Fall 2016 Issue 1

Tufts Observer

VOLUME CXXXI, ISSUE 1

September 26, 2016

STEM’s Barriers for Tufts’ Women of Color Boston is a Flooding City

Considering the Loj’s Indigenous Roots

The Space Issue

Tufts Observer

@tuftsobserver www.tuftsobserver.org

The Tufts Observer has been Tufts’ student publication of record since 1895. Our dedication to indepth 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.

September 26, 2016 Volume CXXXI, Issue 1 Tufts Observer, SInce 1895 Tufts’ Student Magazine

Theme Though the word often evokes the extraterrestrial, space is also all around us on earth. When pondering spaces both physical and conceptual, we ask: what spaces are comfortable, accessible, safe, and for whom? How does this play out on our campus and beyond? How are the spaces we occupy changing every day?

Staff Editor in Chief Carly Olson

Features Sahar Roodehchi

Managing Editor Eve Feldberg

News Will Norris Claire Selvin

Creative Director Chase Conley Art Directors Nina Hofkosh-Hulbert Rachel Cunningham Lead Artists Jake Rochford Annie Roome Photo Director Lily Herzan Photo Editor Kyle Scott Lead Copy Editor Dana Guth Publicity Yumi Casagrande Ashley Miller

Opinion Julia Doyle Ben Kesslen Arts & Culture Carissa Fleury Jamie Moore Campus Greta Jochem Emma Pinsky Poetry & Prose MT Snyder Liza Leonard Web Susan Kaufman Misha Linnehan Web Columns Jordan Lauf

Design Abigail Barton Alexandra Benjamin Josh Goodman Caroline Smith Hannah Vigran Conrad Young Interactive Gabby Bonfiglio Jade Chan Danielle Kong Kayden Mimmack Video Anastasia Antonova Evie Bellew Aaron Watts Luke Zhao Copy Editors Matt Beckshaw Henry Jani Julia Press Sivi Satchithanandan Staff Writer Katie Saviano

Contributors Riley Aronson, Elizabeth Brooke, Amber Chevannes, Luca Eisen, Adriana Guardans-Godo, Tyler Hagedorn, Madison Haskins, Madeleine Lebovic, Ben Rutberg, Tyler Shapiro

Contents

8

Arts & Culture

10

Campus

18

Tech & Innovation

Home Town

Major Sprawl

Under The Sea

Greta Jochem

Carly Olson

Grace Segers

2 Letter from the Editor Carly Olson

3 Cut Off at the STEM Carissa Fleury

6 A Businessman’s Guide

to the Galaxy

Lily Hartzell

12 Dream Summary Libby Langsner

13 space_

17 atom Jaanvi Sant

21 Unpacking Transphobia

in TRUNK

Emma Youcha

24 The Language of Safe

Spaces

Daniel Weaver

26 Apolitical Erasure Katie Saviano

Photo Inset COVER PHOTO BY TYLER HAGEDORN

Letter From The Editor

Letter From The Editor Carly Olson

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O

ne of my favorite fun facts is that the Observer is actually Tufts’ oldest newspaper. First published in 1895–100 years before I was born—Jumbos that I’ll never know were churning out content as the Tufts Weekly.

Tonight, a centennial later, the lab filled with 40 familiar and unfamiliar faces. Ideas were exchanged, critiques were doled out, and words were ever-so-thoughtfully placed on paper. It’s difficult to imagine an Observer of the past at the same time we are pushing so fiercely into the future.

It’s funny to feel nostalgic about something that you haven’t left yet. I’m nostalgic for my freshman year late nights in the Observer’s copy editing room, reading content written by the pinnacle of the “Tufts-y” student—brilliant, passionate, and so much smarter than me. I’m nostalgic for my days as a campus editor, when I first used InDesign.

I was proud of my (regrettably hideous) layout, which was immediately tweaked to perfection by the O’s creative director. I’m nostalgic for this past spring semester, when I felt more connected than I ever had the Observer, learning from and laughing with my closest friends, who just happened to be some of the most thoughtful writers, critical thinkers, and passionate designers on this campus.

But now is not the time to be nostalgic. I can indulge all I want, but we are moving onward, propelling forward with the force that we always manage to muster at the beginning of each semester—and there is something admirable in that spirit.

Since I began working at this publication three years ago, we have honed our probative reporting on the Tufts campus, we have pushed boundaries for what each section can constitute, and we have been a platform for a variety of different voices. Though change is fluid at the O, the constants are almost more striking—the unflappable dedication of our team, the thought and intention that is placed behind every word and image on each glossy page, the ease with which so many different personalities can blend on layout night.

In an age of oversharing, I sometimes find it hard to remember the value in putting even more words into the world. But then I remember why we do it and I remember why it matters.

I can’t envision the O of 100 years ago, but I don’t think I have to.

Feature

Cut Off at the STEM How women of color are marginalized in STEM communities

By Carissa Fleury

September 26, 2016

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Feature

T

he experience of walking into almost any STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) classroom at Tufts is eerily similar. The seats are primarily filled with cisgender men, the majority of them White. Professors lecturing in the front of the room, TAs and lab assistants, as well as directors of the programs, will most likely also be White men. Though there are a few women scattered around the room, one or two of whom are Black or Brown, they are in the overwhelming minority. The stark reality is that there is a devastating lack of diversity in STEM-related fields, with the roots of this phenomenon originating in the classroom.

Some individuals discredit the diversity that does exist, often attributing it to filling a quota. For instance, Dr. Laney Strange is a White professor who recently joined the Computer Science Faculty and has experienced this insult in her career.

“I’ve heard every anti-feminist cliché you can imagine…This is the one that gets under my skin the most, ‘you’re only here because you’re a woman,’” she said. “This is such an insidious comment in this field, because you’re young, insecure, and you’re in a position where you feel like you have to prove yourself and that you belong.

When I was young, that would really freak me out, like I didn’t belong and had to work harder than everybody. Now I have confidence and experience, but even still, I

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heard when I took this job, ‘Oh, they’re just trying to get a woman on Tufts faculty.’”

Almost every underrepresented group in STEM fields faces similar prejudices and biases. However, women of color face a double-bind because they experience biases that neither their male counterparts nor White women will face.

STEM at Tufts is no exception to these biases. Marilyn Allen, a recent Tufts graduate and current PhD student in Chemical Engineering at University of Maryland, explained that she never felt that her intellect was respected during her undergraduate experience as a Black woman in the Tufts Engineering department. “As a Black woman in STEM you are constantly being tested. People want to know how smart you are and if you can prove it or they assume that you are not smart enough and dismiss your ideas immediately,” she said.

“As a woman in STEM, you have to learn to have a voice because people will walk over you, but this is especially difficult as a Black woman because you are immediately deemed ‘angry’ or ‘bossy.’”

According to a study conducted by Professor Joan Williams from the Hastings’ Center for WorkLife Law, “In interviews conducted with 60 women of color and 557 women in STEM fields, a full 100% of the women of color reported gender bias [within their STEM professions].” As Fortune Magazine reports, from Williams’ study, “Both Latinas and Black women, who report regularly being mistaken as janitors, and Asian-American women said they felt more pressure to act feminine…and received more pushback when they don’t.” Both Latina and Black women feared fulfilling stereotypes of being “angry and overemotional” if they pushed back on the bias they experience.

Racist stereotypes attributed to Black and Latina women are harmful both inside and outside of the classroom.

Though Williams’ study focuses on Black and Latina women, all women of color face these stereotypes and biases.

They are often used as qualifiers or control mechanisms for keeping women of color inside a polished box that narrowly defines how they can interact both with

their environments and with other people, especially men. Inside the classroom, these perceptions often limit their success. Many aspects of academic performance can be

“As a Black woman in STEM you are constantly being tested. People want to know how smart you are and if you can prove it or they assume that you are not smart enough and dismiss your ideas immediately.” affected, from feeling capable to push back against professors or engaging in conversation with peers.

Whether women of color do choose to reject these stereotypes or not, they are often met with microaggressions from their professors and feelings of inadequacy and dismissal.

Junior Nihaarika Sharma, a South Asian biology student, tells the story of responding to a question posed in the lecture hall. Despite speaking up and giving the correct answer, her professor completely dismissed her. “When a White male classmate of mine said the exact same thing, he responded with ‘yes exactly!’” These instances are not rare and contribute to the atmosphere of isolation that many women of color in STEM feel.

Junior Morgan Freeman, a mixed-race Black woman, entered Tufts as a Computer Science major after partaking in three years of a high school computer science program called Women in Technology. In the bimonthly program, Freeman was introduced to coding and completed multi-

Feature

ple projects, all of which promoted women being involved in the field. However, when taking Intro to Computer Science at Tufts, she felt with each lecture that her presence was not welcome. Though the concepts and C++ language were not new to her, Freeman states that the more she went to class and lectures, the less confident she felt in her abilities. “I was so frustrated because how can I be bad at something I’ve been doing for three years…and be taking this class with people, especially a lot of White men, who’ve never been exposed to computer science before and were thriving in this environment.”

These feelings of inferiority and questioning one’s belonging can be summed up by the theory of Imposter Syndrome: the idea that you think you don’t belong in a space, even if you do. The effects can undermine one’s validation as well as degrade their sense of self-worth. “You think you’re an imposter even if, by all outside views, you are qualified and a part of it,” said Senior Sibonay Koo, an Asian American in Computer Science. “It’s pretty common in tech in general and in computer science, but especially among minorities. You continue doing it, but you feel like you never deserve what you have. You think you’re doing badly even if you’re doing fine in the class,” she said.

When Koo was taking Computer Science 40, a notoriously demanding computer science class, she was convinced that she was stupid and had lost her grasp of the material. Her first instincts were to blame herself, the time off when she went abroad, or what she believed to be her lack of intelligence. Instead, she came to the realization that her male partners in class were doing the majority of the coding and ignoring her ideas. It took her time to convince herself that she was not, in fact, an imposter or unintelligent, but that she was not being given equal opportunities and an equal voice in the classroom.

Even beyond the classroom, the homogeneity of STEM fields is creating an often hostile and violent environment for women of color. Audrey Chu, who is a survivor of sexual assault, depression, attempted suicide, and is currently an elec-

trical engineering student, was a woman of color in the Computer Science department who eventually left Tufts after facing a lack of university support. She described an experience she had in Halligan, the primary computer science building, where she and a Black peer were talking about critical social issues together while finishing a project. She said, “Halfway through talking, a White man interrupted us to share, ‘Damn, Audrey is opinionated!’ and I looked around to see a lab of white men laughing at me, an Asian woman, and a Black man.”

Granted, certain attempts are being made to make spaces more accessible and open for women of color at Tufts. Kristin Finch, the Associate Director of STEM Diversity at Tufts, explained that Tufts has many active projects working to improve inclusion and diversity for marginalized identities in STEM. As a Black woman in this field, she examines the importance of not only recruiting women of color into STEM, but also retaining them—this is much of the work that STEM Diversity at Tufts strives to do. There are many initiatives, including STEM Ambassadors who connect female, minority, and firstgeneration college students to high school classrooms fostering conversations about their experiences in STEM. BEST (Bridge to Engineering Success at Tufts) and PRISE (Promoting Retention In Science and Engineering) are other examples, supporting first generation STEM students through their first and second years at Tufts by exposing them to research, helping them network and doing weekly check-ins. These programs are intended to support underrepresented students and help them feel safe within the fields.

Finch stresses the importance of this support, and emphasizes that it starts early.

“I think the image of what Science and Engineering is in the media doesn’t show diversity, so marginalized students from a young age don’t feel connected and see themselves in science and engineering,” she said. “I think it’s really important to emphasize that science and engineering is for women, it is for people of color, it

is for people who are low income or first generation college students.”

Marilyn Allen describes the STEM pipeline as a place “where Black and Latino students enter STEM fields, or think about entering STEM fields, but eventually quit.”

The lack of the inclusive space not only blocks women of color from these spaces, but also creates an environment where they feel like they cannot succeed, and they often change their focus to more inclusive and validating fields. However, she believes that STEM fields at Tufts contribute to this pipeline, and that Tufts needs greater investment in students of color, especially women of color, in these programs to continue pushing for the already existing programs to reach more students and be more comprehensive. Allen, in addition to Koo and Freeman, believes that with greater support from the university, more women of color would stay in STEM. “I think there could be a support group for women of color. If that had existed, I’m sure I wouldn’t have quit so easily.”

September 26, 2016

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News

A Businessman’s Guide to the Galaxy The Privatization of Space Exploration

By Lily Hartzell

O

n September 1, photos of the fireball that was once SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket splashed across the front pages of newspapers across the nation. For the first time in recent years, the public’s attention was turned toward outer space, and this time, NASA was not the center of attention. Instead, the public eye turned toward the growing trend of private companies in space.

Outer-space companies appear to be the latest darlings of wealthy entrepreneurs. Elon Musk, the tech magnate who founded SolarCity and Tesla, started SpaceX in 2002 with a mission to “revolutionize space technology with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets.”

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, began Blue Origin in 2000. Like SpaceX, Blue Origin contracts with other companies to launch vessels into space, but is also promoting its program as a means for ordinary people to feel like astronauts by offering them short space flights. Though this second goal has yet to be achieved, Blue Origin is already working with researchers to launch payloads of research equipment into space.

Other companies like Virgin Galactic (an affiliate of Virgin Airlines) and XCOR Aerospace are also pursuing suborbital space tourism. As NASA’s funding and profile have diminished over the last decades, SpaceX and its competitors have begun to fill its shoes.

This shift towards space research in the private sector is not a tragic story of the Unit6

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ed States’ space agency succumbing to partisan budget wars—instead, it’s giving NASA the freedom to pursue other endeavors.

“There’s a very clear sense that NASA has given more routine aspects of its work, like servicing the International Space Station, over to private companies, while at the same time it was focusing its energies on deep space exploration,” Tufts Assistant Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics Anna Sajina said. “I think it’s just a shift in focus, which I actually think is the right direction.”

In 2006, NASA launched its Commercial Orbital Transport Services Program (COTS), which was designed to incentivize private companies in developing a replacement for the Space Shuttle, a vessel that transports astronauts and supplies to and from the International Space Station.

By investing $700 million—only half of what a Space Shuttle flight would cost— NASA helped two companies, including SpaceX, create the technology to launch their own vehicles.

Programs like COTS have allowed NASA to shift away from sub-orbital space operations, or those closest to Earth, and turn its sights instead on exploring Mars and sending a human there one day.

“It’s worth remembering that it’s not a more or less thing, it’s these things that NASA does and allowing private companies to enter some aspects of it, so NASA is freed up to do what they do best, which is the deep space exploration,” Sajina said.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Science, Space, and Health Jonathan Margolis also emphasized the importance of the federal government working closely with private companies to align their goals.

“The United States government encourages private investment in the peaceful exploration and use of outer space. The United States sees great promise in private sector efforts to advance path-breaking activities that deepen our understanding of space and unlock new space applications that benefit all mankind,” Margolis said in an e-mail.

In short, the government sees private space companies as the most efficient way to expand space exploration—they don’t need to invest taxpayer money in research projects that already have the attention of the private sector.

So far, SpaceX’s launches have mainly been satellites for telecommunications companies. However, SpaceX and Boeing have now contracted with NASA to fly astronauts to the International Space Station at the end of 2018. Moon Express, another spacefaring company, received approval to be the first private company to exit the Earth’s orbit and land on the moon in early August.

Dr. Kenneth Lang, Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Tufts University, is enthusiastic about the prospect of these ventures. He thinks the increase of private companies will lead to more discoveries and better ventures.

ART BY BEN RUTBERG

News

“I’m not a corporate person, I’m not a profit-motivated person. I’m an idea person and a discovery person, and the number of discoveries is likely to increase,” Lang said.

“You can’t say what those discoveries will be before because they’re unknown, but it’s inevitable that more of them will be made when you send more spacecraft out.”

American companies are leading the way, but they are not the only ones who will make these kinds of discoveries. The number of countries with spacefaring capabilities has grown, as has the number of space companies abroad. This phenomenon is pushing the State Department and others to coordinate more carefully with other countries’ space agencies.

“We will continue to work with other nations to determine how best to manage [private companies’] activities so that they are conducted in a safe and responsible manner, consistent with international law, that allows space technologies and services to flourish,” Margolis wrote.

To this end, the International Space Exploration Forum convened in January 2014.

A far cry from the space race of the Cold War, the forum was designed to help countries align their objectives in outer space and promote information sharing. An important topic under discussion was how to bring private companies into the fold to help achieve these goals.

Cooperation with private companies is not without its risks. However promising the possibility of increased discoveries in space is, Dr. Lang expressed concerns about companies’ motivations to explore in the first place.

“The thing that bothers me about it is the profit motivation. The motivation of companies is essentially to make money, and it might be to make money for the wrong people. It might be to make money for the CEO, not for the guy who does the science,” he said. Lang worries that this profit motivation may cause companies to ask for larger “indirect cost allowances” in their contracts with NASA, which would essentially go into their pockets instead of towards their projects.

Other sectors, like defense, have also seen an increase in reliance on private com-

panies, which many see as allowing the government to take less and less responsibility for its actions. Coupled with the often-contradictory motives of the public and private sector, many are understandably troubled by this change.

On the flip side, private companies could also increase the efficiency of space expeditions.

“What companies are extremely good at, what market forces are extremely good at, is finding the cheapest ways to do things,” Sajina said.

For example, SpaceX and others are working on technology to make rockets reusable, a step that would reduce both waste and costs. By improving on these more routine missions, private companies are making near space more accessible and allowing NASA to explore further afield.

“A private company is good at some aspects and NASA is certainly great at other aspects, so each can play to their strengths,” Sajina said. O

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Arts & Culture

Home Town

By Greta Jochem

W

here Beach Street meets the Greenway, Ko Kun Ha, the first instructor of Chinese language at Harvard University, stands clad in a traditional Chinese robe. On Harrison Avenue, the Wongs, two immigrant sisters, stand together. That is, life-sized cutouts of Ha and the Wong sisters.

In Boston’s Chinatown, figures from the community’s past have returned home.

These figures, spread throughout the Chinatown area, are part of artist Wen-ti Tsen’s public art project, “Home Town: Representing Boston’s Chinatown as Place of People - Then and Now.” Tsen has harnessed the power of art to address harmful changes in Chinatown.

“This project is to use art in such a way that will draw attention to the threats with gentrification,” he said.

Chinatown has been a home to Asian Americans in Boston for over 100 years, noted Tsen. As early as the 1880s, Chinese immigrants settled there, mostly running laundries or restaurants. But in the 1960s, so-called “urban renewal initiatives”—attempts by corporations to profit off of marginalized populations by “reinvigorating” urban areas—built a highway cutting into the area and displacing hundreds of families with a ramp and retaining wall.

Now, rising rents and encroaching high-rise buildings continue to threaten the community. According to a 2016 Buzzfeed article, buildings like The Kensington—just blocks from the center of Chinatown—rent

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September 26, 2016

PHOTOS BY GRETA JOCHEM

Arts & Culture

one-bedroom apartments for a steep $4,000 per month. The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund cited that between 1990 and 2010 the Asian American population in Chinatown dropped from 76 percent to 46 percent. University of Massachusetts Boston Associate Professor and co-author of a 2013 Chinatown report Andrew Leong told the Boston Globe last April, “We’re slowly being gentrified out of existence. You’re talking about displacement of those kinds of people that have rented from these unattractive units for decades.”

Tsen’s “Home Town” project is not the only public art piece addressing history in Chinatown. Over 20 panels detailing the history of written word in Chinatown hang in the Tufts Medical School bookstore and China Trade Center in an installation titled “These Words.”

The project received significant funding from Tisch College through the Tufts Community Research Committee. “These Words” tries to bring light to Chinatown’s struggle for a public library branch, an ongoing issue for the past 60 years, as well as display the history of the Shanghai Printing Company—the only bilingual press in the area—and the Oxford Street Bulletin Board, a center for community information. Tufts, of course, plays an integral role in gentrifying Chinatown; combined together, Tufts Medical Center and New England Medical Center occupy a third of Chinatown’s total land.

Tsen said that in addressing gentrification in the area, art serves as a

powerful medium: “By using art, I think it can be more relatable to the general public than statistics...It’s to get more of the city to be aware of the situation.”

Tsen’s figures are indisputably striking: fully life-sized, brightly painted cutouts of people from the historical Asian-American community stand on the sidewalks for the week. Captions written by Bridgewater State Professor and Chinese Historical Society of New England Vice-President Dr. Wing-kai detail the figure’s stories.

Tsen explained that the figures are all about relatability: “They are real people that people can look eye to eye and relate to... people [viewing the exhibit] get a feeling that they are the [figures] and that they have the history to relate to present day.”

In his “Home Town” project, Tsen collaborated with the Chinese Historical Society of New England. Using the organization’s photo archives, he selected 12 images to enlarge and paint. In the process, he found that while there were Boston Globe photos of working people in Chinatown, there were few photographs that gave them control of their own subjectivity. Most of the people who had their picture taken looking the camera face-on were those of stature and power.

In the second part of Tsen’s piece, he looks to the present. Over the course of a few sessions, he set up stations to photograph residents, working people, and passersby.

Tsen photographed hundreds of people to compile an album documenting the people of today’s Chinatown.

Tsen said the spelling—“Home Town” instead of “Hometown”—is intentional. “Hometown, one word, is very much to my mind associated with American movies. It’s very much the Meet Me in St. Louis when people have big houses with a lawn in front.

Everything is so neat... it’s very exclusive of the immigrant experience.”

Susan Chinsen, Managing Director of Chinese Historical Society of New England, pointed out that in the case of Boston’s Chinatown, home is a concept that transcends geography. “It’s a place of home for many people, it’s not just about residents that live there... it’s to show that Chinatown is a residence, a location, for people who actually live here, but that you know this concept of home, especially today, is much broader than a geographic address.”

Chinsen noted that while growing up in an immigrant family in Quincy, her family relied on Chinese language services in Boston’s Chinatown and came to buy groceries and see a doctor.

Although it was not where she lived, Chinatown served as a home.

Tsen agreed. “I still think of going to Chinatown as a little bit of that part of a home, the part of me that was from China,” he said. “Because of that home quality, that’s why we need to preserve it. The high rise people will go down, they may even eat in Chinatown, but it’s not their home. We need to preserve a quality home for the Asian American families around the northeast.” O

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9

Campus

Major Sprawl

By Carly Olson

“I

one-hundred percent feel like it’s the CS hub,” said senior Cecily Lo about Halligan Hall.

“Lots of things come together to create a sense of camaraderie.” Despite having mixed thoughts on the computer science community at Tufts, Lo affirms that there is undeniably a central space for students in her major—Halligan. “It’s possible to do programming assignments remotely, but for some classes it’s really discouraged,” she explained. “People have definitely fostered 10

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relationships with the professors through being in Halligan.”

Unlike computer science, some departments on campus are less centralized than others. While disciplines like computer science, chemistry, and romance languages have buildings on campus in which they consistently hold their classes, many other departments don’t have such a luxury.

Ultimately, centralization is only prioritized for certain departments on campus due to university policies that are

already in place. Classroom assignments, and centralization of departments in general, are decided by the University Registrar’s Office. When choosing where to place a specific class on campus, the Registrar considers the technological needs of each class, the size of each class, and who has “ownership” of each building on campus.

Certain departments are given the privilege of holding most of their classes in the department’s home building—what the ART BY ADRIANA GUARDANS-GODO

Campus

Registrar calls the “home court advantage” policy. “Economics, for example, is in Braker Hall. We try to book as many of the economics courses within their building that we can,” explained AS&E Registrar Jo Ann Jack.

However, only certain departments can reap the benefits of home court advantage. The English department is based in East Hall, a building with very few classrooms, though there are over 100 English courses being offered this semester.

As a result, the English department’s classes are scattered across campus.

Another dilemma occurs when multiple departments are based out of the same building. In this case, the departments can rarely benefit from the home court advantage policy. Eaton Hall is exceptionally challenging—the building is home base for the American Studies, Religion, Classics, and Anthropology

class, the Registrar will assign the class in Braker instead if a room is available.

Jack explained that the home court advantage is often at odds with choosing the best space for a class. “I think it would help us utilize our space better if we could eliminate the home court advantage and actually put courses in their best fit,” she said. But she doesn’t expect this policy to change any time soon. “We’re not there yet. There’s a strong sense of ownership of buildings,” she said.

But not all buildings have one “owner,” and Jack acknowledged that some departments need home court advantage more than others. As a result, most of the lab sciences and engineering classes are housed in or near their home buildings more often than some types of humanities courses. “Physics has all kinds of equipment…so they obviously need a

experience with the history department despite lacking a centralized space on campus. “I definitely identify with my major, but I’m not sure how strong of a community we have,” she said.

For the Office of Campus Planning, knowing which departments use which classrooms is key when they are assessing the space for renovations.

Between 2014 and 2015, the Office of Campus Planning commissioned the Learning Spaces Strategic Plan—an indepth assessment of the classroom space on the Medford/Somerville campus and how to better utilize it. Since the findings were released, the team has been gradually working its way around campus to meet with faculty and administrators and decide how to properly renovate the spaces to suit each department’s individual need.

Courses in the humanities are more commonly spread out than those in economics or lab sciences. departments. Here, choosing who gets first pick of classes is difficult. Jack explained that the departments in Eaton cannot have true home court advantage—it would require prioritizing one department over another. “We try to put as many as their courses in their building as possible, but since there are four departments that live there, they can’t all have home court advantage like Braker,” she said.

Jack noted that this is nothing new.

Courses in the humanities are more commonly spread out than those in economics or lab sciences.

For the Registrar, sometimes the home court advantage policy can make scheduling classes in their “optimal” rooms difficult. Jack and her team use a program called EMS (Event Management System) to run a classroom “optimization,” which assesses all of the rooms on campus and selects the optimal room for each course considering variables like class size and technology necessary. Home court advantage interferes with this practice—if EMS picks a room in Olin for an economics

different kind of room than English 1.”

Faculty, students, and administrators can see the benefits of having a centralized space. Aside from the perk of walking shorter distances between classes, it creates a sense of connection among faculty as well as students of the same major.

James Glaser, Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, recognizes this benefit in housing departments together. “You want to co-locate people who might work together and have common interests,” he noted. Glaser said that this is especially potent in the sciences, where lab projects might find “synergies,” but is true of all departments and faculty.

Lo noted that when she’s coding in Halligan, it’s always easy to find a professor or TA in the building for extra help. “[Professor] Ming Chow, who teaches web programming and security, is so often on this one couch upstairs that people call it ‘Ming’s spot,’” she said. “So if you ever need help from him, 99 percent of the time, he’s there.”

Lizzie Boston, a senior majoring in history, said that she still enjoys her

For departments that don’t have as much of a home court advantage, it can be difficult to tailor spaces exactly to their needs. “There’s a little bit of the luck of the draw going on because some departments are in buildings with classrooms and other departments are in buildings without classrooms,” Lois Stanley, Director of Campus Planning, said.

When departments lack regular spaces in which they teach, they are presented with unique challenges— having classrooms that will suit their needs and building a sense of connection within the department. Perhaps some of these will be mitigated with the classroom renovations that are designed to accommodate many modes of teaching, but there is still a sense of dissatisfaction with the lack of consistent centralization.

“I have been jealous of people who can go to Halligan,” Boston concluded. “It’s not only an academic environment, but a place to meet people, work, and build relationships. There’s really nowhere for history students to do that.”

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Poetry

Your body moves in shadows. People can be dreams, too.

Light does not travel uniformly across miles of haze. This is when I learned why they call that color midnight blue.

Streaks of light dance on and off of you from a lighthouse in the sky.

I wrap myself in a blanket of milk when you leave. Heading into the storm we conform to new positions we have never tried before. A warm condition of existence wrapped around my right thigh.

We are a flexible temporary. We disintegrate while accelerating.

Dream Summary

By Libby Langsner

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ART BY RILEY ARONSON

space_

ELIZABETH BROOKE

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TYLER HAGEDORN

AMBER CHEVANNES

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September 26, 2016

MADELEINE LEBOVIC

ELIZABETH BROOKE

September 26, 2016

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LUCA EISEN

TYLER HAGEDORN

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Poetry

atoms

By Jaanvi Sant I. scientists say nothing is real not even the moment my synapses align to produce a projection of you II. i once saw myself in a moth’s paper wing & realized that rebirth as a book means dying as a tree first III. i wonder if all the soap bubbles we ever blew have rearranged themselves into constellations

ART BY ANNIE ROOME

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Tech & Innovation

Under the Sea Boston’s attempt to mitigate the consequences of climate change

By Grace Segers

ART BY JAKE ROCHFORD

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Tech & Innovation

“I

t’s gonna rise.”

Andrew Kemp, Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences at Tufts, did not mince words when discussing the

If the city does not take active steps, Boston’s ocean surface will rise by 2.5 meters by the year 2100.

effect that climate change will have on sea level in Boston throughout the next century. According to him, the goal is not preventing the sea level from rising, which at this point is a certainty. Instead, the City of Boston needs to take steps to ensure that this increase will inflict only minimal damage.

Kemp has worked with the city to diagnose the specific effects that climate change will have. He was a contributor to the 2016 report by the Boston Research Advisory Group entitled “Climate Change and Sea Level Rise Projections for Boston.” This document was published by Climate Ready Boston, a project sponsored by city government, and the Green Ribbon Commission, a climate-oriented working group composed of city officials and representatives from the private sector. The finalized report was printed for use by the City of Boston in the early summer of 2016.

According to Kemp, Boston will be affected more severely by rising sea levels than the rest of the world throughout the next century. Kemp explained that the Earth isn’t like a bathtub, where the level of water increases evenly across the surface; some places are more affected than others.

Changes in Boston’s relative sea level will be affected by factors such as the push of Gulf Stream currents and melted ice from Antarctica. These Antarctic glaciers are composed of ice sheets that hold water together by gravity, known as the “fingerprint” effect. When the glaciers melt, the bond of gravity dissipates and the water is pushed farther away. Boston lies within an area that will be severely affected by this push, making it one of the most vulnerable cities to sea level rise in the world.

If the city does not take active steps, Boston’s ocean surface will rise by 2.5 meters—or approximately eight feet—by the

“I think [solutions are] the most difficult part of the process.”

year 2100. But Kemp says it is a mistake to only be concerned with long-term effects.

“Long before that is when you start to see the problem,” Kemp explained, giving the example of nuisance flooding, when storms are exacerbated by high tides. If there is a significant rise in sea level, the severity of storms will be such that it consistently seems as though it is high tide. In

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Tech & Innovation

this case, every time there is even a bit of rain, downtown Boston would experience a “nuisance flood.”

Now that Kemp and his fellow researchers have diagnosed the problem, Boston is working with consulting firms to implement solutions. As 2016 draws to a close, the city is inching towards applying these ideas, such as retrofitting building infrastructure to withstand flooding.

On September 15, Climate Ready Boston hosted “Boston’s Climate Vulnerabilities & Solutions Symposium,” intended to highlight the work done by the city and offer a forum to discuss policy implementation. “I think [solutions are] the most difficult part of the process,” Kemp said. “Doing something requires social and political will and money.”

Other major cities have already acted to mitigate the effects of rising sea levels.

A native of England, Kemp recalled how London had built floodgates at the mouth of the Thames to prevent the rising level of

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water from affecting the city. However, this is not possible in cities like New York or Boston, which do not have the luxury of building simple floodgates as they are located directly along the ocean.

Kemp offered some possible pathways that the City of Boston can take towards addressing its climate change problem. He explained that it is more difficult to provide a single solution for an entire city than to apply different tactics to smaller sections.

As such, steps should be taken in several areas at once.

Kemp suggested lowering insurance rates for buildings that leave their first floors empty, such that no businesses would be affected by flooding. He added that there are different considerations for different construction projects—building a subway requires more complex solutions than building a beach house. Kemp also explained that future subway tunnels could be shielded by floodgates, or power sources placed in the top rather than the bottom of the tunnel.

A wider solution would be to build more structures inland, further from the threat of flooding, and thus refocus the center of commerce away from downtown.

A few buildings in the Boston area have already begun implementing solutions. The first floor of the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Charlestown was built 42 inches above the highest flood level. No critical patient care facilities are on the first floor, and the building’s electricity is controlled from the roof. While not flood-proof, the hospital is flood-resistant, a necessary requirement for all future structures built in Boston. Kemp suggested lowering insurance rates for buildings that leave their first floors empty to encourage more of these projects.

“Alternatively, you can just do nothing,” Kemp shrugged. Fortunately, this is one suggestion which Boston does not seem likely to follow, given its efforts to diagnose the problem and strategize for the inevitable.

Opinion

UNPACKING TRANSPHOBIA IN TRUNK

By Emma Youcha

September 26, 2016

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Opinion

T

he Traveling Treasure Trunk proudly presents: transphobia.

It’s taken me many months to even begin processing the transphobia I’ve faced the last two semesters since coming out as non-binary. I’m scared of hurting the people who’ve hurt me, scared of making them look bad, scared of tarnishing their reputations, terrified of being further scapegoated, hated, and damaged. But I’ve tried reaching out to them to talk, tried being understanding, tried talking honestly and openly, and that has been used to abuse and erase me.

I auditioned for The Traveling Treasure Trunk during the first few weeks of my freshman year. On their website, TRUNK self-describes as “Tufts University’s own children’s theatre troupe that uniquely blends theatre performance with community service. TRUNK writes, directs, and costumes its own original skits, songs, and plays and performs them for kids at daycares, hospitals, and preschools in the greater Boston area.” The instant I saw the goofy, handmade costumes, I knew it was something I wanted to try out. TRUNK has a difficult audition process—you must be unanimously voted in. The group thinks of itself as a family; every member even adopts the last name Trunker, and new Trunkers are highly sheltered and guarded.

These members, “the babies,” are brought in with “unconditional love.” As an incoming first-year, struggling, confused, and lonely, it made the transition into life at Tufts so much easier. I had people who said they had my back, people who promised to support and love me through anything I may face. I got to perform plays, try out weird voices, make fun costumes, and see kids several times a week. I had a family. It was a dream come true.

A dream is a great way to think of it. After first semester, I started to realize that this group of people was not quite as

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perfect and well put together as my vulnerable heart had wanted me to believe. I was questioning my own gender identity and began to pick up ways in which gendered dynamics—along with racial and class dynamics—were, and always had been, very present within the space. By sophomore fall, my third semester in TRUNK, I’d changed my pronouns and started working harder to understand what was going on in my head. Between this process and conversations with other Trunkers, I noticed more and more how harmful the plays we performed were. By harmful, I mean the messages that they promoted included core tenets of the gender binary, the values of meritocracy (wherein anyone’s ability to succeed is promoted, despite living within a system that actively enforces a social hierarchy), and other ideals that are used every day to promote capitalist, racist, and cisheteropatriarchal ideologies. As a non-binary person, that means our plays were performed in ways that actively hurt me. As the oft mentioned quote goes, “the personal is political.”

When I tried to point it out, I got the feeling other Trunkers felt I was ruining their fun or making things unnecessarily difficult. I was asking for more intentionality within that space because I was being hurt. It hurt when the only people who would deign to play the tooth fairy character were cis women. It hurt that the only way the tooth fairy could be imagined was prancing and singing. It hurt that to have her played in a traditionally masculine way meant she was “funny.” It hurt to get completely shut down in the face of mentioning it and, later, to be told I’d chosen an “inappropriate” time to bring it up. It hurt that after three months of using they/them pronouns, I was misgendered at least once a rehearsal. It hurt that nobody ever stood up for me when that happened. It hurt that I did not feel I could stand up for myself.

I tried going to some individual members of the group for support. I told them I felt unsupported, that these things were happening and I needed people to care more, to try harder. I asked that they learn more about what it means to be non-binary, that they question the gender binary as it exists in their own heads, and that if I said something was harmful to me, they listen and change their behavior.

The response? What you are asking of us is unfair and hard.

So much for family.

We decided earlier that semester that we needed to have a conversation about our mission as a group. I decided, at that discussion, to bring up the feelings I’d been having to the group at large. I felt that Trunk was failing at one part of its mission: to be a supporting and loving space for all its members. What followed was a twohour sob session. I did none of the crying.

Only a couple of people in the 13-member group supported me. Two cis White men remained silent the entire time. Many of the cis White women told me—no, literally yelled and cried at me—that I was invalidating their womanhood. They said they had looked at the gender binary and knew that they were women. They loved and supported me, but what I was asking was “too much” and “not fair.” One said she was bisexual, but she didn’t try to bring that part of her identity into TRUNK. Multiple people were so overcome with emotion that they just had to leave the room, one even saying she was going to vomit. I sat there calmly the entire time, wondering: why did they feel so invalidated by me trying to bring myself into this group?

Coming into spring semester, I realized that I could not, would not, bring new members into a group so unwilling to support the people that were currently members. I talked with the few people who’d been there for me the semester prior. The

ART BY MADISON HASKINS

Opinion

aforementioned “conversation” sparked some of them to question their own relationships to TRUNK, too. Ultimately, for our own reasons, but in support of one another, we all decided to take our leave. We wrote a letter explaining the decision and the ways in which those of us with marginalized identities struggled to feel safe and

What’s worse is that TRUNK is a children’s theater troupe that performs every weekday morning. And that group continues to go present these seemingly innocuous plays to kids—little sponges who need to learn something other than meritocracy and traditional gender roles. And some of those kids are trans; they statisti-

me every day. TRUNK has been incredibly transphobic to me. People need to know that before they decide to audition.

They need to know that before they head to the On Campus show at the end of the semester. And if, by any chance, this gets into the hands of a school or a teacher, you need to know this before you ask

The Traveling Treasure Trunk as it exists now is a group that has made the active choice to continue upholding systems of power even when confronted with opportunities to question them and push back.

loved within TRUNK. In my part of that letter, I offered myself up to talk to Trunkers about what happened. An entire semester passed in radio silence.

Upon talking to a TRUNK alumnus, I learned that current Trunkers were propagating a story that I had political differences with the group, that it had been me against everyone, that they all felt antagonized by me, and eventually I left. They turned me into a dissident and destroyed all evidence of any wrongdoing on their part. I heard this and felt crushed. I’d been totally erased.

cally must be! It pains me to know this. I feel like I’ve let them down. I feel like I’ve let yet another kids’ performance group show children the same things that hurt me, that hurt everyone.

The Traveling Treasure Trunk, as it exists now, is a group that has made the active choice to continue upholding systems of power even when confronted with opportunities to question them and push back. They’re a small group that gets to exist without much attention from the Tufts community at large, but I can’t sit and let that happen anymore. It eats at

TRUNK to perform for your students.

This is a story about TRUNK, but there is a reason they got away with the described emotional violence. These attitudes are everywhere on this campus and they go wildly unchecked. Do not be quick to condemn TRUNK without first examining yourself. If someone in one of your on campus groups came out tomorrow, how would your react? If there are trans/non-binary/questioning people in one of your groups, do you think they feel supported? The violence of my experience is overt, but not unique.

September 26, 2016

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News

The Language of

Safe Spaces

By Daniel Weaver

O

n August 24, University of Chicago administrators penned a letter to incoming freshmen inveighing against “intellectual ‘safe spaces’” and re-affirming the university’s “commitment to freedom of inquiry and expression” as one of UChicago’s “defining characteristics.” The UChicago letter spread widely in the media, but is hardly the first time ‘safe spaces’ and trigger warnings have entered the national discourse. The letter arrives amidst a broader debate over ‘safe spaces,’ trigger warnings, and a supposed culture of political correctness. The September 2015 cover of The Atlantic declared “Better Watch What You Say! How the new political correctness is ruining education – and mental health,” the headline set in a cartoonish thought bubble that is partially aflame.

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The idea of safe space can be difficult to define, and at Tufts the term itself has been replaced by the vocabulary of ‘intentional spaces,’ particularly within campus spaces including the LGBT Center and the Women's Center. According to Women’s Center interim director Bryn Gravitt, the Center made this transition in language under the guidance of former director Steph Gauchel.

The central problem with the language of ‘safe’ space, explained by both Gravitt and LGBT Center director Nino Testa, is the guarantee of a ‘safe’ experience. This guarantee is predicated on an assumption that “inherently homogenizes groups,” according to Gravitt. The term ‘safe space’ is “sort of guaranteeing that you can experience a space in a sort of way,” the process of which “essentializes the experience of women,” and other marginalized groups. In short,

guaranteeing a safe space assumes a singular or essential gender experience that, in Gravitt’s view, doesn’t exist.

According to Testa, the language of ‘safe’ space has roots in the LGBT community. “People used to talk about safe spaces as spaces that are populated with LGBT people only,” and that they are literally “safe for people to be out in,” Testa said. In the national conversation, however, the term has been applied more broadly to describe spaces that are “safe” for people of all identities. But Testa and Gravitt both expressed serious doubt that a space could be totally safe for anyone. “I don’t know how anyone could promise such a thing,” said Testa.

Outside of organizations like the Group of Six, the term “intentional space” is neither widely known nor understood.

According to Testa and Gravitt, this is a

ART BY ADRIANA GUARDANS-GODO

News

major reason why safe—or intentional— spaces are accused of stifling exactly the debates intentional spaces can enable on campuses across the country. But according to Gravitt, prioritizing intentionality creates spaces that might “level the playing field” in a way that encourages critical thought, the production of knowledge, and actively makes space for those traditionally excluded. In the eyes of Gravitt and Testa, the essential goals of ‘intentional’ spaces actually begin to resemble the values that UChicago letter claims to defend: “freedom of inquiry and expression” and the “free exchange of ideas.” It’s a central irony of the discourse on intentional spaces that to hear Gravitt and Testa outline the role of intentional spaces is to hear, almost verbatim, UChicago’s language in defense of “academic freedom.”

The fear UChicago’s administration expresses in the letter is that “intellectual ‘safe spaces” allow students room to “retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.” But the idea that intentional spaces seek to anesthetize students from the discomfort of learning does not mesh well with what appears to be the dominant understanding on the Tufts’ campus of what an intentional space is. Gravitt understands intentional space as an attempt to “interrogate this line between productive discomfort and actively oppressive discomfort.”

This understanding requires a belief in such a thing as “actively oppressive discomfort” as distinct from “productive discomfort,” a distinction the UChicago administration refuses to recognize.

The progression from the language of safe spaces to the language of intentional

spaces is related to this line between “productive discomfort” and “actively oppressive discomfort.” Considering the conclusion that, as Testa said, the promise of a safe space can never be fully fulfilled, the most we can hope for is conscientiousness.

The focus of this mindfulness is often language, with an eye towards developing an awareness about how our language affects others. The question for those in intentional spaces becomes how to fulfill an intellectual mission that privileges learning while avoiding the discomfort that, for some, makes learning spaces oppressive.

For Testa, that question is open. “I can’t give you a list of ways that are the ways to engage in every space...as a group of people who want to create intentional space you have to do that together.” O

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Opinion

Apolitical Erasure: Tufts,

By Katie Saviano

I

first went to the Loj in November of my freshman year. I felt lucky to be in such a beautiful, quiet place. However, over my years at Tufts as a Tufts Mountain Club (TMC) member, I have rarely questioned my access to the Loj or the nearby White Mountains.

I have realized that although the reasons I go to the Loj—to escape from campus, breathe, reflect, and connect to outdoor spaces—are seemingly well-intentioned, by not acknowledging the history of the land the Loj occupies, I am complicit in the erasure of Indigenous history.

I am not alone. TMC, Tufts University, and all Tufts students are implicated in the ongoing colonization and struggle of Indigenous people. Furthermore, the very act of sitting on Indigenous land is political and by TMC’s refusal to shed its apolitical identity, we are perpetuating violence.

“Our history was erased, but our people didn’t go. They stayed. They are still here,” said John Moody, Ethnohistorian and Project Coordinator for the Winter Center for Indigenous Traditions. The Abenaki People, whose homeland extends through New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine, and Vermont, were victims of violent land encroachment by European settlers. As early as 26

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the 1500s, the Abenaki Tribe lost their homeland to colonial expansion.

According to Donna Moody, Tribal Elder in the Abenaki Nation and spokesperson for the Abenaki Nation to the State of New Hampshire and the Federal Government, colonization is achieved “...by separating the people from the land.” She continued, “progress from an Indigenous perspective has, in many cases, destroyed what we have and our own particular ways of knowing the land.” The wilderness is not “pristine,” uninhabited land ready for hikers, but a homeland, and a place of conflict, where settler militias burned, starved, and brutally killed Indigenous people. Celebrating and romanticizing the outdoors without acknowledging the history of the land has become a popular pastime for large numbers of white, upper-class Americans, many of whom have never had to work the land to make a living.

The reality is that the majority of TMC members do not question their claim to Indigenous land or the space of the Loj in particular. Matt Hooley, visiting Assistant Professor of Native American Studies, explained that the history of the land itself is often neglected. “[C]ertain forms of participatory environmental education have played a particular role in validating those kinds of claims, often at the same time that

Indigenous ideas about the environment are tokenized and erased,” he said.

Meanwhile, in New Hampshire today, not a single Indigenous group has state recognition. This means that Indigenous communities are barred from the land, their spiritual sites decimated by construction, and the ways that they originally used the land—to hunt, fish, and trap—are redefined as illegal so that we can enjoy the land and mountains in their “original state.”

Why do we not question the history of the land and Tufts’ claim to Woodstock, New Hampshire? Ari Schneider is the current president of TMC. To his knowledge, such a conversation had never taken place since the club was established in 1939. This means that TMC has laid claim to land in New Hampshire for 77 years and there is no known record of a formal conversation about the implications of occupying and benefiting from Indigenous land. Professor Hooley further probed these claims.

“It’s important that we both question the specific land-claiming practices of Tufts as well as situate our understanding of that in a broader understanding of US colonialism,” he said.

As an occupier of Indigenous land, TMC doesn’t have the right to be apolitical. According to Schneider, being apoliti-

Opinion

, the Loj, and Indigeneity cal is a longstanding policy for the campus group, because “...we’re a club with a very simple mission statement, to go outside.”

For example, TMC has not protested the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) being built on Indigenous land. Schneider made it clear that club members should be able to have their own political beliefs, but the outing club wouldn’t get involved in protesting the pipeline.

DAPL would extend through the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s ancestral lands and within half of a mile of its reservation.

If a spill were to happen—which, historically, is a question of “when,” not “if ”—the spill would pose a public health threat to the Tribe as well as threaten the Tribe’s way of life and culture.

For a group that founds itself on enjoying nature and outdoors areas, it seems contradictory not to protest the pipeline, which poses significant threats to the environment.

Last year, TMC refused to endorse Indigenous People’s Day at Tufts because of its apolitical identity, even though the club members routinely benefit from their use of Indigenous land. Going forward, there can no longer be spaces at Tufts where students can decide that combating systems of oppression do not apply to them.

And TMC members are not the only Tufts students implicated in uninterrogated claims to Indigenous lands. These claims are structural aspects of ongoing colonialism everywhere.

Tufts sophomore Parker Breza, an Indigenous student and a leader of the Indigenous People’s Day Movement on campus and in Boston, echoed this sentiment. “I think it’s really important that Tufts students be even more conscious of the continued settler colonialism that almost every student here, unless you are Indigenous to this area, is participating in, and the responsibility that this brings,” he said.

Awareness is key to moving the conversation forward. Donna Moody expressed this opinion succinctly, stating, “I don’t care what the deed says, it is still Abenaki land.”

Moody outlined several important actions for the Tufts community, starting with the opening of respectful communication with the Abenaki tribe. When I spoke to Moody, she stated that it was the first time she had been contacted by a Tufts University student. I had assumed that contacting Abenaki tribe members would be difficult, but the people I contacted were willing and excited to be connected to TMC.

After communication is established, the second action is to “… take account of what is on Tufts land.” Moody described a process called Traditional Cultural Properties, in which tribes and communities engage in an evaluation of a place. I believe this process should occur in tandem with education events for TMC members and the larger Tufts Community. As a TMC member, I have had critical and meaningful conversations with other members about the Loj, and I want to see these conversations formalized.

According to John Moody, “taking care of the earth and having the earth take care of us, is a distinctively Indigenous perspective.” For many TMC members, respecting the outdoors is a priority and students are unconsciously subscribing to an Indigenous philosophy. In order to continue using outdoor space, TMC members must be aware of who gets to participate in outdoor space at the expense of others.

This means acknowledging the history of the land both at the Loj and on Tufts campus. Finally, until TMC refuses to shed its apolitical identity, it won’t be able to actually address the Indigenous land it exploits and benefits from. The next time I’m enjoying the outdoors, whether it be the Prez Lawn or the Loj, I will ask myself: at what cost am I enjoying this land?

September 26, 2016

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Meet Our Columnists Read their columns online at tuftsobserver.org starting October 10

Only a Game

By Jamie Moore

Jamie will be writing about the NFL outside the stadium—from social issues to contract disputes to the way the sport markets itself.

Thing of the Week

By Max Makovetsky

Max is a senior who’s interested in a lot of things. He tends to fixate on one topic at a time, his “thing of the week,” really intensely, until he moves on to the next. Lately he’s been thinking a lot about different spaces at tufts that make up Tufts as a whole. Join Max in conversation with other voices who share his enthusiasm, passion, interest, and intrigue for his thing of the week.

Tuft Love

By Sam Crozier

Tuft Love will be an exploration of the ways in which college students—and Tufts students in particular—navigate the complex nature of modern love in all of its forms. From swiping right to having a serious “thing,” Sam will tackle the fluid, complicated, and often confusing nature of romance on college campuses.

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Feature

ORLANDO ECONOMOS

September, 2016

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