Tufts Observer VOLUME CXXVIX, ISSUE 2
FEBRUARY 18, 2014
UKRAINE’S LOST OPPORTUNITY FOR EU INCLUSION (PAGE 2)
SILK ROAD: BUILDING A BLACK MARKET IN THE DEEP WEB (PAGE 5)
HOUSE OF CARDS & THE AMERICAN POLITICAL PSYCHE (PAGE 22)
EDITORS editor-in-chief Nicola Pardy managing editor Evan Tarantino creative director Bernita Ling assistant creative director Ben Kurland
February 18th, 2014 Tufts Observer, since 1895
Volume CXXVIX, Issue 2 Tufts’ Student Magazine
Table of contents
section editors Anika Ades Robert Collins George Esselstyn Nicholas Hathaway Justin Kim Ben Kurland Moira Lavelle Katharine Pong Sahar Roodehchi publicity director Stephen Wright photography director Knar Bedian photography editor Alison Graham art director Griffin Quasebarth lead artists Mia Greenwald Eva Strauss lead copy editors Eve Feldberg MT Snyder copy editors Savannah Christiansen Carly Olson Joey Cheung design assistants Anastasia Antonova Claire Selvin
KEENJT
FEATURE Euromaidan: The Enduring Struggle for a New Ukraine by Anastasia Antonova
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NEWS Dead Men Tell No Tales by Susie Church
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NEWS Brazil’s Grand Illusion by Elisa Magalhaes
web director Kumar Ramanathan
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staff writers Allison Aaronson Ellen Mayer Julia Malleck Jamie Moore
POETRY Passenger Seat
editor emeritus Molly Mirhashem
by Anika Ades
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GRIFFIN QUASEBARTH
OPINION The New Workout Plan by Moira Lavelle
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OPINION Aggressive Denial by Andrew Wofford
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ARTS & CULTURE House of Cards: Government, Politics, & Optimism in America by Chris Rickard
22 HALLIE GLUCK
PHOTO INSET The Secret Life of Crafties
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The Observer has been Tufts’ student publication of record since 1895. Our dedication to in-depth reporting, journalistic innovation, and honest dialogue has remained intact for over a century. Today, we offer insightful news analysis, cogent and diverse opinion pieces, creative writing, and lively reviews of current arts, entertainment, and culture. Through poignant writing and artistic elegance, we aim to entertain, inform, and above all challenge the Tufts community to effect positive change.
@tuftsobserver
www.tuftsobserver.org
PROSE Dear Olga
by Ben Zuckert
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MIA GREENWALD
ARTS & CULTURE The Continuing Story of the Boy Who Lived by Allison Aaronson
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OFF CAMPUS Red Tape: Why the Red Line Stopped Short by Alex Wallach Hanson EVA STRAUSS
CAMPUS Dividing The Hill by Claire Selvin
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EXTRAS Police Blotter
by Moira Lavelle and Eve Feldberg
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CONTRIBUTORS Tara Avunduk Lizz Card Coorain Devain Hallie Gluk Lily Herzan Chelsea Newman
Cover by Bernita Ling
FEATURE
EUROMAIDAN:
The Enduring Struggle for a New Ukraine By Anastasia Antonova
M
embers of Parliament are throwing punches in session. Men in suits and ties climb tables, grip hair, and restrain in chokeholds. Speaker Volodymyr Rybak shouts, “Stop! What are you doing!” but his calls for law and order fall on deaf ears. This is the Ukrainian Parliament, circa March 19, 2013. This all too familiar scene, reported by BBC, broke out between President Viktor Yanukovich’s Regional Party and the nationalistic far-right group, Svoboda, after the Regional Party’s parliamentary leader gave a speech in Russian. Although similar violent brawls occurred in the Ukrainian Parliament in 2010 and 2012, they did not attract much media attention because they were accepted as fairly commonplace in the post-Soviet state’s politics. Nowadays, however, Ukraine resides in the international spotlight due to increasingly violent protests spurring from President Yanukovich’s refusal to sign agreements with the European Union. The protesters claim that joining forces with the European Union would benefit all of Ukraine’s citizens. While the youth point to notions of “freedom” and “global human rights,” older constituencies stress “economic security” and a “normal, European democracy,” according to the Washington Post. Leading up to the formal agreement date, the European Union and Ukraine had been discussing possible economic and political deals.
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According to the New York Times, the agreements were part of the EU’s Association Agreements, which could eventually lead to countries like Ukraine entering the union. In February 2013, the EU gave Yanukovich a deadline to sign the agreement. It had originally been set for November, but due to the threat of Russian trade sanctions, Yanukovich refused to sign. His choice strengthened ties with Russia that have been prevalent for many decades now. But these are the same ties that many Ukrainian citizens would rather cut because of the corruption that they bring. Immediately after Yanukovich announced his decision on Nov. 21, activists and journalists began urging people to protest on the streets and on the web. Social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and popular Russian social media site VKontakte became crucial outlets for gaining exposure. On the first day of peaceful protests, an estimated 1,000 to 2,000 people showed up to Kiev’s Independence Square, according to NEWSru.com. Two days later, the numbers rose to at least 50,000. Protestors occupied City Hall, carrying EU flags and chanting, “Ukraine is Europe.” It wasn’t long before the riot police came in to end the protest using tear gas and truncheons. This, along with continued police brutality, has put protesters, journalists, and even medical help into hospitalized care.
FEATURE
President Yanukovich has since turned to allies that have provided the country monetary aid in the past, such as Russia and China. On Dec. 8, the fed-up protesters toppled a statue of Lenin in Kiev—a symbolic attack on Russian power in Ukraine. In January, well into a harsh Ukrainian winter, the protesters stood their ground outside of City Hall, the Trade Unions building, and in Independence Square. With feet of snow on the ground and sub-zero temperatures, the tent cities and protester-made barricades stood strong. Political speeches and musical performances on the stage in Independence Square continued almost 24/7. On Jan. 22, police forces and the special unit Berkut—a military-style force sent in by Yanukovich—attempted to disperse the crowds still gathered on Grushevskogo Street to protest and occupy the Cabinet and Parliament houses. The demonstrators, wearing shields and helmets, threw stones and Molotov cocktails at the police advances. The Berkut responded with tear gas, stun grenades, and rubber bullets. Amidst rubble and acrid smoke from burning cars, at least three identified victims were pronounced dead, according to a list compiled by Radio Free Europe. Among them was 20 year-old Serhiy Nigoyan, an only child originally from Armenia. At the protests, Nigoyan had read a poem by Ukrainian writer Taras
Shevchenko entitled “Caucasus.” A video of his performance can still be found on YouTube. The deaths and injuries that this fight has brought are the sacrifices that come with any revolution—and it is, I think, a revolution. What’s more, the string of kidnappings and activist tortures associated with the Ukrainian revolution has made the conflict even more violent. On Jan. 21, Igor Lutsenko and Yuri Verbitsky, both activists heavily involved with the movement, came to Oktyabrsky Hospital to treat Lutsenko’s eye injury, but the activists were suddenly struck and tied up by a group of men disguised as civilians. The two men were dragged into a car and taken to an unknown neighboring village. The kidnappers beat and severely tortured both the men. Lutensko later said to the Human Rights Watch organization that he believed Verbitsky was more severely tortured because he was from Lviv, a prominent city on the Western side of Ukraine known for being extremely anti-Russian. Both men were unbound and left out in the Ukrainian winter. While Lutsenko was able to crawl to safety nearby and recount his story, Verbitsky was found the next day frozen and dead in a village in the Kiev District. Similarly, activist Dmytro Bulatov— thought to be dead—was discovered severely hurt, crucified, with part of his ear and face cut off in a village near Kiev eight days after his
PHOTO BY KEENJT
FEBRUARY 18, 2014
TUFTS OBSERVER
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FEATURE
In a way, Yanukovich's decision has stimulated a popular reaction that should have happened long ago. It has unified the country's citizens, as well as Ukrainian immigrants in other nations. kidnapping, reported the Guardian. Either Berkut officers or members of covert force created by the Ukrainian or Russian governments are the suspected perpetrators of these attacks. Such horrific kidnappings demonstrate the rampant, high-power corruption of post-Sovietism that has existed in Ukraine for decades with little attention from the global community. Ukraine ranks 28th from the bottom as one of the most corrupt country among 177 profiled by Transparency International in 2013. From police officers accepting petty bribes from the rich to President Yanukovich’s eldest son Oleksandr doubling his fortune over one year, corruption pervades the Ukranian system. Although formal evidence has yet to be presented, there is much speculation that Oleksandr’s father’s presidency and his own sudden wealth are closely linked. Yanukovich’s refusal to sign the agreement was just the straw that broke the camel’s back after decades of deeprooted corruption. In the blur of all these events, the protest has been deemed Euromaidan—#euromaidan
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if you’re tweeting it. Some have compared it to the French Revolution, deeming Yanukovich the Louis XVI of Ukraine. Others have compared it to the Orange Revolution led by Yulia Tymoshenko, who is currently imprisoned, against Yanukovich himself, labeling him once again the antagonist of this revolution. In a way, Yanukovich’s decision has stimulated a popular reaction that should have happened long ago. It has unified the country’s citizens, as well as Ukrainian immigrants in other nations. According to the Washington Post, protesters over the age of 55 who are retired have come out to fight injustice because many of the younger citizens who hold daytime jobs are unable to. All around the world, Ukrainians follow the events daily and support their fellow citizens—one of my friends from home set her profile picture to “Pray for Ukraine,” and my mother streams the events live every day. It’s not fighting out in the streets, but it unites us with those who are. This revolution now continues in its third month. I hope that this summer when I visit my parents’ homeland, I will be able to visit a Ukraine with political power that gives its citizens their voice. O
FEATURE
Dead Men Tell No Tales By Susie Church
FEBRUARY 3, 2014
TUFTS OBSERVER
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NEWS
Imagine a website with over 950,000 users, $1.2 billion in revenue, and 13,000 listings for illegal drugs, guns, fake IDs, and assassinations— all accessible to anyone with a computer. Imagine it’s run by a straight-laced kid in San Francisco, that the US Postal Service ships the drugs, and that the FBI has no idea how to take it down.
You’re imagining Silk Road, a creature of the deep web that emerged in February 2011 as one of the most successful innovations in the history of the drug trade. On Oct. 1, the FBI arrested the alleged founder of Silk Road, “Dread Pirate Roberts,” in a San Francisco public library while he was administering the site. The suspect, Ross William Ulbricht, 29, didn’t even have a chance to close his laptop. The FBI shuttered the site and seized about 144,000 bitcoins (roughly $100 million) from Ulbricht. Another $300 million of Ulbricht’s bitcoin profits remain untouched and unaccounted for. The FBI Office of Public Affairs told the Observer in an email that the Bureau would continue to “devote resources to prosecuting the criminals and groups responsible,” calling the group’s activities “nefarious.” Ulbricht would disagree. On his LinkedIn page, which remains online, Ulbricht wrote, “I am creating an economic simulation to give people a first-hand experience of what it would be like to live in a world without the systemic use of force.” For two years, law enforcement made over 100 undercover drug purchases from Silk Road and slowly
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assembled a case based on Roberts’s mistakes. The FBI said Ulbricht used the same username across web forums to promote Silk Road and recruit developers. The Bureau gathered evidence that Ulbricht used his personal Gmail address when recruiting administrators, left his IP address on servers used to administer the website, and made public posts soliciting fake IDs. Finally, there were the six murders Ulbricht allegedly ordered over the site. Dread Pirate Roberts built the site using The Onion Router, or “Tor,” named for its layers of encryption. Tor hides the IP address of host servers for its websites by using more than 5,000 relays across the world— all made possible by Tor users who volunteer their IP addresses. After a simple software download, Tor pages are available to anyone. They make up part of what is known as the “deep web.” Once on the Tor Network, the doors to Silk Road were completely open. From ecstasy to Afghan heroin, fake passports to ATM hacking guides, murders for hire to 20,000 Facebook likes, the Silk Road stores were vast. And because of Tor’s encryption, neither the website host nor its visitors could be traced.
Silk Road used bitcoin, a peer-topeer cryptocurrency. Since bitcoins pass to and from digital wallets with only an address as their identifier, bitcoin users can remain completely anonymous. Even if law enforcement attached a name to a bitcoin address, Silk Road sent the coins through a series of dummy transactions to obscure the record of bitcoin transactions. This process makes it nearly impossible to track where bitcoins start and where they end up. On Silk Road, both the buyer and seller were safe from identification. Roberts said in a rare Forbes interview last year that bitcoins return power to the individual by allowing people to “control the flow and distribution of information and the flow of money.” “We’ve won the State’s War on Drugs because of bitcoin,” Roberts claimed, “and this is just the beginning.” But the layers of encryption didn’t protect Ulbricht. Ulbricht had made a mistake—naming himself in his username in a programmers’ forum, where he asked for help on a code for a “Tor hidden service.” An FBI forensic analysis found that lines from the code posted on the forum were nearly identical to the Silk Road code. Though Ulbricht changed the
ART BY GRIFFIN QUASEBARTH
NEWS
username a mere two minutes after posting, the edited username “frosty” was linked to the Silk Road web server, leading the FBI to Ulbricht. Ulbricht has pleaded not guilty to the charges—narcotics trafficking, computer hacking, money laundering, and “engaging in a criminal enterprise”—but he’s suing the Justice Department to recover the bitcoins they seized. A month after Ulbricht’s arrest, a new
Dread Pirate Roberts emerged, promising a more secure platform and expanded service to the unregulated market. But the new Roberts fled six weeks later when some administrators of the new site were arrested. Since his disappearance, his second-incommand, “Defcon,” has taken over the site. Though less prolific than its predecessor, Silk Road 2.0 is still in business. The Silk Road bust happened because of human error, not because the encryption
infrastructure failed. With further innovation in this growing industry, Silk Road 2.0 might be just as successful as the original, if not more. In his announcement of the reinstatement of Silk Road 2.0, Defcon wrote on a public forum, “Will this be the end of everything we’ve fought for? Will our movement be remembered as a cypherpunk fad, or as an unstoppable force? I’m here to fight.” O
Silk Road’s Murders for Hire
January 26, 2013
March 13, 2013
April 5, 2013
An employee of Silk Road steals some $350,000 in bitcoins from the site. Dread Pirate Roberts contacts a Silk Road seller to beat up the employee and get the money back. The seller is an undercover law enforcement agent who arrests the employee. When news of the arrest reaches Dread Pirate Roberts, he “change[s] the order to execute rather than torture.” He pays the undercover agent $80,000 and the agent sends him a staged photo of the body of the arrested employee.
FriendlyChemist, a Silk Road user from White Rock, Canada, threatens to blackmail Dread Pirate Roberts. He says that he will release Silk Road user’s personal information unless Dread Pirate Roberts pays him $500,000, which he owes Hell’s Angels for drugs. Instead of settling the debt, Roberts contacts the Hell’s Angels user directly. He asks the Angels to start supplying Silk Road and he offers to pay them $150,000 in bitcoins to kill FriendlyChemist. The Angels send Roberts a picture of the body, he pays, and they go into business. Canadian law enforcement have no record of the man in question or of any murder in White Rock.
The same Hell’s Angels user contacts Dread Pirate Roberts again. He says that when he tortured FriendlyChemist, FriendlyChemist named a partner, Tony, who lived with three other drug dealers in British Columbia. Dread Pirate Roberts hires the user to kill Tony and recover the money. The user offers to kill the three roommates as well—just in case—and Dread Pirate Roberts agrees. He transfers $500,000 in bitcoins to the Hell’s Angel. Once again, Canadian police can find neither the victims nor any evidence of the murders.
FEBRUARY 3, 2014
TUFTS OBSERVER
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NEWS
Brazil’s Grand Illusion By Elisa Magalhaes
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FEBRUARY 3, 2014
NICOLA PARDY
NEWS
L
ola Rosa, a domestic worker in Rio de Janeiro, recently quit her job of 13 years because she thought her wages were too low. “I’m tired of working in other people’s homes,” she said. “If they don’t pay me a decent sum it isn’t worth it to me.” Her employer, Adriana Saggese, an architect, had a different story. “She took more days off than days on, her travel costs were too high, and she asked for a raise almost every month,” she told the Observer on Feb. 7. “By the end of the year I couldn’t afford it anymore.” This scene is a typical result of decreasing income inequality in Brazil. Despite the widespread belief that Brazil is one of the biggest economic success stories in recent years, inequality in Brazil is still rampant. Today the percentage of Brazilians living below the poverty line has fallen below 24 percent. A new middle class now makes up 52 percent of the population, Márcio Pochmann, president of the Institute of Applied Economic Research, told the Tufts Observer in a phone interview on Feb. 6. For Brazilians like Saggese, the costs of employing domestic workers like Rosa outweigh the benefits. Reliance on domestic workers may be coming to an end. For many domestic workers, working in other people’s homes just isn’t cutting it anymore. Live-in domestic workers and other minimum wage earners have historically made up 35 percent of the Brazilian population. Most upper- and middleclass households have at least one live-in maid responsible for cooking, cleaning, and childcare. Brazilian maids often stay with one family for their entire working lives. Those who don’t live with families usually live in shanty-towns called favelas. Lola’s 21 year old daughter, Jessica said that she would never dream of being a live-in domestic worker, though she admitted that she had been trained to work in the industry since she was a child. “I used to go with my mom to Adriana’s house because I couldn’t stay
at home alone,” Jessica said. “So from a young age I was cleaning with my mom, cooking with my mom, changing diapers with my mom. It got to the point that when my mom took days off, I would work instead.” Following in her mother’s footsteps was never Jessica’s plan, but like many Brazilian teenagers, the public school system was failing her and work started to take precedence over school. “My teachers didn’t show up. I did horribly on exams. I was already really old for my grade and I was going to be held back again, so I wanted to quit school and become a full-time housekeeper so I could make my own money,” she said. Then Saggese stepped in, funding Jessica’s switch to a private school, hoping that higher quality academics would reignite a passion for any profession other than housekeeping. This kind of close relationship between domestic workers and their employers is common in Brazil. Pochmann said that the new class environment is the result of economic growth, promotion of social programs like Bolsa Familia (similar to the U.S. welfare system), and a series of political incentives aimed at lower classes beyond simply raising the minimum wage. “The gains of our economic productivity are no longer being spread only among the wealthy,” Pochmann said, “but the wealth continues to be concentrated in the elite class on a level that is simply indecent compared to other countries.” Many Brazilians agree with Pochmann. Despite this decreasing gap in income inequality, and the progress fighting poverty, Brazilians had expected more from the past few years of economic growth, which has now stagnated. Brazil sustains a higher daily death toll from crime than the daily death toll of the Syrian civil war. Preparations for the 2014 World Cup in Rio have already cost more than the past three World Cups combined, though all of the sta-
dium construction is running late, and no work has been done on the airport, the surrounding roadways, or the public transportation systems. Brazil earned 72nd place on the 2013 Corruption Perception Index, below Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Kuwait, and Botswana. “That,” Jessica Rosa said in a phone interview on Feb. 5, “is what the protests were all about. And, of course, [President Dilma Rouseff ’s] lavish lifestyle.” Rosa is referr4rto corruption scandals that have become so common they no longer make headlines. Politicians have set up programs for poor Brazilians to succeed; yet those same politicians
Brazil sustains a higher daily death toll from crime than the daily death toll of the Syrian civil war. have been caught stealing large sums of taxpayer money. The culture of Brazil is changing, but no one can say if it’s for better or for worse. Adriana Saggese’s main concern isn’t finding a new live-in domestic worker. According to her, many middleand upper-class homes are adapting to lives that require far less outside maintenance. With an expanding middle class and college enrollment at an all-time high, Brazilians know they’re supposedly one of the great economic success stories. But with rampant corruption, they still feel stuck. “We’re somewhere in between the first and third world and we have to deal with all of those problems,” Saggese said. O
FEBRUARY 3, 2014
TUFTS OBSERVER
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OPINION
THE NEW WORKOUT PLAN
BY MOIRa LAVELLE 10
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ART BY GRIFFIN QUASEBARTH
OPINION
M
yFitnessPal is an app that allows users to track their caloric intake and physical activity as they work towards fitness goals. The app calculates how many calories a member needs per day, based on their current weight and their desired weight. Users can input how much they exercised and MyFitnessPal will subtract however many calories were burned. But the most impactful aspect of MyFitnessPal is that users have the ability to “friend” other users, thereby giving their friends, family members, and acquaintances the ability to see every calorie that they have consumed and every push-up that they have completed. The app tries to take advantage of the common knowledge that we work out better or eat healthier when we have a team or a community behind us. MyFitnessPal brags that users who added friends lost 50% more weight than those who did not. Users with at least 10 friends lost 20.5 pounds on average. I’m sure MyFitnessPal has helped many people stay on track and lose the weight they needed to lose. But when I was in high school we called MyFitnessPal “MyAnorexiaPal.” The joke was a cruel way to deal with the reality of how the app was being used: girls would friend each other and then tacitly compete to see how few calories they could consume each day. We would all scoff at meal entries that read “8 baby carrots” but it was hard not to compare your own eating habits with those of others’, especially when every calorie was tabulated. For most of the young people I know, MyFitnessPal has been more a source of stress than a push towards health. Several writers and publications have discussed the new “Quantified Self movement” wherein consumers are able to constantly track their pulse, sleep patterns, caloric intake, exercise, mood, temperature, caffeine consumption, et cetera. Several products such as the Fitbit and UP band, which have sensors that continually track the wearer’s movement, are popular in the Quantified Self movement. And though these products place much more emphasis on exercise and positivity than MyFitnessPal does, I think once again these products can only be detrimental to younger consumers. Middle-aged consumers may be struggling with weight gain and sedentary
jobs, but younger consumers are dealing with massive amounts of insecurity. There have been several studies, specifically one from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, that showed that the more time a user spent on Facebook, the lower their self-esteem was. A study from the University of Michigan showed that more Facebook time led to an increase in feelings of depression. The over-sharing we engage in online leaves us feeling jealous and inadequate. When translated from more than just pictures of parties or sunsets into eating and exercise, I fear this over-sharing can become even more toxic.
“For most of the young people I know, MyFitnessPal has been more a source of stress than a push towards health.” Luckily there are apps that tap into the idea of creating a community for exercise that don’t necessitate this sort of oversharing. The app Yog allows members to connect with runners all over the world— keeping with the notion of community— but is less invasive. With Yog, users can run “with” someone else—they plan a time, date, and distance, sync up online, and then run together. During the run, Yog provides a little bar to show how far each partner has run even if they are thousands of miles apart. The app Endomondo doesn’t provide running partners but it does provide a cheering squad—while users run or bike or hike, Endomondo broadcasts their route to their friends and allows them to send pep-talk updates. As Endomondo explains in its tagline: “It’s fun, it’s social and it’s motivating.” The app RunKeeper similarly tracks the distance a user runs, but puts even more value on the idea of creating a motivational community— users must pay $4.99 a month in order to have their friends see their progress. These are the sorts of communities that would appeal to a younger demographic—it feels much more like a collaborative body as
opposed to a voyeuristic portal that would lead to envy and poor self-esteem. A Tufts graduate is also taking advantage of the idea of positively creating communities in the workout world. Hameto Benkreira is the founder of Drop In, a platform that allows users to sign up online for on-demand access to gyms and fitness classes without a long-term gym membership. Drop In provides a discount for users who bring a friend along with them to the gym or class. Benkreira explained the logic behind this: “People work out more effectively and more frequently if they have a buddy for social accountability and support. We want to help people moving in this direction of working out more frequently. This comes from our direction of building alternatives to current gym memberships. We want to incentivize going with friends. Later on when we have a mobile app, we’ll be able to do more on the social side with things like reviews, or if you bring a friend and do so many classes we can give you points towards a new class. It’s better for users and better for us. We want people using the gym, with us or not.” Benkreira and his team also worked recently on an initiative they called the Jolt Challenge. Users sign up online and define a health or fitness goal such as eating healthy or walking more, then are matched up with people who have similar goals. The team has seen a great amount of success. “It is a bare-boned model to help people take little steps and have a support system to help them improve,” commented Benkreira. The Drop In team plans on using this model much more frequently. Benkreira’s ideas provide a perfect example of an app that creates a community for people to improve their health without succumbing to the threat of over-sharing. It may often feel as if working out is a Sisyphean task—every day pushing a boulder up a hill towards the vague, ultimate goal of “staying in shape.” And today, in a world where apps can facilitate work, communications, and friendships, it makes sense to create communities online so no one has to push their boulder solo. But there is a big difference between having help, and constantly comparing yourself to everyone else’s boulder story. O
FEBRUARY 18, 2014
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FEATURE
Passenger Seat by Anika Ades
I climb in
to the familiar perfume of melted cinnamon gum and cough drops, like menthol cigarettes a swift brush of recognition before the slow wave of freedom breaks a crash on the beach like a hug
There’s nothing in the world but this it’s not possible, when the road is this quiet and the fog is this blue this seventh definition of love like Eskimos have thirty for snow, one for each shape, for each texture, for each catch of sunlight
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ART BY CHELSEA NEWMAN
the
secret life
Hallie Gluck
of
Crafties
Hallie Gluck
It’s called the Crafts House, and it’s the only cooperative oncampus living option for Tufts students. That all sounds technical. We call it sanctuary, absurdist, chaotic, ethereal, and home to the Crafties, those wonderful creatures who live (or might as well live) in our little slice of Wonderland. We buy food as a house, and we eat communally the (normally vegetarian) dinners we all take turns preparing, every night at six (time being relative, of course). All are welcome, by the way, even if the overlords made us take down our welcoming sign.
MAY 7, 2012
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Hallie Gluk Coorain Devain
I once sat on the lighter and dropping i someone’s pastel sketch ration for a showing se course. Downstairs, the upwards, carrying the s and Sriracha. The hous and etched into every
Hallie Gluk
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Hallie Gluk
he 3rd story fire escape burning my poetry with a ng it into a ceramic goblet of water. Just inside, etches and ink drawings decorated the floor in prepag seven hours into the future, after the sun rose of the sound of bass and odd shrieking laughter floated he scent of late night toast with honey, fried eggs, ouse shook with a vibrancy drawn at the front door ry painted ceiling tile across the living room.
Hallie Gluk
Lizz Card
MAY 7, 2012
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RE AT U FE Some of us like glitter—that’s your only warning, if you are one who feels such warnings are necessary. We like face paint and installations and brainstorming weird ideas for cutting-edge, post-post-Dadaist performance art. We love eating and dumpster diving and having word-of-mouth guerilla concerts (folk, punk, improvisational jazz, etc.). So stop by whenever; even if it’s 3:00 a.m., there’s bread for all. Because at the end of the day, we’re just 20ish off-beat folk who didn’t quite find each other in Dewick freshman year, who stumbled blindly, drunkenly, artistically, or otherwise passionately through the front door one day/ dinner/night and fell in love....
Half of us have lost our IDs so we’re super responsive to doorbells and always very welcoming of strangers. Come by around 6:00 p.m, and join us for a vegetarian meal, vegan upon request. Or stop by the Crafts Center in the basement of Lewis. There’s bountiful glitter to be had! Ceramics tossed on wheels and kiln-cooked for your benefit! Friends to be met? Yours Lovingly, A Crafty
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PROSE
Dear Olga by Ben Zuckert
Dear Olga, I’m writing in response to your comment on the YouTube video, “Baby monkey rides a donkey.” You said your best friend’s sister-in-law Tatiana “makes $52 an hour sitting at home on her computer.” I’m very interested in this job opportunity. How can I apply?
Dear Olga, Just checking in. Any updates? Dear Olga, I meet none of those requirements either. Is there anything else available? Thanks, Ben
Thanks a lot, Ben
Dear Ben, Thank you for your interest. Please send a resume and fifteen referrals. Just so you know, we require a minimum GPA of 4.0, a background in econometrics, and a working knowledge of Cantonese. Yours truly, Olga
Dear Ben, Just send the naked pic anyway.
Dear Olga, Can you just delete it from your computer?
Yours truly, Olga Dear Olga, Please don’t post it online. Dear Olga, Would that get me the job? Dear Ben, Be proud of your body.
Thanks, Ben
Dear Olga, Unfortunately, I meet none of those requirements. Are there any other opportunities available?
Yours truly, Olga Dear Ben, Depending on the picture, yes.
Thanks again, Ben
Yours truly, Olga
Dear Ben, Yes. Tatiana is looking for a husband. Please send a photo of your nude body and your most recent report from your physician. Just so you know, she requires a body mass index between 20 and 22 and an eight-inch penis.
Dear Olga, What’s going on with the picture?
Dear Olga, You think so? Thanks, Ben
Dear Olga, I attached the picture. What do you think?
Dear Ben, I know so.
Thanks, Ben
Yours truly, Olga
Yours truly, Olga
FEBRUARY 18, 2014
TUFTS OBSERVER
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CAMPUS
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here are two sides of the Hill: there’s uphill, and there’s downhill. While this may seem like an obvious, unloaded observation, a myth of two distinct cultures and communities seems to exist. Any kind of “rivalry” between uphill and downhill dwellers seems to be mainly based on Carmichael or Dewick preference and is merely playful. Regardless, it can be difficult, especially as a newcomer, to meet students living on the other side of campus. Your
first semester is a time for establishing a group of close friends, whether that’s in your hall, in your pre-orientation group, or on your team. When second semester comes around, meeting people on the other side of the Hill—oh so far away—can seem daunting. So, how are the differences between uphill and downhill perpetuated beyond social divisions? How much truth is there in the idea that uphill and downhill residents are actually divided by Pro Row?
TREKS Both lifestyles, without a doubt, involve a lot of walking. Every day, downhill students must walk up to the academic quad for classes, venturing out of their homelands for hours at a time. At the same time, uphill students must wander down if they need to go to an engineering or psychology class, or if they want to grab a coffee at the Rez. “Walking up and down the Hill with all my guitars makes me feel like a
track star. Sometimes it feels like I’m on tour and I need roadies with how much I travel,” comments Freshman Conor Hearn, who frequently travels between his dorm at Hill Hall and Aidekman Arts Center for numerous musical ventures. Some lucky students avoid the trek altogether. “I have a car,” says Junior Emily Rennert.
THE
FOOD “So much of uphill and downhill culture stems from each side’s respective dining hall: Dewick is the nightclub you hit up to see and be seen, Carm is the family kitchen table where you can show up in your pajamas and spend six hours pretending to do sociology reading while binging on Nutella,” says Freshman Blaine Dzwoncyzk. The banter about Carm or Dewick never is familiar to every just about every Jumbo. What Dewick lacks compared to Carm’s exciting stir-fry and
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fondue nights, it makes up for in a generally more varied selection of food. However, what exactly are we debating? Is the debate over Carm or Dewick really about the food and ambience? Or is it more about convenience? After a long night of studying, do you really want to make the trek up to Carm for a bowl of chicken teriyaki stir-fry, or stick with Dewick Thanksgiving? Students can get too comfortable in their home territory, which contributes to the divide.
ART BY EVA STRAUSS
ICON BY CASTOR & POLLUX
CAMPUS
HOTSPOTS Dewick: See and be seen CARMICHAEL: Calm, cool, and collected CAMPUS CENTER: The cornerstone of campus living DAVIS SQUARE: A taste of Boston HODGDON: Odd selection, but beggars can’t be choosers ACADEMIC QUAD: Snow or sunshine, always a scene TISCH: Your worst and best friend during finals GINN: Just don’t annoy the Fletcher students! Mail Services: Can’t we just ship to our dorms? CRAFTS CENTER: For last-minute Halloween costumes
DING HILL
DORMS Freshman Oliver Gonzalez-Yoakum says, “I could imagine living uphill and I’m sure I’d be just fine, but downhill just divides work and play.” On the other hand, after living uphill for her freshman year, Stephanie Kim comments, “My heart will always be uphill.” Freshman Blaine Dzwoncyzk says that the uphill/downhill scheme could be beneficial as it creates smaller communities within a larger campus. She wonders if she’s “missing out” on other students across campus but acknowledges that her Houston Hall community is strong. “There’s something valuable about the smaller communities that the division helps create. Dividing the campus in this way makes it easier for firstyears to get to know people well and I feel like part of a more intimate community, even if it’s just Houston neighbors or breakfast regulars at Carm,” Dzwoncyzk says. Freshman and Lewis resident Rose Banks adds that she doesn’t think that the campus is sectionalized or deeply divided into two territories. She, along with many other people, travels up and
down the Hill to see people in various dorms. “People from uphill spend plenty of time downhill and vice versa, and my friends and I just tease each other about which is better. I definitely don’t think we’re all that divided. Granted, people are going to hang out more around where they live just because of convenience, but I don’t think where you live divides you from the other side of campus,” she says. Junior Lauren Taylor lived in Hodgdon her freshman year and Carmichael her sophomore year, so she has had a taste of both uphill and downhill life. She notes that some students are very adamant about uphill or downhill life, while she herself may not be. “I can certainly say that both dorms were perfect in terms of proximity to food, but making the trek uphill for 8:05 a.m. classes was not too fun. While some people certainly have strong preferences for uphill or downhill, I personally enjoyed having the opportunity to live on both parts of campus,” she says.
By Claire Selvin So, does the divide ultimately make our campus better? Or worse? With Tufts separating our campus—and two different dining halls as anchors—it’s a question of whether or not we accept the separation. And—if we do—is that such a bad thing? While we may be diehard loyalists to the “uphill” or “downhill” cause, we all eventually have to face the Hill.
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OPINION
AGGRESSIVE DENIAL
BY ANDREW WOFFORD 20
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ART BY EVA STRAUSS
OPINION
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he economic crisis that has stifled the global economy for the past six years has taken its largest toll on workingand middle-class Americans across the country. In December of 2007, US unemployment was at 4.9 percent. By October of 2009, that rate had skyrocketed to 10.1 percent. Millions of working-class Americans lost their homes through foreclosure and suffered massive hits to their savings. Let’s briefly review what contributed to this catastrophe. The Great Recession involved complex conditions. In essence, a series of banks and Wall Street investment firms irresponsibly bought perilous, mortgage-backed securities from lenders and sold them to investors. These dangerous transactions ignited the sub-prime mortgage crisis and the subsequent recession. For the firms, these practices were low-risk and high-reward; in fact, investment banks encouraged them. For the global economy, however, the stakes were much higher. Despite these historical and statistical realities, many of the wealthiest Americans, often referred to as the 1%, claim that they are in fact the true victims of the post-recession climate. They feel unjustly demonized for their financial success, and believe that they should be celebrated for their role in stimulating the economy. Some, such as Tom Perkins, even fear that the resentful language directed towards wealthy Americans could transform into physical violence. Perkins is a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and a founding member of the investment firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers. In a letter to the editor published in The Wall Street Journal on January 25th, Perkins voiced his fear that the public animosity towards the “1%” in the United States could lead to a “progressive Kristallanacht.” “The Night of Broken Glass,” as it is known in English, was Hitler’s final resolution in which 91 Jews were murdered and over 30,000 were sent directly to concentration camps. In his letter, Perkins explains that the ongoing protest of the Google buses in San Francisco—during which protestors broke the windows of the high-end vehicles that transport employees to Google—evoked images of the fateful night in which Nazis shattered the windows of Jewish storefronts. One would hope that Perkins’ attitude is simply an anomaly. Yet sadly, he is far
from alone on this front. As early as August 2010, Steve Schwarzman, CEO of the The Blackstone Group, equated Obama’s tax plans to Hitler’s Nazi advances. In a board meeting, he stated, “It’s war. It’s like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.” This claim suggests dire straits for America’s most affluent demographic. Although Perkins’ example is accurate in that the protests have led to vandalism, his comparison is hyperbolic. The 1% does not face conditions that are even remotely similar to those of the Holocaust. Josh Marshall of the political news website Talking Points Memo explains this fallacy: “The extremely wealthy are objectively far wealthier, far more politically powerful and find a far more indulgent political class than at any time in almost a century—at least. And yet at the same time they palpably feel more isolated, abused and powerless than at any…and sense some genuine peril to the whole mix of privileges, power and wealth they hold.”
Many of the wealthiest Americans, often referred to as the 1%, claim that they are in fact the true victims of the post-recession climate. The most glaring hole in Perkins’ logic is that unlike the powerless Jews of Nazi Germany, Wall Street as a financial sector is more powerful than it has ever been. However, his nonsensical comparison is grounded in actual sentiment. Members of America’s most affluent percentile genuinely fear that their country and its political leaders, specifically President Obama, are out for their blood. But the basic history of Obama’s presidency reveal that the extreme fear of the 1% is not based in reality. In other words, unfounded paranoia has caused their perceived victimization. In 2001, President Bush implemented a tax policy known as the “Bush tax cuts,” which significantly lowered the federal income tax on the wealthiest Americans. President Obama extended these tax cuts for two extra years until they finally expired in 2012.
He also took direct action to save Wall Street from its own mess. The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, also known as “the Wall Street bailout,” authorized the United States Department of the Treasury to spend 700 billion dollars on distressed assets and directly supply cash to banks. Sure, President Bush signed the bill into law, but Obama not only voted for it as a senator, he also saw it through as president only a few months later. In addition, both liberals and conservatives have criticized Obama for being too soft on Wall Street. To this day, the Department of Justice under the Obama administration has not prosecuted a single Wall Street investment firm for what have been widely regarded as illegal, fraudulent actions. So if Obama’s actions have clearly allowed for Wall Street to thrive as usual, why are members of the 1% so defensive? The only tangible change in Obama’s America is that the president publicly condemns gross economic inequality in a way that Wall Street is certainly not familiar with. The financial sector has long benefited from an unchecked power over the rest of the country. The post-recession critique of the 1% terrifies them precisely because it threatens to reshape this dominance. Those on Wall Street are not dimwitted—they know they made enormous mistakes that catalyzed the Great Recession. They are aware that their illegal actions have provided the country with a rare opportunity to reevaluate the role of Wall Street in American society. Members of the Wall Street elite have accepted, although not publicly, their undeniable culpability in the economic disaster of 2008, which explains their fear of persecution. Tom Perkins’ comments are, therefore, just another product of this psychological defense mechanism known as stubborn denial. This tactic allows greedy and irresponsible Wall Street investors to equate themselves with Holocaust victims, while declaring that working-class Americans— still recovering from the damage of the Great Recession—are modern day Nazis. This is the strategy of illogical, verbal warfare. And it is Wall Street’s desperate attempt to hold on to the unregulated power that the American public is finally challenging. O FEBRUARY 18, 2014
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ARTS & CULTURE
House of Cards; Government, Politics, & Optimism in America
By Chris Rickard
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PHOTO BY TARA AVUNDUK
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linton’s Washington had The West Wing. Bush’s Washington had 24. Obama’s Washington has House of Cards, Homeland, and Scandal. The varied and telling ways in which American political culture is portrayed in television has evolved from the first televised presidential debate between Kennedy and Nixon in 1960 to contemporary dystopian dramas of corruption and murder on Capitol Hill. While The West Wing managed to captivate viewers for seven seasons, it is significant that shows like House of Cards are now revealing the darker parts of Washington. This shift coincides with falling congressional approval ratings, which hovered consistently around 50 percent during the broadcast of The West Wing but have recently dropped to as low as 9 percent. As Americans have lost faith in Congress’ ability to move past partisan division, it seems they have also lost interest in the idyllic version of our government that The West Wing presented. In this new era, House of Cards is not alone; shows like VEEP, Scandal, and Homeland also have dramatized an edgier take on the realm of politics. What does it say about American society that these are the dramatic interpretations of politics that sell? Since its release almost exactly one year ago, Netflix’s original series House of Cards, a political drama set in Washington, DC, has established a groundbreaking new paradigm in American television. Diverging from the traditional format of televised weekly releases, all episodes were released at once and could be streamed by Netflix subscribers at any time, ad-free. Despite this unconventional move, the show has been quite popular, and fans greatly anticipated the release of the second season on Feb. 14. House of Cards follows fictional South Carolina House Representative Frank Underwood, played by Kevin Spacey, as he works to manipulate Congress and the White House after being denied a bid as Secretary of State. Often using subversive, illegal, and even
violent methods, Underwood is painted as a ruthless yet compelling character. Part of the character’s appeal results from pauses in his scenes as he breaks the fourth wall to speak directly to the audience. Through this method, viewers are drawn into the story and feel like co-conspirators in his scheming. As Micah Agnoli, a Tufts senior majoring in Political Science, puts it, “A lot of the allure comes from the fact that such a patently evil character is someone we’re rooting for.” While the plot and style of House of Cards are enticing, its cynical disposition towards politics seems to be particularly popular in light of current frustrations with the American government. This is not the first Washington-based drama to capture the nation’s attention, and while most have had entertaining and suspenseful plots, there can be little question that a major attraction of these shows is their elucidation of government and the way in which our country is run. There is something deeply intriguing about diving behind-the-scenes into our political system, especially one as sinister and dark as Underwood’s. However, every show has had its own take on what those interactions actually look like. In fact, House of Cards comes in the wake of Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing—a show famous for its idealistic representation of the executive branch, and tied for most Emmys of all time for a TV drama. The show was broadcast from 1999 to 2006 and portrayed several members of the White House staff, including the president, as they argued over decisions and swayed people with eloquent and impassioned speeches. Despite the innovative intrigue of Underwood, House of Cards was not the first show that found a way to make politics entertaining. In its time, The West Wing utilized a concept called the “walk and talk,” where cameras followed the characters as they stormed through the White House, maintaining long-shot conversations. Jacob Wessel, a senior studying Political Science and an avid viewer of the show, says, “[The technique] added movement
to what might have normally been conversations that happened in bland offices at a stand-still. It added to the world of politics where, especially in law making, it doesn’t move as fast as the characters in The West Wing talked.” It appears that many viewers have been craving characters like Underwood, who are effective lawmakers, albeit by alternative methods. President Barack Obama, an avid fan of the show, recently commented, “I wish things were that ruthlessly efficient.” President Obama’s comment illustrates the realism that House of Cards lacks. Would Underwood’s fictional political games and calculating efficiency be as popular in Washington as on Netflix? Lizzy Robinson, a junior majoring in International Relations, thinks not. She said, “On the contrary, behavior that even begins to approach that of Underwood’s draws intense criticism from the public. Think of Christie’s ‘Bridgegate,’ for example. It’s the job of TV show producers to understand their audience and put on shows that people will watch. To that extent, it’s likely that the producers of these shows may have based their story lines and characters on the general sentiments of the American public toward politics. On the other hand, people watch TV in order to be entertained, and a large part of that entertainment comes from being absorbed by something that is dramatized and is an escape from reality.” With only one season out so far, it’s hard to know whether House of Cards will sustain its popularity, or what impact it may have in the long-term. But for the moment at least, Robinson reminds us that, “For better or worse, I think most politicians in DC fall somewhere in the middle—not quite as moral as President Bartlett in The West Wing, but far less selfish than Underwood in House of Cards.” So while Underwood’s methods may make for good TV, there may still be hope for the idyllic vision of The West Wing, both in the minds of the American people and in the real workings of American government. O
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ARTS & CULTURE
The Continuing Story of the Boy Who Lived
By Allison Aaronson
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ART BY MIA GREENWALD
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few weeks ago, J.K. Rowling shocked fans of the Harry Potter series by questioning her plot decisions in an interview with Harry Potter actress Emma Watson for Wonderland Magazine. During the interview, the author admitted that she regretted romantically pairing characters Ron and Hermione, saying that Hermione should have married Harry instead of Ron. “For reasons that have very little to do with literature and far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it, Hermione ended up with Ron,” she explained. “It was a choice I made for very personal reasons, not for reasons of credibility.” This comment has begun a massive online debate, questioning the appropriateness of revising work post-publication and drawing attention to the continuing world of Harry Potter. Seven years after the publication of the final book and three years after the release of the last film, the world of Harry Potter is still alive and well in popular culture and mainstream media. The rise of the wizarding sport quidditch on college campuses, the continuation of Harry Potter fanfiction writing, and the creation of apps, such as the Parseltongue Translator, point to the vibrancy of the Harry Potter community. Rowling’s recent comment has highlighted the extent to which she is still editing the Harry Potter universe. Rowling’s website, Pottermore, allows users to actively engage with the saga, retelling the story in an interactive format and releasing Rowling’s thoughts and unpublished texts. She has written three Harry Potter spinoff books based on textbooks that Harry and other Hogwarts students read in the series: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Quidditch Through the Ages, and The Tales of Beedle the Bard. In September, Rowling and Warner Bros. announced their plan to create a Harry Potter spinoff movie focusing on the adventures of Newt Scamander, the fictional author of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Rowling’s website also publicized her intent to create a theatrical version of Harry Potter with theater producers Sonia Friedman and Colin Callender. This continual release of new Harry Potter information has received mixed responses from fans. An article about the subject on the Harry Potter news source, Mugglenet, received 718 comments, and Twitter exploded with tweets about the breaking news. “Vindication at last! H/Hr Forever!” Mugglenet user Christina Hardin posted on the website. Tufts freshman Avneet Soin was more critical, saying, “I honestly thought it was a little bit publicity oriented.” Freshman Lucy Kania stands in the middle. “I think some of the info she releases on Pottermore is really, really great. It’s exciting and it keeps the work alive,” she concedes. “I think it’s exciting to learn new things, but I don’t think she can take back anything. I don’t know why she had to rain on all of our happy parades.” The comment regarding Hermione’s romantic choices followed another controversial announcement by Rowling in 2007. “I always thought of Dumbledore as gay,” she declared, referring to Harry’s headmaster and mentor. The famous “outing” was met with applause, though some readers felt it better to leave the books as they were. In a letter to Rowling published in Entertainment Weekly,
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ARTS & CULTURE Erin Strecker wrote, “It kills a little bit of the magic when I hear statements from you that contradict what I’ve read dozens and dozens of times.… My greatest Potter-related wish now is that these new additions don’t come at the expense of what we first learned and loved in the novels.” Rowling’s return to the story comes as a surprise considering her website’s statement, “I have no immediate plans to write another Harry Potter novel and I do think that I have rounded off Harry’s story in the seven published books.” Yet after publishing two adult books, The Casual Vacancy and The Cuckoo’s Calling, Rowling is returning to the world of Harry Potter, although the new film does not relate directly to Harry’s story. “Her later books had notso-great reviews.… She has such a legacy from the Harry Potter series, it’s hard for her to part with it,” Soin speculates. Rowling is not the first to revisit a work after its assumed completion. The upcoming film, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is comparable to famous fantasy author JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Like the upcoming Harry Potter film, The Hobbit is set in the same land as Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy but tells a separate story with separate characters. Tolkien also revised his work after publication, making certain changes to The Hobbit to accommodate his later work in Lord of the Rings. Likewise, Charles Dickens rewrote the ending of his coming of age tale, Great Expectations, after a friend told him that the initial ending was too depressing. “Books belong to their readers,” tweeted young adult fiction author John Green after the release of Rowling’s Harry/Hermione comment. To a large extent this is true of the Harry Potter saga, which continues to be crafted by its readers through HarryPotterfanfiction.com, an online forum through which fans post stories inspired by the Harry Potter series. As of Feb. 5, 81,479 stories had been published on the site. In many ways, Harry Potter has taken on an aura similar to that of the Odyssey and the Iliad centuries ago. These stories were passed down orally, with storytellers revising them as they were told. More recently, the characters of Sherlock Holmes and James Bond have been employed in the stories of many different authors. Through fan fiction, Kania remarks, “Harry Potter is the popular mythology of our generation.” So will Harry Potter continue as a permanent cultural institution? A July Guardian poll indicates it might, with 68 percent of respondents voting that the Harry Potter series “deserves to be considered a classic.” Some literary critics have augmented the series’ relevance by deeming it worthy of literary analysis, such as in Elizabeth E. Heilman’s book, Critical Perspectives on Harry Potter. “When Shakespeare was writing it wasn’t literature, it was popular entertainment,” says Kania. “No one was thinking, ‘in 400 years people will be standing around in an English classroom talking about this.’ I think that’s comparable to Harry Potter.” “Of course it’s a classic,” asserts Sophomore Stina Stannik. “ It’s more that just a book… I think nothing else has come close to having the cultural resonance that this did.” O
“My greatest Potter related wish now is that these new, additions don’t come at the expense of what we first learned and loved in the novels.”
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OFF CAMPUS
RED TAPE: Why the Red Line has not expanded into Arlington
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working-class, Irish-Catholic community on the edge of suburbia, with access to downtown Boston, and a small-town feel that no one wanted to change—this is Arlington, MA in the 1970s. Most families had lived in the town for their entire lives, and connections ran deep. The church parish was strong (“devout, conservative and traditional,” as one old Boston Globe story put it) and children growing up knew they were going to play either Little League or hockey. However, as the 1980s approached, a change was going to come in the form of a proposed subway through the heart of the town. The Red Line Extension, which was to extend the Red Line from Harvard Square to Arlington Heights and eventually to Rt. 128 in Bedford, divided the community. It was eventually defeated, but not before laying bare the town for what it really was: a community resistant to change and overwhelmed by the prospect of outsiders dictating—some would say even taking part in—its future. To anyone who has moved to Boston in the last 30 years, the Red Line has always ended at Alewife, and Tufts has always been known as the university that is near the Davis Square T stop. However, this was not always the case; there is a story behind why the Red Line exists as it does today. At its heart is Arlington, a town that borders Somerville and is just one mile from Tufts’ campus. The community of Arlington played a central role in how the Red Line Extension project proceeded, with consequences that reverberate today. From 1914 to 1984, the Red Line terminated in Harvard Square. Along with Harvard University, the station at the end of the Red Line contributed to the development of Harvard Square as a hub of commercial activity. However, in the early 1970s, a concerted effort began to finally complete the Red Line. The governor at the time, Francis Sargent, had placed a moratorium on new highway construction in 1970 and was utilizing federal highway funds, not to build more highways but to fund public transportation projects such as the extension of the Red Line to Braintree and the re-construction of the Orange Line. It was during this era of mass transportation that
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the push to extend the Red Line to Rt. 128, by way of Arlington, began. The Red Line Extension plan in its original conception would have essentially consisted of two parts. The first part would have extended the subway from Harvard Square to Arlington Center, while the second part would have taken the subway all the way to Rt. 128 in Lexington, where it would connect to a major highway. Though this plan won almost immediate approval in Cambridge and Somerville, the fact that the Red Line would temporarily end in Arlington Center caused an initial round of opposition. The community feared additional traffic, parking, and general congestion that would result from living at the end of a subway line where commuters would park and ride into the city. As a result, in 1972, the Board of Selectmen voted for “128 or nothing”—either the Red Line would extend all the way to Rt. 128 or it would not extend through Arlington at all. As the Board of Selectmen vote illustrates, some initial opposition to the Red Line Extension did exist, but it was not determinative. In fact, the local opinion at the time was split not on the question of whether the Red Line should be extended, but on whether or not the community could allow it temporarily to end in Arlington Center. Just four years later, in April of 1976, the Metropolitan Area Planning Council completed an application for federal funding for the Red Line Extension. At the time, it was the largest application for federal funds ever made in Boston ($381,191,000) and these federal dollars would have covered 80 percent of the cost of the total project. Today, such spending by the federal government on large mass transportation projects is unheard of; this application truly represented a once in a lifetime opportunity to complete the Red Line. Local opposition intensified quickly. The proposed Red Line station in Arlington Center was near Arlington Catholic High School, a division of the local church. Local residents and parishioners saw this location as undesirable. The State Representative, John Cusack, responded by introducing a bill to prohibit the MBTA from constructing any facility within 150 yards of the ART BY MIA GREENWALD
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by Alex Wallach Hanson
high school. Though never passed, the bill was supported by 1,000 Arlington residents at a town hall meeting. Out of this legislative effort, the Arlington Red Line Action Movement (ALARM) was born. Largely a creation of the local church, St. Agnes, ALARM placed a special referendum on the ballot in March 1977 on whether or not the Red Line should go through Arlington. The pastor of St. Agnes called a “no” vote, “a must for the survival of Arlington as a residential community.” ALARM and the church worked together to distribute literature, call 18,000 homes, and in the end send the referendum question to overwhelming defeat, with voters rejecting the Red Line Extension 9 to 1. At the end of the day, Arlington had a chance to have a station on the Red Line and rejected it. In the course of less than one year, the town went from being part of the largest federal mass transit project ever proposed in the region, to forever excluding itself from the subway system. The causes were a combination of reasons, both those stated overtly and those left unsaid. Local residents worried that the second half of the extension project would be delayed for decades, leaving Arlington Center as the terminus of the subway line with increased congestion and parking needs. The church—politically influential and “omnipotent” according to a local official—spoke of the need to preserve the fabric of the community. Together, these concerns may have been enough to stop the project on its own, but they were not what fundamentally drove opposition to the Red Line in Arlington. In reality, it was fear; Fear of “undesirables” using the subway to get the community, including those who “need no more
instruction than finding the end of the line in order to get to Arlington.” The church magnified the views of its white, semi-suburban constituency and convinced them that the subway would bring “outsiders” into the community. No argument about transportation or jobs could stand up to this fear. Today, the town of Arlington still holds on to remnants of its past. Though the church is no longer monolithic, old ways die-hard and pockets of Irish-Catholicism remain. Children still know they are going to play one of two sports, except now it is hockey or soccer. The lack of a subway protected the community from urban change longer than its neighbors in Somerville, but today Arlington experiences rising housing costs just like any other local community. The town often does not want to face its less-than-praiseworthy past, and would rather focus on the neighborhood it has become today. Without acknowledging where it came from though, Arlington will never know what it really is. The fear of change still exists, as seen through a lack of diversity in Arlington’s affordable housing, socio-economic isolation, and resistance to the Mass Ave. redevelopment project—and it is not unique to ‘townies.’ Progressive or conservative, new to town or born and raised, the urge to exclude crosses all boundaries. As Arlington plans for the next 40 years, it would do well to heed the lessons of the previous 40 and plan for not just a prosperous, but an inclusive future. O Full disclosure: The author was born and raised in Arlington, and grew up around the corner from St. Agnes Church.
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EXTRAS
POLICE BLOTTER
By Eve Feldberg and Moira Lavelle
State of Denial
Just Dew It
Officers found a student urinating off of the brick wall at the corner of Packard Avenue and Professor’s Row. The student repeatedly insisted that he wasn’t peeing. The officers thought different.
Police received a call from the residents of 20 Professor’s Row, reporting a suspicious-looking bag in the bushes outside their home. Officers found a black backpack in the bush and searched it for identification. Along with the owner’s driver’s license, the officers also found an inexplicable contraption composed of a clip or tube (details remain unclear) attached to a plastic bottle, as well as a bottle of Mountain Dew. Later that day, officers received another call that the owner of the backpack appeared to have returned to retrieve it. Questioning of the suspect revealed that the backpack did, indeed, belong to him. The contraption, he explained, was intended to aid in passing a drug test. And the bottle of “Mountain Dew” was actually “clean urine.” Lucky for him, in the state of Massachusetts it is completely legal to walk around with two liters of pee in your backpack.
Thursday, January 30th, 2:35 am
Friday, January 31st, 9:57 am
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Campus Cruiser A non-Tufts affiliated resident of Curtis Street called TUPD regarding their nextdoor neighbors, a group of Tufts students. The students’ driveway curves behind their house, and instead of backing out, one of them decided it would be easier to drive over their neighbor’s front lawn and onto Curtis Street. If only he’d stopped to mow their lawn while he was at it.
Sunday, February 9th, 7:00 pm
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TUFTS OBSERVER SINCE 1895 www.tuftsobserver.org observer@tufts.edu @tuftsobserver
ple ase r ec ycle