ISSUE 5 SPRING 2022

ISSUE 5 VOL CL ARCHIVE

tufts

Observer

TABLE OF CONTENTS 2 LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

19 PAUSE

4 LETTERS FROM THE CREATIVE DIRECTORS

20 CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE CASE AGAINST CAPITAL

6 CENTERING COMMUNITY

22 ON FILM WE’RE BRIEFLY GORGEOUS

10 PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORIES

24 INTERFAITH SPACES AND CONVERSATION

BY AROHA MACKAY

BY JULIA STEINER & BAO LU

BY LAYLA KENNINGTON

BY EMARA SAEZ

12 ADDING INSULT TO ILLNESS

BY TESS ROBINSON

14 ONYX

BY ISABEL GENN

16 NO VACANCIES

BY ADEN MALONE

18 HOUSE PARTY

BY AUDREY LEDBETTER

ARCHIVE

BY ANICA ZULCH

BY MEGHAN SMITH

BY EDITH PHILIP

BY HANNA BREGMAN & ELOISE VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

26 UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES AND COMMUNITY

BY DANIEL SANTAMARIA

28 PUBLICIZING THE PRESENT

BY ISABELLE CHARLES & LIANI ASTACIO

STAFF EDITOR IN CHIEF: Aroha Mackay

EDITOR EMERITUS: Josie Wagner MANAGING EDITOR: Sabah Lokhandwala CREATIVE DIRECTORS: Bao Lu Julia Steiner FEATURE EDITORS: Edith Philip Melanie Litwin NEWS EDITORS: Gracie Theobald-Williams Silvia Wang ARTS & CULTURE EDITORS: Juanita Asapokhai Sabrina Cabarcos OPINION EDITORS: Priyanka Sinha Meghan Smith CAMPUS EDITORS: Shira Ben-Ami Hanna Bregman POETRY & PROSE EDITORS: Michelle Setiawan William Zhuang

VOICES EDITORS: Emara Saez Eden Weissman CREATIVE INSET: Brenna Trollinger ART DIRECTORS: Kate Bowers Misha Mehta

MULTIMEDIA DIRECTOR: Unnathy Neltulla MULTIMEDIA TEAM: Jasmine Chang Miela Efraim Pam Melgar PODCAST DIRECTOR: Caitlin Duffy PUBLICITY DIRECTOR: Janie Ingrassia PUBLICITY TEAM: Sophie Fishman Paola Ruiz Millie Todd STAFF WRITERS: Seun Adekunle Leah Cohen Clara Davis Ruby Goodman Layla Kennington Audrey Ledbetter CE Malley Aden Malone Akbota Saudabayeva Eloise Vaughan Williams Anica Zulch DESIGNERS: Emma Davis Uma Edulbehram

DESIGN BY BAO LU, PHOTO COURTESY OF TUFTS ARCHIVES

WMeguna Okawa Tara Steckler Miriam Vodosek Ines Wang Michael Yung

LEAD COPY EDITOR: Marco Pretell COPY EDITORS: Sophie Fishman Linda Kebichi Eli Marcus Emilia Nathan Jack Rogen Millie Todd Alexandra Ward PODCAST: Noah DeYoung Julio Dominguez Alexis Enderle Gayatri Kalra Bronwyn Legg Grace Masiello Jaden Shemesh Jillian Yum STAFF ARTISTS: Brigid Cawley Aidan Chang Anna Cornish D Gateño Amanda Lipari Maxson Carina Lo Emmeline Meyers INVESTIGATIVE TEAM: Liani Astacio Hanna Bregman Eden Weissman CONTRIBUTORS: Isabelle Charles Isabel Genn Tess Robinson Daniel Santamaria

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Dear reader, I love storytelling. It’s why I joined the Tufts Observer and why I have loved writing, reading, and editing every semester since. However, I have always stayed away from my own stories. So, for my last letter from the editor, I decided to look into my personal archive, made up of stories of my own making and those passed down by my ancestors.

My mother’s side, the Kambel family, has rows of file cabinets filled with our complicated history preserved by several generations.

My grandfather was one of three “legitimate” children of a Surinamese man who built himself up from a rural rubber tapper to a wealthy land, property, and business owner in Paramaribo. Quite a feat for the son of an enslaved woman in a Dutch colony. My grandfather, Emro Kambel, was never allowed to walk barefoot lest he offend our enslaved ancestors who were denied their shoes along with their freedom.

My grandmother is the daughter of an Indonesian woman who left Sulawesi at 16 with my great grandfather, a Dutchman twice her age. They met when he was a soldier in the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army, an army that committed numerous war crimes in Indonesia. They last saw each other when he was arrested in the Netherlands for resisting the Nazi occupation, leaving my great-grandmother with seven children when he died in the Dachau concentration camp. My grandmother, Tineke Hout, spent her fifth birthday in a Dutch orphanage after her mother fled back to Indonesia.

I hold archives of colonizer and colonized, enslaver and enslaved. I am still figuring out how to hold those legacies within myself without feeling the perversity of stitching together harm and harmed. That being said, along with the painful stories, my grandparents also passed on a love of music, letters, and learning to my mother and to me.

My father’s side, the Mackay family, remains an ambiguous, thin manilla folder filled with more questions than answers.

While I don’t know many of our stories, my dad has given me his passion for doing what is right, an insatiable curiosity, my two dear siblings, and all his love.

I carry their stories with me, even the ones I haven’t heard, as I create my own. I don’t think any of my ancestors imagined that their descendant, who grew up in Amsterdam, would end up in charge of a college magazine in the United States.

In my 21 years, the Observer has become a large part of my archive: two semesters as a staff writer, two as a section editor, and the last one as editor-in-chief. I get to file away all the sunrises, back-and-forths over titles, and thousands of Slack messages into my own archive. In return, I also get to be part of the Observer’s archive. A small part of 127 years of history. A set of five little magazines on the top of a towering stack reaching back into the 19th century.

Before this issue becomes part of the archive, I would like to say thank you. Thank you to Sabah, Julia, and Bao for learning how to do this job with me; I am forever grateful that you took the leap. Thank you to my wonderful staff; I wouldn’t want to stay up with anyone else. And thank you to everyone who has worked on this magazine, past and present, for all you have given to the Observer and all you have given to me.

With love and in power, Aroha MacKay.

DESIGN BY BAO LU, PHOTO COURTESY OF AROHA MACKAY

MAY 2, 2021 TUFTS OBSERVER 3

RS

LET

M O T R H F E S ET R CRE O T C A TIV E DIRE

My family members are terrible bookkeepers. Only the oldest of our photos are scattered among unkempt photo albums and manilla envelopes: my parents’ wedding, Vietnam, baby pictures (of course), and other familial relics. In 2007, my mom began to upload all her photos to Facebook and would reminisce about past days. I found this beautiful. Not the photos themselves—they were horrendously blurry and awkward—but thRe act of archiving and the indulgence in it.

I believe that everyone has an affinity for the archival. What I mean is that if you look at your camera roll, however chaotic it may be, patterns emerge. Patterns that reveal the way you view and capture the world, the things you find beautiful, funny, disgusting, and strange. Taking and loving what you experience and just simply keeping it close in our pockets—that is the awesomeness of iCloud.

The beauty in the archival shows us that our lives are artful, no matter what our creative interest may be. In our heads we create rules and stick to them. Each of us has unique rules that show us how we traverse and visualize our lives. The habits that create our archives preserve these rules and unabashedly display them either for us or others to see.

When I look back at my own archive, I get immersed in my world that I’ve curated. Everyone I love and everything I admire shows through. The compactness of it gives me energy and clarifies my vision. It’s strange how I see through my chaos. Designing for the Observer has shown me that heart is at the core of all my design, and my heart can be seen in my archive.

I hope this inspires you to look back at your own archive, wherever it may be. In your camera roll, photo album, or any other collection you’ve built. Because they are all trace patterns of you!

You’re the best, Bao

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A few springs ago, I was rifling through the drawers in my mother’s old childhood bedroom in the house where my grandma still lives.

I sifted through stacks of candy-colored birthday cards (Love, Aunt Toni & Uncle Norman), journals from camp (the food here is terrible), and yellowed letters from friends (Sealed With A Kiss). Through these papers, smooth and golden with age, I was able to see my mother as another version of herself, a part that was tucked away in a drawer with painted flowers, near the closet where her wedding dress now hangs.

From the bottom of this accidental time capsule, I pulled out an edition of her high school’s newspaper from 1983. I don’t remember the front page now; it was something about homecoming or graduation, a commemoration of some mark in time that rendered it worthy of keeping. She had held on to that student newspaper for almost 40 years. Having gone to the same high school as my mother, it was the same newspaper for which I, at the time, was an editor.

Journalism is about keeping people informed. It allows us to learn about our community, to feel like we’re a part of it, and to understand what’s going on around us in our day-to-day lives. But journalism is also a record, encapsulating the people and events that came before us. Like that high school newspaper, the Tufts Observer will live on: forgotten among stacks of books, filed away in desk drawers, shoved into boxes marked “college.” Some issues will make it to the first move from college, fewer still the second. All will be immortalized online, and some treasured editions may be saved for lifetimes.

So, to anyone reading this 20 or 30 years from now, or on Monday, May 2, I hope you find some joy in this issue, learn something new, or be a part of the Tufts community as we left it. Until then, the Observer will be here, waiting for you in the archive.

Cheers, Julia

DESIGN BY JULIA STEINER, PHOTOS BY BAO LU AND JULIA STEINER

MAY 2, 2022 TUFTS OBSERVER 5

FEATURE

CENTERING COMMUNITY: THE HISTORY AND PROGRESSION OF TUFTS DSDI CENTERS

By Layla Kennington Reporting Contributions by Anthony Davis-Pait Content Warning: Mentions of racism, hate crimes, racial slurs, homophobia

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FEATURE

S

ince the founding of the Africana Center in 1969, Tufts’ Division of Student Diversity and Inclusion (DSDI) Centers have existed as spaces for Tufts students with diverse backgrounds and identities. In the years since 1969, Tufts has established six additional DSDI Centers.

For the past 53 years, the implementation of DSDI Centers is in part due to the outsized contributions of student activism, revealing how students push for social change on campus.

THE INDIGENOUS CENTER In October 2021, DSDI announced the creation of the Indigenous Center.

Luz Del Carmen Pliego, the first Indigenous Tufts Community Union Senator and councilmember for the Indigenous Students’ Organization at Tufts (ISOT), expressed its necessity.

“Whenever you hear about anti-racism and race at Tufts, [Indigenous students] are not involved because we’re not acknowledged. Even though we faced so much discrimination in this country and the genocide of Indigenous people still happens in the Americas… we’re not taken seriously. It’s so difficult walking around campus and no one around you knows your experience, knows the beauty of your culture,” Pliego said.

Pliego explained the need for a specified safe space for Indigenous students.

“I don’t feel welcome at [the other DSDI Centers] because there is still so much anti-Black and anti-Indigenous sentiment there… so the [Indigenous Center] will be like a home far away from home.”

Since 2019, the energy and dedication of ISOT have been integral to the establishment of the Indigenous Center. “It was a very frustrating process… A lot of students felt like this should be obvious, like this should be no question, like the Indigenous Center should be automatically approved for recognition. But it took so long,” Angel Jesus Cruz Salvador, a sophomore and ISOT council member, said.

Salvador highlighted the role student activism played in establishing the center. “Always, without question, the biggest challenger was [the Tufts administration]...

DESIGN BY EMMA DAVIS, ART BY KATE BOWERS

A lot of students sacrificed a lot of different things, whether it be time, energy, responsibility, [or] their health and well-being to do all the work that Tufts University wouldn’t,” Salvador said. “[Ultimately,] we have these things because students advocated for them.”

The Tufts administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment. An updated online publication of this article will include the administration’s statement, should one be provided.

The Indigenous Center officially opened its doors on March 2, 2022. Salvador spoke of his hopes for the center’s future.

“I would like the Indigenous Center to ultimately become a symbol of hope and a symbol of joy for every Indigenous student,” said Salvador. “The center [itself] is a protest against the many years when Indigenous students were not receiving the support that they deserve.”

Vernon Miller, the Indigenous Center Director, underscored the significance of the center on Tufts’ campus. “Tufts was built on the Massachusett, Nipmuc, and Wampanoag tribes’ territories, and continues to evolve as an institution in this powerful acknowledgment... The establishment of the Indigenous Center is an extension of the efforts,” Miller wrote in a statement to the Tufts Observer. “The [center] will continue the legacy of activism by offering personalized support for prospective and current Indigenous students [and] will always be mindful and intentional in programming to reflect [how] each student’s experience is often individualized in their sovereignty.”

THE AFRICANA CENTER Tufts’ oldest DSDI center, the Africana Center, was founded in 1969. Originally named the Afro-American Cultural Center, its birth stemmed from what the university’s archives describe as “one of the community’s most significant and effective protests against institutional and societal racism.”

According to a 1969 edition of the Observer, the protests emanated from the racist hiring practices of Volpe Construction, whom Tufts had contracted to build

Lewis Hall. In a letter to the Tufts administration, the leadership of the student AfroAmerican Society highlighted the dearth of Black students and faculty within Tufts’ academic departments, as well as a lack of policies regarding equal employment for racially marginalized individuals. Specifically, the organization “cited the visible presence of [few Black construction workers],” as only four workers out of ninety were Black, as evidence for the university’s “complicity… in perpetuating racism and exploitation in American society.”

After a protest that resulted in students occupying the construction site on November 5, 1969, as well as other clashes, an agreement was reached. Both the Tufts administration and the Afro-American Society filed a discrimination lawsuit against the Volpe Construction Company, and the university was pressured to establish what is now named the Africana Center.

Over 50 years since its conception, the Africana Center exists as a safe haven for students of African descent. According to presentations produced for the center’s 50th anniversary, the center was integral in supporting students through rallying for an independent Africana Studies Department in 2011, as well as the #TheThreePercent rally in 2015, which protested the lack of Black students admitted into universities across the nation, including Tufts.

Harrison Clark, a student peer leader with the Africana Center, shared his personal experience with the Africana Center.

“I don’t think you can survive a place like this without some sort of affinity group that allows you to express your identity… the [Africana Center] programs were really big for me in terms of thinking about who was supporting me on campus, who was rooting for me, even if I wasn’t interacting with them all the time,” Clark said.

THE WOMEN’S CENTER The Women’s Center was established in 1972, first as a student group. It wasn’t until 1985 that the center became independent of TCU jurisdiction. Initially, students organized in the Miller Hall basement, sharing the space with the Tufts University Abortion Coalition.

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FEATURE

Student organization is integral to the legacy of the Women’s Center. On November 6, 1979, the center organized Tufts’ first “Take Back the Night” march, meant to bring awareness to relationship and sexual violence.

Hope Freeman, the senior director of the Women’s Center and LGBT Center, spoke about her vision for the Women’s Center, highlighting the need for intersectionality within affinity spaces. “I’m trying to make sure that the folks who don’t typically get the mic aren’t being censored and are being thought about all the time in programming…”

Freeman continued, “I think… intersectional identities are never [cross examined]... as they fit within systems of oppression. All of that is to say… the Women’s Center [is] always assumed to be white or supporting white people, and that anyone who does not fit in that demographic of white, cis woman does not fit in these spaces. Now we know that’s not true… A lot of the work that I [have] been trying to do is undoing this single-story narrative.”

Saira Mukherjee, an intern at the Women’s Center, spoke about the center’s current programming. They said, “There is Gaze, which is a body liberation zine that we’ve been putting out. And then we have the POC Circle… Queer Desis… there’s a lot of crafting events… [and] transformative justice workshops.”

Mukherjee also explained that through the center’s programs, they are able to address sometimes taboo topics, such as mental health and sexual health resources.

THE ASIAN AMERICAN CENTER The Asian American Center was established in 1983, following a targeted racist incident on campus. According to an official apology from the Kappa Chapter of Zeta Psi, a now-disbanded group on campus, pledges “were instructed to line up and yell derogatory remarks of a racial nature such as ‘Nuke the G-ks’ in front of Start House.” At the time, Start House was an affinity residence for Asian-American students.

8 TUFTS OBSERVER MAY 2, 2022

According to a 2009 Tufts Daily article, “[M]embers of the Tufts community came together in support of positive change.” In the incident’s aftermath, due to student outrage, the Asian American Center was founded.

Aaron Parayno, Director of the Asian American Center, revealed how the center’s activism-rooted history plays into its current mission. “Student protest is aimed at making the university accountable to the community… Students show the university what they believe it should look like.”

Arnav Patra, an Asian American Center intern, commended the center’s work.

In a statement to the Observer he wrote, “The AAC plays a role in creating space for Asian and Asian American identifying students to celebrate their identities and build community. We are one of only about 40 college Asian American Centers [at US colleges], so our presence on this campus is really special and something that sets Tufts apart.”

Sophomore Michelle Zhang, an Asian American Center intern, likewise lauded the center’s efforts while continuing to implore the university for more.

“The university gave us a center…

We have a center library… space for clubs to gather… study space… [and] community food supply… but it is concerning to think about [the fact that] there was over a 300 percent spike in anti-Asian American [hate crimes] last year. It all correlates: What is the university doing about that?”

Zhang continued to discuss the necessity of cross-cultural exchange among students. “Tufts has such a high Asian and Asian-American student population, but their presence isn’t as necessarily integrated the way it should be. The centers are so interconnected, but [advocacy] isn’t less required.”

Patra expressed an evolving vision for the center. “My vision is that of an inclusive space where all Asian students feel welcome… This has been a historic challenge for our center, but I am confident that we are improving this each day and that we can do more to make sure that our work isn’t solely centered on East Asian students, as it may have been in the past.”

THE LGBT CENTER A four-hour, 200-person rally in front of Ballou Hall on November 4, 1991 began the fight to establish the LGBT Center at Tufts University.

The rally came after years of discrimination faced by LGBT students and faculty. For instance, during a 1969 Commencement speech, a student came out as gay and called attention to administrators’ lack of support for queer students on campus. Immediately, the student’s mic was turned off.

In 1988, a lesbian student residing in Metcalf was the victim of homophobic graffiti sprayed on her door. In response, the disciplinary panel imposed a mandatory discussion session with the residents of the dorm, aimed at addressing the “wider issue of homophobia.” Sharon Wachsler, a student organizer at the 1991 Ballou Hall rally, highlighted one of her motivations for orchestrating it. Wachsler’s friend, a member of the LGBT community on campus, was “violently harassed by a Tufts staff employee.” Wachsler told the Daily that when the incident was reported, “the dean subtly implied... the incident was not harassment.”

The 1991 rally, coupled with the efforts of existing student LGBT organizations on campus, established the LGBT Center in September of 1992.

Freeman outlined the continued need for the LGBT Center’s work.

She said, “We might be present, but students are still getting dead-named.

Folks can’t update their names in all these millions of systems [and] people’s housing and genders are constantly getting messed up.”

THE LATINX CENTER In 1983, according to the Latinx Center’s website, a group of students or-

ganized and created the Hispanic American Society. In subsequent years, the organization engaged with the TCU in order to advocate for the establishment of the

FEATURE

Latinx Center. After a ten-year effort, the center was founded in October 1993.

Since its conception, the Latinx Center has evolved to more comprehensively address student needs. Ashley Gomez, a former intern with the Latinx Center, commented on this progress. “I think, in the past, it wasn’t a space that was welcome to many folks… specifically Black Latinx folks. And I think, in my senior year, I see that… has changed,” Gomez said.

Under the leadership of Director Marvin Casasola, The Latinx Center currently partners with a number of student organizations to further the Latinx community on campus. Gomez spotlighted “Questioning Latinidad,” an initiative from the center she had a hand in starting.

“Questioning Latinidad came from Black history programming last year…

Latinidad is a political term, it’s anti-Imperial in nature… With this series, I’ve been able to understand how Latinidad has served the countries under its bracket.”

The center’s programs additionally include the Latino Peer Leaders Program, on-campus affinity housing, and the Tufts New Entry Food delivery.

THE FIRST RESOURCE CENTER

such resource, the lending library, “which allows students to reserve textbooks for free. We have a food cabinet [for] students.

And at the beginning of the year we work to [donate] a lot of free necessities, like dorm items, supplies, school materials that the FIRST community can use when coming back to campus.”

Additional resources from the center include mentorship, career workshops, a peer leader program, and a photo campaign to represent the first-generation community at Tufts.

Hook also shared hopes for the center’s continued role on campus. “I hope to see more resources being built for the first generation of incoming undocumented student populations here at Tufts.”

Tufts, like many universities of its kind, was not initially created to serve students with marginalized identities. Tufts was founded in 1847, however, it wasn’t until 1905 that the university admitted its first Black student, and 1980 that it became officially co-educational. The history of Tufts’ DSDI Centers reveals how students have determinedly striven to carve out spaces of support on campus, as well as the work that must continue to be done to ensure that Tufts meets the needs of its diverse study body.

Established in 2018, the FIRST Resource Center serves first-generation, low-income, and undocumented students on campus. The center’s creation built off the work of the First Generation Collective and the now-dissolved Office of Student Success and Advising .

Bella Hook, an intern at the FIRST Resource Center, explained its mission on campus. She said, “We serve as a support system… [The center] was founded to reassure students that their identity [and] background on campus is important. It allows them to feel more pride in their identity, and allows them to work together with other students that share the same difficulties and hardships.”

The FIRST Center aims to provide essential resources and knowledge to the students it serves. Hook described one

DESIGN BY EMMA DAVIS, ART BY KATE BOWERS

MAY 2, 2022 TUFTS OBSERVER 9

VOICES

PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORIES

By Emara Saez

In 1999, two awe-struck Cuban immigrants stepped off of a plane in Miami, Florida to discover a world they never could’ve imagined. A few years later, they managed to bring some family to the US; eventually, my parents started a family of their own.

I was born in Tampa, Florida as the oldest daughter of my parents and lived in a predominantly Latino neighborhood until I was eight years old. The loud whizz of cars speeding by, voices of neighbors on their patios, and loud reggaeton blasting from teenagers’ stereos would filter in through the windows of my house and eventually became the sounds of my childhood. I grew up eating Cuban food like arroz amarillo, tostones, and sopa.

The house was always full of guests— usually the friends of my parents and my extended family. My childhood was largely defined by living in an intergenerational household, as my grandmother Niria lived with us.

Niria was unlike any other person I have known. She and her five siblings were raised by their single father in a small Cuban town called Yaguajay. As the eldest sibling, she practically raised her younger siblings. She never had the opportunity to 10 TUFTS OBSERVER MAY 2, 2022

attend school, so she was mostly illiterate. Despite this, she was still incredibly witty and resourceful. Her childhood was marked by intense struggles with poverty and food insecurity, and, at age 18, she had her first child. She gave birth to three more kids after, including my mother, and raised them all as a single mother. In the ’50s and ’60s, it was practically unheard of for an unmarried older woman to make a living for herself in Cuba, but my grandmother did it. She was an incredible businesswoman, selling cigars, canned tomato sauce, toothpaste, and anything else she could acquire in bulk in order for her children to be clothed, fed, and taken care of.

In 2000, she left her small town and emigrated to the US to help my parents.

Shortly after arriving, she began working as a nanny for a young family with a baby.

Niria always had a way with children, perhaps because of her upbringing. When my parents finally decided to have children, she was more than ready to play the role of the doting grandmother; that is exactly what she did, and, in the process, she became my first best friend.

My mom returned to work a few weeks after having me, so Niria became my second mother in my infancy and youth. I called her “Mami” and called my

mother “Mama”. When my mother would scold me, I’d run and hide behind Mami’s skirt. When I’d fall and scrape my knees, Mami would always pick me up. When I was sick with a cold, Mami was always ready to heal me with a dozen home remedies (Vick’s VapoRub was her favorite).

She was always my protector.

Mami was the one who taught me to speak my mother tongue, Spanish. She taught me how to sew, even though I soon forgot everything she taught me about her precious Singer sewing machine. I learned the importance of food as a vehicle for comfort by watching her cook. She was the only one who was allowed in the kitchen during meal times, and I vividly remember watching her whirl around in her green apron. My mother and I would joke that she was like a tornado—messily whizzing around from one end of the kitchen to the other, leaving a trail of open cabinets, scattered spice bottles, and dirty pans behind her.

Mami was fundamental to my upbringing as a stable, calming presence that balanced out the chaos of life. As she aged, however, the roles reversed. She developed Alzheimer’s when I was in high school, and slowly that wretched disease stole her away from me. My mother was

VOICES

her primary caregiver, but all of us would help out. I vigilantly watched to make sure she didn’t leave a pan unattended on the stove, helped her pick her outfits out, and reminded her of who she was as she slowly forgot. No matter how much I reminded her, these efforts were fruitless.

She became a shell of the woman she once was. Towards the end of her life, Mami no longer recognized me and would ask me where the niña was: where did Emara go?

She passed away on November 21, 2019. It was two years ago, but it still feels like it happened yesterday. Months went by after she passed before any of my family dared to go into her room. Mami cared tremendously about her personal possessions; she’d never let any of us borrow or touch her things. Growing up without material goods, Mami had a deep appreciation for everything she acquired after migrating to the US. My mother was the one who built up the courage to empty Mami’s old room, so she was the one who decided what to do with her possessions. Most of her clothes were saved to bring to relatives in Cuba so that they could get use out of them. My mother and I picked through the pieces of her clothes that we each wanted, and the rest of them were donated. Her prized Singer sewing machine was stored in a hallway closet. The room’s furniture was

gifted to one of my cousins who had recently bought a house. Within a few days, Mami’s possessions, which took a lifetime to accumulate, were gone.

It was comforting to know her items would gain a new life in the possession of strangers, friends, and relatives, but, at the same time, I couldn’t help but wonder how Mami would feel to see her precious things moved from their home. She was proud of everything that she had accumulated over the years, including hundreds of photographs of her first years in the US, of all my family trips back to Cuba, and of my youth. These photographs became an archive of the person I once knew, a bittersweet reminder of how life was before she slowly forgot herself. There are many photos of her dressing me up in cute costumes, helping me take my first steps, and celebrating all of my “firsts” with me. Every single holiday and special moment is commemorated in those photos.

My favorite photo of all of them is one where she and I are both looking at the camera with cheesy grins on our faces. Mami is wearing a colorful checkered shirt, straight from the ’70s, and her classic round wireframe glasses.

I’m wearing a blue and red t-shirt, red shorts, and white patent shoes. I think I like it so much because you can tell that

DESIGN BY UMA EDULBHERAM, PHOTOS COURTESY OF EMARA SAEZ

she was my best friend, the only person that knew me better than myself. That photo, an immortalization of our collective joy, will always remind me of who she was before Alzheimer’s.

Years later, after her passing, I now own that checkered shirt and many of her other colorful clothing. Clothes were always a way for her to express herself, and she was well known for always presenting herself as put together. Even when she had Alzheimer’s, we made sure she continued to preserve her dignity and sense of self through her clothing.

Her care for personal style definitely transferred to me, though I’ll never be able to rock that checkered shirt even half as well as she did.

When I wear her clothes and see those photographs, I remember the woman who I loved so dearly, not the shell of who she was when she left us. The photographs she took weren’t enough to prevent her from forgetting, but they are enough for me. Her person and story live on, as far as I’m concerned, in those photos and the memories they hold.

Those archival memories take on a new life every time I go through them. They may only be snapshots of small moments in her life, but they are emblematic of the person I choose to remember everyday.

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OPINION

ADDING INSULT TO ILLNESS THE LACK OF LONG-TERM CARE AT CMHS

By Tess Robinson

A

s a student who came to Tufts during the first school year of the pandemic, I have been dissatisfied with the lack of long-term care at Tufts mental health services. Counseling and Mental Health Services (CMHS) describes itself as a center for “time-limited counseling services based on students’ individual needs.” Explicitly interpreted: it is a place to get therapy in the interim between getting your own therapist or getting better on your own. As frustrating as that is for students who want to establish a relationship with their counselor, who don’t want to rehash their trauma every few weeks to someone new, who lack the financial means to seek external therapy, or who fear telling their parents they need it, most of us, including 12 TUFTS OBSERVER MAY 2, 2022

me, accepted the absence of long-term care as a sad reality of college mental health services. Until author Grace Talusan came to speak in my Asian American Literature class.

Talusan, a Tufts alumna whose memoir The Body Papers won the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, spoke to our class in February 2022. Talusan doesn’t mention Tufts by name in The Body Papers, but it has a substantial presence in her narrative as the place where she experienced the most serious depression of her life. She says of her junior year, “I have never been as ill as I was then, and every year since then has been an attempt to swim away from the dark depths of that illness.”

When she came to my class, I knew about those dark times in her life, and I knew that she found her solace in therapy.

I didn’t know the long-term therapy she received was at Tufts.

Talusan describes her college therapist in The Body Papers, noting the silence that filled the room as she stared at the therapist’s succulent, unable to speak. “At the time, being seen by her was enough to make progress,” she writes. Talusan mentioned to our class that she owes a lot to this therapist for her continual support, for meeting with her several times a week over the course of her time at college, throughout summer vacations and holidays. I thought her therapist was an external provider, a counselor from Medford or

OPINION

Somerville whose proximity would make them an easy support system for a young woman in need of weekly sessions. Only when she came to our class did I realize that the therapist was a clinician at CMHS. As a student who has personally sought out Tufts counseling services, I was in disbelief: that kind of care doesn’t exist at Tufts anymore. When I went to CMHS in Fall 2020, during Tufts’ first year of the pandemic, the therapist I saw almost immediately began the external provider process with me. I sought her out early in the semester, before the influx of students that usually marks the midterm period at college mental health facilities, and the concerns I discussed with her weren’t acute enough to require more specialized care; nothing about my case at that time pointed to the need for an external provider. Yet, after only a few sessions, she asked me to consider talking with James Kane, the clinician at CMHS who helps students find outside counselors. I didn’t want to find an external provider when therapy was available and free at Tufts. “How long can I stay with CMHS?” I asked. She told me they could see me for about four sessions before they begin the external provider process.

Four 50-minute sessions is equivalent to one showing of the Titanic, which I think many students would rather watch than begin a relationship with their counselor only to be shifted off to someone new. This mid-length care delivery model may benefit students whose mental health issues are situational and impermanent, but many have more enduring mental health concerns.

Other students were immediately referred to local providers before ever receiving therapy directly from Tufts. An anonymous sophomore stated, “I came to CMHS struggling, and I was basically told that I needed to find a counselor on my own…

I didn’t know what qualities to look for… so I ended up trying three different counselors and made a connection with none of them. I wish I could have at least gotten some guidance from CMHS, even i f they weren’t able to offer me counseling services.”

Barriers for service already exist outside of the short-term/long-term debate around CMHS. The institution still doesn’t have a cohesive, user-friendly website for counselors’ availability, and students still have to book appointments over the DESIGN BY MEGUNA OKAWA, ART BY BRIGID CAWLEY

“IN A WIN FOR IRONY, THE MENTAL STATE WHICH CAUSES STUDENTS TO SEEK OUT THERAPY ALSO MAGNIFIES ALL HURDLES AGAINST IT.” phone. In a win for irony, the mental state which causes students to seek out therapy also magnifies all hurdles against it. The same anonymous sophomore said of the search for an external therapist, “I didn’t know what I was doing and I surely didn’t have the motivation to figure it out.” Small obstacles become big barriers for students seeking therapy during mental hardship. And having to search for your own external therapist—having to find someone compatible, inexpensive, and within network—is a big barrier under normal circumstances.

CMHS should offer long term therapy. That it doesn’t is not surprising—what is surprising is that it did. Talusan sought therapy from Tufts in the ’90s. “Overall, 12.2 percent of the population 18 to 54 years of age received treatment for emotional disorders between 1990 and 1992,” according to a study from the New England Journal of Medicine. Since then, Tufts’ own Report of the Mental Health Task Force from 2019 cites a “notable increase in the number of students with significant, ongoing mental health needs.” In a report about the mental health of college students from years 2007 – 2017, the American Psychiatric Association found a decrease in mental health stigma and an increase in the rate of treatment from 19 percent to 34 percent. If stigma against mental illness is falling, and an awareness for the importance of mental health treatments rising, why do students at our institution have poorer access to long term mental health care in the 21st century than they did in the 20th?

An Observer article from 2019 has the answer: “Michelle Bowdler, the Executive Director of Health and Wellness Services, said that due to the high amount of student need, if CMHS were to treat patients longterm, it would only have the resources to

support 375 students, down from the over 1,800 undergraduate students it currently sees.”

In distributing mental health services broadly rather than deeply Tufts has constructed a dangerous dichotomy. Shortterm and long-term care aren’t mutually exclusive; the same institution can offer the former and the latter, depending on the needs of the population. If more students are seeking treatment, and more are suffering from mental illness, it is no less the responsibility of their institution to provide the same quality of care that it did when mental health stigma kept those numbers low. Other institutions have proven themselves able to supply consistent care. For instance, Colby, a NESCAC school with a much smaller endowment provides individual, 50 minute sessions which “typically occur on a weekly or bi-weekly basis.”

Many students can’t pass up free therapy for financial reasons, and others rely on the autonomy it gives them over their own treatment during a stage of life characterized by dependence on one’s parents.

Talusan wrote in an email of her own experience with CMHS, “I didn’t have to ask my parents for money to pay for it and I appreciated that privacy over my healthcare needs.” Tufts has proved itself an institution capable of changing quickly to meet public health developments; it has constructed, deconstructed, and reconstructed several modular housing units designed for COVID quarantine in the past 2 years alone. Doesn’t the pandemic-related public health phenomenon of increased mental illness deserve similar attention? If Tufts must increase the budget of CMHS to increase access to long-term care, so be it. We spent $137,000 on prom.

MAY 2, 2022 TUFTS OBSERVER 13

ARTS & CULTURE

CARVING A SPACE FOR BLACK VOICES

F

or a curious Tufts student armed with the power of technology and social media, there are always layers of this hallowed institution left to explore. This student might have happened across an Instagram story posted to the account @tufts.onyx calling for submissions of visual art and creative writing. Clicking on their Linktree leads the viewer to a sign up sheet for an open mic night in collaboration with the Pan-Afrikan Alliance.

There are a number of niche publications out there, albeit unknown to a large number of the student body.

These underground publications are putting out quality journalism and catering to a diverse set of interests every semester. If one were to continue scrolling through their page, they would find that Onyx, a student-run arts and literary magazine for the Black community with roots spanning decades, was just revived.

Tracing this history through the digitized editions preserved in Tufts Archives sheds insight on what makes this magazine so special. According to an editor’s note by Margot Mosley, written in the magazine’s inaugural issue in 1984, “the purpose of Onyx, the magazine, is to expose the power and the beauty of black expression in its purest literary form.”

The form that this takes has been diverse, showcasing everything from poetry and personal narratives to art and photographs. She also stressed the importance of a magazine centered on Black voices, which are often overlooked at a predominately white institution like Tufts. Since then, Onyx has become a TCU-recognized club and thus an established campus organization. Although recent years have seen Black students turning to14 TUFTS OBSERVER MAY 2, 2022

By Isabel Genn

wards alternative platforms to showcase their creativity, the need for a cohesive space dedicated to amplifying these voices has not diminished.

In Mosley’s last publication as editor-in-chief in 1987, she explained that, while the aim of the first edition was to engage white members of the Tufts community directly about the

experiences of Black Tufts students, the 1987 edition witnessed the magazine pivoting toward a more internal focus. “The current edition reveals how we, the Black community at Tufts, have converted our anger, frustration, and pain into positive energy which we have redirected and channeled into our community in order to give us motivation and strength for our continued struggle. We no longer feel compelled to define ourselves to the rest of the world, instead, we

have become more concerned with communication and unity within our own community so that we can cultivate our strength,” Mosley wrote.

The magazine partnered with and was supported by a number of other campus organizations in this effort, notably the Africana Center, the Office of Equal Opportunity, and the Pan-Afrikan Alliance. In 1997, Onyx, which had traditionally been a yearly publication, put out its first fall issue, indicating that the demand for a space for Black art at Tufts remained high. Specialized themes, like the arts of the African Diaspora, were explored starting in Fall 1997 and subsequent releases. The Fall 1997 edition also marked the establishment of the Editor’s Choice Award, which was an award selected by the art and literary selection committees for exemplary pieces in each category as a way of highlighting and celebrating students.

And yet, Onyx quietly faded from publication with its last issue in the archives appearing on its 25th anniversary in spring 2009. In this special edition, editor-in-chief Dom Johnson wrote, “I would love to say that the Black population of Tufts no longer has a need to air out their artistic abilities… but we all know as long as there is a Tufts University there will always be complaining from people of color on this campus (let’s not play ourselves!).” In the past 10 years, the need to fill this gap has lurked under the surface, waiting to be revitalized.

Enter Des Porte, a senior and the current editor-in-chief of Onyx and the force behind the publication’s return to print this spring. They described their serendipitous discovery of the magazine’s existence in their DESIGN BY INES WANG, ART COURTESY OF ONYX MAGAZINE

ARTS & CULTURE

second semester at Tufts after finding a copy of the 25th anniversary edition sitting in the Africana Center common room. Something in them clicked as they flipped through its pages and gazed at the artwork. Even though they had limited experience with journalism, they resolved to do something to revive the magazine before they graduated. A large part of Black community building at Tufts is housed at the Africana Center, which is the space from which Porte recruited others committed to rebuilding this literary and artistic outlet that they believe is wrapped in “so much history, beauty, and authenticity.”

While it does not have the same audience as other notable magazines at Tufts, Porte underscored its significance as a way for Black students to air their grievances with racism. Other identity centers at Tufts have corresponding publications that act as vessels for the creative contributions for confronting issues specific to their communities; for example, the Women’s Center formed their yearly literary magazine Out of the Ashes in spring 1975. Porte cited the importance of leaning on the example of the community built over the course of Onyx’s 38-year history, which has allowed them and their team “to find ways to continue to celebrate and enrich Black culture.” Looking towards the future of Onyx after their graduation this May, Porte expresses hope that new leaders will continue to use this platform to foster supportive spaces for Black creatives to come together and share their art with the community without any expectations for perfection.

Isabelle Charles, the incoming co-editor-in-chief, is set to take up this torch. She reaffirmed the publication’s commitment to serving the Black creatives at Tufts. She has always loved writing and reflected, “It’s been an exciting experience because I’ve been able to uplift Black voices.”

Her hope for the future is that Onyx will become a well-loved, staple publication for the Black community at Tufts. As the magazine gets back on

its feet and continues to gain steam, she hopes word will get around and will motivate more Black students to contribute. She also wants to make sure that incoming students become aware of Onyx early on in their college career so that they can be involved for as long as possible.

Already, the promise of the community Onyx will create is uplifting others on campus. Ace Arias, a freshman, performed an original spoken word poem entitled “A Woman She Is” at a recent open mic night hosted

by Onyx in collaboration with the Pan-Afrikan Alliance. She expressed her gratitude to both organizations for giving her the perfect platform to showcase this powerful work, stating, “I thought that what I had to say was too raw and intimate to be read [but not too raw to be] heard.” She added, “I’m very happy to have found out about Onyx. Since I’m a freshman, I’ve spent the year looking for groups of people who I identify with and share the same passion for creating. Even though I found some clubs I love, I hadn’t found a club where I could do my ‘thing’ until I heard about Onyx’s open mic [nights]. I definitely want to get involved next year and continue working with them.” Previously, Onyx hosted a writing workshop with prompts brainstormed by members of their editorial board as an opportunity for students to write and connect with others in a non-academic setting.

Onyx’s upcoming edition will be published by the end of the semester in both digital and hard-copy forms.

In their parting words from the interview, Porte also disclosed that future events reflecting Onyx’s mission, such as additional writing workshops and open mic nights, are on the horizon. That same curious student (who could now be you!) should maintain a vigilant eye on @tufts.onyx, and continue exploring the hidden gems on campus that have made Tufts the multifaceted community it is to day.

MAY 2, 2022 TUFTS OBSERVER 15

NEWS

NO VACANCIES THE TUFTS HOUSING CRISIS CONTINUED

By Aden Malone

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f the 150,000 students completing their higher education in the Boston area, nearly half of them were living in privately-owned, off-campus housing as of Boston’s 2020 Student Housing Report.

Tufts hasn’t built a new on-campus residence since the 2006 construction of Sophia Gordon Hall, even though they are in the middle of a plan to increase the student population to 6,600 undergraduates by 2026, in contrast with a 5,483 undergraduate student population in 2018.

In response to Tufts’ growing student population, administration announced via email on April 8, 2022 they plan to build new modular housing for incoming freshmen and a new dormitory building by 2026. With recent developments such as the Joyce Cummings Center and the Medford/Tufts Green Line extension, Tufts 16 TUFTS OBSERVER MAY 2, 2022

is navigating their campus projects amidst local regulations and an urgent need for high-density housing.

Over-enrollment has been a difficult problem for Tufts and its peer institutions to tackle. “Predicting yield is always a difficult task, and the pandemic has certainly made that more challenging,” said JT Duck, Tufts’ Dean of Undergraduate Admissions. “When coupled with a new test-optional policy, significantly reduced campus visits, and potential changes to applicant decision-making during this period of uncertainty, there are far more unknowns than ever before,” he continued.

To combat their underestimations in the last couple of years, the admissions office has reduced the number of admitted students for the Class of 2026. Still, 100 first-year students lived in the Hyatt Place

hotel in Medford this year, and, according to a recent email from Camille Lizarríbar, Tufts’ Dean of Student Affairs, 150 incoming first-years are now scheduled to live in temporary housing modules located at the site of the current COVID modular housing.

There have been a variety of reactions to this new plan, ranging from outrage to neutrality to acceptance. Jake Pryor, an incoming freshman, explained, “Is it going to be the end of the world if I get a mod? No. Would I prefer to be in regular housing? Yeah for sure.” He continued, “I understand the rationale behind why the school is [housing some first-years in modular housing]... bigger class sizes [and] all the COVID mess when it comes to admitting students.”

NEWS WWW Barbara Stein, vice president of operations and member of the Campus Planning Committee, stated, “The temporary housing will be custom-built, suitable for semester-long residence, and is in a fantastic location on campus.”

Similarly, Timothy Jordan, associate director for residential education, said, “These buildings will serve as another firstyear hub on our campus... We are confident that once students live in these spaces, they will see them as a great place to call home.”

In contrast to the Hyatt, the location of which was not ideal according to Stein, these units are expected to be a step up, and Patrick Collins, Tufts’ director of public relations, agrees, “Last year, we didn’t have sufficient time to bring in this kind of housing because it couldn’t be built on short notice. As a result, the Hyatt was the best available option at that time.”

However, some students disagree that the modular housing units are a better solution than the Hyatt. Justin Deberry, a freshman who currently lives at the Hyatt, said, “I feel like for freshmen next year trading [the Hyatt] for a mod-style living dorm is just not the right move on Tufts’ part.” Deberry explained, “Being at the Hyatt I was still able to have a dorm-like experience, even though I was off-campus, and plus, the perks that I have being at the Hyatt outweigh my need to be on campus because I could stay on campus… for as long as I need to be and then go home.”

Eden Sekwat, another first-year living at the Hyatt, emphasized the close friendships that she developed with other residents as a result of their unique housing placement. When asked if she would have rather lived on campus, she said, “Honestly, no, I think I’d rather live at the Hyatt. I think my experience was just so specific, and I feel like the friendships I made would have, of course, been close if we lived on campus, but we had this shared experience that created a closer bond.”

Somerville has an ongoing housing crisis of its own. After the addition of the Davis Square station in 1984, nearby housing prices increased significantly and displaced a number of lower-income families that used to live there. As a result, the racial and ethnic diversity that the city has long cherished is being lost. Around Tufts, the extension of the Green Line to

College Avenue is expected to increase rents by at least another 30 percent, furthering issues of displacement and gentrification in the Somerville area at the hands of Tufts. In a Tufts Daily article, Somerville City Council President Katjana Ballantyne described how she has seen the impacts of Tufts students living offcampus in the Somerville area. “[Tufts has] left less available apartments for the region… [Tufts] is in direct conflict with our strategic plan as a city, in building a vibrant community.”

While Somerville has been attempting to improve their own housing crisis by pushing for affordable housing through campaigns like SomerVision 2040, Tufts’ inability to complete high-density housing projects and reliance on offcampus expansion have resulted in limited capacity for locals and the displacement of families and working-class residents.

Tufts has struggled to fund and build new dorms partly because the administration has put off investing in residential projects to instead invest in academic facilities, and this decision aligns with the operations of many universities around the country.

For example, Tufts describes the Joyce Cummings Center as, “critical to [their] growing academic programs,” and that, “[it] will also offer the opportunity to create event spaces on a scale that is competitive with peer universities.”

To combat the lack of funds allocated to constructing new housing, Tufts introduced Community Housing (CoHo), a more community-centered approach to off-campus housing in 2017.

Justin Hollander, a professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning (UEP), shared that CoHo has not panned out as intended. Phase two of the project which intended to transform more local houses into residences for juniors and seniors never came to fruition. Instead, according to Hollander and Goldman, Tufts plans on moving department offices, including the UEP department, from wood-framed houses on Professors Row to make space for students. Dr. Goldman, though, sees this as yet another temporary solution, “What could [instead] happen in [Professors Row] is higher density housing, which is a lot more units.”

DESIGN BY MICHAEL YUNG, ART BY EMMELINE MEYERS

Building new dorms, though, is not so simple. When planning and constructing any building, Tufts must get approval from the municipality in which they wish to build. Each city has their own zoning laws, which require structures to abide by parking, height, and proximity regulations that often preserve the aesthetic and feel of a neighborhood. According to Hollander, while Tufts gets a great deal of leeway with these regulations in practice, neighbors are off-put by substantial violations. Goldman, though, said that these protests, while understandable, make it difficult for nonprofits and their local governments to act upon progressive legislation and build high-density, affordable housing. “People are afraid of density, and that’s something that we have to work on,” he continued.

Tufts and Somerville are under similar pressure to offer more housing, and Goldman urges the administration to work with surrounding neighborhood organizers to find an optimal solution.

Whether it’s building more on-campus dorms or providing the town with public and accessible shared facilities, they must focus on uplifting the community that hosts them. “We need to have new ways of thinking about what is precious and how we have a wonderful life in the [already] built environment that accommodates the people that we have.”

She also explained that Tufts’ housing crisis is not just a Tufts problem, nor just a Somerville problem, but a federal issue that must be addressed by all levels of government, starting with the mobilization of local bodies.

MAY 2, 2022 TUFTS OBSERVER 17

POETRY & PROSE

house party, halloween My rings clink against my glass, pink-tinted and cool to the touch.

I’m sipping honey, whiskey, and apple cider, cross-legged on the carpet, glancing around with an easy grin, enjoying the smiles of strangers in my home.

That familiar warmth fills me—flushed face to fingertips to feet. I release my long legs from their bind and return to my room.

The sounds of socialization filter through the slits of my door.

Something stirs the soul of my string lights —they flicker—I blink—and now, I’m curled up with my grief, eyes closed against a reminder of a plane crash’s cruelty.

The backs of my eyelids come alive, a movie screen of memories.

Her, swaying in time to Scarlet Begonias asking us—sixteen and stupid— to name the band and lead singer.

A clue: rhymes with Cherry Garcia.

Her, giddy as a ladybug’s wings flutter

18 TUFTS OBSERVER MAY 2, 2022

By Audrey Ledbetter

to rest on her palm. No one knew why she loved them so much—now we have mugs and tattoos and earrings.

Me, stupefied in the dorm stairwell that day she died, my tear-blurred vision fixating on the flickering lightbulb.

Pints of Cherry Garcia, ladybugs that land on my leg, flickering lights in dark rooms— this is how we communicate.

I say hello, tell her about my day, remind her that she should still be here.

But I love—she loved—life too deeply for me to be here on my bed, back bare against my comforter thinking of death. So I stretch, smile, say see you soon.

I open my door to an angel, two fairies, a ghost, and Britney Spears drunk, in line for the bathroom.

Lights dimmed, steady, calling me— come dance in the dining room.

DESIGN BY TARA STECKLER, ART BY D. GATEÑO (LEFT) AND TARA STECKLER (RIGHT)

POETRY & PROSE

pause

By Anica Zulch

My finger stretches out, wrapped in my grandfather’s gold. I see it, my pause button just out of reach like an unforgiving mirage.

It doubles and blurs as a sheen of tears overlays the image.

My chest hiccups and heaves as I rack my brain for how to breathe, to slow down, to calm. I draw a blank. I set one foot behind the other, perfectly placed with a dancer’s grace, defying the syncopated rhythm of my heaving chest. Back, back, back I go, my finger quivering and growing further away from the target. I retreat until the backs of my legs slam against the deskchair’s lip, buckling and surrendering to the fall. My back stiffens as I feel the chair beneath me, the cold surface a perfect complement to a seemingly detached mind. I surrender. Slumped over and head hung, my eyelids flutter as I fight to keep them closed, each fear and unbridled thought liquifying and seeping through, coating my cheeks with their presence. This is a moment alone. A moment wanted. Needed.

The anguish that had dulled begins to simmer again, an uncontainable, uncontrollable boil. I look up. I spring forward with reckless abandon, finger outstretched and resolve unhindered. I am determined. Determined to hit pause in time, on my terms, to simply have a break. I can’t breathe, I can’t think. I just need. To hit. Pause. The ground below me begins to splinter. Each crack in the foundation elongates, extending toward me with its threatening fractures. As I crane my neck to look around, I notice the pristine façade it once was is now gone, no surface left unscathed. Thank God. It was never real anyways. The ruptures grow longer as I grow faster, my movements accelerating the destruction, my destruction. I am determined.

I am terrified. The warm air brushes my face as I refuse to look down; the splintered foundation below me ceases to be relevant.

Steeling myself for the impact, my finger cuts through the haze and murk of a distorted perspective. The once-suffocating thoughts finally dissipate. I finally exhale.

I hit pause.

MAY 2, 2022 TUFTS OBSERVER 19

OPINION

CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE CASE AGAINST CAPITAL

By Meghan Smith

O

n Earth Day—Friday, April 22nd—climate activist Wynn Bruce set himself on fire in front of the Supreme Court in an act of protest against climate change, tragically passing away from his injuries the next day. Kritee Kanko, a climate scientist and friend of Bruce’s, wrote on Twitter that this was “a deeply fearless act of compassion to bring attention to the climate crisis.” His tragic death was motivated by a sense of grief and urgency in the face of climate inaction.

At the same time, climate activist groups at Tufts and elsewhere have begun to pick up their efforts after being limited by the pandemic. Sophomore and member of Tufts Climate Action (TCA) leadership Ryan Kadet wrote to the Tufts Observer that TCA has recently “collaborat[ed] with other climate justice organizations from universities across the greater Boston area to create a coalition of Boston climate activists.” In a moment that provides renewed opportunities for action in the fight for a livable future, I urge Tufts students to begin evaluating the relationship between climate change and our global political economy which we take for granted— namely, the way in which it is structured around unceasing growth and consumption. At Tufts, we have to interrogate the way we live and the way that our world is shaped, and not take economic growth and extraction of profit as given “goods” when they themselves are the culprits in the crime of global environmental destruction.

Two degrees of warming above baseline industrial levels was once regarded by the international community as a thresh-

20 TUFTS OBSERVER MAY 2, 2022

old of climate disaster not to be surpassed.

Journalist David Wallace Wells found in his book, The Uninhabitable Earth, that the two-degree limit now appears more like a best-case scenario, with even higher global temperatures likely. However, this “bestcase scenario” is still catastrophic: according to Wallace-Wells, ice sheets will begin to collapse, major cities in the equatorial band of the planet will become unlivable due to high temperatures and high humidities, incidence of wildfires will sextuple or more in the United States, and droughts in Africa will extend by five years, impacting food production.

With calamity incoming, our existing solutions—modifying consumer behavior, trading carbon, and gradually transitioning to renewable energy—seem inadequate. If we want to solve the climate crisis, we have to target its root causes. Increasing evidence suggests that there are limits to what we can achieve in an economic system that is fundamentally structured around continued economic growth, increased consumption, commodification of the natural world, and extraction of profit.

Climate change and ecological collapse are inextricably linked to the capitalist mode of production and the incentives which structure its outcomes.

Capitalism is the global political-economic structure that is centered around and defined by the production of commodities for sale on the market and the private ownership of production. The fundamental incentive inherent within capitalism—a need for expansion and growth—drives continued extraction of

the earth’s resources for the realization of a profit. Nature itself is transformed into something to be bought and sold, with its ability to generate profit prioritized over ecological value. Anthropologist Jason Moore wrote that “Capitalism’s governing conceit is that… [n]ature is external and may be fragmented, quantified and rationalized to serve economic growth…” Ecosystems and natural resources are valued to the extent that they may be utilized for profits.

Capitalism also requires the creation of more and more commodities—using more and more resources—for sale on a market. The World Economic Forum concedes that, “Production itself is contingent on consumption. Without sufficient consumption… the production cycle would be paralyzed… mass consumption… is embedded in the core tenets of capitalism as an economic system.” On a finite planet with finite resources, however, consumption is a force behind energy usage and exploitation of the world’s resources.

Anthropologist and activist Andreas Malm locates the beginnings of a capitalist mode of production in the extraction of fossil fuels. Economies were constrained by the natural world around them until they began to extract fossil fuels, allowing for continued growth. In his book Fossil Capital, he wrote that energy constraints “explain not merely the preference for fossil fuels, but also, and perhaps more importantly, the very conditions of self-sustaining growth.” This relationship continues to define the foundations upon

OPINION

which an economic system premised on growth was built.

As such, there are no apparent indications within the investment economy that fossil fuels are being abandoned as a source of fuel. On the contrary, as investment flows into fossil fuel sources, more extraction facilities are constructed. In “How to Blow Up a Pipeline”, Andreas Malm writes that in 2018, two-thirds of capital placed in projects for generating energy went to new facilities for oil, gas, and coal, while only one-third of investment capital went to wind and solar power. We cannot continue expanding fossil fuel infrastructure if we want to have a livable planet in the future—but it seems as though the reliance on profitable energy incentivized by the capitalist political economy encourages it.

If we take continued growth as a necessary precondition of a capitalist economy (though continuous growth has been pursued by other economies as well), this will jeopardize a full transition to renewable sources of energy. While it may be possible to transition our economy to 100 percent renewable energy, economist Jason Hickel writes that “we cannot do it fast enough to stay under 1.5°C or 2°C if we continue to grow the global economy at existing rates.” The world can produce eight more megawatt-hours by renewable energy sources than it could in 2000, but economic growth has increased energy demand by 48 more megawatt-hours, meaning this increase in renewable energy supply has been outstripped by growth in consumption. If we grow the economy by current rates it will double by the midcentury. While decarbonizing our existing economy is difficult enough, with ecological consequences of its own, decarbonizing it twice over becomes insurmountable.

Outside of the production of fossil fuels and their emissions, the pursuit of profit and commodification of the environment causes countless ecological disruptions and crises. The endless expansion of industrial agriculture—driven by the profit motive—is “undermining the

DESIGN AND ART BY MEGUNA OKAWA

planet’s capacity to support life,” according to Foreign Policy Magazine. In areas of India, the water supply has been poisoned by the overuse of pesticides, while in the US, the intensity of industrial agriculture has eroded away topsoil and made landscapes uninhabitable. We can see these as extensions of the need for capital to expand and grow to attain a profit, and commodify land itself.

Along these lines, a full-scale transition to renewable energy without any cutbacks in consumption or growth could further exacerbate ecological disruption.

According to Less is More, for us to power a little under half of the output of our global economy by solar and wind power would require 4.8 billion tons of iron as well as a 2700 percent increase in the mining of lithium. This is not to say that renewable energy sources are not essential, only that without a significant change in our mode of living, utilization of “green” technologies may exacerbate ecological collapse.

TCA, through its targeted approach aimed at divestment of university funds from fossil fuels, has made a crucial connection between climate change and financial instruments within our political economy. Outside of TCA’s strategic approach, Tufts students can also bring an evaluation of these kinds of interconnections between the global economy and climate change to other aspects of campus life, like courses themselves.

Economics is one such discipline that portrays growth and profit as norms or values to which societies should aspire, without always evaluating the ways in which the economy translates into environmental harm. Environmental economics does incorporate the effects of carbon emissions and other forms of pollution into its models as “social costs” or externalities. However, we still see economic growth preferred. Tufts Professor Ujjayant Chakravorty, an expert in Resource and Environmental Economics, stated in an interview, “At least this is my belief and [that of] a lot of other economists, that if you

have the correct policies, then you can incentivize the economy to innovate along in terms of a cleaner growth process, cleaner production process, cleaner development.”

Chakravorty urged solutions for sustainable growth and beneficial innovations while acknowledging that there are justice issues with levels of consumption worldwide. However, while economists often propose assigning taxes on carbon or integration of the value of ecological resources—which may inflate the cost of goods to high levels—and using democratic regulations on producers to incentivize protection of the world’s ecosystems, we may not have time for such incremental market measures if we intend to preserve the planet’s habitability.

We can’t wait for carbon trading to become effective, or for renewable energy sources to suddenly become more profitable and thus more viable for energy producers. Tufts students need to interrogate the mechanisms of the economic system that dictates how resources are used on our finite planet. We have to question prioritization of profit as the basis of our economic system, and unsustainable growth and consumption without end which drive us to the brink of disaster. This includes being more critical of courses that normalize environmental destruction for the sake of preservation of an unjust system. We shouldn’t accept without question courses of study that obfuscate the global environmental impacts of the phenomena they study, and should be more aware of the ways in which the political, economic, and environmental realities of our world interact.

If our political-economic system stands in the way of a just and livable future, it is necessary for us to rethink it, and instead prioritize one that is equitable for all. As the late anthropologist David Graeber wrote, “The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make dif ferently.”

MAY 2, 2022 TUFTS OBSERVER 21

ARTS & CULTURE

ON FILM WE’RE BRIEFLY GORGEOUS A CALL FOR DIVERSIFYING COMING-OF-AGE MEDIA

T

rembling while pinning a corsage on my date to the school formal and pricking a finger in the process. Swatting away ants on the grass by the Mississippi Levee in Baton Rouge watching the sunset. Rolling up my jeans to wade in the creek by a friend’s house and looking for crawfish. Skipping school to go canoeing and writing our names on the underside of the bridge in New Orleans City Park. Speeding over the bridge with snowballs in the cup holder threatening to spill over, blaring a remix of the song Youth by Troye Sivan. Holding hands while strolling through the botanical garden, picking flowers to dry, and to remember this moment by.

These are just some of the memories that recount my rich coming-of-age experience in Southern Louisiana.

Fortunately, I captured all these moments in my memories, my dinky digital camera from 2008, and in my red Moleskin, because I will never see moments like these in mainstream media.

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Growing up as a Tamil woman, there were not enough coming-ofage films with characters who look like me. This is a personal tragedy as there is no other genre I relate to and consume more than female-centric coming-of-age media. The growing pain of leaving adolescence and entering this scary woe-filled adulthood is something I feel on a personal level.

I’ve dressed up as Emma Stone from Easy A far too often for Halloween, devoured Ottessa Moshfegh’s novels in one sitting, and can frequently be found, quite pretentiously, convincing my friends that Ladybird is simultaneously the protagonist and antagonist of Ladybird. I look up to and adore all of these authors and storylines, as they capture the nuanced essence of growing into womanhood. Taylor Swift said it best: “we are happy, free, confused, and lonely at the same time; it’s miserable and magical.” However, this beloved genre is far from perfect.

There is one jarring flaw binding all of

By Edith Philip this media together: these films and novels only star white characters, and the white adolescent experience is far from universal. People of color as a whole, and women of color in particular, are rarely given center stage roles in coming-of-age stories and when they do, they are often tokenized or stereotyped.

Not only are white-only films often lacking depth due to their homogeneity, but they are also often not enjoyed as much by the audiences that watch them. A new study from UCLA’s Newsroom, a news media and research publication, found that “[f]ilms with casts that were at least 21% minority enjoyed the highest online viewing ratings among all racial groups in the all-important 18–49 age category.”

Thus, these films are not only giving the most representation to people of color, but they are also the most enjoyable to the largest demographic of filmgoers. Saira Mukherjee, a South Asian student at the School of the

ARTS & CULTURE

Museum of Fine Arts, said that she consumes more media that centers POC than white characters. She stated, “Obviously I want to watch people of color on screen, but, also, I just think the aesthetics are better and the plot is less tropey.”

Lack of media presence also has grave results outside of bookstores and Hollywood. Kiana Danielle, a writer for Luna Station Quarterly, a literary magazine centering female writers since 2009, writes that in media portrayals, “There seems to be a straight line from childhood to adulthood for POC. All the fumbling in between exists for us too.” When teens of color make mistakes, they are often used as an example of what not to do and are not given the same sympathy that their white counterparts receive. The absence of adolescents of color in coming-of-age media perpetuates a larger societal prejudice that young POC have no wiggle room to make mistakes like their white peers.

The effects of centering white people in coming-of-age media happen behind the screen as well, often barring writers of color from reaching the same levels of acknowledgment and status that their white counterparts do. For instance, Malavika Kannan, a queer South Asian author, scrutinized appraisals of Sally Rooney, a white woman, as the voice of her [millennial] generation in an essay for Electric Literature. The supposed universality of Rooney’s novels is an attribute that is “only afforded to white narratives,” Kannan writes. White writers are able to write coming-of-age narratives and assume that everyone else can relate to them, whereas POC authors are told

DESIGN BY INES WANG, ART BY AMANDA LIPARI MAXON

that their novels cannot be published because no one will relate to them— while the inverse is also true, but never questioned, Kannan concludes.

Jessie Tu, an opinion writer for the Sydney Morning Herald, also writes about the whiteness we read in Sally Rooney’s novels, and really most white coming-of-age novels, stating that her “stories merely celebrate privileged white people doing privileged white things including going to elite colleges, voluntarily sleeping with bad men[, and] having hang-ups about those bad men.” The scope of Rooney’s novels and other mainstream coming-of-age media are extremely limited and do not explore the experiences of people of color, such as being forced to grow up faster, facing racism by students and faculty alike in predominantly white institutions, being fetishized by romantic interests, and being underestimated because of racial stereotypes. However, people of color also have messy hookup experiences, heartbreaks, and complicated relationships with their parents, just like white teenagers. LivV Fernandez, an Apache Indigenous English major at Tufts, spoke to the absence of storylines starring well-developed Indigenous characters. “I have never in my entire life seen a movie where there is an Indigenous character that isn’t completely tokenized; there [are] always certain character traits that they have, like loving nature and animals, and I can’t wrap my head around it.”

Fernandez continued to say, “I can off the top of my head think of two TV shows that do a good job at showing Indigenous characters. However, this is never in cinema or high art, it’s always streaming sites with a young audience in mind, not anything that will receive critical acclaim.”

This isn’t the middle finger to Sally Rooney, whose novel Beautiful World Where Are You

I hold close to my heart, or to any of the other works of art I’ve mentioned but rather constructive criticism from someone who wants this genre to be the best it can. I would not be the person I am without Jo’s monologue (you know the one) from Little Women or John Green’s extensive collection of novels. However, I am also equally shaped by the few pieces of media that star people of color and know there needs to be more like them. I don’t mean it lightly when I say that Celeste Ng is my favorite writer ever and that The Last Black Man in San Francisco is one of the few character and not plotdriven films I can root for.* I want to see change in a genre I love so much, and I hope you agree. The fault in our fiction can change. Okay?

*Some other media starring the stories of POC I’d recommend are: Everything, Everywhere, All at Once (2022), Severance by Ling Ma, Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng, Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid, Gold Diggers by Sanjena Sathian, The Lovebirds (2020), Sheer Qorma (2021), and The Farewell (2019). I highly suggest you read these novels and watch these films and understand that even the parts you don’t relate to are still important and deserve to be showcased.

MAY 2, 2022 TUFTS OBSERVER 23

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INTERFAITH SPACES AND CONVERSATIONS

TRANSLATING IDEALS OF RELIGIOUS PLURALISM INTO COMMUNITY

By Hanna Bregman and Eloise Vaughan Williams

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n many ways, Tufts students have come to appreciate the diverse and vibrant opportunities for exploring questions of spirituality and building faith-based communities. The Interfaith Center, with its large windows that invite sunlight into its neutrally-colored interiors, is the product of a concerted effort by Tufts University to create a space that functions as a hub for community meetings, spiritual curiosity, and the sharing of ideas.

This building is the physical manifestation of longstanding ideals of civic engagement and religious pluralism at Tufts. This tradition spawned Conversation Action Faith and Communication (CAFE), a Pre-Orientation program that offers an opportunity for students to engage with these ideals at the very beginning of their time at Tufts.

Community of Faith Exploration and Engagement (COFFEE), a year round extension of CAFE, encourages students to continue their engagement once their lives at Tufts are underway.

Freshman Romy Arie, the student affairs coordinator for COFFEE, said

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that she was drawn to CAFE due to “the community organizing aspect. I think a lot of people don’t realize that a really big goal of CAFE is to learn about community organizing…

It’s not necessarily a faith [centered] Pre-O.” The intersection between faith and community engagement is not new to Tufts. In Senior John Lazur’s directed research project that seeks to explore the evolution of faith and spirituality at Tufts, they found that the university has been interested in ideals of religious pluralism since its founding.

Admittedly, “Tufts was founded as a Universalist institution

by Universalists, and in a lot of senses, for Universalists. But, also, when it was founded as a college there was an immediate commitment to a nonsectarian education,” said Lazur.

“This immediate commitment to nonsectarian education— if not secular education—[ran] in counter to other colleges and universities, especially in New England,” they continued.

Lazur’s research expounds on Tufts’ commitment to social engagement as intertwined with the religious identities of its students. Crane Theological School, Tufts’ divinity school, opened in 1869 and closed a century later. The school “always struggled financially, it always struggled

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academically, [and] it was never accredited,” Lazur said. By 1915 to 1920, the Universalist presence had become somewhat of a minority. Because of this, the Crane Theological School “shifted the focus. It was no longer about any relation to Universalist theology. [Instead it asked,] how do we prepare in terms of practical skills? How do we prepare these students to be religious leaders for social and moral improvement in the world?”

Within this context, Tufts’ emphasis on interfaith spaces and explorations of faith as it relates to civic engagement appears to descend from a broader legacy of religious pluralism and social outreach.

Speaking to her experience in COFFEE, sophomore Grace Rotermund expressed her belief that COFFEE can be thought of as a community space before a religious space.

Framing a purportedly faith-centered university program as a space that primarily fosters an exploration of personal and

“WITHIN THIS CONTEXT, TUFTS’ EMPHASIS ON INTERFAITH SPACES AND EXPLORATIONS OF FAITH AS IT RELATES TO CIVIC ENGAGEMENT APPEARS TO DESCEND FROM A BROADER LEGACY OF RELIGIOUS PLURALISM AND SOCIAL OUTREACH.” community values speaks to the evolution of experiences of faith on campus.

In a statement to the Tufts Observer, Malvika Wadhawan, a sophomore involved in CAFE and the South Asian Political Action Committee (SAPAC), stressed her profound appreciation for the way in which “people [in CAFE] want to engage and learn from each other.” For Wadhawan, as “a space that strives to be interfaith,” SAPAC has also facilitated meaningful experiences centered on “unpacking Hinduism and talking about the difficult, hypocritical, and uncomfortable parts of a religion and cultural community that has a lot of power and privilege.” Wadhawan also emphasized a point echoed by other students involved in interfaith communities at Tufts: as an interfaith community, SAPAC offers opportunities to “learn from other people and challenge [her] own views on how faith connects to the broader world.”

Similarly, Freshman Rebecca Krauss has found fulfillment in her experience within the Jewish community at Tufts Hillel. Prior to arriving at Tufts, she wrote in a statement to the Observer that she “wasn’t really sure what [she] expected or wanted from the Jewish community.” Regardless of pre-college expectations, her experience in Hillel

DESIGN AND ART BY MIRIAM VODOSEK

has “showed how comforting it was to… have this support system and group of people who shared [her] love for Judaism.” Now, a semester and a half in, Krauss finds herself as first-year programming chair and a Hillel social intern.

Similarly, Owen Thomas, a freshman also involved in Hillel, expressed his appreciation for casual Jewish-specific spaces on campus. Thomas said, “Having random conversations about how we’ve experienced faith… you hear about the way that other people have participated in traditions throughout their lives… in more unstructured ways that you don’t necessarily get in a more formal space.”

The desire for casual spaces for exploration and conversation is shared by those who are eager to engage in meaningful conversations in a non-religious setting. In this vein, Lazur stressed the significance of the creation and implementation of a Humanist Chaplaincy at Tufts. Establishing a Humanist Chaplaincy, Lazur said, “marked a shift in the interfaith community at Tufts… There was this acknowledgement that the University Chaplaincy was not only serving traditionally religious students… so, whether students are atheist, agnostic, questioning, seeking, spiritual but not religious… [they] aren’t outsiders to the University Chaplaincy.”

The university’s stress on community and connection that is recognized and appreciated by Lazur and others involved in the Humanist Chaplaincy has remained pervasive in campus culture across contexts. Junior Nishita Gaba reflected on her enriching experiences within Tufts’ interfaith spaces. Her time in CAFE, for instance, inspired her to become a peer leader years later. “I think what fulfills me now as a peer leader is seeing a community grow every year—it’s always so surprising to me the connections people can make in six days.”

The widespread appreciation of communities students find and participate in within Tufts’ mainly chaplaincies and interfaith groups reflects the dedication and open-minded quality of the students who comprise them. As Lazur said, “The question of belonging is not centered around ‘What tradition are you from?’ It’s ‘Do you want to be here? And are you curious enough to connect with other people?’”

MAY 2, 2022 TUFTS OBSERVER 25

VOICES

Digital Collections and Archives (DCA) is the archives and manuscript repository of Tufts University and is open to the public. DCA’s team of professional archivists provides stewardship for the Tufts University Archives, nearly three hundred manuscript collections, and other permanently valuable physical and digital archival materials. DCA staff also assist Tufts students, faculty, and staff with recordkeeping activities, through records management and digital library services. DCA’s stewardship responsibilities are mandated by the Board of Trustees, as outlined in the University Records Policy.

UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES AND COMMUNITY INSIGHTS FROM AN ARCHIVIST

By Daniel Santamaria There are thousands of stories in have grown to thousands of boxes and are as accessible as possible to the enthe archives. Tufts Digital Collections terabytes of digital data. tire Tufts community. and Archives (DCA) is the home of University records generated in One way we have tried to highlight the Tufts University Archives and is the course of working at Tufts don’t tell a variety of communities at Tufts across the primary archives and manuscript the full story of the university’s past, time is by hiring students as “roving arrepository at Tufts. Archival records however. Over the last several years, chivists” to discuss donation of archival exist from the foundmaterial from students ing of the university and student groups, and DCA itself traces and acquiring collecits origins to 1964 tions—most promiwhen the first univernently the papers of sity archivist position faculty member Gerwas created at Tufts ald Gill—which docuin recognition of the ment his extensive need to create a forwork on the history of mal program to preBlack students at Tufts. serve evidence of the We’ve also beuniversity’s past. The gun reparative work University Archives’ on our description of founding documents collections and cataand original mandates loging information refer to official uniin awareness of the versity records and impact that language some formal student can have on researchwork such as theses Projection onto Goddard Chapel. Archival Image: Claud Randolph Taylor ers and users of arand dissertations. This chival material. We’ve focus has continued and now includes much of the work of our dedicated focused our attention on digitizing a records management program that team of professional archivists has fo- and providing online access to student provides advice to staff, faculty, and cused on centering stories of students publications such as Onyx, Voices, and students across the university about and faculty that are underrepresented South Asian Literary and Art Magazine document retention and transferring in the archives and removing barriers (S.A.L.A.A.M). All of this documenmaterial to the archives. The archives to access to the archives so that they tation is essential to understanding

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DESIGN BY UMA EDULBEHRAM, ART COURTESY OF DIGITAL COLLECTIONS AND ARCHIVES, TUFTS UNIVERSITY

VOICES

not only communities within Tufts but for whom the use of records has that have been traditionally under- lasting consequences.” represented or harder to find in the A University Archives’ relationarchives, but to the entire university’s ship with the wider community can past, present, and future. be deep and profound; the implicaPerhaps most fundamentally, tions of the relationship can impact we’ve focused on removing barriers in many aspects of archival work from users’ access to archives. The essential creating collections and appraisal first step in providing access to archival policies to outreach and academic material is developing empathy for our programs seeking to repair harm. At audiences and ensuring that our physical and digital spaces and environments are welcoming and approachable. This can range from being mindful of images and representations displayed in reading rooms and public spaces to designing policies and security procedures with the minimum amount of surveillance and monitoring to studying and improving users’ in-person and digital experiences.

It also requires, Staff of the Tufts Observer, 1985. as archival scholars Michelle Caswell and Marika Cifor Tufts there is very strong interest in point out, “that users have [deep emo- this type of work from both students tional ties] to records, the affective im- and faculty, and we at DCA have been pact of finding—or not finding—re- partners on a number of projects cords that are personally meaningful, with faculty, staff, and students from and the personal consequences that across the University. archival interaction can have on users.”

One notable project has inCaswell and Cifor explicitly dis- volved collaboration with the Center cuss not only the relationship between for Study of Race and Democracy, archivists and users, creators, and sub- documenting sites related to the Afjects of archival records but also pro- rican American Freedom trail on pose a reorientation of archival work Tufts’ campuses. This work has inwithin the larger community. In this cluded numerous public events; one shift, archivists have “‘responsibilities such event in 2018 included photos towards unseen others’—those who of Black students projected on the are not direct users of archival records, central part of Tufts campus, includ-

ing Goddard Chapel. It was a moving event with people from Tufts, Medford, and Somerville, including many people who may never come to the Archives to do traditional (or any) research. Many expressed joy at seeing these images projected onto the most prominent buildings in the most prominent part of campus.

This work has continued to develop, and this year has included the Leading While Black at Tufts project, including a symposium, exhibit, and documentation effort centered on Black academic leaders at Tufts, along with the project team led by Kris Manjapra, Alonso Nichols, and Katrina Moore. All of this work demonstrates that we are not telling a special interest or narrow “side” story. It’s not an attempt to provide “balance” in the historical record but to demonstrate the ways that Black students, faculty, and leaders are central to the Tufts story—that Tufts would not have evolved to this point without them.

To do so we’ve needed to expand some of our traditional notions of what an archive does—moving a bit away from a focus on collections and traditional research and instead towards filling expressed needs of the wider community. This work is complex and will always be ongoing as we work towards documenting as full a picture of Tufts as possible.

MAY 2, 2022 TUFTS OBSERVER 27

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PUBLICIZING THE PRESENT PRINT JOURNALISM AND TUFTS’ DIGITAL AGE

By Isabelle Charles and Liani Astacio

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tudent publications are critical to the voice and expression of the student body. As technology has dominated our lives academically, politically, and socially, print publications are less “en vogue” and digital forms of publications have taken over. Student publications are not just meant to be kept in dusty bins only to be revived generations later by curious descendants; these publications are often personal and elevate the voices of students. A print copy of these works cements a kind of concreteness that deviates from digitized texts. Will technology dominate our transmission of information at Tufts, or is there a glimmer of hope for student journalism in print?

Des Porte, the co-editor in chief of Onyx, the only literary magazine on campus dedicated to Black student voices and experiences, stated that “print publications are very relevant, especially in the case of Onyx, because it was developed in 1984 as a means for Black students to come and share their grievances that they had with the institution.” For many students on campus, Onyx represents something larger than just a student publication. It reflects the voices of the Black student body at Tufts and is a space for creative expression at this predominantly white collegiate institution. In addition to serving as an outlet for Black students, Onyx “act[s] as a safe space to share Black joy and experience… It’s important for us to have different mediums for our students to show their creations,” said Porte.

For Porte, their initial experience with Onyx was finding the magazine on a coffee table on display in the Africana

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Center. “When I saw Onyx magazine in Capen Lounge [my freshman year],” Porte said, “I was like ‘I want a piece in Onyx.’

‘I want to have something submitted by the time I graduate.’

This is for freshman year me to have my little piece in Onyx.”

Onyx uses both printed copies and an online presence to reach its audience. According to Porte, “It’s nice to have a physical copy… It’s nice to have different ways that you can use this art… Onyx has been digitized…from the years 1984 to 2009 [available in the archives], but I still end up printing out a lot of those versions, so I feel like it’s very important to have physical copies.”

The online presence of Onyx exists primarily through Instagram as a way to share student work. “We mostly use our Instagram to share a lot of poems or art that we have. We do have a website but [it] is under construction, so once that is fixed you can also view our works from there” said Porte.

Onyx is just one of many arts and literature themed publications that have been adding a digital component to their publications. The Historical Review, Melisma, and Future Histories all have websites where interested users can access articles and pieces from recent publications as well as from their archives.

The Tufts Daily, one of Tufts’ largest publications, has also been managing the balance between creating digital and print content. Alex Viveros, the former editor-in-chief of the Daily, said, “I am of the opinion that [print journalism] doesn’t really work anymore… I think we’re so digital now and print journalism [doesn’t]... really follow how news is spread on campus… So as an example, the Daily reports on something [and] half of campus already knows about it because, you know we have Sside chat, Facebook, [and] Twitter.”

Additionally, Viveros emphasized that the spread of news is considerably more rapid in digital formats. “... there’[re]s a lot of stories that just go unreported, ‘cause we simply don’t have enough people or by the time we report on it, it’s already old news,” Viveros said.

He continued to say that publications on campus should consider a more digitized format as opposed to physical ones. Viveros noted that,, “Tweeting is [also a] part of journalism… If something had just happened, [journalists will] just tweet it out, and that’s how the news is received [today].”

For the Daily, Viveros recounted the amount of work and money printing physical copies of the newspaper

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along with the concurrent rise of the Daily’s social media presence. “I want to say 2010 is when we really increase[d] our social media [presence]. In my freshman and sophomore year, the Daily printed four times a week. We printed Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and not Friday. The reason they dropped Friday [is] because it’s so expensive… At the time [it was] like 1200 copies a day.” It led Viveros to question whether the Daily is “a print publication that also publishes online or [is it] a media publication that focuses on [publishing] online but also publishes in print? That’s kind of like two different models.”

In contrast to the Tufts Daily, some publications, like the School of Museum of Fine Art (SMFA)’s Currents, an art and literature zine, chose to use social media to share their content, rather than an online website. Fiona Jacobson-Yang, social media manager and graphic designer for Currents, said “a lot of Currents’ aesthetic choices are influenced by internet culture” and include images from the internet itself. Currents’ staff “are very active on [their] Instagram… [Tthey] had virtual elements in [their] last [issue] where you could scan QR codes to hear music online etc.,” said Jacobson-Yang. On the Currents Instagram, followers can find videos of monkeys on their stories, interactive polls, and photos of the staff. All of these alternative forms of content sharing expand upon the traditional art/literature content found in their physical publication and the traditional online formats of content sharing.

At the same time, the physical copy of Currents bridges both online and physical pieces of media with QR codes and internet meme references, reflecting the changing landscape of publications in the digital age.

Despite the incorporation of digital aspects in many student publications, print copies continue to be equally as important for spreading visibility of publications. This is especially true for the art and literature magazines that are relatively new on campus. Lauren Fischer, the lead designer for Future Histories, said “for the same reason that clubs and events promote themselves on printed fliers taped around campus, having a physical presence makes publications more accessible and noticeable.”

Print copies allow “anyone walking in the entrance of any of the major buildings on campus [to] see these publications in the corner of their eye, and, even if they don’t pick a copy up and read it right then, that’s still an important form of visibility,” said Fischer. Moreover, because Future Histories is a submission-based publication with writers and artists submitting from inside and outside the magazine, “having physical copies for those whose work [Future Histories] showcased is exciting for those students.”

Of course, not all submissions can make it into the print editions of student publications due to the sheer volume of interested students. Melisma, Tufts’ music journal, uses their website for “articles that are churned out on a regular basis, such as concert previews and reviews, end of year lists, and anything else that does not make it into the magazine,” said Andrés

DESIGN BY MIRIAM VODOSEK, ART BY ANNA CORNISH

López, co-editor-inchief of Melisma. Online platforms are also used to publish longer pieces that do not fit for spacing reasons in print publications. López furthered that “longform article[s] will only have an excerpt of it in the magazine, and the complete article will be online,” allowing for more flexibility in their publication, as their print copies have limited space.

Melisma, similar to Currents, has also gained traction on social media. Their Instagram page features various segments such as “‘Friday Five,’ which highlights five new albums that were released that week;, ‘Foraging,’ which promotes releases by up-and-coming artists;, and ‘What are you listening to?’ videos where Tufts students are asked what they are listening to at that very moment,” said López. Since the publication of the “What are you listening to?’’ series, the Melisma Instagram account gained 100 followers on Instagram, revealing how their social media platforms have been increasingly vital in gaining more visibility for the magazine.

Melisma co-editor-in-chief Ian Smith explained, “nowadays, our website and our magazine are both integral and equal[ly] important parts of the magazine since our pictures and reviews of shows go up on our website only.” Student publications, while mainly targeting Tufts students as their primary audiences, also wish to reach beyond the campus.

Smith said they “think of it as the [print] magazine offering content only for Tufts, and the website allowing us to expand our audience to other parts of the country.” Smith echoed similar ideas to Fischer saying that “in terms of community, coming together with a group of like-minded people to make something from scratch and then to have that finished product in your hands alongside everyone who helped out with it… that can’t be replicated easily online.”

In many ways, Tufts publications are not just about what they physically print, but also about newer, and different digital content, including playlists accessible from QR codes, Instagram Reel videos, Instagram stories, and web-articles. Print publications have accordingly expanded and redefined many staff roles to include those who specialize in social media.

While online media platforms have allowed publications to expand the range of their content, ultimately Tufts publication staff members note the satisfaction of having something published in-print, where one can feel the fruits of their labor. As Andrés López said, “there is something special about physically holding the magazine in your hands and flipping through the pages as you read.”

MAY 2, 2022 TUFTS OBSERVER 29

Bye bye Bao