short videos lasted forever, unless removed by the user. The most glaring difference lied in the inclusion of a comment section—a feature not available for stories—and the infinite scroll feature, a signature of TikTok.
During September of 2020, YouTube updated its interface to include short-form media with the launch of YouTube Shorts. Snapchat followed suit the following November with Snapchat Spotlight, and later Instagram in August 2020 with their popular Instagram Reels.
Concurrently, algorithms across social media platforms began to increasingly collect user data and more closely track what someone was clicking on as well as how long they looked at a post—a change that was only documented in the largely
DESIGN BY TANISHA SAHNI, ART BY CHERRY CHEN
overlooked fine print of rapidly changing user agreements.
As a result, social media feeds, especially TikTok’s ‘For You Page,’ began to feature more content based on users’ interests. As The New York Times put it, “People marveled at the app’s X-ray of their inner lives.” This ability to precisely reflect a given user’s interest in the content they saw was not only a means by which TikTok, and other social media platforms, gained users, but it was also a huge source of profit and revenue.
According to the United Nations Economist Network, in 2021 alone, popular US social media companies like Facebook (Meta), Google, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft saw a 55 percent increase in profit from capitalizing on human attention spans and data. According to a report written by Sarah Oh Lam from the Technology Policy Institute on company ad revenue, TikTok was expected to make approximately 7.63 billion dollars from ads in the US in 2024 alone. In this era of hyper-capitalism and ever-growing technology, all facets of human experience became exploited and monetized via social media.
Then, the TikTok empire fell.
On January 19, 2025 at around 11 p.m., all lights went dark on TikTok. All across the US, TikTok users were sent into a frenzy, mourning the loss of the well-loved social media platform.
Alongside the TikTok ban, users faced a stark reckoning with their addiction to the app. “I was kind of losing it,” Vang reflected “I was just like, ‘What do I do now?’ A good pastime was just gone.” Vang’s inability to fill the void of subtle boredom reflected the sentiment of addictive attachment many US TikTok users felt. Moreover, Vang and many others were beginning to understand how greatly the platform had affected their attention spans.
books, and even longer written captions on social media posts.
This epidemic of what some refer to as ‘TikTok brain’ is more than just a deficit in attention—it verges on a full scale addiction. In a 2020 study by Su et al., the brains of Chinese college student users of Douying, the Chinese equivalent of TikTok, were studied when watching the personalized videos from their feeds. Their brain
addiction to the apps as well as generally addictive behavior. Essentially, TikTok and Douyin not only rely on human attention, but utilize neuroscience to ensure that the addiction persists.
Further studies have also shown that children of Generation Alpha are even more affected by the early and widespread introduction to technology, the internet, and short-form media content.
According to the National Institute of Health, “researchers found that among six- and seven-yearolds… those who had more than two hours of screen time a day were more likely to have deficits in overall IQ, problem solving skills, impulse control, and attention span.”
So what is the bottom line here? Is there any way to halt the roaring success of the attention economy for the benefit of the current generations and the next?
Following the reinstatement of TikTok, the future seems quite bleak. Undoing the effects of the attention economy would include a large-scale dismantling of capitalism as we know it. However, in recognizing the grasp these social media platforms have on our attention, individuals can regain agency on social media—a part of our future that’s here to stay.
The shortened attention span, however, is not just affecting users’ ability to consume video content, but all forms of media, such as podcasts, YouTube videos,
scans showed that brain areas involved in addiction were highly activated in users that engaged with personalized videos and that many struggled with their ability to control their usage.
The study outlined the problematic addictive effects TikTok and Douyin were having on their users. An even more harrowing finding from the study suggests that TikTok and Douyin specifically target certain regions of the brain involved in reward and attention, ultimately promoting
IT’S FRIDAY AND I WILL NEVER BE A WOMAN
I turn o! the shower and wrap a towel around myself, stepping over the threshold with slip-slap ip- ops clopping on the beige tiles all the way back to my room. I’m still in a towel when I turn on the speaker and hear the ba dah dun of connection. My roommate is lying at on their bed, which mirrors mine. I climb into my own bed, wet hair dampening the pillow, and curate a queue. We sit in silence for a while, listening to the clock tick and the music quietly play, letting time pass on our own terms. e sun melts below the line of houses on the horizon, and I think I see urries starting to collect, but I’m not quite sure. Eventually, time moves us, and we both get up—there’s somewhere to be. Not in the metaphorical sense, but in the concrete ‘it’s a Friday night and if we don’t get up right now we’ll miss the plans we created and committed to’ sense. Since we started living together ve months ago, the weekly Friday-night-getting-ready has become something of a practice, sharing not just the space in between our beds, but drinks and songs, a wardrobe, and some kind of mutual, precious, unspoken understanding at the very core of all of it. It’s always a struggle to get dressed. My roommate and I pull every dress, skirt, button-up, tank top and dress pants combo out of our respective closets and try them all on, tossing them aside when we’re
done and accumulating a prodigious pile on the rug between our beds. Music plays low through our room—it’s Indigo de Souza, singing about someone she used to love. Some of our friends come over while we are indecisively still in our underwear, debating. We compare out t combinations, ranking them on a spectrum we’ve devised ourselves, stretched from bad to awesome, along with a third masculinefeminine dimension that we both dip our toes into but aren’t brave enough to dive into all the way given the time crunch. Even though I am almost an entire foot shorter than her, the clothes ow between us e!ortlessly. We end up knocking on our friend’s door across the hall, asking if we can add her wardrobe into the mix. We si and sort and test and strut and twirl and in twenty minutes we’ve tried on every possible combination of everything ever. Excruciatingly, I remain undecided. It’s not about picking the wrong color dress or whether that pair of pants matches this pair of shoes or if this tank top ts me at all. It’s not even about settling for something I might end up hating in an hour. It’s so much bigger than that. Le or right. On or o!. Inside or outside. Back or forth. Starboard or port. Up or down. You’ve gotta pick one! Growing up, I never anticipated the unremarkable blips of passing time between childhood and adulthood to be so littered with the uncomfortable, elastic push-and-pull of who I want to be. I was a four-year-old non-autonomous product of my grandma’s homesewn creations.
An eight-year-old tomboy, sporting neon basketball shoes and my brother’s handme-down t-shirts. A 13-year-old girl adri through learned stereotype, leaning into the Justice leggings, shimmer lip gloss, and perpetual lost homework, while deeply suppressing queerness. A 16-year-old with an utter lack of personal identity, built on microtrends and lost in mirroring media, reckoning with queerness. rough every version of self, my entire girlhood had prepared me for a lifetime lled with braiding long hair, trading Sylvia Plath and Dolly Alderton, and basking in the simplicity of e!ortless femininity. Instead, I’ve found myself positioned right on the outskirts of womanhood, where nothing ever feels quite right. ere’s a pulling sensation—a straining tautness—standing in the way of a simple, effortless understanding of who I am. Like pink bubblegum stretching between the bottom of my sneaker and the black asphalt underneath. I can’t seem to get it o! ! I climb back into the shower while my room starts to ll with friends and music and drinks. Loud even in the hallway through the closed door. I change my mind about my hair. Don’t take o! the black dress I’ve nally decided upon, but instead, drag the elastics out and stick my head under the shower, running the water. Freezing on my head. Body hanging out of the shower
door. Water running down my neck. O! my chin. Hands triangulated, supporting me against the shower walls. Wait for a while. Hair wet now, brush it back, shake it out.
Back in my room, someone is taking a shot next to my unmade bed, mid-conversation with someone else who sits at the very foot of it. I have to push and wiggle and duck and circumvent to get back through the people collecting near the door. Flo Milli vibrates through the room, making the jewelry on my desk jump with the beat. Dance to it! I start to sweat a little. Aquaphor on my knuckles and elbows.
I turn away from the mirror and bump vright into someone, knees crashing rst. Now, the room is stretching at its seams with people. My roommate hands me a tiny plastic cup. We cheers and drink together. I set my cup down on my school-issued desk and turn back around to face the room. She grabs my face in her hands, painting glitter with their ngertips onto the top of my cheeks and eyelids. It sits wet and heavy on my skin and they blow on it, drying it down.
e most intimate form of platonic love. My face in her hands, a delicate cradle, painting sparkles onto me. All at once, I’m seven and double-bouncing my best friend
on the trampoline until our knees give out and we liquefy into laughter. I’m nine and sitting underneath a pile of laundry in a front closet, my mouth smothered by the hand of my partner in hiding, while the seeker tiptoes by us. I’m 16 and wrapped in a blanket on the couch, crammed next to my best friend, watching a movie until we both fall asleep. I’m 18 and holding my head as still as I can, my chin sheltered in a so hand while the other trims my bangs. Even tonight I am tied back to an inherent girlhood that I can’t—and don’t want to—either wholly evade or comfortably inhabit.
My roommate grabs my hands. We twirl and dance and boogie to the beat bouncing o! the walls while the droplets of water shake free from my hair and the glitter on my cheeks hardens into the lines of my wide-open smile. We cheers again. Near the end of my playlist now, and people start reaching for their shoes, ready to go.
I bend down and slip into my boots. Put on a coat, and enlace with my roommate. We walk and shiver in the cold, huddled just the two of us tied together amid the bigger pack of people—and yes! It is snowing! A sharp, cold bite in the air but warmed up by bellies full and the sweetness of being with each other, wherever we are going.
Step le , step right. Le . Right. Me and her. em and I. Walking together to the party. Sailing through a dark, choppy, uncharted sea. Battening down the hatches throughout the tempest. Tiding over: anchor down, anchor up, laboring into the headwinds. Learning the ropes. A doublemast schooner, a boundless vessel, navigating the limitless waters together. Beaches le behind, waning into the light. Open ocean forever in front of the two of us. How easy it is to love like this. Capturing love in authenticity. To share in it and to give it out. Glitter on your face and drinks in tiny cups and handfuls of snacks and a backing track of babble partnered with hugs and taking pictures of each other and walking through the winter and getting to be yourself. Able to leave every other past iteration of who you were on the sandy fronts, far behind the wake. Sailing towards the vast unknown, the great undecided. Not realizing, until later, how sweet it is to simply get to be.
ART BY LEILA TOUBIA
Time For a Nap
Time For a Nap
ACROSS
1More faithful
6Gwyneth Paltrow's lifestyle brand
10Winter blanket
14Ted ___ (Apple TV+ comedy)
15__ Apollo, musician
16Grow weary
17Another way to describe REM
19Like fine wine
20Taylor Swift's fourth album
21District 13 leader
22Emotional appeal
24Tender-hearted
25a French toast
26Crash Landing on You, e.g.
29What you might find at a Cheese Club x Italian Club event
32Marine hazards
33Sarcastic taunts
34Shade of color
35"If all ___ fails..."
36Verbal exams you might take in Olin
37Frees (of)
38Where to find the best frats in Boston, allegedly
39Steakhouse selection
40Suit the occasion
41"That's that me ___" by Sabrina Carpenter
43Divisions of long poems
44Chair designer Charles
45Reason for an R rating
46Undresses
48Actress Moore of "The Substance"
49___Tok
52"No ___, no gain"
53One of four parts of a nightly cycle, or a clue for the other starred clues in this puzzle*
56Oklahoma tribe
57Electrified swimmers
58Prescient cards
59Orderly
60Lavish affection (on)
61Lead in to "logy" or "nomy"
DOWN
1In case you have allotted no time to peruse this, I've prepared this summary, in summary
2Selena Gomez beauty brand
3Like a car you might buy
4Spanish "that"
5"10 Things I Hate About You" and "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days"
6"Understood!"
7Yemen neighbor
8Granola grain
9Makes ready
10It might be a bust
11Trendy song by Lucy Dacus*
12Milk's favorite cookie
13Ties the knot
18Parlor piece
23Beggar's request
24Out of danger
25Luxurious fur
26Krispy ___
27Pax et Lox and Katz
28Downtime after exercise*
29You can find one in the Granoff practice rooms
30The A of A/V
31Birds' homes
33___ out, or give the ick
36How you may feel about their ex, per Olivia Rodrigo
37Philosopher Descartes
39Seasonal worker
40You'd find one in the Sink
42Ma dubbed "Mother of the Blues"
43With sci, the most popular major at Tufts
45Honking birds that have made themselves at home on campus
46Catch sight of
47"And you did it at my birthday dinner" Westbrook
48Shoulder muscle, for short
49Sour
50Hunchbacked lab assistant
51"No sugar?" or, a popular low-carb diet
54DiCaprio of Inception
55Who's probably grading your papers right now
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