Fall 2017 Issue 1

TUFTS OBSERVER VOL. CXL

ISSUE 1

#SILENCE

Table of Contents

STAFF EDITOR IN CHIEF Ben Kesslen MANAGING EDITOR Carissa Fleury

SEPTEMBER 25,2017 Volume CXL, Issue 1 Tufts observer, since 1895 Tufts’ student magazine

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Kyle Scott PRODUCTION MANAGER Chase Conley FEATURES EDITOR Henry Jani NEWS EDITORS Ale Benjamin Vivian Tam OPINIONS EDITORS Emmett Pinsky Merissa Jaye

‘SILENCE’

This week, we’re thinking about silence. Who in our world is forced into silence? Whose lives are seen as disposable, whose voices are unheard, whose stories are deemed unworthy of telling? And, most importantly, how can we begin to unearth these narratives, hold them and honor them for all they are? This is an issue of recounting silences, and breaking them, too.

ARTS & CULTURE EDITORS Lena Novins-Montague Jordan Lauf CAMPUS EDITORS Wilson Wong Julia Press POETRY & PROSE EDITORS Nasrin Lin Alexandra Strong VOICES EDITOR Gabby Bonfiglio STAFF CARTOONIST Ben Rutberg WEB EDITOR Sasha Hulkower COLUMNS EDITOR Sivi Satchithanandan COLUMNISTS Myisha Majumder Riva Dhamala Britt PHOTO DIRECTOR Abigail Barton PHOTO EDITORS Priyanka Padidam Roxanne Zhang

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Letter From the Editor

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WHAT’S THERE TO SEE?

by Ben Kesslen

by Jonathan Innocent

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ART DIRECTORS Annie Roome Nina Hofkosh-Hulbert LEAD ARTISTS Jake Rochford Nicole Cohen

VIDEO DIRECTOR Aaron Watts

by Sivi Satchithanadan

PODCAST DIRECTOR Evie Bellow PUBLICITY DIRECTORS Alyssa Bourne-Peters Ashley Miller

by Lena Novins-Montague

DACA DISCONTINUED

LEAD PHOTOGRAPHER Jordan Delawder

MULTIMEDIA DIRECTOR Kayden Mimmack

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SIGNS OF THE TIMES

COVER BY KYLE SCOTT

LOVE THY NEIGHBOR

by Ben Kesslen

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INSET

by Abigail Barton, Priyanka Padidam, and Audrey Falk

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*Warning: this product contains tree and other varieties of nuts

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why don’t we teach socialism?

22 24 26 28

FOUR YEARS FOR A PRICE

by Julia Press

WHEN THE WATER CLEARS

by Alexandra Benjamin & Carissa Fleury

SILENCE QUITE THIS LOUD

by Jordan Lauf

RISE & SET

by Misha Carlson

PUBLICITY TEAM Owen Cheung STAFF WRITERS Kyle Lui Jonathan Innocent Rosy Fitzgerald DESIGNERS Nicole Cohen Noah Neve Erica Levy Anna Stroe Dennis Kim LEAD COPY EEDITOR Chris Paulino COPY EDITORS Owen Cheung Erin Berja Anita Lam Sonya Bhatia Juliana Vega Niamh Doyle

CONTRIBUTORS Madeline Lee Audrey Falk Laura Wolfe

by Sara Bass

by Gabriela Bonfiglio & Kyle Lui

IN THE PERIPHERY OF THE SPOTLIGHT

by Emily Sim

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

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letter from the editor

By Ben Kesslen

L

ast year proved to be a difficult one for this campus. To deny the Observer’s central role in this would be injudicious. While there are many lessons to be learned from the events that unfolded, one of the things it chiefly revealed to me was the power and responsibility we hold as a magazine.

This year at our retreat, we committed as a staff to centering marginalized voices, providing a platform for underreported and untold stories on campus, and trying our best to use this magazine as a vehicle for positive and necessary change. Our first theme is silence, and the work we intend to do comes with searching for the silences on campus.

Who is heard? And who isn’t? What is the administration telling us? And what are they omitting? While these are questions we will be asking ourselves specifically for this issue, they are also questions that will be guiding us throughout the entire year.

We had over 20 seniors on staff graduate last year, and as we brought on new firstyears and second-years to fill their roles, I couldn’t help but think of my own experiences as a first-year—going to every GIM imaginable, figuring out what clubs I wanted to join, trying to make sense of who I was and who I wanted to be. I wanted to be a part of the Observer because I was desperately searching for community on a campus where it can be hard to find, and I thought the might fit. I didn’t know what a time commitment it would be, I didn’t know where the MAB Lab was, and I didn’t know I would be getting myself into the most meaningful, challenging, complicated, and beautiful community I’ve ever had the chance to be a part of. At the time, I had no understanding of how much of my learning in college would come from this bi-weekly publication. The has taught me how to use InDesign and how to think through power. It has taught me the power of working together to create something, the strength of collaboration, and the importance of critical and compassionate critique. It has introduced me to some of the most dynamic and wonderful people I’ve ever known, and I still find myself in awe of the work our staff produces every two weeks. To lead it is the honor of my entire college career—and in truth, my life so far.

We ask you to read what we have written—and think. If you feel uncomfortable, sit with that. If you feel confused, talk to someone. If you feel mad, do something. If you feel moved, then we are doing our job. We hope, in our 123rd year, that this magazine pushes you and affirms you, challenges you and makes you feel seen. I don’t know what this year will bring for our campus, but I know the Observer will be a part of it.

2 Tufts Observer SEPTEMBER 25, 2017

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what’s there to see ? questioning police presence on campus

By Jonathan Innocent

W

hen you see the police, what flashes through your mind? Do you see their uniforms, badges, cruisers, and guns as tools to uphold your security? Does their presence give you a feeling of safety, as though they can ward off danger?

When I see the police, news clips flash through my mind, and I’m even further troubled by the incidents that never make the news—the ones that occur beyond my field of vision, yet haunt me nonetheless.

I’m immediately gripped by the ongoing history and increasingly prevalent footage of state trained officers harassing, surveilling, and killing Black, Brown, queer, and trans people. I see their uniforms, badges, cruisers, and guns as weapons that, at any moment, could be used against me. Most times I’ve come across the police, their presence has brought a feeling of unsafety—they are the danger.

ART BY NINA HOFKOSH-HULBERT

With that in mind, I make it a point to avoid police as much as possible; Tufts University Police Department is no exception. When I walk by them in the Commons during late-night meal service, I either greet them with a forced polite smile or avoid their gaze completely. When I saw them posted outside of Hotung with metal detectors at a Black city-wide event during my freshman year, I almost didn’t want to go in. As I saw them staring down and watching people dance from the second floor balcony, I wondered what they were looking for, as if our fun needed to be policed.

For students of color who desire a safe space to have fun at a party with other people of color, Tufts can be a very difficult place to be. For Caila Bowen, a Black junior at Tufts, organizing Black events and parties is made even more difficult when it comes to September 25, 2017 Tufts Observer 3

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engaging with TUPD. According to Caila, Tufts police unfairly targets Black parties, with the most recent occurrence this past Friday, September 16. Caila, along with her fellow organizers, cleared the SOGO Multipurpose room for a du-rag and bonnet themed party, coordinating with Office for Campus Life for the party to last until 1 a.m., consistent with most late-night campus engagements.

At approximately 11:45 p.m., a White TUPD officer came to the party, stating that the party was asked to be shut down.

The party’s organizers all addressed the officer and explained that they had coordinated with OCL to have the party end at 1 a.m. and the officer said okay, and left. Not too long after, Caila said, a second officer came, and this time it was a Black officer.

He proceeded to tell Caila that the noise was so loud, he could feel it from his cruiser, saying, “Y’all need to turn it down to the point where it’s not lit anymore.” Caila had notified the DJ after the first visit that the music was too loud, and so she obliged again. After that exchange, he returned to his vehicle but stayed on the premises, keeping a watchful eye. About ten minutes later, the same officer returned, entered the party, which was already waning due to the police’s persistent presence, and waved his flashlight across the room.

4 Tufts Observer September 25, 2017

This was one of the many times Caila has witnessed TUPD officers putting a stop to a POC led party—particularly those with primarily Black attendance—and it was particularly frustrating that she wasn’t allowed to let it go on until the agreed time of 1 a.m.

Worse yet, Caila has never seen TUPD shut down a frat party in the same manner, let alone enter into their party space flashing lights towards what was, at that point, a relatively small crowd. In her own words, “It’s annoying. It’s frustrating. And I think what makes it worse is that these officers really and truly must think we’re idiots. We’re following your rules, yet you still feel the need to shut our party down.”

In all of my brief encounters with TUPD, I’ve had feelings ranging from fear, to apprehension, to insecurity, to anger. All of these feelings are inseparable from my experience as a Black man—one who has been on the receiving end of discriminatory and hostile behavior from police within my own neighborhood. In a campus community with such visible and consistent police presence, anyone with trauma related to past negative experiences with police is vulnerable to being re-traumatized at any moment. For many of my peers, especially those of color, their first or most uncomfortable experiences with the police have occurred here at Tufts.

A Black-identifying first-year student at Tufts, who has chosen to remain anonymous, explained her recent encounter with police that left her feeling singled out because of her Blackness. As she explained in her interview, her roommate and some friends went out onto the roof of Dewick through their dorm room window. By the time the student returned to her room, her roommate—who’s White—and her friends, only one of which was of color, had come

back inside. Not long after, TUPD officers approached their room from the roof. The officer explained that someone had called the station reporting that there were people out on the roof. The student stated that this was her room, and that she had only just gotten there, unaware of what her roommate and her friends had been doing.

She recounted: “As soon as I explained to them that this was my room, I could feel a shift in the tone. They immediately asked for our school IDs, and told us about how it’s dangerous and that people have fallen before. They even held my ID, along with one of my roommate’s friends’, longer than they held the rest while they talked to us.”

The student was particularly disturbed that the officer had asked for their IDs only after she had spoken, as a Black student, to say that it was her room, holding hers longer as if she was presumed to be guilty.

What does it mean when your campus police use unmarked vehicles,butdoesnotnotifyits campus-dwelling community?

The student’s experience of assumed culpability based upon her race is one that has been shared by others within the Tufts community. K. Martinez, Director of the Women’s Center, has had two experiences with TUPD within their four months of being here, after over 10 years of experience at various other colleges and universities where they never had any interactions with campus police officers before.

In the first instance, they were on the steps of Richardson dormitory with a friend on a late night during the summer.

They were granted a temporary residence at this particular dorm, which should’ve been on the radar for TUPD officers who are responsible to know who’s living where on this campus and when. As they were walking their friend out, a TUPD patrol

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SUV stopped in front of the dorm (he pulled over abruptly at a 45-degree angle, then parked facing the wrong side of the street). As the officer remained in his vehicle, K. went down to meet him. They tried to remain as calm and cordial as possible, and the officer asked them, “Who are you?” They then explained that they worked here and were living in this building over the summer, also insisting to show their ID. After a brief exchange and some small talk, the officer claimed he was just checking, and continued on his patrol.

In their interview, they explained: “My friend and I are both queer Black and Brown people. It made me question a sense of belonging. Do they see us and our bodies on this campus and wonder, like, ‘Who are those people?’ If we had been White, I wonder if he would have stopped us. It definitely impacts me psychologically to be like ‘Do I belong on this campus? Who belongs here?’”

In the second instance, K. Martinez noticed an unmarked vehicle parked outside of the Women’s Center during Strut, a party during orientation sponsored by the LGBT and Women’s Centers. They were immediately concerned with who was in the car, and whether they had gone inside the building. Realizing it was an unmarked police vehicle, they walked inside with their hands up, not knowing what to expect upon entry. They were quickly approached by two officers in bulletproof vests, who, after hearing their explanation as to why the building was open, decided it was safe to move on.

The 45-degree angle tactic used in the first situation, and the presence of an unmarked vehicle in the second, suggest to me that TUPD is well prepared to respond to potentially serious threats on this campus, but they also present a more worrying dilemma: what if they falsely perceive that threat to be a member of our own community? Why were two unarmed, non-threatening people standing outside of a building, one which TUPD should’ve known was occupied, approached as though they were hostile invaders to this campus?

Was their presence potentially danger-

ous enough to warrant a shutdown of the whole street? Or was their skin color?

A major concern as to the usage of these tactics by TUPD is the increased militarization of police. Since 2008, TUPD officers have been armed with and trained to use semi-automatic rifles in cases where deadly force is being used to harm or kill.

Now, and possibly in years past, TUPD uses unmarked vehicles. Such developments make me, and others, wonder what’s next for our campus. The Department of Defense holds what is called the 1033 program, where it transfers surplus military equipment, ranging from mine-resistant vehicles to small weapon accessories, to law enforcement agencies across all 50 states. This also includes agencies that exist on college campuses, like TUPD. Some universities, like Texas Southern, have taken this as an opportunity to arm themselves with the mine-proof tanks. Campus police shot and killed Scout Schultz on September 16, 2017 and at this moment are using tear gas on students protesting Schultz’s murder. It is my hope that TUPD decides against arming itself further to resemble a small army. However, in the case that it already has done this, it’d be great for us to know about it first.

What does it mean when your campus police use unmarked vehicles, but do not notify the campus-dwelling community?

The deployment of unmarked vehicles is a tactic often used by police to remain unnoticed whilst surveilling criminal activity— and it’s quite possible that there could be incidents on this campus that warrant such a response. However, if these surveillance vehicles are to be used in the interest of the community, we should be informed about why, and to what end.

It is also important for me to note that as I pose these questions and concerns to you, the reader, I have also posed them to Deputy Chief Mark L. Keith, who has chosen to defer my questions so they can be reviewed by him and by the Director of Public Safety, and to have them be re-

sponded to at a time later than the publication of this article. When the Deputy Chief and Director have to ‘review’ questions as plain and direct as, “How many [unmarked] vehicles does TUPD have? What are they used for? Why not use a marked police car?” I have to wonder whether these questions were ever expected to be answered in the first place. And, if those who are trained and tasked to protect us, the Tufts community, don’t answer to us, who do they answer to?

The more I walk on this campus at night and notice a black vehicle with tinted black windows parked outside of Aidekman or stowed in the first level parking lot in front of their station at Dowling, it becomes harder for me to know if TUPD is watching out for me, or just plain watching me.

September 25, 2017 Tufts Observer 5

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DACA DISCONTINUED IMPACTS ON OUR STUDENTS AND COMMUNITIES

By Sivi Satchithanadan

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resident Obama’s decision to begin the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program was monumental; after more than 15 years of debate, young, undocumented immigrants finally had a program that could temporarily halt their fears of deportation. President Trump’s decision to repeal DACA was—perhaps catastrophically—just as monumental. He recently reversed his position after meeting with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and decided to work on a plan that will protect DACA recipients. The plan’s nature and contents still remain unclear, however, as millions of people must now navigate a legal status limbo.

DACA, created in 2012, is not a naturalization program. Instead, it provides 800,000 recipients with a two-year commitment of avoiding initiating deportation proceedings and a work permit. The program was one of the most notable achievements of the Obama administration despite him deporting more people than any other president in American history.

In 2015, a group of state attorney generals tried to sue the Obama administration over the constitutionality of the program—their lawsuit was dismissed.

This year, another group of state attorney generals threated to sue the Trump administration, again claiming that DACA is unconstitutional. Trump ended up repealing the program entirely to circumvent this litigation. His decision to repeal the pro6 Tufts Observer september 25, 2017

gram expedited DACA’s impending expiration without a clear indication of what is to come for undocumented immigrants.

This murky future could be devastating for those who have spent most of their lives in the US. A survey by Tom Wong, a political science professor at UC San Diego, found that the average age that DACA recipients entered the US was six-and-ahalf. Because of this, most Dreamers (a name for people protected under DACA) did not even know their immigration status until they were teenagers and discovered their lack of a social security number.

At Tufts’ United for Immigrant Justice’s (UIJ) rally, an undocumented student named Juan shared his experience coming to the US. Juan always knew of his status and has encountered many hardships throughout the years.

“I never really understood how different I was until I realized that I was the only one of my friends that had felt the fear of seeing my parents go to work, go the store, even go for a walk and wonder if he was ever going to see them again,” he said in a video posted by UIJ. “I was the only one seeing my parents break their backs to make sure that me and my sister had enough to eat, their health deteriorating day by day.” The impact of DACA not only meant that Juan was able to access higher education, but it gave him a way to contribute financially and drive his “parents around without the fear of

them getting stopped and deported for a simple traffic ticket.”

As Alejandro, another DACA recipient at the UIJ rally, put it, “DACA granted me a sense of humanity.” It allowed him to attend college and a respite from the fear and anxiety that can come with being undocumented.

“With the repeal of DACA comes the rush of debilitating feelings that had accompanied me since I learned of my status and the fear that I would be pushed back in the shadows, enveloped in fear,” he said.

Professor of Sociology Helen Marrow stated, “the impact of repealing or letting DACA expire will be devastating. Not only to the students affected, but to their families and communities who are seeing indirect gains from it too.”

The national economy is projected to take a hit from this repeal, as it is estimated that the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will be reduced by several hundred billion dollars without the contributions of Dreamers over the next decade. Other effects of the DACA repeal could be seen almost immediately as well: 25 percent of the workers who helped rebuild New Orleans post-Katrina were undocumented. With immense amounts of hurricane damage in both Houston and Florida, rebuilding could be slowed without the contributions of undocumented people.

Many colleges have backed the almost 241,000 Dreamers attending their instituART BY LAURA WOLFE

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tions today. The University of California system is suing the Trump administration over the repeal. Additionally, they have instructed campus police that they will not serve as surrogates for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, meaning they cannot work on behalf of ICE agents to stop or detain anyone. Along similar lines, Harvard issued a statement that police would not serve as surrogate ICE agents and “maintain its practice of not inquiring about the immigration status of students, staff, or faculty.”

At Tufts, the swift response over DACA’s uncertainty has been reassuring.

“Oftentimes letters from the President can be pretty lukewarm,” said junior Cecilia Rodriguez Mora, the Political Director for the Tufts Democrats. “I was surprised by how clear the administration came out in support of DACA. I just really hope that’s going to transfer into Tufts then protecting DACA students when the time comes.”

But unlike Harvard and the California system, the statement Tufts released did not ensure that Tufts University Police Department will not serve as surrogate ICE agents or inquire about immigration status. When asked, the Executive Director of Public Relations Patrick Collins said that, “TUPD does not have the legal authority to enforce Federal Immigration Laws, and therefore would not assist ICE with enforcement removal operations for DACA or undocumented students.”

Still, the relations between administration and student groups on campus remain amicable. Emma Kahn, a senior involved in UIJ, explained that the rapport between UIJ and the administration, “has been collaborative in general. What that has looked like is UIJ being really firm and adamant on what we are pushing, and [the administration] being really open to that.”

Kahn also confirmed that President Monaco’s statement was written by the administration alone, and that UIJ did not have any involvement.

Although large institutions supporting undocumented students is critical, the future of Dreamers is more nebulous than ever. What seems inevitable, though, is that without DACA, many undocumented immigrants will no longer have the right to work permits. This could be substantially

detrimental to college students’ education, as they may not be able to afford extra costs like books, food, or transportation without a steady income.

Moreover, the support from large institutions is starting to feel less substantial—to no legal fault of the institutions themselves. Tufts vowed to protect their undocumented students, but without the DACA program and the backing of the Obama administration, they may not have the same power.

“I felt so strongly that this decision by the university could make some powerful structural changes,” expressed Kahn, in reference to the 2015 decision from admissions to change their policy towards undocumented students. “But now, I think the university is being forced to ask questions how it can really mitigate these massive barriers put in place by our immigration system. Tufts itself cannot bring back DACA.” Robert Mack, Associate Dean of Student Success and Advising, advises DACA and undocumented students. Dean Mack said that, “Tufts is working closely with outside immigration counsel and other local area schools to determine how best to augment the security of its DACA and undocumented student population.” Some services provided by the school include providing DACA and undocumented students with individual legal consultations free of charge, offering Know Your Rights seminars and other trainings hosted by the Student Immigration Movement, and being able to relocate DACA and undocumented students to residences in Somerville if they decide they would feel more comfortable living in a sanctuary city.

Concerning student organizations, UIJ held their rally to defend DACA and immigrant rights as well as educate the Tufts community about what the DACA repeal means. The events and efforts of groups like UIJ have galvanized major breakthroughs for undocumented students at Tufts in the past few years, such as undocumented students now being able to have campus jobs and receive payment for assisting professors in research.

Tufts became a leader in undocumented-friendly campuses when it pledged its support of DACA, expressed

its willingness to protect undocumented students, and urged the new administration to continue and expand the DACA program in 2016. The university continues to work on this issue, as Dean Mack stated that “Tufts also was invited to file a declaration in support of the Attorney General’s legal challenge because of the university’s leadership role on this issue.”

And yet, with the repeal of DACA and no concrete plans on the horizon, Tufts might be forced break a promise it can no longer fulfill, leaving undocumented students with an uncertain future.

SEPTEMBER 25, 2017 Tufts Observer 7

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SIGNS OF THE TIMES FURTHER OPENING THE MUSIC WORLD TO THE DEAF COMMUNITY

By Lena Novins-Montague

W

hen Dr. Oscar P. Cohen worked at the Lexington School for the Deaf in New York City, the school’s theatre program put on a production of “The Sound of Music,” but they called it “Without the Sound of Music.” The school held a prom every year with DJs, and between the wooden floor and the volume, students loved to dance. A program called “eurhythmics” had kindergarteners placing their hands on top of a grand piano while a teacher played music. The students could feel the vibrations, and the concepts of rhythm and beat were both stimulating and exciting to them.

Cohen, the former Superintendent and Chief Executive Officer of the Lexington School for the Deaf in New York City, is hearing but both of his parents are Deaf— otherwise known as a Child of Deaf Adult— and he grew up in the Deaf community. He explained that the Lexington School has always included music in its curriculum. He said, “It was always used as a motivator, as a way to stimulate.” The Lexington School is not alone in their mission to incorporate the Deaf community into the music world.

Shirley Childress, the late American Sign Language interpreter for the acapella group, Sweet Honey in the Rock, once wrote, “Music is often perceived as another sound-based communication barrier, an instrument of discrimination and oppression of Hearing upon Deaf.” Childress saw a fundamental flaw in the lack of Deaf accessibility in music, and spent much of her life trying to bridge this gap. Her actions, and the actions of institutions like the Lexington 8 Tufts Observer September 25, 2017

School, are being built upon as awareness of Deaf accessibility in music surges and grows.

Two to three of every 1,000 children in the United States are born with a detectable level of hearing loss in one or both ears.

While some Deaf people may not be able to fully hear the sounds of music, they can still feel the vibrations in their body and can understand the meaning of the lyrics through ASL. Hearing aids and cochlear implants (electronic devices that function like the inner ear and send sound signals to the brain) can also help Hard of Hearing or Deaf people hear and understand music. The Deaf and Hard of Hearing community’s needs are becoming more recognized by both artists and institutions.

Sweet Honey in the Rock was one of the first music groups to prioritize Deaf accessibility. The all-female, all-Black ensemble was founded in the 1970s with the goal of acting as an advocate for social justice causes. The group described themselves as “artists, activists, and humanitarians…[who address] the critical issues of democracy, freedom, racism, and economic and social justice.”

As part their advocacy, Sweet Honey in the Rock wanted to make their music accessible to the Deaf community, and, at first, they used ASL interpreters supplied by festival organizers. However, this proved to be problematic, in part because the vast majority of these interpreters were White. Sweet Honey in the Rock felt that these White interpreters were not fully communicating the messages of their all-Black group, especially in an instance when a White interpreter signed the word “Africa” by miming putting

a ring through her nose. The group believed that there was a significant cultural chasm between the messages of their music and the way that White interpreters were communicating the lyrics. They also wanted to acknowledge the multi-racial makeup of the Deaf community.

In 1980, the group added Childress, not just as their ASL interpreter, but as a fullfledged group member. Childress was costumed like the other members and stood in the semi-circle with them while they all performed. Her status as a full group member was a departure from the convention of interpreters standing off to the side of the stage and not being a part of the performance.

Childress died this past March, and her role in the group has not yet been replaced. Dr. Ysaye Barnwell, who retired from the group four years ago, told the Washington City Paper about the impact of Childress; “[The Deaf community] would know what we were singing about, they would have an appreciation for aspects of the music—the language, the rhythm, the way in which we as different singers were working together, and the meaning of the songs.”

An interpreter can make all the difference when it comes to Deaf accessibility in music. Through a video relay service (a video telecommunication service that allows Deaf people to communicate over the telephone via an interpreter), Jim Lipsky, a Deaf Tufts professor, said, “If you want accessibility in music, it’s important to have someone who’s a professional sign language interpreter. When we have Deaf conferences, we have workshops related to music interpreting and how to do it. Learning how to translate Eng-

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lish into ASL in accordance with the rhythm is very welcome knowledge.” Lispky teaches ASL classes at Tufts, and while he personally does not enjoy music, he acknowledged that many other Deaf people do.

Contemporary interpreters are also striving to fully communicate the messages of music to the Deaf community. Amber Galloway-Gallego is an ASL interpreter who specializes in interpreting rap and hip-hop. A video of her interpreting a Kendrick Lamar cover of A$AP Rocky’s “Fuckin’ Problems” at Lollapalooza in 2013 went viral and has since garnered over 1.5 million views.

She is notable for her signing style.

She mouths the words, changes her facial expressions, and moves her entire body to the music. Her interpretations communicate when the bass drops, when the music slows, and when a new instrument enters the song.

She has also been incorporated into artists’ performances, which is unusual for an ASL interpreter. At Lollapallooza in 2016, she interpreted on stage with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and became a focal point of their performance. Cohen commented on interpreters in general, “Interpreters are performers themselves, it’s an arm form in and of itself.”

Some artists have also taken the initiative to make their music more Deaf accessible. Chance the Rapper made headlines in June when he announced that he had hired ASL interpreters for not only his show in Tampa, but also for the remainder of his Coloring Book tour. This news

Deaf accessible, institutional changes are also taking hold. This past May, the first large-scale Deaf-friendly music festival was held in San Antonio, Texas. The Good Vibrations Music Fest offered different, specialized features in order to make the music accessible: live captioning, ASL interpretation, telecoiling (a coil inside hearing aids that picks up a magnetic signal and can make it easier to hear), synchronized vibrating backpacks, and LED dance floors and light shows that were synced to the music. All profits went to Aid the Silent, a Christian nonprofit that raises funds for deaf research, education, and resources.

The date for the 2018 festival will be announced soon.

While these reforms are indicative of growing awareness, there are still changes that can further increase accessibility. Cohen suggested, “People should firstly not assume that Deaf people do not value music or assume what kinds of events Deaf people would be interested in or would benefit from.” He also emphasized, “Music is an avenue that is crucial to the development of a culture, and Deaf people have the right to access all aspects of arts and culture. Expanding Deaf accessibility in music would be a contribution to the benefit of the entire world, not just Deaf people.”

“INTERPRETERS ARE PERFORMERS THEMSELVES, IT’S AN ART FORM IN AND OF ITSELF.”

ART BY MADELINE LEE

caused ripples across the Deaf community because while venues usually provide interpreters upon request, Chance is the first rapper to handpick an interpreter. Kelly Kurdi, one of the interpreters on tour with him, said in an interview with WTSP, a Florida news station, “We’ve all been close to tears since we met him, because we just can’t believe that he’s willing to provide interpreters on his own.”

While artists like Chance are taking their own steps to make their shows more

september 25, 2017 Tufts Observer 9

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Love thy Neighbor? a picture of changing community relations in somerville

By Ben Kesslen

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round a-year-and-half ago, Gail Grove noticed an old tree stump in the front yard of her Powder House Boulevard apartment in Somerville and decided to do something with it. She carved a smiley face into the stump, decorated it with a pattern of small rocks, and placed a poetry box on top.

“We would put poems in there for everyone,” Gail explained. “You could write a poem and take a poem…I even put poems in for the dogs. It was bringing community to us […] Tufts students loved it, little kids from the neighborhood school next door would leave poems too.” Now tall grass has grown around the stump, it’s barely visible, and the box is gone.

This summer, Gail and her husband, Jeff, were displaced from their home on Powder House Boulevard after renting the same unit for over 25 years. Last year,

10 Tufts Observer September 25, 2017

their house was sold to a money-hungry landlord, who wanted more for the unit, made them feel unsafe in their own home, and told them he wanted to rent their apartment to young professionals and Tufts students.

The poetry box has now been tossed aside in the garage of Gail’s new home, and she doesn’t know if she will have the heart to put it back out.

The Grove family moved to Somerville over 30 years ago after Cambridge changed their rent control policies and they could no longer afford to stay in the area. At the time, Jeff was a musician and Gail was a dancer—they were artists who were looking for an affordable and safe place to live and raise their young

daughter, Haley. They found their place on Powder House Boulevard, and for 25 years never had a renter’s lease. Gail described their verbal arrangement with the landlord as a “normal, humanistic, oldfashioned” agreement.

The Grove family’s description of their past two decades on Powder House would hardly be recognizable to the students who live there or frequent the area today.

Haley, now in her mid-twenties, explained that growing up, she and her neighbors felt like “one big family.” They would leave their doors open, share food from each other’s gardens, and eat dinner with the people who lived in different units of the apartment. They were neighbors with the Somerville Alderman—an elected member of the municipal council—and Gail fondly recounted a story PHOTO BY ALEXANDRA BENJAMIN

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News of a time he helped her get a possum out of her garage. Haley met her best friend playing in the Tot Lot—the playground outside Harleston Hall.

“I feel like a lot of people are confused when I tell them stories about growing up in my house,” Haley said. “At one point in the unit downstairs there was a twobedroom apartment with 11 people living there.” It was “a little crazy,” but shaped her into who she is today.

The Somerville where the Grove family raised Haley has changed. When they first moved in, Gail recalled that “everyone was a teacher, a plumber, a mailman— workers” and Somerville was full of “families who have lived there forever.”

Now that’s gone. These days, the area is inhabited mostly by young professionals who can afford the rising rents. The McDonald’s in Davis Square became an upscale Korean barbecue restaurant, the Dollar Store is gone—there is even a shop that exclusively sells oatmeal. The liquor store Haley’s grandparents owned in Somerville is now the site of an artisanal nut shop.

Wealthy families with grown children from towns like Belmont and Lexington are moving to Somerville to downsize, and seeking out smaller, often renovated and expensive condos. As Boston is becoming more and more of a tech hub, the young professionals working at new tech companies and making high salaries are choosing to settle in Somerville. These are some basic markers of gentrification, but another sign—and perhaps a less visible one—is the loss of community.

The way Haley sees it, “a lot of people moving in, they’re not looking to live [permanently] in Somerville, they aren’t trying to set down roots. They are just looking for a place until they make their money and can move to the suburbs.”

“It feels like all the houses on my street turned to condos,” she continued. “People had to move [as far as] New Hampshire.

If you didn’t own your house, good luck.”

Haley’s observations perfectly reflect recent trends of the Somerville housing market. Many have coined Somerville the “Brooklyn of Boston.” Property values are increasing at an average of 10 percent each year. Two-bedroom condos on the Grove’s former street are selling for over 1 million dollars, and Powder House Boulevard is constantly a site of renovation.

Gail spoke of developers and speculators

knocking on residents’ doors, actively pressuring those who owned their homes to sell to contractors. Many were swayed, and moved to areas farther away from the city.

But with all these changes comes a radically different neighborhood.

Penn Loh, the Director of the Master Public Policy Program and Community Practice at Tufts’ Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning, says that “the whole phenomenon of gentrification is multi-causal.” Evidently, one of these causes in Somerville is Tufts itself. As Tufts’ class sizes increase—as they have been for the past five years—and the availability of on-campus housing options remains stagnant, more and more Tufts students are moving into Medford and Somerville, and existing communities suffer as a result.

Tufts students often don’t know their off-campus neighbors personally—unless they are other students—and when they do, those relationships tend to be strained. Somerville is the most densely populated municipality in New England, which means neighbors live physically close to each other. This often leads to tension. Students have spoken of verbal fights with their neighbors, said their neighbors will take pictures of friends entering their house if they suspect a party, and will often call the police on them.

But the issue isn’t just Tufts. Many Somerville residents I’ve spoken to who live in subdivided homes said they wouldn’t even go to their downstairs neighbor to ask for a cup of sugar. “We didn’t even think to get to know them,” one resident told me.

“The soul of the city is gone,” Gail lamented.

This problem isn’t a new one in Somerville, and it’s one the University is well aware of. Tufts’ history of gentrification in Somerville is well understood among its residents. This became especially apparent in the last couple of years when Tufts considered buying a 41-unit apartment building at 119 College Avenue in Powder House Square—not far from where the Groves lived. Tufts called off the plan after city residents cited fears that this would only worsen the existing affordable housing shortage in the area.

According to Barbara Rubel, Tufts’ Director of Community Relations, the school “is committed to creating more housing September 25, 2017 Tufts Observer 11

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News

for undergraduates. This includes modifications to existing dorms […] significant renovations to Miller and Houston Halls, and creating apartment style housing for juniors and seniors in some Tufts-owned wood frame properties on blocks immediately adjacent to campus.” Rubel says Tufts is also considering building a new dorm, which would “have a positive impact on student life and our host communities.”

At the same time, professors in the Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning Department, namely Loh and Professor Laurie Goldman, have been studying the effects of gentrification through the Somerville Gentrification Project. Goldman said a main goal of the project is to “learn more about how people are experiencing gentrification in Somerville,” and spoke to the many organizations in Somerville that are working towards alleviating the crisis. Groups like the Affordable Housing Organizing Committee and the Somerville Community Corporation have been fighting for legislation that increases inclusionary zoning of affordable housing in the city from 12.5 percent to 20 percent, and working on a transfer tax, which would attach a fee to property sales that would go into funds to create job opportunities for low-income residents.

While Somerville residents are fighting for these changes, the Office of Residential Life and Learning at Tufts and the

12 Tufts Observer SEPTEMBER 25, 2017

“

Office of Community Relations are strategizing ways to make Tufts students living off-campus better neighbors. Matt Austin, the Associate Director of Housing Operations, told me they are working to “change the culture of students living off campus,” hoping to show students they do not exist in a vacuum and teach them how to respectfully “embrace their space in the community.” But in the meantime, families like the Groves are suffering.

Gail and Jeff were no strangers to the gentrification unfolding around them, and had long been wondering when it would hit their unit. Last year, after their landlord got too old to take care of the house, he sold it to a man who tried to immediately raise their rent by $600. “The first time I met him, he yelled at me,” Gail said. The Groves soon realized their time had come.

While the landlord didn’t explicitly tell them they needed to leave, Haley said “he was making [my parents] feel unwanted and unsafe.” Gail added that “we felt like we were being forced out.”

Gail went on to tell me her unit didn’t have working fire alarms for over five months, and the hall and staircase light didn’t work for months either. For two people in their sixties, unlit stairs felt, and were, dangerous. When the downstairs neighbors—a group of Tufts graduate stu-

dents—would call the landlord with a problem, he would drive over immediately. Meanwhile, he completely neglected any requests from the Groves.

“He only wanted to rent to students and young people,” Gail said.

Gail and Jeff made a plan to move out September, and told their new landlord they were going to break their lease.

Originally, he agreed, but later changed his mind and said they had to leave by July 31 so he could gut and renovate the apartment, knowing full well the Groves didn’t have a place to live for August.

Gail said they got lucky—some of her dance students helped her and Jeff find a place to temporarily live. If that hadn’t happened, they don’t know what they would’ve done.

For now, Gail and Jeff have settled into their new place, still in Somerville.

Their friend owns the house and gave them a good deal on the first floor. But they are still worried. Their friend could get too old to take care of the house and sell it, and who knows who could buy it then. “I just don’t want to be old and uncomfortable,” Gail told me.

As for their former landlord, the city recently shut down his construction on their old unit for violations of the Massachusetts building code. Once it’s back on and the construction is finished, the unit will likely be rented to Tufts students.

A lot of people moving in, they’re not looking to live [permanently] in somerville, they aren’t trying to set down roots. They are just looking for a place until they make their money and can move to the suburbs.

P r i vat e

hush

steady

PHOTOS BY PRIYANKA PADIDAM (TOP AND BOTTOM), ABIGAIL BARTON (MIDDLE)

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Transient

14 Tufts Observer September 25, 2017 PHOTOS

BY AUDREY FALK (OVERLAY), ABIGAIL BARTON (BACKGROUND)

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lull

September 25, 2017 Tufts Observer 15

Breaking

PHOTO BY ABIGAIL BARTON

FEATURE

PROSE

*Warning: this product contains Tree and other varieties of nuts

By Sara Bass

The thick slab of window muffles the outside sounds. In the back, the kitchen produces an orchestra of clanking equipment set to life by rushing commands, and in the front of the coffee house, sundry voices mix with deepening essences of toasting butter and brewing coffee beans that seep out from the kitchen. But these hues of nuttiness can only be purchased inside because outside was to be kept quiet.

Next to the two bags of walnuts that sag perfectly off-kilter on the counter are two jars of raw honey and a tall glass container. Through the glass, people can marvel at bite-sized milk chocolates, barely out of reach of a six-year-old on tiptoes and inches away from the more common fingertips of customers exchanging bills for their varieties of nuts.

On the green side of the window, a wagon carrying a little girl silently rolls along the sidewalk. She is still, her mouth slightly agape, and she tracks herself across the window until her gaze happens upon someone else’s inside. The customer drops her mug onto her lap and mimics the girl’s parted lips as her image comes to overlay itself onto her own. She is poised to say “hi,” but the word is sharply stuffed back down her throat when the heavy wedge of glass is shoved deep into her mouth upon noticing her own abrupt reflection. Then, the wagon is gone, and she looks back to the wrinkled surface of the coffee in her hands. The commotion renews behind her, but it isn’t unpleasant.

People meander through each other clumsily, but jovially, and with stupid grins to each passing dance partner, all of them clutching a nutty drink under their noses. Things are perfect even though they aren’t at all. And people’s delusional memories lead them faltering about the room, growing evermore lost in a perfect unreality.

The only entryway into the chaos is a door with the sign, “no pets, no children, no sanity,” before which every customer, having already fulfilled his life’s promise as best he could and thus being left with a deep hunger satiable by none other than nuts, must leave his frustrations tied to notions of a blemished world on the welcome mat. Once the door swings shut, silence belongs to the children outside because they’re not done changing the world. And purchases can only be made inside.

ART BY NICOLE COHEN

SEPTEMBER 25, 2017 Tufts Observer 17

FEATURE

opinion

Moving Beyond Capitalism

By Gabriela Bonfiglio and Kyle Lui

I

n recent months, we’ve seen professors at universities like Tufts step up to speak about and organize around threats to the safety of marginalized students by the Trump administration. In the weeks after, professors organized a teach-in connecting various struggles against systems of oppression, and since then, many departments have brought speakers to campuses to reflect on decisions or dangers posed by the White House. We’ve turned to the Economics department to ask what potential this discipline holds for engaging, and what the department is already doing to respond to—and prepare students for— our political moment.

To get a sense for the mindset behind the Tufts Economics department as well as its impact, we spoke to several students and professors, including the Head of the Department Professor Daniel Richards. In our conversation, Richards described economics as a subject that teaches “theories of social interaction” and focuses on markets as one of the main sites in which these interactions take place. He said a natural part of this teaching is to bring current events into the classroom, and he believes that every professor in the department ties current events into their lessons. Richards mentioned that many courses include a variety of real-world applications; for example, when government intervention works and when it does not. Specifically, Richards mentioned Obamacare as one intervention many professors “would understand the logic behind,” indicating that a large part of the department is willing to look beyond a purely capitalist system in the US. In contrast to the Economics department’s socially liberal intent, Alex Kowalick-Allen viewed her introductory economics course as focusing on “profit profit profit.” She felt economics was taught not “as a social science, but as hard science. We 18 Tufts Observer Sptember 25, 2017

assessing the lack of intellectual diversity in tufts’ economics department

got so disconnected from the social side of it—that our economic system is supposed to benefit society.”

Kowalick-Allen was among students who expressed concerns around a culture within the Economics department that is simultaneously created and reinforced by a lack of ideological diversity. She recalled her introductory economics professor’s lecture on luxury goods as one event contributing to this mindset; the professor said something along the lines of “any selfrespecting woman has a nice handbag,” and proceeded to ask the women in the class for ballpark handbag prices, and the men in the class for the price of the newest Lamborghini. Kowalick-Allen recalls looking around the classroom to see if anyone else was shocked, and instead overhearing a group of guys laughing about “bitches and their handbags.” This incident illustrates how sexism on the part of the professor can reinforce more blatant offenses among students. According to KowalickAllen, this was one of many examples that made her feel that a student of economics could have an “entirely different experience at Tufts” than that she was having.

Examples used (or avoided) by professors are some of many devices we see as adding up to an inherent and tangible political stance within the Economics department. In our conversation with him, Professor Richards spoke about how “there is not, as of yet, a lot of actual economic policy initiatives to respond to from the Trump administration because, to date, the administration has not gotten any major policy change through Congress.” We are calling for a deepening of intellectual diversity within the Tufts Economics department, so that its lessons can better prepare students to navigate and confront this turbulent time.

Most economics classes at Tufts are taught lecture-style—this acts as a device

through which capitalist ideologies are subtly made part of not only the course content, but also the way in which that content is taught. Economics students Karl Wilander and Stephanie Chen Schmidt stated that almost all of their economics courses to date have been taught through lecture. In lectures, the professor stands in front of the class—sometimes on a stage— positioned as the holder of the knowledge, and by extension, the truth or the “right answers.” This classroom style leaves little room for questions or for information to come from the students. When it does, this knowledge is often in the form of exam questions, which are then graded on a curve, pushing students to compete for the “right” answers rather than engaging critically with the material—and therefore reinforcing competition with a hierarchy of clear winners and losers.

Just as an economics professor may stand on a stage, Braker Hall stands on the academic quad. The departments’ offices and classrooms are almost entirely located in this building; along with the number of economics majors who might be able to donate to Tufts after graduation, this makes Braker a space of concentrated power on campus. To put this power and weight behind an economic system lends legitimacy and power to that system.

When a Tufts environmental economics class actively avoids politics, the class is feeding into a larger ideology that the fate of our globe should be controlled by profit. The economic theory in this class teaches us the idea of cost-benefit analysis, and it places a monetary value on the globe and its citizens in order to analyze if an environmental policy decision is economically sound, else the value of lives and the globe will not be accounted for at all.

However, this thinking dehumanizes and allows justification for refraining from saving lives in the name of economic effi-

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ciency. This thinking is the manifestation of profit over people.

This method of teaching economics is not unique to Tufts, but rather is reflective of a larger trend in Economics departments across the country, even though according to a Harvard University study, “only the age group above 50 years old contains a majority that supports capitalism”.

Many liberal arts and research universities alike tend to teach neoclassical economics.

This approach connects supply and demand to an individual’s “rational” ability to maximize their own utility or profit. Theories like these regard individuals as able to make deliberate, calculated choices to serve their own interests, instead of seeing happiness as communal. In effect, teaching only this economic framework theorizes the way things ought to be and instills it as business as usual, ingraining a sense of ethics into the world by only seeing people as self-serving individuals separate from a larger community.

The issue here is that when this neoclassical theory is regarded as the only way to understand economics, these large assumptions about individuals form the way in which we understand not only economics, but also the world at large. Chen Schmidt and Wilander spoke about understanding that the department mainly teaches capitalist theories because they see American capitalism as the guiding global economic force.

In the US, free market capitalism has created industries that directly profits off and benefits from the tearing apart of livelihoods and families of color through its legacy of racism. This legacy has manifested through the profitability of prisons and immigration detention. There is an economic incentive for people to be incarcerated if the money used to maintain prisons is lining people’s pockets. And if free market capitalism dictates that people get locked up in order for certain individuals to amass wealth, the prison population will only continue to increase according to economic theory.

This is exactly what we have seen, as the US incarcerates more people per capita than any other nation, at almost 25 percent of the world’s total prison population.

Nicholas Shi, a major in the department, expressed the significance behind ART BY ANNIE ROOME

pushing and reforming the department, and others. “I think the discipline itself is very valuable,” he said. “You can use economics to evaluate power structures.”

One university that is doing a great job of adopting this approach is UMass Amherst, which has been at the forefront of teaching alternative ways of understanding economics, referred to as Heterodox Economics. In their Economics department, they have professors who focus on feminism and queerness in their economic research, teaching topics such as the economic and social benefits of legally recognizing queer marriages and the impacts of fertility decisions and household work on the economy.

Additionally, the Global Development and Environment Institute (GDAE) at Tufts is working on comprehending both the limitations of the mainstream economic paradigm and the wide range of creative efforts that have been and are being made to extend our economic understanding.

On the GDAE’s website, it claims that “throughout all of its activities, theoretical advances at GDAE are informed by the Institute’s applied and policy work, while its practical applications of economics are enhanced by a growing theoretical understanding of what is required to promote socially and environmentally just and sustainable development.”

However, students are not given these resources in Tufts’ environmental economics class, nor are they made aware of the Institute, its presence on campus, and its work on revising economic textbooks.

Our hope is that Tufts can integrate this strand of thinking into the Economics department and integrate the materials that

GDAE have taken so much labor to create and compile.

One class in the Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning, focused on community economic development, introduces the idea of a solidarity economy, which is based on the ideology of a community democratically controlling capital and resources to transform free market capitalism and our political and economic systems into a world rooted in values of democracy, justice, and sustainability.

The Economics department has a responsibility to integrate these resources and ways of thinking into its classrooms and ensure an open discourse on economic thought. Imagining and working towards a more socially just Economics department is also in line with the goal of creating a more socially just world. Refusing to teach alternative economic models and centering capitalism perpetuates the current economic system that continues to put so many lives and families at stake.

If Tufts is truly seeking to build a better world, it must take a political stance on the flaws within our current economic system, and this means within the Economics department. to put so many lives and families at stake. If Tufts is truly seeking to build a better world, it must take a political stance on the flaws within our current economic system, and this means within the economics department.

September 25, 2017 Tufts Observer 19

FEATURE

Voices Feature

In the periphery of the spotlight

By Emily Sim

I

was never meant to find out that I was undocumented. I stumbled upon my status during my first year at Tufts, after speaking to a staff member at the International Center. My visa paperwork had been processing for over six months, and despite the usual lag that comes with bureaucracy, this was abnormal. With no feedback from the immigration office, all we could do was speculate about why my visa change had been so delayed. Perhaps the system was acting up. Maybe there was an influx of priority applicants. However, in the winter of that year, I was called in to the I-Center because someone had withdrawn my visa application. I didn’t approve any papers to be withdrawn, so who had? I called my Appa to see if he knew any more information.

To say that my parents are the strongest people I know is an understatement.

They left their family and lives behind to gamble for a chance at a fresh start. In Korea, Appa owned an optometry business and Umma worked at a publishing company. When we immigrated, they didn’t hesitate to pick up new trades; from being janitors to laundromat workers, I witnessed my parents break their backs to pay the rent. I grew up with an implicit understanding that their 50-hour work weeks amounted to new school supplies and not having to opt out of school field trips. For this reason, I saw my parents as larger than life. But on this particular afternoon, any sense of courage and gumption they had when we embarked a plane in Seoul to Virginia was nowhere to be found. They told me that day that my family had been 20 Tufts Observer SEPTEMBER 25, 2017

scammed by lawyers when I was nine years old. I came to America when I was eight.

Ever since, we had been undocumented.

I remember this conversation as a mere physical experience. Hearing that my family had no papers, that we were “bul-bup”, meaning illegal in Korean, had no immediate impact on me. At the time, I knew that I wasn’t allowed to travel outside the country. I had already known that I could not work because of the limitations of my visa. This new status felt no more restricting than being an international student at Tufts. In fact, it took six months for the impact of what it means to be an undocumented person in America to sink in.

I don’t remember what the impetus was for the sheer fear of uncertainty to finally and suddenly hit me. I do remember feeling the gravity of my situation—I have never cried empty tears until that day during the summer after my first year.

In that moment, the resentment I held towards Umma and Appa for withholding the truth from me disappeared. In retrospect, I would do the same. How could I tell my child that the federal government had cut off their wings? How could I tell them, “You can be anything you want to be,” if their dreams were pushing impossible legal boundaries?

Because my family is low-income and my parents are aging, I began to put pressure on myself to succeed. In theory, I knew a Tufts degree should help me become financially stable and support my parents. I certainly didn’t want Umma and Appa to work seven days a week going into their sixties. However, given the laundry

list of everyday things I cannot do as an undocumented person—namely working, driving, and traveling—I felt like my ability to imagine a future for Umma and Appa had been confiscated. Even more so, I felt that I was not allowed to have a future.

Despite the weight of these realizations, I immediately chose to break the silence that is expected of undocumented immigrants. Shouting the validity of my existence and being in the presence of an undocumented community at Tufts empowered me. However, I cannot deny the inevitable safety in choosing this identity to be less visible. Especially with my political thoughts, I am wary of what I say and who I say it to, because I know that my citizenship status can be leveraged against me. This is a reality that undocumented students face, especially on other campuses where the student body is not as likeminded as we are at Tufts. Revealing our status can mean that an anonymous tip can be filed against us. If we choose to share our narratives, we put our physical wellbeing on the line. No one should have to make a choice between visibility and safety.

I especially felt the censorship that came with my legal status as a Tufts Community Union Senator during the resolution to “End Investments in the Israeli Occupation” last May. Over 100 students were packed into the meeting room in Sophia-Gordon Hall. The turnout itself underscored the personal significance of this resolution to many students on campus. Given the contentious, high-profile topic of the resolution, the tension in the room was undeniable. At this particular ART BY ANNIE ROOME

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VOICES

meeting, no video recordings were allowed for the safety of everyone in the room. Yet, when one student was caught secretly recording the debate, I feared deportation for the first time in my life. What if I was caught on tape and my name was found in the Tufts directory? What if a background check was run so my name could be added to a database? A simple background check would reveal everything needed to put the pieces together. For the rest of the meeting, I vetted my opinions carefully. Offending someone could mean waking up to a deportation proceeding letter.

Being an Asian undocumented person at an elite private White institution means I live between clashing identities, ideas, and places. When my mental health hit its lowest point, I sought out communities and spaces that uplift immigrant narratives. What I found is that Asian immigrants are at the periphery of the undocumented movements. This is not the fault of the undocumented Latinx people actively fighting for our rights; the media and politicians have shaped perceptions of our community so that the public largely views us as Latinx. The intentional exclusion of other racial identities by White institutional structures lessens our collective power to organize as a community. Further, the invisibilization of Asian, African, European, and Arab undocumented immigrants allows us to stay complicit in stereotypes being perpetuated (as in, “Bad hombre” and “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best”). Though the entire undocumented community is equally implicated by policy reforms and increased Immigration and Customs Enforcement surveillance, non-Latinx people can more easily choose to remain silent or disengage.

We don’t face the added danger of visibly being perceived as undocumented.

By stratifying the levels of privilege that people within the undocumented community can experience, the US immigration system makes a continuous effort to pit parts of our community against one another. Even programs such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals that transformed 800,000 lives of young undocumented people reinforce a notion that not all undocumented immigrants are worthy enough to receive benefits. To qualify for

DACA, you must have arrived in the US before you were 16. You must be in school or have a high school diploma. You must have no criminal record. Ironically, this sense of blamelessness that the applicant must display drives a wedge between younger undocumented people and those in their parent’s generation. The policymakers’ focus on the younger demographic implies that the older undocumented folks did, in fact, commit a crime by “illegally” coming to this country. DACA reinforces a system that sifts only the most palatable narratives of the undocumented community to remedy. If you do not show potential of upward mobility, you are not deserving of even a fraction of rights that an American citizen has.

identity to look like and my own narrative lent itself to a self-consciousness in entering these spaces. Even as an undocumented person, I am still working to unlearn what I have been taught in history classes about immigration and the faces behind it reinforced by the media.

People seeing me as an Asian woman means they usually do not jump to the conclusion that I am an undocumented person. For that reason, I do not bear the brunt of the burden of being actively questioned about my legal status. In those ways, I am privileged. Ironically, I can’t help but to be cognizant of how my racial identity is perceived as depoliticized, but being undocumented holds the complete opposite implication. Calling for a reimagining of what solidarity looks like for all undocumented people—Black, Brown, and White—is a delicate balance that I have not yet found how to navigate.

To those who are not undocumented: speak for us when we choose safety over voice, embrace our existence, and fight with us. I challenge you to push back on the notion that immigration is only a Latinx issue, in our own minds and in our communities. Look for the pockets of communities and the hidden spots within the undocumented immigrant narrative that you can support alongside the dominant movements.

To my undocumented siblings and family: do not feel the need to qualify or justify your presence by proving you are good enough. That you aren’t a criminal, that you go to school, that you are human.

We forget how much more we deserve.

The times I inserted myself into spaces centering immigrants, I often felt like a visitor. I couldn’t discount how unusual it felt to be an Asian-American undocumented person. I wanted to discuss the intersectionalities between undocumented and racial identities but did not want to divert attention from folks who were at the forefront of the activism. The tension between what I perceived the undocumented SEPTEMBER 25, 2017 Tufts Observer 21

FEATURE

Campus

Four years for a price

By Julia Press

the cost of early graduation

L

ast year, Emma Phillips, a junior, realized that she needed to graduate early.

“I was on the phone with my parents discussing finances, and they said we probably couldn’t pay for the last year here,” Phillips said. She knew that she had enough Advanced Placement (AP) credits from high school that taking five classes each semester of her junior year would fulfill the 34-credit minimum. However, upon diving into Tufts policy, Phillips encountered a roadblock.

In addition to fulfilling distribution and major requirements, every Tufts student is bound by the residency requirement, a lesser-known policy that mandates students take classes full-time for eight semesters. In order for students to bypass the residency requirement, Tufts policy allows five pre-matriculation credits, five Tufts summer session classes, or a combination of the two to count as equivalent to one semester at Tufts. A combination of nine prematriculation credits and summer courses can allow a student to graduate a year early.

22 Tufts Observer September 25, 2017

Despite this loophole in the policy, many students remain unaware that the residency requirement even exists in the first place. Phillips was lucky to have discovered the residency requirement in time to register for the five summer classes she needed in order to graduate early. “Had my parents called a month later, I probably wouldn’t have been able to register on time or figure out all the logistics,” Phillips said.

Basic awareness of the policy is the first hurdle to bypassing the eight-semester requirement. Phillips only knew about the policy because her friend had encountered the same problem. “I felt as if the information was accessible if you knew what to look for. When you ask [the deans] about it, they’re very good, but it’s a little hard to find, especially if you don’t even know what a residency requirement is.”

Joëlle Tollefson, who would have been a senior this fall, agreed that familiarity with the policy is key. Tollefson had always planned to graduate early and was able to work with her dean to develop a

plan. “When I came into school, my parents made a deal with me and my brother like, you can go wherever you want, but you have to finish early somehow,” Tollefson said. “I was very explicit with my dean about my parents’ rule that we’re not paying for eight semesters of college.”

Taylor*, a senior, had a similar experience. “I knew from when I started at Tufts that I would need to graduate in seven semesters for financial reasons, and I spent a lot of time with my parents strategizing about how I could do that because of the residency requirement even before I started here,” they said. “Even coming from an upper middle class family and getting significant financial aid from Tufts, my entire time here I was still going to be buried in loans.”

Avery Spratt, a senior and part-time student, said the process took a lot of selfguided research. “It takes some deep exploration on Tufts websites and stuff that aren’t easy to navigate,” Spratt said. Anna Sossenheimer, a senior graduating this December, expressed similar thoughts. “I ART BY NINA HOFKOSH-HULBERT

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Campus

had such a hard time knowing what to do.

There’s nothing on any website that explicitly says ‘if you want to graduate early, here’s what you should do,’ there are just bits and pieces,” Sossenheimer said. “I had to do all the undertaking by myself and do all the research.”

Students who don’t know about the policy may realize too late that seemingly benign decisions have sabotaged their chances at early graduation. Taking summer courses at a school other than Tufts and studying abroad through a non-Tufts program are both rejected as fulfilling a “Tufts semester” and thus cannot be used to complete the eight-semester requirement.

Beyond awareness of the policy, fulfilling this requirement is not always feasible, particularly for low-income students.

Summer courses are not a viable option

for all students, who may need jobs over the summer, making them unable to devote their time to courses. As the Tufts financial aid website states, “We will not be able to increase your financial aid for the next academic year because your summer earnings are low.” Moreover, although the $14,000 it costs to take five summer courses is significantly cheaper than the $26,576 it costs during the school year, financial aid for summer courses is limited. According to Tufts’ aid policies, the school offers “very limited grant aid to help pay for summer school costs,” and “if you decide to borrow a Direct Loan to pay for summer school, you will incur loan fees and interest charges.”

Moreover, by privileging students who were able to take AP tests in high school, Tufts is further exacerbating existing patterns of racism and classism. According to the 10th Annual AP Report to the Nation, published by College Board in 2014, Black students make up 14.5 percent of graduating high school classes, but make up only 9.2 percent of students taking an AP exam, and 4.6 percent of successful test takers, with success defined as achieving a score of 3 or above. Low-income students make up 48.1 percent of graduating classes, but only 27.5 percent of AP testers and 21.7 percent of successful testers.

In justifying the policy, Tufts’ undergraduate deans pointed to its deep entrenchment in the school’s expectations of its students. “The academic residency requirement has been an explicit bachelor degree requirement for decades, and the policy is so old, it precedes the tenure of all the deans now working in Dowling Hall,” the advising deans wrote in a joint email. As outlined in the Tufts Bulletin, the school believes the policy is necessary because “Students need time to reflect on and absorb knowledge,” an undertaking that can only be fulfilled through “four years of full-time study in an academic environment.”

However, many Tufts students burdened by the requirement have a different

It’s all about Money, not about students’ well-being. perspective. “It seemed like it was a way to kind of trap students to pay tuition,” Sossenheimer said. “The residency requirement and also just their lack of information about it felt kind of intentional, to be honest.”

Taylor agreed that the requirement seems to be financially motivated. “Tufts says that it cares about us not ‘rushing’ our college experience, but they literally are not at all subtle about how untrue that is because it’s my understanding that if you pay for eight semesters, you have fulfilled the residency requirement, even if you drop out and don’t get credit for that semester. So it’s all about money, not about students’ well-being.”

The deans pointed to Tufts’ peer institutions in their argument that the policy was a commonplace expectation of “residential liberal arts colleges,” citing Harvard and Brown as schools with stricter policies.

In fact, Harvard makes exceptions to the eight-semester residency requirement for students with Advanced Standing, those who matriculated with transfer credit, and those who fulfilled credits in summer school, and Brown requires that only four semesters of study occur during the school year, and allows its students to graduate a semester early if all other degree require-

ments are fulfilled. Tollefson attested, “My brother went to Brown and that was not the case for him. He was easily able to do it.”

Compared to other schools in the New England Small College Athletic Conference, Tufts’ policy is on the stricter end of the spectrum. Bowdoin and Connecticut College require only four semesters of full-time residence; Williams, Wesleyan, Bates, and Hamilton allow students to graduate in six semesters; Colby requires seven; and Amherst and Middlebury each require eight, with certain exceptions.

Trinity College lists no limit on how early students who have fulfilled their academic requirements may graduate.

In response to a question about the implications of the policy for low-income students, the academic deans defended the policy because of the aid such students

would ideally receive in the form of “grants, loan-replacement, and financial aid” to support their studies during the school year. However, the deans admitted that not all students qualify for aid, writing, “Anecdotally, it seems that the students most financially impacted by the eight-semester policy are those students who do not quality for much (if any) financial aid but who must take out private loans for their college education.”

Spratt said much of her success in fulfilling the requirement came down to luck.

“Had I not gone to Talloires or had I not had APs from high school, it would have been impossible and I would have been stuck,” she said. “I can’t imagine thinking you could graduate early and having that be the thing in your way, because it seems like just an arbitrary rule. If you finished your distribution requirements, if you finished your major requirements, why does it exist?” *Name has been changed at the student’s request.

September 25, 2017 Tufts Observer 23

FEATURE

News

“H

WHEN THE WATER CLEARS

arvey didn’t discriminate, but [as] with most tragedies in America, people of color and the poor were hit the hardest,” John Peavy reflected.

Peavy, a Black Tufts senior from Houston, Texas, returned to campus just days after leaving his family, friends, and neighbors still grappling with the aftermath of Category 4 Hurricane Harvey.

“Fortunately my house did not flood, but several homes on my street did,” he continued. “I live just west of downtown in an upper-middle class neighborhood.

But […] every neighborhood in Houston flooded. Relief efforts often took three days or longer to reach [the] inner city.”

Harvey, which hit Texas August 25, was recorded as the most destructive hurricane to hit the United States in over a decade. Not long after, meteorologists began tracking an even more threatening storm, Hurricane Irma, heading through the Atlantic towards Florida and several Caribbean islands. Irma’s devastation was catastrophic—with reports showing that the hurricane even left Barbuda, a small Caribbean island previously home to 1,638 residents, completely uninhabitable.

Harvey and Irma are neither the first hurricanes to hit the US with such a devastating impact nor the first to gain such widespread media attention. Additionally, like other natural disasters that came before them, both storms disproportionally affected the lives of disenfranchised populations, namely racial minorities and low-income communities.

24 Tufts Observer September 25, 2017

Boston may seem far from these storms’ physical impacts, but like Peavy, many Tufts students call these places home. According to Tufts’ online Diversity Data, in 2016 there were 280 students from Florida and 155 from Texas in the total undergraduate and graduate classes, and many more from Caribbean (University data doesn’t say the exact number of students from the Caribbean). For many of these students, campus life became a stark contrast to the realities they had either just left behind, or knew their loved ones were currently facing across the country.

Many wanted to stay connected to their hometowns. Peavy, along with his fellow Tufts senior and Houston resident Joseph Caplan, started a Facebook page called “Jumbo Hurricane Harvey Relief Effort.”

“Our goal was to try to spread as many stories about the storm as we could,” Caplan said. “We wanted to try raise money within the Tufts community, but actually ended up working more through our high school network. But a lot of Tufts students did donate.”

Marissa Michael, a Tufts senior born in Antigua to family of Lebanese origin, also started a GoFundMe page in an effort to raise funds for the reparation of Antigua and Barbuda. She is also organizing fundraiser events in the upcoming weeks with Tufts’ Caribbean Students Organization. However, knowing of the devastation, Michael remains distressed regarding the future of her home country.

“Antigua and Barbuda is the only independent nation that was severely im-

Students AND THE AFTERMATH OF NATURAL DISASTERS

By Alexandra Benjamin and Carissa Fleury pacted by Irma,” she explained. “We do not have organizations like FEMA or budgets like the Federal Government who can throw millions of dollars at us with ease.”

She also emphasized the intense connection she feels to the country and every tragic story coming out of it.

“In the Caribbean, there is a very strong sense of community and patriotism in each nation,” she said. “I don’t know anyone personally in Barbuda but they’re all my brothers and sisters.”

It is largely for this reason that she sees it as so important to acknowledge the personal stories of people affected by the storms.

Along with the stories students publicized online, some had their own experiences with the storms to recount.

“For about 30 hours straight [the streets] turned into a river,” Caplan recalled. “If you were outside water was up to your waist.”

He emphasized that most of the immediate relief he noticed in Houston was local— neighbors patrolled the flooded streets in motorboats from their driveways, and some brought kayaks or canoes out their garages.

Caplan even recalled a women in labor throughout the hurricane. “She had to be picked up by motorboat and taken where the EMS could pick her up.”

Both Caplan and Peavy returned to campus later than they had planned—after airports reopened and their families had safely resettled. They expressed gratitude towards the support they received from people on campus who reached out with concern.

ART BY JAKE ROCHFORD

FEATURE

News With news of the Harvey aftermath soon replaced by the incoming threat of Irma, students from Florida, though already back on campus, were still deeply affected by the ever-changing weather updates.

Matthew Wilson, a Black senior from Mirarmar, Florida, recalled feeling constantly anxious about his mother, who was still in Florida. “Losing communication when the phone lines and power went out was pretty immobilizing,” he said. “I ended up crying at work during my break just watching the news coverage of it.”

Other students felt the reality of the storm set in when they were contacted

by Tufts’ administration. Danny Knight, a junior from Jensen Beach, Florida, said that Dean Mack, who heads the Office for Student Success and Advising, emailed all students from Florida expressing the University’s support. He commented that even though his town escaped much of Irma’s destruction, the Dean’s email made the storm feel much more real. “[He] was talking about me, my home, my friends, and it made me feel connected to a strong sense of community on campus,” Knight said.

Although these students felt the storms’ impacts in various ways, and many were even exposed personally to them, many also acknowledged their relative privilege in being able to safely process the hurricanes’ aftereffects. For some other groups, either their position within a marginalized community, their lack of resources due to socioeconomic status, or a combination of the two, makes life after a hurricane a much more complicated reality.

This is not always reflected in national media, which can even contribute to further isolating or misrepresenting these voices. Michael again expressed her exasperation with the particular lack of attention to the Caribbean’s devastation of Irma.

“It really didn’t surprise me at all,” she said. “Every single year it happens […] It was literally unbelievable to me how much attention was drawn to the impact of Hurricane Harvey in Texas and the potential impact of Irma in Florida compared to the actual devastating impact of Irma on Barbuda, St. Martin, St. Thomas, Tortola and other islands.”

Others have raised similar critiques.

Natural disasters have a politicized history

in the United States, and there is no better example than perhaps the most wellknown hurricane in recent memory—Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Louisiana (NOLA). The devastation Katrina caused in 2005 is widely known. However, less widely acknowledged is the governmental abandonment of NOLA’s Black residents.

In 2006, Tufts professor Sam Sommers wrote an article examining the racialized ways Black communities in New Orleans were effectively left for dead after the hurricane, and how the mass media portrayed them. The news was filled with images of residents stranded on their rooftops—many with infants in their arms, others desperately holding up signs begging for help to the helicopters circling the overflowing streets.

The majority of those stranded after the levees broke were Black. Stories surfaced of police pointing guns at Black residents attempting to evacuate, and of evacuees trapped in shelters with scarcely any food, water, or fresh air.

“Mass devastation in Houston has brought with it a breakdown in law and order […] There’s reports of looting by storm survivors,” Fox News Host Tucker Carlson remarked, merely four days after the eye of the hurricane hit residents. His commentary was delivered over video clips of primarily Black residents in Houston searching stores for basic necessities after losing their homes. Labeling such behavior as criminal vilifies people of color, and highlights the fact that racism, classism, and citizenship status remain integral even after catastrophe strikes.

Recovery from Katrina took immense time and resources, and profoundly changed the communities it touched.

Likewise, recovery for the areas impacted

by Harvey and Irma is far for from over.

However, this process will look very different for different groups. Although it has been over a decade since Katrina, it is clear that race and class still remain a central factor in responding to natural disasters. For all communities, however, the

“It was literally unbelievable to me how much attention was drawn to [ texas and florida ] compared to the actual devestating impact of irma on barbuda, st. martin, st. thomas, tortola, and other islands.”

Sommers emphasized that the media refused to recognize this racist desertion of NOLA’s Black residents—instead choosing to demonize them. Only days after the hurricane, their focus was not on survivors but rather, as Sommers wrote, “on the outbreak of violent crime throughout New Orleans.” “‘Looting comprised one aspect of this coverage [...] particularly among evacuees at the Superdome and Convention Center,” he continued. “The interesting aspect [...] is in retrospect many of [these behaviors] did not happen at all, or at least not to the extent that the media and local officials led us to believe.”

The same shift in focus from supporting survivors to demonizing victims—especially those who are Black and Brown— resurfaced after Hurricane Harvey.

process will be a long one.

For students whose families are still navigating recovery, this is a sobering reality to consider. And the storms themselves are still coming—Category 5 Hurricane Maria has now torn through the island of Dominica. Michael, who has family on the island, fears the worst is yet to come.

Both in and out of the US, the scope of these disasters is massive. “It’s just crazy when […] you just see the sheer amount of people who are going to have to restart from this,” Caplan lamented.

Going forward, maintaining awareness for not just some, but all people and places affected will be key. “The people of Antigua and Barbuda aren’t begging for pity,” Michael emphasized. “[But] no one is obliged to help us and we certainly can’t do it on our own.”

September 25, 2017 Tufts Observer 25

FEATURE

arts & culture

Silence Quite this loud Taylor swift and the challenge of being an apolitical star

By Jordan Lauf

T

aylor Swift’s comeback has been all about her reputation. It’s the title of her new album and the underlying theme of her single, “Look What You Made Me Do.” The singer has written songs about feuds with Kanye West and Katy Perry and breakups with John Mayer and Taylor Lautner; she has started Twitter fights with Nicki Minaj, spoken out about being a feminist, and paraded her leggy girl-squad onstage during her 1989 tour.

Swift has no problem using her voice—except when it comes to presidential politics.

Swift has not publically spoken about the election, a decision that is by no means standard practice for celebrities in this age of social media—fellow female pop icons Beyoncé and Katy Perry openly campaigned for Hillary Clinton. Yet Swift has said nothing, causing some fans to speculate that she voted for Donald Trump, while others guess that she has refused to divulge her liberal opinions for fear of alienating the Make America Great Again hat-wearing portion of her fan base. Swift’s silence on political issues, despite her self-proclaimed feminist identity, raises the question—what duty do artists have to be political?

In a practical sense, celebrity support for a political candidate has little effect on that candidate’s success—rendering a Taylor Swift endorsement essentially worthless. A piece published in The Daily Beast, featuring research done by Professor David 26 Tufts Observer September 25, 2017

Jackson of Bowling Green State University, found that while popstars and actors can help candidates with fundraising, a celebrity endorsement more often provokes a more negative view of the candidate from voters than a positive one. If Beyoncé’s endorsement didn’t help Clinton win the election, it stands to reason that a Swift endorsement would have been similarly ineffective. Therefore, an artist’s refusal to endorse a political stance or candidate has no practical impact on the outcome of an election.

Furthermore, the experience of previous artists who went from seemingly apolitical to sharing their political opinions publically demonstrates that speaking out about a political issue can often serve to further alienate fans from the cause that the celebrity is promoting. After the lead singer of the popular country group the Dixie Chicks, Natalie Maines, said she was “ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas” and criticized his policy in Iraq, the group faced a massive backlash.

Their songs were pulled from almost all country radio stations, and rallies against their music effectively caused the group’s successful career to come to a grinding halt. This incident might have stood as a glaring example for Swift—whose music largely avoids overt political messages and whose fan base spreads across party lines—that speaking out about politics would only serve to alienate her fans, rather than persuade them of her cause.

ART BY JAKE ROCHFORD

FEATURE

arts & culture

Just because an artist’s music is seemingly apolitical, however, doesn’t mean their public image is. In an age where artists are expected not only to produce albums, but also have an engaging social media presence and a cultivated brand, many stars end up using their personal identities to forward their public careers in a way that often has a political bent. In the case of Swift, this public persona has been closely tied to feminism. Swift has spoken out about identifying as a feminist on multiple platforms and has encouraged women to uplift and support one another. She enthusiastically paraded her “squad” of talented (and mostly White, skinny, beautiful) women onstage at her 1989 tour and denounced the press for their tendency to slut-shame her for her dating history.

Yet Swift’s feminism, which is White and self-serving, helped shape her career and increase her popularity, her silence on actual feminist issues calls the legitimacy of her stance into question. Her White feminism fails to recognize the privilege that White women have over women of color. She has yet to speak out in support of Planned Parenthood. She tweeted in solidarity with the Women’s March, but did not attend. And when one considers how Swift has used her feminism to further her career, her silence on the issue of the recent election of Trump—a man accused of sexual assault multiple times over and whose policies work to place reproductive rights in jeopardy—was disappointing to many fans and critics. As Amy Zimmerman wrote in a piece in The Daily Beast denouncing Swift’s political silence, “Cutesy sentiments and political palatability are no longer acceptable…If you refuse to denounce your ‘altright’ supporters, you risk alienating all of your queer, trans, Black, Latino, undocumented, Muslim, and Indigenous fans.” Swift’s fans seem less easily placated by the fact that her art has always tried to be apolitical.

Similar issues surround other popular artists. In an interview with Nightline, Lil Wayne, a wildly popular rapper, especially within the Black community, angered fans when he claimed ignorance about the Black Lives Matter movement, later stating as an excuse, “I ain’t no fucking politician.” Miranda Lambert, a powerful female voice in country music, recently told Billboard that she refused to write political songs or speak publically about politics because country singers should just talk about “tears in [their] beers.”

But as much as these artists try to remain apolitical, and as much as their music attempts to remain so, they cannot be separated from their identity and aren’t living in a vacuum. Swift profits from her “feminism,” and yet, she won’t denounce Trump when he brags about “grabbing women by the pussy.” Lil Wayne can try to be apolitical, but he can’t be fully divested from his identity as a Black man at a time when Black people are under attack by the police. Whether they like it or not, stars like Swift have a massive platform with which to assert their influence and pay more than lip service to political and social movements that have shaped and buoyed their careers.

In a time where politics aren’t merely about tax reform or foreign policy, but also about the physical and mental safety of so many Americans now under attack by a Trump presidency, being apolitical is becoming an increasingly untenable position for Swift and other artists like her. If Swift continues to claim to be spokesperson for women and feminism, remaining silent on politics will undermine her position at every turn.

But as much as these artists try to remain apolitical, and as much as their music attempts to remain so, they cannot be separated from their identity, and aren’t living in a vacuum.

september 25, 2017 Tufts Observer 27

FEATURE

POETRY

RISE &

SET

By Misha Carlson No words, just lips and teeth Crescents and puckers, dimples and wrinkles Morning breath and mussy eyebrows We stretch into the cotton-blend coziness of our quietude • No words, just lips and teeth.

Gritted and pursed, gnawing a fleeing truth Twisted fingers and averted eyes We wrestle with the ropes of our reticence

28 Tufts Observer SEPTEMBER 25, 2017

ART BY NICOLE COHEN

FEATURE

MEET THE

COLUMNISTS F@!K GENDER

By Britt

For the past year or so, I’ve been consistently journaling my thoughts about this campus, my body, and my beliefs. It just so happens that this time frame correlates with finding comfort in my non-binary identity.

In this column, I will be sharing the ways that my place in the world around me has shifted, and how this has affected my daily life—for better and for worse.

Explorations & Explanations

By Myisha Majumder

Myisha Majumder has spent most of her life explaining the difference between Bangladesh and India, the fact that she pronounces “drawer” weirdly because she grew up in the Midwest, that her parents tried to get the nickname “Mishu” to stick (and failed), and that yes, she played rugby for one season. But those things are all important because they make up who she is—and this column is an exploration, sometimes without explanation, of her identity and how it impacts her day-to-day life.

A CONVERSATION WITH MY MOM ABOUT

BY RIVA DHAMALA

When I pick up the phone, the first thing I hear my mom say is, “How is…” and a list of things that I want to talk about begins generating in my head, but comes to a halt as I hear her end with “…school?”

Our conversation topics feel like multiple choice answers to the question: “What can Rashmee and Riva talk about today?” A) school, B) food, C) random Uncle and Aunty drama. Every time I encounter the question, I yearn to have a fill-in option. But our relationship has both generational and cultural barriers that block us from communicating in the ways that I want. By writing this column—that I will tell her is for option A) school—I am hoping to come closer to that fill-in option.

ART BY ANNIE ROOME

September 25, 2017 Tufts Observer 29

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